Chapter 4 #3
“Excellent, excellent. Hold on to it for now.” He handed the girl into the cabin. “Drive to Upper Thames Street, cabbie, and turn left. I’ll knock when I want you to stop.”
The driver nosed his horse through the traffic around St. Paul’s Cathedral and headed toward the river. Shortly after he turned onto Upper Thames Street, his passenger pounded on the hackney’s roof. The man leaned out the window and shouted, “Stop the coach.”
The driver slowed his horse and stopped. “Guvnor?”
“Turn right into Trig Lane. And pull up at the entrance to the wharf.”
The cabbie drove as instructed, and the hackney rattled to a stop at the end of the lane.
The passenger stepped out of the cabin. “Driver, can you assist me? The lady seems overcome.”
The cabbie climbed down and peered inside the cabin, eyeing the crumpled figure in the corner. He ducked inside and leaned over the girl. At a tap on his shoulder, he twisted around.
The driver’s brain registered a searing pain under his chin a split second before oblivion.
Lady Styles waited all Tuesday afternoon for Brigid Dowling to appear. She’d told the footmen to expect a visitor and thought to warn the kitchen staff that a girl might present herself at the servants’ entrance, asking for her. Has she changed her mind? Susan wondered. Or lost her way?
She spent part of the time reading the newspaper coverage of the prince’s visit to St. Bart’s. Both The Times and The Daily Telegraph praised the Prince of Wales for comforting the Clerkenwell victims, their criticism of the absent Victoria implied rather than stated.
The queen complains of Bertie’s idleness but gives him nothing to do, Susan thought, putting the newspapers aside. And he’s good at this sort of thing. Perhaps that was the problem. Victoria refused to take the stage but guarded it jealously, denying her heir the limelight.
On Wednesday morning, Susan sent a note to the Chapter House and asked the second footman who carried it to wait for a reply. An hour later, the servant returned.
“Brigid Dowling paid for two nights and left yesterday afternoon, my lady.”
“And she never returned?”
“The desk clerk hasn’t seen her since. Said he was holding her carpetbag and wondering what to do with it.”
On Thursday morning, Sergeant O’Malley arrived early at Scotland Yard. He found his new inspector’s office empty, his desk cleared out, and a message from Chief Inspector Clark. The chief wanted to see him.
Clark sat at his littered desk, reading a letter. His scowling bulldog’s face made him look more combative than usual. When he dropped the note, O’Malley spotted the commissioner’s heading.
“Sit.”
The sergeant lowered his bulk onto the battered wooden chair and winced when it creaked. The squat, bald Clark leaned back and hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets.
“I’ve got just the job for you, O’Malley,” he said, stressing the “O” in his surname. “Some Irish servant girl has gone missing. For some reason, Marlborough House cares, so—” The chief looked over the sergeant’s shoulder. “Well, well … Look what the cat’s dragged in.”
O’Malley twisted around in his seat. Tennant stood in the doorway.
“Thank you, sir,” the inspector said. “It’s a pleasure to be back.” Tennant turned to O’Malley and smiled. “Good to see you, Sergeant.”
O’Malley got to his feet, the grin underneath his bushy mustache splitting his face. He reached to shake the inspector’s hand and stopped when he saw the bandage.
“Nothing much, Paddy. A flesh wound. I’ll tell you about it over a pint.”
“You’ll put off the bloody reunion for now,” Clark said.
“This message from Sir Richard …” He snatched it up.
“The commissioner wants to—let me read it—‘reinstate a winning team’ and put you on a case.” The chief tossed it aside.
“Princess Alexandra’s lady-in-waiting filed a missing person’s report about a servant girl. ”
“Indeed, sir,” Tennant said, his expression impassive.
“Yes, ‘indeed,’ so let’s not make a pig’s ear out of this one.” Clark handed O’Malley the file. “We’ll have Marlborough House, the palace, and half the bleeding Home Office looking over our shoulder.”
“I see.”
Clark waved them out of the room. “Hop it.”
When they were out of earshot, O’Malley said, “You’ll be noticing the chief hasn’t changed.”
“Charming as ever,” Tennant said, opening the door to the office he’d exited nearly six months earlier.
He stood a moment with his hands on his hips. “Well, it hasn’t gotten any larger since I left.” He walked to the window and put his hand on the sill. “The window is just as drafty. All the same …” Tennant dropped Clark’s report on his desk, swiveled the creaky chair, and sat.
“All the same, I’m glad you’re back. And that maggot, Romilly, or whatever he’s after calling himself. Good riddance.”
“I’ll tell you the whole story later, but Romilly was up to his neck in gunrunning. Sold weapons to the Irish Republican Brotherhood.”
“Have you told the commissioner that?”
“Yes. French military intelligence asked me to convey some documents to Sir Richard about IRB activities.” Tennant looked at his sergeant. “So, tell me … how are things at the Yard?”
“Morale’s been better, and if you happen to have a name that starts with ‘O’ or ‘Mc’ ’tis a bit like having a dose of leprosy.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“The fella sitting at your desk for the last six months has joined a special division looking into the brotherhood threat. I wasn’t invited to the party.”
“I’m sorry, Paddy.”
O’Malley shrugged. “Like the old music hall song says, ‘No Irish Need Apply.’”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve held down the fort. The Yard seems under siege.”
“That it is. And there was some trouble over at the doctor’s clinic on the day of the bombing.” O’Malley explained what happened to Kate Connelly. “’Twill all blow over soon enough, I’m thinking.”
Unless Colonel Chabert is right, and it’s just begun, Tennant thought. “Damned unpleasant for poor Kate.”
“Have you seen the doctor?”
“Not yet, but she knows I planned to be back today. So, this missing girl. What’s our first order of business?”
“I’ll be looking at the daily reports from the divisional chief inspectors for anyone answering the girl’s description.”
The inspector picked up Clark’s report. “She’s described as a young woman in her middle twenties, auburn-haired, wearing a gray coat and hat.”
“I’ll be sending a pair of constables along to check the hospitals,” O’Malley said. “A country girl from Ireland looking the wrong way? A cab may have knocked the poor lass down in the streets.”
Tennant scanned Clark’s report again. “Last seen at the Chapter House around the corner from St. Paul’s Cathedral. A copper interviewed the desk clerk.”
“St. Paul’s … I’m remembering something about a cab going missing thereabouts.
” O’Malley retrieved a stack of reports from his desk and shuffled through them.
“Here it is. On Tuesday night, a hackney driver never returned with his cab. His turf was Cheapside and the neighborhood around the cathedral.”
“All right, Paddy. Track down the copper on that beat and talk to the Chapter House desk clerk again. I’ll interview Lady Styles at Marlborough House.”
A pair of young mud larks had waited until midmorning for the tide on the Thames to turn and the gray water to recede, leaving a band of slime-slickened mud.
The boys had come equipped with rubber boots, rakes, and a basket.
They headed down the cobbled roadbed of Trig Lane.
The stone steps at the bottom of the street gave access to the oozing strand where they planned to dig for treasure.
Almost anything would do. Even an old shoe could be dried out and sold for scrap.
Near the top of the lane, the sharp-eyed older lad spotted a battered tin near a broken crate.
“Empty,” he said. “Might be worth a ha’penny.” He dropped it in his basket. “Here, what’s this?”
He squatted, retrieved a red, hairy mass, and smoothed out a false beard. The boy fitted the hooks around the ears of his younger brother. “You could do a turn at the music hall with this, Sammy. Let me try.”
They took turns hooking on the beard and laughing at themselves. Then they stopped at the old warehouse near the turnoff into Trig Wharf.
“Oy, Bert. Look,” the younger lad said. “Somebody’s gone and smashed the lock.”
“Funny, that.”
They’d tried to explore the abandoned building earlier but hadn’t found a way inside. That morning, they heard neighing and banging behind the door.
The broken latch and the strange sounds were irresistible.
Tennant and a constable took a hansom from Scotland Yard, driving along the Mall, keeping St. James’s Park on their left. The cabbie turned right on Marlborough Road and rolled to a stop in front of a three-story brick mansion, the London residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
The inspector paid off the cabbie and looked up at the columned portico that sheltered the front door. Then he walked up to the entrance.
“Blimey,” the young copper said. “Begging your pardon, sir, but you’ll not be knocking at the front door?”
“Certainly, Constable.”
The footman who answered hesitated when Tennant gave his name and rank and asked to see Lady Styles.
Then the servant led the two policemen down a short flight of marble steps to the entry hall and asked them to wait.
The young copper stood rooted at the room’s center; the inspector crossed the Persian carpet to examine the tapestry on the wall.
Tennant turned when someone said, “La Primavera.” A tall, fair woman dressed in a gray-and-black day frock stood in the doorway. “It’s an exquisite woven copy of the Botticelli masterpiece.”
“Lady Styles?”
“That’s right, Inspector.” She descended the steps and offered her hand. “There’s a small drawing room in this wing where we can speak in private. The maids light a fire in the morning, and I often sit there before luncheon.”
“Thank you.”