Chapter Nineteen
Emily
Jo brought them up those narrow stairs with their wobbly railing once again. This time, Emily noticed, someone had left mud on the steps, dry now, but thick enough to cause a slip to a woman whose center of gravity was changing on a weekly basis. Once this introduction was done properly, she’d be giving Mr. Smith a hearty lecture on keeping his home up to snuff for an expectant mother, that was certain.
“Shall we knock loudly?” Emily asked. “So as to wake him up?”
“Fuck no,” Jo laughed. “He’ll think we’re the bobbies if we do that. I’ve got a key.”
“Do you need help getting it out?”
“I can—” Jo paused, a sly grin and a hint of a flush spreading over her face. “Would you mind?”
As they got to the top of the staircase, Emily reached into Jo’s pocket, taking her time and swirling her fingers in a brazen way that she had mostly certainly not indulged in last time this happened. She didn’t linger too long, but by the time she’d gotten the keys out, Jo was biting her lip and eyeing the hall behind them a little guiltily, though of course, who would ever find anything odd about a bit of helpful affection between lady friends anyway?
She was smiling to herself as they went down the hall to the door they’d gone through yesterday, the one with the little wooden plaque that said Smith.
Once they got there, though, they found that that plaque was dangling sideways from one of its corners by a single nail.
Emily selected the next key on the ring, but Jo put an arm out to block her way. She’d gone very still as she looked at the disrupted sign, the mud on the floor, finally bending a bit to inspect the heavy black knob, which, now that Emily was looking, also didn’t look quite right. Some of the wood had come away from the doorjamb, a shower of splinters on the floor below it, and the knob was clearly loose. Jo whispered a curse, then peered back down the staircase, as if trying to ascertain whether there was anyone at home behind the other two apartment doors.
After a moment, she gestured for Emily to take a few steps down the hall.
Out of the way.
“Jo—”
But Jo shook her head, waved her a few steps farther off, then tried the door, which had been left unlocked and swung open easily, given the state of the jamb.
Emily disregarded Jo’s warnings and followed her across the threshold.
The first thing she saw was books. Books everywhere. They’d been impressive on their towering shelves, but now, they appeared almost infinite. Some were still standing on the spread of shelves, but a good deal more had been unceremoniously removed from their places, thrown and scattered and heaped on the muddy carpets with no concern for whether bindings broke or pages went fluttering off. Once she’d gotten over the books, she spotted other troubles: smashed, painted glass that had been a pitcher yesterday; a bright piece of artwork she’d begrudgingly admired ripped from the wall, frame now smashed around it; and at their feet across the rug, as if it had been put there to trip someone, the mermaid coatrack, swimming in jackets and scarves that had escaped her grasp, one of her curving hooks cocked at very final-looking angle.
Stomach knotted with confusion and fear, Emily looked to Jo for some indication of what was going on, how to respond. She’d seen plenty of terrible things at the hospital, things that were certainly more urgent than this. And yet there was something more frightening about this gutted bookshelf. She knew the meaning of blood and fever and screams of pain. They were terrible, but they came with clear causes and protocols. But this...she had no idea what any of this meant.
Jo was pale and shaky. She had a hand to her mouth, which she moved just long enough to call, “Paul?” in a trembling voice. “Paul, are you here? Vanessa?”
There was no answer. No flutter of pages. No sign of life in the decimated rooms.
At last, Emily found enough footing to go to Jo and put a hand on her back. She still wasn’t sure what was happening, but it was an emergency of some sort, and she was far from useless in those.
“Was he robbed?” she said quietly.
Jo shook her head. “Raided.”
It didn’t shake Emily to hear the word quite as much as it shook Jo to speak it, but it still wasn’t one she was especially keen on. Emily led Jo to one of the fine, squashy armchairs near the cold fireplace and sat her down.
“What does that mean? Not the raid itself; I know what that is,” she added at Jo’s sharp look, a shudder threatening her own stability. She’d never had occasion to deal with a police raid, but between Noah, David, and some of her rowdier suffragist companions, she’d heard enough secondhand stories to have a good sense of dread around the topic. “What does it mean for him?”
Jo put her head in her hands. “Means either he wasn’t here, he got away, or he got taken away.”
“How are you going to find out which it is?”
“I don’t know.”
Jo looked lost, nearly helpless in her distress. Though a doctor had to cull every shred of such a response from their own dispositions, she could still recognize in others that frozen feeling, that feeling of doom, that of the brain frosting over with indecision even when a decision was of utmost importance.
If Emily had ever found Noah’s rooms in similar disarray, she’d be halfway to the police station already to demand answers. Somewhere in Jo was her ability to act, to move, to know what was next. Clearly, though, she was going to need some help to find it.
Emily stooped down before Jo’s chair, grateful for the ease of movement her simple skirt and bodice allowed for. “Shall I come along with you to Scotland Yard? I’m sure you have some right to know what’s happened. We can...we can rule out the worst, that way.”
She took one of Jo’s hands in hers. When she got very little response, she drew it gently to her lips. That at least got Jo looking at her, her dark eyes swimming with frightened tears. She squeezed Emily’s hand gratefully.
“Not yet,” Jo said. As she looked at their twined fingers, she seemed to breathe a little easier, looking up and around like she was awakening somewhat. “No, we...we meet at the bookshop if we run into shit.” She did not simply say it, but recited it. “Bookshop first. Then the printers’... No. No, if they were here, they’ve certainly already been there. Bookshop first, then...”
She faltered and Emily stood, tugging her to her feet.
“Then we make our decisions based on what we find there,” Emily said, allowing what was good and useful in her practical nature to have its way. While crises wore on one’s spirit, she had become very good in them, and for the first time in a while, she was grateful for that. Jo seemed bewildered to have access to a steady hand to help her through this, and the impact it clearly made on her mindset made Emily feel very strong. She stepped in close and put one comforting hand on Jo’s cheek, warm and wet with the tears that had escaped. “We need not plan for the worst, my darling. Only for what comes next.”
She was shocked to hear the word darling come out of her mouth. She’d thought it quite a lot when she received the letters, but hadn’t considered it a word she might ever actually speak. But Jo responded well to it, nodding and leaning in so their foreheads touched for a moment. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and when she pulled back, she looked more upright and able to handle what was happening.
“Thank you,” Jo said. “Does that mean you’re coming with me? It’s not far, but I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go back to Miss Withers’s instead, or get a start on meeting up with your family.”
“There’s plenty of time for that,” Emily assured her, smoothing a bit of hair behind Jo’s ear. “I’ll stay with you.”
Carefully, they started making their way through the mess of books. While Jo was clearly eager to check up on her husband, too eager to stay here and clean things up thoroughly, she also didn’t seem quite capable of leaving the most distressed-looking of the books to languish. She picked a few of them up with a delicacy that Emily might have reserved for injured puppies, patting their covers gently, tucking in any pages that had come out of place, and setting them on whatever surface was closest at hand. There was a distinct air of I’ll be back for you in her movements.
It slowed their progress to the door substantially, but Emily joined her in the task anyway. She found a tall volume sprawled open near the mermaid, the pages slanted and out of place, with a muddy boot print marring the top ones. It was a sad-looking artifact, made especially so when Emily picked it up to find that the words within it were not printed, but handwritten very tidily...
Carefully, since the binding was already in such a fragile state, she flipped to the front, where she discovered a simple inscription in the corner of the first page. The spelling was irregular, but not so odd that she could not make out that it was from the kitchen of Catriona Creagh, for her granddaughters’ use.
Jo had finally made it almost to the door. Emily called her back, rushing to meet her in the middle with the damaged book outstretched.
Goodness, it was hard to witness tears spilling over the edges of such devious, shining eyes. It nearly inspired the same in Emily’s own. Jo ran her palm down that front cover, examining the damaged spine, the twisted, spoiled pages, the stain of an officer’s uncaring boot.
“I’m so sorry,” Emily whispered.
“Sorry?” Jo sniffed and wiped her face on the back of her sleeve, hiccupping. “Don’t be sorry. You found it. You fucking found it!” She was laughing and crying, and carefully turning the pages like she couldn’t quite believe it was real.
“I only meant that it’s in such dreadful shape.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Another finger down the spine, a sharp eye looking over all the injuries with a look not unlike what Emily had seen in her fellow physicians. “But I’m a very good hand with restoration. We might lose a page or two, but if I can make out enough of the letters, I bet I could rewrite them myself. I’d rather have it in hand like this, than perfect and lost forever.”
She hugged the precious book to her chest, and then pulled Emily in as well, pressing kisses to the side of her head as Emily started to really wonder how freeing it might be, to be loved by someone who went about the business of loving with an attitude like that.