Untitled (34 page)

   Jane says, "Are you feeling better now, ma'am?"

   "Better?" She turns away from her reflection in the mirror and looks at Jane. "Oh, yes," she says, "I am feeling much better."

   "Well, I am pleased to hear that, ma'am." She gives a tiny smile, then looks around her—anywhere but into the widow's face, because there is something there she doesn't like. A quickness to her now that wasn't there before, and a tightness to her jaw that makes her look capable of desperate acts.

   "In fact, I feel well enough to leave here. But I will have to rely on you." She steps towards Jane and lays one of her cold hands on her wrist. "You're still my friend, aren't you? You'll help me, won't you?" Her voice has fallen to scarcely more than a whisper. "I can't stay here. The Bentleys can't believe Henry would have chosen a wife like me. I'm not good enough for them." Her face flickers. "Do you know what it's like to have no friend, and nowhere to turn? But even that is better than staying here."

   Although Jane wants to pull her hand away, she knows she mustn't. "I'm sorry, ma'am."

   "This—" the widow points to the bed—"is all I have. I'll need a small trunk for it."

   "A trunk?"

   "Mine's at the bottom of the sea."

   "Yes, ma'am." Jane looks at the clothes on the bed. They will not fill a trunk. "Excuse me for saying so, ma'am, but what do you need a trunk for?"

   "For respectability's sake." The widow gives her wrist a slight squeeze. "You can't travel without luggage. People will suspect you. I've learnt that much about the world."

   "Where will you go?"

   She lets go of Jane's wrist. "As far from here as I can."

   Of course the widow doesn't trust her. She must know Jane was the one who told the secret of her past to the Bentleys. Who else does she have to help her, though?

   Jane says she knows there are trunks in the lumber room upstairs, and that most likely it is either unlocked or the key is hanging up in the kitchen.

   Along the corridor and up the back stairs she goes, up to the top floor. She has no reason to be up here at this time of the day, unless she is looking in on Price, so she makes her way to Price's door. Inside the dim room the air is stale. A small fire is glowing in the grate—a fire she lit a couple of hours ago. Now it has burnt down to its embers. As for the tray she left on a chair by Price's bed, it looks untouched. The broth has a greasy, cold look, and the dripping has sunk into the bread. "Mrs. Price," she calls, but Price doesn't move.

   She bends over her. All of the color has disappeared from Price's face so that the darkness of her hair stands out unnaturally. Her breathing is slow, but loud enough for Jane to hear it without leaning closer.

   She sits on the edge of the bed. At the end of the corridor the lumber room waits, and with it the widow's hope for escape. She could easily bring down a trunk. She could help the widow lay her clothes in it; she could even carry it down the stairs to the hallway for her. But they would be discovered before the widow could be carried off in a hansom. Besides, she can't be Mr. Henry's widow if there was no marriage, and there cannot have been a marriage if there is no proof of one—that much Jane has overheard through the drawing room door. So the widow deserves what she gets for pretending to be what she is not, for trying to profit from Mr. Henry's death.

   Even as she tells herself this she feels doubt seeping in around her heart. The woman hardly looks like a criminal. And hasn't Jane heard her crying in her room, great wrenching sobs that must have come from deep inside her?

   She hears footsteps in the corridor, and she starts to her feet. With both hands she smoothes the covers, hiding any sign that she has been sitting.

   Mrs. Robert is standing in the doorway. "Jane—what are you doing here?"

   "Looking in on Mrs. Price, ma'am. I thought perhaps her fire was burning low." She nods to the hearth.

   Mrs. Robert's skirts rustle as she closes the door. She looks over at Price. "How is she today?"

   "Much the same, ma'am."

   "Has she eaten?"

   "I don't think so, ma'am. I brought her up a tray, but she hasn't touched any of it."

   "At this rate she'll soon be following her mistress into the grave."

   "Let's hope not, ma'am."

   Mrs. Robert looks about her, then gestures to the fire. "Hurry up with that. I don't know what you've been about this morning to be so behind."

   The coal scuttle is half full. Jane crouches beside it and picks out lumps to feed to the fire. "Mrs. Victoria Bentley asked me to help her get dressed," she says.

   "Did she indeed? Then it's possible she's thinking of leaving us."

   "Yes, ma'am."

   "Is she, Jane? Is she making plans?"

   She keeps her face turned to the fire. She blows on the embers and they pulse with heat like something alive. "Yes, ma'am."

   "I see."

   Jane hears her moving about the room, those skirts of hers rustling. The tongs clang as she hangs them back up with the poker and the brush, then she rubs her hands to get rid of the coal dust.

   Mrs. Robert comes close. "For the moment, oblige her. Do you understand? Help her with whatever she wants. But tell me the moment she tries to leave the house."

   "Yes, ma'am."

        
M
ina can't bear the feeling of Price's skin lingering on hers, or the rough texture of her unwashed hair. She stands at the basin rubbing soap over her fingers and across her palms, finding every crevice, then she plunges them into the water. Price barely opened her eyes at the sight of the jewelry, though Mina told her, "Look what your mistress left you. There's fifty pounds too. You can't say she didn't provide for you. Come on now, sit up. Sit up, Price." Instead Price let her eyes close and turned away, as though whatever her mistress had left her was not enough.

   Cartwright knocks on the door, then enters, carrying a salver and a single letter on it. "For you, ma'am." He holds it towards her though her hands are wet. She takes a towel from the stand and carefully dries them, never mind that Cartwright is standing there, not watching but waiting certainly, his face expressionless, his thoughts apparently far away. She has often wondered what he thinks about while he stands at attention, as is so often required of him.

   The moment she catches sight of the writing, she knows the letter

is from Popham. She takes it and keeps her voice steady. "Thank you, Cartwright."

   "Ma'am?" he says. "Excuse me for intruding, but I have noticed our second housemaid in the lumber room. She says she has your authority. Is that indeed the case, or has there been a misunderstanding?"

   She holds the letter against her chest, as though she might drop it. "In the lumber room, Cartwright?"

   "Yes, ma'am. Apparently Mrs. Victoria Bentley requested a trunk."

   "She has my permission. Thank you, Cartwright."

   The door closes behind him, and she carries the letter over to the dressing table. With one finger she rips open the envelope and reads:
You cannot expect me, my dear lady, to think of our past
merely in financial terms, and your behavior was such that I laid
myself open to humiliation in the eyes of my family and friends.
She reads to the bottom of the page, and the blood rushes to her face.
You are no longer my luscious rosebud. The bloom has gone off you a
little, has it not? However, I am prepared to overlook such deteriora
tion. I will send a hansom for you on Thursday evening at seven
o'clock. You may give your husband whatever excuses you think nec
essary. Naturally, if you are unable to be free at that time, I will be
happy to explain to him the exact nature of our acquaintance, and
provide unassailable proof.

   She has two days. She tears up the letter and drops it into the grate.

   She should hurry. She turns the trunk back the right way up. Its lid hangs open, and something flaps loose. Has she broken it? She peers inside, and with one hand feels around. The bottom lining of the trunk has come unstuck, and she tries to press it back again. It won't lie flat, so she tips the trunk towards the light. Underneath she sees a flat packet of some kind. She gets to her feet and stands listening in the doorway. No one is coming. Slowly she pushes the door closed on its dry hinges, so slowly that its squeals barely reach her ears. It doesn't take much to pull the packet free. Papers by the look of it, tied up with string. She carries the packet past the boxes, past the furniture draped in dust sheets, over to the grimy window, and there she tugs on the knot.

Chapter 29

A
pparently the matter is not one of great urgency, for it is three hours before Robert returns with a detective. For Mina it has been three hours of sitting, of remembering the way the shreds of Popham's letter curled as they burnt. Of listening for sounds from the hallway. The widow is clever—but is she clever enough to buy Jane's loyalty? To somehow escape from the house undetected? Mina pictured herself standing in the hallway with her arms outstretched, blocking her path; she imagined herself hurrying into the street just in time to see the widow disappear into a cab that took off with a clatter of wheels. She let herself taste how it would be to take off in that cab, to rush away from this house, and the widow, and Popham. But try as she might, she could not come up with a way to have Robert beside her. So she sat, waiting, listening, until she heard Robert return from the police station.

   Now Dixon the detective is here, though he isn't much to look at. That was her first impression: a shrunken man with a habit of sniffing that pulls his face all to one side, and a coat that looks in need of a good cleaning. He has come, he says, merely "to make enquiries," and he perches on the edge of the sofa with his notebook and his stub of a pencil, though Robert isn't yet down with the widow. He refuses the tea Mina offers to ring for and looks about him as though this room contains clues he should take note of.

   She wonders if she should make conversation, but what does one talk about with a detective? So instead she watches as he peers about, eyes flitting from the landscape on the wall, to the novel she was holding when he was shown in, to the bust of the queen on a high shelf. The silence is measured out by the clock on the mantelpiece. How long could it take for Robert to walk upstairs and knock at the widow's door? Under the hem of her dress, one foot starts tapping. Dixon sniffs, a great rippling sniff that makes one eye wink and the end of his moustache lurch upwards. He looks like the sort of man who eats bacon sandwiches and drinks tea by the mugful in cheap shops. Probably he lives in a boardinghouse, or if he's married it's to a bossy woman who commands their house in the suburbs with its cramped square of garden and its sullen maid-of-all-work. There's something small and dingy about it all, just as there is about the man himself. If you spend your life rooting around in the wrongdoing of others, well, some of it will rub off on you, won't it?

   Now he's looking at her, and she smiles, though those eyes of his track unabashedly over her face, her hair, her black dress, as though she's merely part of the furnishings and he must get his bearings. Then they rise back to her eyes, not once but twice. It's unnerving, the way his eyes meet hers while seeming to focus on something beyond them. She holds his gaze, but wonders—is that a sign of guilt? The ability to stare back at a detective? When he does look away— Robert is coming through the doorway—she lets out a silent sigh of relief.

   "She will not come down," Robert announces. His cheeks are flushed, his shoulders held stiffly.

   "Perhaps, then," says Dixon, "I should go up. The lady may find it more difficult to refuse when she's faced by the Law."

   It takes Mina a moment to realize he is referring to himself. The Law, apparently, is this man in a worn coat.

   "Very good," says Robert, and steps aside.

   The two of them head up the stairs. She hears the creaking of the boards under their feet, then knocking and voices. Dixon, most likely, telling the widow that she now has to answer to the Law.

   Along the hallway comes a shadow. Mina leans forward. It's Jane, craning her head to catch every word of what is going on above her. Was she waiting for the widow? she wonders. Or is this mere curiosity?

   It's difficult to walk quietly in the rustling skirts of a lady, and Jane hears Mina before she gets close. "Is it the police, ma'am?"

   She meets Jane's eyes until Jane glances away, back up the stairs. "Yes, it is."

   "Are they taking her away?"

   Mina looks up the stairs, too, up to the landing, though there is nothing to see. "It hasn't come to that. Not yet at least."

   They wait, listening. Soon the widow will be brought downstairs to answer Dixon's questions. The thought of it makes Mina shiver. A lady—however dubious her past—made to explain herself to a man like him who has grubbed through the sad secrets of so many lives. All compassion, gone. His job is to knit evidence together into a tight net.

   The widow is an impostor, Mina tells herself. She has come into this household to take what she can. To have let her succeed— wouldn't that have been foolish? Especially when the ruse was one so easy to detect? It's unlikely she came up with it herself. Somewhere a man is waiting for her to come to him with the money. An older man. A man who has some hold over her, who sends her out into the world and expects her to return with all she has managed to steal for him. Isn't that what thieves in India train monkeys to do? Yes, she thinks, and it was the widow who told her about them— monkeys dressed in dapper outfits who skitter up your arm and press a bristly kiss onto your cheek, and before you have recovered yourself their small hands have lifted the earrings from your ears or the necklace from around your neck, and they're gone.