A Gift for Guile (The Thief-takers) (8 page)

Now, he felt…a bit cheerful, really.

There’d been a sick moment or two in the retelling, but then Esther had teased him about his ridiculous moniker and engaged him in a ludicrous discussion about the minimum number of bullets required to earn it, and now he felt quite like his usual self.

She had cheered him up, he realized with no small amount of surprise.

Esther Walker-Bales, that prickly, unpredictable, infuriating woman, had cheered him up.

“Something of a step up from rooms over a grocer on Commercial Street,” Samuel commented.

Esther peeked out the carriage curtains at the long line of houses on Apton Street. Bethnal Green was hardly a desirable section of town, but this particular street was located a fair distance from the notorious Old Nichol Street rookery and appeared to be solidly middle class, with modest but well-tended homes. Which made it more of a leap than a step.

“Perhaps he wasn’t a grocer,” she ventured. “Perhaps he owned the building in Spitalfields and the grocer was his tenant. It was some time ago. People confuse details. Or we could have the wrong street.” This last was unlikely.
Apton
was the closest thing to
Apple
or any fruit-based street name they’d found in the area.

“Why would he have used the Spitalfields address on the letter he sent to your mother?”

“I don’t know.” She motioned at the door. “Let’s see if we can find out, shall we?”

“There is something we need to discuss before we begin this search in earnest.” He reached over and took her hand in his. “Esther, we don’t know anything about this man other than that he had an affair with your mother, the wife of Will Walker.”

She looked down at their joined hands. His was warm and strong and nearly swallowed her own. “You think they all moved in the same circles,” she guessed. “That he might be a criminal and a threat.”

“I wouldn’t wager on it.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze before letting go. “If George Smith always knew of you, then he knew Will Walker was the man raising you. If he had any desire to betray either of you, he could have managed it years ago.”

“Yes, that was my thought as well.”

“But the possibility of betrayal still remains.”

She nodded and suddenly wished he’d not released her hand so quickly. “He might be a different man now.”

“Yes.”

George Smith’s circumstances might have changed over the years. Or he may have always been the sort of man who wouldn’t stoop to betraying a child but could live with betraying a grown woman. Or he may have remained unaware of her existence all these years.

“Are you prepared for such a possibility?” Samuel asked.

“Yes. I mean to lie to him,” she admitted. “At least initially. It’s been my plan from the start. I’ll tell him my siblings died in an outbreak of influenza and I married and moved to Boston years ago. Now I am widowed and only in London for a short visit.” She made a face, annoyed with the circumstances. “All this time and effort, all this worry and work to meet my father, and I’m going to lie to him.”

“It can’t be helped.”

“Yes, I know.” She tipped her head at him, curious. “Why are you only now mentioning this? Why didn’t you bring this up at the hotel or in Spitalfields?”

“We weren’t looking for your father in Spitalfields; we were looking for the boy. We certainly weren’t going to find him at the hotel. You might meet him today.”

That didn’t explain why he’d waited to speak up. Unless… “What if I’d not thought to lie to him, or agreed to do it?”

“You’re already here,” he pointed out. “Why argue with a reasonable suggestion when you’re so close?”

“And if I refused to be reasonable?”

He gave her a thin smile. “This isn’t a public hackney.”

“I thought as much.” He could take her back to Derbyshire, forgoing the trouble of getting her out of the hotel and into the carriage.

She could hardly fault him for the plan. It would be the only sensible response to what would have been a terrific act of stupidity on her part. The idea that the plan had been needed at all, however, was a little insulting. “I’m really not an idiot, you know.”

“I know,” he said simply. “With any luck, we’ll know what sort of man your father is by the end of the day.” He opened the carriage door and hopped down, then turned and frowned at her when she moved to follow. “What are you doing?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Well, I’m not waiting in the carriage.”

“Yes, you are.”

“That is ridiculous.” She threw her hands up in annoyance. “Why did I come along at all if it was only to sit in here?”

“I assume if we find him, you’ll want to speak with him?”

“I want to speak with whomever answers the door.”

Samuel shook his head. “A young widow asking questions is an oddity. People don’t like oddities.”

“Of course they do. That’s why we have circuses and curiosity shops.”

“People don’t like oddities showing up at their front doors unannounced at nine in the morning. They do, however”—he pulled a calling card out of his pocket and handed it to her—“like a bit of excitement.”

Esther read the card with a sigh.

Sir Samuel Brass, Private Investigator.

Yes, being handed a card such as this would be exciting. Even if the name wasn’t recognized, the profession certainly would be. People would want to help Sir Samuel Brass, Private Investigator. They would likely want to help him even if he brought along an odd widow, but they might feel more constrained in her company.

“Oh, very well,” she muttered. She gave him back the card and sagged back against her seat after he closed the door and ran off to have all the fun.

She might as well have stayed in Derbyshire and hired Samuel to find her father. One might argue that it would have been the safer course of action, but her purpose in coming to London hadn’t been simply to meet her father; it had been to
find
him. The search was an important step on the path of setting things right.

She wasn’t finding him now; she was waiting for someone else to find him for her. And she wasn’t even paying him for the trouble.

She felt like one of those indolent country gentlemen who went hunting but didn’t do anything but stand in a field and shoot. It was their servants who carried the weapons, flushed out the pheasants, retrieved the carcasses, carried them home, then cleaned, cooked, and served the birds. She didn’t want to stand in the field and shoot. She wanted the work.

Esther pushed aside a corner of the drapes to peek outside as Samuel climbed the front steps to the first house.

This wasn’t atonement. It was atonement by proxy.

Samuel, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind the arrangement at all. Over the next few hours, he appeared quite content to go from house to house alone, staying only briefly in some but disappearing for fifteen minutes or more in others. He returned to the carriage every so often to inform Esther of his progress, or lack thereof. No one on the street had heard of Mr. George Smith, but the neighborhood was filled with let houses. Few of the inhabitants had lived in the area for more than three years.

Esther’s small store of patience began to wane.

After his fourth visit to the carriage, she was feeling completely useless and decidedly grumpy. It didn’t help matters that he returned smelling suspiciously of tea and pastries.

“Are these people feeding you?” she demanded.

Samuel looked down at his lapel and brushed away a crumb. “Maybe a little.”

“Was that a biscuit crumb?”

“Banbury cake.”

“Banbury cake?” Who served Banbury cakes at eleven in the morning? For that matter, who ate Banbury cakes at eleven in the morning? “We only just had breakfast.”

He shrugged and said, “It was a Banbury cake.” As if that explained everything.

After a moment’s consideration, she had to admit that it did. Banbury cakes were delicious. She slumped farther into her seat, now grumpy
and
hungry. “Well, bring some back with you next time.”

“I’ll see what I can manage.”

He didn’t manage Banbury cakes, but after another hour, he managed to procure useful information at last.

“We may have something,” he told her, taking his seat across from her. “According to Miss Latimer—who was born, raised, and intends to die in the house at the end of the street—a Mr. and Mrs. George Smith occupied number fourteen Apton Street for thirty-seven years. Mrs. Smith passed on five years ago and Mr. Smith moved away to parts unknown. They had one son, Arnie, who left for school at a young age and rarely came home for visits.”

“Thirty-seven years?” That couldn’t be right. She knew for a fact that George Smith had lived in Bow more recently than that. “Was she certain?”

“Quite. She didn’t know Mr. Smith well. He had a reputation for being a haughty and snobbish man who held himself apart from his neighbors. Considered himself superior. She also mentioned that, if he is still alive, his age would be somewhere in the midseventies.”

“It’s the wrong George Smith.” Now she was grumpy, hungry, and disappointed.

“Not necessarily. Men sire children in their fifties.”

“Not with my mother. She ran off with dashing young men who amused and adored her, not pompous gentlemen who would look down on her. Besides, she ran off to Brighton that year, not Bethnal Green.” And there was the matter of her father having lived elsewhere during that thirty-five-year time span. “It’s the wrong George Smith.”

Samuel rubbed his chin. “I’m inclined to agree, which means either there is another George Smith in the area, or you were given false information.”

“There are bound to be others in the area.” With a name like George Smith, there could be dozens.

As it turned out, there was exactly one. Two hours later, and three streets over, Samuel found a Mr. George Albert Smith, age twelve.

“It’s no good,” Esther decided upon hearing the news. “The information I was given must have been wrong.”

Samuel nodded in agreement then tilted his head a bit to study her. “You look as though you’ve lost heart.”

“I’ve not lost heart. I’m disappointed, that’s all.” And it wasn’t the temporary setback that bothered her so much. It was the inaction. Failure by proxy was even worse than atonement by proxy.

“We’ve places to look yet,” Samuel said, “and there’s more to a search than going door-to-door. There are records to be gone through as well. Deeds to the old building in Spitalfields. Birth registries, census records. If your father is in London, we’ll find him.”

Good Lord, how did one go about searching records for a George Smith, exact age, location, and marital status unknown? “And if he isn’t in London?”

“Then we’ll find him outside of London. Should we try our luck in Bow first?”

Oh, she had so hoped they wouldn’t really need to visit Rostrime Lane.

“Are you opposed to luncheon beforehand?” If it was cowardly to put off the inevitable for another hour or two, then cowardly she would be. She wasn’t up to facing her past just yet.

“Not at all.” Samuel stuck his head out to give orders to the driver.

Back to the hotel, she thought. Back to her rooms. Then, if she was very lucky, back to the carriage. Such an adventure.

“I’m going to look out the window,” she grumbled. “Are you going to make a fuss about it?”

“Not if you put down your veil.”

She obliged him without complaint and found that the view lifted her spirits a little. It was difficult to maintain a sour mood while London itself passed before her eyes.

The day had not gone as she had hoped, but it was only one day. One morning, really. She needn’t assume she would have to be inactive for the rest of her trip. There were plenty of things she might do yet. She could search through the paperwork. Maybe she could convince Samuel to let her join him at one or two houses on Rostrime Lane.

Certainly, she was going into number twenty-three. Given the choice, she’d rather stroll through the gates of hell and invite the devil to tea, but that wasn’t an option. Someone had to go into number twenty-three, and she would be that someone. She had to be.

Also, there was still the mystery of the young man at the station to solve. She was needed for that.

Esther grimaced a little as she became aware of the tenor of her thoughts. Had her life truly become so dull, so unbearably monotonous, that the possibility of physical danger was now a welcome relief? Was the chance to sort through papers, or view London through a moving window, really the most exciting thing she could hope for?

She found herself craning her neck for a glimpse at an intriguing roofline in the distance and realized that, yes, her life had become just that dull and, yes, this was likely the most she could expect.

She sighed, and with sufficient volume for Samuel to take note.

“Do you know the worst part about being a police officer?” he asked her. “And being a private investigator?”

Esther flicked a glance at him. “Not the lack of pastries, evidently.”

“The waiting,” he informed her. “Waiting in court, waiting to speak to a witness or a suspect. Waiting to talk to a magistrate or a judge. Waiting for someone to come forward with information. There is an abominable amount of waiting in the work.”

“You didn’t have to wait this morning.”

“Of course I did,” he replied. “At every house. How many people do you imagine are up and about prepared to greet visitors first thing in the morning?”

“It isn’t first thing.”

“In town, anything before one in the afternoon is first thing in the morning.” He pulled the curtain nearest him back another inch for a quick glance out the window. “For every minute of conversation I had in those houses, I spent ten minutes waiting alone in a parlor or sitting room.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him. Certainly, the early visits might have roused a few people unexpectedly, but it was nearly one in the afternoon now. The neighborhood was middle class, not aristocratic, and it was only the aristocrats who felt it was their duty to sleep past noon every day.

He was trying to make her feel better, she realized. His approach was obvious, awkward, and not at all effective. It didn’t matter in the end. Where the tactic failed, the effort succeeded.

She found herself smiling simply because Samuel Brass was trying to make her smile.

* * *

Samuel watched Esther as she stared out the window. He couldn’t see her features clearly through the veil, but he didn’t need to. He had the keen memory.

Without any effort at all, he could bring up every detail of her face in his mind’s eye. Right down to the tiny freckle at the corner of her mouth.