Rivals in the City (11 page)

Mary scanned the crowd for anything significant. The scene felt like something Anne and Felicity might have devised for her during her training as a test of observational skills. Travellers milled anxiously, supervising the loading of their baggage: neat valises, heavy corded trunks, even a vast, irregular bundle that reminded Mary for all the world of half a cow wrapped in burlap. As always, coachmen and travellers had their familiars: half-grown boys ducking and darting about the wheels, intent either on earning a penny or stealing anything unguarded; travellers’ friends and families, watching the preparations with misgiving in their eyes; and the usual assortment of bystanders a busy street produced, all with advice to give, things to sell, opinions to declare.

Anne’s voice was as cool and quiet as ever. “I know this is highly irregular, Mary. I must also caution you to consider yourself in the company of a dangerous person. Mothers and daughters are so often cut from the same cloth. Bearing that in mind, are you ready to begin?”

The question was purely a formality. Mary was the only person for the task; there was no possibility that Angelica Thorold would follow a stranger out of the pub towards a promise of safe lodging. “I’m ready, Miss Treleaven.”

To her surprise, relief softened Anne’s tightly drawn features. A pause. Then, very quietly, “Thank you, Mary. I appreciate this.”

Mary nodded, sudden tears stinging the backs of her eyes. Anne Treleaven was normally so clipped, so perfectly emotionless, that even this modest admission came as a revelation. “Well, then,” she said, trying for a light-hearted tone, “wish me luck?”

“Of course,” said Anne, with the smallest of smiles. “Although I doubt you’ll need it.”

Outside the Coach and Horses, the scene was hectic; inside was pure chaos compressed within timbered walls. Mary paused on the threshold, struck by the vivid differences between the types of public houses she’d recently visited. She was beginning to appreciate what a clean, orderly ship Mrs Bridges ran, and just how difficult that must be. In fairness, the Coach and Horses was roughly four times the size of the Hangman, and bursting with coaching passengers and all who served them. Still, every person in there was striving, with varying degrees of success, for attention. Coachmen hollered at the ostlers, who barked at the stable boys. Cooks bawled at their skivvies. They dodged, whining, around the barmen who, in turn, roared at them for getting in the way. Somewhere in the middle of the mayhem, a tiny baby yowled: a round, dark hole of a mouth that seemed to emit no sound, so great was the din.

Mary covered her ears and stood quietly in a corner. Gradually, as she watched, some sense of order emerged. The dining room, it seemed, was overfull; many of the customers slumped along benches in the main taproom were waiting for, and grousing about, a table and a meal. The walls were lined with a cornucopia of travellers’ trunks and cases awaiting collection or dispatch. These threatened to trip up any who passed, and loud complaints and curses contributed to the din.

She couldn’t see a person who fit her memory of Angelica Thorold: elegant, blonde, haughty. Mary wondered if there was a separate dining room for ladies, and if that’s where Angelica might be. But just as she was about to explore the inn further, her eye lingered on a woman curled defensively into herself in a corner of the room. She looked vaguely familiar: could it be? This woman was very thin, her hair mousy and straight, her expression one of sheer pinched misery. Then, the wide blue eyes flashed a glance at the ceiling – a look of frustration and despair – and Mary smiled. It was Angelica Thorold.

Mary began to work her way through the room, stepping over and around people and things with an air of mild confusion. As she drew closer to Angelica, she began to ask people: “I beg your pardon, but has the Dover coach arrived?” “Do you know when the Dover coach is expected?” “I’m looking for a passenger from the Dover coach, a young woman.” Most people hadn’t a clue; others were too absorbed in their own weariness and misery to reply.

At last, Mary reached Angelica. “Excuse me, miss,” she said, raising her voice slightly to be heard even at this proximity, “I’m looking for a young woman who was meant to be on the Dover coach.”

Angelica’s eyes flashed with hope, and she sat up straight. “I was on that coach! Are you from the Milnes’?”

Mary wondered when, or if, Angelica would recognize her. “I’m here on behalf of the Newlands, to meet a Sally Tranter.” A moment, and then a frown. “Could you possibly have mistaken the name? Are you Miss Tranter?”

Angelica shook her head. “I almost wish I was, for the time I’ve been waiting here. Look, the Dover coach arrived absolutely hours ago. Your Miss Tranter’s probably made her own way to…” Her sharp eyes raked Mary from boot-tips to hat, assessing the value of her ensemble. “To whatever you said the family’s name was.” Her gaze arrived at Mary’s face and sharpened, perceptibly. “Oh, my good Lord: I know you. It’s Miss Quinn!”

Mary allowed recognition to dawn on her face. “My goodness – Miss Thorold! I do beg your pardon. I’d have known you immediately, only I was preoccupied…”

“No, no,” said Angelica, rising hastily and shaking Mary’s hand. “I’ve changed a great deal. Not quite the spoilt débutante you once knew.” She touched her light-brown hair, slipping from its arrangement. “Not to mention the rigours of travel. And living as a music student.”

This couldn’t have gone more smoothly. “So you did go to study music in Germany? Or was it Vienna? How marvellously exciting!” Mary huffed with exasperation as a long, thin parcel, badly carried, nearly knocked the hat from her head. “It’s bedlam in here. Let’s go somewhere quieter. Haven’t they got a ladies’ parlour? I’ll bet this Miss Tranter’s neatly tucked up there, wondering where the blazes everyone’s gone.”

“The ladies’ parlour is closed,” said Angelica with a sigh. “Fire damage, they told me. Listen, Miss Quinn, I couldn’t be more pleased to see you. You’re the only practical, intelligent woman I know in town. After you find your Miss Tranter, I don’t suppose you could spare a moment for my own predicament?”

Mary blinked. This was entirely too easy: why was Angelica throwing herself into her clutches? What did she truly want? “But of course. I don’t suppose you remember a young woman who travelled with you? She’d have been inside the coach, not on top.”

Angelica shook her head decisively. “No young woman. Two elderly sisters, and me. All the rest were men.”

“In which case, I’ll have to come back tomorrow. Coaches are
so
unreliable, are they not?” Mary looped her arm confidently through Angelica’s. “Let’s find a corner where we can hear ourselves think, and you can tell me about your difficulty.”

Inside the inn was impossible. They ended up standing just outside the building like, as Angelica put it, with a nervous giggle, “a pair of common tarts”.

Mary laughed openly. “You’ve changed, Miss Thorold. And if I may be so impudent, I like you a great deal better.”

Angelica made a noise that could only be described as a snort. “That’s not such an extravagant claim, Miss Quinn. You could scarcely have liked me less, two years ago.” She paused. “In my own defence, I worked quite hard at being unlikeable.”

“You were extremely unhappy,” suggested Mary, quietly.

Angelica nodded, and her blue eyes clouded. “Grieving as I am now, I am infinitely happier.” She blinked, and offered Mary a small smile. “But I am speaking in riddles. My situation, baldly put, is this: my father is dying, in jail. I’ve come from Vienna to see him and I don’t know if he’s still alive.

“I wrote to a friend before my departure asking if I might stay at her family’s home. We had been close friends, in a schoolgirlish way, and although my family’s reputation is destroyed, I had hoped she might agree. After all, it’s not as though she needs to see me; she only comes to town for the season. I’ve now been sitting in this appalling excuse for an inn for more than four hours. I’ve sent as many messages to my friend’s house in Knightsbridge, and all have come back unanswered. I know that they keep a full staff at the house even when they’re in the country. They used to, anyway. But given my father’s current residence, and my mother’s mysterious disappearance, it’s almost certain that I’m considered beyond the pale.

“I suppose a reputation such as mine is quite capable of denting hers. And I’m sure I’d have done precisely the same thing, a few years ago. Hindsight is so very acute, don’t you find, Miss Quinn?” Angelica sighed and rubbed her eyes wearily. “In any case, I’ve been travelling non-stop for a fortnight and I’m about to faint from exhaustion and I’m asking you, oh wise and resourceful Mary Quinn, if you could possibly advise me on what to do next. I’m afraid I’m not giving you much choice,” she concluded, with a brittle chuckle. “If you don’t say something reassuring, I think I might just burst into hysterics!”

If this was a performance, thought Mary, Angelica Thorold ought to star in the West End. If it was genuine, Angelica would soon be completely shattered. Once her mother was arrested, she would suffer a second cataclysm of humiliation and tragedy; a human sacrifice for the greater good.

“Let me think,” said Mary, slowly. “I haven’t friends capable of putting you up.”

“I don’t expect that,” said Angelica quickly, her old pride asserting itself. “I suppose I meant…” She gestured helplessly. “A cheap but respectable lodging-house? Does such a thing exist? To be perfectly, humiliatingly frank, I’m not the heiress I once was. I earn my living teaching music, and I simply haven’t the money for the sort of hotel in which a lady could stay alone.”

It was all so absurdly, improbably easy that Mary had to pretend to flounder. After dithering for a minute or two, she finally said, “You’ve given me an idea. I attended a boarding school for several years, Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls. It’s a good-sized place, plenty of bedrooms, and one doesn’t get more respectable than a girl’s boarding school, really. I’m still quite friendly with its head teachers. Head teacher, that is,” she corrected herself. “I shall ask them if there’s a bedroom you could have for a few days.” She paused. “Or shall you be staying longer?”

Angelica shook her head. “It would be terribly kind of them to let me stay just for a night or two. I’m sure I can organize something for myself, with a little time. It’s only – I’m just – it’s so…” And she abruptly burst into tears.

Mary found herself in the absurd position of comforting Angelica Thorold. “There, there,” she said awkwardly, patting her shoulder. “You must be half-dead with exhaustion. I don’t know how you managed two full weeks packed into a jouncing, swaying public coach with a circusful of strangers. Did you stop for even a single day to rest?”

“I couldn’t,” she replied in choked tones. “My father…”

Miracle of miracles, Mary located a clean handkerchief that somebody – Anne – had tucked into the reticule she was carrying. “Here,” she said, dabbing Angelica’s face gently. “You’ve arrived now. You’re in London. I’m sure there will be a spare bed for you at the Academy.”

Weary as she was, Angelica soon stopped crying, blew her nose and took a few deep breaths. “I do beg your pardon,” she said, her voice still shaky and waterlogged. “I’m making such a colossal exhibition of myself, and so much inconvenience for you, too. I suppose your employers will be wondering where you are.” There was a faint ring of hope to that last statement, as though she was hoping Mary would deny it.

“I can stay a few minutes longer, to organize your things, but you’re right: I shall have to go.” Mary felt no real regret in saying this. Angelica was so entirely convincing in the role of distraught daughter that Mary needed two minutes alone, to remind herself of the other gruesome possibilities Angelica represented. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to write a note of introduction and find you a cab. While I’m doing that, you collect your belongings, and then you’re off. The school is in St John’s Wood.”

“But I need to see my father as soon as possible.”

“You look ready to faint. Once you’re at the school you can have a meal and a bath, and then see about your father. The headmistress will assist you, I’m sure. And I’m permitted to go out, occasionally. I’ll call at the school in a few days to see how you are.”

Angelica nodded obediently, took two steps back into the inn, then turned back. “What if there’s no space at the school?” she asked, eyes filled with panic.

Mary shook her head. “Let’s not borrow trouble,” she said. “Besides, I have a strong feeling about this. They won’t turn you away.”

Nine

The same afternoon

The offices of Easton Engineering, Great George Street

“B
eg your pardon, Mr Easton, but you have a caller.”

James frowned and looked up from his nest of papers. “I’m not expecting anybody.”

“Lady here to see you,” said his chief clerk. “On urgent and personal business.”

Mary
. The thought bubbled up before he could control it.
No
, he admonished himself. Mary was known to all his staff, so this was not Mary herself, but a messenger. Fear clawed at his guts. “What name did she give?”

“None, I’m afraid, sir.”

“Half a minute,” he said. “Then show her in, please.” He gathered up all the Bank-related plans and sketches, notes and calculations, and rolled them into a tube. He wasn’t so nonchalant as to leave them in open view, but neither was he inclined to refile them. He had only just cleared his desk when a tall woman stepped through the door into his private office.

She was dressed in plain black silk, her face concealed by a light veil. James wondered, for one bizarre moment, whether it might be Mrs Thorold, come to settle the score. He stepped forward to greet her. “James Easton, at your service, ma’am.”

“Thank you for agreeing to see a perfect stranger,” she said, her voice rich and low and unfamiliar. “I know you must be busy.”

“Not too busy to be intrigued by your mention of urgent business.” He drew out a chair and she sank into it gracefully. “Mrs…”

“Frame. Felicity Frame.” She lifted her veil and fixed him with a level, green-eyed gaze, waiting until he, too, was seated. “We have a mutual friend in Miss Quinn.”