Suzanne Robinson (25 page)

Following someone without being detected and yet not losing them proved to be more difficult than Valin had expected. Dressed in shabby clothing obtained from a street vendor, he lurked for three days in an alley near Madame Rachel’s in Needle Street, his legs and feet growing numb from standing in one place. His first sight of Emmie leaving the place had set his heart pounding and blood roaring through his veins. Then there had been no more time to be upset if he expected to keep up with her.

Emmie walked everywhere—to button and lace shops, to the chemist, to a blacksmith’s, and to places the purpose of which seemed impossible to divine from their outward appearance. These premises boasted no signs declaring the business
carried out within and no bay windows in which goods beckoned to customers. Valin dared not go inside for fear of running into Emmie. Three days of trailing along in her wake forced him to realize that she navigated the disreputable regions of St. Giles, Whitechapel, and Clerkenwell better than he did the rooms of Agincourt Hall.

By the fourth day, Valin had decided that following Emmie hadn’t informed him as much as he’d hoped. He met Mildmay for dinner and remarked as much.

“You do realize, m’lord, that an evening watch might prove more interesting.”

Valin crumbled a roll over his plate. “Damn. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I was making inquiries as to the security of the neighborhood surrounding Madame Rachel’s. If your lordship is determined to continue, such a nocturnal expedition should be safe as long as you’re armed.”

“I have my pistol, of course.”

He returned to his post after dark and determined that Emmie was still in her rooms by the light in the corner window on the third floor. Around eleven o’clock the light in the window went out, but Emmie didn’t leave the boardinghouse. The hour passed slowly, and Valin had almost decided to go home. He moved nearer a
street lamp and read his pocket watch. It was past midnight.

“You’re being absurd,” he muttered. “What can you hope to learn that you don’t already know?”

Stuffing the watch in his waistcoat pocket, Valin was about to leave when two women came out of Madame Rachel’s. One was much taller than the other. Veiled, mantelets on their shoulders, shrouded entirely in black, they were widows of little fortune.

Valin watched them come down the steps and set off in the direction of the train station. He turned up the collar of his jacket and grinned. Poor but respectable widows seldom strolled about London after midnight, but he knew a certain lady thief who would. Besides, the shorter one moved with Emmie’s distinctive walk, like a small schooner on a glassy sea.

Stepping off the curb, Valin hurried after the women. He followed them onto a train that took them to the West End, past Westminster, along Hyde Park, and into Kensington. The farther west they went, the more deserted the streets became and the more uneasy Valin grew. They left the train at the edge of Kensington and walked to a group of new and expensive villas arranged around a square. Valin hid behind one of the brick pillars in a wrought iron fence and watched the widows
slip around the side of the house and down the servants’ stair.

“Good God, she’s on one of her robberies.”

He craned his neck to see where they’d gone, but the blackness at the bottom of the stairs had swallowed them. He crept down after them, only to find himself confronted by a locked door. Emmie and her companion had vanished. Valin peered in a window at more darkness and cursed himself for not anticipating this setback.

“Now what shall I do?”

He pulled his jacket tighter against the evening chill and trudged up to the street. The metropolitan police patrolled such areas as this regularly. Not wishing to be seen and questioned, Valin went into the garden that formed the center of the square and slouched against a tree.

Inside the Bagshot residence, Emmie knelt beside Dolly in a closet the size of her sitting room at Madame Rachel’s. The Bagshots were at the opera, according to Dolly’s information. Neither understood Italian or liked the music, but they went anyway, so that Society would see them. Meanwhile the servants had been given the night off so that Mr. Bagshot wouldn’t have to pay their wages.
The only inhabitants of the house were a couple of maids who slept in the attic, and the butler.

Emmie turned a long, thin tool in the lock of a jewelry box. There was a click, and she lifted the lid. Dolly opened one of her petticoat pockets, and Emmie tipped the contents into it. They emptied three more boxes, more jewels than either of them had ever found in one house in London. While Emmie returned the jewelry boxes to their shelves, Dolly stood watch. She touched a heavy silk gown hanging in the closet.

“Grand clothes she has,” Dolly whispered. “Too bad she looks like a gouty otter.”

“Shh.”

Emmie stood back and surveyed the closet in case they’d left anything out of place. Her gaze fell on a pair of men’s boots. They were old and heavy, the kind farmers wore.

“What are these doing here?”

Dolly glanced at them and shrugged. “No accounting for the habits of them that’s got lot’s of blunt.”

“But you can usually count on them getting rid of anything that reminds them of their humble background.”

Emmie picked up one of the boots and turned it over. She heard a soft thud and shook the boot. Something fell out and rolled on the floor. Dolly picked it up, but it was too dark in the closet to see
what the object was. They went to a window where Dolly held it up to the moonlight.

“Goodness gracious mercy,” Emmie whispered reverently.

“My eyes,” murmured Dolly.

In her hand rested a fat roll of one-hundred-pound notes. Emmie whipped back into the closet and dumped the other boot. Another roll fell out, and she tucked it into a petticoat pocket. She closed the closet door, and she and Dolly crept downstairs and out of the villa. As they walked down the street, Dolly hissed at her.

“Several thousand pounds at least!”

Emmie nodded and placed her hand on Dolly’s arm to keep her from dancing down the street.

“Plus the jewels,” Dolly continued in a low voice. “We’re rich.”

Too astonished to speak, Emmie nodded again. Who would have thought the Bagshots would keep that many valuables in a simple locked closet? She wanted to shout with elation and cry at the same time. If the jewels were real, the children’s future was secure; yet no amount of money could make her future seem anything but bleak.

Valin had resigned himself to a long wait, but less than an hour passed before the widows appeared
out of the blackness and walked unhurriedly back the way they’d come. He should have realized Emmie wouldn’t take longer than necessary to purloin whatever valuables she was after.

Following at a distance, Valin lost what was left of his patience. Emmie seemed calm and unconcerned that she’d just committed a crime, that she might be caught at any moment. The two women chatted as they walked, as if strolling at midday. Their unconcern only fed Valin’s anger.

Emmie was mad, running about the city at night, without protection, breaking the law, exposing herself to the possibility of violence. He wouldn’t allow it! Mrs. Apple was going to retire.

He decided to confront Emmie at Madame Rachel’s. His immediate concern was that she not get caught with whatever she’d stolen. He was relieved when they made it onto the train without incident, but grew worried again as he thought of the trip back to the boardinghouse through so many disreputable streets.

Then the women gave him a jolt. One got off the train, and Valin nearly panicked. Both were still veiled, but he knew the one departing wasn’t Emmie. He stayed on the train and left when Emmie did.

Now he grew more and more worried, for she was on foot and traveling deep into the squalid back quarters of the old city. The farther east they
went, the older the regions became. Soon they passed areas where noxious slaughterhouses lay, and around such industrial regions clustered block after block after block of grimy, decayed tenements. In all his explorations of the East End, Valin had never come so far into the rookeries.

On and on Emmie walked—swiftly, with assurance and no hesitation. Fearful for her, Valin closed the distance between them. They traversed dozens of leaning tenements huddled around black, stinking waterways thick with sewage. The West End might be sleeping, but the East End had just gotten up. Valin could hear raucous laughter, and more than once he dodged insistent prostitutes.

He hurried after Emmie as she entered an area where old yards and gardens had been built over and landings occupied, so that the whole evolved into a maze of foul nests and burrows. Again he closed the distance between them and slipped his hand into the pocket where his gun was concealed.

Emmie startled him by ducking into a hole in a wall, but he went after her only to find himself in an open area formed by back-to-back cheap houses. She skirted a row of latrines and walked swiftly down a tiny passage to come out into a lane. To Valin’s disgust a cess-trench had been gouged down the middle of it, leaving ledgelike paths on either side of the trench. Valin gagged at
the stench and imitated Emmie by keeping to the narrow edges. Several dirty and drunken men huddled over a fire near a doorway, and watched Valin pass with slit-eyed curiosity.

Valin grew alarmed as he realized Emmie had paid them no attention. He decided to stop her and force her to leave this horrific place. He sped after her into an open court. Unsupervised children played amid water barrels, a pigsty, and more latrines. He dodged through another hole cut through a rickety tenement and stumbled over something. As he fell his head exploded in pain, and he heard a hoarse voice.

“Not ’ard enough. ’It ’im again.”

Valin dropped to the ground and rolled. Something whizzed by the space where his head had been. As he jumped to his feet, a boot jammed into his stomach. Valin doubled over, then dropped to his knees under a blow to his shoulder.

Something clattered on the bricks beneath him. The pistol. He dodged sideways to avoid another blow. His vision was blurred, but he could see the two men wielding cudgels sidle toward him. He dared not take his eyes from them to look for the gun.

One more step and they’d be close enough for a strike. Valin braced himself as the two drew back their cudgels. Then he heard a noise behind him and turned in time to see two strangers clamber
through the tunnellike passage into which Emmie had vanished.

Certain he was doomed, Valin backed away from them. They hardly glanced his way, brushing past him to plant themselves before his attackers. One was tall and thin as a ferret, while the other could have been a prizefighter. Valin’s attackers straightened up at the sight of these two, but kept their weapons ready.

The ferretlike man spoke. “Evenin’, Jakes, evenin’, Toad. Missus Apple says to go about your business.”

“That’s what we’re doing, like,” replied Toad, whose extraordinarily wide mouth and jaw combined with a low forehead and pop eyes to make him worthy of his name.

“Right,” said Jakes. “Missus Apple’s got no call to interfere in our business, Snoozer.”

Snoozer glanced at his companion.

“Pr’aps you’ve misunderstood.”

“No, we ain’t, Sweep,” said Toad.

“Yes, you have,” Sweep replied. “This here bloke is under Missus Apple’s protection. I take that serious, I do. It’s me job, and I always do me job. So if you don’t rub along right quick, me and Snoozer is going to take offense, like.” A knife appeared in Sweep’s hand. “Hook it, you two.”

Snoozer lumbered closer to Toad. “Yeah. You know what happens to old lags what trifles with
Missus Apple’s friends. ’Member old Porkpie Leech? Lost half his skull and walks sideways to this day. And they never did find Snubbin Brown.”

“Yes, they did,” Sweep said. “Found ’im in an old latrine hole in Lurker’s Alley.”

“They did? When?” asked Snoozer, turning to his friend.

“The other day. Some tike was playing near it and saw these eyes staring up at ’im from the hole.”

“Dead eyes?”

“ ’Course they was dead. Who’d stay in a hole if they was alive?”