The Ragged Heiress (2 page)

‘She’s me half-sister,’ Stranks muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Any more quaint remarks from you, mister, and you’ll be sorry.’

Blunt closed the book with a snap. ‘No mention of Froy or Stranks,’ he said triumphantly, but on seeing the look on Stranks’ face he changed his tune. ‘But there was a young woman who might fit the description. She developed a fever and was sent to the Fever Hospital in Islington.’ Blunt shook his head. ‘Typhoid, I believe – you might be too late.’

But he was speaking to thin air. Stranks had raced from the building, barging through the half-glassed doors and almost knocking down a woman and child in his haste.

‘Well!’ Simms said, shaking his head. ‘He’s a rum ’un and no mistake.’

‘I’d say the young lady would be better off in the
next world than living with a brute like him,’ Blunt said, adjusting his spectacles with the tip of an ink-stained index finger.

‘You wasn’t as close to him as I was,’ Simms said, grimacing. ‘He smelt like a midden and I’ll wager he’s a stranger to soap and water.’ Simms leaned across the desk, speaking in a low voice. ‘I heard that there was prisoners being brought back from the East Indies for trial on board the
Caroline
. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he weren’t one of them.’

‘Well, we’ll never know, Mr Simms,’ Blunt said, glancing nervously over his shoulder. ‘Don’t look now, but Matron has just come out of her office, and she’s coming this way.’

Stranks erupted into Duke Street and was immediately seized by the scruff of the neck. ‘Did you find her?’

‘Let go of me, Guthrie.’ Stranks jerked free from the hand that held him. ‘She ain’t there.’ He glanced up and down the street. ‘There’s a copper over the road – best move on afore he spots us.’ Shoving his hands in his pockets he put his head down and crossed the busy street with Guthrie hobbling along as fast as his gammy leg would allow.

‘For God’s sake, man,’ Guthrie said breathlessly. ‘I can’t keep up with you. Anyway, they ain’t looking for us. We’re dead – drownded in the Thames. We’re free men.’

Stranks dodged in between a costermonger’s barrow and a brewer’s dray where a couple of burly deliverymen were unloading barrels and rolling them down a
ramp into a pub cellar. ‘Shut up,’ Stranks muttered. ‘D’you want the whole of London to hear you?’

Guthrie stopped by the open trapdoor and he inhaled the smell of beer with a gasp of pleasure. ‘I say let’s stop for a jug of ale. It’s what I missed the most out there in that heathen land.’

‘No time for that,’ Stranks said, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him down the street. ‘And no money until we’ve got the heiress safe and sound.’

Guthrie fell into step beside him. ‘All right then. Have it your way, but where is the little trull?’

‘Looks like they took her to the Fever Hospital in Liverpool Road. Hurry up, mate, there’s no time to lose. The silly cow went down with typhoid. We’ve got to get to her before she croaks or there’s no money in it for us.’

‘You’re so sure of yourself,’ Guthrie grumbled. ‘How do you know that her family will pay up?’

Stranks stopped for a moment, breathing hard. ‘We’ve been over this a dozen times, you idiot. Her pa was a wealthy merchant with a house in the best part of Islington and she was his only child.’

Guthrie grinned, revealing a row of broken and blackened teeth. ‘And we know the parents didn’t survive, don’t we, cully? You saw to it that they never come up for air.’

‘Keep your voice down, you fool,’ Stranks hissed. ‘I never touched his missis. She went down like a stone, but her old man was made of tougher stuff. I thought he was going to pull me under, so I had no choice. Anyway, there was no witnesses so we’re in the clear.’

‘If you say so, Norm. You’re the boss.’

‘That’s right, you keep that fact in your thick head, Guthrie. Remember that we’re officially dead so we’re free men, and when we collect from the family we’ll be set up for life. There must be a fortune to be had from the Froys for the safe return of their little angel.’

‘I’ve always wanted to be rich,’ Guthrie said, sighing. ‘They used to call me a clodpole in the workhouse. They said I’d never amount to nothing, but I’ll show ’em.’

‘Come on then, mate. What are we waiting for? Let’s get to the hospital and find out if we’ve got the right girl.’

Half an hour later, having decided that it was too risky to claim the unidentified girl as Lucetta Froy, Stranks decided that it would be safer to refer to her as Lucy Guthrie, just in case the police became involved, as his name was synonymous with crime and a sure giveaway.

‘Are you certain that this is your relation?’ the ward sister demanded, unconvinced. She did not like the look of these two men, whom she deemed to be ruffians of the worst order, and her sensitive nostrils twitched as the rank odour of their bodies overpowered the strong smell of disinfectant.

A lady of breeding, Sister Eugenia Demarest had trained at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, and she was used to dealing with people from all walks of life, from the high-born to the lowest of the low. She
knew instinctively that these two men fitted into the latter order, but as the young houseman had pointed out, the girl was of a different class altogether.

‘She is our little Lucy,’ Stranks said, baring his teeth in what he hoped was a pleasant smile. ‘We had almost given her up for lost, and now she’s found.’

‘Thank the Lord,’ Guthrie said piously. ‘Us will go to church to give thanks for her safe return to the bosom of her loving family.’

Stranks gave him a savage dig in the ribs with his elbow. ‘Don’t overdo it,’ he muttered. He turned back to the nurse, who looked as though her knickers were starched as well as her pristine white cap and apron. He knew that she was suspicious and that she was looking down her long pointed nose at them. He’d like to get that one on her own down a dark alley – he’d soon have her cut down to size and begging for mercy, or maybe for more. Perhaps that was what the sad old virgin needed.

‘Have you any proof of identity?’ Sister Demarest demanded. These two ruffians might have fooled the almoner, but then Miss Parry was an innocent and thought the best of everyone. Sister Demarest folded her arms across her flat chest. ‘Well, have you?’

‘All lost when the ship went down, Sister,’ Stranks said, meeting her stern gaze with a straight look. He was good at lying. He had learned to lie as soon as he could talk. With a drunken scoundrel of a father and a mother who was no better than she should be, life had been hard in the slums of Hoxton, and Norman Stranks had existed on the streets since he was eight
years old. Cheating, lying and stealing had come easily when it meant the difference between survival or the less attractive alternative. A brief spell in the workhouse had further hardened him and a year in Pentonville prison had completed the process. It was there that he had met the simple-minded Guthrie and for good or ill they had been accomplices in crime ever since. Now he could see a way out of the vicious circle of reoffending, capture and imprisonment and he was going to grab it with both hands. The only problem was that the answer to all their problems lay close to death on the bed before them.

Stranks fell on his knees and buried his face in the snow-white coverlet. ‘Don’t die, little Lucy. Oh, my duck, please don’t leave us.’ He looked up at Sister Demarest and the tears that trickled down his cheeks were real. ‘Get her better, Sister. Us wants to take our little angel home.’

The girl’s eyelids fluttered and her lips parted in a long sigh. Her eyes opened and she stared uncomprehendingly at Stranks. For a moment it seemed that the fever had abated and Sister Demarest pushed Stranks aside so that she could take the patient’s pulse.

‘You must leave now,’ she said firmly. ‘You are disturbing my patient.’

Stranks scrambled to his feet, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. ‘Is she coming round, Sister? Is she going to get well?’

‘I can’t say, but she must be allowed to rest. If you don’t leave I will have to summon a porter to escort you from the ward.’

Guthrie took Stranks by the arm. ‘Come on, mate. Do as she says.’

‘All right, but we’ll be back later,’ Stranks said grudgingly. ‘But you ain’t going to keep us from our sister now we’ve found her.’

‘Keep your voice down, and go,’ Sister Demarest said, pulling the curtain around the bed. ‘Come back tomorrow and with God’s grace you might find that the fever has broken and the patient will be able to recognise you.’

In the dim recesses of her fevered brain, Lucetta could hear the murmur of vaguely familiar male voices and an inexplicable fear seized her. Then there was the unmistakeable clink of brass rings as the curtains were drawn around her bed and she forced her heavy eyelids to open, but a shaft of fear ran through her body. Everywhere was white, except for the flower print on the curtains. She had no idea where she was – or who she was. She closed her eyes and drifted off to another place and another time. A place of safety and calm – somewhere achingly familiar – somewhere else.

The scent of the Spice Islands was not the sweet, nutty aroma of cinnamon and cloves or the spicy tang of pepper, cardamom and ginger that Lucetta had romantically expected it to be. The cloying odour of rotting vegetation, hanging like a steamy mist in the tropical heat, had come as a shock after months at sea with nothing to breathe but the cool salt-laden air. The first sight of the mountainous, palm-fringed island, bright with exotic blooms of frangipani and hibiscus had hit her senses in a flood of colour. Everything here was so dramatically different from the pale northern watercolour landscape of England or the sepia tints of London that it had left her breathless with wonder.

Now, after three months in this island paradise, she was used to the strange smell of the jungle that permeated the stuccoed walls of the British consul’s residence in Denpasar. The odour was all-pervading and even managed to seep into the sandalwood chests that contained her clothes. When she dressed, with the help of Naomi, the flower-like Balinese girl who had been assigned to her as a personal maid, Lucetta had been horrified to find that her new gowns, which had cost a small fortune in London, felt damp to the touch and hung limply from her slender body.

Perhaps this exotic place was not paradise after all, and if the truth were told she had not wanted to come to this strange land, but Papa must be obeyed in all things. He had decided that a sea voyage would be beneficial to her mother’s delicate constitution, and there was no question of leaving sixteen-year-old Lucetta alone in London with only the servants to care for her. The only alternative had been to invite Aunt Eliza and Uncle Bradley to stay with her in Islington, and that meant enduring the company of their son, spoiled, spotty-faced Jeremiah. Lucetta had disliked him intensely when they were younger, and although they had seen little of each other while he was away at boarding school, she doubted whether he had changed very much and if he had, then it was probably not for the better.

Lucetta had reluctantly opted to accompany her parents, and she had not regretted her decision. She had fallen in love with what she had seen of the island and its gentle people. If only she had more freedom to explore its mysterious interior she would have been content to stay longer than the intended four months while Papa toured the neighbouring islands in search of merchandise to stock his wholesale warehouse in London. But she soon discovered that the same strict rules applied even though they were so far from home. It seemed to Lucetta that Queen Victoria’s influence had spread from the outposts of the British Empire to the Dutch East Indies. The British consulate was dominated not by the consul, Sir John Boothby, but by his wife, Pamela, who observed all the niceties and
traditions of English upper class life, even down to afternoon tea with cucumber sandwiches and toasted muffins. Despite the tropical heat, steaming bowls of brown Windsor soup were served at dinner, followed by a fish course and then the inevitable roast meat with at least two boiled vegetables. Lucetta would not have been surprised if suet pudding and custard had appeared on the table as a dessert, but this was either beyond the scope of the Balinese cook, or Lady Boothby had been persuaded that fresh fruit was more palatable after a heavy meal.

Lucetta would have liked to learn more about the Balinese culture and she tried desperately to communicate with her maid Naomi, but as the girl only spoke her native tongue and a few words of Dutch, and Lucetta spoke neither, they had mostly to resort to sign language interspersed with inevitable fits of the giggles. Naomi’s given name was Nyoman, but Lucetta had such difficulties with pronunciation that she opted for a more English-sounding alternative. When this seemed to delight rather than to offend Naomi, Lucetta gave her a hug and presented her with a bead necklace by way of setting a seal on their friendship, to which Naomi responded by taking a spray of frangipani from her sleek dark hair and tucking it behind Lucetta’s ear.

The days of enforced leisure passed pleasantly enough but Lucetta longed for a little excitement. There were occasional trips into town with Lady Boothby, when the good woman was not otherwise occupied with her charity work, but these were infrequent and
Lucetta was not allowed to explore unless chaperoned by Miss Dodd, Lady Boothby’s steely-eyed maid, who complained bitterly of the heat which made her feet swell and played havoc with her varicose veins.

Other than this, Lucetta spent most mornings attempting to entertain her mother, either by reading to her or taking her for short walks in the rose-scented gardens before the heat became too oppressive. Once a month the wives of minor officials and senior clerks were invited to the consulate to take afternoon tea, and there were occasional card parties in the evening, but the guests were mostly middle-aged and Lucetta longed for the company of young people, although she knew better than to complain. She was only too well aware how important this business trip was to her father, and she would not upset Mama’s delicate constitution for all the tea in China, or even all the spice in the Spice Islands. She resigned herself to another few weeks of idleness, and resolved to make the best of things.