The Shadow in the North (12 page)

ard might make before dropping from a branch onto the frail back of a gazelle.

He moved toward her and spoke.

"Am I permitted to wish you a good afternoon?"

"I see no reason to forbid it."

He smiled slightly. He was standing two or three yards away, hands behind his back, a shaft of pale sunlight gilding one side of his heavy blond face.

"You look enchanting," he said.

She didn t reply at once but reached up and broke off a piece of the glossy palm leaf that hung just over her head and shredded it quietly with her nails.

Then she said, "Thank you." It was little more than a whisper.

He pulled up another chair and sat down close by. "You will be interested, I hope, to hear my plans for our married life," he said. "We shall live at Hyde Park Gate for the time being, though naturally we shall need a place in the country. Do you enjoy the sea, Mary? Do you like sailing?"

"I don't know. I have never been at sea."

"You will enjoy it. I am having a steam yacht built; it will be launched in time for the wedding. We might spend our honeymoon aboard. You could help me choose her name. I hope you will launch her."

She made no reply. Her eyes were cast down sightlessly; the bits of shredded palm leaf lay on her white lap. Her hands were still.

"Look at me," he said. His voice was hard and even.

She looked up at the man she had agreed to marry and tried to keep her expression empty.

"The photographers are coming," he said. "I wish to have a picture that expresses pleasure and satisfaction in our betrothal. As my fiancee, as my wife, as the hostess of my house, you will not use any pubUc occasion to express discontent, whatever you might feel privately. Naturally, I hope you will not be discontented anyway. Do you understand?"

She found herself trembling. "Yes, Mr. Bellmann," she managed to say.

"Oh, not Mr. Bellmann anymore. My name is Axel, and that is what you will call me. Let me hear you say it."

"Yes, Axel."

"Good. Now tell me about these plants. I know very little about plants. What is this one called.**"

Promptly at two thirty, Mr. Protherough of Elliott and Fry's arrived at Lord Wythams house. His three assistants had an unexpected hour off, with five shillings apiece to keep quiet about it; and in their place were Frederick, Jim, and Charles Bertram.

Jim was wearing his best suit and had his hair slicked down flat. Frederick, with darkened eyebrows and cheek pads to fill his face out, was scarcely recognizable. Mr. Protherough, a sandy-haired young man with spectacles, had entered into the spirit of it, but Frederick knew that his job was at risk if anything went wrong.

The footman who opened the door was disinclined to let them in at first.

"Tradesmen's entrance," he said, sniffing, and made to close the door.

The Honorable Charles, who was dressed with faultless elegance, said, "One moment, my man. Do you know who you're trying to keep out of your master's house?"

The footman opened the door an inch wider. The trace of a sneer appeared on his face.

"Yes," he said. "Photographers. Tradesmen. Tradesmen's entrance round the corner."

"Tell me," said Charles, "when Sir Frederick Leighton was painting Lady Wytham's portrait, did you direct him to the tradesmen's entrance?"

The footman was now looking apprehensive. "No," he said cautiously.

"My card," said Charles, extracting it wearily. "Have the goodness to inform your master that the photographic artists have arrived. Did arrive, in fact, prompdy at two thirty, but are now"—he looked at a gold watch—"nearly five minutes late."

The footman looked at the card, gulped, and shrank at least three inches.

"Oh. Ah. I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure. Please come in. I shall inform his lordship of your prompt arrival, sir. This way, if you please, sir. ..."

Jim assumed a haughty expression (not easy, after a cheerful wink from Charles) and helped Frederick carry

in the equipment. They were shown into the winter garden. While Mr. Protherough organized the setting and checked the Hght, Frederick and Jim set up the tripod and prepared the plates. They would be wet-collodion pictures; studios preferred the familiar process for large formal photographs—it was fiddly, but it guaranteed a good result. Charles, meanwhile, was talking to Lord Wytham.

It was warm in the winter garden; the sun was thin, but the steam in the pipes kept the air close and moist. Jim, thinking of nothing in particular, mopped his brow as he adjusted the leg of a tripod. He was aware of Bellmann and Lady Mary coming around a corner of the path, and looked up—^and then felt as if he'd been struck over the heart with a hammer.

Lady Mary. She was so perfect he could hardly stand. Lovely wsLsnt the word—nor beautiful —he felt as if he'd been picked up like a leaf in a hurricane and whirled away—^helpless, suddenly and totally and utterly in love. It was quite physical, the effect it had; his knees shook and he had to remember to breathe. He wondered (with the part of his mind that wasn't stunned and could still think) how it was that Bellmann could stand there calmly and talk, while her hand lay on his arm. As if it meant nothing! She was wearing something white and her hair was dark and glossy, and her cheeks were warm, and her cy^ wide and misty. ... He nearly groaned aloud.

In a dream, Jim moved automatically where Mr. Protherough told him, handed a plate to Frederick, held a palm branch out of the way, shifted her bamboo chair near the pool, propped up a white sheet just out of the picture to reflect a little more light on the shadowed side of her face, and all the time talked to her passionately inside his head and listened with awed delight to her imagined responses.

Bellmann didn t matter a bit. He was irrelevant. She marry him? Ridiculous. It was impossible. Look at the way she sat beside him, proud and separate and dreaming; look at how those slender, lovely fingers idly removed a fleck of moss from her skirt and trailed it in the water; look at the warm tenseness of her neck just under the dusky pink ear where the hair curled back waywardly. . . . Jim was lost forever.

Around him the photographic session went on smoothly. Mr. Protherough dived beneath the camera cloth, exposed the plate, emerged again; Frederick handed him a new plate and took the exposed one back; Lord Wytham hovered dimly in the background, then left them alone. Charles watched it all with the proprietorial ease of a landowner watching his gamekeepers at work. They took a dozen pictures altogether, including one of Lady Mary alone, for which Jim gave silent thanks.

When they'd nearly finished, Frederick leaned across and whispered, "Careful, Jim. You're staring."

"Oh, God," Jim groaned, and turned away to hand Mr. Protherough the last plate. This was for a picture of the couple standing beside some classical goddess, but Charles broke in to suggest that Lady Mary should sit. It would improve the balance of the composition, he said, and Mr. Protherough agreed.

"Bring the chair, please, Mr. Sanders," said Charles to Frederick, as Jim helped Mr. Protherough turn the tripod around. Frederick picked up the bamboo chair from beside the pool and carried it to the statue—

And suddenly Jim was aware of a silence.

He looked up to see Bellmann holding Frederick's arm and staring at him intendy. Frederick was gazing back in innocent bewilderment.

Oh, keep it up, Fred, thought Jim desperately, he's rumbled you . . .

"Tell me," said Bellmann (and everyone was still now, including Mr. Protherough), "were you at Lady Harborough's house last week?"

"Me, sir?" Frederick inquired in a gende, studious voice. "No, indeed, sir."

"Posing as a guest?" Bellmann went on, with an edge to his voice.

"A guest at Lady Harborough's? Oh, no, not me, sir. Shall I put the chair this side, or that, sir?"

"Last week," said Bellmann more loudly, "a man— who, if he was not you, was your double—^was at Lady Harborough's house on the evening of her charity con-cen. That man was pr)'ing and watching the other

guests in what I thought was a suspicious manner. I ask you again: were you that man?"

But before Frederick could reply, Lady Mary herself spoke.

"Youre forgetting," she said to Bellmann, "I was there too. I saw the man you mean, and this isn't him."

"If I may conjecture, sir," Frederick put in diffi-dendy, "you might possibly have seen my cousin Frederick. He's by way of being a private detective, and several ladies and gendemen have patronized his services where security and the safety of property are concerned."

He blinked innocendy.

"Hmm," said Bellmann. "Very well. But it is a remarkably close resemblance." He stood aside for Frederick to put the chair down.

Jim could feel Mr. Protherough relax; if Frederick had been discovered, he'd have lost his job at Elliott and Fry's. They were all taking a risk—and what were they hoping to gain? It was daft.

But if they hadn't come, he'd never have seen her. She sounded so young; she could hardly be more than sixteen. What the hell was going on, that she should marry a man like that?

Jim looked at Bellmann more careftilly as he posed, standing beside the chair and gazing down at her. There was danger in that heavy face, Jim felt, but for whom? Lady Mary was toying with a handkerchief, in a sort of sulky boredom, while Bellmann stood, massive, over

her. He put his hand on her shoulder and obediendy she sighed and composed herself, looking steadily through those wonderful cloud-gray eyes at the lens.

The picture was taken; the plate was put away, and the photographers started to pack up. Charles strolled along the path, talking easily to Bellmann, and then came the moment that Jim had been longing for for twenty minutes—or a lifetime.

She'd stayed by the statue, lost in thought, while Frederick helped Mr. Protherough with the camera and tripod. One hand rested on the back of the chair, the other twisted a curl around her finger; and then she looked up and saw Jim—and her ty^ were sparkling.

He took a step toward her. He couldn't help it. She looked over her shoulder swiftly, saw they were alone, and leaned forward so their faces were only inches apart. He felt dizzy, and he put out a hand to her, and—

"/jr it him?" she said quiedy, swiftly. "The man from Lady Harborough's?"

"Yes," said Jim. His voice was hoarse. "My lady, I—"

"Is he a deteaive? Really?"

"Yes. Something's wrong, isn't it? Can you talk?"

"Please," she whispered. "Please help. I don't know who else to speak to. I'm all alone here, and I must get away. I cant marry him—"

"Listen," he said, his heart bursting, "can you remember this? My name's Jim Taylor, of Garland and Lockhart, Burton Street. We're investigating your Mr.

Bellmann. There's something rum going on. But we'll help, I promise. Get in touch as soon as you can and we'll—"

"The chair back here, Taylor, if you please," called Mr. Protherough.

Jim picked up the chair and smiled at her. A little answering smile passed across her face and was gone, like the wind in a cornfield, and then she turned away.

He said nothing to the others as they left. There was nothing he could say; he could hardly believe he was awake, or even alive. He might have felt like singing if he hadn't felt like laughing, and crying bitter tears, all at the same time.

Later that day a short, thickset young man stood hammering at the door of a respectable lodging house in Lambeth. Beside him on the step waited another man—^a bruiser, to judge by his flattened nose and cauliflower ears. Jim would have recognized them; they were the men he'd rescued Mackinnon from in the Britannia Music Hall.

When the door opened (by an elderly woman in a neat apron), they pushed inside without a word and slammed it shut behind them.

"Listen carefully," said the young man, holding the handle of a stout cane under the woman's chin. "Young lady with a birthmark on her face. Where is she?"

"Oh! Merciftil heavens, who are you? What do you

want?" gasped the landlady. "Let go of my wrist! What are you doing?"

The bruiser had her arm behind her. The young man said, "We want to find her. Take us to her—now. And don't shriek out, else my friend here'U break your arm."

"Oh! Oh, please, don't hurt me! Let me go, please—"

The bruiser, at a nod from the other, let go, and the landlady fell against the banister in the narrow hall.

"Upstairs," she gasped. "Second floor."

"Go on, then," said the man with the cane, and she stumbled upstairs ahead of them.

Mr. Harris (for that was his name) prodded the old woman's back with his stick as they climbed.

"Not quick enough," he said. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Mrs. Elphick," she said with difficulty. "Please, my heart isn't strong—"

"Oh, dear," said Mr. Harris. "Mackinnon broke it, has he?"

They were on the first-floor landing. She slumped against the wall, her hand to her breast.

"I don't know what you mean," she said faintly.

"Stop dawdling and get a move on. We need a woman's pure and guiding light, don't we, Sackville?"

The bruiser grunted a simian agreement and prodded Mrs. Elphick into movement. They climbed the next staircase and stopped outside the door of the first room.

"Well, now, Sackville," said Mr. Harris. "This is

where we call upon your particular talents. Mrs. El-phick, you are about to witness a scene that may distress you. Bad luck."

"Oh, no, please—" the lady said as Sackville the bruiser took a step backward and then kicked the door hard with the sole of his foot, just beside the lock. It splintered at once and crashed open, to a startled cry from inside. Sackville shoved the broken door aside and held it back for Mr. Harris, who walked through slowly, tapping his cane in the palm of his hand and looking around curiously.

Isabel Meredith, half her face drained of blood and the other half flaring like a fire by contrast, stood by her table, holding some intricate piece of embroidery.

"What do you want?" she whispered. "Who are your

"Mackinnons what we want. You're looking after him. Does your landlady know?" said Mr. Harris malevolently. He turned to Mrs. Elphick. "Did you know, my good woman, that your tenants been keeping a man in here? I think hes a man, anyway, except that he keeps running away, which a man don t do usually. Is he here at the moment, Miss Birthmark?"