Touched by Angels (12 page)

All right, they had the fob and the Gladstone bag, but he had the key once more. They would never get the contents of that box without it and he knew they couldn’t acquire a duplicate. So all was not lost after all.

He dragged
himself up, feeling his gorge rise, seeing the semi-liquefied cat covering him from the waist down and an hour later, as he sat with a whisky and soda in his room, after a hot, deep bath, he began to consider how he was going to obtain that fob watch.

The only way to locate them
, he thought, would be by obtaining the name and location of the bank from the King brothers, for he was sure she would make her way there eventually. As they had been so certain their nephew would turn up in Rice Lane, they had not given him any other information, but Bride grinned to himself as he lit a cigar, knowing exactly how to wheedle it out of them, without, he was sure, arousing the tiniest hint of suspicion.

The next morning, a determined Lil Smith took her son to a ladies
’ and gentlemen’s outfitters, Bryant & Sons Bespoke Tailors, in Chelsea, where the proprietor looked at them over his half-moon spectacles as though they were flies crawling along a piece of excrement.

His valued regular clients were pausing in their browsing to look too, nudging each other and whispering.
One, an elderly dowager, even held her stick-mounted glasses to her eyes to get a better look, her mouth open in horror.

Mr Bryant was a small, plump, soberly dressed man, bald headed, who looked as though he might bounce back up if somebody knocked him over. A tape measure hung about his neck. He eyed them for some time with growing disgust before he spoke.

“
Excuse me, madam, if you please!” He inclined his head towards the door. “It grieves me to tell you that you have entered the wrong establishment.”

Mr Bryant
was looking around embarrassed, and at the skinny urchin in particular with some disquiet. He looked as though he might have vitamin deficiency and there was a scratch on his neck where he was bound to have been in a fight.

It looked as though the woman had at least endeavoured to bathe him, but still, that odour, characteristic to such people, came through.

One of his assistants craned his neck to get a better look, so Bryant clapped his hands and snapped, “Ahem! Jones, kindly attend to Lady Devonshire.
I
will attend to
these
people,” and then, in a slightly lower voice, “look, what do you want? We are a very high class purveyor of…”

His words trailed off as he caught a glimpse of the slim wad of pound notes she had clearly meant him to see. He began to sweat.

There had to be upwards of fifty pounds, more than he could expect to take in a week. He took his tape measure from his neck and mustered up a sycophantic smile.

***

Tom Bride came to a halt before the raised plinth in the Board Room of Marylebone Workhouse.
By Sir Rupert’s design, only he and Alistair were here and Bride launched straight into his report, having had plenty of time to doctor it to his own ends.

“
I occupied the house next door to the one where your brother was murdered by that ruffian, for two nights
.”

“
And?”

“
Your nephew never showed up.”

Their faces dropped.

“
It is of course, possible he has already absconded, perhaps even left the country for good.”

A look of horror spread across their faces and Sir Rupert’s brother spoke.

“
But all the ports are under scwutiny and there is a substantial weward for his appwehension.”

“
Perhaps
,” he told them, “but I doubt it would have been beyond the man’s ingenuity to disguise himself. He was not, by all accounts, yours included, stupid. If I am to stand any chance at all of apprehending him, I will require a list of banks and other financial institutions he uses. Also a list of known friends, associates, both business and pleasure, acquaintances, enemies too, and any gentlemen’s clubs he has membership of.”

They spent the next half hour compiling this farcical list, and one of the entries made Bride’s heart skip a beat when it was mentioned, because he knew he’d coaxed from them exactly what he wanted. The Strand branch of Coutts & Co Bank.

In next to no time, Tom Bride was trotting down the long driveway to that hideous workhouse, so excited, he had almost forgotten the pain he was in.

They wanted to see him in three days’ time for an update and had stressed again, in carefully worded phrases, that they couldn’t care less how he accomplished his mission, or how much discomfort might have to be solicited from their nephew to that end.

He nearly laughed out loud. If all went to plan, they would never see hide nor hair of him again. In any case, he couldn’t bear another ogling from Alistair King.

There was no time to waste, so he strode off quickly, with Sir Rupert’s eyes tracking him from the window of his study.

When Lil and Robert stepped out of Bryant & Sons Bespoke Tailors, they were, for all the world, two entirely different people.

Now, they blended more effectively with the refinement surrounding them.

She had made several other purchases too, a small striped suitcase and a large alligator skin handbag, for carrying the valuables from both the Gladstone bag and the safety deposit box, when or if they acquired access to it.

After this, they made their way to Mrs Swinglehurst’s Hatters Emporium, where they were greeted effusively by Mrs Swinglehurst herself, the jolliest and fattest lady Robert had ever seen. Lil chose a broad, burgundy velvet hat trimmed with green feathers. They also visited a jeweller’s, where she purchased a gold bar brooch, flanked with leaves and pearls and a slim gold wristwatch, encrusted with tiny diamonds.

Lil was getting jittery as they made their way to the Strand. She knew Bride might be on their tail and that, even though they were disguised, he would have an eye trained to look beneath any veneer.

When they arrived at the bank, where she had been considering trying to bluff her way through, they saw a massive clock celebrating the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria over the granite portals. She had never been in a bank in her life.

As she stood there, dithering, Bride was watching from much closer than they would have imagined.

He was leaning against a lamppost, pretending to read a newspaper, as he peered over the top periodically. Having already guessed her intention to try and sham her way, he could see her hesitating.

He noticed though, that while the boy carried a small suitcase, the woman toted a large handbag, in which she clearly intended putting the valuables if she succeeded.

He grinned with relief when she finally wandered off, trembling with nerves, not knowing that he too was being watched by other eyes from not so very far away.

***

As soon as he had left the workhouse, Sir Rupert had voiced his suspicion that Bride might not be quite as dedicated to their cause as he seemed. He simply could not believe their nephew would fail to show up at that address.

Was it possible he already had the safe key, and o
nly needed the name of the bank, the piece of information they had been so easily duped into parting with?

Alistair had been oblivious to this rather unsettling possibility before his brother had mentioned it. To deepen the mystery further,
he
pointed out that Bride would still need the safe’s number and only the missing fob could supply that, which he clearly did not have, otherwise he would not have needed to get the name of the bank from them.

Now though, having followed him all the way there, where he had been convinced he would go inside, Sir Rupert King was relieved to see that instead, Bride was loitering outside, appearing to watch a well-to-do woman and child.

He watched as Bride tucked the newspaper under his arm, before taking off after them. Then he followed himself.

As King kept pace through the throng of people, he saw Bride flinch several times, as if he knew by instinct the woman would turn.

He was in a sweat by the time he saw them disappear into one of the cheaper hotels in Piccadilly, one not in keeping with her apparent station, thus deepening the mystery further. Keeping back as far as possible, he watched to see if Bride would follow her in, but he didn’t. He saw him grin to himself and couldn’t for the life of him fathom out what was going on.

He saw Bride look up at the hotel, as if taking note of its name. He turned suddenly and it was only by a hair’s breadth that Bride didn’t spot him as he ducked into a fruit merchant’s.

When he had passed, King found himself fighting past a match girl and a gaggle of scamps who had followed him in. By the time he had made his way back to the pavement, Bride was gone, swallowed up in the throng, with a huge horse-drawn cart packed with suffragettes obscuring his view further.

He stood there frustrated, panting, as he hunted through the sea of shouting faces, hats and banners, but Bride was nowhere to be seen. Shaking, King made his way to the hotel, but checked himself at the last moment from going inside. He realised that if they were all involved in a scam to fleece him, they may have seen pictures of him, with a warning to be on the look out. If they saw him now, they might sense the game was up and if that happened, there was no telling what they might do.

He wandered
back to the workhouse, confused and getting lost several times.

He would later find his wallet had been lifted, but that was as nothing to his sense of foreboding, as he sat in his study, smoking a cigar and sipping a glass of whisky.

Who were these strange people?
Where did his nephew fit into all of this and where was he? Why was a child involved, unless he served no other purpose than as a front?

He sat there for the next hour, hoping against all his instincts that everything was more above board than it seemed, because for once in his life, he felt out of his depth.

“
How
are we going to get that key?” Robert asked later, as they lay in the same bed.

L
il stared at the ceiling, having thought about that and nothing else for hours on end. She knew that after today’s ordeal outside the bank, where she had completely lost her nerve, they would have to get it back by more devious means.

“
We’ll set a trap for him.”

“
What sort of trap?”

She told him, and as he listened, he found his mouth gaping.

***

Blissfully ignorant of what she had in store for him, Bride had also thought his plan through carefully, though he needed to know the number of the room she was staying in.

Asking directly for it at Reception was out of the question.
A more subtle way was needed, so when morning came, he made his way back to her hotel, dressed rather differently, in garb he had bought from a pawnshop. It was an old suit, abysmally threadbare, with a shabby bowler hat, and shoes that were falling to bits.

He had not washed, or had a shave either, so he guessed he smelt a little ripe. He knew there must be no mistakes or hiccups, or it would all be over. Worse still, he could end up in prison for a very long time.

When he made his way into the lobby, it was mainly to see the lie of the land; to note where the stairs, exits and entrances were and roughly how many people worked there.

All of this was vitally important in the event of something unforeseen happening, so he could run if he had to.

He saw a stern-
looking man, who he guessed to be in his fifties, and probably the owner, standing behind the reception desk, writing in a ledger. Bride knew if he approached him with what he had in mind, he might see straight through him, so he stayed back in the shadows, watching the other members of staff as they came and went, as he pretended to look at a wall painting.

To stay too long would look suspicious, but after a few minutes he saw what he had hoped. A boy of about seventeen joined the older man and the rancour between them was obvious. He looked as though he had been a walking punch bag at school, lanky with rosy cheeks, which were peppered here and there with red spots, and a nervous tic in his left eye.

H
e was safely on the other side of the road as he saw the two people he was after emerge. They looked happy and contented, with not a care in the world.

This left him more mystified and irritated than ever. He quickly reasoned that no bags meant they hadn’t checked out yet, so time to move quickly.

***

Sir Rupert King had surmised a
lot too, as he stood in the Boys Canteen in the workhouse beneath a fading slogan on the wall, informing them that “God loves the meek and the thrifty”.

There were about two hundred
inmates here, ranging in age from six to fifteen; among them the four Inkpen boys, whose heads had been shaved and painted with iodine in varying hues of mauve and brown, to fight a ringworm infection. They sported various dressings too, where boils had been pricked. They stood with everybody else in the long queue for lunch, cold and miserable, as thin Mrs Scantleberry slopped tepid gruel into their outstretched bowls.