Where The Heart Leads (16 page)

Stokes stepped back, waving them into his small parlor. Closing
the door, he gestured them to the armchairs by the hearth, then crossed to fetch a straight-backed chair from his tiny kitchen.

Setting the chair before the armchairs, he sat. “When did this happen?”

Penelope glanced at Barnaby. “I don’t really know—we were at a soiree when the message arrived.” She looked back at Stokes. “I gave orders to be informed of any further disappearance regardless of time or where I might be. Mrs. Keggs would have sent a messenger as soon as she heard, but he would have had to travel first to Mount Street, then on to Lady Carlyle’s.”

“Say an hour for Keggs’s message to reach us, and for the news to travel from the East End to Bloomsbury”—Barnaby met Stokes’s gaze—“possibly as much as two hours.”

Ferreting in her reticule, Penelope pulled out the note and handed it to Stokes. “Apparently the doctor dropped by to check on Mrs. Carter, and found her dead, and Jemmie gone.”

Stokes read the note. “It sounds like the doctor is very sure Mrs. Carter didn’t die naturally.”

“Indeed.” Penelope sat forward. “So what should we do?”

Stokes glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf; the hands stood at a quarter to eleven. “There’s not a great deal we can achieve tonight, but I’ll send word to the local watch house. They’d been keeping an eye on the household, but as none of us imagined Jemmie—or Mrs. Carter—were in any immediate danger, the watch wasn’t constant.”

Penelope looked pained, but conceded, “There was no way of knowing they would stoop to this.”

Stokes inclined his head. “Nevertheless, I’ll go into headquarters—I’m close, so that won’t take long. We have official messengers—one will take the alert to the Liverpool Street watch house. The doctor will have reported the crime, but interest from Scotland Yard will ensure that the local sergeant immediately starts to gather all the information he can. I’ll go there tomorrow and see what he has, and what more I can learn.”

Penelope looked at Barnaby. Meeting her eyes, he didn’t need any words to know what she was thinking, feeling. But…he shook his head. “There’s no sense in us going there tonight. We won’t be able to learn anything, and in the dark it’s possible we may overlook or even destroy some clue.”

Her lips compressed; her face looked pinched, but after a moment, she nodded. “Very well. But as you mentioned, we should make plans.”

They did, rapidly assessing possible avenues of investigation, people they might question. The logistics of what had to be done were discussed; Stokes undertook to address the more formal aspects, while Barnaby and Penelope would pursue the more personal—the neighbors and locals who might have seen or heard something. Twenty minutes after they’d knocked on Stokes’s door, they rose. Stokes grabbed his greatcoat; pulling his door shut, he accompanied them downstairs. They parted on the steps, he striding off toward Scotland Yard while Barnaby helped Penelope into the waiting hackney.

Barnaby shut the door; cool darkness enveloped them. As the carriage rocked into motion, Penelope sighed and leaned back. After a moment she said, “Stokes is good at what he does, isn’t he?”

“Excellent.” Through the dark, Barnaby reached out and closed his hand about one of hers. The heat of his palm engulfed her fingers, a human warmth in the chill of the night. He squeezed lightly, reassuringly. “Rest assured that this case couldn’t be in better hands.”

She smiled in the dark. “He’s your friend—you would say that.”

“True, but ask yourself this: if he wasn’t so good, would he still be my friend?”

Her smile deepened. After a moment, she said, “I’m not sure I’m up to dealing with conundrums at present.”

Again he squeezed her fingers. “I’m only pointing out the obvious.”

Her chest felt tight, yet his nearness—the solid masculine reality of him all but filling the seat beside her—eased and comforted. “Speaking of the obvious…”

He followed her thoughts with frightening ease. “We’ll have to go back through the Foundling House’s records and look at every single boy who fits our schoolmaster’s bill, regardless of whether his guardian is close to dying or not.”

She felt her face harden. “We can’t—absolutely
cannot
—take the chance of another boy being grabbed as Jemmie was.”

A long moment passed. Then, as if this time he’d read her fears as
well as her thoughts, he said, “We’ll get Jemmie back. That I promise you.”

She closed her eyes, told herself he was just saying what she needed to hear, but the unwavering resolution in his tone, resonating in his deep voice, made it easy to believe him—to place her faith in him. To believe that together they would get Jemmie back.

She needed to believe that.

A few minutes later, the hackney drew up outside Calverton House. Barnaby opened the door, stepped down, then handed her down. Although her awareness of his touch hadn’t abated in the least, she no longer steeled herself against it; indeed, tonight, she welcomed it—drew strength from it—which, in light of their earlier discussion, wasn’t a comforting realization.

She pushed it to the back of her mind, and let him escort her up the steps. They paused on the narrow porch; facing him, she offered her hand.

He took it, held it, studied her eyes, her face. “I’ll call for you at nine. We’ll go first to the Foundling House so you can reassure the staff, then we’ll continue to Arnold Circus and spend as long as it takes to learn all we can.”

She nodded; he’d earlier convinced her of the need to call in at the Foundling House. “I’ll be ready and waiting at nine.”

His lips quirked in wry understanding. “Get some sleep.” Before she realized what he was about, he raised her fingers to his lips and brushed a kiss—hot and distracting—across the sensitive backs.

Before she had time to assimilate the sensation, and resecure her wits, his other hand captured her face, tipping it up as he stepped closer, bent his head, and pressed his lips to hers.

A gentle kiss this time, one that spun out in sweetness, that extended for just long enough for her to be completely swept away.

Lifting his head, he murmured, the words a wash of heat across her now hungry lips, “Sleep well—and dream of me.”

A shiver of anticipation slithered down her spine. She opened her eyes.

Straightening, he reached past her and tugged the bellpull; immediately she heard Leighton’s footsteps on the other side of the door.

Barnaby stepped back and saluted her.

Behind her the door opened; with a nod to Leighton, and a last glance for her, Barnaby turned, descended the steps, then strode away into the night.

Leaving her staring after him. Raising a hand, she touched her fingers to her lips, then she swung around and went inside.

A
t eight o’clock the next morning, in the large room on the second floor of his rickety tenement in Weavers Street, deep in the slums east of the north end of Brick Lane, Grimsby in his guise as schoolmaster was preparing to address the latest group of inductees into Grimsby’s Burglary School for Orphaned Boys.

Pacing slowly before the seven boys lined up before him, only one short of fulfilling Smythe’s order and breaking free of Alert’s clutches, Grimsby was pleased. He showed it with an expansive, avuncular smile; he’d long ago learned that boys responded to overt emotions—they quickly learned that when he was happy, they would be happy, too. And then they worked to keep a smile on his face.

Little light penetrated the grimy windows even in summer; today, with fog hanging heavy outside, a gray dimness pervaded the space, yet they were all—the boys, Grimsby, and his assistant, Wally—used to working in poor light. Old straw and the accompanying dust covered the bare plank floor; the dust eddied with every step Grimsby took.

Wally, a quiet, unremarkable sort in his mid-twenties who invariably did exactly as Grimsby told him, stood in the shadows by the stairs. He was of average height, average build, with bland features—a man everyone forgot an instant after seeing him. That, in Grimsby’s eyes, was Wally’s strength; it was why Smythe had taken Wally with him yesterday to fetch their latest recruit.

There was little furniture in the room, which took up the entire floor. A long narrow trestle at which the boys ate and sometimes worked had been pushed against one wall, the crude benches on which
they sat stowed beneath. The unpolished tin bowls and spoons they ate with sat in a dark corner; the straw-filled pallets on which they slept were strewn on the floor of the attic above, which was reached by a wooden ladder.

The aids provided for the boys’ education were both primitive and practical. Ropes of various thicknesses dangled from the rafters; a plethora of locks and bolts decorated the wooden walls. A section of iron fencing with spikes at the top rested against one wall; a similar section of bars used to protect windows leaned alongside. Rough wooden frames, all smaller than a man could pass through, lay stacked nearby.

Grimsby surveyed the accoutrements of his trade, then, halting at the center of the line, he looked over his pupils, and beamed. “I’ve already welcomed some of you to this fine establishment, but today we welcome another into our little group.” He focused on the scrawny, brown-haired lad in the middle of the line. “Jemmie here is the second last to join us. There’s one more coming—one more place vacant—but he’s not here yet.”

Grimsby pulled the sides of his woolen coat together; the room was drafty, not that the boys in their thin grimy clothes, or Wally, seemed to notice.

“However,” Grimsby continued, “we’re going to start your lessons proper from today. The last boy will have to catch up. Now, I’ve told you—each and every one of you—how lucky you are to get a place here. The authorities have handed you over to us to see to it that you have a trade.”

He beamed even more brightly, meeting their wary eyes. None of those he selected were stupid; stupid boys never lasted more than one outing, which made them a waste of his time. “So I’m going to tell you what you’ll do. You’ll work, eat, and sleep here. You won’t go out unless you’re with Wally, or later, once you’ve mastered the basics and are ready fer on-the-job training, with my associate, Mr. Smythe.

“But first, our lessons here will teach you to how to break into houses, how to make your way around the mansions of the nobs in the dark without making a sound, how to slip bolts and pick locks, how to crawl through small spaces, and also how to keep watch. You’ll learn how to scale walls, how to deal with dogs. You’ll learn everything you need to know to become a burglar’s apprentice.”

He eyed the line of small watchful faces, and kept his smile genial. “Now, this school doesn’t run all the time—only when we have places waiting fer our boys. I don’t need to tell you what a piece of luck it is to be chosen to train in a field where there’s a job waiting fer you to step into it. You’re all orphans—just think of all those other orphans out there, struggling to earn a crust and likely sleeping in the gutter. You’ve been lucky!”

Leaning closer, smile fading, he met each boy’s eyes. “Remember that—that you would have ended in the gutter, just like all the other orphans, if you hadn’t been so lucky as to get a place here.” He straightened and, features relaxing, nodded at them. “So you work hard, and make sure you’re worthy. Now—what do you say to that?”

They shifted, but dutifully chorused, “Yes, Mr. Grimsby.”

“Good. Good!” He looked at Wally. “Wally here will start your lessons today—you mark what he says and pay attention and you’ll do well. Like I said, once you’ve grasped the basics, Mr. Smythe—he’s a legend in this field—will start taking you out with him on the streets so you get to learn the ropes on the job.”

Once again, he surveyed his small troop. “Right now—any questions?”

To his surprise, after a moment of wavering hesitation, their latest recruit tentatively raised his hand.

Grimsby studied him, then nodded. “Yes—what is it?”

The boy—Jemmie, that was it—bit his lips, drew breath, then mumbled, “You said the authorities sent us here to learn how to be burglar’s apprentices. But burglary’s against the law—why would the authorities send us to learn it?”

Grimsby smiled—he couldn’t help it; he’d always approved of boys who could think. “That’s a smart question, but the answer, lad, is simple. If there weren’t any lads training as burglar’s boys, then the burglars couldn’t work, or not so much, and then who would the rozzers have to chase? It’s a game, see?” He looked at the other faces, well aware the same question had been germinating under each thatch of grimy hair. “It’s a game, lads—it’s all a game. The rozzers chase us, but they need us. Stands to reason. If we weren’t there, they’d be out of a job.”

They swallowed the twisted truth whole; Grimsby saw a more certain light enter all seven pairs of eyes. Only natural; they were re
lieved and reassured that their new life was an honorable one. Yes, there was honor among thieves—at least when they were young.

But as he’d told them, life was a game; they’d learn the truth of that soon enough.

“Well, now.” He beamed genially upon them once more. “If that’s all, then I’ll hand you over to Wally, and he’ll start you on your lessons.”

As Wally came forward, Grimsby turned to the stairs. “Work hard!” he exhorted the class. “And make me proud to have you here.”

“Yes, Mr. Grimsby.”

This time the chorus was enthusiastic. Chuckling to himself, Grimsby stumped down the stairs.

“So you didn’t see or hear anything last evening—or even during the afternoon?” Penelope wished she could cling to some hope, but the old woman’s shaking gray head was the answer she’d expected.

“Nah.” The woman lived across the narrow passage, two doors down from the rooms Mrs. Carter and Jemmie had occupied. “I had no inkling anything was wrong.” The old woman met Penelope’s eyes. “Jemmie would’ve come and found me if’n he’d needed help. Can’t think why he didn’t—they haven’t been here that long, but me and Maisie Carter got along.”

Penelope summoned a half-smile. “I don’t think Jemmie had a chance to contact anyone. We think he was whisked away by whoever—”

“Whoever put a pillow over Maisie’s face and held it down while she died.” The old woman’s tone spat venom. Again she met Penelope’s eyes. “I heard tell that young man of yours is something to do with the rozzers—not one hisself, of course, but can get them to do things. You get him to make them find out who did this—no need fer any trial, just tip us the wink. We take care of our own around here, we do.”

Penelope didn’t doubt it; even though she couldn’t approve of vigilante action, she fully understood, and shared, the old woman’s anger. She’d met the emotion again and again over the past hour she’d spent questioning the inhabitants of the narrow lane.

“We’re concentrating on finding and rescuing Jemmie—that has
to come first. But when we find him, we’ll very likely learn who killed Mrs. Carter.” Eyes locked with the old woman’s, Penelope made a decision; she nodded curtly. “If the police don’t catch him, I’ll send word.”

The old woman’s smile promised retribution. “You do that, dearie, and I can promise we’ll take care of the bastard as he deserves.”

Penelope stepped back from the woman’s doorstep. Looking along the passage, she saw Barnaby talking animatedly to a middle-aged man some way up the lane. Barnaby glanced her way, saw her watching, and beckoned.

Instinct pricking, Penelope started toward him, then she picked up her skirts and hurried. The man Barnaby was speaking with appeared to have stumbled from his bed. He looked tousled and bleary-eyed, but also serious and sober.

Barnaby turned to her as she came up. “Jenks here is a shift worker. He works nights, so he leaves here at three in the afternoon.”

Jenks nodded. “Regular as clockwork, or I miss the bell at the factory.”

“Yesterday,” Barnaby continued, “as he was coming out of his door Jenks saw—just glimpsed—two men going into Mrs. Carter’s house.”

“Knew she wasn’t well, so I thought it were strange.” Jenks’s face fell. “Wish I’d stopped and asked, now, but I thought p’raps they was friends. Jemmie must’a been there, and there weren’t no argy-bargy about them going in.”

Penelope glanced at Barnaby, and saw he was waiting for her to ask the question. She turned to Jenks. “What did they look like?”

“The first one, he was big.” Jenks looked at Penelope. “I’m big, but he was bigger—not the sort I’d want to face in a fight. Hard and mean, he’d be, but he was dressed neat and proper, and didn’t look to be angling to cause any trouble. The second one, well, he was…just your average bloke. Brown hair, ordinary clothes.” Jenks shrugged. “Nothing special about him.”

“Would you know them if you saw them again?” Penelope asked.

“The first one?” Jenks frowned. “Yeah—I’m pretty sure I’d know him. The second…” His brow furrowed. “It’s strange. I saw him for longer than I did the other, but I reckon I could pass him on the street
today and not know him.” Jenks met Penelope’s eyes and grimaced. “Sorry. I can’t tell you more.”

“Not at all—you’ve told us more than anyone else. At least now we know there were two men, and one is identifiable.” She smiled. “Thank you. You’ve given us our first real clue.”

Jenks relaxed a fraction more. “Yeah, well, it’s no surprise no one else knows anything. If you were going to do what those two did, the middle of the afternoon would be the time to do it. I doubt there’d be more’n a handful of others in this whole block when I leave for work—everyone’s out and about their business, not home to see anything that might go on.”

Barnaby nodded. “Whoever they were, they knew what they were about.”

Penelope reiterated her thanks. Barnaby added his, then they turned and walked back toward Arnold Circus.

“That’s it.” Barnaby looked along the alley. “I’ve asked everyone down this side. I kept Jenks until last because they told me he’d be asleep.”

“And I’ve asked everyone on the other side, with no luck.” Reaching Mrs. Carter’s door, Penelope halted, looked at it and sighed. “What next?” She met Barnaby’s eyes. “There must be something else we can do—somewhere else, somehow else we can search for a clue.”

He held her gaze for a moment, then raised a brow. “The truth?”

Frowning slightly, she nodded.

“There isn’t anything more we can do here. We’ve spoken with everyone. We’ve learned what there is to learn. That’s all there is. We have to go on—move on to the next chance.”

She glanced around, her gaze coming to rest once more on the door behind which Jemmie should have been. “I just feel…like I’ve failed him. And even more her. I told him I’d see him safe—and I promised her I would.” Looking up, meeting Barnaby’s eyes, she read in them complete understanding. “A promise to a dying mother regarding her son’s safety. What value can one put on that? I can’t—just
can’t
—rest with that on my conscience. There has to be more I can do.”

His lips twisted, but he neither smiled nor laughed. Taking her arm, he turned her along the alley. “It’s not just you involved. I made
a promise, too, to Jemmie himself. And yes, I understand, and yes, we have to get him back and put him in the Foundling House where he belongs.”

She found herself moving away from the door as he gently propelled her along.

He met her eyes as she glanced up, held her gaze as he said, “I made another promise if you recall—to you—that we will get Jemmie back. That’s a promise I intend to keep, just as we’ll both keep the promises we made to Jemmie and his mother. But we won’t be able to keep any of those promises if we allow ourselves to become distracted through acting simply for the sake of it—to salve our consciences. We need to act, but sensibly, rationally, logically. That’s the only way to defeat the blackguards and rescue the innocent.”

She studied his eyes, then looked ahead as they emerged into murky daylight and the bustle of Arnold Circus. “You make it sound so straightforward.”

He steered her to where their hackney waited. “It is straightforward. What it isn’t is easy. It is, however, what we need to do. We have to set aside all emotion and focus on our goal.”

Penelope blew out a breath; she would have loved to argue, simply because of the tortured way she felt, but…he was right. He swung open the hackney’s door and handed her up; settling on the seat, she waited until he sat beside her and the carriage started rolling before saying, “All right. I won’t indulge my conscience, at least not by acting impulsively. So what is our next sensible, logical, and rational step?”

Her tone was snippish, but Barnaby was content; while she was sniping at him, she wasn’t letting the situation overwhelm her. The lost look in her eyes as she’d stared at the Carters’ door had made him feel violent, even more so because he understood how she felt. But he’d been through such times with other investigations; he knew the way forward. “We need to tell Stokes what we’ve learned. It might not be much, but he’ll know how to make the most of it. Jenks’s description was meager, but it might make a connection in some sergeant’s brain.”