Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I'll have a whiskey, my good man.” The drunk weaved and stumbled.
“A whiskey?” Flute polished a glass with a damp rag.
“For my liver. Keeps it strong.” The drunk leaned up against the man to his right, a sailor who had been boasting of his share in the cargo of a ship recently come to port. The sailor pushed him aside, and the drunk almost fell to the floor.
Flute glared. “Go away now, old man. Whiskey isn't free.”
The old man cursed him, but stumbled to the door and into the night.
* * *
Hours later, Flute closed the bar.
Though Flute enjoyed the bustle, the customers, the news they carried him from the wharfs and the surrounding neighborhoods, he felt the deep quiet of the empty bar as a comforting calm. He'd already sent Bertie to bed an hour ago, after the boy had wiped the tables, swept the floors, and checked all the corners for drunks and stragglers. Flute had adopted the ginger-haired ten-year-old when he'd returned to England, taking him from an orphanage in Manchester. It was an act of kindness to Bertie's father, an officer who'd pushed Flute out of the way of a falling mast, only to die himself below it, leaving his wife and son destitute. Flute enjoyed telling Bertie stories of his father, of the vagaries of the sea, but he paid every month for Bertie to be a private scholar at Mr. Neal's Mathematical School in Dorset Street, learning trigonometry and surveying. The Crown might have no concern for the orphaned children of the men who'd served her, but Flute at least didn't forget his obligations. He'd even given the boy a room of his own, a closet at the back of the kitchen. Warm in winter, it was more than Bertie had at the orphanage.
Heading to the back of the bar, Flute turned down all the lights in the wall sconces as he passed, leaving a path of growing darkness behind him. At the back of the linen closet, a door opened onto a long stairwell. As Flute ascended the stairs, he could hear the muted rumble of voices in the gambling hell above his tavern, then the stairway grew silent again as he entered the attics. He and Charters owned the whole block, and the attic was their private passageway from one building to the next, from one enterprise to another.
At the middle building, Flute descended the stairs and entered the series of rooms they used as their offices.
“What did you gain last night when you stole from my customers?” he growled when he found Charters.
“What do you mean?” Charters looked up from the map he was sticking pins in.
Flute didn't argue. “The drunk. I know it was you.”
“How?” Charters sounded genuinely surprised.
“I know the ways you stand when you take on a different voice, the way you bunch your clothes to make your body appear misshapen. No one else would notice. You take too much care to appear unremarkable, but I know. If you steal from our customers again, I'll beat you silly.”
“Ah, but the man had been such a braggart.” Charters lifted his hands in half apology. “I thought he deserved a comeuppance.”
“The Blue Heron needs to be above reproach. You know that. No thieving in the barâjust in the hell above. A safe place to make them foolhardy. Give me back your haul, and I'll tell him he dropped it on the floor.”
Charters laughed. “Not many men would threaten me.”
“Not many men like you,” Flute rejoined.
“True.” Charters nodded his acceptance. “It's on the table. Just banknotesâand not even as many as he bragged of having. By the way, there's a woman in my room.”
“So? I don't remark on your habits.” Flute picked up the young sailor's pocket watch and wallet and put them both in the deep pockets sewn into the lining of his jacket. He would send out a message on the wharfs for the sailor to retrieve his belongings.
“Not a doxy. Marner's cousin. We caught her this afternoon.”
“What's you going to do with her? Kill her?”
“No. Hide her until we get our money. Perhaps now that we have her, we'll find out what his game is. We meet with him tomorrow, show him the woman. If his answers don't satisfy me, tomorrow you will take her to this address.” Charters held out a piece of paper.
Flute looked at the address and scowled. “There?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn't it be kinder to kill her outright? A nice drowning perhaps? Send her there, and she's good as dead anyways.”
“Perhaps, but I need time. She's given us some information we need to pursue. And we can't keep her here.”
“You know best.” Flute shrugged. “I'm thinking of taking the apple girl to a play.”
* * *
Marner was angry. Charters could tell by the way his jaw twitched as he stood there silent. But the man had learned that Charters preferred civil discourse in his business dealings, and he was attempting to control his rage.
“How am I to believe you've found her?”
Charters swirled the whiskey in his glass, then sniffed, filling his nostrils with the aroma. “I have alliances, connections, andâunlike youâI pay those who help me promptly. I find it makes my affiliates willing to preference my requests over those of others. If you wish to take the woman with you, you know my fee.”
Marner stiffened and clenched one of his hands into a fist. “That's a bloody lot for a fortnight's work. I don't have that much on hand.”
“I'm happy to give you whatever time you need to raise the funds. Until then, however, your cousin remains with me.”
“With you?” Marner stepped forward, threateningly. Flute raised his eyes from his woodcarving and met Marner's. Marner stepped back. Without the protection of his men, he was more manageable. “But I have plans. Plans that require her to be at my home.”
“I'm certain I could help you effect those plans.” Charters traced the thick raised scar on the back of his hand.
“No, I'll not be paying more to you than what you already claim.”
“It is no more than the price we indicated when you called on us before. Georges had you sign a contract I believe.” Charters pulled a page from the top of his desk. “Ah, yes, here it is.”
Marner ignored the exchange. “I want to see her . . . alone. I have questions only she can answer.”
“She's asleep, drugged.”
“I still want to see her.”
Charters nodded to Flute. Flute rose, slipping the carving he was working on into his pocket. “This way.”
“Five minutes, Flute, no more,” Charters directed, then turned back to the pile of correspondence on his desk.
Flute led Marner down the hall and opened the door to a large bedroom kept by Charters. The room was well appointed but understated, the pieces all good, but not fine. A low couch fronted a dressing table and wardrobe at the front of the room, and at the back a tester bed stood next to a washstand and pot cabinet. On the washstand, on top of an embroidered piece of linen, stood a pitcher of fresh water in a basin. In front of it stood a jar of laudanum and an empty glass. A low fire burned in the grate, keeping the chill from the room.
Flute let Marner proceed him, then stepped into the room behind him. The woman lay on the bed, on her back, arms by her sides, legs extended straight. Her fashionable grey walking dress was smoothed out around her. To the side of the bed, on a table, sat her bonnet, its ribbons carefully extended over the edge. It was as if she had lain down for a short nap, smoothing her skirts to avoid wrinkles. Her only movement was the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
“I said alone,” Marner sneered.
“She's too far down. She won't answer, and if she does, she won't make no sense.” Flute stood in the narrow doorway, easily filling it with his height and girth.
“
I
make that determination.” Marner glared again. “Out.” He pointed toward the door; then, he pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat.
Flute stepped outside the room, shutting the door behind him. He knew five minutes: it was enough time to smooth out the neck of his most recent carving, a giraffe. He'd based it on a print hung in the window of the bookseller's shop below. The apple girl had told him how much she liked the engraving, and he was going to surprise her with the carving when he visited her stall in the morning. He leaned into the door, hoping to hear what Marner asked the woman, but he couldn't hear any words. No surprise. The girl had been carefully drugged, enough to keep her asleep, not enough to kill her.
He'd finished the first smoothing stroke when he grew uneasy. He slipped the giraffe in his pocket and quietly opened the door enough to see in.
Flute took in the details in an instant. Marner had moved the washing basin to the chair. The woman's right arm was extended off the side of the bed, her wrist and arm below her elbow in the washing basin, the water red with her blood. Marner himself had moved to the opposite side of the bed, followed by a trail of blood. He had just cut open the woman's sleeve. In his hand a knife dripping blood. He picked up the woman's arm and moved to make a cut.
Howling for Charters, Flute ran at Marner, knocking him into the wall beside the bed. Marner let go of the knife and Flute kicked it aside as he lifted the smaller man off his feet. His first hit left Marner dazed, the second unconscious. Flute threw him to the side and turned to the woman.
Charters was already there, lifting her arm from the water. “Fool. He cut down her arm, not across it. Good to kill her, but it looks like murder, not suicide.” Charters lost his working-class accent, slipping into the educated tones of his youth. He pulled the embroidered cloth off the washstand and pressed it against the wound, drying the back of the arm with the ends.
Blood dripped onto the floor. Bertie, having followed Charters, stood in the doorway, watching, waiting.
“He missed the artery, but the cut is deep. And from the looks of his knife”âhe nodded to the blade on the floorâ“it may well fester.”
Charters ripped the wide ribbons from her bonnet. “Lift the linen, and hold the wound closed.”
Flute put his hands on either side of the long cut and, pressing his fingers in, pushed the skin together. Blood oozed from the length of the wound.
“I can sew it. Used to help the ship's physician sew up the men who were wounded or lost limbs.” Flute turned to Bertie. “Some silk thread from the milliner's, Bertie, and call for the men as you go.”
Bertie ran from the room, and Flute heard the door slam behind him.
“Think she'll die?” Flute looked at the blood in the basin and on the floor, so much blood.
“Not if we can help it. Any magistrate who views the body will know it was not suicide. At least you stopped him before he cut the other arm.”
Charters pressed his hand over the wound, trying to reduce the flow of blood. But blood seeped through between his fingers. “The blood's not easing. We'll need to burn it.”
“I know. Be ready to hold her still.” Charters picked up the knife and walked to the fire, leaving Flute to open up the bandage. He held the knife in the fire, turning the blade from one side to the next, until it glowed red. He walked quickly back. Flute pressed his hand against her chest, holding her against the bed.
Charters pressed the hot blade against the cut, searing the flesh. Still unconscious, Lucy cried out, throwing her head back with the pain, then she fell back against the pillow. The smell of burnt flesh and blood filled the room.
Bertie stood quietly in the doorway, holding thread and a needle, looking sick. Behind him, two of the men Charters hired to manage unruly gamblers waited for instruction.
Flute held out his hand, and the boy approached. “Don't worry, Bertie. She won't remember feeling it.” Flute ruffled the boy's hair, then took the needle and thread. “She'll only think it was a bad dream.”
As Flute threaded the needle, Charters motioned for the men to carry Marner away. “Lock him in the empty storage room, until our employers decide what to do with him. Then bring us some of those new linen cloths from the dining room and a bottle of whiskey.” The men nodded and dragged Marner by his arms out of the room. Charters moved the basin back to the washstand, allowing Flute to sit before the woman's arm.
Charters pulled another chair from the wall and held the arm steady for Flute to work.
Flute began to make small stitches, working his way slowly down the long cut.
Charters occasionally wiped away the blood oozing from the stitches. “That's fine work, Flute, as good as any lady's embroidery.”
“The Doc was a tidy man, insistent on keeping a clean line. He liked to show off his best ones. The less visible the scar was in the end, the happier he was.”
The woman began to moan and pull against her arm. Charters poured a trickle of laudanum into her mouth, then covered her mouth and nose, forcing her to swallow.
When Flute was done, Charters folded a cloth into a bandage and pressed it against the wound, and reused the bonnet ribbons to tie it to the arm.
They stood back and watched her sleep fitfully.
“Do you think he thought she'd bleed to death before we noticed?”
“I don't know. By cutting her here, he may be trying to implicate us in her death. Then he gets what he wants: her dead, and our bill unpaid.” Charters moved the chair back to the wall. “But I look forward to asking him what he thought he was doing. Bring his knife. Wrap your knuckles while I change my clothes.”
* * *
Marner returned to his estate by night, wanting no one to see his face. A bruise grew along his chin and brow where Flute had struck him. His side hurt, inhalation painful where the big man had hit him over and over. One hand was throbbing where his two outside fingers were surely broken. His planâimagined in the spur of the momentâhadn't accounted for the cold anger he had seen in Charters's face.