Ghost of the Thames (3 page)

Edward wasn’t putting anyone on the
street. At the same time, he didn’t want to disrupt any working
arrangements at Urania Cottage. He paid the doctor and sent him on
his way as Mrs. Tibbs came down the stairs.

Concern was etched on her face. “As
far as I can see, Captain, she is not taking anyone’s bed at the
moment. I must tell you, though, that we never know when Mr.
Dickens might be sending a girl to us.”

“I understand, Mrs. Tibbs. I’ll speak
with Mr. Dickens tomorrow. I only expect her to stay here until
she’s past the fever.”

The woman nodded. “One of the girls
helped me clean her up and put her in a nightgown. The doctor gave
her some medicine, and she’s now asleep. Still, would you like to
see her before you go? I don’t think you’d recognize
her.”

There was no need for him to look in
on her. He could make whatever arrangements were necessary for her
care and their paths need never cross again.

“I believe I will look in on her
before I go,” he said, surprising himself.

Edward followed the matron upstairs.
Two young women were peering into Sophy’s room, and they
disappeared inside another bedroom as he climbed to the
landing.

“I’d like to leave her some money, in
case she’s better and wishes to leave tomorrow or the day
after.”

“The girls living here have all sworn
to give up their old ways and be honest young women,” Mrs. Tibbs
told him, holding up the candle and looking into his face. “As you
know, Mr. Dickens has no patience for anyone who strays from the
decent, hardworking path once she’s started on the road to
redemption.”

The two of them stood in the doorway
of the darkened space. He could see the room was sparsely
furnished. Three cots had been arranged side by side. The bed with
Sophy on it was the only one occupied. Edward took two five-pound
notes from his pocket and held them out to the matron, whose
eyebrows shot up in surprise at the sum.

“You will give this to her for
me.”

He knew the money was enough for food
and rooms suitable for someone of the girl’s station for a month or
more.

Mrs. Tibbs took the money and walked
in. Edward watched her tuck the notes under Sophy’s pillow. She
held the candle over the sleeping patient’s face. “She is laboring
to breathe, sir.”

“The doctor believes she’ll
recover.”

There wasn’t much that Edward could
see from the doorway. Curiosity made him enter the room and move to
Sophy’s bedside.

“The important thing is that she—” He
stopped and stared, his thoughts shattered.

High cheekbones, smooth skin, straight
nose, generous lips. Even with her eyes closed and with the bruises
and the dressings on her head, the young woman was striking. He
didn’t know that he’d ever seen a face so beautiful.

“None of us expected to find such
features under all that dirt,” Mrs. Tibbs commented, understanding
his reaction. She moved the candle from Sophy’s face down to where
her fingers peeked from under the blanket. “And the girls helping
me change her out of those men’s clothes noticed that there’s not a
single callous on these hands of hers. She hasn’t been surviving on
the streets doing hard labor.”

The note in the woman’s voice was
unmistakable. The matron believed Sophy was a high-priced
prostitute, and Edward had no reason to dispute her assumption. The
thought of his niece Amelia, though, brought with it awareness. He
straightened up to his full height and glared down at the
woman.

“We don’t know the circumstances, Mrs.
Tibbs, which have brought her here. And until she can speak on her
own behalf, I suggest that it may be imprudent to make any
conjecture. Don’t you agree?”

“Of course. Of course, you are
correct, Captain.”

Edward had to get out of this room,
out of this house. All of a sudden, too much of what lay before him
was a sordid reminder of everything that could have befallen his
niece.

“See to it that she gets what she
needs, and I will speak to Mr. Dickens tomorrow,” he said, stalking
out of the room.

The matron followed him downstairs and
stopped him at the door.

“Oh, Captain, one more word, if you
please.”

Edward turned and looked at the
woman.

“I was going to send word to you
through Mr. Dickens, but since you’re here.” Mrs. Tibbs paused. “I
don’t mean to give you false hope, but one of our girls was talking
only yesterday to a relative of hers, a girl just out of the
workhouse. Don’t know if she’s trustworthy at all, to be blunt, but
this other one would like to meet with you. Seems she believes
she’s seen someone resembling your niece.”

“Of course, I’ll meet with
her.”

“I should warn you Captain. These
girls have nary a penny and will say anything if they think there
is a reward to be had.”

Every false trail he’d been following
for the past two months had started this way. Always someone who
knew someone else. Always for the right amount of money. Always
someone who might look like Amelia.

No matter how far-fetched a story
sounded, though, Edward had no option but pursue the trail to its
end. He took out a card and handed it to the matron.

“Have the woman stop at my residence,
Mrs. Tibbs. I’ll see what information she has to offer.”

C
HAPTER 3

Edward’s search for his niece had been
futile, thus far. Every lead, no matter how hopeful, had taken him
nowhere. He believed that Amelia had gone off with a midshipman,
Henry Robinson, but Edward had found no proof that the two young
people had left London, or that they had even boarded a ship out of
the country. Such undertakings were expensive, and eloping to
Gretna Green cost money, as well. But Edward found out that Henry’s
pay for his last voyage had never even been collected. Even if
Amelia had gained access to some money by selling some of her
jewelry, none of the innkeepers on the roads north toward Scotland
had seen any sign of the pair.

And so Edward continued to search.
They were not in London, as far as he could tell, and yet they did
not appear to have left it, either. His friend Charles Dickens had
his own thoughts on the matter, Edward knew, but the writer had so
far been extremely judicious in sharing his opinion. He simply kept
his contacts in London alert for any sign of the girl and her
midshipman, and reported any news that he thought would be helpful
to Edward.

It was the novelist’s routine to walk
for miles every day in the afternoon, and Edward found himself
joining the man more and more often, as he had done today. As they
started to cross the bridge, the Parliament Building--with its
half-built clock tower--glowed in the late afternoon light on the
far bank of the river. Beyond it, the smoke of a thousand cooking
fires hung like a cloud over the roofs of the city.

“
About that woman I left
at Urania Cottage,” he began.

“I believe Mrs. Tibbs wrote that her
name is Sophy?”

“Yes,” Edward replied. “Following the
accident, while she was drifting in and out of a conscious state,
Sophy spoke in a different tongue. One that I could not
identify.”

Dickens looked up at him sharply.
“That is curious, considering your travels, Captain. Miss
Burdett-Coutts speaks of you as a person who is knowledgeable about
every language known to man.”

“Well, our mutual friend has been
known to exaggerate from time to time. In any event, this language
was not a dialect I could be certain of. Of course, she only
uttered a few words of it. When she spoke English, however, her use
of the language was perfect. Quite refined, I would go so far as to
say.”

“That is very curious, indeed,”
Dickens mused.

Edward made no mention of the woman’s
beauty. Since leaving Urania Cottage last night, he hadn’t been
able to erase the image of her face from his mind. He also could
not forget the matron’s comment about Sophy’s smooth
hands.

“Do you have any suggestions as to
where she could be moved if she does not recover her memory anytime
soon?”

“Where she could go depends on her
ability to do work and on her state of mind. How did she come
across to you last night?”

“She seemed to be hallucinating and
kept mentioning a friend that she’d been following on the streets.
I saw no such person at the time of the accident.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Dickens
said.

“But I am most concerned about her
memory,” Edward continued. “What if she cannot recall who she is or
where she belongs?”

The writer shook his head, glancing
down over the railing of the bridge as they walked. His gaze was
moving from one small river craft to the next.

“If there’s even a hint of lunacy,”
Dickens said finally, “it will be difficult to find a place for
her.”

“No. No. I don’t think this is an
issue of insanity. Whatever she is suffering, it seems to have come
from the blow to the head—something that she should be able to
recover from.”

Edward chided himself for giving any
reference of madness. The care for insane paupers was a huge topic
of discussion in London these days. Even this morning’s newspapers
had been filled with complaints about the overcrowded conditions of
Hanwell Asylum in West London, and those complaints had been
matched by others regarding who was going to pay for another
expansion of the hospital.

“
Well, my suggestion,”
Dickens concluded, “is to leave her at the Cottage for at least a
week or perhaps a fortnight. We can house her until she recovers
fully from her physical injuries. So long as she makes no trouble,
I’m perfectly happy to have the bed occupied rather than have it
sit empty. I’ll let Miss Burdett-Coutts know of the
arrangements.”

Good enough, Edward
thought.

“But Captain,” Dickens added, casting
a side glance at him. “Please ask your driver to try to avoid
running down any more young ladies. At least, in the middle of the
night."

*

The murmuring voices droned from dawn
to nightfall, rising and falling, but never growing distinct in
Sophy’s head. She had no idea whether one day or a month of days
had passed.

After a while, she was more conscious.
Her head still ached, but the pounding began to subside. She
realized that she was lying in a clean but austerely furnished
room. She began to recognize the young and older women who came and
went, but she could not speak to them. With the passing time,
however, she spent more hours awake than asleep, questioning her
own memories of the river and of the girl who led her out of it.
None of it made sense.

Captain Seymour was the only real
person she remembered from the night of her accident. The deep
reassuring voice. The strong arms that had lifted her with no
difficulty at all and carried her up here. The dark eyes that she’d
glimpsed for a moment before he placed her in this very bed. The
clean, masculine smell of the sea when she had buried herself in
his heavy cloak. He was a man impossible to forget. He had
definitely made an impression on the others in the house,
too.

She awoke one morning with sunlight
illuminating the far wall. She pushed herself upright, waited until
the room stopped spinning, and then stood up. The light was warm on
her face. Then the nausea gripped her and she sat on the bed again.
In a few moments, the queasiness began to relent.

“The Captain left you some money under
your pillow the night you arrived,” Mrs. Tibbs said without
greeting.

Sophy turned and saw the matron
standing in the doorway. One of the residents stood behind her,
holding a tray with clean bandages.

“How long have I been here?” she
asked, her voice rough from lack of use.

“Good to see you can talk,” Mrs. Tibbs
said curtly, placing a basket that she was carrying on the bed next
to Sophy’s. “Four days.”

The matron sat down beside her and
unwrapped the dressing around Sophy’s head. Without a word, she
inspected the wounds.

“Well, these are healing nicely.” She
waved her helper away. “We won’t be needing the dressings. The air
will do the wounds good.”

The girl backed out of the room
without a word and disappeared. Sophy could hear her footsteps on
the stairs.

“No fever or chills, I take it?” Mrs.
Tibbs asked.

“None. Just a little weak.”

“Not surprised.”

Sophy turned and took the two
five-pound notes from under her pillow.

“The Captain is quite generous with
his money, I’d say,” the matron said. “Keep it safe, and don’t make
it a temptation for the other girls by flashing it
around.”

Sophy pushed the notes back under the
pillow. She needed to know what to do, where to go, and what was
expected of her. She looked up at Mrs. Tibbs.

“Am I to leave today?”

The woman didn’t immediately answer
and looked at her. “Do you have somewhere to go?”