“Olga, meet Erasmus Burgeson.” Miriam indicated the back curtain, which billowed slightly as Erasmus tried to stifle his coughing before entering. “Erasmus, meet my friend Olga.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” he said, and stepped out from behind the curtain. “Yes, indeed I
am
charmed, I’m absolutely certain, my dear.” He bowed stifly. “To what do I owe the honor of this occasion?”
Miriam turned around and flipped the sign in the door to 4, then shot the bolt. She moved deeper into the shop. “You got my letter?”
“It was most welcome.” Burgeson nodded. “The fact of its existence, if not its content, I should say. But thank you, anyway.”
“I don’t think we were observed,” Miriam stated, “but I think we’d better leave by the cellar.”
“You trust her?” Burgeson raised an eyebrow.
“Implicitly.” Miriam met his eyes. “Olga is one of my business associates. And my bodyguard. Show him, Olga.”
Olga made her pistol appear. Burgeson’s other eyebrow rose. She made it disappear again. “Hmm,” said Burgeson. “A fine pair of Amazon women!” He smiled faintly. “Nevertheless, I hope you don’t need to use that. It’s my experience that however many guns you bring to a fight, the Crown can always bring more. The trick is to avoid needing them in the first place.”
“This is your agent?” Olga asked Miriam, with interest.
“Yes, exactly.” Miriam turned to Burgeson. “I brought her here because I think it may be impossible for me to visit in person in the future. In particular, I wanted to introduce her to you as an alternative contact against the time when we need to be publicly seen in different places at the same time. If you follow.”
“I see.” Burgeson nodded. “Most prudent. Was there anything else?”
“Yes. The consignment we discussed has arrived. If you let us know where and how you want it, I’ll see it gets to you.”
“It’s rather, ah, large.” Burgeson looked grim. “You know we have a lot of use for it, but it’s hard to make the money flow so freely without being overseen.”
“That would be bad,” Miriam agreed. Olga looked away, then drifted toward the other side of the shop and began rooting through the hanging clothes, keeping one ear on the conversation. “But I can give you a discount for bulk: say, another fifteen percent. Think of it as a contribution to the cause, if you want.”
“If I want.” Burgeson chuckled humorlessly: It tailed off in a hoarse croak. “They hanged Oscar yesterday, did you hear?”
“Oscar?”
“The free librarian who fenced me the Marx you purchased. Two days before Inspector Smith searched my domicile.”
“Oh dear.” Miriam was silent for a moment. Olga pulled an outfit out to examine it more closely.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if Russell hadn’t shot Lord Dalgleish last year,” Burgeson mused. “You wouldn’t know about that. But the revolution, in that history book you gave me, the one in the Kingdom of Russ, the description all sounds exceedingly familiar, and most uncomfortably close to the bone. In particular, the minister named Stolypin, and the unfortunate end he came to.” He coughed damply.
Olga cleared her throat. “Is there somewhere I can try this on?” she asked.
“In the back,” said Burgeson. “Mind the stove on your way through.” He paused for breath as Olga squeezed past.
“Is she serious?” he asked Miriam quietly.
“Serious about me, and my faction.” Miriam frowned. “She’s not politicized, if that’s what you’re asking about. Sheltered upbringing, too. But she’s loyal to her friends and she has nothing to gain from the Emergency here. And she knows how to shoot.”
“Good.” Erasmus nodded gravely. “I wouldn’t want you to be placing your life in the hands of a dizzy child.”
“Placing my—
what
?”
“Two strangers. Not constabulary or plainclothes thief-takers, one of them looking like a Chinee-man. They’ve been drinking in the wrong establishments this past week, asking questions. Some idiots, the kind who work the wrong side of the law—not politicals—these idiots have taken their money. Someone has talked, I’m sure of it. A name, Blackstones, was mentioned, and something about tonight. I wrote to you but obviously it hasn’t arrived.” He stared at her. “It’s a very deep pond you’re swimming in.”
“Erasmus.” She stared right back. “I am going to make this world fit to live in by every means at my disposal. Believe me, a couple of gangsters playing at cracksman won’t stop me.”
The curtain rustled. Olga stepped out, wearing a green two-piece outfit. “How do I look?” she asked, doing a twirl.
“Alright,” said Miriam. “I think. I’m not the right person to ask for fashion tips.”
“You look marvelous, my dear,” Erasmus volunteered gallantly. “With just a little work, a seamstress will have the jacket fitting perfectly. And with some additional effort, the patching can be made invisible.”
“That’s about what I thought.” Olga nodded. “I’d rather not, though.” She grinned impishly. “What do you say?”
“It’s fine,” said Miriam. She turned back to Burgeson. “Who leaked the news?” she asked.
“I want to find out.” He looked grim.
“Write to me, as I did to you, care of this man.” She wrote down Roger’s address on a scrap of card. “He works for me and he’s trustworthy.”
“Good.” Erasmus stared at the card for a moment, lips working, then thrust it into the elderly cast-iron stove that struggled to heat the shop. “Fifty pounds weight. That’s an awful lot.”
“We can move it in chunks, if necessary.”
“It won’t be,” he said absent-mindedly, as if considering other things.
“Miriam, dear, you really ought to try this on,” called Olga.
“Oh, really.” Miriam rolled her eyes. “Can’t you—”
“Did you ever play at avoiding your chaperone as a child?” Olga asked quietly. “If not, do as I say. The same man has walked past the outside window three times while we’ve been inside. We have perhaps five minutes at the outside. Maybe less.”
“Oh.” She looked at Olga in surprise. “Okay, give it to me.” She turned to Burgeson. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to abuse your hospitality. I hope you don’t have anything illegal on the premises?”
“No, not me. Not now.” He smiled a sallow smile. “My lungs are giving me trouble again, that’s why I locked up shop, yes? You’d better go into the back.”
Olga threw a heavy pinafore at Miriam. “Quick, take off your jacket, put this on over your dress. That’s right. Lose the bonnet.” She passed Miriam a straw hat, utterly unsuited to the weather and somewhat tattered. “Come on, take this overcoat. You don’t mind?” She appealed to Burgeson.
“My dear, it’s an education to see two different women so suddenly.” He smiled grimly. “You’d better put your old outfit in this.” He passed Miriam a Gladstone bag.
“But we haven’t paid—”
“The devil will pay if you don’t leave through the cellar as fast as you can,” Burgeson hissed urgently, then broke up in a fit of racking coughs. Miriam blinked.
He needs antibiotics,
she thought absent-mindedly.
“Good-bye!” she said, then she led Olga—still stuffing her expensive jacket into the leather case—down the rickety steps into the cellar, just as the doorbell began to ring insistently.
“Come on,” she hissed. Glancing round she saw Olga shift the bag to her left hand. Shadows masked her right. “Come
on
, this way.”
She led Olga along a narrow tunnel walled with mildewed books, past a row of pigeonholes, and then an upright piano that had seen better days. She stopped, gestured Olga behind her, then levered the piano away from the wall. A dank hole a yard in diameter gaped in the exposed brickwork behind it, dimly lit from the other side. “Get in,” she ordered.
“But—”
“Do it!” She could already hear footsteps overhead.
Olga crawled into the hole. “Keep going,” Miriam told her, then knelt down and hurried after her. She paused to drag the piano back into position, grunting with effort, then stood up.
“Where are we?” Olga whispered.
“Not safe yet. Come
on
.” The room was freezing cold, and smelled of damp and old coal. She led Olga up the steps at the end and out through the gaping door into a larger cellar, then immediately doubled back. Next to the doorway there was another one, this time closed. Another two stood opposite. Miriam opened her chosen door and beckoned Olga inside, then shut it.
“Where—”
“Follow me.” The room was dark until Miriam pulled out a compact electric flashlight. It was half full of lumber, but there was an empty patch in the wall opposite, leading back parallel to Burgeson’s cellar. She ducked into it and found the next tunnel, set in the wall below the level of the stacked firewood. “You see where we’re going? Come on.”
The tunnel went on and on, twisting right at one point. Miriam held the flashlight in her mouth, proceeding on hands and knees and trying not to tear her clothes. She was going to look like a particularly grubby housemaid when she surfaced, she decided. She really hoped Olga was wrong about the visitor, but she had a nasty hunch that she wouldn’t be seeing Burgeson again for some time.
The tunnel opened up into another cellar, hidden behind a decaying rocking horse, a broken wardrobe, and a burned bed frame with bare metal springs like skeletal ribs. Miriam stood up and dusted herself off as best she could, then made room for Olga. Olga pulled a face. “Ugh! That was filthy. Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Miriam said quietly.
“It was the same man,” Olga added. “About six and a half feet tall, a big bull with a bushy moustache. And two more behind him dressed identically in blue. King’s men?”
“Probably. Sounds like Inspector Smith to me. Hmm. Hold this.” Miriam passed her the flashlight and continued to brush dirt and cobwebs out of the pinafore: It had started out white, and at best it would be gray by the time she surfaced. “Right, I think we’re just about ready to surface.”
“Where?”
“The next street over, in a backyard.” Miriam pulled the door open to reveal wooden steps leading up toward daylight. “Come on. Put the flashlight away and for God’s sake hide the gun.”
They surfaced between brick walls, a sky the color of a slate roof above them. Miriam unlatched the gate and they slipped out, two hard-faced women, one in a maid’s uniform and the other in a green much-patched suit that had seen better days. They were a far cry from the dignified widow and her young companion who had called on Burgeson’s emporium twenty minutes earlier.
“Quick.” Miriam guided Olga onto the first tram to pass. It would go sufficiently close to home to do. “Two fourpenny tickets, please.” She paid the conductor and sat down, feeling faint. She glanced round the tram, but nobody was within earshot. “That was too close for comfort,” she whispered.
“What was it?” Olga asked quietly, sitting next to her.
“We weren’t there. They can’t prove anything. There’s no bullion on Erasmus’s premises, and he’s a sick man. Unless we were followed from the works to his shop…” Miriam stopped. “He said some housebreakers were going to hit on us tonight,” she said slowly. “This is
not
good news.”
“Housebreakers.” Olga’s face was a mask of grim anticipation. “Do you mean what I think you intend to say? Blackguards with knives?”
“Not necessarily. He said two men were asking around a drinking house for bravos who’d like to take their coin. One of them looked Oriental.”
Olga tensed. “I see,” she said quietly.
“Indeed.” Miriam nodded. “I think tonight we’re going to see some questions answered. Oriental, huh?” She grinned angrily. “Time to play host for the long-lost relatives …”
* * *
The big stone house was set well back from the curving road, behind a thick hedge and a low stone wall. Its nearest neighbors were fifty yards away, also set back and sheltered behind stone walls and hedges. Smoke boiled from two chimneys, and the lights in the central hall burned bright in the darkness, but there were no servants. On arriving home Miriam had packed Jane and her husband Ronald the gardener off to a cheap hotel with a silver guinea in hand and the promise of a second to come against their silence. “I want no questions asked or answered,” Miriam said firmly. “D’you understand?”
“Yes’m,” said Jane, bobbing her head skeptically. It was clear that she harbored dark suspicions about Olga, and was wondering if her mistress was perhaps prone to unspeakable habits: a suspicion that Miriam was happy to encourage as a decoy from the truth.
“That’ll do,” Miriam said quietly, watching from the landing as they trudged down the road toward the tram stop and the six-fifteen service into town. “No servants, no witnesses. Right?”
“Right,” Olga echoed. “Are you sure you want me to go through with this?”
“Yes, I want you to do it. But do it fast, I don’t want to be alone longer than necessary. How are your temporary tattoos?”
“They’re fine. Look, what you told me about Matthias. If Brill’s working for—”
“She isn’t,” Miriam said firmly. “If she wanted me dead I’d be dead, okay? Get over it. If she’s hiding anything, it’s something else—Angbard, probably. Bring her over here and if the bad guys don’t show we’ll just dig out a bottle of wine and have a late-morning lie-in tomorrow, alright?”
“Right,” Olga said dubiously. Then she headed downstairs, for the kitchen door and the walk to the spot beside the greenhouse where Miriam had cleared the snow away.
Miriam watched her go, more apprehensive than she cared to admit. Alone in the house in winter, every creak and rustle seemed like a warning of a thief in the night. The heating gurgled ominously. Miriam retired to her bedroom and changed into an outfit she’d brought over on her last trip. The Velcro straps under her arms gave her some trouble, but the boots fitted well and she felt better for the bulletproof vest. With her ski mask on hand, revolver loaded and sitting on her hip, and night vision goggles strapped to her forehead, she felt even more like an imposter than she did when she was dressed up to the nines to meet the nobs.
Just as long as they take me as seriously,
she thought tensely. Then she picked up her dictaphone and checked the batteries and tape one last time—fully charged, fully rewound, ready for action.
I hope this works.