Traitor and the Tunnel (23 page)

Jones hesitated. “Oh. That. Wel , she was just so damn keen, y’know. It felt ungentlemanly to refuse.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment. I was the one who told you of the plan. That would have been the time to decline.”

“You have me there.” A sheepish grin crept onto his face and he did his best to look appealing.

“Come now, Miss Quinn – I’m a healthy, vigorous man in his prime. D’you real y expect me to refuse such a brazen offer? I assure you, Amy enjoyed herself just as much as I did.”

“That is entirely beside the point, Mr Jones. You consider yourself a man of the world. How could you not understand what such an invitation meant?”

He looked sulky. “I thought you understood me.”

“I do; it doesn’t mean I agree with you.”

“So you won’t help me.” He made an angry, chopping gesture. “Damn it, I won’t be caught this way. Look, if you can’t persuade Amy that it was al in good fun but I’m not the man for her, you’l regret it.”

Ah. The real Octavius Jones showed himself at last. “An impotent threat, Mr Jones. Are you real y so desperate?”

“I could tel the housekeeper what you’re real y up to.”

Mary pretended to consider. “You could, I suppose. Assuming she’d believe a word of it. And providing you could get to her before I did.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Al I need do is go back to the Palace and explain to her why you pretended to court Amy. I’m sure she’d be fascinated to know that a scandal-seeking journalist was attempting to prise secrets out of a Palace domestic.” She paused. “However clumsily it was attempted.” Twin spots of colour appeared in Jones’s cheeks, but she didn’t relent. “As for the breach-of-promise suit, it would be easy to find witnesses. Al the female servants saw your Valentine, and I was party to your seduction of the sheltered, innocent Miss Tranter. I expect there’s even the evidence of the bed-sheets… D’you know, Jones, I can’t think of a jury who wouldn’t sympathize with poor Amy.”

With visible effort, he mastered his temper. It was a minute before he could speak, however, and when he did his voice was hoarse. “You’re a reasonable woman, Miss Quinn. D’you think I’d make a good husband?”

“Of course not. But that’s hardly the point. Amy would get substantial damages from a breach-of-promise settlement. Certainly enough to live on until she found new work.”

“Then I may as wel pay her off directly. Cut out the middle man, so to speak.”

His attempt to sound jovial was utterly unconvincing. Mary smiled pleasantly. “Then why are you badgering me?”

“Oh, hang it al !” he cried. Again, it was a rare and unnerving example of real emotion cracking his polished façade. “I’m sick to bloody death of her! I never want to see her face again. Have some compassion, Miss Quinn, I beg of you.”

Ah – now they were getting somewhere. She folded her arms. “Then make me an offer.”

He glared at her, al attempts at charm abandoned. “Five guineas.”

She almost laughed. “For Amy, certainly. But I don’t want your money.”

“What, then?”

“Information, of course: what you hoped to learn from Amy.” She daren’t be more direct. The thefts had been so wel covered up that he’d be suspicious if she revealed knowledge of them.

“And in return, you’l cal off the b—”

“In return,” interrupted Mary, “I’l do my best to persuade Amy that marrying you is not in her best interests and that she’s better off accepting five guineas for her disappointment and suffering. I’l need a cheque, by the way.”

“And if you fail, and she sues me for breach of promise?”

“She won’t. But if she does, I won’t testify on her behalf.”

“That’s al very wel , but I need a bit more reassurance than that.”

Mary shrugged. “I’ve never lied to you. That’s more than you can say for yourself.”

It was a measure of Jones’s desperation that he held out for only half a minute; Amy must have been effective indeed, when she ran him to earth. “Fine.

It’s not very juicy, anyway: there’s some sort of scandal hanging about the Prince of Wales.”

“Not those preposterous rumours about the death of Ralph Beaulieu-Buckworth, I hope,” said Mary with feigned impatience.

“What d’you take me for?” snapped Jones. “Of course not. I’ve been working on Amy since early January – much too long to be distracted by that sort of half-baked gossip. No, this is something much more likely: a royal romance.” He caught Mary’s look of disbelief. “He mayn’t seem very appealing to you, but he’s stil the heir to the throne. There’ve been a couple of sightings – the Prince coming down to town at unusual times. A few letters sent. A morning ride in the park, after which the Prince disappears for an hour or so.”

“Who’s the lady?”

Jones shook his head. “Not quite certain. It’s a family of four sisters, al between sixteen and twenty-two. Name of Hacken.”

“What a peculiar name.”

Jones’s mouth twitched. “Wel , they’re not haut ton, or whatever’s left of it; otherwise it’d have a more euphonious pronunciation. Hacken père’s a jewel er. Done rather wel for himself: big freehold pile in Mortlake, carriage and pair and al that. The older girls work in the shop. I expect that’s how he met them. They’re not exactly diamonds of the first water themselves –” Jones smirked at his own pun –

“but I suppose they’re fresh and just pretty enough.

And from what Amy says of the Prince, he’s a foolish pup. Probably he thinks he’s having a grand romantic adventure, thinking and doing things nobody’s ever thought or done before.”

“But have you evidence that this is a romantic entanglement?”

“As opposed to what?” demanded Jones. “You think he’s talking philosophy with the shop-keeper?”

Mary said nothing, except “Go on.”

“Anyway, I’ve been trying, through Amy, to pick up any tittle-tattle about al this, but the Palace is a grim little pile of stones, ain’t it? No gossip, no fun, no high-jinks by night.”

“What made you persist, then?”

Jones shrugged. “Wel , one keeps hoping against hope. And Amy was a nice enough child. Besides,”

he smirked again, “why wouldn’t I like a woman who ranks me higher than God? Until this, of course.”

Mary smiled for rather different reasons. Even men like Jones, who prided themselves on their worldly savoir faire, could be so easily hoodwinked by girlish enthusiasm. Privately, she thought there would be little difficulty in persuading Amy of Jones’s unsuitability; those five golden guineas would speak louder than words. “Why didn’t you simply get a job at the Palace yourself?”

He feigned horror. “My dear, the hard work! It would be the death of me.”

“Yet it would be so much more reliable than other people’s distil ed memories.”

“The newspaper pays me only so much, darling Mary – sorry – esteemed Miss Quinn. Certainly not enough to al ow me to buttle. Assuming they’d have me.”

Mary only half-believed him. Stil , there was nothing to be gained in belabouring the point. “Very wel , then. Anything else you’re keeping from me?”

“My dear Miss Quinn! After al you’ve promised to do for me?”

The answer was almost certainly yes: this was Octavius Jones, after al . But she could verify Jones’s interests with Amy herself – something he surely realized. And it was enough to rule out his interest in the heirloom thefts, Honoria Dalrymple, the death of Beaulieu-Buckworth and the tunnels. It was the soundest bargain she’d driven since this case had begun.

Twenty-two

Wednesday evening

Buckingham Palace

Shock was an effective anaesthetic but it couldn’t last indefinitely. As Mary re-entered the Palace grounds, she felt a strange churning in her stomach that had nothing to do with her long-ago dinner. Her chest ached, her lungs were constricted and her mouth was suddenly parched, despite a flood of intensely salty saliva. This would never do. She flew through the service entrance, hoping she’d not run into Mrs Shaw. Her luck held, in a way.

On her way up the servants’ staircase, she nearly barrel ed into Honoria Dalrymple, in company with an older gentleman. Both whisked round, then Honoria relaxed. “Carry on, Quinn,” she said. Mary hesitated only for a moment – her need for privacy was stronger than anything else at this moment – but as she hurried past Honoria, she heard the lady-in-waiting say, rather loudly, “I’l see you to the door, Papa.” Mary kept running.

She burst into her room – the room she’d used to share with Amy, now stripped half-bare – and only just made it to the chamber pot. Retched. Choked.

Final y gave up the remnants of her dinner. Dribbles of thin, sour acid. Then nothing at al , except air and muffled sobs and – yes, as they trickled down over her lips into her mouth – warm, salty tears.

She hadn’t the strength to fight them now. She’d used up al her wisdom and restraint: in recognizing her father and not breaking down then and there; in bul ying him into tel ing her his story; in not demanding personal answers of him; in leaving him there, without al y. It was time to give up the glowing, idealized father figure she had cherished al these years. The good husband. The loving father. Above al , the brave sailor who’d sailed away on a mission of justice. For two years, she’d thought of her work at the Agency as a kind of homage to her father.

Fol owing in his vanished footsteps, as best she was able. She’d dreamt of his one day finding her, after years of searching. She’d imagined it as a homecoming, a reunion.

Instead, she had found him. Her tears flowed faster as she mourned her losses. The first of her father to the sea, when she was a young girl. The second of the image of her father, bright and brave and untarnished. She forced herself to renounce those childish ideals and summoned an image of Lang Jin Hai as he truly was: a pathetic stick figure –

shivering, unwashed, possessed whol y by the desire for more opium. A despicable figure, charged with murder and unremorseful. And, if she was very honest with herself, the deepest wound of al : a man who had been in London and failed to contact her; had, indeed, denied his identity and refused to acknowledge her.

She was soon cried out. First came the drying of tears, then the mopping and blowing, and final y the hiccups. She stood with difficulty, legs half-dead from having been folded beneath her for so long.

Took a long drink of stale water. Lay down on the bed to think more about her disgrace of a father.

And yet she couldn’t quite join the chorus of condemnation. After al , she too had once been an accused criminal. She knew the despair that drove one to il egal acts, the instinct for survival that crowded out al others. But this was only part of the matter. For larger than empathy, larger than understanding was the fact that no matter what he’d done or who he was, this Lang Jin Hai was stil her father. Of that, at least, she had no doubt.

She made it through the evening – above-stairs dinner preparation, below-stairs tea and desultory tasks – and to bed without further incident. While Mrs Shaw looked askance at her swol en face and bloodshot eyes, the housekeeper was not usual y suspicious except of excess enjoyment and leisure.

Mary’s symptoms were so clearly the product of misery that they went unremarked.

Sleep was a long time coming. It was unusual y silent in the room; Mary had become used to Amy’s chatter and snores. And try as she might to focus on the tasks at hand – Honoria Dalrymple; Prince Bertie; those ever-more-mysterious thefts – her thoughts persistently circled back to Lang Jin Hai.

Mary woke in the early hours, rather surprised to find she’d slept at al . It was a rare, clear night – the rain had stopped in the early evening – and the moon shone brightly even through the tiny garret window. It was the glowing, unearthly light by which Mary, as a child, used to rob houses. Perhaps that’s why her thoughts returned to Lang Jin Hai with a sudden clarity that owed nothing to adult logic, her moral training at the Academy, her responsibilities to the Agency. Suddenly, her path became clear.

Rather than frittering away time on shifty ladies-in-waiting, hopeless kings-in-waiting and petty thefts that might never be solved, she had to address the real responsibility at the core of her life.

She had to rescue her father.

Twenty-three

Thursday, 16 February

Cradle Tower, Tower of London

It was the same sentry on duty when Mary turned up at nine o’clock in the morning. He looked surprised to see her again, but admitted her readily enough.

“You had a rare reception from the Chinaman yesterday,” was his greeting.

Mary gave the smug smile of a certified do-gooder. “Sometimes, al these people want is a civil ear.”

“Don’t know why you ladies bother. He’l be swinging from the neck inside a week.”

Cold terror clutched her stomach. “So soon?”

He shrugged. “Give or take. Ain’t no jury going to find for a Chinee what kil ed a toff.”

The guard was correct, of course. It was the reason she’d come. No matter how Queen Victoria felt about justice and truth, a jury of stolid Englishmen would always make a foreigner pay the heaviest price for his crime. “I don’t suppose he’s been seen by a physician.”

The guard snorted with amusement. “Oh, aye –

and by the Queen herself, too.”