Unseemly Science (10 page)

Wealth flows from the grinding mill of industry
. And f
rom wealth comes
refinement. But nothing upset
s
the refined quite so badly as
the smell from a factory chimney.

From Revolution

Tinker – a small-framed boy in outsized clothes, self-orphaned, adrift in a world of men. A year before he’d been a stable hand on a grand estate in the Kingdom. His mother had a fondness for drink and his father was free with the belt. So the boy latched on to a kinder man. And when that man ran away to join a travelling show, Tinker followed. It might have worked out, but Tinker’s adopted parent had been spiralling towards destruction. Thus, for a time, the boy mistakenly latched onto me. When we said goodbye, I’d not thought to see him again. But there he was, on the roof of the waiting room.

In front of me stood the constable, running his fingers around the peak of his cap. “Well?” he demanded.

I coughed into my fist, trying to loosen my throat. “Air,” I whispered.

“Air? What?”

I coughed again. “I needed air.”

He leaned forwards and peered into my face. Expert though I was, my disguise wouldn’t stand the long scrutiny of suspicious eyes. He stepped closer. I tried to get past him and back into the waiting room but he put out his arm to bar my way.

“Let me through.”

“Where’re you from?”

“North Leicester.”

“Whereabouts in North Leicester?”

“Glenfield,” I said, picking a pleasant suburb at random.

“And what do you do in Glenfield?”

He was so close now that I could smell his breath and knew who had cooked the sausages in the waiting room. He was tall. Even with the lifts in my boots, I would’ve had to angle my head upwards to look him in the eye. And that I couldn’t do without letting the lamplight shine fully on my face.

I took a step back. He closed the distance again.

“What do you do?” There was iron in his voice.

“Tinker!” I blurted, the word coming too loud from my mouth. Too high pitched.

There was a faint scuffing sound from the roof of the waiting room.

“What did you say?” demanded the constable.

“I tinker,” I said, hoping that the boy would understand my message.

“I’m going to have to ask you to open your case, sir.”

He gestured towards the waiting room door. An image flashed into my mind – the bloomers and skirts that would expand outwards as the lid lifted.

“Why?”

“We’re searching for an escaped prisoner.”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter who. You’re behaving in a suspicious manner. I’m an officer of the Transport Police. I–...”

“Is he dangerous?”

“It’s a she not a he. And yes, she’s dangerous. Royalist spy named Elizabeth Barnabus. Now – open – your – case!” He pushed me between my shoulders and I stumbled towards the waiting room door.

It was then that Tinker chose to act. There was a loud thud from above – the stamping of a foot on the flat roof. The constable froze. His eyes darted upwards. I could see the thoughts tumbling over each other in his mind. Then he turned on his heels and sprinted around the building to the back. His boots clanged on the iron ladder.

A sack thumped to the ground next to me, followed directly by Tinker himself, landing cat-like. For a fraction of a second, wide blue eyes shone up at me from a face that would have made a coal miner seem clean. His white teeth flashed in a broad grin.

“Ashbourne,” I whispered.

He grabbed the sack and sprinted off down the road.

Seconds later the constable had scrambled down the ladder and was sprinting back around the waiting room. The last I saw, he was pounding away in hot pursuit. Watching him go, I wondered why I’d blurted my destination to Tinker instead of taking the chance to slip away.

The coach rattled along Derby Road towards Ashbourne. Ignoring the other passengers, I peered hungrily through the mud spattered window glass. I was further north than I had ever travelled. Every detail was of interest to me.

The air had sweetened as we left the city. Now, having passed through the rolling countryside for some ten miles, I could again smell the occasional tang of smoke, though more from wood than coal. The shops and houses displayed virtuous modesty, their fronts narrow and understated. Many were built of uneven grey stone instead of terracotta brick. They lacked the resolute order of the city. I liked them more for that. Plainly but expensively dressed women and men were out taking the air. They strolled between tubs of scarlet geraniums, which dotted the roadside. Nature, it seemed, was allowed to flaunt.

I saw but one factory as we rolled through the main street. The sign proclaimed it to be a manufacturer of corsets. The workers around the gates were neatly clothed and clean. The streets grew narrower but there were none of the signs of poverty I had witnessed in the city. Window glass reflected the liquid gold of the morning sun. Even the black painted doors and window frames were bright.

The coachman reined in his horses and we slowed to a stop under a signboard hanging from a gallows-style beam across the road.
The Green Man and Black’s Head Hotel
. The porter carried my case inside. I resented his assumption but still had to pass over a coin for his trouble. Ashbourne was going to be expensive.

At the desk I found myself yet again navigating my own web of deception. I was still presenting the appearance of a young man. This being a very different kind of establishment to the guest house in Derby, I couldn’t ask to see the un-chaperoned Julia Swain. Nor had I been given so much money as to be able to make free with it by booking rooms of my own. Instead, I wrote a message on the hotel’s notepaper and folded it.

“Miss Julia Swain asked for the address of my children’s nanny,” I said. “It’s for her sister. Could this be given to her?”

The desk clerk pocketed the coin I had passed with the note and said that he would see that it was delivered. I watched as he slipped the paper into one of the rack of pigeon holes behind the counter. Under it was the number 203 and a hook from which no key dangled.

“Thank you,” I said. “And may I trouble you to direct me to the rest room?”

He hesitated until I had passed yet more money, then pointed out to the back. It did not matter whether or not he believed the charade. Unseemly conduct was like sewage – everyone knew it existed, but no one wanted to be reminded of the fact. So long as virtue remained plausible, Republican morality would be satisfied.

I picked my
way
through the bar, empty at that time in the morning, and out to a coach yard. Crates of empty brown bottles were stacked around the outside. A tradesman’s entrance took me back into the building. Unseen, I made my way up to the second floor.

Julia opened the door to my knock. On seeing me she seemed temporarily incapable of speech. Her appearance suggested a beached carp rather than a than lady detective.

“Let’s protect your reputation,” I whispered, not waiting for her to unfreeze, but slipping into her room before anyone could happen upon us in the corridor.

“I... I thought... that is...”

I cut her mumbling short by wrapping her in a sisterly embrace, as I’d done a thousand times before. But after a moment she was struggling away from me. “Please change first,” she said, blushing. “I’m too taken aback by surprise to greet you properly.”

She watched intently as I peeled the false hair from my chin and changed into female attire. She didn’t smile until I had wiped away the last of the makeup and was brushing out my hair.

“Better?” I asked.

“I don’t think I’ll ever grow accustomed to seeing you like that.”

“I’m sorry if it offends.”

“It’s just that when you’re dressed as a man the world seems upside down. And you being here – it was a shock. I only received a letter from you this morning – and that postmarked North Leicester.”

“Events,” I said, “have overtaken me.”

She sat and listened as I related the trials that had beset me since we parted. The colour drained from her usually rosy cheeks as I described my internment and escape. I chose not to dwell on the brutal details.

“Will they come looking for you?” she asked, alarmed.

“They don’t know to look for me this far north.”

“They shall not have you!”

“If by force of indignation they could be stopped, you’d have saved me already.”

She smiled at that. “And what of Mrs Raike?”

“What of her?”

“She told you where to find me.”

“Yes.”

“And anything else?”

I didn’t fancy my chances of keeping Mrs Raike’s secret without Julia realising I was holding something back. So I said: “There’s something I can’t tell you.”

Her expression clouded. “Explain.”

“What did Mrs Raike say when she sent you here?”

“That I should talk to the ice farmers. But not to use her name. Discretion is the watchword, she said. But you’re avoiding the point!”

“I once promised you openness,” I said. “But now another promise holds me back.”

“What can’t you tell me?” she asked, before seeing the illogicality of her words. “I mean what manner of thing?”

“It regards Mrs Raike...”

“But now you’ve met her, surely your misgivings are gone.”

“I’m more convinced of her sincerity,” I admitted. “But she told me something in strict confidence. Would you have me betray her trust?”

Julia got up and started pacing in the way she did after an argument with her mother. I braced myself for some expression of anger or frustration. But after two times back and forth across the room, the frown left her face and her shoulders relaxed.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“Oh.”

“There’s a tea shop across the road. They do scones with cream and jam.”

“That sounds lovely.”

Nothing more was said on the matter of Mrs Raike. Not that day.

The thing that infuriated me about Julia was the absence of nuance in her thinking. A statement could be true or false. A person good or bad. Though I’d taught her for two years, she still had trouble comprehending that the world of the intelligence gatherer is coloured in indistinguishable shades of grey. The morals and motives of crime and deception can’t be resolved through arithmetic.

But certainty cultivates contentment. Though she often missed the subtlety of things, her attitude gifted her with a marvellous ability to divide wakefulness from sleep. Seconds after I had turned off the gas and plunged the room into darkness, her breathing became deep and regular.

“Julia?” I whispered.

But she was gone.

I lay, looking at the line of moonlight on the wall. Julia was happy. So should I have been. For once, I was well fed and warm. She had presented me as her cousin, unexpectedly arrived, and the hotel had provided a cot bed for me to sleep on. Though lumpy where wooden slats pressed through the thin mattress, it was luxury by the standards of my recent experience.

Circumstances had taken a turn for the better. I had escaped and was safe for the time being. They would never think to look for me in Ashbourne. Julia was content to not know a secret and Mrs Raike would lobby for my cause.

The mystery of the figure that had been following me was resolved – insofar as I had discovered his identity. It seemed that Tinker was still focussed on me after our adventures a few months before. In his chaotic world, he had mistaken me for a substitute parent. His was an unhappy knack of betting on the wrong horse. The question of why he’d not revealed himself had been tumbling in my mind. Possibly he feared that I would send him away. Yet whilst he hid close, he could believe there was hope of me taking him in.

And then I had made a mistake. Without thinking, I had let him know that I was travelling to Ashbourne. He would surely try to follow. But with my life lurching from one disaster to the next, he was a responsibility I could not accept.

Slipping out of the bed, I padded to the window. Under moonlight, the rear courtyard appeared like a woodcut illustration. I vainly tried to pierce the shadows, searching for a boy in a ragged coat, hoping he would not be there.

When I awoke it was already daylight outside. Julia was gone and her bed made. I found a tray with half a rack of cold toast, butter, chunky marmalade and a cup of tea, also cold. A considerable number of crumbs and a used butter knife told a story.

Not having felt properly clean since leaving the wharf, I filled the basin, stripped and washed vigorously with flannel and soap. By the time Julia returned, I had dressed and breakfasted and was sitting in the sunshine by the window.

I could tell from the fast beat of her approaching footsteps that something had alarmed or excited her. Once inside, she stood with her back pressed against the closed door.

“We must leave,” she said.

“What’s happened?”

“Pack now. I’ll pay the bill.”

“What has happened?”

“I... I went to send a report to Mrs Raike. In the post office there’s a wall pinned with official notices. And... a picture of you. I nearly fainted.”

“Someone who looked like me, perhaps?”

“Your name was on it. Printed. I didn’t want to stare, but I did. I couldn’t help myself. I really couldn’t. And now I think maybe I was seen staring. And if I was seen–...”

“Julia, for heaven’s sake, slow down.”

“We must go. We must leave as quickly as–...”

“What – did – the –notice - say?”
I spoke slowly and firmly.

“Elizabeth Barnabus. Wanted fugitive. One hundred guineas reward for information leading to her apprehension.”

“One hundred!”

“And four hundred guineas for her capture and extradition to the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. Claimants will be required to provide proof of their contribution, witnessed by public notary. The sum to be paid by his grace the Duke of Northampton.”

I felt my heart constrict. I watched Julia rush to her travelling case and then away to the dressing table and then back to the case without having picked up any of her things.

For one hundred guineas, I understood why the transport constable in Derby was so focussed in his search. But four hundred would transform the life of a working man. Everyone seeing the notice would dream it might be them to claim the prize.

“Was it a good likeness?”

Julia stopped, mid-stride, her hands full of brushes and tooth whitening powder. “Not a photograph. Yet not unlike.”

“Was it the image itself or my name that made you stare?”

“I... can’t say. But once I looked closer, I saw clearly it was you. There was a description also. Your height. Your eyes.”

“What about my hair?”

“I can’t recall. Black, it must have said.”

“Long or short?”

“The picture showed it long but I can’t remember the words.”

“Then put down those things and help me plait it. We’ll pin it up. And while we do that, think of the clothes in the picture, and the hat. All the details we can change. And then I will go.”

“We,” said Julia. “You’ll not be going alone.”

“There are penalties for harbouring a fugitive.”

But her face was set and I knew her mind would be also.