A creak of the door behind him. Price. She comes close, takes her mistress's hand out of his and tucks it back beneath the covers. "We can't be having her catch cold." Her smile is narrow. He doesn't smile back, not even when she tells him, "Mrs. Bentley is doing a little better today."
He looks down at his mother lying there. Her eyes have closed again, and her mouth is cracked open. Her breath is louder now, a rustle that makes him press a hand to his own chest. Price is a fool, he thinks, then corrects himself—not a fool. No, she senses the end coming and cannot bear to watch it, for what will happen to her? A woman getting old herself, whose skills were good enough for his mother, who has barely changed her hair or the style of her dresses in twenty years, but are unlikely to get her another position. She must, he thinks, have savings. Isn't that what servants do? They open a savings account at the bank? After all, what can they spend their money on when they have food and a bed provided? Besides, his mother has left her a little money in her will.
He runs a hand over his moustache and opens his mouth to tell Price that yes, maybe his mother is looking a little better. Before the words leave his mouth she reaches in front of him to straighten the covers, erasing any sign of him having touched them. "Dr. James insists on quiet," she tells him. "Any excitement could be fatal." In her dark dress and with her hair plaited over the top of her head—how long ago was that style the fashion, he wonders—she looks like a bird of prey. Not an eagle, but something meaner and more drab.
"Of course," he says stiffly. With a sigh he stands and bends towards his mother, pressing a kiss to her forehead, then running his hands over the covers. When he turns he takes Price's elbow and walks her to the door. "Dr. James also warned us that she may not have long. If I were you, I would think about the future."
Her eyes widen a little, but he steps away and opens the door.
He makes his way down the stairs to the study. On a cabinet by the door sits the hat left by the intruder. A ridiculous incident— Michael Danforth sneaking into his house to look through his papers. And to leave his hat behind in the house of an expert on anthropometry! But then, for Danforth fingerprints are everything: they will match a man to his body once and for all. Yet, with no means to classify fingerprints, how would one sort through the thousands of prints that would be gathered over time? How would one specific set be found? No wonder the men who support the use of fingerprints talk in vague terms about a solution to this problem. As yet, there is no solution, and no sign of one. How else do they think Bertillon persuaded the French government to rely on anthropometry? A card with a convict's measurements—with fingerprints, too, and a photograph, for what they're worth—but the
measure
ments
are key. They mean each card can be classified, can be carefully filed, can be plucked out from amongst thousands of others with little effort.
Tomorrow, he will present before the Troup Committee. Rather than sit at the desk, he gets to his feet. From the back of the houses beyond, a lit-up window stands out. Past it comes a small boy jumping around like a wild pony until his nurse gathers him to her side with one arm. It is the sort of gentle gesture his mother would have used, and the sight of it heartens him.
But his mother is dying upstairs. He knew it was hopeless when he went to her room, yet he'd hoped that she would show some sign of improvement, of living the winter out at least. She is his mother, and she is slipping away from him, but it is not just the sadness of another death so soon after Henry's that occupies him: it is too late to change her will. When she dies he will have little time to discover who Henry's widow is and—if she leaves—she could disappear with half of what little money this family still possesses.
No, he thinks, he cannot let that happen.
He steps away, back to the desk, where he turns up the lamp.
A
sullen morning. A low sky, and a chill wind out of the east that threatens more snow. This is a day much anticipated, however, and the man gives his hat an extra push to make sure the wind doesn't lift it away. He heads down the street in the shadow of the high wall that runs its length. No windows. No gates. Only a stone wall black with soot that looms over him.
His coat was never meant for a day as cold as this, and he has no gloves or scarf. Already his ears are red. He hides his hands in his pockets and hunches his shoulders against the wind. Not for long, though, he tells himself. He will buy himself a thick wool coat and the finest pigskin gloves, a new pair of boots—in fact, everything new, from his socks to his hat. By tomorrow he will be a new man with a new name.
For now, what he wants is a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich in the shop where Steiner will be waiting for him. He imagines the warmth of the place, and how the bacon will be salty in his mouth. Then when he knows he is safe, after he's had time to watch, and to slip around corners and into shops with Steiner keeping an eye out, then it'll be time to retrieve his money.
Down the street he hurries. As soon as a side street presents itself he takes it, never mind where it goes so long as it leads him away from the prison.
And so Flyte disappears from sight, a free man at last.
Chapter 14
W
hen Robert arrives home he is in the foulest of tempers. His voice rings out in the hallway—"Miserable weather. . . . No, Cartwright, no, it was not"—then his footsteps thud up the stairs. A few moments later a door slams shut.
Mina looks up from the St
rand
she is reading. On the other side of the fire the widow is staring at a book of sermons, but all afternoon her eyes have been floating away from the page, so that every time Mina raises her eyes she catches her gazing around the room. Is she calculating the value of the house and its furnishings? Or is she looking for portable property that she can make off with before she is discovered? Now, though, she is watching the door—nervously, Mina thinks—and when she notices that she herself is being watched, her face twitches and she forces her eyes back to her book.
Mina lets her head rest against the antimacassar. So, things did not go well at the Troup Committee. How could that be? He was so confident—the case for anthropometry is a strong one, as he's often told her. What on earth could have so angered him? Nervousness like a tickle spreads through her gut, and she gets to her feet. Perhaps it was nothing to do with that. Maybe she was wrong—maybe Popham has already made his move and cornered Robert today. She can just imagine the way Popham would lean towards her husband, his fleshy lips shaping each word deliciously as he stripped away everything Robert thought he knew about her.
Why is she on her feet? She can't remember. Now she twists her hands together and tells the widow, "In this country one spends so much time sitting." She laughs—too harshly, she's sure. "It can't be healthy. Though neither is going outside when the air in this city is so filthy." She walks to the window, stares out as though idle curiosity has got the better of her. "More snow," she says. But her eyes are looking through the flurry. A few men hunched against the cold, none of them gentlemen, by the look of it. A woman wrapped in a sagging shawl who must be a servant. A wagon pulled by a white horse that is barely more than an outline against the snow. Across the road a bulky man reading a newspaper and stamping his feet. He is often there. Now she wonders—is he Popham's man? Of Popham himself there's no sign. She gives a sigh loud enough for the widow to hear. "The weather here never seems conducive to going out."
The widow's small face has turned to her. Those pale eyes. That pale hair. All of it paler yet against the black of her dress. "At home it was the heat," she says. "Or the rain. When the rains came you couldn't go out. You'd be drenched. Henry always—" and she trips. "Henry," she says more softly, "always used to hate the smell of dampness and mold. He made the servants have a clean shirt ready for him at midday, and always wanted it hot from the iron. That way he could be sure it was fresh and dry."
As Mina looks across at this young woman she forgets her suspicions. Oh yes, she thinks, early love is full of joy at idiosyncrasies, and she catches herself wondering how Victoria would have fared if Henry hadn't drowned. Would his particularities have become a burden? Or would she have been the sort of woman who devoted her life to them, so that a slightly damp shirt or dinner being served half an hour late would have counted as a catastrophe?
But then, she reminds herself, it is easy enough to feign knowledge of someone you scarcely know. You think of a person you know well and slip a new name and a new face onto them. Or you take a habit you have noticed and you build a world around it. It's not so hard.
Despite the fire and the lamps, the room seems gloomier than it ever does at night. She could abandon the widow here and ask for a fire to be lit in the morning room, but that would be little better. What she needs is to go outside—to walk, to sit at a table in a café or a restaurant, to see life going on around her. This room is too littered with small tables of figurines for her to be able to walk about it. Yet to sit back by the fire and close herself into the words of a story—no, she cannot do that when her guts are gripped by worry. So she comes near and holds her hands out to the warmth of the fire. She says, "I should see how Robert's day has been. Ring for tea if you want some before I am back." With a smile she turns and heads for the door.
The hallway is cold enough to make her shiver. If nothing else, she thinks, she should fetch her shawl. Up the stairs she goes, nodding to Sarah on the way, Sarah who merely stands to the side and kicks her dustpan out of the way. Such rudeness from a servant. She can't bear her, but neither can she dismiss her quite yet. To get rid of another servant so quickly after Lizzie—she knows that it would be enough to upset Mrs. Johnson and Cartwright, and if they gave notice the household would fold in on itself. For now, it has to stand firm. Not for long perhaps; when Robert's mother dies, as soon she surely will, there may be no reason to keep the household going.
He is in the bedroom, sitting on the bed dressed only in his shirt and socks. His head jerks up when she comes in, and he grimaces. "Soaked through and freezing cold. My best suit filthy. The damned fool of a driver got his hansom stuck between two carriages and I had to get out into a sea of freezing mud."
"Before the hearing?"
He unbuttons his shirt. "Naturally, before. And as though that were not enough, I found that the
insights
I was delivering to the committee were not new to them at all."
She sits beside him. He is still shivering, but she knows better than to touch him when he is in such a mood. Whatever is bothering him, it is nothing concerning her, and the pinch of her anxiety slackens. She says, "I thought they called on you as one of the leading authorities on the subject."
"It seems I was preceded by Dr. Taylor a couple of days ago."
"Dr. Taylor?"
"Sir Jonathan's colleague. We met at the British Institute of Anthropology." He tugs his arms free of the shirt. "Not only did he see it necessary to talk about his own work, he somehow managed to present my recommendations too."
"You told him enough for him to do that?"
His eyes look tired. "No," he grunts, and lets his shirt drop onto the carpet. "That would have been utter idiocy. He must have a sharper mind than I imagined. I gave him a few hints, and somehow he pieced together the entirety of my argument."
From the chest of drawers she takes a fresh shirt and holds it out for him. "Whatever happened to Sir Jonathan?"
"A
misunderstanding
. He was still in Edinburgh when he should have been here."
She hates it when he scowls as he is doing now. It makes him look like a petulant boy who cannot see beyond his own concerns. Standing in front of him, she cradles his face in her hands and brings her own to it so that his breath mixes with hers, and the warmth of her skin touches his. "My love," she says, "you are too fine a man for them. You should leave them behind."
"And let Sir Jonathan become the government's expert on anthropometry? When he can't even remember a meeting, and mistakes the day he is called to the Troup Committee?"
"Or," she whispers, "maybe Dr. Taylor will become their man."
He moves her to the side and stands up, his bare legs looking vulnerable below the bottom of his shirt. "I can't let that happen. The man's no expert—what has he done in the field? I can't leave the fate of anthropometry to a man like him."
"You'd be better off back in Paris."
"The battle's been won in France. It's here that I can make a difference."
"Robert—"
"Besides, there's the small matter of my soon having to earn an income. We have no choice but to live here now, for the time being at least."
She walks over to a chest of drawers rather than stand close to him a moment longer. She tugs out one drawer, then another, her hands busy while she thinks, thinks, what she must do. Her hands choose a pair of trousers, and she turns and tells him, "Then I should go back to Paris and arrange things. We'll have to dismiss Marie and Madame Pépin, and there are our belongings to pack."
"You can write to Marie. What else are servants for, my dear, if not to save us that sort of trouble?"
She brings the trousers over to where he waits. "I should go myself."
"No, my darling. Mother is dying. You must stay here."
She leans forward and kisses his cheek, dropping his trousers on the bed and closing her arms around him. Anything so that he doesn't see her face.
T
he water is wonderfully hot. Mina bends her back so that though her knees rise up through the steam like stark hills, the water wraps itself around her chin. Her eyes are closed and her breath sends a shiver of ripples across the surface. Soon she will have to get down to the business of washing herself. For now all she wants is for the warmth of the water to soak into muscles cramped tight and ease the discomfort in her belly. It is the thought of her letter that has done it: it is downstairs ready for the post, their Paris address written on the front, Marie's name at the top. By now it has gone out—Cartwright may have taken it, or Sarah. Sarah more likely. She imagines her holding it up to the light before slipping it into her pocket, and the jauntiness with which she put on her hat and coat and told Mrs. Johnson that there was a letter that needed to go out. Then she'd have climbed the area steps and taken off up the street to the postbox. She'd have stood there with it in her hands, reading the address, then, when she had it firmly in her head, she would have let it drop into the darkness of the box to wait for the postman's sack, and the sorting office, and the train to the coast, and the boat across the Channel.