Untitled (36 page)

   "All right then. But how will I recognize these letters, Mrs. Bentley?"

   "Oh," she says, "you'll recognize them."

   A smile pulls his mouth to one side. "I see. Then if you double what you've got there"—he points at the coins scattered over the desktop—"and pay me that much again when you get the letters, we've got an agreement."

   She expected as much. Still, she sees him differently now: his eyes are alive with a sense of his own cleverness.

   "Very well," she says. From where she's kept it out of sight on her lap, she opens her purse and counts more sovereigns onto the desk. There will be nothing left to pay the butcher, or the grocer. For now that cannot matter. "Tomorrow is Thursday—the letters must be here by this time tomorrow at the latest. Do you understand?"

   "Oh yes." He starts scooping the coins off the desk and into his hand, then looks up with a wink. "I understand perfectly."

Chapter 31

T
hursday, and it is what Robert calls filthy weather. The city has turned ghostly since a foul, yellow fog settled down on them again, muffling sounds, blurring the carriages passing slowly along the street. The reek of it seeps into the house so that even sitting by the fire, Mina would swear she can smell it.

   All afternoon she's been uneasy. She's trapped in this house— how to go out when she has nowhere to go, no reason to be anywhere? Yet to sit still—to let her fate be decided by a self-satisfied valet who will, no doubt, read the letters and smirk over the passions the words shape, yet understand nothing at all—is almost more than she can bear.

   But sit still she must. She has kept her composure through breakfast with Robert, and pretended to be busy all morning with the household accounts and menus for Mrs. Johnson, and bills to be paid—as though she still has the money to pay them. That way she could be silent, could seem occupied without having to explain. At lunch when Cartwright stepped out of the room, Robert leaned over and said she looked pale. The fog, she told him—it depressed the spirits and had given her a headache. Plus all this business with the widow was a strain. He stroked the delicate skin between her thumb and index finger, said, "My poor darling."

   Now, eventually, she has persuaded him that he should venture through the fog for his meeting with Sir Jonathan. So here she sits alone, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, staring into the fire. Again and again she asks herself whether there really is nothing else to be done. No, she thinks, there is not. Popham has the letters. That is his hold over her, the handwriting that will give her away, the name at the bottom that Robert won't recognize: Nora. Was she ever really Nora? No. After all she has done to pull herself onto the high ground of respectability, the waters are rising and threatening to sweep her away again. She shivers as though she already feels the coldness of the tide. How could it have crept up so far? She'd imagined she was safe. Instead she's been foolish. She should never have let Robert convince her to come to London; she should have found any reason to stay away.

   She hasn't lost yet, though. She has sent the valet off to find the letters. Now she must hope that they are not too well hidden, and that he won't see if Popham will pay more to keep them than she can to retrieve them.

   Perhaps he agreed to help her too easily. He could keep the letters and slowly, painfully, bleed money from her over months, or years even. For that, he'd have to understand why she's willing to pay to have them back. Is he clever enough for that? She presses her hands together because they are so very cold.

       
J
ane is shaking out the dusters when she hears a voice: a man's, light, cheerful, and although she knows it's not Teddy's, she looks up. From out of the fog leans a small man in a hat that threatens to swallow his head, and a greatcoat wrapped around him.

   He bends over the railings and calls out again. "Young missy— young missy down there. Would you be kind enough to help me?"

   What harm is there in helping the gentleman? She snaps the last duster through the air, then comes up the steps towards him. He might be lost, in which case she won't be of much help; or he might want to find a family that lives hereabouts, in which case she won't be of any help at all. Instead, he tips his hat to her and says, "I'm a friend of your mistress, but it's a little hard to visit at a time like this."

   "Yes, sir." She nods, watching his thin face.

   "I don't mean to be indelicate—I have been away for several years and feel I would intrude to ask the family—but has there been a recent bereavement?"

   "Oh sir." She shifts her weight and leans against the railings. "First it was Mr. Henry, then the shock of it killed his mother."

   His eyebrows arch up in surprise. "Two deaths? Good Lord, how terribly unfortunate." His hands come out of his pockets and settle on his chest, a strange womanly gesture.

   "Yes, sir. We're all awfully upset by it."

   His hands can't stay still. Now they dance along the pointed tops of the railings. "Yes indeed, yes, quite so. I hope this doesn't mean the household will be broken up?"

   "I wouldn't know, sir."

   "No." He gives a gentle smile. "Naturally. Then in that case—" he fiddles with his gloves "—I shall have to pay my respects sooner rather than later."

   "Yes, sir."

   "You have been most helpful. I'll be certain to tell your mistress when I see her."

   "Thank you, sir."

   Then he's gone, back into the sea of fog that fills the street. The air is dank, and Jane shivers. Down in the area the light from the kitchen spills out, warm and hopeful. It seems to shine out across a great distance, like a far-off cottage's windows at night. She folds the dusters and takes off down the steps to see what Mrs. Johnson is cooking for dinner.

S
he has until seven o'clock.

By then the valet will have come, and she will be safe. At times it seems the fog will lift, for occasionally it parts and the houses opposite suddenly appear, carriages passing in front of them that soon vanish back into the dingy white, as though only this part of the street exists. Something closer catches her eye. A man—a man in a too-big hat and an odd way of holding his hands to his chest. He is at the railings, and her breath catches painfully in her chest. That bulky coat, that tilt to his head that makes it seem he's looking in one direction when he's looking in another. She'd know him anywhere. He's a stain on her memory she'll never be rid of. Flyte.

   He has been released, then, and already he has found her. Somehow, despite the tricks she used to cover her trail, he has put his nose to the ground and followed her scent over so many miles and so many years.

   He's not looking up at the house but down into the area. Talking to someone, she realizes. Someone standing on the area steps—a white cap, an apron over a black dress. Jane.

   Mina stumbles towards the fire and lets herself down into an armchair. How can this be? Flyte outside the house, talking to her maid, on the very day that Popham is coming for her. Was it Flyte who betrayed her to Popham? Because he would, she's certain—he might be so furious over his lost money. Yet it can't be that. Popham was in Mortimer's, he found her by accident, and Flyte was still in prison.

   So what is he doing outside the house? He wants his money back. He has discovered the strongbox is empty, his fortune gone. To find his money, he believes he must find her.

   She has been betrayed, she is sure.
Jane
.

   The idea of it sinks inside her, a cold stone that settles in her belly.

   Flyte has been more clever than she has; she should have guessed he would be. Why did she assume he wouldn't win himself an early release from prison? Or that hiring a maid from the country would be safe? Indeed, she'd congratulated herself on finding one who'd lied and so had every reason to be loyal to her: at one stroke, she could reduce her to the sort of despair that makes women of her sort throw themselves into the dark waters of the Thames. Yet, what has she just seen but this very maid talking to him?

   He has paid her. He must have.

   Jane Wilbred has taken his money and spilled everything she knows about the household into his ear. Everything about her mistress lately from France, whose past only goes back so far, then mysteriously stops. Was it Jane who managed things to let the burglar in? Has Jane been working for him all along? Is she not the real Jane Wilbred? She must be, Mina tells herself, for she was careful in hiring her. Wasn't she?

   The lumber room. Jane was up there. Cartwright told her, yet she paid him no attention. She'd had Popham's letter in her hands, could hardly think of anything else. Now she wonders—are the papers still in the trunk? Or has Jane found them and handed them over to him? What else could she have been up to?

   She hurries from the room into the cold of the hallway, then up the stairs, past the bedrooms, to the stairway that leads up to the servants' rooms. Along the corridor she rushes, right to the end, where she unlocks the door of the lumber room and looks about her. The light is so dim that she feels with her hands, but soon it is clear to her: out of the trunks that came from France, the smallest is missing. With it is gone the packet of shares in mines from Argentina to the Yukon that the police missed when they came for Flyte, documents drawn up by Flyte himself and that looked so very much like the real thing. Documents that would earn him another stretch in prison. They are gone—the only security she had against him.

   Her shoulder knocks against something—someone—a man. He yells out and she stumbles, falls to the slick pavement, but in a moment is up again, rushing on despite the pain raging through her knee. How can she keep going? Her lungs are burning, her throat tight. The taste of the filthy air is everywhere inside her. She'd cry if she could, but she can't yet, not when she must run as fast as she can though she can hardly see three paces in front of her. She must find Teddy. He'll know what to do. He'll know a place where she can stay, he'll lend her a few shillings to tide her over. He'll find her a shelter in this terrible city, because, of all the shadowy people fumbling their way through the fog, she must be the only one who has been thrown out onto the streets and has nowhere to call home.

   Such fury! Mrs. Robert's face drawn in on itself, her spittle landing on Jane's cheeks as she hissed that she was the worst sort of traitor, a spy in her own house. That she'd trusted her and now she'd been made a fool of; that Jane couldn't understand the enormity of what she had done, all for the sake of a little money. On and on. She'd felt her knees give way, had held onto the back of an armchair, though Mrs. Robert had told her to move her filthy hands—she remembers that now as she runs—
filthy hands.
And whose filth was it?

   Even as Mrs. Robert dragged her from the room and towards the front door she hadn't understood what was happening. How could she be so angry? A litany of accusations: letting in the burglar, breaking the tazza—so had she noticed, or had Sarah told her? Talking to a gentleman this afternoon, but what could one expect from a liar and a thief, a girl rotten through and through? With that Mrs. Robert had swung open the door and pushed her outside. Behind her the door had slammed shut.

   She'd stood staring at it. From the other side came the hollow sound of retreating footsteps. Then silence. She'd knocked. She'd beaten the door so hard that she'd bruised her hands. No one had come. She'd forced herself down the front steps and past the railings, down into the area. They must have heard her and been given instructions. A key grated in the lock. Against the kitchen window an arm appeared and swept the light behind a curtain. Sarah's arm, she thought.

   There was no point calling out. There was no point waiting but she did, though she didn't know for what. How long had she stood there? Long enough to grow cold. Long enough to understand that the moment she walked back up the area steps, she'd be alone and penniless.

   So now she runs, for what else can she do? She runs through the fog, stumbling into gutters of slush, coming close to being hit by an omnibus, going wrong because on a night like this the streets all look the same. She retraces her steps, then dashes on, up the next street and the next because somewhere close by is Mr. Popham's house, where Teddy, surely, will fold her into his arms. Perhaps Mr. Popham needs a housemaid, and as she trips over the edge of the pavement she imagines the bliss of that—seeing Teddy every day, being able to steal moments together without having to see Mrs. Robert afterwards to explain that no, she didn't know much more about Mr. Popham's household than before though yes, she'd tried, but please, what was it she was supposed to be finding out?

   When Mr. Popham's kitchen door swings open the cook's eyes slide down—from Jane's face with her hair come loose from under her cap to her dirty apron. She declares that Teddy is not home and she has no idea when he will be back. With that she closes the door in Jane's face.

   She waits. A church bell chimes out the half hour. Then the hour. She presses her hands under her arms and her arms against her body, and crouches against the wall. It's of little help against the cold. Occasionally she calls out, "Please—can I just warm myself ? Only for a minute. Please!"

   At last the door opens. The cook. She hefts a pan of water at Jane. It slaps her in the chest, then its coldness spreads over her skin. The cook shouts, "Hook it. Go on, off with you," as though Jane is a stray cat.