Desperation and Decision (7 page)

"I have found myself lately interested in we
call the 'second sons' of English society. These are young men who
are of the gentility or wealthy classes, yet are not in line for a
large fortune. Therefore they must look to some profession to make
their way. They may have had a military commission purchased for
them, be in government service, or in some business or industry.
Here is what happened in one case."

"Drinks all 'roun', my good man!" The
flushed young man staggered against the highly-polished bronze and
black bar and nearly collapsed. Many of his new-found friends,
eager to take him up on his offer, helped him onto a black leather
and bronze barstool. He flashed a wad of money and the bartender
lost his scowl and turned down slightly the wireless blasting the
Home Game. He set pint pots beneath his clockwork taps and turned
the master lever that caused them to draw bitter, stout and good
October ale according to each man's shouted desire. Mechanical arms
reached across to the patrons at the bar.

I smiled at the newcomer and drew him aside
to a table after the drinks had been paid for. As usual, I wore a
disguise for my evening ramblings among the fallen. Tonight I had
chosen gray tweeds and had colored my hair and beard a fatherly
gray. Tinted spectacles obscured my eyes and my clothing hung loose
and baggy to accentuate the appearance of shrunken, advancing
age.

The young man was already so drunk it was
unlikely he knew what his own face looked like at the moment, much
less mine. His clothing was worn and shiny, though it seemed once
to have been well-made and well-fitted, fawn brown linen, leather
gaiters, with perfectly matched fawn gloves worn to holes and
half-hanging out of his jacket pocket.

I noted his expensive watch dangling open on
his watch chain and as I solicitously tucked it back into the young
man's waistcoat pocket and closed it I saw no less than five
pawnshop numbers scratched into it. For whatever reason, this young
man had seen more hard times than good.

"You should spend your money on some new
collars and cuffs before you treat a bar full of strangers, my
friend."

"I will -- I will do that too. When I show
up at that gate of hell where I work tomorrow, they shall know I'm
more than just the cast off son of the thirteenth earl of the fifth
house of the seventh … er – whatever it is."

"You'll show them, eh?" I kept a heavy hand
on my companion's fast-disappearing pint between gulps. I had to
prevent the clockwork mechanism in the table from weighing the pot.
I had no desire for the interruption it would create by lighting
the gas beacon above our heads and alerting the bartender to the
need for a refill.

"Thass right. Show them I'm a man. Show them
they mus' respec' me or I'll sell 'em out too." In the manner of
the intoxicated he switched from bravado to a flood of tears.
"Didn' know Dodge meant to kill th' poor bloke. Killed over a
briefcase stuffed wi' papers, he was." He changed to furtive but
determined. "Money is all that matters, y'know. All that
matters."

Whereupon the fellow's head fell on the
table and he began to snore. I had taken pains to choose a table
away from the direct lights of the golden gas jets dotting the
sporting-poster and memorabilia-plastered walls. I deftly searched
him in a way that looked to the other patrons as if I were simply
arranging the poor sot more comfortably to sleep it off.

Money the fellow had plenty of. Trying to
hide it and counting hastily I couldn't be sure of the exact total
but it was more than five thousand pounds. Yet I couldn't find any
evidence of what made this fellow worth such a lordly sum. I did
find a scrap of paper rolled up like a spill and tucked into the
lining of the fellow's frayed coat sleeve. The paper contained
nothing but a smudged address.

"Thank you, Prince Florizel," Madame Phoebe
said as I seated myself. She gave me a nod and a smile as if she
approved. Approved of what? Was she going to explain this mystery
at last?

"My tale comes next. When I saw the address
on that paper, I recognized it and investigated what possible
connection there could be between a low-ranking manager in an
important engineering firm and a notorious gossip columnist."

Madame Phoebe took a breath.

"Well, well, well." Judy Punch swept me into
her sitting room as one sweeps a fleeing mouse toward the trap it
must not be permitted to avoid. Her blue hair rose to alarming
heights on its wire bouffant rolls and I could hear the frantic
winding of the springs and gears in her patented self-adjusting
corset straining to contain the gossip-columnist's ample figure.
Her plum day gown was heavily-bustled with wire as well. Amethyst
pompons sparkled all over her dress and anemone-like amethyst
beaded flowers had been stuck crazily into her hair.

"Do sit down and let me have my maid bring
some tea, Miss Moore. Imagine! Miss Phoebe Moore in my very house!
Miss Moore, who never gives interviews and has a whole clan of
handsome blond giants to shield her from the press in America. I
knew I would wear you down once I got you alone for a minute at the
Baroness Orczy's tea party last week!"

The gossip columnist's home was a train
wreck of patterns, colors and styles, rich and tasteless, crammed
with mementos of the celebrities she had interviewed, and in many
cases, testimony to the innocent lives she had ruined with her
libelous reports.

"The home of London's most avidly read
celebrity news reporter can hardly be called humble." I had chosen
my own costume to impress without stooping to the tasteless shout
for attention of my hostess. I wore a rich russet day gown with
shimmering matched lace cascading over my upper arms and down from
my waist. Black jet fringe also edged my gown and russet hat.
Pheasant feathers completed my hat's ornamentation. I set my russet
and black, fringed parasol down in the stand by the door and
followed my hostess to a seat. "Anyone can see you have had great
success at what you do. I have come to give an interview, but I
want some information in exchange."

The interview was very difficult, as I had
known it would be. The woman had no shame, no reserve whatsoever.
She did not, however, seem to know about my previous career. That
was extremely heartening. The Campbells really had managed to bury
it, and I breathed another silent prayer of gratitude to my beloved
husband's family.

I could not fathom what the woman meant by
her "previous career". Could she have been a cheap stage performer
whom Campbell had elevated by marriage? I could not even think how
such a person would come to be noticed by American aristocracy such
as the Campbells. Madame Phoebe continued before I could solve yet
another puzzle in this most puzzle-filled association.

"Really, my dear, you must give me a little
more. My readers are not looking for so much sweetness and light.
These little struggles are charming. Telling us of your first
public concert, your leaving for New York and becoming a
professional church choir singer will enchant my readers. What
tears they will shed over your tending your guardian in his
illness. But my readers also crave a peek at the darker side of a
celebrity's life, the temptations, the missteps ... " She trailed
off invitingly.

"I'm afraid I've told you all I can. Now for
my information. I thought you once said there was news in every
famous person's life, and that the public had a right to know about
it. Yet I haven't seen any stories about important people like…" I
casually mentioned the name of the president of the firm where the
drunken young man Florizel had met was employed.

The change in the woman was dramatic and
almost pitiable. "Ho, ho, Miss Moore, why would we be interested in
dull old bridges and roads and brownstone buildings? We moths hover
about the bright lights of celebrity, not the green lampshades of
dusty board meetings. I have no information about such a place, nor
have I any desire to know."

"But she lied. She was afraid, and it was
obvious. So I left. Later I came back in my little white cap and
neat black dress. I gave the pretty little idle housemaid ten
pounds and told her she had won the Maid of the Month Sweepstakes.
She was to take the afternoon off while I took her place. I knew
her mistress had gone to a celebrity luncheon and that she would
never tell her of this arrangement.

"I noticed that the girl was idle when I was
giving the interview, of course, seeing everything covered with
dust and the tea slow and sloppy. I got a good look, and still had
time to give that place a better cleaning than it's had in months.
Disgraceful what people pay for a housemaid who spoons over the
back fence with the butcher boy while company is present."

This talk of posing as a servant did not
surprise me. I had done it myself. But the odd way she talked,
knowing intimately the ways of servants and actually spending time
cleaning the woman's house -- It was almost as if she actually had
been in service. Looking at this regal lady, I laughed at myself
for thinking she had ever known hard work or want.

"At any rate, what I found was a drawer in
the lady's writing desk that had a sheet glued in the bottom under
a felt pad. Here is a copy of the sheet."

Madame Phoebe passed around a paper with
columns containing lists of words. "Clearly this is a cipher. It's
a simple one -- just allows one word to be substituted for another.
Since this incident I have become a religious reader of the lady's
columns. Such men as the drunk whom the prince met are gathering
information at their places of work – apparently about important
papers to be delivered by a courier or meetings to be held – and
they report to the gossip-monger, whose columns alert thieves to
the time, place, and circumstances where they can commit a
robbery.

"I searched back into past columns of Judy
Punch's and found this reference," Madame Phoebe explained, taking
up a newspaper clipping.

" 'My close friend Dodge has whispered in my
ear that a midnight rendezvous may bridge the gap between certain
stellar persons we all wish were not so far apart. Cupid's arrow
shall fly down Portney Street and perhaps land in Tufts
Square.'

"Not all of the words are part of the coded
message, of course. Judy Punch has an unpleasant habit of frequent
capitalization which appears to be gossipy emphasis but separates
the real message from the unimportant words. When I applied the
coded sheet I had copied, this is the message that it revealed:
Courier Dover Ferry to Lyon Ten a.m. arrival.

"We have confirmed that a courier was killed
in Lyon at noon on April 10th. He was carrying architectural plans
for a new bridge for the firm in which the prince's drunken friend
was employed."

Madame Phoebe paused. She had given her
report very steadily, with little trace of emotion, but she was
very white and her hands shook. For me it was a stunning revelation
and a humbling experience. I had cudgeled my brains to know what
the fellow meant by his words, who had been killed, to whom the
address on the paper might have belonged.

I had felt so helpless, knowing a great evil
had been done, and more might be contemplated, while this
astounding woman had made sense of it all and fitted it into her
quest. How had she known what transpired between myself and the
drunken manager? She claimed she had not found me until yesterday.
I could not give the matter any more thought, though, for Madame
Phoebe spoke again.

"Doctor Twist, please give us your report
next."

"Hold on just a tick, Lady Phoebe." Oliver
Twist hunched his shoulders in a way that had already become
familiar to me. "There. Got my imagework from Chancery up." He
nodded toward a blank wall, this one fitted with a large sheet of
pure white fabric unlike the flocked brocades in the rest of the
room. Everyone looked at him quizzically. He grumbled something
inaudible and fiddled with the device again. I saw a ghostly image
appear in his now opalescent hatband stone; the faint figure of a
dirty, bent, elderly woman.