Rivals in the City (2 page)

“But you want to go. No. You
intend
to go.”

“Yes.” She drew a breath and looked up at James. “It’s tonight.”

His expression was scrupulously neutral. “The only women in the vicinity will be prostitutes. You’ll be in danger from the moment they see you.”

“I’ll go as a boy, of course.”

“The return of Mark Quinn?” He considered. “Still risky. You make rather a handsome lad.”

She hesitated. “Aren’t you going to scold me for doing something so inappropriate? We’ve been so thoroughly dull and forbearing for months now, and I’m jeopardizing all our hard work.”

“And what good would scolding you do?” His smile was crooked. “Besides, is that how you think of me, Mary? A stuffy killjoy, obsessed with what respectable people might think? A fusty old man who can’t quite understand how your mind works?” His mouth twisted. “Perhaps that’s why you don’t want to marry me.”

Mary was genuinely alarmed. “James, that’s not it at all. I know you want what’s best for me. For us. As for being a fusty old man … well. I’ve never once thought of you as either fusty or old.” She smiled up at him. “Believe me, I thoroughly appreciate your manliness.”

He permitted himself a small smile at that, then lowered his voice. “Has it occurred to you that if we married now, you would be infinitely freer to do as you please?”

She blinked. “It hadn’t.” She paused, then spoke more slowly. “But now that I think of it, it’s only partially true. You can go to a boxing den at any time, on your own or with male friends. But if it was ever hinted that I’d gone, too, such a rumour could still threaten our social reputation as a married couple, or that of your family firm.”

He considered her words. “So it’s a larger problem we face. You will always want to exceed the limits of respectable feminine behaviour.”

She thought about it seriously. “Yes, I think I will. Sometimes, at least.” A pause. “And you? Will you always value propriety and a spotless reputation? Are those so dear to you?”

He was already shaking his head. “I respect those things for their utility. They make daily life smoother and easier, and I want your life – our life together – to be as free and pleasant as possible. But they are not paramount to me—” He was interrupted by the chiming of the nearby bells of the Church of St Pancras. It was half-past eleven.

“You had better go pay your labourers.”

“Yes. But we need to finish this conversation, Mary.”

She nodded. “As for tonight, will you come with me?”

“I suppose there’s no dissuading you.”

“No. I’ll go alone, if you prefer not to come.”

“Then how can I possibly refuse?”

She looked at him. “You ought to, really. You shouldn’t let me coerce you with threats of danger and scandal.”

“What if I just want to see you in breeches again?”

She smiled and raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll call for you at eight.”

“Better if I meet you at the corner of Russell Square, I think.”

“Right.” Usually, James took his leave by kissing her hand and murmuring some tender endearment. Today, however, he chucked her under the chin. “Cheerio, Mark.”

Two

M
ary’s rooms were on the top floor, up three flights of stairs. The flat was inexpensive because of the inconvenience, but to Mary this was one of its great appeals. It had small, high windows, with views of the rooftops, and seemed almost to press against the low grey sky. It was practical, too: she never had to listen to neighbours’ tramping footsteps as they passed her door on the way to their own flats, and this veneer of solitude pleased her immensely.

Unlocking her front door seldom failed to give her a thrill of satisfaction. This was her own home, the one she’d chosen and for which she paid a quarterly rent. It was small: a postage-stamp of a hall linked to a cosy sitting room, beyond that a bedroom and, finally, a tiny bathroom. There was a shared kitchen buried in the depths of the building, to which Mary never ventured. Instead, she dined out once each day. The new class of coffee-house or restaurant that deigned to serve unaccompanied ladies sequestered them in a separate dining room, to be sure, but they were offered hot, competently cooked meals nonetheless. At other times, Mary boiled an egg and toasted bread over the sitting-room fire or nibbled on fruit and tea. This never struck her as subsistence. Rather, it was freedom from the tyranny of three square meals a day, of sticky porridge and spattering chops, and the ordeal of washing-up that followed. Mary also had a daily maid, a girl who came in each morning to clean.

In all, Mary was as free and private as a young woman could possibly be. James had seen her flat only once, before she’d moved in. Nobody else visited. When she closed the front door behind her, she was the creator and sole inhabitant of her own small world.

Mary shed her rain-heavy cloak, lit a small lamp and stoked up the fire in the sitting room. She balanced a kettle on its tripod over the bright fire.

She had just exchanged her walking dress for a dry woollen gown when her doorbell rang.
James
. She skimmed down the steep flights of stairs, unlocked the front door and threw it open with a broad smile – a grin that slackened into astonishment when she beheld the thin, neat, middle-aged lady standing before her.

Several long moments passed. Mary knew she was gaping, yet couldn’t quite summon the appropriate greeting. Eventually, she settled for a weak, “Miss Treleaven?” Her first, panicked, thought was that Anne had seen James depart. It was more than likely.

“Hello, Mary.” The Agency’s past and present manager, Anne Treleaven, smiled sedately. “May I come in?”

It wasn’t really a question. Mary nodded, stepped aside to let her in and assumed something approximating a serene expression. “Of course. How lovely to see you, Miss Treleaven.” It wasn’t a lie; she was extremely fond of and grateful to Anne Treleaven, who, with Felicity Frame and the rest of the Agency, had rescued, educated, trained and supported her for so many years. Mary owed them, quite literally, her life. Yet this unannounced visit was disconcerting, to say the least.

She led Anne up the stairs at a much more conventional pace than her usual two-by-two. She needed the time to gather her thoughts. Inside, Anne removed not only her cape, but also her hat and gloves, confirmation that this was no fleeting social call. As if there had ever been a chance of that.

As Mary showed Anne into her small sitting room, she became intensely aware of its spartan appearance. She’d rented the flat unfurnished, preferring not to live with others’ bits of cast-off history. Yet, Mary had discovered, shopping was tedious. Once the initial flush of novelty had worn off, she could think of half a dozen things she’d rather do than browse mediocre furnishings in Tottenham Court Road. As a result, the sitting room was oddly bare – a single sofa, a low table, a rug – calling to mind her simple room at Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls rather than a lady’s parlour.

They perched awkwardly on opposite ends of the small sofa and spoke of safe things at first: Mary’s new life as mistress of her own flat; the fierce public debates that had raged all through the summer and autumn over Mr Darwin’s incendiary book,
On the Origin of Species
; the capture of Beijing yesterday by British and French forces and its repercussions for the opium trade; school life at Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy, which covertly housed the Agency in its attics and where Anne was head teacher.

Mary poured boiling water onto fragrant tea leaves and discovered two remaining biscuits in the tin.

Anne made no mention of her former fellow manager, Felicity Frame, and her departure, which had fractured the Agency. Mary understood the divide in terms of ideology. Felicity had wanted to employ male sleuths and expand the Agency with the help of her new, high-ranking contacts in government. Anne thought the Agency should concentrate upon its speciality, placing female detectives in discreet situations. But Mary couldn’t imagine what Anne’s new reality must be like, having worked for so long and so intimately with Felicity. She was both anxious to ask and reluctant to hear the answer. But before she found the right opening, Anne leaned forward and came to the point.

“I am here to ask if you’d consider one more job for the Agency,” she said, taking charge of the teapot. A not-so-subtle power play, wondered Mary, or was Anne showing signs of nervousness?

Mary permitted herself to look surprised, but said nothing.

“You’ve a comfortable life here, that’s clear. I also realize you’re disappointed in the way things ended between Felicity and me… You’re not the only one,” she added.

“Disappointed” failed to come close, as a description. Anne Treleaven and Felicity Frame had been much more to Mary than the managers of the Agency; they’d been closer to stepmothers, an unlikely and extraordinarily effective duo whom Mary had tried to emulate in all things. Their falling-out nine months ago had torn apart the Agency and, with it, Mary’s life. She had lost both her surrogate family and her home.

Mary silently offered Anne a biscuit, but neither woman took one. The tension was already too high.

“But I’ve come to you first, because you’re the best choice for this assignment,” said Anne, at last. “Do you wish to hear more?” This was the same phrase that Anne had always used when offering Mary a chance at an assignment. From this point on, all they discussed would be in strictest confidence. Mary searched her face for a sign, but Anne’s spectacles were as good as a mask.

Faced with this familiar challenge, Mary felt a peculiar swirl of emotion: intense curiosity, a surge of suspicion. Why couldn’t an Agency member do the job just as well? Above all, though, she had a sudden, powerful desire to be on assignment for the Agency once last time.

It had been nine months since the events at Buckingham Palace that launched her independence. Nine months since the rift in the Agency. Nine months since she and James had founded their own fledgling detective bureau, Quinn and Easton. She didn’t actually need the Agency any more. But just as surely, she missed it, in the way one might long for a childhood home.

Mary leaned forward in her chair and nodded. “Yes, please.”

There it was: a gleam of satisfaction in Anne’s steel-grey eyes, distinct even behind the spectacles. An instant later, it was gone. “You recall, of course, the Thorold family.”

How could Mary ever forget? Her time with the Thorolds had been her first experience of detective work: a routine exercise that had suddenly ballooned into a swift and deadly criminal plot. “Naturally. Mr Thorold admitted his guilt with regard to insurance fraud and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Mrs Thorold fled the country. ”

Anne nodded. “Henry Thorold stoutly denied any involvement in the piracy scheme, and his denials rang true: there was no logical reason for him to be involved in attacks on his own merchant fleet. Scotland Yard views his wife’s flight as an admission of guilt, and she remains their prime suspect for the acts of piracy and the deaths of so many Lascars. The sheer scale of Thorold’s marine losses over the years – dozens of ships sunk, dozens of Lascar crews dead, extremely valuable cargoes never recovered – point to somebody with inside knowledge of the vessels’ routes and cargoes. The circumstantial evidence is compelling: Mrs Thorold had both means and opportunity to commit those crimes.

“There is also her attempted murder of James Easton, and the suspected murders of two others. As you know, Mr Easton’s testimony will be conclusive. Yet until Mrs Thorold returns to England, our police are powerless to arrest her.”

Mary nodded. This seemed obvious enough. “So much for the parents. What about Angelica? She announced her intention to study music in Germany. Did she do so in the end?”

Anne nodded. “She studied first in Germany, where her music teacher had connections, and later in Vienna. She has never returned to visit her father in jail, until now. Henry Thorold is dying, Mary. As his next of kin, Angelica was notified of this. She embarked on the journey from Vienna to London last week.”

“Was Angelica never regarded as a suspect? Why seek the mother but not the daughter, who also promptly fled for the Continent?”

“Angelica was interviewed by the Yard and judged to be profoundly ignorant of the family business. You must remember that she’d been away at boarding school for several years before coming to live at home again that spring.”

Mary frowned. “And Mrs Thorold?”

Anne’s smile held little amusement. “Scotland Yard’s best guess as to her location is ‘somewhere in Europe’. But you’re right. They are very interested in the possibility that she may return in order to see her husband one last time.”

“Why on earth? It’s not as though they were fond of one another, what with Mrs Thorold using pirates to raid her husband’s merchant ships.”

“Yes, but if she could persuade him to make a deathbed confession…?”

Mary sat up, scalp prickling with the possibility. “Thus clearing her name, and freeing her to return to England?”

“Precisely. The police ensured that the news of Thorold’s illness – a cancer, it seems – was well known. He has suffered a slow decline, but the prison physician believes he now has only a few days to live. We – the Agency – have been asked to watch for Mrs Thorold’s return.”

Mary swallowed hard: a difficult gesture, given the lump in her throat. Her first thought was of James, whom Mrs Thorold had very nearly murdered. Her second was a fervent prayer for his safety, in this moment and those to come. “She’ll be in disguise,” she managed to say. “You’re watching all the ports?”

Anne paused, clearly surprised to be questioned in this way. “Yes. But she’s extremely practised in changing her appearance, as you know, and very few members of the Agency have actually met her face to face.”

“What about the banks? She must have left a nest egg somewhere, under a false name.”

“The name is Mrs Fisher, actually, and the bank’s been notified.” Anne looked amused. “Anything else, my dear?”

Anne was treating this like a game. Didn’t she realize how deadly the situation was? “Another house, under a third name?”