Rivals in the City (22 page)

A brief pause. “Then it appears that I have your answer.”

“Not yet,” said Angelica, firmly. “As I said, I need to know more.”

“What more would you know?”

“I need your solemn oath, Mamma, that nobody will be harmed in this scheme of yours. I will not have blood on my hands. And I need to hear the plan, in detail, and satisfy myself that it is rational. If I am to risk not only my music and my career, but also my neck, I must be a full partner in the scheme.”

Mrs Thorold took her time, considering. Then, very slowly, she nodded. “All your requirements are reasonable. I give you my word that no blood will be shed. And I appreciate your caution: I expected no less. But to answer that question, we must walk on.” She rose, a little stiffly, and extended her arm to Angelica. “Shall we?”

Angelica hesitated for only a moment before standing and linking arms with her mother. “Yes. Let us go.”

Sixteen

A
s mother and daughter returned to the gravelled path, Mary stretched her arms and legs with slow, small movements. Mrs Thorold wasn’t the only one who felt the cold. Mary’s first thought was of immediate action: did she and her shadow-agent have the strength to overpower Mrs Thorold and bring her to a police station? They had the element of surprise, which they would need. Mrs Thorold was almost certainly armed.

Yet it would be more effective, by far, to catch her in the commission of her next crime. If the old charges were dismissed for any reason, or if James’s testimony against her was somehow void, it would be better to have fresh evidence against her. Furthermore, Mary didn’t quite believe Mrs Thorold’s protestations that she was prepared to work entirely alone. It was possible, in fact, that Mary and her fellow agent had walked into a loose snare, and that the moment they moved against Mrs Thorold, her collaborators would spring the trap. With her heart racing like this, all senses stretched to their limits, Mary sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between legitimate suspicion and rank paranoia.

She watched the Thorolds walk away at a dignified but steady pace, yet she continued to linger on the path, in plain sight. Within a minute, she was joined by a person in rough trousers and sailor’s peacoat. “I couldn’t hear a word they said,” was the first thing the stranger said, resettling her cloth cap.

“Mrs Thorold asked Angelica to join her in a large robbery. Angelica is considering,” said Mary.

“Where are they going now?”

The Bank of England, of course. And yet Mary refrained from leaping to such a conclusion. She’d had no further confirmation on that matter, from this evening’s work. Once she had that knowledge, Mary could safely summon a constable, a squadron of constables, the whole bloody army, if that’s what it took. Until she was certain, though, it was just four unaccompanied women trotting briskly down Montague Street on a Saturday night. “We’ll follow them and see,” said Mary. “When I give you the signal, report to the Agency as fast as possible.”

The woman nodded and evaporated into the shadows once more.

At the end of Montague Street, Mary expected the Thorolds to veer eastwards, to the City. The swiftest route to the Bank of England would take them through Holborn, past Newgate and St Paul’s. However, they instead turned west into Great Russell Street. Mary’s gut tightened.

After a minute, the Thorolds stopped before the museum’s high, brass-spiked fence, mother pointing out something to daughter. Mary passed them at a brisk walk, staying silent and far enough away that she was only another pedestrian hurrying home of an evening. When she reached the corner of Museum Street, just opposite the main gates, Mary slowed her steps. There was a shallow doorstep a few yards down, the entrance to a tightly shuttered shop, where she could take shelter from the wind. And if the Thorolds turned eastwards, as she still anticipated, she would be once more behind them.

Two minutes passed, and then five. Mary scanned the rest of the street, but it was a murk of shadows and fog. She was just about to set off in an easterly direction when a pair of women presented themselves before the immense gates. Mary caught her breath.

The museum was closed, of course. By four o’clock, all visitors would have been shooed out and the two enormous pairs of gates locked until Monday morning. Yet in the gloom, she could see the taller figure, Mrs Thorold, in conversation with the turnkey. Mary frowned. This seemed entirely unorthodox, Mrs Thorold’s offering herself to a person’s notice. She wasn’t the sort who appreciated witnesses. And what on earth did she hope to accomplish at the museum, after hours? But less than half a minute later, the guard unlocked the small, human-sized entrance within the larger gate. Then, dragging his heels as though exceedingly weary, he locked the gate once more and collapsed into the guard’s box, while the Thorolds vanished into the foggy courtyard.

Astonishing. Mary stared into the mists, as though seeing into the depths of the museum – not to mention Mrs Thorold’s mind – were merely a matter of concentration. What on earth…? And then, quite suddenly, the answers tumbled into place in her cold and sluggish brain.

It wasn’t the Bank, at all.

Perhaps it never had been. All the titbits about Mrs Thorold’s interest there, the gentleman with the mole on the end of his nose, the highly privileged contract extended to Easton Engineering, the theft of the plans from James’s office: they were all part of a blind, a cunningly laid diversion. And it had so very nearly worked. It was only Mrs Thorold’s meeting with Angelica this evening that had led Mary to the real target: the British Museum. Had Mrs Thorold been able to resist recruiting her daughter… Mary shivered. Significant events so often turned on casual coincidence, sudden impulse. But this time, the good fortune was hers. She suddenly understood not only where and when, but the all-important how.

Mrs Thorold must know the gatekeeper because she worked at the museum! It was an inside position that granted her frequent access to the museum’s collections, the knowledge with which to plan a successful heist and the leisure to pull it off when the building was closed to the public. The museum had a staff of curators and experts on any number of arcane subjects, of course, but as a woman, Mrs Thorold could never hope to attain such a post. No, she had to be one of the domestics who lived on site: maids, cooks, housekeepers, a governess.
This
was what Mrs Thorold had referred to when she spoke of being a humble, underestimated lone woman. And they were all housed in the vast, private wings of the museum.

Mary waited another minute, allowing the guard time to resettle himself. She couldn’t see movement in the other sentry box, but assumed that it was manned nonetheless. She began to walk along Great Russell Street at a crisp but ladylike pace. As she passed through the yellowish haze of the nearest street lamp, she raised her right hand and brushed it across the brim of her bonnet: a small gesture, the removal of a distracting hair or thread. It was also the signal for her colleague to report their location to the Agency.

As Mary tucked herself into the next available doorway, maintaining a clear view of the entrance gates, she felt a distinct sense of calm. It was now a little after eight o’clock. By her calculation, a good runner needed half an hour to reach the Agency’s headquarters in Acacia Road, over slick cobblestones in the ill-lit streets. Then Anne Treleaven would have to present herself at Scotland Yard to explain the situation, and there would be a brief wait for a unit of policemen to be dispatched. Mary could expect to be here alone for at least an hour and a quarter, and likely a bit longer. Then there was the trifling matter of how they might apprehend Mrs Thorold. For now, however, she pushed those thoughts away with fatalistic serenity. This was a case with exceptionally few certainties, but a fresh one now emerged: the end was in sight.

Seventeen

A
fter roughly three-quarters of an hour, Mary became aware of footsteps in the middle distance. In the darkness and fog, her ears offered more information than her eyes: the sound came from a pair of steel pattens ringing unevenly on the cobbles. She was therefore not surprised to discern a woman, wrapped in a shawl, just inside the museum gates. She rapped briefly on the guardhouse and said, quite loudly, “Coffee, Mr Welland.”

After a few seconds, the turnkey emerged. “Eh?” From his tone, it seemed that he had been napping.

“Coffee, you sorry beggar,” said the woman. Her tone was impatient, but fundamentally affectionate; an elder sister doing him a favour. “Don’t say you couldn’t use a little waking up.”

“You’re a saviour, Mrs Price,” he muttered, cupping his hands around the mug. “Good Lord, I feel like death warmed over. What a night to be the only one on guard.”

“What, they took Mr Entwistle with them, too?” She jerked her head towards the other guard hut.

“Aye. Matter of urgency in the City, they said.” He drank deeply of the coffee and groaned, but it didn’t sound like satisfaction. “Oh. God. I swear, my insides are on fire.”

“I told Cook them prawns was too far gone to be served at dinner,” said Mrs Price, in waspish tones. “Do you think she’d listen to me? Oh, no: she’d as soon poison us all as waste a scrap of the upstairs leavings. You didn’t eat any prawns, did you, Mr Welland?”

“No prawns,” he croaked. “I don’t hold with foreign food.” He raised the mug to his lips, then suddenly lowered it. “This ain’t right,” he said suddenly. “I never had food poisoning like this before.”

“No call to be such a baby about it,” retorted Mrs Price. “I’m feeling half-dead myself, and don’t get me started on the state of that lot upstairs. They’ll want nursing all night, and who else is to do it, I ask you?”

Welland raised his mug once more, with unsteady hands. He gulped, flinched and clutched his abdomen. “You don’t think it’s the dysentery, do you? I seen that go through a building like wildfire.”

“Don’t say that.” Mrs Price shivered and huddled deeper into her shawl. Then, sharply, “You drinking that coffee or not? I got to get back inside.”

The mug wobbled for a few seconds. The next moment, Welland’s body buckled. He gave a wordless cry, dropped to his knees and began to vomit.

“Here, you! You never said it was that bad, you silly—” Mrs Price sounded genuinely worried. “Why didn’t you say you needed a basin?”

Welland was unfit to reply. He retched violently, repeatedly, his body tipping forward until his cheek was pressed to the slime and grit of the cobbles. Even then, he continued to vomit and writhe and moan.

Mrs Price continued to hover over him, flapping her hands in agitation. “Welland, you oughtn’t lie on the ground like that, you’ll catch a chill. Sit up, why don’t you?” After several minutes, Welland’s agony weakened. His body continued to shiver, but these were smaller convulsions, quite different from the noisy, painful voiding of before. He was sobbing now.

“There, there,” said Mrs Price. “Let’s get you inside. You’ll have to stand, Welland, I can’t help you. It feels like there’s a knife in my bowels, and I’m for my bed, but we’ll get you inside and cleaned up first. Whether it’s the prawns or the dysentery I don’t know, but it’s bad, this.” The two servants clung to one another and hobbled in stages back towards the museum, Mrs Price muttering all the way.

Mary took a moment to absorb what she’d seen. The museum gates were currently unguarded, with Welland indisposed and his colleague called away on a “matter of urgency in the City”. Illness was at large within the building, apparently affecting both servants and the academic staff. That left Mrs Thorold and Angelica inside, free to do God knows what.

Mary peered through the palings, trying to discern movement amidst the fog. It seemed bizarre that the courtyard would be unpatrolled. Yet if there was a guard on his rounds, Mrs Price would have hailed him for help, rather than force Welland to stand and walk on his own. No, the courtyard must be deserted.

What was Mary’s best course of action? She had planned to remain outside the gates in order to brief Anne Treleaven and the police when they arrived. Yet what might Mrs Thorold accomplish inside, while Mary waited in safe if chilly inertia? Besides, it had already been a full hour since she dispatched her fellow agent for help. The police would soon arrive, likely within the half-hour.

There remained only the challenge of entering the gate. The railings were some fifteen feet high and too narrowly spaced to squeeze through, even had she been unhampered by a crinoline. Mary felt a twitch of resentment for the slow labour of picking locks. Luck continued with her, however: even as she reached for her unusually long steel hairpin, her eye caught a gleam of metal lodged in the muck. She smiled widely. Instead of bothering with the hairpin, she extended her umbrella between two palings, curved handle foremost. A moment later, she was holding a small ring of keys that could only have fallen from Welland’s belt as he writhed on the ground.

Mary unlocked the gate and left it wide open: a sign of warning and invitation for the police. She stepped around Welland’s pool of vomit, gleaming dark and viscous in the gaslight, and into the courtyard. She found a locked door, and then a key on Welland’s ring that fit the door. Soon, Mary was inside the museum.

She was in an unlit passage, which probably meant she was in the servants’ wing. Mary found it difficult to imagine that the corridors of the educated and affluent men who ran the museum would be so dim. She closed the door and stood still, listening in order to find her bearings. There was, first of all, a striking silence: a building at rest. Then, as her ears adjusted, a few sounds of habitation – footsteps, a voice or two – one floor above. The large doormat was muddy beneath her feet, and she saw a pair of pattens hastily kicked to one side. Mary glided forward, pausing to read the brass nameplates on each door she passed: Housekeeper. Pantry. Linens. She was in the right place. Each door had a faint aroma of olive oil and vinegar, the traditional components of wood polish. At the end of the corridor she found a stairwell with flights of steps leading both up and down.