Rivals in the City (26 page)

Mrs Thorold staggered up and backwards, smashing Mary hard against the brick wall with the full weight of her body. “Two bullets left, so don’t get your hopes up,” she hissed. Mary grunted as all the air left her lungs. For answer, she locked her arms tighter about Mrs Thorold’s neck. As her vision cleared, she noted the revolver still bobbing in Mrs Thorold’s right hand, while the left clawed at Mary’s hold, twisting her fingers, seeking to break their clasp. Mary felt no pain, heard only Mrs Thorold’s increasingly laboured gasps for breath. All she had to do was hang on.

But where was Angelica in this mêlée? It was only when Mary scanned the room, deliberately searching, that she saw something sprawled carelessly across the floor. It was Angelica’s body. It didn’t move. Something primal blossomed within Mary and she squeezed harder yet across Mrs Thorold’s windpipe. The gasps became choking sounds, and the gun soon crashed to the ground. Mary ignored it. She didn’t need it any more.

With immense effort, Mrs Thorold staggered forward and then back again, once more using her body as a weight to crush Mary against the wall. It was a weak effort compared to the first, however, and in response, Mary squeezed tighter. She envisioned the air leaving Mrs Thorold’s body, expelled by the force of her struggle, leaving only a dark vacuum. It was in the grip of this fierce delirium that she first saw the change in the room. One moment there were three bodies; the next there were four. The new arrival was male and darkly silhouetted in the doorway.

Mary blinked and almost slackened her grip, so startled was she by this sudden apparition. “You!” she whispered, a ragged scrap of breath she could ill afford to waste. Half a moment later, she caught her error and renewed her crushing grip across Mrs Thorold’s throat.

Mrs Thorold emitted a strangled roar.

James sprinted forward, fear and anxiety etched across his face. “Move your arms!” he said, low and tense, as he reached Mary. She scarcely had time to absorb his meaning and react before he added his weight to hers, slamming Mrs Thorold face down to the ground. He twisted her arms up and behind with swift precision, making her bellow in the process, and knelt at the centre of her back.

Mary was panting, her arms aflame. As she slid off Mrs Thorold’s struggling form, she could think of nothing to say other than, between gasps, “Well. Hello.”

James cracked her a grin. “Hello, yourself. Is that a gun I see, just beside us?”

Mary nodded, crawled towards the revolver and picked it up. “Best check her for other weapons,” she said. “I’d not got that far.”

“You surprise me.”

“It’s been rather a hectic evening.”

“Would you do the honours?” he asked, looking suddenly squeamish. “It’s, er, rather an intimate thing.”

Mary stared at him for a long moment. “Only you would worry about propriety at a time like this.”

“Well, I’d hate for her to think I was enjoying it.”

“You stupid, vain, vapid, smug, self-satisfied, sneering little brats,” said a voice like a lash. “I might have known that you were in league. I should have guessed it the moment she turned up this evening.”

James blinked down at the body wedged beneath his knee. “Who asked you?”

Mary sighed and began to pat down Mrs Thorold carefully. It was a delicate task, made additionally challenging by the woman’s prone position and her rather complicated structural undergarments. Eventually, Mary said, “I can’t do a thorough job like this. She’ll have to stand up.” She slid the gun to James. “Here.”

They positioned Mrs Thorold with her hands on her head. James stood several feet away, taking careful aim with the revolver. “Remain perfectly still,” said Mary. “As you said, two bullets remain.” She began at Mrs Thorold’s back, working slowly and carefully. The devil was, as ever, in the details, and women’s undergarments were nothing if not rich in detail: the structured layers of whalebone, steel, leather, string, brass eyelets, padding and ruching could conceal nearly anything. She moved to Mrs Thorold’s left side, which yielded a thin, long-bladed knife tucked into a garter. Mary slid that carefully across the floor towards James, who whistled low. “Nasty.”

“Yes.” Mary had seen just what its sibling could do.

“My arms are growing numb,” complained Mrs Thorold.

Mary rolled her eyes but didn’t reply. She moved to the woman’s right, where she discovered an old-fashioned pocket strapped between overdress and petticoat. It held a large roll of bank notes, a door key and a French bank account book in the name of Mme Robert Downsby. It also contained a broken phial of white powder, which Mary examined for a long moment. “Arsenic?” she asked, but received only a snarl in reply. Mary dusted off her fingertips and replaced the phial in the dusty pocket. That was work for the police. And speaking of which…

“It’s always lovely to see you,” said Mary, turning to James, “but are the police also on their way?”

James half smiled. “Any minute now. They were about a quarter-hour behind me.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here now. Even though I already had things in hand.”

“I beg to differ,” said James casually. “You were strangling Mrs Thorold in self-defence. It’s thanks to my intervention that she’s alive to face trial.”

As he uttered the last word, his face twisted in alarm. It was the only warning Mary received before she was jerked roughly upwards and a muscular arm wedged itself hard against her throat. A gritty chuckle filled her left ear, making her pulse leap. “Sloppy sideshow amateurs, the pair of you. Too busy flirting to do it right.”

James levelled the gun at the two women, but it was a meaningless gesture and they all understood that. Mary and Mrs Thorold were locked once again in close embrace, this time with Mary in front, struggling for breath. He couldn’t possibly shoot at one without hitting the other.

“Now,” said Mrs Thorold, relishing each word. “Who said anything about a trial?” She began to edge backwards, keeping Mary between her own body and the gun.

Mary gulped. Mrs Thorold was squeezing her airway, true, but her real fear in this moment was their destination: the dark tunnel that bisected the present room. It was neither the route to the museum’s front hall nor to the outdoor steps they had first used. This was an entirely new direction, one that seemed to lead into the storage catacombs that snaked below the museum’s vast footprint. It was a direction she’d completely neglected to consider.

James pivoted slowly, following their progress. His expression was perfectly neutral, and Mary felt a helpless spurt of anger and despair. She adored this man. She hated that she’d permitted that adoration to sap her concentration, to taint her work. This was not how she wanted to die: a tragicomic footnote in the Great Museum Robbery of 1860.

“Put down the gun,” said Mrs Thorold. She continued to retreat towards the mouth of the connecting tunnel.

James hesitated.

“Or I’ll snap her neck like a chicken’s,” sneered Mrs Thorold. “It’s not much thicker.”

James swallowed visibly. “All right,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m putting it down.”

“Don’t…” began Mary, but Mrs Thorold squeezed her throat tighter, choking off her protest. They were in the shadows, now, poised to vanish into the brick labyrinth.

“Now kick it towards the door.”

James obeyed with slow, steady movements, never taking his eyes from Mary’s.

Mary stared back at him, willing her gaze to convey all the things she felt and had neither time nor breath to utter. As she and James stared at one another, she noticed a subtle change in his expression, from grim neutrality to desperate affection to a tiny flare of … triumph?

A moment later, Mrs Thorold emitted a small, brief gasp. Instantly, the crushing pressure at Mary’s throat fell away and she stumbled backwards, suddenly deprived of the support of Mrs Thorold’s body. She tripped on something and struck out blindly, furiously, before crumpling to the floor, desperate for air.

“Mary!” James was instantly by her side. “My God, Mary.”

For several seconds, all she could do was sputter and choke. The fetid air of the tunnel flooded her throat and lungs, and with it the stinging sensation of life returning. She sobbed and shuddered some more, and feared that she couldn’t possibly get enough air. As her senses spun and tilted, she caught the thread of James’s voice. “How did you do it?” he was asking.

Mary tried to protest that she’d done nothing. Then she realized that he was speaking to a third party: a slender, black-haired man with a quizzical gaze.

“Pressure to a precise spot on the throat,” the man was saying. “I will show you, another time. For now…” He pivoted to welcome a new element to the conversation – a figure who emerged briskly from the shadows, coiling a hunting whip.

“Well done, sir,” said the fourth person, in tones that were slightly husky. “I, too, should be glad of a lesson at a future time, if you would be so gracious.”

Mary struggled to sit up in the cradle of James’s arms. This couldn’t possibly be a hallucination; she simply hadn’t the imagination to contrive a meeting between these two people, in her fancy. “Lang?” she croaked. “And Miss Treleaven?”

Anne tried for her usual prim smile, but her lips trembled and a rapid pulse was visible in her throat. “My dear, I came through the readers’ tunnel.”

Mary nodded. Speech was painful.

Lang only smiled at Mary mildly, pleasantly, as though they’d met by arrangement. “Hello, Cousin.”

James looked astonished. “Cousin?” he echoed. “No, don’t try to talk; tell me later.” A moment later, they felt the tremor of rapid, synchronized footsteps one floor above: a phalanx of policemen, marching into the museum. James smiled. He glanced at their audience of two, then kissed Mary gently on the lips. “Much later, I think.”

Twenty

Monday, 22 October

The streets of London

The joint directors of the firm Quinn and Easton, Private Detectives, were in conference once again. Their office today was in Russell Square, a location chosen specifically for its evocative associations. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and the weather was, as usual, cold, dark, wet and generally abysmal.

“It seems especially unfair,” said James, “that although you were the principal in this case – all the work and all the risk was yours, in the end – you were still excluded from the police interviews. I thought Chief Inspector Hall would be more enlightened than that.”

“He was probably just embarrassed by how effective Mrs Thorold’s diversion strategy was. It took for ever and a day for Scotland Yard to arrive.”

“It’s still unreasonable of him to blame that on you, however indirectly.”

“I’m feeling philosophical today,” said Mary. “If Chief Inspector Hall prefers to believe that you did most of the work, and I was simply another busybody female who got involved at the last moment, it leaves me free to work more discreetly in the future.”

“He seems to have wrapped his brain around the idea that Mrs Thorold planned and executed a large-scale crime.”

“Precisely. We’ll let him grapple with that enormity first before opening the door to a whole parade of female freaks.”

“Otherwise, what might come next? Women owning property in their own names! Women at university! Women who vote!”

Mary grinned. “Witches, succubi and vampires.”

“Speaking of vampires, how is your arm?”

“Sore, but the physician thinks it ought to heal. The bite wound is not too deep, thanks to the very thick wool of my sleeve. I’m to flush it regularly, keep it well dressed with honey and rest it for a few days.”

“And your throat?” His gaze hovered at the high collar of her dress, as though he wished to peel it away.

“Black and blue and nothing more.”

“You were fortunate.”

“We were both fortunate. Have the police linked Mrs Thorold to the attack upon you?” Mary shivered. James had told her of it in a minimal, off-hand fashion, but she could picture the gleaming knife only too clearly.

“Not yet. I doubt they will unless she makes a full confession.”

Mary frowned, knowing how very unlikely that was. “What about her inside contact at the Bank of England? Has he said anything useful? It seems astonishing to me that she could bend somebody so powerful to her ends.”

“I don’t think there was much bending to be done. The man in question, Mr Bentley, is well known as a businessman and even better known as a collector of antiquities. His collection of ancient currency pieces is especially admired. I think so long as the Bank’s holdings were never in real danger, he was happy to assist with her project. It was simply another way of augmenting his collection.”

“Is there any evidence that he and Mrs Thorold have worked together in the past?”

“Not yet, but Chief Inspector Hall is optimistic.”

Their boots crunched in the gravel and Mary indicated a particular bench, currently occupied by a nurse and her two small charges. “That’s where Mrs Thorold laid out her plan to Angelica, and promised to shed no blood.”

James frowned. “She never had the slightest intention of keeping her word. Even at the time she made that promise, she had administered an initial dose of arsenic to everybody at the museum. That’s about forty people.”

“It was definitely arsenic?”

“Chemical tests show that large quantities of arsenic were mixed into the sugar, flour and salt stores in the pantry at the museum. Although the different households at the museum have their own cooks and dining rooms, they all obtain their supplies from the same storeroom. By ensuring that all the dry staples were contaminated with significant quantities of arsenic, Mrs Thorold was able to ensure that every person, no matter his or her appetite or dietary preferences, consumed some of the poison.”

“She mentioned a run of dysentery amongst the staff,” said Mary. “I shouldn’t be surprised if she’d tinkered with the process before Saturday night. She is meticulous enough to want to know whether such a delivery system would be effective. In fact, she may have toyed with it for a few weeks, as a way of accustoming the staff to put up with moderate amounts of digestive upset. That way, on Saturday evening, they would have been less inclined to call for a doctor at the first signs of illness; they’d have thought it was more of the same minor complaint.”