The Serpent and the Scorpion (19 page)

“Yes?” Lord Wrotham prompted. Ursula heard the warning note in his voice, but it went unheeded by Peter Vilensky.

“That Miss Marlow was your fiancée.”

“Really.” Lord Wrotham’s response was deadpan. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

 
Ursula had gone to Temple Chambers hoping to explain her recent behavior to Lord Wrotham, but hearing his conversation with Peter Vilensky had thrown those plans into disarray. She still wasn’t sure what to make of it all. What was the personal matter Peter Vilensky alluded to? Did it have anything to do with Katya’s death? What proposal was he supporting for Lord Lansdowne? A year ago she would not have hesitated; she would have gone to Lord Wrotham and demanded her answers. Now, with the gulf between them widening, she no longer knew what to do.

Instead, Ursula continued on to her next meeting and was presently sitting in Bertie outside Christopher Dobbs’s house near Holland Park, trying to get her thoughts in order.

“Do you still want to wait, Miss?” Samuels asked with a quick glance at Ursula in the rearview mirror. Ursula bit her lip; it was already eleven o’clock. She had to decide whether she was going to go through with meeting Christopher Dobbs.

“Yes,” she replied, gathering her skirts. “I expect this won’t take long.”

Ursula opened the car door and stepped out onto the pavement. As she gave Dobbs’s footman her calling card, she noted with distaste Dobbs’s recent acquisition of a tiger-skin rug in the hallway. The footman led her to the front parlor to wait. Standing next to one of the reproduction Chippendale chairs, she gazed about the room, trying to formulate what she was going to say. She had taken a chance that Christopher Dobbs was still in London for there were rumors he was already planning to tour Carmichael Shipyards. Arriving unannounced, she might catch him off guard and be able to assess what he was really up to in offering to buy Marlow Industries.

Above the fireplace was a painting of Napoleon in Egypt, and beneath this a line of invitation cards was propped up against the mantel. Ursula could not resist taking a look. One invitation in particular caught her eye—it was from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.

“Not bad after only eighteen months at the helm of the Dobbs Steamship Company,” Christopher Dobbs called out from the doorway. His voice still betrayed the lilt of his Liverpool upbringing.

“Not bad at all,” Ursula replied, continuing to peruse the invitation cards. “Although your father was not without connections himself.”

“Yes, but even he would admit I’ve expanded our family’s horizons beyond measure.”

“Indeed,” Ursula responded coolly before turning to face him.

Christopher Dobbs stood in the center of the room, wearing dark gray flannel trousers, a wing-tipped shirt, and a somber tie. Over his suit he wore a loose velvet jacket with a quilted silk collar. Entirely inappropriate for the time of day, it did denote a casual indifference to her presence and, Ursula suspected, a deliberate attempt to disconcert her.

Dobbs walked over to his desk in the rear corner of the room and flipped open the silver cigarette box. He motioned for her to join him, but Ursula refused with a decorous shake of her head.

“So I’m guessing you’re here to discuss my little offer for Marlow Industries,” Dobbs said as he took a seat behind the desk and looked at her confidently.

“Yes,” Ursula replied, taking a seat on the long chesterfield sofa. “I thought a face-to-face meeting might help me decide.”

“Decide?” Christopher Dobbs countered with a smile. “But I thought you had already rejected the offer.”

“Yes.” Ursula smiled. “But a woman can always change her mind.”

Dobbs watched her closely.

“For example, I think I will have one of those cigarettes after all—are they Turkish?”

“No, Woodbines—I’m afraid my days at sea left me with a taste for them.”

“Then I think I will have to decline after all,” Ursula responded with feigned sweetness as she leaned back against one of the brocade cushions on the sofa. “How is your father, by the way? I meant to ask after him the other night, but I did not get the chance.”

Dobbs continued to watch her closely. “My father is feeling much better,” he said.

“I’m pleased to hear it. What does
he
think about you buying Marlow Industries?”

“What does he think? He thinks it’s a capital idea, of course, but I hardly think you are here to discuss my father’s views.”

“No, I’m here to reiterate my total rejection of your offer, in person.”

“I doubt the trustee of your father’s estate agrees with you.”

“I am aware of his views on this matter.”

“He could decide to overrule you.”

“Oh, I think we both know he won’t do that.”

Dobbs threw the cigarette butt in a ceramic ashtray on the desk and started to fidget with the paperweight on his desk, a brass replica of HMS
Victory.
“Miss Marlow, what are you really doing here?” he asked, with a barely suppressed irritation that Ursula found quite satisfying. She noticed his glance flick to the grandfather clock in the corner of the room, and wondered whether he was expecting someone to arrive soon, someone he did not wish her to meet.

“I’m trying to work out what kind of creature you are,” she responded enigmatically.

“What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?!”

Ursula smiled. “Just something a friend of mine warned me about in Egypt. I’m just trying to piece it all together. Dobbs Steamship Company. Carmichael Shipyards. My factories. It doesn’t quite fit together yet.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry your pretty little head about it. I doubt for a woman like you it will ever ‘quite fit’ together.”

Ursula gathered up her skirt and got to her feet. “Oh, believe me, I’ll make sense of it all soon.” She flashed him a grim smile. “And I’ll work out if it’s you who is behind all the trouble at my mills and factories. I’ll figure it out all right, and when I do—”

Christopher Dobbs rose and walked around the desk. Ursula was suddenly reminded of Eugenie Mahfouz’s warning.

“And when you do?” he said insolently.

“I’ll know if you are the serpent or the scorpion.”

 
Ursula had Samuels drive Bertie round the block and come to a halt just on the periphery of Holland Park, keeping Dobbs’s house just in sight. As instructed, Samuels kept the motor running.

“Wait here for a bit,” she told Samuels. He looked at her quizzically in the rearview mirror, but she gave no explanation. She wanted to see who Dobbs was expecting. It was nearly midday, and the sun was starting to make Ursula feel uncomfortably warm in her formal day suit and hat. It was one of the few sunny days in an otherwise soggy spring. She took the opportunity to remove her jacket, and when she looked up, a motorcar was pulling up outside Dobbs’s house.

Ursula watched closely. The motorcar idled for a moment in front of the house, then, as if waiting upon a signal, slowly maneuvered down the narrow laneway that led to the rear of the building.

“Now quietly drive us over to the other side of the street—that’s it. Just stay behind here and give me a minute.”

Ursula got out of the car and carefully made her way down the lane. When she got to the iron bars of the rear stairway that led to the kitchens, she paused and slowly peered round the side of the building.

A tall, dark-suited man was standing with his back to her, opening the rear door of the motorcar. Jeffries, Christopher Dobbs’s butler, hastened up the basement stairs, whispered in the man’s ear, and then looked nervously around. Ursula ducked her head back quickly and waited before edging her way back round the wall. The tall muscular man appeared to be dragging something from the rear seat of the car. Whatever it was, it was about the size of a man, but looked little more than a wraith covered in dark filthy rags. Ursula looked on with growing horror as the bundle struggled for a moment, bare arms suddenly exposed and flailing, until exhausted, seemingly lifeless, it collapsed and went limp. The tall man then turned and, with an ease that suggested whoever it was weighed little more than a child, carried the bundle down the back stairs into Dobbs’s basement kitchen.

Jeffries remained in the laneway with his head bowed. Ursula took a step back, conscious that her presence could easily be revealed should he look up. Back on the street, Ursula hurried back to Bertie and Samuels, shaken by what she had just witnessed, conscious that without her suit jacket, she would soon attract the attention of passersby.

“Are you sure it was a person?” Winifred cupped her tea in her hand.

“Absolutely sure,” Ursula replied bleakly.

They were sitting in a tea shop near Euston Station, waiting for Ursula’s train to the North.

“God, who do you think it was?”

Ursula shivered. “I have no idea, but the thought of someone in that condition being taken down there . . . it doesn’t bear thinking about.”

Winifred looked grim. “You need to tell someone about this, Sully.”

Ursula shook her head. “Who would I tell, Freddie? Who’s going to believe me? It’s sounds like something out of a Dickens novel, and I’m sure if someone were to go and investigate, this mysterious person would be long gone.”

Winifred put her tea down and moved her plate aside.

“I’ve lost my appetite just thinking about it.”

“I thought Obadiah Dobbs was bad enough, but this, this smacks of kidnapping, degradation, and I don’t know what. I almost wish Chief Inspector Harrison was back here in London. At least he might believe me.”

“Is there no way you can get in contact with him at all?”

“I don’t know—I’m not even sure he’s still in Egypt. Maybe Oliver would know. . . .” Preoccupied as she was, Ursula didn’t even notice she had referred to Lord Wrotham by his first name.

“Well, maybe you should ask him. Oh, God, I can’t believe I just said that. Me, recommending that you ask Lord Wrotham for advice. If our sisters at Clements Inn could hear me now!”

“Freddie, do be serious!” Ursula exclaimed.

“I am being serious,” Winifred said quietly. “I think it could be dangerous to act alone on this.”

Ursula closed her eyes and breathed slowly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I need time to think this through.”

“Then do so,” Winifred recommended. “And now, I’d better tell you what I found out about the letter fragments.”

In the past Ursula would have insisted on acting immediately, but now she understood the need for restraint as well as patience. She would help no one if she acted rashly.

Winifred wiped her hands, slid the plate out of reach, and dug out a yellow envelope from her coat pocket. “I put the fragments in here for safekeeping. And I wrote out what we could decipher.” She laid the fragments out carefully on the table.

Ursula leaned in closer.

“As you can see, none of it makes any sense.”

Ursula took a look at the paper and shook her head.

“Why would Arina have a letter written in some kind of code?” Winifred shrugged. “Is it political, perhaps?” she asked. “You said Arina was involved with the Bolsheviks.”

“Possibly,” Ursula answered, but she was noncommittal. “But my gut tells me this had something to do with her death.”

“Well, the police obviously didn’t think so—they missed finding it entirely.”

“Yes, which makes me wonder how seriously they are taking the case. When I visited the station, I got the feeling that Arina’s death was going to be treated just like any other industrial ‘accident. ’ It was as if her life was of such little consequence that it wasn’t worth properly investigating her death.” Ursula could not hide her bitterness.

“Are you going to take the letter fragments to the police?”

“Do I have any other choice? Maybe it will finally make them sit up and take notice.”

“More likely they’ll put the whole matter down to a political act of the Bolsheviks and ignore it,” Winifred responded

Ursula sighed. “I hope not but I’m going to keep the copy of what was written. Who knows, maybe we’ll find the key and be able to decipher what the fragment says.”

“Which reminds me,” Winifred said. “Lady Winterton has been doing some research on codes for the WSPU. Now that our old codes are likely to be made public in the trial, we’re obviously anxious. Maybe Lady Winterton could help us decipher this?”

Ursula bit her lip. “Maybe, but I don’t want to involve anyone I cannot completely trust as yet. I’d rather keep this to ourselves. It’s bad enough that we have to keep an eye on Alexei.”

“Speaking of which,” Winifred replied, “what do you want me to do about him?”

Alexei, thought Ursula, was an added complication she could have well done without. “Keep a close watch on him. I want to talk to him further about Arina, but first let’s see what happens at the coroner’s inquest.” She rubbed her eyes.

“I did ask him what happened the night Arina died,” Winifred said.

“And?”

“I agree, he’s holding something back.”

“Do you think his mother knows he’s back in England?” Ursula asked tentatively.

“I’m not sure but it’s best to leave that issue well enough alone. You know how Anna blames you for Alexei leaving England in the first place. Imagine what she’d do if she found out Alexei had returned, and no one had told her.”

“Hmm . . . Well, I’ll leave you to deal with Anna.”

“I think that can wait till we have this all resolved. Anna has enough to worry about without Alexei. But, Sully—”

“Yes?”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s changed.”

Twelve

Oldham Coroner’s Court

 
Ursula entered the Oldham coroner’s court trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible, her small, narrow-brimmed hat pulled down low. Unlike other courtrooms she had been in, this one did not have a dock, only a raised dais at which the coroner was to sit with a witness stand on the left and a jury box on the right. The long rows of benches reserved for witnesses, the press, and the general public were filled to capacity. The noise in the courtroom was deafening. There were some twenty girls, many of whom Ursula knew from the Oldham factory and mill; George Aldwych and his family; and sundry other locals Ursula vaguely recognized from visits with her father. Ursula hesitated for a moment, looking for somewhere to sit.