CHAPTER 9
W
ithin the hour we were back in our flat, dinner behind us, Colin fussing over tea while Mrs. Behmoth tried to coerce a fire back to life by poking at its cinders and kindling, her annoyance evident in her every muttered curse. Colin handed my tea to me with a sigh. “You must do me a favor in the future,” he said as he settled back into his overstuffed chair. “If I ever tell you I want to visit that old bastard again, please remind me how I despise him.”
“That may be so, but you can still be quite charming when you choose.” I peered at him over the rim of my cup. “At least until he starts taking out after me. I'm sorry I embarrass you.”
He stopped and glared at me a moment before quickly downing his tea as he stood up and snatched at his dumbbells. “It's not me,” he mumbled with seeming preoccupation. “I'm angry for you.”
“Then you're wasting your energy. I cannot change the regrettable choices I made as a lad. After what happened I was afraid I might be the same. I was bloody well terrified. You know that. I went and hid in the only place that allowed me to truly dispel my fears: the opium dens.”
“Don't say that. It makes you sound weak.”
“I was!” I shook my head, not embarrassed, but ashamed. “I was not quite ten years old when it happened. My grandparents were thick with guilt and about as afraid of me as I was of myself. I wasn't in their house much more than a year before they couldn't stand having me around anymore.”
“That's ridiculous,” he chided, waving the weights around madly.
“It isn't. That's why they sent me to Easling and Temple. To get me out of their house.” I heaved a sigh. “I'm sure it also helped them assuage some of that guilt by affording me such a fine education, despite my squandering of it. And it did allow me to meet you.” A small smile easily crossed my lips. “I thought you so self-assured and handsome.” I chuckled. “Of course that only terrified me more. And you didn't even know I existed.”
“I knew who you were,” he protested without conviction before suddenly turning on Mrs. Behmoth, still cursing at the flagging embers.
“Do you need a ruddy hand with that?”
he barked.
“Don't get cheeky with me!” she growled back.
I shook my head. “Well, no matter. Though I do wish it hadn't taken you nine years to rescue me from Maw Heikens.”
He screwed up his face, halting the weights in midair. “That regrettable old harridan,” he snarled. “I won't have that name in this flat.”
There was no surprise in his reaction. He always hated Maw. I suppose it was easier to blame her for what had happened to me than to blame me. “What I really want to know,” I said, content to let that topic be, “is why we went to see Varcoe in the first place?”
“For the information,” he muttered blithely as he settled back into his chair and began curling the dumbbells behind his head.
“Information? What information?”
He glanced over at me as though I were daft. “We now know that his suspicions toward Nathaniel are wholly rudimentary, without the slightest whiff of a motive. You saw how he acted when I pressed him. I'll bet his entire case rests on nothing more than his own speculations. Once again he has proven that he owes his endless tenure at the Yard to his inability to intimidate the lesser minds who have risen above him.”
“Brutal.” I chuckled. “But what do you mean about his suspicions against Nathaniel?”
“The boy is gruff, uncommunicative, and so clearly hiding something that he couldn't possibly appear more culpable if he had been found beating the Earl. And then there's that bit about how he fancies Elsbeth. I can't stop wondering about the argument they had that night. Jealousy is a potent motivator for the worst in a man.”
“But it doesn't make sense. He works for the Arnifours, for heaven's sake; how could he ever think that he might have a chance with her? It's too preposterous.”
He tipped one of his dumbbells toward me. “Then what do you suppose happened that night?”
“I'm sure I haven't the slightest idea, but there's a lot more rotten out there than just that old house.”
“Ach,” Mrs. Behmoth groused. “It's always that way with them that has too much money.” She abruptly reached up, seized my Jules Verne novel off the mantel, and flung it into the still-sputtering fire.
“My book!”
I leapt up, spilling much of my tea onto myself. “What the hell are you doing?!”
“I'm tryin' to get this bloody fire goin'!” she barked. “That book's twaddle. It'll do a lot more good in there.”
“You'll buy me a new copy,” I shot back as I tried to blot the stains from my clothes.
“Like 'ell,” she answered, pointing to the quickly escalating flames. “It served a fine purpose. I don't owe no one nuthin'.” A knock at the door was the only thing that kept me from responding in kind. “Don't trouble yerselves,” she said as she headed for the staircase. “Allow an old lady the pleasure of fetchin' that.”
“Absolutely.” Colin chuckled.
Mrs. Behmoth shot him a withering glare, which he took no notice of as he shoved the dumbbells under his chair, and then she disappeared down the steps.
“Are we expecting anyone?” he asked.
“I'd guess it's that scruffy East End lad with the missing sister I was telling you about yesterday. He said he'd come back this evening.”
“Oh yes. What are their names?”
“Michael and Angelyne.”
“That's right. Very Church of England.”
The thunderous footfalls of Mrs. Behmoth's ascension brought a halt to our conversation. “Yer alley cat is back,” she announced, glaring at me.
“Well, let him up!” I snapped, only to be surprised when he suddenly poked his head out from behind her. I was appalled that he'd heard her disparage him.
“Do come in.” Colin swept past me and ushered him into our study. “We've been expecting you.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said as he doffed his cap and nodded at me. The smudges on his face had been scrubbed away to reveal a fragile complexion, which also exposed the hollowness in his cheeks. He went back to the settee and balanced himself on the edge of it just as he'd done the evening before. “Tell me, Michael,” Colin settled into his chair as Mrs. Behmoth trudged back downstairs, “when exactly did you last see your sister?”
“Ye'll take the case then?”
“We are at your behest.”
“Wot?”
I leaned forward. “He's taking the case.”
“Oh, ruddy excellent,” he said, his face lighting up for just an instant. “Ya know I ain't gonna be able ta pay ya much.”
“You needn't pay us at all. You shall have us for free.”
“Ya mean that? I don't gotta pay?”
“You can't very well spend what you haven't got.”
“I'd get somethin'.”
Colin held up a hand. “That won't be necessary. On occasion I do a service for someone in need, and today you are that someone. Perhaps you will return the favor one day for someone else.”
“I will.” He smiled broadly. “You bet I will.”
“Now, tell me about your sister,” Colin said, surreptitiously extracting a crown from his pocket and smoothly flicking it through his fingers.
“Angelyne. Like the angels. And she is one too. A reg'lar angel. The last time I saw 'er were a week ago. I'd left 'er in our room and told 'er ta stay there, but when I got back she were gone. I ain't seen or heard nothin' from 'er since and that ain't like 'er.”
“I see. Did anyone at your boardinghouse hear or see anything?”
“No one saw nothin'. Least not wot they tell me.”
“What time was it when you left her alone?”
“Middle a the afternoon. Round two or three, I suppose.”
“And when did you return?”
“Suppertime. I brought food with me. I knew she'd be 'ungry.”
“So you went up to your room . . . ,” he prodded, his coin continuing to make its silent rotations.
“. . . And she weren't there. Just like I said. Our room ain't big. I knew right away she were gone. I knew it soon 's I opened the door.”
“And what did you do?”
“I went to see me landlady.”
“And did she know anything?”
“Nah.” He swatted his cap on his knee. “She's a cur, that one. She don't 'ear nothin' but the sound a men with a pocketful a change.”
“I see. And did you talk to anyone else in your building?”
“Me and Angelyne keep ta ourselves. I don't know nobody else. I knew she 'adn't gone ta see none a them. She 'ad no business with any of 'em.”
“One last question then.” He held the coin up in front of his face and seemed to be admiring its luster. “Did she mention anyone bothering her lately? Following her around?”
“I'd a killed anyone was messin' with 'er.”
“I trust you mean that figuratively.”
“Wot?”
“We'll need to come over and have a look around. And I'll want to speak with your landlady.”
“You kin try speakin' to 'er, but she'll only wanna take ya fer a grinder.”
“Then she'll be sorely disappointed.” He stood up. “What's her name?”
“Rendell.”
“Fine. Leave us directions and expect to see us tomorrow. We shan't waste time given how long it's been.”
Michael stabbed his cap back on as he bounced up and started for the door. “I've got a bit a business ta run in the mornin', but I'll be round. Specially if I know yer comin'.”
“We shall be there.”
“Thank ya, sir.” He bowed regally, his studied polish commendable if suspect.
Colin smiled and nodded his head. “Until tomorrow then.”
The lad bounded off down the stairs, a lightness in his step that had not been there before.
“Is that ragamuffin gone?” Mrs. Behmoth hollered up as soon as the front door slammed.
“That's our new client you're disparaging,” Colin called back.
“Ya must be starkers,” came the muffled reply.
He chuckled as he settled back in his chair and began flipping the crown through his fingers again. “What do you make of that?”
“Are you kidding? I know that boy. I used to be that boy. He's too practiced. Too slick. I'd wager he's up to something.” While I knew Michael couldn't be driven by the same demons I had been, any boy scraping by on the streets of the East End knew how to get what he needed. You either learned it or became a statistic. I had certainly done it, for a while anyway, and it seemed obvious to me that this lad was very much more savvy than I had ever been.
Colin stuffed the coin back into his pocket and rolled the dumbbells out from under his chair again, seizing them and curling them along his sides. “When you say you know that boy . . .”
“Well, I don't mean literally.”
“Of course. But don't you think what he said sounds plausible?”
“Certainly it sounds plausible. It
needs
to sound plausible. The question is, how much of what he's saying is true?”
“You don't think his sister is missing?”
“I don't doubt she's missing, but I'm not so convinced it was on a Sunday afternoon when she was supposed to be waiting at home like a good little waif.”
“What difference do the details make?”
“Well, it won't be very easy to find her if we don't know the truth of her disappearance. He could've prostituted her to the wrong man, or lost her in an opium club, or had some scam go sour only to see her carted off by an infuriated mark determined to get his revenge. I know that life.”
The weights buzzed back and forth as a smile slowly snaked across his face. “You're making this personal. Just because
you
were always up to something doesn't mean every urchin is.”
“I was
never
an urchin,” I sniffed. “Highborn and -bred, and you know it.”
“That's not what I meant,” he dismissed. “And anyway, that only makes it worse.” He stood up and rotated the weights so that they surged against the broadness of his chest. “But I don't disagree with you. I also suspect that something is missing from the story. A young girl doesn't simply disappear in the middle of the afternoon without somebody seeing or hearing
some
thing. Indeed, that viral-sounding landlady would seem a prime suspect for both access and opportunity.”
“I think he makes too much of a fuss about her. After all, she lets them live there. If it weren't for her they'd both be in one of those Dickensian orphanages.”
He paused and stared at me, the weights held out perpendicular to the floor. “You're just saying that because of the old slag who took you in. What was her name?”
“Maw. Maw Heikens.”
“God, I hate that name.”
“Will you be wantin' more tea?” Mrs. Behmoth shouted from the bottom of the stairs, and for once I was glad she did so. Our conversation was headed for an unfortunate place, making her interruption divinely inspired.
“Please,” I called back, thankful to hear the jostling of china as she immediately began her ascent. I met her at the top of the stairs and took the tray from her as she followed me back into the room.
“Must ya get yerself all worked up in 'ere?” She scowled at Colin. “Ya sweat all over the carpet and it leaves stains. Yer like a bloody drudge.”