by Anna Elliott
“Do you mind? I know it’s worse than a needle-in-a-haystack operation. At least there, you have some guarantee that you’ll actually find a needle if you sort through enough hay.”
Icy January sleet was hissing against the windows. The curtains were all drawn against the dark outside, and Becky was—theoretically, at least—asleep upstairs.
In practice, it had been roughly thirty minutes since Jack and I had told her good night, which meant that we were probably due for an appearance in which she announced that she wasn’t tired in the slightest and couldn’t possibly be expected to stay in bed.
London was never entirely quiet, even on an icy winter night, and carriages rattled past in the street outside, punctuated by the occasional shout of a newspaper boy or a spirited argument between flower or orange vendors. I actually loved that about the great city—or cesspool, as Watson had famously called it—that it was constantly beating with fierce, irrepressible life.
But I also loved that inside, our lamps were lighted and a fire was crackling in the grate in front of us. The small room was quiet, cosy, and … homelike.
Even after nearly three months, it still struck me with a small, half happy, half almost painful jolt every time I thought the word home about the small row house that had been assigned to us as housing by the police force.
I’d waited my entire life to be able to say that I had a home and a family of my own. Now, a tiny part of me was afraid every time I turned onto our street that I would arrive to find that the house had burned down or been simply winked out of existence like the Scottish village in the old fairy tales.
“I don’t mind,” Jack said. “Although it would help if you could give me more of a description of Alice.”
“Which is exactly what I can’t do. According to Lady Lynley, she has blonde hair and blue eyes—which narrows it all the way down to roughly half the female population. Slightly less, of course, when you factor in that she’s somewhere between eighteen and thirty years old. Lady Linley doesn’t have a photograph of her, and doesn’t know anything about her interests or family background, because she’s ‘not in the habit of asking her staff about their personal lives.’ That’s a direct quote.”
“And she couldn’t give you any idea where in London Alice might have gone?”
The most recent census reports estimated the London population at over three million people, spread out across twelve metropolitan boroughs, which meant that the odds of finding a single female were small to none.
“Not just that. She couldn’t really give me any actual reason for thinking that Alice would have turned up in London at all. All she would say was that ‘girls of Alice’s class are always thinking that they’ll improve their lot in life in a big city.’ Another direct quote.”
Jack’s dark brows edged together. “So she wants you to look for she-doesn’t-know-who, who may be she-doesn’t-know-where, doing she-doesn’t-know-what.”
“More or less. And that’s just it.” The same nameless, formless uneasiness I’d felt during my meeting with Lady Lynley danced across my skin. “She doesn’t appear to have known Alice well—not well enough to care about her personally. She wants at all costs to avoid going to the police, because she’s afraid of causing a scandal in her neighborhood. If I had a shilling for every time she said the word ‘discretion’ during our conversation, I’d be … well, not rich, because that would take a lot of shillings, but I’d have enough to buy Becky penny candy for an entire month. I didn’t get the impression Lady Lynley was afraid for Alice exactly—and yet I did have the sense that she was afraid or at least worried about something.”
I frowned, then shook my head to clear it. With my performance schedule at the Savoy, it was too nice—and too infrequent—an occurrence that Jack and I got to be together at home in the evenings. I didn’t want to spoil it with talking about Lady Lynley the entire time.
“Never mind. If she doesn’t want to fully confide in me, I can’t make her. And short of traveling to Lincolnshire, I don’t have any good way of finding out more about Alice herself. Could you ask whether any girls matching Alice’s description have turned up, either in hospitals or in the morgue? And I can ask at some of the boarding houses where country girls looking for work in the city often stay. I can take Becky with me tomorrow, she’ll love that. Then I can tell Lady Lynley that I’ve done my best, and that will be the end of it.”
Jack nodded. “I can—”
A patter of feet descended the stairs and the sitting-room door opened, revealing Becky in her white cotton nightdress, her blonde braids askew.
At ten years old, Jack’s younger sister was still small for her age, with blue eyes, a heart-shaped face sprinkled with freckles across her cheeks and nose—and enough energy to make a seasoned army major general beg for mercy.
“I’ve tried shutting my eyes and counting sheep, but I’m not tired at all, and—”
“Sleep!” Jack and I spoke at the same moment, both of us pointing to the stairs.
“Fine.” Becky sighed dramatically and retreated, shutting the door again. A few seconds later, I heard the creak of springs overhead as she flopped back onto the bed in her room.
I glanced at the clock above the mantle. “At least she’s right on schedule, you have to give her that.”
Jack’s mouth twitched, and then we both started to laugh.
My heart turned over. In the eighteen months or so that I had known him, I had seen Jack look determined, competent, grim, thoughtful, and occasionally dangerous. But it wasn’t often that I had seen him look purely, unguardedly happy.
I caught hold of his shirt and pulled him towards me so that I could kiss him.
His breath caught in a soft murmur of surprise. “What’s that for?”
I drew back enough so he could see me roll my eyes. “Not even two months of marriage, and already it’s, ‘What? My wife wants to kiss me again?’”
I broke off, laughing, as Jack pulled me onto his lap.
“Not what I meant.”
A knock sounded on the front door.
Jack pulled back, frowning, and I sat up. “A visitor? At this time of night?”
“It might be my father or Dr. Watson, but they would be more likely to telephone first than come in person.”
Jack got up and went to the door. I heard a young, deeply adenoidal voice say, “Special delivery message for you, sir.”
Then the door closed again.
When I came into the hall, Jack was still standing in front of the door, staring at a sheet of paper he’d obviously just unfolded from the envelope in his hand.
“What—” I stopped as I caught sight of his face, cold stabbing through me even before I crossed to read over his shoulder.
The letter was on expensive-looking cream-colored stationery, with a gold letterhead printed at the top.
Office of Abelard S. Shirley, Esq., attorney at law.
I noticed those details mechanically, my eyes moving down to the words on the page.
Dear Sir,
I represent my client, Mr. Benjamin Davies. Having served his appointed prison sentence and paid for the mistakes of his past, he is naturally most anxious to be reunited with his daughter Rebecca Davies—
My breath caught. I looked up at Jack. “Becky’s father is out of prison?”
Jack’s expression was hard, grimmer than I had ever seen it before.
“Not just that. He wants to take custody of her.”
8. RETURN FIRE
LUCY
“He can’t do that!”
“Yeah, he can, actually.” Jack’s voice was flat, his expression so stony it could have been carved in granite. “He’s her father. That gives him every right to take custody of her in the eyes of the law.”
“But you’re the one who’s been taking care of her.”
When he was younger than Becky was now, Jack’s mother had abandoned him, leaving him to grow up alone on the London streets so that she could take up with Benjami
n Davies, the man who would become Becky’s father.
Then, three years ago, Jack’s mother had turned up on his doorstep with seven-year-old Becky in tow. His mother had been dying of tuberculosis, her husband had been imprisoned for smuggling, and she had begged Jack to look after Becky when she was gone.
Jack hadn’t even been twenty-one at the time, but he’d taken care of Becky ever since. Until I met them, they’d been their own small family: the two of them against the world.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “It’s not like I ever adopted her legally. I’m not even her full brother, only half. Any court in London would rule in Benjamin Davies’s favor.”
He set the letter with an almost chillingly careful precision on the hall table. Then he turned to the door.
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. I wasn’t even sure whether he heard me.
Jack didn’t lose his temper often, and when he did, he got deadly quiet instead of loud. Right now, he was monumentally angry.
He reached for the doorknob, and I caught hold of his arm, trying to hold him back—which was like trying to wrestle a stone statue.
“Wait! What are you going to do?”
Finally, Jack turned his head to look at me, though his dark brown gaze was almost flat, his eyes dull as though brushed with coal from the fireplace.
“There’s an address on the letter. I’m going to go and ask this Abelard S. Shirley where I can find Benjamin Davies.”
Judging by Jack’s expression, it wouldn’t end well for either Benjamin Davies or his attorney.
“You can’t do that!”
Jack didn’t try to pull away; he just opened the front door and set me gently to one side. “Yeah, I can.”
“No you can’t! If you murder Becky’s father, I’ll have to break you out of prison, and then we’ll have to emigrate to America and live as outlaws in the Wild West—which Becky would probably love, but it could get inconvenient after a while.”
Jack stood a moment in the doorway, his shoulders taut, braced. I held my breath. Then, after a seemingly endless wait, his muscles relaxed and he turned back to me, one eyebrow raised.
“You’d break me out of prison, would you?”
“Obviously.” I looked up at him, scrutinizing his face. “Are you all right now? You’re not going to do anything crazy?”
“Define crazy.”
“Going to see Abelard Shirley and giving him the choice whether to die quick or die bloody unless he gives up Benjamin Davies’s address …”
Finally, one corner of Jack’s mouth tipped up. “I think you’re safe there.”
I exhaled. “Good. Then can we please go back to me being the impulsive one and you being the sensible, level-headed one? Because I’m really not good at it.”
Jack at least let me lead him back into the sitting room. He dropped silently onto the couch, and I curled up beside him.
A leaden weight was pressing on my chest.
Jack was unfortunately all too right about the courts being likely to rule in favor of Becky’s father.
From Norman times coming right down through history to today, the law had a grand old English tradition of being almost obscenely biased in favor of the male patriarchy.
A man could be an abusive, drunken monster who beat his wife and children daily, and yet if his wife sought a divorce on grounds of cruelty, she would nearly always forfeit the right to even visit her own children because he husband would have sole, exclusive custody.
Jack finally spoke, his gaze fixed on the dying embers of the fire. “I remember the first week I had Becky with me. Her mother had just died, and we were living in a hole in the wall boarding house room in Whitechapel, because that was all I could afford. I was going through police training so that I could have a job that would keep a roof over our heads. My first day, I was out on the London Streets for ten, twelve hours, breaking up street brawls, chasing down thieves … then I got back to our room and Becky told me I had to braid her hair and tell her a story before she’d go to sleep.” He exhaled a half-laugh. “And I realized the police training had actually been the easy part of my day.”
I took Jack’s hand, lacing our fingers together. Something sharp and painful gripped inside my chest. I couldn’t let Becky’s father take her away from Jack, I just couldn’t.
I couldn’t give Becky up, either. Even before Jack and I had been married, she’d been like the younger sister I’d always wanted but never had.
The fire crackled in the hearth, sending out a shower of sparks. I took a breath. Panicking never solved anything.
“How likely do you think it is that Benjamin Davies’s offer is sincere? That he really has paid his debt to society and wants to turn over a new leaf?”
Jack raised one shoulder. “I haven’t seen him since I was a kid. Besides, I’m not exactly unbiased.”
Neither of us was. Becky didn’t speak of her father very often, but from what she had said, Davies had been an indifferent father at best, harsh and uncaring at worst. And—though she’d never directly said it—I suspected him of outright cruelty to Becky’s mother.
“That doesn’t matter. You’re a police officer. You know his type. If this were someone else who’d served time for smuggling—some other criminal you’d never met—how likely would you say it was that he’d stay on the straight and narrow?”
“Ten percent?”
Police officers tended to have a cynical view of human nature, but the truth was that they were all too often proven right.
And compared to my father’s view of humanity, Jack was practically an incurable optimist.
“So it’s roughly ninety percent likely that Benjamin Davies is still involved in his old criminal ways?”
“Actually, it’s more likely even than that,” Jack said slowly. “He’s just out of serving a four-year prison sentence, but he’s somehow got the money not just to buy a house but to hire expensive lawyers as well?”
“You’re right.” That was why I’d fallen in love with Jack. He wasn’t just handsome and brave and honorable; he was also one of the most intelligent people I’d ever met. “Unless he’s got a rich uncle who died and left him a fortune, he obviously has a ready source of income. Which, as you say, isn’t likely for someone just out of jail.”
That was why there was only a ten percent chance of criminals going straight; after a month or two of digging ditches or hauling cargo down at the docks, they usually decided that it was far easier to make a living by breaking the law than by keeping within its narrow confines.
“And Abelard Shirley’s address is here in London.” I had picked up the letter from the hall on our way back to the sitting room, and now unfolded it again, looking at the letterhead. “Number 85 Chancery Lane. So it stands to reason that Davies is somewhere in London, as well, otherwise why hire a lawyer here?”
Jack glanced at me, a slight frown etching his brows. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that I feel a sudden urge to investigate Alice Gordon’s disappearance in person.”
Jack’s expression cleared; he saw where this was leading. “Which I’m guessing means you’d need to go to Lincolnshire?”
“Taking Becky with me,” I agreed. “If we’re out of the city, short of sending the police after us—which I would lay odds on the fact that, as an ex-convict and probable still-criminal, Benjamin Davies doesn’t want to do—there’s very little he can do to take Becky away. Besides, except for you, my father, and Uncle John, no one will know where we’ve gone.”
“What about your performance schedule at the Savoy?”
“I don’t care. I’ll tell Mr. Harris that he’ll have to give my part to someone else.”
Jack’s frown deepened. “You shouldn’t have to—”
I stopped him, putting my hand over his mouth. “Yes, I should. I’m going to. Becky’s my family, too. I’m not letting you cope with this on your own or letting her go without a fight. I’ll take h
er out of London. Meanwhile—”
Jack gave up arguing. “Meanwhile I’ll start looking into Benjamin Davies’s affairs and see what I can turn up.” The expression in his eyes turned calculating, hard. “If he’s involved in anything criminal, I’ll find out about it, and see he’s arrested again.”
I didn’t doubt that he would.
Davies wouldn’t be able to take custody of Becky from inside a prison cell.
Cold bloomed inside me. “Just be careful,” I said.
In the course of the last year, I’d found out that every person you cared about was someone you were afraid to lose.
“You, too.”
“I’m investigating a maid who more than likely got sick of catering to her employer’s whims and left. You’ll be looking into the criminal underworld. I don’t think I’m as likely to run into trouble as you are.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about that.” Jack turned to look at me, his expression serious. “There’s something about this case—I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about the whole setup I don’t like.”
That so exactly echoed my own feeling that fresh worry inched through me, one drop at a time. But I tried to speak lightly. “Are policemen allowed to have premonitions? I thought it was against regulations.”
“Very funny.” Jack pulled me close to him, resting his chin on top of my hair. “Just don’t take any crazier risks than usual, all right?”
“No crazy risks.” I tilted my head to look up at him. “You’re not alone in this, all right?” From childhood, Jack had spent the better part of his life on his own, not accepting or relying on help from anyone. “Talk to my father. I know he’ll want to do anything he can. And Mycroft, too. He’s bound to know lawyers who might be able to help. If anyone can bury Benjamin Davies under an avalanche of legal counter-claims, Mycroft can.”
Jack nodded, though the tension didn’t entirely leave his expression.
I laced my fingers together with his. “We can do this. Six months from now, Benjamin Davies will just be one more criminal we can look back and say, ‘There. We beat him, too.’”
