Rivals in the City: A Mary Quinn Mystery

by Y. S. Lee

  Mary covered her ears and stood quietly in a corner. Gradually, as she watched, some sense of order emerged. The dining room, it seemed, was overfull; many of the customers slumped along benches in the main taproom were waiting for, and grousing about, a table and a meal. The walls were lined with a cornucopia of travellers’ trunks and cases awaiting collection or dispatch. These threatened to trip up any who passed, and loud complaints and curses contributed to the din.

  She couldn’t see a person who fit her memory of Angelica Thorold: elegant, blonde, haughty. Mary wondered if there was a separate dining room for ladies, and if that’s where Angelica might be. But just as she was about to explore the inn further, her eye lingered on a woman curled defensively into herself in a corner of the room. She looked vaguely familiar: could it be? This woman was very thin, her hair mousy and straight, her expression one of sheer pinched misery. Then, the wide blue eyes flashed a glance at the ceiling – a look of frustration and despair – and Mary smiled. It was Angelica Thorold.

  Mary began to work her way through the room, stepping over and around people and things with an air of mild confusion. As she drew closer to Angelica, she began to ask people: “I beg your pardon, but has the Dover coach arrived?” “Do you know when the Dover coach is expected?” “I’m looking for a passenger from the Dover coach, a young woman.” Most people hadn’t a clue; others were too absorbed in their own weariness and misery to reply.

  At last, Mary reached Angelica. “Excuse me, miss,” she said, raising her voice slightly to be heard even at this proximity, “I’m looking for a young woman who was meant to be on the Dover coach.”

  Angelica’s eyes flashed with hope, and she sat up straight. “I was on that coach! Are you from the Milnes’?”

  Mary wondered when, or if, Angelica would recognize her. “I’m here on behalf of the Newlands, to meet a Sally Tranter.” A moment, and then a frown. “Could you possibly have mistaken the name? Are you Miss Tranter?”

  Angelica shook her head. “I almost wish I was, for the time I’ve been waiting here. Look, the Dover coach arrived absolutely hours ago. Your Miss Tranter’s probably made her own way to…” Her sharp eyes raked Mary from boot-tips to hat, assessing the value of her ensemble. “To whatever you said the family’s name was.” Her gaze arrived at Mary’s face and sharpened, perceptibly. “Oh, my good Lord: I know you. It’s Miss Quinn!”

  Mary allowed recognition to dawn on her face. “My goodness – Miss Thorold! I do beg your pardon. I’d have known you immediately, only I was preoccupied…”

  “No, no,” said Angelica, rising hastily and shaking Mary’s hand. “I’ve changed a great deal. Not quite the spoilt débutante you once knew.” She touched her light-brown hair, slipping from its arrangement. “Not to mention the rigours of travel. And living as a music student.”

  This couldn’t have gone more smoothly. “So you did go to study music in Germany? Or was it Vienna? How marvellously exciting!” Mary huffed with exasperation as a long, thin parcel, badly carried, nearly knocked the hat from her head. “It’s bedlam in here. Let’s go somewhere quieter. Haven’t they got a ladies’ parlour? I’ll bet this Miss Tranter’s neatly tucked up there, wondering where the blazes everyone’s gone.”

  “The ladies’ parlour is closed,” said Angelica with a sigh. “Fire damage, they told me. Listen, Miss Quinn, I couldn’t be more pleased to see you. You’re the only practical, intelligent woman I know in town. After you find your Miss Tranter, I don’t suppose you could spare a moment for my own predicament?”

  Mary blinked. This was entirely too easy: why was Angelica throwing herself into her clutches? What did she truly want? “But of course. I don’t suppose you remember a young woman who travelled with you? She’d have been inside the coach, not on top.”

  Angelica shook her head decisively. “No young woman. Two elderly sisters, and me. All the rest were men.”

  “In which case, I’ll have to come back tomorrow. Coaches are so unreliable, are they not?” Mary looped her arm confidently through Angelica’s. “Let’s find a corner where we can hear ourselves think, and you can tell me about your difficulty.”

  Inside the inn was impossible. They ended up standing just outside the building like, as Angelica put it, with a nervous giggle, “a pair of common tarts”.

  Mary laughed openly. “You’ve changed, Miss Thorold. And if I may be so impudent, I like you a great deal better.”

  Angelica made a noise that could only be described as a snort. “That’s not such an extravagant claim, Miss Quinn. You could scarcely have liked me less, two years ago.” She paused. “In my own defence, I worked quite hard at being unlikeable.”

  “You were extremely unhappy,” suggested Mary, quietly.

  Angelica nodded, and her blue eyes clouded. “Grieving as I am now, I am infinitely happier.” She blinked, and offered Mary a small smile. “But I am speaking in riddles. My situation, baldly put, is this: my father is dying, in jail. I’ve come from Vienna to see him and I don’t know if he’s still alive.

  “I wrote to a friend before my departure asking if I might stay at her family’s home. We had been close friends, in a schoolgirlish way, and although my family’s reputation is destroyed, I had hoped she might agree. After all, it’s not as though she needs to see me; she only comes to town for the season. I’ve now been sitting in this appalling excuse for an inn for more than four hours. I’ve sent as many messages to my friend’s house in Knightsbridge, and all have come back unanswered. I know that they keep a full staff at the house even when they’re in the country. They used to, anyway. But given my father’s current residence, and my mother’s mysterious disappearance, it’s almost certain that I’m considered beyond the pale.

  “I suppose a reputation such as mine is quite capable of denting hers. And I’m sure I’d have done precisely the same thing, a few years ago. Hindsight is so very acute, don’t you find, Miss Quinn?” Angelica sighed and rubbed her eyes wearily. “In any case, I’ve been travelling non-stop for a fortnight and I’m about to faint from exhaustion and I’m asking you, oh wise and resourceful Mary Quinn, if you could possibly advise me on what to do next. I’m afraid I’m not giving you much choice,” she concluded, with a brittle chuckle. “If you don’t say something reassuring, I think I might just burst into hysterics!”

  If this was a performance, thought Mary, Angelica Thorold ought to star in the West End. If it was genuine, Angelica would soon be completely shattered. Once her mother was arrested, she would suffer a second cataclysm of humiliation and tragedy; a human sacrifice for the greater good.

  “Let me think,” said Mary, slowly. “I haven’t friends capable of putting you up.”

  “I don’t expect that,” said Angelica quickly, her old pride asserting itself. “I suppose I meant…” She gestured helplessly. “A cheap but respectable lodging-house? Does such a thing exist? To be perfectly, humiliatingly frank, I’m not the heiress I once was. I earn my living teaching music, and I simply haven’t the money for the sort of hotel in which a lady could stay alone.”

  It was all so absurdly, improbably easy that Mary had to pretend to flounder. After dithering for a minute or two, she finally said, “You’ve given me an idea. I attended a boarding school for several years, Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls. It’s a good-sized place, plenty of bedrooms, and one doesn’t get more respectable than a girl’s boarding school, really. I’m still quite friendly with its head teachers. Head teacher, that is,” she corrected herself. “I shall ask them if there’s a bedroom you could have for a few days.” She paused. “Or shall you be staying longer?”

  Angelica shook her head. “It would be terribly kind of them to let me stay just for a night or two. I’m sure I can organize something for myself, with a little time. It’s only – I’m just – it’s so…” And she abruptly burst into tears.

  Mary found herself in the absurd position of comforting Angelica Thorold. “There, there,” she said awkwardly, patting her shoulder. �
�You must be half-dead with exhaustion. I don’t know how you managed two full weeks packed into a jouncing, swaying public coach with a circusful of strangers. Did you stop for even a single day to rest?”

  “I couldn’t,” she replied in choked tones. “My father…”

  Miracle of miracles, Mary located a clean handkerchief that somebody – Anne – had tucked into the reticule she was carrying. “Here,” she said, dabbing Angelica’s face gently. “You’ve arrived now. You’re in London. I’m sure there will be a spare bed for you at the Academy.”

  Weary as she was, Angelica soon stopped crying, blew her nose and took a few deep breaths. “I do beg your pardon,” she said, her voice still shaky and waterlogged. “I’m making such a colossal exhibition of myself, and so much inconvenience for you, too. I suppose your employers will be wondering where you are.” There was a faint ring of hope to that last statement, as though she was hoping Mary would deny it.

  “I can stay a few minutes longer, to organize your things, but you’re right: I shall have to go.” Mary felt no real regret in saying this. Angelica was so entirely convincing in the role of distraught daughter that Mary needed two minutes alone, to remind herself of the other gruesome possibilities Angelica represented. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to write a note of introduction and find you a cab. While I’m doing that, you collect your belongings, and then you’re off. The school is in St John’s Wood.”

  “But I need to see my father as soon as possible.”

  “You look ready to faint. Once you’re at the school you can have a meal and a bath, and then see about your father. The headmistress will assist you, I’m sure. And I’m permitted to go out, occasionally. I’ll call at the school in a few days to see how you are.”

  Angelica nodded obediently, took two steps back into the inn, then turned back. “What if there’s no space at the school?” she asked, eyes filled with panic.

  Mary shook her head. “Let’s not borrow trouble,” she said. “Besides, I have a strong feeling about this. They won’t turn you away.”

  Nine

  The same afternoon

  The offices of Easton Engineering, Great George Street

  “Beg your pardon, Mr Easton, but you have a caller.”

  James frowned and looked up from his nest of papers. “I’m not expecting anybody.”

  “Lady here to see you,” said his chief clerk. “On urgent and personal business.”

  Mary. The thought bubbled up before he could control it. No, he admonished himself. Mary was known to all his staff, so this was not Mary herself, but a messenger. Fear clawed at his guts. “What name did she give?”

  “None, I’m afraid, sir.”

  “Half a minute,” he said. “Then show her in, please.” He gathered up all the Bank-related plans and sketches, notes and calculations, and rolled them into a tube. He wasn’t so nonchalant as to leave them in open view, but neither was he inclined to refile them. He had only just cleared his desk when a tall woman stepped through the door into his private office.

  She was dressed in plain black silk, her face concealed by a light veil. James wondered, for one bizarre moment, whether it might be Mrs Thorold, come to settle the score. He stepped forward to greet her. “James Easton, at your service, ma’am.”

  “Thank you for agreeing to see a perfect stranger,” she said, her voice rich and low and unfamiliar. “I know you must be busy.”

  “Not too busy to be intrigued by your mention of urgent business.” He drew out a chair and she sank into it gracefully. “Mrs…”

  “Frame. Felicity Frame.” She lifted her veil and fixed him with a level, green-eyed gaze, waiting until he, too, was seated. “We have a mutual friend in Miss Quinn.”

  He would not be tricked that easily. “Miss Quinn?” he repeated, in a faintly puzzled tone.

  “Your associate, of course, in the firm of Quinn and Easton. The senior partner, one might presume.” She leaned forward, planting one elbow on his desk in a gesture of confident intimacy. “I was surprised to find the nameplate missing, but I believe you are still in business?”

  James swallowed hard. “That depends upon who asks.”

  “Someone who wishes you both well,” she said. The words were accompanied by a small smile that did not seem particularly reassuring. “I see that my name is unknown to you; that is a credit to Miss Quinn’s discretion. But I assure you, I have known her since her girlhood, and I am well aware of her distinct talent for discreet observation and detection.”

  James’s thoughts were racing. Was this Mary’s connection from Scotland Yard? But what role could a middle-aged woman play there? “How may I assist you today, Mrs Frame?” he asked quietly.

  She pursed her lips in thought, and James realized with surprise that she was very beautiful. “I wanted to talk to you today about Mary’s current assignment. At the risk of boring you with information you already know – but how else can I demonstrate that I, too, have knowledge worth sharing? – this is the third day of her watch over Newgate Prison.”

  James held perfectly still.

  “I do not believe there has been any sign of Mrs Thorold in the area, although Mary had some unconfirmed suspicions about me. Not entirely surprising,” she added, “given my constant attendance at the jail over the past few days.” She paused. When he remained silent, she gave the merest suggestion of a shrug and resumed speaking. “I am inclined to believe that the surveillance of Newgate Street is a waste of time. I doubt that Mrs Thorold would take such a large risk to clear her name. It would be simpler for her to establish a new identity and proceed unimpeded by her husband’s history of disgrace.” She looked at James. “I can see the question in your eyes. This might all be interesting, but what has it got to do with you and Mary?”

  James half-smiled despite himself. “I can neither confirm nor deny anything, Mrs Frame.”

  “Such wise circumspection.”

  “Pray continue your … narrative.”

  “I am here today because I believe you are now the person best placed to watch for the reappearance of Mrs Thorold.”

  “Oh?”

  “Have you already accepted the commission for the proposed alterations to the vaults of the Bank of England?”

  James raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s no need to play the fool with me,” she said amiably. “I know you attended a confidential meeting with the Court of Directors of the Bank of England. I also know that, despite the relatively small stature of your family firm, and your rather startling youth, you personally were offered the contract. No tender, no competition. It would be rather difficult – impossible, even – to decline such an opportunity, don’t you think?”

  “If all that were true, it certainly would,” agreed James.

  Felicity’s smile was quite feline. “Oh, I do appreciate your discretion. Let me explain: Mrs Thorold holds an account at Coutts Bank under the name of Fisher. Yesterday, a woman attempted to make a large withdrawal from the Fisher account. Because the account was flagged for watch, the bank attempted to delay her while calling Scotland Yard. The woman became suspicious in her turn and left the bank empty-handed before the police could arrive.”

  James was intrigued. “Did nobody at the bank try to stop her?”

  “The woman injured two guards and escaped down a side street. There was a brief chase, but they very quickly lost her trail.”

  “So there is no possibility she will attempt to access that account again.”

  “Precisely. But the very attempt suggests that Mrs Thorold is in need of funds. She is not the sort of criminal to stoop to common burglary: she operates on a more grandiose scale. I now believe that she will attempt a large-scale theft. Your project offers a spectacular opportunity.”

  “Surely the project is too spectacular?” argued James. “The Bank of England is one of the most secure buildings in the country.”

  “Not while it is under construction, with its hoard of gold
roaming the countryside.”

  “Even if it is necessary to move gold from its vaults for the period of construction – and it might not be so – the gold will be heavily guarded. Such a theft would require extensive planning, a large team of criminals working together and an informant on the inside, at the very least. Not to mention a means of transporting such a large amount of gold and melting it down. If I were Mrs Thorold, I would look to jewels or cash – something easily smuggled on my person.”

  “None of the challenges you cite are insurmountable obstacles,” returned Felicity. “Mrs Thorold has worked with a gang before. She has the intelligence and audacity to plot such a scheme. And the potential payout is precisely the sort of thing that would attract a woman of her ilk. If the job were successful, it would be her last. She could vanish once again and never return to England.”

  James thought about this. “Let us suppose you are correct,” he said, slowly. “If Mrs Thorold lost access to the Fisher account yesterday, she must only be starting to plan a new theft.”

  “She may have been plotting something all along, and this recent failure has given the scheme a new urgency.”

  “Either way, she would want to act swiftly, within the next couple of months, at most. How on earth could she have heard about the Bank’s need to expand its vaults?” He knew he was committing himself, but he continued nevertheless. “This is extremely recent information. I met with the Bank only yesterday.”

  “The Directors would have been discussing it for some time. There’s that inside contact…”

  “A rather lofty inside contact.”