by Y. S. Lee
She abandoned the woman with a prayer that she remain unconscious and dived down the steps in search of the weapon. Whoever held it also held the future. But just as her fingers found its cold barrel, she felt it whisked from her grasp. She spun around and tried to stand, but was immediately pressed back by the glare of the lantern, so close she could feel its warmth. Its bright rays danced along the barrel of the gun, and she could smell the sharp warmth of hot metal from those two very recent bullet blasts. Mary swallowed.
“Sit,” said Angelica. Her voice shook, as did the revolver.
“Angelica, please,” said Mary, in her calmest tones. “Let me help you.”
“I said, sit!” It was a shriek now, the voice of a person confused, desperate, distraught. A person capable of almost anything.
Mary obeyed. As the lantern retreated and rose higher, Mary was able to see Angelica’s form and work out what she wanted: she was looking at her mother.
“Is she … dead?”
Mary’s tongue felt too large in her mouth. “No. Unconscious,” she said. Not for long, either.
Angelica appeared to fall into a trance. A minute passed, and then she began to mutter something under her breath. It was rapid and soft, but after several seconds, Mary caught it: she was asking, repeatedly, What shall I do? What shall I do? What shall I do? Still she remained motionless, however, staring down at her mother’s body.
Just as Mary thought she might risk movement, Angelica abruptly stumped back down the steps. She held her right arm stiff and the gun swung wildly in Mary’s general direction. Mary tried not to flinch. Angelica passed her and, putting down the lantern, opened the door she’d worked so hard to unlock. Its hinges groaned and the sweet aroma of damp rot floated out to envelop them. “In here.”
Mary blinked. “But … your mother?”
“Bring her in here.”
“I’ll need help.”
“I suspect you are stronger than you look.”
“Truly, I’ll have to drag her. She’s heavier than I.”
Angelica remained stone-faced. “Fine.”
Mary set to work. She had no idea what Angelica was thinking, feeling, planning. Likely Angelica herself didn’t, either. Mary clasped Mrs Thorold under the arms and lifted. That itself was manageable, but once she pivoted to descend the steps, she struggled against the dead weight of the larger woman’s body. She got stuck midway and said, “Angelica, you’ll have to help.”
Angelica stared at her. Her fingers tightened about the revolver.
“If it’s about the gun, you can put it down: I promise not to try to take it.” It was a daft thing to say and an even madder thing to promise, since Mary intended to keep her word. “But I’m going to drop her if you don’t help.” She paused, the slumped body growing heavier in her arms by the moment. “It’s up to you, of course.”
Angelica set down the lantern, tucked the gun into her handbag and grudgingly took her mother’s legs. Between them, they managed to hoist the unconscious body through the doorway without too many bumps and scrapes, and set it clumsily onto the floor. As soon as she was able, Angelica retrieved both lamp and weapon. She seemed calmer, with one in each hand.
For lack of anything better to do, Mary studied the underground room in which they found themselves. It was a low brick cavern, strongly reminiscent of the sewers beneath Buckingham Palace, which she and James had explored a number of months ago. The room in which they stood had two tunnel openings in addition to the door. One appeared to lead towards Great Russell Street, and the other seemed to run at a right angle to the first.
“What is this place?” asked Angelica. She sounded panicked, suspicious. Not at all the sort of person who ought to have her finger on the trigger of a revolver.
Mary tried to sound reassuring. “I believe this passageway is used to walk from the museum’s entrance to the Reading Room.”
Angelica shivered. “No loot to collect, then.”
“Not in this room.”
“So my mother lied to you about the reason for coming down here.” Both young women looked at Mrs Thorold’s body, sprawled on the floor. There was a bruise already forming on her temple.
“I suspect she has lied about a number of things,” said Mary, in studiously neutral tones.
“What do you think she planned to do down here?”
Mary took a deep breath. “I think she intended to kill me, and somehow frame me for the thefts.” Their gazes once again returned to Mrs Thorold.
“You don’t believe her promise not to shed blood?”
“As it happens, I do not.” Mary paused. “Do you?”
“I must, if I am still to consider myself her daughter.” It wasn’t a proper answer, and they both knew it. “As a dutiful child, I ought to carry out her plan,” said Angelica. “I don’t know how to frame you, of course, but I could still leave you here to take the blame.”
“If I were found alive, I would surely give evidence against you.” Mary kept her voice calm and quiet. “You would have to kill me, if you wanted me to take the blame.”
“So I would.” Angelica carefully lifted the revolver and pointed it at Mary. “Do you think I could kill a woman, Mary? Or a man, for that matter?”
Mary swallowed hard. “Only you know that, Angelica. But there is another choice open to you, at this time.”
This time the gun did not waver. “Really?”
“Yes. You could leave now. Go back to the Academy, pack your trunk and return to Vienna as you originally intended. Your mother is here, and I am here, but there is no reason for your name ever to be mentioned. Your choice this evening is not yet irrevocable.”
Angelica’s eyes widened. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she whispered. “All this time, I thought my fate was sealed.”
Mary watched the gun, watched her hands. “There will still be disgrace, of course; that is inevitable, no matter what happens tonight. But there will also still be music, work and a future.”
“I am accustomed to disgrace,” murmured Angelica.
“But I am not,” said a third voice, sudden and biting and cold. Mary and Angelica both jumped to face Mrs Thorold, who was even now raising herself slowly to hands and knees. “I expected no less of you, Miss Quinn, wheedling for your life. But you are a Thorold, Angelica, and you have made your choice. There is no turning back, at this point.”
Angelica nearly dropped the weapon, in her surprise, but managed to recover it. “Mamma!” She set the lantern down on the ground.
“Who else?” demanded Mrs Thorold, rising unsteadily to her feet. “Angelica, you may give me the gun.”
Angelica looked at her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Mrs Thorold held out her hand, expectantly. And then, very slowly, her own hands shaking, Angelica raised the revolver. She pointed it at her mother. “Not yet, Mamma.”
Mrs Thorold froze, an expression of pure incredulity on her strongly marked features. “Don’t be absurd, Angelica. Give me the gun.” But her voice was hollowed of its usual command, and her pockmarks suddenly stood out on her chalk-white skin.
“Answer me first, Mamma. Were you planning to kill Miss Quinn?”
A sly look. “I gave you my word earlier, did I not, daughter?”
“So you did. But you have not answered my question.”
“And if I did think to leave Miss Quinn here? She was not part of my original plan; I cannot be held to account for variables such as this.”
“I thought as much,” muttered Angelica. “And the museum’s security staff that she asked about earlier: the Military Guard, the police and I think there was a third group?”
“The Fire Brigade,” said Mary, helpfully.
“Shut up,” snapped Angelica, but she kept the gun trained on her mother. “Answer the question, Mamma.”
“Oh, they’re all fit as fleas and jumping about London,” said Mrs Thorold lightly. “I give you my solemn word, they’re all fine.”
“Then why haven’t they roused t
o the sound of those two shots in the courtyard?”
“They’re not here,” replied Mrs Thorold. “There’s a tricky little operation going on this evening at the Bank of England, and they’re all buzzing about it like flies on a dunghill.”
Mary swallowed hard. So that was the reason for such a delay: Anne would have had to go all the way to the Bank, via Scotland Yard, to sound the alarm. Mary made a rapid mental calculation. Allowing for time to send policemen back to the museum, they ought to be here soon. Within the next half-hour, probably. Although at that point, they might be entirely too late.
Angelica seemed to calm a little. “And the domestic staff? The academics? They’ve no reason to be away. Why are they all still asleep?”
“They are alive, if somewhat indisposed. You saw that with your own eyes.”
“I asked you earlier if they were alive, and you said they were. What I ought to have asked – what I was too afraid to ask, at the time – is this: had you anything to do with their indisposition?”
Mrs Thorold adopted the look of someone trying to pacify an irrational child. “Angelica, my darling…” She took a step towards her daughter, but promptly froze when Angelica cocked the trigger. Fury and disbelief chased rapidly across her face.
“Answer me, Mamma.”
“You saw me making that batch of barley water. Did you see a poison bottle in my hands?”
Angelica’s voice was tight and small. “Not as such.”
“Well, then?”
Silence. It was bulky and almost palpable, a fourth presence in the room. Mother regarded daughter. Daughter stared at mother. Mary strained her ears, trying to hear something – anything – above the thundering of her pulse, but she could discern nothing with certainty. She might have heard a distant patter of footsteps; she might simply have wished for them.
Angelica took a deep breath, clearly trying to calm herself. She softened her grip on the revolver but did not lower its muzzle. “Then answer me this, Mamma: will all the museum staff be alive come morning?”
Mrs Thorold sighed. “We are wasting precious time, daughter. I shall answer all your questions fully and completely once we are embarked on our journey.”
“Yes or no, Mamma!” Angelica’s voice rose to a shriek. She braced the gun with two shaking hands. “Answer me!”
Mary tensed, ready to spring. That gun would fire at any moment, and there was no telling where.
Mrs Thorold’s features twisted into a smirk of fear, bravado, contempt. “No.”
A deafening explosion.
Mrs Thorold staggered, then launched herself towards Angelica. Mary’s stomach plummeted: the bullet had missed its mark. She leapt at Mrs Thorold’s back and all three women went tumbling, a tangle of elbows and crinolines and fury, the ground cold and gritty beneath them. Another discharge, but it sounded muffled, as though the revolver had been pointed directly into the dirt floor of the tunnel. How many bullets remained in the chamber? wondered Mary, as she clung grimly to Mrs Thorold’s neck and shoulders. She was the smaller woman by several inches and perhaps four stone, and she struggled to keep her grip in this strange embrace.
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.
