The walking stick swung forward and struck the surgery door. “Dewhurst! What’s keeping you?” Mr. Thornfax called.
The door creaked open. My brother-in-law appeared in smock and gloves. “Had I better meet you at the warehouse?”
“No, I’ll wait, but make haste,” said Mr. Thornfax. “Watts says the duty officer never sleeps past ten.”
“Why should you care about that? Until your ban passes in the House your cargo is still perfectly legal.”
Mr. Thornfax jabbed the stick at him. “That, my friend, is why you’d never make it in politics. Trust a scientist to take the letter of the law over its spirit!”
Daniel crossed his arms. “Bollocks. You’re only concerned with appearances, Lord Rosbury. And anyhow I thought your new ship was inspection-proof.”
A lady doesn’t eavesdrop, I chided myself. But I couldn’t tear myself from the window.
“I defy any wharf-hound to discover my Heroine’s secrets!” Mr. Thornfax declared. “That little clipper will bring me more profit than my old fleet entire, once the ban is in place.”
“How do you mean?” said Daniel.
“Nothing raises prices like a law.”
Dr. Dewhurst laughed. “Well said, Francis. Well said! I should sorely like to see that statement quoted in the newspapers.”
“But you know there’s no concealment in the warehouse itself, and before the Heroine is launched we’ve got to clear the last of your raw materials out of the way.”
“All right, I’ll make haste. Come in, then, and—”
Their conversation was cut off by the slam of the surgery door.
My fingers ached: I saw my knuckles clenched white around the window frame. My pulse throbbed in my throat. Smuggling, and the manufacture of Dr. Dewhurst’s drug. That much I had understood from their exchange, at least. But Mr. Thornfax had also mentioned the name “Watts”— and I remembered that name from my conversation with Daisy in the surgery.
My aunt Emmaline’s advice rang in my mind again: Discover all the facts before you make up your mind. Tossing my book onto the bed I crossed to the wardrobe and shoved aside my dresses. I found a long over-jacket and shawl I had not worn often. From the dresser I collected gloves, a translucent silk scarf, and a small purse full of coins. Carrying my sturdiest boots I stole through the kitchens to the side door. From the hook I scooped Mrs. Fayerweather’s forgotten bonnet, offering a silent apology in the unlikely case the old woman would finally remember to send for it today and find it missing.
I wrote a hasty note to Bess, telling her that I was going alone to call on neighbours down the road and would not be back for lunch. In the mews behind the house I began to run, suddenly afraid that I’d taken too long in dressing and would miss them altogether. But round the corner I saw Curtis still waiting by Mr. Thornfax’s carriage, scuffing at the cobbles and emitting great huffs of smoke from his pipe. As soon as his back was turned I dashed past the front gate into Gloucester Street. I draped the scarf over Mrs. Fayerweather’s bonnet, covering my face and tucking the edges into my collar as a lady might do when caught in a dust storm. Then, for the first time in all my seventeen years of life, I raised my hand and waved for a cab.
The driver of the two-horse brougham that pulled over to the curb leaned down to examine me. Before he could peer too close through my scarf I reached a coin up to him.
“Nicholson’s Wharf!” Wearing Mrs. Fayerweather’s hat on my head, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that Mimic would announce herself in the old woman’s throaty chirrup.
The cabbie harrumphed but made no objection, so I scrambled inside. I’d hailed the brougham rather than one of the cheaper, more popular hansom cabs because this style of carriage was more closed-in and private. Breathing deeply through my scarf the aromas of damp wool and tobacco from the seat cushions I felt, suddenly, quite cozy and safe. What a daft notion, that a young lady of good reputation should feel safe riding unaccompanied in a cab! Christa would have me pilloried, I thought, and I had to press my gloved fingers against my mouth to stop my laughter so the cabbie wouldn’t hear it and think me utterly mad.
I spent most of the twenty-minute ride debating whether to order the driver to turn round and bring me home again. I scarcely had time to formulate a plan before we’d reached Upper Thames Street and I was assaulted by the stench of the river. Seabirds wheeled in the air overhead, their raucous screams echoed by the barking of the dogs who’d evidently just chased them off a feast of fish innards on the wharf. Taking a deep breath I stopped the driver and abandoned the temporary shelter of my cab.
The scent of fried eels and fish pies reminded me of distant childhood vacations at Brighton, but the air was decidedly less festive here. Beyond the traffic-choked London Bridge lay a dense, impassable forest of masts and sails. A beribboned touring steamer churned upriver, but its passengers were huddled under the canopy to escape the wind. It was low tide. The pilings wore long stockings of green slime. Ragged children in bare feet and grass hats scavenged the banks.
I scuttled along the quayside shopfronts and kiosks. Though I was in disguise my disguise was made up of finery, and finery was an unfamiliar sight to the hard-faced docksmen and foreign vendors whose cacophony of dialects thronged round me. I was aware of their curious glances, and at every moment I expected to be confronted by the leering smile of a Mrs. Clampitt or the grasping hands of her girls. When I spied a tea shop within sight of the Nicholson’s Wharf building, I entered at once and fell into a seat by the lace-curtained window.
It was only a few minutes until the Thornfax carriage pulled up alongside the warehouse. Curtis leapt down, slid the great door aside, and led the horses forward until the carriage disappeared inside the building.
Only after I’d sipped half my tea, scalding myself several times in the process, and had spread out a newssheet in front of me to denote solitary absorption did I cease my trembling, frenetic actions and permit myself to think about what I was doing.
Know your own mind. I stared through the smudged glass as billowing clouds rolled across the sky and the sun shot them through with green, grey, and gold. Skiffs and barges inched past one another, the crewmen shouting and gesturing across the water. I’d heard that boys sometimes dared one another, when traffic was high, to cross the whole river’s breadth by leaping from deck to deck. Also that they sometimes fell into the troughs between the vessels and were crushed before anyone noticed.
This recollection seemed suddenly, urgently relevant to my present situation. If I leapt, would I fall and be crushed? I had no intention of ship-hopping of course. But the move I was considering was no less perilous. Discover all the facts, before you make up your mind.
“Now then,” I addressed myself, whispering behind my scarf. The resolve that had pushed me to abandon my bedchamber this morning now took on a clearer shape. I wanted to discover the facts. I wanted to do what was right. But most of all I wanted to be less afraid. Wearing a hat belonging to another woman was frightening. The act of stepping out on my own, of sitting alone in a public tea room, was frightening. Trespassing on the business activities of my suitor, not to mention those of my own brother-in-law, was unimaginably frightening. And discovering—well, I was too terrified even to imagine what I might discover in my search.
There was only one woman in my acquaintance who wasn’t governed, even in some small measure, by fear: the Countess of Hastings. My aunt Emmaline went everywhere alone and did not mind if society labelled her mannish and unsociable. She had played Cleopatra at the Adelphi Theatre. She lived in Gordon Square, an area most of her generation considered too dangerous, because she preferred, as she put it, to “dodge the prying eyes.” She carried a needle-thin silver dagger in the handle of her parasol, and as a child I once witnessed her brandish it at a cutpurse who’d sidled too close beside us on the trolley. Even on that occasion Aunt Emma had been utterly unafraid. When the thug had slunk away she’d simply slid the weapon back into its hiding place,
tapped the handle snug against her boot, and murmured, “Don’t tell your father, my dear.”
The carriage emerged from the warehouse again with Curtis walking at the horses’ heads. He leapt into his seat and turned the rig into the street. I could see the silhouette of Daniel’s hat and thought I caught the glint of Mr. Thornfax’s jewelled cuff-clips where his arm rested on the sill.
I was frightened, yes—but, after all, fright had not stopped me from acting thus far. Leaving a coin on the table I tugged my shawl close about me and exited the shop.
Curtis had slid the heavy warehouse door closed but left it unlocked. The iron runners screeched against my weight and stuck fast. I flattened the brim of the hat to my cheeks to squeeze through the gap. Inside it was dim, cavernous, and fragrant with fresh timber and pitch. Before my eyes adjusted I mistook the flutter of pigeons in the rafters for bats, and I backed myself clumsily into the horse stall.
Breathe, I commanded myself. The rough slats of the wall caught the fabric of my glove as I felt my way deeper into the building. I stared down each menacing shape until it resolved into something I recognized: a stack of wooden pallets, a coil of mooring-rope, a pile of cork floats encrusted with barnacles, an enormous mast-lamp. The light improved as I neared a door thrown open to the water. Nicholson’s dock was only a few dozen paces away, and I was greeted by the jaunty prow of Mr. Thornfax’s new clipper wharfed nearby, now with her freshly painted moniker: Heroine. Wary of lingering sailors I skirted the rectangle of sunlight cast on the floor.
A fainter sliver of light drew me to the far end of the warehouse, where I found an ordinary wall panel without frame or handle, invisibly hinged and standing slightly ajar. Beyond it was a narrow room striped with sunlight from a high window. Motes of dust floated above the polished leather surface of a writing desk. Mr. Thornfax’s office, I assumed, and I hastened to try the desk drawers, which were all locked. A pen-stand and blotter, several ledgers, a crystal decanter of brandy, two glasses, a cigar box—I felt a sudden frustration at the display. How could I find anything without any idea what I was looking for?
The muted clink of glassware brought me to shocked attention. Someone was in the room with me!—no, in a room adjacent to this one, through a doorway I’d failed to notice at the far end of the office. I tore the hat and scarf from my head, deciding on the spot to explain my presence to Mr. Thornfax as an innocent prank by an infatuated young girl.
But it was not Mr. Thornfax I saw when I inched forward and peeped round the partition. It was Tom Rampling.
FIFTEEN
Tom stood with his back to me lifting a spherical flask up to the window. The sunlight licked indigo flames through his hair and limned the long muscles of his back through the translucent linen of his shirt. Round and round he swirled the cloudy liquid in the flask, held it still to note how it settled, then swirled it again. He set the vessel into a frame and reached beside him to a gas-jet burner spouting a yellow flame. Bending to steady an elbow on the counter he set to work in deft, delicate movements, soldering a copper wire round the lip of another, slimmer vial.
As I hung there watching him at his tasks, my fear edged into sheer fascination. I was looking at Tom, and he was utterly oblivious to my gaze upon him. Shirt buttons open, sleeves rolled past his elbows for work, his body was caressed by light. Filled with light. He tilted his head a little, and I watched how the light poured through his ear, making it a glowing whorl of red and gold. For the second time that day a voyeuristic thrill raised the fine hairs on my arms.
At last I blinked and tore my gaze away. I forced myself to take advantage of Tom’s absorption to examine the rest of the room—my brother-in-law’s laboratory, I surmised. Apothecary jars lining the glass shelves refracted light against the tiled counter, a watery mosaic of blues, ambers, greens. There were dozens of racked pipettes with tan rubber bulbs, and an assortment of ceramic dishes stained with resin. On the wall nearest me hung several papers filled with mathematical calculations and chemical formulae. One page displayed a complicated diagram: a flame, a glass bulb like the one Tom had set down, a snaking tube, and a hollow reed sharpened to a point.
Tom straightened from his work.
I said, “What is it you do for him, precisely?”
He spun round, open-mouthed.
“Do you manufacture the drug that is killing your own beloved Daisy?” Mimic was again using Mrs. Fayerweather’s voice, but Tom was too surprised to notice.
“Did—did he bring you here?” he whispered. “Thornfax?”
“Of course not.” I couldn’t prevent a note of pride from creeping in. “I followed him and Dr. Dewhurst.”
Tom looked aghast. “Milady, you cannot be here. If he finds you—”
“What will he do, Mr. Rampling? Will he let my brother-in-law prescribe me a course of his deadly medicine? Or will he let you send me forth into a deadly explosion?” I had not realized until this moment just how very angry I was with Tom Rampling. My fury overtook any lingering shyness I felt at intruding on him, and I closed the distance between us so fast that he stumbled back against the counter.
I snatched up the copper-ringed vial. “And what is this?”
He shook his head and reached to retrieve it. “It will be a syringe, milady. The doctor—”
I flung the tube onto the counter with all my strength. It shattered with a satisfactory pop, scattering fragments in all directions.
There was real fear in Tom’s eyes now. “Listen to me. Mr. Thornfax is not the mild gentleman you believe him. He mustn’t find you discovering him in this way!”
“Perhaps it is you I mean to discover,” I retorted. Reaching past him I lifted a black notebook from the counter, tipped the shards from its cover, and riffled through its pages. Daniel’s spidery script laid out long columns of patients’ names, dates, dosages. Harriett Cooper (Hattie), I read, on a page dated from the night of her death. Potency adjustment. Over-dosage .
“Hold me here, Tom,” said Mimic, using Hattie’s voice, “so’s I dun’t go to him.”
“Oh no, milady. Please don’t,” Tom whispered.
In my anger I’d cornered him against the counter, and even as he leaned away, Tom’s body was only inches from mine. We’d been in this position once before—after Hattie’s collapse in the parlour, when Tom had tried to bar my exit from the room. Then I had felt surprise and embarrassment, the self-consciousness of my own position as a lady and his as a servant. This time my anger overrode everything else. This time my every pore awakened to Tom’s closeness, and my rage cartwheeled into a kind of wild, surging excitement. One of my hands leapt from the book to circle the white column of his throat. I felt his larynx jump under my thumb and I pressed into it, hard.
“Did you inject her?” The words seared my tongue.
“No,” he rasped. “I swear it!” His shock at my assault had him gaping and wide-eyed. His fingers covered mine, trying to loosen my grip.
Mimic switched into Daisy’s stupefied drawl: “Tom Rampling. My sweet’art. He said he’d take me away in a heartbeat!”
Tom pried my fingers from his neck, and the book fell to the floor between us as he twisted both my wrists behind me, turning me and pinning me to the counter. “Stop,” he said.
I struggled, panting half in pain and half in exultation. “He’ll keep me safe. Tom is the best man I ever known, mum.”
Tom’s body pressed tight to mine as he tried to hold me still. I felt his low, agonized groan reverberate through his chest against my jaw. “Stop, stop, stop,” he begged.
“The doctor’s doses make ye fly and fly, forever!” I took a shuddering breath, and then another, deeper one. After a few moments I let myself relax into Tom’s embrace.
He released me at once, dropping my wrists and stepping back to make a foot of space between us. While it did little to dispel the tension and upset that charged the air, at least it permitted my heart to slow its crazed thumping inside my ribs.
Tom bent to pick up
the doctor’s book and set it on the counter. Slowly, cautiously, he reached for my hand where it hung, trembling, at my side. Two of his fingertips slid beneath the rim of my glove. “You have me wrong, milady. I am not your enemy, nor the enemy of those poor, wretched girls whose voices you mimic. I have tried—I have been trying, with all my power—to save their lives. To prevent more deaths.”
His gaze had been fixed on my arm. Now he lifted his eyes to meet mine. Clear and grey, fringed all round with curling lashes. The heat from his touch on my bruised wrist went straight up through my chest and down my spine.
I shook him off. “How have you t-tried? I m-must know it all, Tom!” Desperation hoarsened my voice. I wanted so badly to believe him that I could scarcely breathe.
“I swear I will explain it all. Only please, let me take you home now,” he said.
The heavy tread of footsteps sent us lurching apart.
“That’s Thornfax returned!” Tom gasped. Covering my mouth and grasping me by the back of my neck he wheeled me so fiercely round the end of the counter that I was too flustered to mention my plan of greeting Mr. Thornfax openly until it was too late, and we were crouched tight together behind the open door of a tall cabinet.
“Cozy quarters for a lord,” came a nasal male voice from next door.
Mr. Thornfax’s smooth chuckle came in answer. “I am nothing if not a patient man, Mr. Watts. And if you will be patient but a moment longer, I’ll have you directly on your way.”
Mad Miss Mimic Page 12
