The Art of Theft

by Sherry Thomas

  A hand settled on Charlotte’s shoulder. “Are you all right?” whispered Lord Ingram urgently. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine, perf—”

  The floor shook. For a moment Charlotte thought it was because Barre had thrown himself at the door. But it was not that. Lieutenant Atwood struck a match. In the flare of light he, Lord Ingram, and Charlotte glanced at one another.

  “So the rescue has started in earnest,” said Lord Ingram, his voice tight. “They brought explosives.”

  Charlotte put a hand under her stomach to help with the weight. “We have to get out of here. Please have all the ladies come to room two.”

  They already knew where the spy port was in room 2. Charlotte went in and set a chair before it, and then yanked the cover from the bed to drape over the chair, blocking the spy port’s view.

  Mrs. Watson and the maharani arrived first. Without a word, they helped Charlotte remove her jacket, waistcoat, and shirt, as well as her glued-on facial hair. And then, with greater care, her now-heavy false stomach. The false stomach was not simply a shell, but was lined with thick canvas where it rested against her torso, to prevent anything inside from falling out, and also because they’d always intend to take it—and its contents—off her.

  And to then turn it around and reattach it to her, so that it served as a bustle, albeit an unwieldy one that exerted considerable pressure on her lower back and abdomen, where the women tightened the straps hard, to prevent it from falling off.

  Livia came into the room then. She opened her mouth. Charlotte immediately placed a finger before her own lips, shushing her sister. Under the bed, hidden from view by the blue silk bedskirt, the two guards who’d been blindfolded and stowed there were coming to, groaning softly behind their gags, and she didn’t want them to overhear anything.

  Mrs. Watson waved Livia toward Charlotte. Outside the window the sky glowed: Fireworks shot up and burst noisily into showers of brilliance.

  The ball always concluded with a display of fireworks. But this was too early in the evening. Moriarty’s people must have set off their own fireworks, to distract the guests from the real explosions.

  Another tremor came from underfoot. Fear flashed in Livia’s eyes, but she worked quickly to help Charlotte pull out the skirt of the ball gown that had been rolled up and tucked into the waistband of her trousers, along with two layers of petticoats. As Livia smoothed out the skirts in the back, Charlotte refastened the trousers that she still wore so that they wouldn’t fall off her now-much-slimmer waist.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Watson had her own skirts up and the maharani was on her knees, fastening Charlotte’s discarded items of men’s clothing to the ribs of Mrs. Watson’s reinforced bustle: They didn’t want to leave behind any of Charlotte’s menswear. If the guards were questioned, they wanted Moriarty’s men to be looking for a portly young man, preferably a portly young man in a bright teal jacket.

  That way they wouldn’t look too closely at a woman in an unremarkable beige gown.

  Charlotte signaled Mrs. Watson and the maharani, who were done secreting Charlotte’s garments, to leave. She didn’t want them all to rush back to the ballroom at the same time.

  She took off her mask. Livia set a wig on Charlotte’s head, covering up Charlotte’s very short hair. Charlotte put on her mask again, this time reversing it, so that it was a solid and unexciting blue-grey, instead of teal on black-and-white.

  She gestured at Livia, who nodded and slipped out of the door. She waited one minute and stepped out herself. Lord Ingram was waiting for her.

  They had just stepped back into the ballroom when the ground shook. Chandeliers jerked and swung, crystal drops clinking together like a sudden rainstorm striking the windows. The guests, congregated near the windows for the best view of fireworks, looked up and around.

  Unsettled murmurs rose.

  “How much dynamite are they using?” wondered Charlotte.

  If she were planning this rescue, she would have started in the chapel, which, according to Mr. Marbleton, had been guarded by two men when he last reconnoitered. Even if there were four men guarding it, it would still be possible to get them out of the way without too much trouble.

  From there, all the way to the reinforced and heavily locked door before which Lord Ingram had turned back, there had been nothing that needed explosives, not even that very door. They must be trying to destroy something made of pure steel.

  Charlotte glanced around at the gallery. Livia and Mr. Marbleton, who was again in proper evening attire, stood fifteen feet away. Lieutenant Atwood, Mrs. Watson, and the maharani were twenty feet away in a different direction. Everyone looked different. The horns on Lieutenant Atwood’s mask was gone, as were the prominent purple plumes on Mr. Marbleton and the maharani’s masks. And their masks, like Charlotte’s, were now worn on the reverse, their former splendor exchanged for black and grey nondescriptness.

  Lord Ingram leaned an elbow on the parapet. Even with his mask on, it was obvious he was frowning. “I don’t understand why Moriarty would give away the combination to the safe.”

  Charlotte had been wondering about that, too. “Demolition isn’t Moriarty’s usual method. These people coming to rescuing him aren’t his loyalists, but people they have hired. But what did they have to hire them with? Moriarty probably kept a tight control of his organization’s finances and Madame Desrosiers certainly wouldn’t help fund his rescue.

  She should have realized that there was something ramshackle about the plan to blackmail the maharani, and others like her, into theft. The maharani did not make for the best candidate, if one wanted an art thief—nor did the aristocratic Grandmaman. Knowing what she did now, she could see that Moriarty’s loyalists didn’t have much to go on. It was difficult to get messages to or from a locked-up Moriarty. All the blackmail evidence was in a safe to which no one had access. And given the secretive nature of the organization, even the loyalists probably only knew a handful of quarries to whom they could apply pressure, cases they had worked on personally.

  “While the loyalists still had infiltrators in the château, it’s possible they got Moriarty to agree to give the combination to the dynamiters,” she went on. “But I doubt he was happy about that. He could have given them a false combination, but I think it pleased him far more to give the correct one, but in such a way that he was sure no one would be able to use. Even if the dynamiters heard him tapping everything out on the day of the reception, it was in code—and in a code that he judged to be far beyond their ability to solve.”

  Outside the fireworks continued to go off. They were louder here, producing long, sinuous whistles as they shot up and solid bangs upon bursting. But they could no longer hold the full attention of the guests, who were looking around and talking uneasily with one another.

  “And the dynamiters were happy with that?” asked Lord Ingram. “Some tapping they might or might not have heard and couldn’t make heads or tails of?”

  “His loyalists probably had to cough up everything they had and it’s possible they aren’t terribly pleased with him at the moment. But enough about Moriarty,” said Charlotte. “When I spoke to Lady Ingram, I told her to leave. But she insisted that she owes Madame Desrosiers more loyalty than that.”

  Lord Ingram pulled his lips. He, obviously, did not care for Lady Ingram’s concept of loyalty. But in this, Charlotte did have some sympathy for Lady Ingram, who had probably thought she needed to pretend to love him for only a short time, and that he’d then lose interest in her and start confessing his devotion to other women.

  In Lady Ingram’s shoes Charlotte, too, would have found that sort of devotion suffocating.

  But Lord Ingram didn’t let his opinion of his wife get in the way of his gallantry. “Do we need to help Madame Desrosiers against Moriarty?”

  Charlotte shook her head inwardly. “I dropped my nightstick during the s
cuffle. I have only one bullet left in my derringer and a heavy weight hanging on my hindquarters. Maybe the other ladies are in better condition to fight, but my sister has no training or experience with dangerous scenarios. I need to get her out as soon as possible.”

  The château shook again. Crystal beads fell from the chandeliers. Fortunately, most of the guests were still at the windows, and no one was struck from above. But the floor glittered with broken shards.

  “There’s an anarchist attack!” shouted a man.

  “Mon Dieu, bombs, bombs!” yelled another.

  Cries of panic ricocheted in the ballroom. Livia came running. Charlotte took her hand. “Remember, we expected chaos.”

  “Not this much chaos!”

  Charlotte squeezed her sister’s fingers. “But our response must be the same. Don’t succumb to it. And don’t add to it.”

  The ballroom was on the ground floor, but because the château was set on an island, it didn’t have French doors leading to a terrace outside. On the balcony above the ballroom, they were at an advantage, as the rest of the guests must first come up the steps.

  “Let’s go,” said Charlotte.

  All the electric lights blinked out. Livia gasped aloud.

  “Keep walking. You studied the architectural plans. You know the way. We are already along the wall, and there aren’t any major obstacles in our way.”

  The art thieves currently on the premises had no reason to cut the electricity—greater chaos did them no favor when they didn’t even know where the paintings were. She couldn’t think of a reason Moriarty’s people wanted the lights gone—they were already using explosives; too late for any subtlety to their endeavor.

  This would be Madame Desrosiers’s loyalists then, trying to slow down Moriarty’s progress. There wasn’t much else they could do when faced with invaders who deployed bombs as if they were throwing rice at a wedding.

  The entire company headed for the coat check. The night was bitterly cold and they were all dressed for a heated interior, with hundreds of vigorously dancing guests. Unlike the night of the reception, for which the château had provided omnibuses to and from the nearest railway station, the ball had too many guests and its hours were too inconvenient for public transportation.

  The guests, most of whom had arrived in private carriages, had been dropped off by the bridge, where their coaches turned around to find a place outside the château. She’d heard from late-arriving guests that the line of carriages stretched more than half a mile either way along the country lane.

  Had the ball proceeded normally, they would now be just done with supper, with much more dancing to come. In other words, it was too early for any carriages to have come back onto the grounds. And they would need to walk for least fifteen to twenty minutes in the frigid December air, if not more, before they reached their carriages.

  Coats and cloaks, then, were an exceedingly good idea, especially for ladies with exposed shoulders and bosoms.

  The fireworks were still going off, providing flashes of light for them to see their way down the grand staircase. The coat-checkers weren’t at their stations. The gentlemen of the company kicked down the door and grabbed mantles for everyone.

  Mr. Marbleton handed one to Livia and smiled at her. Charlotte, watching them, was filled with an unhappy premonition. She had told Livia—and Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram—that Stephen Marbleton could be Moriarty’s son. But when she had asked him, point-blank, about his parentage during the past summer he’d answered with ease and certainty that his father was Mr. Crispin Marbleton.

  Then, she’d assumed that he preferred not to speak of the truth. But he’d since turned out to be the sort of man who did speak the truth, often at the cost of convenience, at least to those important to him. And yet he’d never mentioned to Livia that he was Moriarty’s son.

  And now they were on the same premises as Moriarty, albeit alongside hundreds of others, and in the middle of pandemonium.

  The fireworks ended abruptly. Charlotte exhaled, feeling cold in the greater darkness.

  The bulk of the guests, having made it out of the ballroom, were now coming down the grand staircase to the entry hall. They struck matches to light their way. Shouts of Be careful! and Don’t push! Don’t push! echoed against marble walls.

  “Why are we just standing here?” whispered Livia vehemently. “People will get ahead of us!”

  “Stay close to the walls,” Charlotte warned. “And stay where you are.”

  The tide of guests flowed past them. The front hall, a wide, cavernous space, was now packed to the gills. Those with matches must be conserving them; the place was almost unnaturally dark.

  Light appeared, causing a stir among the guests. At least a dozen men, holding torches, came down double-returned the staircase. They were not in evening attire, and their suits were covered with dust. Except for the man at the very center, surrounded by torchbearers. His clothes, while worn and too informal, were at least clean.

  And his face—his face was so similar to Mr. Marbleton’s that Charlotte had to look away.

  Mr. Marbleton had turned his body in such a way that he blocked Livia’s view of Moriarty. Or was he shielding her from the latter’s gaze?

  He’d already seen Moriarty, hadn’t he?

  The guests were loudly complaining that at last someone had thought of torches. For God’s sake, why had it taken them so long? And what was the matter with the electrical plant, anyway?

  But they fell silent as the men approached and parted them like the Red Sea. Charlotte had the sense that Moriarty was looking for someone. Madame Desrosiers? Or the thieves who had opened his safe and taken his hard-gathered hoard of evidence?

  Cold air rushed in—someone had opened the front doors.

  “What’s this? Why is this gate locked?” came the angry shouts of the would-be escapees in the courtyard, at the very front.

  “We are looking for a portly blond man with a full beard. He may be wearing a teal jacket.”

  Ah, so it would seem that the guards upstairs had already been questioned.

  “Do any of us look portly to you?”

  “You may be slim, Monsieur, but please remain put for a minute or go back inside the château, where you’ll be warmer.”

  “And what, be struck by falling chandeliers? Who are you, and why are you keeping us at this dangerous place?”

  “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but you must stand back from the gate. I have my orders—and a loaded revolver.”

  “How dare you? My uncle is the president of the Third Republic. Get out of my way.”

  “Stand back!”

  Charlotte, despite her warnings to Livia to stay near the wall, tiptoed so that she could see out of a window.

  The guard, who had set his torch in a cresset by the wrought iron gate, raised his revolver. But the guests pressed forward, led by the irate nephew of the president. The guard fired his revolver at the sky. And while he still had his arm raised, half a dozen guests fell upon him, wrestled the revolver from his grip, and tied him up with the sleeves of his own jacket.

  The president’s nephew, revolver in hand, shot the padlock on the gate. Charlotte ducked in case the bullet ricocheted. But next came the sounds of cheers and hasty footsteps pounding over the bridge.

  Even spoiled, half-drunk young men could be useful from time to time.

  “Let’s go,” said Lord Ingram, “before they decide to lock the gates on the bridge.”

  The crowd pushed and shoved, but did nothing particularly unruly. Once over the bridge, the more impatient guests ran toward the gate. Charlotte and co. were only halfway there when they heard new shouts.

  The front gate, then, must have been locked.

  They, too, picked up their paces, not toward the front gate to their south but to the fences in the east.

  Mr. Marbleton
was up and over the fence in less than a second. Charlotte undid a number of hidden buttons on the skirt of her ball gown so that it wouldn’t impede the movement of her limbs. Lord Ingram and Lieutenant Atwood raised her up until she could put her foot on a cross railing near the top.

  Lord Ingram climbed up and gave her a hand—or rather, he gave her laden bustle a hand, lifting it clear of the finials. She pivoted around carefully and lowered herself. Mr. Marbleton caught her around the waist and set her down.

  The maharani was the next. Mrs. Watson’s petticoat caught on a finial, but without any hesitation she tore it loose. Livia waved aside everyone gathered to catch her and leaped off, landing in a perfect crouch position and then bouncing upright.

  Now that all the ladies had scaled the obstacle, Lieutenant Atwood climbed over.

  Lord Ingram, who could have done so at the same time, did not. “Lady Ingram is at the château. I should remain and make sure she’s all right,” he said without any inflection to his tone.

  “No!” Mrs. Watson and Livia said in unison.

  Then everyone, except Lord Ingram, turned toward Charlotte.

  “Be careful then, and be quick. We’ll see you in the morning,” she said quietly.

  He nodded and disappeared into the dark.

  “How could you let him go?” Livia whispered vehemently.

  “What was I to do? Climb back over the fence and drag him over it? Let’s go.”

  Their carriages were parked near a dirt lane that Mr. Marbleton had discovered on a previous outing. It cut across a large pasture to join a road that led to a village farther west and then the highway to Paris.

  Livia, Mr. Marbleton, Mrs. Watson, and the maharani climbed into one carriage.

  “Your carriage is closer to the dirt lane. You go first. We’ll follow after a bit,” Charlotte said as she closed the door for them.

  She climbed into the other carriage, Lieutenant Atwood coming in after her. “It’s good to put some space between our two carriages,” he said.

  He did not ask anything about Lord Ingram.