by Steven Price
Mm, Molly said.
You ain’t still gettin reports from him now? Mr. Adam?
For god’s sake, Foole said, is no part of my business mine alone?
Fludd paid this no mind and instead rubbed at his beard with an open hand and turned to Molly. Gabriel Utterson used to let Mr. Adam know what Charlotte were up to, he said. Was a time we used to see him regular-like. That were years ago now.
O-ho, Molly cried. She got angrily to her feet. A right regular romance, ain’t it? How long was you plannin to keep this from me?
Fludd started to laugh. Kid sounds jealous.
I ain’t jealous.
I’m to go see him this afternoon, Foole said. He held up a hand. Sit down, please. There’s no secret to it. Charlotte left instructions with Gabriel about the job, I’m to go through the instructions and if I’m still interested I’m to call on her in Hampstead.
Molly sucked in her lips, her nostrils flaring. Ain’t it lucky I got nothin planned for today.
I’m to go alone, Molly.
Why? She raised her voice. You afraid your plonk-eyed patty goin to be there?
Foole looked past her at his old friend, apologetic. The letter’s clear on it, Japheth. I’m to go to his Gaunt Street address unaccompanied. I’ll tell you this evening what I glean from him.
Aye you will. Fludd gestured at the letter on Foole’s desk. But it don’t feel right. Is that whole letter written like what Molly just was readin? As if there weren’t nothin much between you an Charlotte needin to be aired?
O it gets worse, Molly called out. It gets near to disgusting.
The kid ain’t often right, Fludd grimaced. But this might be one of them exceptions. Gabriel weren’t never one of us, he weren’t never to be trusted.
But he was never dangerous.
Bugger that. Fludd scooped at his beard. Don’t you go alone, Mr. Adam.
He ain’t goin to, Molly called.
Gabriel’s queerer than he was, Foole frowned. He’s cautious. That’s what Charlotte’s instructions mean. If I go in company he might refuse to meet. Even if the company is Molly. And if they wish me harm, Foole began, then trailed off.
He stared out the window. A cart clattered somewhere in the alley behind the garden wall and something passed like a darkness through the long grass there. At last he nodded. He could see the sense in Fludd’s concern and although he did not say it he knew he himself did not wholly trust the letter either. Molly reached out and put a hand on his arm and Foole met her eye.
All right, he said, giving way. All right. He looked sternly at Molly. But you keep your thoughts to yourself and do exactly as I say. Understood?
Molly smiled a sly smile. O sure. Absolutely. Yes.
I mean it, Molly. To yourself.
She smiled and smiled. She had already scooped up a handful of straw packing from the crate and stuffed it now tidily back into place with a wink and she was humming to herself as she left the room. After she was gone Fludd got up and shut the door and he stood a moment listening and then he sat back down. I ain’t goin to ask you where the profit is in all this, he said in a low voice.
Foole nodded. I appreciate that.
I know you and Charlotte have your history.
Well.
An I figure loyalty like that is a quality I ought to encourage in them what I work with. But I guess I hope there’s some angle in it I don’t see as yet. He glanced up. You ain’t forgettin what her uncle were like?
Martin has nothing to do with this.
Martin Reckitt is a bad slice, he is. Even the Church didn’t want him.
He was never a priest.
He were defrocked.
He wasn’t. He was ordained but he never practised. He was never a priest, Japheth. He had a different calling.
Bugger that. You know what he done, Mr. Adam.
All he did was walk away from me.
An leave you to die.
Foole nodded and said nothing and then he said, He also nursed me back to life. He could have just taken what he wanted and gone. He didn’t.
Aye an he could’ve cut your throat too. There ain’t no shortage of ways to do a jack in. Just cause he took one way over another don’t make it less of a betrayal.
It does to me, Foole said quietly. Besides, Charlotte is not her uncle.
You’re wrong on that, Fludd said. He was looking at him strangely and then he cracked his big knuckles and folded his arms. There’s somethin else, he said. I don’t reckon there’s any right way to say this. Last night I paid a old hello to our jill in Bermondsey. For old times’ sake, like.
I know.
Fludd blinked. You keepin me tab open?
I wanted to make sure you kept out of trouble. How is she?
Fludd shook his shaggy head. She says if we waitin for Charlotte Reckitt we like to be waitin a long time. That business you mentioned from the letter, bout her bein hunted by a detective? It’s bloody Pinkerton what’s been huntin her.
Foole raised his face. Pinkerton?
Aye.
Pinkerton’s dead, Japheth.
Not that one. The son. William.
Foole felt something in his stomach give way. He rubbed his face, stared out at the garden, the mists scrolling through the bamboo thicket, the bare apple tree against the stone wall. When he turned back Fludd was massaging one huge shoulder as if to ease some hurt from it.
Seems he were tracin some knuck Charlotte once worked with, Fludd said. Someone out of the swell mob. An somethin’s afoot still, the beaks is all abuzz with it. Pinkerton’s got a hand in it up to his bloody elbow.
A hand in what?
Fludd gave him a long level look. She ain’t said the name. But we both know who.
Edward Shade.
Fludd nodded. Just like his da.
Foole got up and crossed back to the window and clasped his hands behind him and stood like that a moment as the fog curled past.
You want I should do somethin?
Foole was quiet. No, he said finally. Yes. Let’s keep an eye on Mr. William Pinkerton. Have one of our snipes trail him and report back. Let me know if he crosses into Bermondsey again. Foole stared at the fog and brooded and stared. Do you believe in consequences, Japheth? he asked.
Never, the giant said. I live me life by it.
You frighten me sometimes.
Only sometimes?
Foole turned. Fludd was grinning at him in the gloom.
Late that afternoon he and Molly went to call on Utterson at his home. They made their way down to Piccadilly and hailed a hansom heading east and Foole directed the driver to take them to Gaunt Street in Bishopsgate. Molly gave him a look and they rode awhile in silence through the fogbound streets and then she turned to him and wiped a smut of soot from her face and asked him outright.
Bishopsgate? What kind of lawyer lives in bloody Bishopsgate?
He gave her a quiet secretive smile and reached across, picked at the lining of her breeches where a thread had come loose. You’ll want Mrs. Sykes to give that a look, he said.
She scowled and folded her arms and glared out at the streets. They came to a halt outside a tall terraced house. It had long since fallen into ruin, the unpainted railings, the smeared brickwork, the ancient wooden door knocker all cracked and gone green with long use in the foul air. Foole knocked twice then stepped back and brushed at his sleeves.
He don’t live here all on his own, now? Molly said, grimacing. Waste of bloody space.
It’s his sister’s house, he lives with her.
She laughed sharply.
Keep your tongue, Foole muttered. There’s nothing amusing in it. She was a memsahib in the Raj before she came back to England and she’s been in the flash longer than you’ve had teeth to pick at. Anything you say to her she will not forget.
O I can handle myself.
He gave Molly a long look. She’d as soon cut your throat as offer you a drink, he said. And that would be a kindness from her.
&
nbsp; Just then the door groaned shivering back on its hinges, and he straightened. A huge Sikh in blue livery and a gold headdress and wearing slippers of an oriental cast nodded without speaking and Foole bowed gravely to him and introduced himself. The footman stepped aside, his white gloves extended palms up. Foole removed his top hat, his cane, his gloves, and then the footman stepped behind him and the floor creaked under his weight and Foole felt himself being delicately disarticulated from his frock coat.
Is Mr. Utterson at home? Foole asked.
The footman was gesturing to Molly and did not answer but when Foole glanced up he saw a woman had materialized out of the darkness of the hall.
Miss Utterson, he said, and bowed.
Keshub is a mute, Mr. Foole, she said. He cannot help you.
Fuelle, it sounded like.
You are not alone, sir, she added.
Her voice, so like silk rustling. He had not heard it in years. She wore a thick mascara of ash and elderberry juice and had lined her eyes in kohl like some Eastern concubine and her long pale throat and sharp collarbone glowed whitely in the afternoon gloom. After a moment she stepped fluidly aside and half turned from him and he understood he was to follow. The footman preceded them down the long hallway, drew aside the drapery at a doorway, and the lady went past and through into the smoking room beyond. They had been lovers long years ago and friends after that and he thought her feline and beautiful still. The hard years had come out in her face near the eyes but the effect was to deepen and sadden a mystery latent in her and it made her the more desirable. She had travelled to the Raj in search of a husband in the spring of 1857 and returned fifteen years later alone and to Foole’s knowledge was unmarried still. She had told Foole of that first journey across Egypt by land in terror of bandits and of sleeping outside on the deck of the P&O steamship under the Southern Cross. Flying fish in their shivering arcs like faeries of the sea. The wake of phosphorous in becalmed waters. India, she said, had assailed her eyes in a roar of reds and pinks and oranges, yellow saris cut with blue, the mingled spices of ginger, cloves, turmeric, the smoke of sandalwood and burning cow dung, the clang of bells and bullock carts squeaking in the streets. All this she had told him while running her cool hands over the skin of his back one afternoon years ago and he had listened with his eyes half closed and thought of his own Africa. She would be fifty-two now.
At the door he paused.
Long gaslit sconces burned low on the walls. His eyes passed over the indoor lily pond, its scarlet cushions arranged in a circle around the water, the soaring ceiling lost in shadow. On the walls were squares of a gold damask wallpaper, squares of a red and green trellis pattern of birds. A painted Japanese screen in one corner. A tall hookah in a black Japanese varnish in another, its pipes cabling snakelike at its base. Foole could hear the muffled sounds of the street through the white and blue drapery, drawn and glowing with the light of the outer world.
What is all this? Foole said with a smile. Molly had come through with him and stopped half concealed in the doorway curtain and he set a hand on the child’s shoulder to keep her back.
You don’t like it?
It’s a wonder.
A faint curl of her lips. The eyelids closing a moment as her face registered the compliment. You’ll have a drink, she murmured. It was not a question.
Her servant had receded into the darkness. She crossed to a sideboard and unstoppered a crystal decanter and poured out two cut-glass goblets of sherry and then looked across at Molly in the doorway as if considering. Then she moved away, sat down on a cushion with her legs folded to one side of her, smoothed her skirts around her.
It has been a long time, she said.
He smiled. Not so long.
You were away on pleasure?
Business.
Is there a difference? She crossed her long legs at the ankle with a slow catlike grace that he remembered from years past. My brother is not at home. Why don’t you tell me the details and I shall convey them to him. What is to be discussed?
Charlotte Reckitt.
She waited.
She left instructions with Gabriel for me.
Charlotte Reckitt, she said, touching a jewelled finger to her lips. No. I don’t believe I know her. Is she a whore’s—
Rose, he interrupted. Molly snickered in the gloom behind them.
Mm?
Must we do this? When she said nothing he furrowed his brow and said, Charlotte’s the best grifter still in the blush in London. Her uncle was taken to Millbank in seventy-four—
Ah, yes. The famous Martin Reckitt.
You remember Martin.
Of course. Gabriel is still representing him.
Foole paused, studied her cautiously. I had understood Gabriel was changing the kind of clients he took on.
He has kept a few of his more valued clients.
Foole leaned forward. Does Martin still have a hand in?
Martin Reckitt is a model inmate at Millbank, Mr. Foole. His good behaviour is a testament to his reformed ways. And nothing goes in or out of Millbank except through the proper channels.
Does he still have a hand in, Rose?
She folded her jewelled fingers, her eyes hidden in the low light. I do remember he had a niece, she said. Yes. Now I remember. Her lashes flicked languidly over Molly standing in her boy’s suit beside the tapestry at the door. A beauty, she said softly, patting the cushion next to her in invitation.
The boy’s all right where he is, he said.
The boy?
He could hear Molly breathing in the gloom but he did not turn to look at her and she did not step forward.
In the Raj, Rose murmured, we learned to be more flexible with our appetites. One must embrace the unexpected, no? But she was studying Molly with a cold flat stare as if weighing a shank of meat and Foole felt a sudden danger.
He cleared his throat. Rose.
Yes, she said at last, lowering her gaze. Go on.
Charlotte’s been in touch. Gabriel has instructions for me, something to do with a project she’s been organizing. I was to meet him here, today. Is he not here?
You were to come alone.
Foole frowned.
This is rather like in Madrid, I think.
It’s nothing like Madrid.
You do have some difficulty in following directions, Mr. Foole. But she said it gently, and Foole sipped his sherry, smiled a sad smile.
That’s not what I remember about Madrid, he said.
You still have a concern with her as well, I think. With this niece.
Foole felt his smile stiffen and he glanced away. I haven’t spoken to Charlotte in years, he said quietly. But yes, there is that. Of course. There’s always been that.
She leaned forward now and lowered her voice. My sweet sweet man, she murmured. I’ve been asking myself, what is this path my dear Mr. Foole walks? He doesn’t write, he doesn’t visit. What a surprise to find him in London again.
We’ve all kept ourselves busy, Rose. I think of you fondly.
She smiled a smoky smile.
And your brother, he is well, I hope.
My brother won’t meet with you, she murmured. Since the Asperton affair, he prefers to keep his distance from the flash.
But Charlotte’s letter was clear.
Your Charlotte has become a rather dangerous associate.
Foole wet his lips. What do you mean?
You would be wise to keep your distance, Mr. Foole.
You’re talking about Pinkerton?
She held his eye. Mr. Pinkerton has been in London for weeks looking for your Miss Reckitt, yes. And not on Agency business, some personal matter. When we last saw her she said he had been asking about an old associate, someone his father had pursued. She did not say who. She was frightened. And then she disappeared.
Disappeared.
Last Thursday, yes. You must have heard of this. We understand the Yard is expecting her body to wash up downriver, but you and I bot
h know what that is worth. Gabriel has made his own inquiries. The only thing he is certain of is that she did not leave town. At least not by the usual routes. Miss Utterson saw the effect her words were having and she fell silent and then after a moment she reached behind her and brought out a small scented envelope of rice paper. Miss Reckitt asked us to convey this to you.
The envelope was empty. There was an address for Hampstead written on the front.
This is hers? Foole asked in a rough voice.
Miss Utterson frowned in the half-light then let it fade in a long, slow, sphinx-like smoothing of her features. I would not recommend you go to her. I understand the police have occupied the residence.
So the job’s off, he said slowly. And Gabriel’s washed his hands of it. What does he believe, does he believe she’s still in the city? What do you believe?
Miss Utterson regarded him. You remember, Mr. Foole, how it was between us? What happened in Spain? It seems what occurred was no accident. I have a gift.
Rose, he said impatiently. He shook his head, stopped. Remembering how it had been, the jobs they had worked together in the flash. She had dreamed during their last job in Madrid the precise events of the next day’s heist, including the ambush by the police and the shooting of their cracksman. He had laughed it off the morning before the heist. That night, hiding in their hotel room, he had not been able to look at her.
She was quiet as if considering something. Then she met his gaze with her smoky eyes. The spirits manifest in me, she said.
The spirits.
The lost ones. Yes.
You’re a medium.
I am a receptive. It is not the same.
He had heard rumours of Gabriel’s interest in this realm but he had not expected this. He had seen advertisements for seances in the newspapers in the years following the Civil War but had never given it much credence. It seemed too close to a grift. He looked at her and then around him at the weird exotic furnishings and then he looked at her again. The shadows seemed to lengthen. He looked at his drink then set it with a click at his feet. He was thinking about Charlotte and Hampstead.
There is much confusion on the other side, she said. I hope it is not true. But the name Charlotte has been spoken.
For god’s sake.
