by C. J. Archer
“I do,” Brockwell said without looking at her. “Now can we set aside the parlor tricks and focus on the questions we have for the Shaws?”
Willie stepped back, hands up. “Carry on.”
“You say you don’t know if your daughter cursed Trentham specifically,” he said to Mrs. Shaw. “But do you know if she cursed someone for her husband’s sake? A rival, perhaps, or an acquaintance?”
“This is the second part of the earlier question,” Willie clarified for Lancelot’s sake. “We ain’t paying more.”
“She did curse someone once,” Mrs. Shaw said. “Years ago. And I think it was a business rival of her husband’s.” Her nose wrinkled and the corners of her mouth turned down, as if talking about him left a bad taste in her mouth. “Nicholas didn’t believe in curses, in our culture. He pretended to, at first, but later…”
Lancelot spat into the ground.
“Later?” Matt prompted.
“Nicholas tried to change Albina. He tried to keep her away from us, keep her from her family, her people. He became ashamed of who she was. But Albina always found a way to see us when we came to London. She was a clever girl. A good girl.” She looked away, but not before I saw the shine of tears in her eyes.
“Why all these questions about our Albina now?” Lancelot asked.
Willie put up her finger. “Wait. That’s a question. You want answers, give me back a coin.” She put out her palm.
Duke slapped it away. “Don’t antagonize them.”
“Mr. Trentham, the man Albina cursed, is dead,” Brockwell said in his uniquely blunt way. “He was murdered last night.”
“And you think my sister’s curse had something to do with it?” Lancelot snarled.
“No.” Mrs. Shaw pressed a hand to her stomach. Her sharp eyes drilled into Brockwell. “They think Nicholas Mirnov did it. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find out if he had reason? If he’s capable of murder?”
Lancelot released a breath. “He’s capable all right. He’s more than capable. That bastard’s murdered once, he’d do it again.”
“Who has he murdered?” Matt asked.
Mrs. Shaw’s eyes flashed. “He killed my daughter. He killed my Albina.”
Chapter 7
Mrs. Shaw clutched her shawl tightly at her throat. “We didn’t want Albina to marry Nicholas Mirnov because he was never taught the Romany ways by his mother. But she insisted.”
“Albina was pigheaded,” Lancelot said.
“She was strong,” his mother countered. “When Albina wanted something, she always got it in the end.”
“What makes you think Nicholas Mirnov killed her?” Matt asked.
Mrs. Shaw tapped her chest. “A feeling in here. They grew distant this last year. They argued all the time and he called her names. Terrible names.” She shook her head. “He made her feel worthless, like she was dirt under his shoe.”
Lancelot spat into the ground. “Because she was Romany. He despised us.”
“Did he abuse her physically?” Brockwell asked.
Mrs. Shaw indicated her cheek. “One day in the summer, she visited us. She had bruises on the left side of her face and body. She said she fell down the stairs, but…” She shook her head. “A mother knows when her daughter is lying. It was him. Nicholas gave her those bruises, I’m sure of it.”
“Did you confront him at the time?” Matt asked Lancelot.
“Don’t answer that,” Mrs. Shaw said before Lancelot could speak.
Lancelot shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“How did your daughter die?” Brockwell asked.
“The doctor claimed her heart stopped,” Mrs. Shaw said. “But how can that be? She was young and healthy. He must have done something to her.”
“Did you ever take your suspicions to the police?”
Lancelot snorted.
“We had no proof,” Mrs. Shaw said with a lift of her chin. “And the police don’t liked the Romany. They wouldn’t listen to us.”
Brockwell shifted his weight and stared down at his shuffling feet. He knew she was right and couldn’t defend the organization he respected. While Brockwell was a good man who wanted justice for victims, not all of his colleagues were as fair-minded.
“That’s why you came back to London, isn’t it?” I asked. “To find proof that Mr. Mirnov killed Albina.”
“We wanted to remind him that we know what he did.” She indicated her eyes with two fingers. “We want him to know that we see him and see into his empty heart.”
Brockwell looked up. “Do not try to get retribution. Vigilante justice is not justice. It’s just breaking the law.”
Lancelot cracked his knuckles. “Don’t worry, Mr. Policeman. We don’t break the law in this family.”
Brockwell squared his shoulders. “It’s Detective Inspector Brockwell. And I know for a fact that you’ve broken the law on several occasions, Mr. Lancelot Shaw. You’ve served time for theft, twice, the first time when you were just sixteen. And that’s only here in London.”
Lancelot merely smiled a rather irritating conceited smile.
“Mr. Shaw,” Matt said, “do you know a man named Fabian Charbonneau?”
“No.”
“What about Lord Coyle?”
Lancelot shook his head.
“Where were you two nights ago?”
Lancelot jerked his thumb at the tent. “Here. Why?”
“Mind if we look through your abodes?” Brockwell asked.
“Course I bloody well mind!”
Mr. Shaw blocked access to the short ladder leading up to the caravan’s door. He cracked his knuckles again.
His mother advanced toward us, shooing us with robust sweeps of her arms. “You can’t just come in here and search an innocent man’s home. Now get out! Go on! Clear off!”
Duke grabbed Willie’s arm and pulled her away. He must have been worried she’d draw her gun, and from the fierce look in her eyes, he was right to be worried.
Brockwell followed them and Matt placed a hand to my lower back to steer me off too. But I wasn’t ready to go yet.
I stepped closer and lowered my voice. “Can you tell me which man she’s going to marry?”
Mrs. Shaw thrust out her palm for a coin.
“India,” Matt warned.
I sighed. “Never mind. I’ll enjoy guessing.” I picked up my skirts and raced after the others.
“If you become friends with that gypsy then our friendship ends,” Brockwell was saying to Willie when we caught up to them.
“Don’t worry, Jasper. Even I know he’d be nothing but trouble.”
We all looked at her in surprise, although Brockwell’s gaze held a measure of relief. Ordinarily a directive such as the one he’d given her would fall on deaf ears, at best, or end in a petulant argument, at worse. This change was curious, and very pleasing.
“You settling down, Willie?” Duke asked.
“Ha! I don’t believe in fortune telling. I ain’t getting married.”
“That ain’t what I meant, but it’s interesting that you think that’s what I meant.”
She shot him a withering glare and lengthened her strides. “You’re a turd, Duke.”
Duke sidled closer to Brockwell. “She’s calling me names. That means I hit close to the bone.”
Brockwell watched Willie’s back as she forged on, not stopping until she reached our waiting carriage. She scraped the mud off her boots on the back wheel before climbing in. She was sulking in the corner when we joined her. I thought it best to ignore her altogether and focus on the investigation.
Matt gave Woodall instructions to return to the Brick Lane market and as we traveled there, we debated whether we believed Mirnov or his late wife’s family. They clearly hated one another.
“I doubt the hatred is recent,” Brockwell said. “Seems to me the Shaws never liked that their daughter married a half-Romany non-believer.”
“To think he murdered her,” I muttered. “He
seemed so nice, particularly to the children.”
“We only have the Shaws’ word for it,” Brockwell said. “Don’t condemn him based on their opinion.”
Matt agreed but had another point to make. “Whether he did or did not kill her, the fact is, the Shaws believe he did. That belief could mean they want to cause him trouble by accusing him of Trentham’s death.”
“You think they killed him just to implicate Trentham?” Duke asked. “Seems extreme to me.”
Brockwell remained silent as he slowly scratched his sideburns. I thought he was thinking about our encounter with the Shaws until I followed his gaze to Willie. She was staring out the window, her arms crossed over her chest. It would seem that Mrs. Shaw’s declaration after reading Willie’s palm had got them both thinking.
I smiled to myself.
“I still want to know if curses are real,” Matt said. “We need to talk to an independent source who has studied them.”
“Who?” I asked. “We don’t know any experts.”
“We know an expert in magic and its history. It’s possible Professor Nash’s expertise extends to curses too.”
He seemed like a good place to start, but questioning the professor would have to wait. We had more pressing leads to investigate, starting with yet another interview with Mr. Mirnov.
He was not at the market, however. The place where his cart had been was now occupied by a costermonger’s barrow. We drove slowly through the nearby streets, and even went to his place of residence, but couldn’t find him.
We returned home to Park Street in the afternoon for refreshments and to see that Aunt Letitia had everything she required. She happened to be passing the front door as Bristow greeted us, and smiled at each of us in turn. Until she saw me.
“India! Look at you! You’re covered in mud.”
I glanced down at my skirt. The bottom three inches were indeed filthy. “So is everyone else.”
“Yes, but you’re a lady. What if one of our friends saw you?”
“Then I would explain to them that I was meeting a Romany family on Mitcham Common.”
She gasped. “Gypsies! Matthew, why did you take your wife to see gypsies?”
He took her elbow and steered her toward the stairs. “Willie wanted her fortune told.”
“That’s all nonsense. No one can tell the future.” She glanced over her shoulder at Willie. “What did the fortune teller say?”
“Nothing,” Willie grumbled. When Duke opened his mouth to speak, she stabbed him with a sharp glare and he closed it again.
I changed my outfit then rejoined the others in the drawing room. Cyclops had arrived home from police training in my absence, and Duke was telling him how our investigation was coming along. Cyclops sighed when Duke got to the part where we had to return here after searching in vain for Mirnov.
“I miss it,” he said on another sigh. “I miss talking to suspects, finding clues, and putting together the pieces of the puzzle.”
“You don’t like training?” Matt asked.
“I do, but I like investigating more.”
“It won’t be long before you join the ranks of detective,” Brockwell told him. “You’re a natural.”
“And you’ve got Jasper in your corner,” Willie added with a wink for Cyclops and a smile for Brockwell.
The inspector smiled back.
Duke, watching the exchange, leaned toward Cyclops. “You won’t believe what the gypsy fortune teller said to Willie when she read her palm.”
Matt, Brockwell and I departed a short while later as the bleak day became an even bleaker dusk. A damp fog was already settling into the narrow lanes and dead-end courts of the slums where the streetlamps provided little comfort and no security. The Shoreditch tenement where Mirnov rented a room on the second floor was one of many built of uniform brown brick. There were no streetlamps here and no lanterns to welcome residents home, only the squalid gutters and the smell of urine. The only light came from our carriage lamps.
The lane appeared deserted. If it wasn’t for a child crying, I’d have thought the tenements empty. Brockwell knocked on Mirnov’s door, but there was no answer. He tried the neighbor’s and a heavily pregnant woman answered. She seemed neither concerned nor curious to greet three strangers on her doorstep. She was utterly indifferent to our presence, even when Brockwell introduced himself as a detective inspector from Scotland Yard.
“We’re after Nicholas Mirnov,” he said. “Have you seen or heard him return home?”
“No.” The woman began to close the door, but Matt put his hand up to stop it.
He offered her a coin. “When does he usually get in?”
“Why should I know? I’m his neighbor, not his wife.”
“What can you tell us about his habits?”
She put out her hand. He hesitated before placing another coin on her palm. It disappeared into the pocket of her apron in the blink of an eye. “He lives alone now after his wife passed, God rest her soul.”
“Is he a good neighbor?” Brockwell asked.
“He’s quiet these days.”
“These days?”
“When his wife was alive, they used to have terrible fights. They’d shout at each other then be loud when they made up, if you know what I mean, sir.” She rubbed her round belly and chuckled.
“What did they argue about?” I asked.
“This and that. Money, mostly, or her family. He called them thieving, lying gypsies. Sometimes he didn’t like the way she looked at a man.”
“He was jealous?”
“Aye, but so was she. She’d tell him he flirted with too many women. He is a terrible flirt, it’s true.” She winked at me. “Does he flirt with you, ma’am?”
“He wouldn’t dare,” Matt said before I could answer.
The woman leaned her shoulder against the door frame and gazed up at him. I knew that look. She thought him dashing. He could probably ask whatever he wanted and she’d answer.
Brockwell took over the questioning, however. “Did Mirnov ever hit his wife?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think so. It was just a lot of shouting. Was she really a gypsy?”
“Yes.”
The woman winced and rubbed her pregnant belly. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have loaned her my cooking pot that time.”
“That’s probably why they didn’t tell you,” Matt said.
She bristled. “Her family have given Nicholas nothing but grief since his wife died.”
I would have expected his wife’s death would have given him grief too, but I kept my mouth shut.
“They used to steal the toys from his cart overnight when he left it outside here. Once, they stole a wheel off it. He found somewhere safe to store it after that.”
“How do you know it wasn’t a random theft?” Brockwell asked. “Perhaps it was youths having a lark.”
“Because after he stored it away, they got frustrated and left him little gifts.” She folded her arms over her belly. “Once, they threw dung at his window. Another time, they broke in when he was out and ruined his carpet. It was personal, not random, and youths don’t just break into a house in the middle of the day. Now I know her family are gypsies, I reckon it must have been them.”
“When do you think Mirnov will return home?” Matt asked.
“Not for an hour or more. Ever since his wife died, he goes for a drink at The Rose and Crown on Bunhill Row after he locks up his cart.”
Matt thanked her and she went to close the door, but I had one more question to ask. “Does Mr. Mirnov receive many visitors here?”
“Not often.”
“What about a man named Trentham?”
“I don’t know.” She ran her tongue over her top teeth beneath her lip. “There was a fellow who came here some time ago, but I remember him on account of his fancy carriage.” She nodded at our conveyance then thrust out her hand again. “I could be persuaded to remember more.”
Brockwell sighed, but Matt
handed over another coin without comment.
The woman rubbed her stomach again. “He was a real fat gen’leman with a long white moustache.”
So Mirnov had lied about never meeting Lord Coyle. His lordship had even visited the toymaker here. The question was, why? What did they discuss?
Unfortunately the neighbor had no more answers for us. We returned to our carriage and Matt gave Woodall instructions to find the Rose and Crown on Bunhill Row.
Brockwell wasn’t keen for me to enter the pub, but Matt knew better than to forbid me. While Shoreditch wasn’t the worst area of London, it was close, and we were very conspicuous. With Matt and Brockwell flanking me, I felt safe, only enduring some curious stares from the patrons we passed. Aside from the serving women, I was the only female and my attire was vastly different to theirs. My shoulders were covered, for one thing, and my décolletage hidden beneath a fur-lined coat.
There was no point trying to blend in since we stuck out like elephants, so Matt asked one of the serving women if she knew Nicholas Mirnov. She nodded toward a fellow with his back to us at the end of the counter. Even seated on the stool, his height was distinctive.
Matt removed his hat and ducked his head to avoid hitting a beam and Brockwell and I followed behind. The deeper we moved into the pub, the more crowded it became. It was warmer too, and the pungent mix of odors grew thicker.
“Mirnov,” Matt said. “We have more questions.”
Mr. Mirnov groaned as he turned to face us. “Can’t a man drink in peace after a long day?”
Brockwell indicated the people surrounding us, talking loudly so they could be heard over the other patrons, and the violinist standing on a chair in the corner, torturing his instrument. “You call this peaceful?”
“No one bothers me here. Until now. What do you want? I’ve answered everything you’ve asked of me.”
“We have more questions which we’d also be much obliged if you answer.” Brockwell angled himself so that he could rest an elbow on the counter. The barman, wiping a tankard with a dirty gray cloth, waited for an order, but Brockwell didn’t notice him.
