“Oh no, really, there’s no need.” Luciana smiled. “I am sure you must have many affairs of your own to take care of.”
“But I must see you safe home,” Danvers said. “Or at least, as far as I can take you personally, which in this case means putting you on that train.”
Luciana felt Charley’s eyes on her again. “You are putting us in a cab directly there, Mr Danvers. I assure you, we will be quite safe. And really, we have trespassed upon your generosity so much already.”
Philpot Danvers rubbed his chin. “As it happens I do have a meeting with a chap later. But I can still do both…”
“Really, there’s no need,” Luciana insisted. “You’ve already done more than enough.”
Danvers sighed. “All right. Well, I don’t mind telling you, it would be rather useful, today of all days. Turner,” he called, raising his voice. “Please give the money for train tickets to Miss Cattaneo. They are going to see themselves to the train.” He looked down at Luciana again. “Just be sure to let me know when you reach home, won’t you?”
“We will. And thank you again, Mr Danvers,” Luciana said. “You really have been most kind.”
“All right,” Charley said, as the carriage pulled away. “What’s going on? And why do I have a horrible feeling that we’re not getting on a train home?”
“We will,” Luciana promised. “But we can’t go straight back. We need to go somewhere else first.”
“Where?”
“To a place called the Brown Bear in Whitechapel.” Luciana reached into her pocket and held up a slip of paper. “And before you ask what’s there, I don’t know. But that’s the address that was written on this piece of paper that was inside Philpot Danvers’ puzzle box.”
Charley shook his head. “I knew it. You did manage to open it! Why didn’t you want Danvers to know?”
Luciana shrugged. “I don’t trust him. I liked him at first, but like you said, something just doesn’t feel right. If he was such a close friend of my grandfather’s, why did he never visit us in Midford? And if he was meant to have the puzzle box, wouldn’t my grandfather have given him one with a key that was something he knew about?”
“What was the key, anyway?” Charley asked.
“It was the complete wing pattern of a female Swallowtail,” Luciana said. “It was spread over all six sides of the box, so I had to think of it in sections. I don’t think Mr Philpot Danvers is ever likely to work that out, do you?”
It took them an hour to reach the Brown Bear after asking directions from an off-duty guard at Charing Cross. The route they had been pointed towards took them along the curving edge of the Thames. The tide was out and so they walked on the river’s icy shore, stepping over slippery driftwood and on the crushed shells of oysters thrown from the balconies of the wharfs and taverns above. They came up from the shoreline to pass over the narrow bridge at the busy entrance of St Katherine Docks. At Wapping High Street, they turned inland, along busy streets thronged with hawkers and lined with slush. They passed a music hall called Wilton’s, closed since it wasn’t yet even midday. Then, a little further on, there was the Brown Bear public house. It occupied the ground floor of a three-storey building of sand-coloured brick, with an archway to its right that led to a coaching courtyard behind.
Luciana looked up at the building, suddenly apprehensive about what they may find inside. She’d never been inside a pub before. But then, she reflected, she’d never done a lot of the things that she’d done over the past couple of days, and so far everything had turned out fine.
“Come on,” she said to Charley. “Let’s get on with it.”
Inside, the pub was dingy, uncertain light falling from the oil lamps set in the wall and through the grubby windows. One long bar of dark wood ran along the middle of the narrow space, with tables and chairs dotted around the wooden floor. Luciana led the way. A large man in a greasy shirt was behind the bar. He leaned on it heavily as they approached.
“Well, well,” he said, looking them up and down. “What have we here then?”
“Just two hungry travellers looking for a meal,” Luciana said, sounding bolder than she felt.
The man looked amused. “And a little chit to speak for them both,” he said. “Well, we don’t hold nothing against the different in here. We’ve got oysters and bacon with good beer gravy. I’ll send over a couple of platefuls.”
Charley led the way to an unoccupied table beneath one of the windows.
“So,” he said. “Do you think this is the place, or not?”
“It must be,” Luciana said. “It’s definitely the place that was hidden inside the puzzle. But I don’t know what we’re supposed to be looking for.”
Charley stood up. “I’m going to take a look around,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
He walked past one end of the bar, as if he were heading for the conveniences or the kitchen, all situated at the back of the room. Then he turned left and vanished from view along a passageway that ran behind the bar. He reappeared at the other end a couple of minutes later and beckoned to Luciana, who got up and hurried over.
“Look,” he said, pointing to one of the posters on the drab wall. It hung in an ornate wooden frame, its colours an unexpected rainbow in the dimness of the passageway.
The Magnificent Marko!
Be Amazed!
Be Entranced!
Be Flabbergasted!
Behold the Most Extraordinary Sights ever seen on the London Stage!
“That’s one of Grandfather’s posters!” Luciana exclaimed. “But what’s it doing here?”
Behind them the door to what was evidently the kitchen swung open in a flurry of greasy smells. The barkeep appeared, bearing two steaming plates of food.
“What’re you two doing back here?” he asked. “I’ve got your grub. You’ll want it while it’s hot.”
Charley pointed at the poster. “Why have you got that?” he asked.
The barkeep glanced at it and gave a short grunt. Then he turned his head back to the kitchen door raised his voice in a shout.
“Fervent!” he bellowed. “You’re wanted!”
Timothy Fervent was a small plump man with a salutation of red hair and very anxious eyes.
“I cannot believe it,” he murmured in an accent that drifted over the sea from Ireland. “That you should find me here. How did you know where I was?”
“I didn’t, but –” Luciana took out the piece of paper that had been folded inside the puzzle box – “my grandfather sent me here. Well, in a manner of speaking, I think he did, anyway.”
“The question is,” Fervent asked, “why did your grandfather want anyone to find me at all? I’m a cook in a pub, and before that I was just a barkeep in another pub. I’m not important.”
“Is that how you knew Marko?” Charley asked.
“Yes.” Fervent sighed. “He used to come into the last place I worked. That was up on the Charing Cross Road. We got to talking one day and then it happened that we got to be friends. I even came to see the show one night. He got me front-row tickets. Right proud to be there, I was. It was the only night that he ever performed the Golden Butterfly. I was one of the first to see it, and the last.” The man shook his head. “A terrible shame, all that business.”
“Did he talk to you about it?” Charley asked around a final mouthful of oysters and bacon. “What happened with Thursby and the Grand Society of Magicians, I mean?”
At the mention of Thursby’s name, Fervent’s eyes turned baleful. “That devil. No, Marko never spoke of it, save when he told me he’d not be in any more. That was only a week or so after that show, and Thursby was hounding him even then. He followed your grandfather in and sat watching us as if we were criminals. Then he got up and went without even buying a drink. He left two of his lackeys in the bar instead. They came in every day for two weeks after that, just to stare at me. That’s why I quit and came here. Felt as if I were under siege. And for what? As if a great man like that
would tell someone like me any secrets. They just enjoyed the bullying, if you ask me. Small men with small lives given a sense of power – they’re by far the worst kind of men to walk this earth.”
Luciana pushed her plate aside. “What about that poster on the wall back there,” she asked. “Where did that come from?”
“Ah, well,” said Fervent. “It turned up here about a week after I started this job. There weren’t a note or anything with it, and Lord only knows how your grandfather knew where I was. It’s not as if there aren’t pubs aplenty in London town, and I didn’t tell him where I was going. It must have come from him though, mustn’t it? I took it as a little thank-you for all our chats. T’aint nowhere for me to hang it in the eaves of the attic where I bed down and it’s too fine not to be seen, so I asked if I could hang it here.”
“It arrived as it is now?” Charley asked. “In that frame?”
“Why, yes, for which I was doubly grateful,” said Timothy Fervent. “It is a very fine frame indeed. Like nothing I could have afforded myself.”
Luciana and Charley looked at each other across the table.
“Would you … permit me to examine it?” Luciana asked. “Could we remove it from the wall?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“I can see why not,” the barkeep barked across the room. “You’re supposed to be out the back slaving over a hot stove, not having a chinwag.”
“Let me just get it down for them,” said the cook, standing up. “Then I’ll get back in the kitchen.”
Fervent disappeared into the passage, reappearing a couple of minutes later hefting the poster in its frame. Charley hastily moved their empty plates out of the way so that he could lay it down on the table in front of them.
“All right,” Fervent said. “I don’t know what earthly good it’ll do you, but you take a look. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
With that, he returned to the kitchen. A moment later the sound of whooshing steam and clanging pans echoed from the back of the pub. Luciana began to examine the frame. The decoration was ornate; deep curlicues and whorls in a baroque pattern that was nothing like the oriental style of her grandfather’s desk or the boxes she’d deciphered.
“I don’t think this is going to help us,” she said after a while. “I think it’s just what it looks like – a picture in a frame.”
“Let’s not give up yet,” Charley said. “Turn it over and we’ll have a look at the back.”
Together they flipped the frame over so that the poster was lying face down on the table, but the board this revealed was smooth and featureless. It seemed impossible that such a blank surface could hold any secrets at all.
“Well,” Charley said gloomily, after another thorough examination had yielded no clues. “Maybe you’re right and this was nothing but a wild goose chase after all.”
“What’s that?” Fervent asked, appearing back at the table.
“It’s just the back of the frame,” Luciana told him, “and there’s nothing on it to help us at all.”
“No,” said the cook, pointing at the edge of the frame. “I meant those.”
Luciana and Charley leaned over to see what he was pointing at. There, set in the edge of the frame, was a short line of what looked like tiny gold rivets.
“That’s odd,” said Charley, examining the rest of the frame. “There aren’t any more elsewhere. I don’t think they’re to hold the frame together.”
Luciana ran a thumbnail across the wood surrounding the rivets. It felt slightly uneven. “I think there’s a join in the wood,” she said. “Maybe a drawer?”
“If it is, it’s no deeper than a Penny Dreadful is thick,” said Fervent. “What good is anything inside it going to be?”
“Well, let’s find out,” Luciana said. She reached up to her hair and took out one of the pins holding some of her curls in place. Then she pulled the pin apart until it was just a very slim, straight piece of metal. She fitted one end to the head of the last rivet in the row and pushed. It gave, just a little.
Fervent glanced over his shoulder at the bar as Luciana was pushing her hairpin into the final rivet. The pub had begun to fill since they’d sat down, and the barkeep was occupied with too many customers to notice that he wasn’t in the kitchen.
Luciana pushed the final rivet back and almost immediately a narrow panel popped open. Rather than a drawer, it was simply a thin flap of wood, no more than half a centimetre wide and the length of the hairpin she’d used to open it. Peering inside, Luciana could see something lodged in the space within.
“What is it?” Thomas asked, leaning in.
“I don’t know…” Luciana tried to lift the frame to tip whatever it was out, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s stuck.”
“Use the hairpin again,” Charley suggested. “Maybe you can coax it out?”
Luciana bent the pin back against itself to form a sort of ‘L’ shape and tried to hook it around the object in the frame. The pin kept giving way, and she had to keep pulling it out and straightening the two arms of the ‘L’ before trying again.
“It’s moving,” she said, teeth gritted. “I think—”
At that moment a tiny gleam of gold appeared, as whatever it was reached the edge of the frame. Luciana grasped it with her fingertips. Bit by bit, the sliver of metal grew larger and larger. Luciana looked up at Charley.
“I know what it is,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Charley, “I think I do too.”
One final tug and there it lay on the table, strangely wing-shaped, with a tiny rivet in each corner.
“Well,” said Fervent, leaning back with a perplexed look on his face. “I’m glad you two know what it is, because I haven’t got a clue. And I don’t think it’s real gold neither.”
Luciana was already fumbling in her bag. “It’s not,” she said. “We think it’s made of brass. Like this one.”
She pulled out what she’d been seeking and laid it on the table. The two devices – the one she’d found in her grandfather’s desk and the one she had just succeeded in freeing – were almost identical. There was just one difference. The second device had no ribbon-thin piece of metal leading from it – although it did have a tiny scar where, perhaps, such a thing had once been joined.
“Well,” said Charley. “Would you look at that?”
He reached out and rearranged the two pieces so that they lay side by side, close enough that the ribbon of metal leading from the first touched the scar on the second.
Luciana and Charley looked at each other across the table. “What does that look like to you?” she asked.
Charley grinned. “It looks like a pair of wings. Butterfly wings. Golden ones!”
Luciana stared down at the two pieces. “Is this what Thursby is looking for?” she whispered. “Is this what he’s been trying to find for so long?”
“It’s got to be, hasn’t it?” Charley said.
“So … this is the secret to making the trick work then?” she asked. “But … how?” She peered into the gap left in the frame but it was empty. “There aren’t any instructions and we already know we couldn’t work out what was inside.”
Charley shrugged. “Perhaps we needed both pieces?”
Luciana rubbed a hand over her face and sighed. “What we need is someone who can tell us what exactly it is and how it works.”
Timothy Fervent reached out and covered both pieces with his hand, pushing them back towards Luciana. “Well, until you find that person, better keep them both under wraps,” he said, glancing over her head and scanning the crowd that had filled the room around them. “Never know who’s watching, do you?”
Luciana opened her bag and slipped the two small golden wings into it. “What are we going to do now?”
Charley looked at the time on the large clock that hung behind the bar. “We need to start making our way back to the station if we’re going to get back to Rotherton tonight.”
“We can’t stop now,” L
uciana protested. “We still don’t know what the golden wings do!”
“We don’t even know who to ask for help in working that out,” Charley pointed out.
Fervent glanced over to the bar again and leaned in. “If it makes any difference, I think I know who you need to be looking for.” He nodded at Luciana’s bag. “If anyone’s going to know what to do with that thing you’ve got there, it’ll be Adeline.”
“Adeline?” Luciana repeated. “You mean … Adeline Morrell? My grandfather’s assistant?”
Fervent nodded. “I bet she’d be able to help you, if you can find her.”
“But she’s not in England any more, is she?” Charley asked. “When the Magnificent Marko quit the stage, didn’t she go abroad? That’s what Philpot Danvers told us.”
Timothy Fervent frowned. “Philpot Danvers?”
“Do you know him?” Luciana asked. “He was a friend of my grandfather’s too.”
“Was he?” Fervent asked. “Are you sure?”
Luciana and Charley looked at each other with a frown. “Well, he said he was,” she said. “One of the clues we found sent us to him. And he had one of my grandfather’s puzzle boxes – the one that led us here. Why?”
Fervent glanced towards the bar again. The crowd had thinned a little. “You remember I told you that Carl Thursby had two men watching your grandfather and me? One of them was Philpot Danvers.”
“What?” said Charley, shocked.
“That’s not all,” said Fervent, leaning closer still. “The other man … is standing at the bar this very moment.”
Luciana looked over her shoulder, searching the sea of faces for someone she recognized. One in particular caught her eye. It was a man with a cloth cap pulled down low over his eyes. He was leaning on the bar, holding a pint of beer in one hand. There was a newspaper beside him and he looked as if he were reading it. But as Luciana watched, she saw him glance in their direction. His eyes met Luciana’s. She turned away sharply.
The Golden Butterfly Page 8
