A Flaw in the Blood (24 page)

“Lift me,” she said.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

G
IBBON CARRIED THE STACK OF
old shoes and worn shirts carefully through the scullery, negotiating the narrow doorway and the three steps to the small back garden. Twenty feet farther was the wrought-iron gate giving onto the mews, and the familiar bearded face of the rag-and-bone man who worked the Bedford Square neighbourhood.

Percy was his name, although Gibbon had formed the habit of addressing him as
Perceval
—this added a fragile dignity to the scavenger's occupation. He was not admitted to the gated central square, but the mews were open to carriage traffic, and thus approachable by all manner of riff-raff; and the riff-raff performed their necessary functions: nightsoil men who cleared the few remaining cesspools (most of the houses had converted to sewer lines, running into the ancient mains), knife-grinders, milkmaids, and coal vendors.

Percy was waiting when Gibbon unlocked the back gate; he placed the clothes carefully in his handcart, and gave Gibbon a pile of coins warm from his wool-mittened palm. They had haggled over prices Saturday, and Percy had returned this Monday morning to collect the goods. Fitzgerald's bespoke castoffs would be sold to a second-hand clothing shop, at a minor profit for Percy; and from there, they would descend through the social scale over the next decade: mended and re-mended and then torn to pieces a dozen times to fit, eventually, the smallest child of the back slums.

The Yard's back-mews man watched the exchange with obvious boredom from his lounging vantage against the carriage house wall.

“Thank you, Perceval—that will be all,” Gibbon said formally as he made to close the wrought-iron gate. But Percy was fumbling in his pocket, his look one of leering cunning as he gazed at the valet from under his bushy eyebrows.

“Might be as I've somefink you'll like, Mr. Gibbon,” he suggested. “Somefink you've been looking for. Might be as we could agree to a price. If it's worth your time o' day.”

He flashed a bit of paper in the soiled palm of his hand before returning it to his pocket.

“We agreed on the figure,” Gibbon said. “I won't give you a penny more.”

“Somefink from your master a'zus scarpered,” Percy muttered, his eyes shifting to left and right.

“Very well,” Gibbon said with studied indifference. “If you insist on the charge—I'll give you sixpence.”

“A shilling.”

“Ninepence and no more.”

“Done.”

Gibbon dropped a few of Percy's cooling coins back in his palm; the slip of paper slid into his own.

“Good day,” he said distantly, and locked the gate with a clang.

The train they had caught in the woods Thursday night was bound not for Mainz, but Frankfurt. They reached it by midnight, and too tired to go any farther, took a room in a hotel not far from the station.

They registered as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. Georgiana refused to let Fitzgerald sleep on the floor; she was afraid, she told him, of what might happen—of men bursting through the door, of dreams turning to nightmare. She drew him down into her bed and when he asked if she was sure of what she was doing, she said simply, “I could die at any time, Patrick. So could you. We could be parted forever as soon as we reach England. There's no certainty in the future. I knew that, tonight, when I lay in that man's power— But we're together
now
. I refuse to waste my chance.”

“I would marry you tonight if I could,” he said.

She blew out the candle.

From Frankfurt they made for Koblenz, and from there, on Saturday morning, reached Ostend.

Fitzgerald had only a pound left in his pocket by that time, not nearly enough to buy their passage across the Channel. He sold his clothes and bought a second-hand set of worker's togs, then spent an hour looking for a steamer that was short a deckhand.

They had agreed that if he worked his way across to England, Georgie would travel in a respectable second-class berth as though they were strangers. If he could not find work that day, he would try the next. But it was vital, Fitzgerald thought, that she get out of Europe. He wanted her as far from von Stühlen as the sea could put her.

The seventh ship he queried had lost two men to the brothels, and was sailing that afternoon.

It was, Fitzgerald observed with an inner smile, his eternal recurrence: the Irishman who lived by his wits, making his way toward an uncertain future.

By dawn Sunday they'd landed at Dover.

Georgie boarded a train bound for London, and the refuge she hoped to find with John Snow's retired housekeeper is Islington; Fitzgerald made his way to Canterbury, and from there, by gradual degrees and found conveyances, reached London four hours later.

There had been no sign of von Stühlen since they'd left Hesse. But Fitzgerald was not a fool. He knew the Count would discover them, or die trying.

The note had told Gibbon to leave as usual for his supper at the local pub. Tonight, for the benefit of the police, he was to order his food and then seek the lavatory. Fitzgerald would be waiting for him in the alley behind the public house.

A sick thread of excitement was curling in Gibbon's gut, so that for the first time in weeks he forgot the lingering soreness of his healing back. His pulse was uneven and his colour high; if it had not been dark, he'd have given the game entirely away.

He was trailed, as usual, to the Fox & Badger; it had become a habit for the Yard's front-door men to order pigeon pie on these evenings, while Gibbon waited for his bangers and mash. He dawdled until the two of them tucked into their food before making his way to the rear of the establishment.

But his heart sank as he stepped through the publican's scullery, into the cold of the alley. Snow was falling gently on the rutted gravel, and a single man stood with his hands hunched in his pockets, no coat against the cold—a man with a soft slouch hat and several days' growth of beard. A working-class lout where Fitzgerald should be.

“Gibbon,” the man whispered softly.

He peered at him through narrowed eyes, stepped down off the rear stoop of the public house. “Lord love you, Mr. Fitz, you're rigged out like a navvy.”

“If you don't know me, Gibbon, I've achieved my end.”

He offered his hand, and the valet clasped it fervently. “I knew you'd come back to face the music. There's a price on your head—you know that?”

“Yes. But I slipped away when our packet landed at Dover, and I've steered clear of Bedford Square—I'm bedded down for the night at the Inner Temple. The police aren't watching my chambers at night.”

“Be out of there by dawn, if I may be so bold as to give advice. And Miss Armistead?”

“—is well enough. Gone to friends in Islington. You found your way back from France—well done, my Gibbon!”

Gibbon swallowed; there was much he might have said, but no time to say it. He reached into his coat.

“Here's some money, and a letter as Miss Georgie should see.”

“Good lad,” Fitzgerald said with difficulty. “I shouldn't take your bit savings—”

“It's all that's left of the housekeeping. Nobbut two pounds, four shillings, fivepence—I cleared the wardrobe and sold the castoffs.” Gibbon found he could not quite meet Fitzgerald's eyes; the world was topsy-turvy, when the valet paid the master.

Fitzgerald turned the envelope in his hands. “And the letter?”

“From HRH Princess Alice,” Gibbon said sheepishly.

“What?”

“We've been corresponding, Mr. Fitz. Seems she's mortal desperate to talk to Miss Georgie. It's summat to do with the Consort, I gather. She put a notice in the
Times,
and being curious as to who'd address Dr. Armistead in that manner—and not knowing when you might get a foothold in London again—I undertook to answer it. The Princess thinks I'm Miss Armistead.”

“By all that's holy,” Fitzgerald said blankly. “What does
she
want?”

“A meeting. Day after tomorrow, in Portsmouth. She's staying at Osborne House with the Queen, I reckon, and means to take the steamer from Cowes.”

“I must think.” Fitzgerald stuffed the letter in his pocket. “I must consult with Georgie. It could be a trap, Gibbon—”

“Aye. On the other hand—”

“Can you nobble those men who watch our house?”

Gibbon grinned. “Just give me the chance, Mr. Fitz! I've had a deal of time to consider of the problem—and I reckon I can pull the wool over their eyes.”

“Good. Meet me tomorrow at Victoria Station. Eight o'clock sharp. We'll take the first train that offers for the south coast. And Gibbon—God bless you. I don't deserve such loyalty.”

Gibbon thought of the horsewhip, the sun of Nice and the gendarmes' courtyard. The man who whispered in his ear the words of Judas:
He ran—and you've had to suffer for it.

“It's naught to go on about, Mr. Fitz. Mind you don't oversleep yourself in chambers. Wonderful patient the police are, seemingly—and they want to seize you in a powerful way.”

He watched as the figure disappeared in the snow, then turned back to his cold supper.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

A
S IT HAPPENED, FITZGERALD DID
not sleep at all that night.

For the past twenty years, the chambers he'd shared with Septimus Taylor had never varied. The two barristers kept separate offices, each boasting a casement window overlooking the precincts of the Inner Temple. The clerks—there were five of them, ranging from Samuel Smalls, age fifty-three, down to a lad they all called Tiffin, who was barely thirteen—sat on stools before their desks, which were tilted to support a variety of ledgers and inkwells. The clerks' room ran the length of the barristers' offices combined, and was windowless, being a reception area for the main chambers; but the clerks had their own fireplace. The room was usually warm and well-lit to accommodate legal writing.

Fitzgerald established himself here, with the outer door barred and an oil lamp burning brightly. He had no desire to attract attention with a midnight glow at his office window, and for the same reason, forbore to light the coal fire. The chambers had a sad, disused, and neglected air; he noticed the stores of tea and lamp oil were running low. But the chaos left by Taylor's attackers had been cleared and tidied, and the folios of clients' papers restored to their shelves. Someone—probably the head clerk, Samuel—had taken care to set the chambers to rights, regardless of the future or whether he might be paid. This small evidence of loyalty cheered Fitzgerald; he stood on the inner threshold of his own office, staring through the darkness, with an ache in his heart. He would not see it again.

Numb in the fireless room and the January cold, he sat himself before Samuel's high desk and filled his pen. In his neat, lawyerly handwriting, with the hard stool boring into his backside, he drew up a fair copy of Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen's signed confession. It had no legal force whatsoever, but as a salve to his conscience it was immeasurably important.

My dear Maude,
he wrote on the covering sheet,
If ever you held any faith in my name, honour that faith now—and read the enclosed. You know how precious the boy was to me. Forgive, if you can, what I cannot change or restore—and all the ways I have failed you. Patrick.

He sealed the letter and addressed it to Lady Maude in Kent. Then he stole into his shuttered office and by instinct as much as sight, retrieved the strongbox stored in a locked floor compartment beneath his desk. It had always been Fitzgerald's task to manage the chambers' finances; he kept a quantity of cash in the strongbox for the purpose. He left the clerks' monthly salary in an envelope marked with Samuel's name, and took what remained—some seventy pounds—for himself. Then he sat down once more to write out his estimate of the clerks' characters. It was probable no one would hire Samuel or Tiffin or any of the others when they read Fitzgerald's signature on the page; but he owed the boys an honourable dismissal.

It was nearly dawn by the time he finished. He turned down the oil lamp, collected his documents, and gave one last look around his chambers. It seemed, suddenly, as though the life he'd lived there—his marriage, the cases he'd tried and won, Theo and the love for him he'd hidden—was nothing but a dream.

*    *    *

Old Mrs. Russell, who had once been John Snow's housekeeper, lived in Albion Grove in the centre of Islington. It was a district of London that had once been prosperous but was now fallen on hard times; the aged Georgian house fronts were dingy with coal smoke. Snow had provided a pension for Mrs. Russell under his will, however, and she kept tidy lodgings; Georgiana had been in the habit of visiting her there one morning each month, to ensure the old lady wanted for nothing. It had been the obvious place for her to turn, after landing from Ostend.

Fitzgerald paid a boy loitering in Hemingford Road to carry a message to Mrs. Russell's door at seven-thirty that morning. The police might be following him, despite his wariness—and he had no wish to incriminate Georgie. But it was Mrs. Russell who answered his summons, her broad pink face suffused with worry. She climbed up into the hansom to give him the news.

“Arrested,” she said, “when we'd no sooner sat down to our supper.
An information was laid,
the Bobby told me—though as to
who
laid it, he would not breathe a word!
Abortion!
And her doing her sainted best to see those poor women comfortable, whichever way she can, and never mind the cost to herself. What would the dear doctor say, Mr. Fitzgerald, had he lived to see this day?”

You didn't keep her safe, Patrick,
John Snow's voice muttered once more in his ear.

He tried desperately to ignore it. He tried to throttle Snow's ghost, to quell his strident conscience, but the voices kept ringing. Theo's. Maude's. Georgie's. All saying the same thing:
You didn't keep me safe.

He could not silence them now, but he could push onward through the rising clamour, to Victoria Station where Gibbon was waiting, cautious newspaper raised, in easy view of the Portsmouth train.

“She goes before the magistrate today,” he told him, “in Bow Street. I can't appear for her, Gibbon—I'd only get myself thrown into gaol. But I can find Button Nance. I can force that woman to tell the truth. Will you help me?”

Jasper Horan fingered the telegram in his coat pocket. It was the first he'd ever received, and the printed lettering on the stiff yellow paper made him feel important, as though he'd joined the ranks of civil servants and army officers, men too important for mere letters in the post. The telegram had come yesterday, direct from the Dover packet office to the City warehouse where Horan was employed as head watchman. Von Stühlen's name at the end of the brief message.

His instructions were clear: Proceed to Miss Armistead's house in Russell Square and watch the premises for any sign of the lady's arrival. Then report the same to von Stühlen. Horan was not, under any circumstances, to let Miss Armistead slip through his fingers.

He'd told the tea merchant who paid his wage that he was sickening for a fever. He'd hailed a hansom for Russell Square and spent the next four hours and twenty-three minutes watching the premises in question. The house appeared deserted, and Horan had almost given it up as a bad job—when a hired fly rolled to a stop at Miss Armistead's door. The driver had stepped down, and conferred with the personage who answered his ring. After a wait of perhaps ten minutes, the horse stamping and the driver pacing in the cold, a maid appeared with a packed carpet bag, which she handed into the fly. The driver mounted the box—shook up the reins—and put Russell Square immediately to his back.

Horan, by this time, had engaged a cab and was hot in pursuit. He trailed the fly to Albion Grove, where another maidservant retrieved the carpet bag. It was a simple matter, after that, to report Miss Armistead's whereabouts to von Stühlen.

It was Horan who had the pleasure of summoning the police.