Dukes Prefer Blondes (12 page)

“What is it?” Lady Clara said.

“I'm not sure.”

He shoved the window down for a better look. “Stay back,” he said. “Do not let them see you. We . . .” He trailed off as he realized what the uproar was about.

He opened the door and climbed out. “Stay,” he said.

“Mr. Radford.”

But he wasn't listening. He was hurrying down the alley, looking up, as everybody else was, at the figure running across the roof.

The boys had stopped trying to escape in favor of watching the show and cheering Chiver on. His hat at its usual insolent angle, he clambered from the roof of their lair to the roof of the next building. This one had a steep pitch, and he slid twice, but managed to catch hold of something—­a rope, it looked like—­and drag himself back up again.

A policeman appeared on the roof of the building Chiver had fled. The police inside must have encountered obstacles. A constable was supposed to have gone straight to the roof, to prevent this sort of thing.

“Nowhere to go, Chiver,” the officer shouted. “Give it up!”

Radford hurried along the pavement, steps ahead of the boy on the roof.

“Go, Chiver!” one of the boys shouted. “Show 'em how you can go!”

“Don't let 'em catch you!”

“Show 'em, Chiver!”

The others took up the cry.

Holding on to the rope, Chiver worked his way upward. He took hold of the crumbling chimney and managed to work his way to the roof's peak. The rope must have been tied about the chimney at an earlier time, Radford thought. They'd want escape routes. Freame would, in any case, though it seemed a risky choice of route for him.

By now all the alley was awake. ­People hung out of windows, trying to see what was happening. Their neighbors opposite reported.

“He's got a foothold!”

“Won't hold him!”

“There he goes!”

“No, he's back!”

“He's mad! Where's he goin'?”

Radford strode down the alley on the opposite side, keeping ahead of the boy on the roof.

He watched Chiver straddle the roof's peak, swing a leg over, and start sliding down the other side. The rope slipped from his hands. He grabbed the lower corner of the chimney and clung there while he fought to regain his balance.

The policeman was trying to scramble up the roof on the other side.

“He's comin' for you, Chiver! Keep goin'!”

Chiver slid down cautiously. The next roof was a few feet below him. He jumped down and ran across it—­and stopped abruptly, inches from empty air.

Between this building and the next yawned a gap. The two buildings leaned away from each other, making the space between them wider at the top. The roof he needed to get to wasn't level with the one he stood on. He'd have to leap upward across ten feet of space.

“Give it up!” Radford shouted. “You haven't got wings.”

“That you, Raven?” the boy called. “Whyn't you fly up and get me, then?” He laughed.

“Go on!” one of the boys shouted. “You can do it, Chiver!”

“You can do it!” The boys began to chant, “Fly, Chiver, fly!”

Chiver pulled his hat to a sharper angle. “I can do it easy!” he shouted back.

He started to back away, for a running start. But the constable was climbing down from the peaked roof. “Stay where you are, boy!” he shouted.

“Don't think I will,” Chiver shouted back.

“Don't be a fool!” Radford shouted. “Your legs aren't long enough!”

“Yeah, we'll see. Watch me fly, Raven! Watch me!”

With a laugh, the boy stepped back a pace and leapt, an instant before the constable could grab him, and caught hold of the roof edge. The boys, who'd gone utterly still during the leap, burst into cheers. Chiver clung for an endless moment, legs pumping as he tried to pull himself up. There was a hush as he swung one leg up toward the roof. Then his hands began to slide, and down he went, with a blood-­chilling shriek, cut off as he struck the paving stones below.

C
lara heard shouting, a sudden silence, another outburst, then silence again. She looked out of the window in time to see Radford round the corner of a building, a policeman on his heels. Other policemen were collecting boys and bringing them toward her end of the alley. She was supposed to stay in the carriage, and call out when she saw Toby, but she didn't see him.

She tilted her bonnet brim downward, opened the door, and jumped down from the coach.

The sour aroma of unwashed boys assaulted her nostrils, and for a moment she thought she'd be ill. But she hadn't time for that. Something unplanned-­for had happened. By the looks on the boys' faces, it was something dreadful. Most of these children were hardened in crime, according to Radford. Yet while some struggled with the police and others shouted defiance, their hearts didn't seem to be in it.

“What's happened?” she asked the nearest constable. “What was that noise?”

“It's Chiver!” a very little boy cried. “Gone off the roof, he has.”

“Splat!” someone else said with a laugh that sounded patently false.

She suppressed a shudder.

“None of these, is it, ma'am?” the constable said.

She shook her head. “Where's Toby?” she asked the boys.

“Which one of 'em's him, then?” one said.

“Never heard of him,” another said.

“Gone off the roof with Chiver.”

“No, gone to Billingsgate for oysters.”

Laughter and more fanciful answers followed.

She started for the house.

“Ma'am, you'd best not go there,” the constable said. “We still don't know who's inside and who isn't. They got all kinds of bolt holes.”

If they had bolt holes, Chiver would have used one, she thought, instead of leaping from a roof.

She took a firm grip of Davis's umbrella and marched to the house door. It stood open. A policeman tried to get in her way but she adopted her grandmother's autocratic air and waved him aside with the umbrella.

One of the boys made a run for it then, and the policeman had to go after him.

Clara hurried into the house. This time the smell nearly drove her back out again. The odors of dirt and decay rose to her nostrils, blanketing everything in a suffocating miasma. She blinked, tried to breathe only through her mouth, and started up the narrow stairs.

This was worse, far worse, than the ragged school. She could barely see in front of her, and perhaps that was for the best. The stairs creaked and the whole house seemed to groan, but she heard no signs of human life.

On the first floor, two doors stood open. In both she saw clear signs of recent panic: blankets and clothes flung about, crockery in pieces, a toppled coffeepot, an overturned chair. The fire was nearly out, only one or two coals faintly glowing.

The boys had come in, she knew, shortly before dawn. They slept in the mornings, then went out to pick pockets and steal laundry and such in the afternoon. At night they'd break into houses or commit other darkness-­friendly crimes, like assaulting anybody who looked like he or she couldn't fight back, according to Radford. Early morning was the best time to catch them. They'd have gone to sleep by then, and most would wake up groggy, slower to react. That, at any rate, was the hope. By the looks of things, they hadn't been very groggy.

“Toby!” she called. “You know me, I'm sure. Bridget's friend from her school.”

No answer. She found a candle and a piece of straw. She applied the straw to one of the feebly burning coals and used it to light the candle.

She looked into the corners and behind ragged curtains, calling for Toby. She checked the other room in the same way.

No response.

Heart sinking, she went out into the gloomy corridor, and climbed the rickety stairs to the next floor. The first door showed her a room smaller than the ones below, but crammed with baskets of metal and wooden objects. Articles of clothing and bed linens hung from ropes. The thieves' booty. A treasure trove of evidence for the police.

“Toby!” she called.

She thought she heard something. It might have been pigeons. Or rodents squeaking.

Holding the candle high, she went out and into the other room.

“Toby?”

A sob. Other sounds. Words, possibly, but unintelligible.

“Toby, it's me, Bridget's friend. You remember, I'm sure.”

A groan. A cough.

She moved toward the sounds. They came from a heap of foul-­smelling rugs.

As she neared, the heap moved.

“Toby?”

“Help me. I can't run. I'm so sick.”

She knelt and drew away some of the rugs. The boy lay curled into a ball, shivering. “Toby.”

“They left me,” he croaked. “Will I die?”

S
ome of the smaller boys were wailing about Chiver, and one of the older ones got a clever idea and started screaming, “Murder! Them raw lobsters've killed poor 'Enery!”

Oh, good. Just what was wanted now. A riot.

The other boys took up the cry, then the ­people in the windows of neighboring buildings. Some rubbish rained down on the police, but no bricks. In any case, they were used to abuse and had on several occasions demonstrated skill in quelling riots.

Sam Stokes appeared, without Freame in custody, which meant the gang leader had slipped away again.

The inspector's bland face gave away nothing. Any disappointment, dismay, frustration, or other emotion he felt did not disturb his unremarkable exterior. He waded into the fray with his usual calm unobtrusiveness.

Radford left him and his men to deal with it and turned back into the alley. His gaze went straight to the coach and its open door. He started to run.

“Where is she?” he shouted.

A sergeant jerked a thumb toward the house. “Went in, sir. I had no way to stop her, not without violence.”

“She was armed with an
umbrella
! You can't control one female carrying an umbrella?”

He didn't wait for an answer but ran into the building.

“Clara! I warn you, you'd better not be in here! Clara!”

He raced up the stairs, his heart pounding. These old buildings were notoriously ramshackle. They fell in all the time. Only last week four ­people had died in a building collapse.

But no. Freame might risk his boys—­he could always find more boys—­but he wouldn't store his plunder in a shaky building.

Rodents and other vermin would abound, though. And fever-­breeding filth. The walls were damp. The place stank of mildew and worse.

And who knew what cutthroats lurked in hidden places.

But that was Radford's other self, in a panic and letting his imagination run wild. He thrust him out of the way and stormed up the stairs.

“
Stay
, I told you,” he muttered. “When I get my hands on you, my fine lady, you'll wish you'd remained at home with your needlework and your lovers.”

He was starting for one of the open doors when he heard the sounds above. Footsteps, making the floor creak. The rustle of petticoats.

He looked up. She approached the rickety railing.

“Don't lean on it!” he warned. “Don't touch it!”

She drew back a pace. “There you are,” she said.

There she was, undamaged, apparently. Before he could draw a breath of relief, she said, “Hurry, Mr. Radford, do. Toby's sick and I need help moving him.”

Radford swore once, with great energy, then ran up the stairs and into the room.

He knelt by the boy. He felt his forehead and checked his pulse.

He heard her draw nearer, the floor creaking under her feet.

“Stay back,” he said tightly. “I think it's only a chill, but there's no way to be sure. Go make yourself useful for once. Bring me the cleanest sheets or blankets you can find. You ought to find plenty to choose from.” He looked about him. “They've robbed clotheslines enough, by the looks of it.”

She didn't argue this time. A moment later she returned with an armful of bed linens. He unwrapped Bridget's idiot brother from the filthy rugs and wrapped him in the cleaner things she'd brought. He caught the boy up in his arms—­he weighed next to nothing—­and rose.

“Lead the way,” ' he said. “Watch for sharp objects on the stairs. Tetanus is fatal, no matter what the patent medicine quacks claim.”

M
r. Radford carried Toby down the stairs with a gentleness in complete contradiction to the steady stream of reproaches he directed at Clara.

She was supposed to stay in the coach. She had promised to do exactly as he told her. She had broken her promise. He ought not to be surprised. He wasn't. Not at all. He had trusted her—­which was very stupid of him, obviously, and he couldn't believe he'd been so naïve. Like everybody else of her class, she had no consideration for anybody else. She was welcome to risk her own neck—­indeed, he hoped she would, at another time and far away from him—­but she had no right to risk his
career
. If somebody had garroted her while she was fussing over Toby Coppy, Raven Radford's reputation would be
ruined
. He'd be lucky if he was permitted to practice law in Outer Mongolia.

Near the landing before the ground floor, they met the police going up. Mr. Radford interrupted his vituperation to tell them where the thieves' plunder was.

“No sign of Freame?” an officer said. “We haven't seen Husher, either.”

Mr. Radford suggested where they ought to look for hiding places.

To Clara's knowledge, he'd barely glanced at his surroundings. But he must have done more than glance, because he seemed to have memorized the room and its contents. In detail. He'd noticed at least a dozen things she hadn't. But then, she'd fixed her attention on Toby.

“Some of them might still be about, but I doubt you'll find Freame,” he added. “If he was here when we arrived, he would have made himself scarce while Chiver was putting on a show for us.”