Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

THE RODNEY PLACE MISSIONARY SOCIETY

Mary knocked on the basement door. A candle flame flickered in the black glass of a nearby window. Bolts scraped back. The door opened.

“Child,” said Mr. Fanmole in his soft voice. “You are long past your time.”

“I beg pardon, sir. The nurse was late and I couldn’t leave my mother.”

When she was inside, Mr. Fanmole closed and bolted the door. He wore a long grey dressing gown of a silken material that gleamed in the candlelight; his little head was perched on a broad neck that rose from narrow shoulders.

“Come, child.” He led the way along a whitewashed passage vaulted with brick, his shadow cavorting behind him on the wall. “You saw him?”

“Yes, sir. He came out with the other gents, and then he stopped for a while and talked with one of them. Mr. Brunel himself.”

She followed Mr. Fanmole into a room at the back of the house. A coal fire burned in the grate and there were shutters across the two windows. He sat down at a mahogany table laden with papers and angled his chair to face the fire. He beckoned her to stand before him.

“Well, child? What did you learn?”

“He’s interested in a new railway, but he hasn’t made up his mind. He’s lodging at the Great Western Hotel. And… and I took his watch.”

Mr. Fanmole slapped the palm of his hand on the table, and his pen fell unnoticed to the carpet. “I told you to be discreet, you little fool. This was not an occasion for thieving.”

“But he was playing with it, sir, just asking for it to be prigged. And my ma, she’s took bad again, and she needs a nurse as well as a doctor-and it’s a good watch, too, sir. You give me a sovereign for the last one, and I’m sure-”

“Hold your prattle.”

“Sir, he didn’t see my face, I swear it. And I was away through the crowd before he knew the watch was gone.”

“Give it me,” he commanded.

Mr. Fanmole held out his hand and she dropped the watch onto his palm. To her surprise he smiled. “Ah! He will be enraged. He’s deeply attached to his Breguet timepiece.”

“Sir,” she asked timidly, “how much will I have when you sell it? My mother-”

“It’s too precious to sell, child. Far too precious.”

“But, sir, I don’t understand.”

He gazed at her, whistling tunelessly, and put down the watch, very gently, on the table. “You don’t have to understand.”

“I-I thought you’d be pleased, sir.”

Suddenly he was on his feet and looming over her. His hand shot out and seized her by the hair. He dragged her to a tall cupboard built into the wall on the right of the fireplace. He opened the door. Hanging inside was a yellow silk gown.

“This is how to please me, child.”

In the opinion of Sir John Ruispidge, Mr. Brunel was not quite the gentleman. But it would be churlish to deny that he had been kindness itself after the distressing theft of the Breguet watch at Temple Meads Station. He had summoned police officers and urged them to prosecute their enquiries with the utmost vigour. He had ordered advertisements to be placed in the Bristol papers, offering a reward of twenty guineas for the watch’s safe return.

“Not for the world, my dear sir,” he had said, “would I have had such an incident occur.”

Sir John could well believe it. The long and the short of it was that Brunel had every reason to keep him sweet.

That evening he dined in Queen Square with two men who might become fellow directors if he decided to accept Brunel’s overtures. Still shaken by his experience, he drank deep and left early. The loss of his watch had been a double blow-first the watch itself, which he cherished, and second the circumstances of its theft. As an old soldier, Sir John prided himself on being a man of action, always prepared for the unexpected. But he had not even tried to apprehend the young person. He had behaved, in short, like a milksop.

But he would not be caught unprepared again. As the carriage whirled him back to his hotel near the Cathedral, Sir John patted the pocket of his overcoat and felt the reassuring outline of his Adams revolver. Only recently patented, it was a double-action model enabling rapid fire; according to his gunsmith, its bullet would stop a charging tiger.

The carriage drew up outside the hotel. A servant let down the steps and opened the door. As he climbed down, Sir John stumbled, and would have fallen if the man had not steadied him. He was perhaps a trifle bosky, but he prided himself on being a man who could hold his liquor. There might even be a case for a little brandy to aid digestion before he retired.

His apartments were on the first floor. He opened the sitting-room door and discovered that the people of the house had forgotten to bring lights and make up the fire. He marched towards the fireplace, intending to ring for a servant.

But something stopped him in his tracks, something amiss. There was a perfume in the air, clearly identifiable despite the underlying smell of his cigars. He acted without conscious thought. He pulled the heavy revolver from his pocket. Simultaneously he glimpsed a shadow shifting on the far side of the room.

The revolver went off with a crash that stunned him, the echoes almost masking the sound of scuffling and a cry and the closing of the door to the bedroom next to the sitting room. He was so surprised he nearly dropped the gun. He had not intended to shoot; he had forgotten that the Adams revolver was self-cocking and lacked a safety catch.

“Stop, thief!” Sir John cried, and the words came out little better than a whimper.

He moved unsteadily to the connecting door and flung it open. The bedroom appeared to be empty. A second door, leading directly to the corridor, stood open; the corridor was empty, too.

Trembling, Sir John returned to the bedroom and tugged the bell rope so hard it came away in his hand. As he looked about him for the brandy decanter, a piece of material on the carpet caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it under the light.

It was a scrap of yellow silk.

During the following day, Robbie earned a few coppers helping a stall holder at the market. Everyone was talking about the burglar at the Great Western Hotel, and how an old gent had put a bullet in him. When Robbie got back to his lodgings, the cobbler called out to him from his workshop.

“There’s a woman asking after you. That nurse, Mrs. Allardyce. She said you was to go over to Mrs. Linnet’s. But first things first. I need a dozen tallow candles from Hornby’s. If you look sharp you’ll catch them before they close.”

Robbie ignored the order, just as he ignored the shout that pursued him up the street. He ran all the way to Hotwells. The house where the Linnets lodged was full of lights and noise but their window was dark. He climbed the stairs and tapped on the door. There was no answer. He turned the handle and went inside the room. The air made him gag.

“Mrs. Linnet? Mary?”

“Robbie?” Mary’s mother whispered from the alcove near the fireplace. “Is that you?”

“Yes. Shall I light the lamp?”

He blundered through the darkness and found the oil lamp and a box of matches on the mantel. Mrs. Linnet’s face appeared in the wavering light. She was lying on her pallet, huddled under a mound of blankets.

“What’s happened? Where’s Mary?”

“She didn’t come back last night. Mrs. Allardyce stayed till morning but then she had to go.”

“Is she coming to sit with you tonight?”

The head rolled on the pillow. “No. I can’t pay her. Mary said she’d bring some money. Where is she, Robbie? I’m worried.”

“I’ll find her. Did she go out again last night?”