Стефани Баррон - A Flaw in the Blood

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.

As 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.