Anne Perry - A Christmas Odyssey

“I’ll take you,” she said, and turned and led them out of the hall, then along one passage after another, and down several flights of steps. It was damp and bitingly cold. The air smelled stale, and there was something on the walls that could have been mold.

Then Sadie seemed to change her mind. Almost doubling back on herself, she climbed a long, narrow flight of stairs upward.

“Where the devil are we going?” Squeaky demanded as they came outside into the night and followed her across a lantern-lit, freezing yard. The wind groaned in the eaves of the high buildings crowding around the small space. There were icicles hanging from broken gutters, and a rat scrabbled its way, burrowing among the discarded refuse for food.

Sadie avoided a wide door that looked as if it might have led to a tavern, and instead went to a narrow, poky opening between one stone wall and another. She turned sideways to get through the opening, and for a moment Squeaky was afraid she had escaped them.

He pushed his way through ahead of Henry and Crow. He felt in his pocket for his knife in case he should need it as soon as he emerged.

But there was only Sadie waiting for him. As soon as she saw him she started to walk away, knowing he would follow her. He looked at the pale gleam of her skin above her dress and wondered how she didn’t perish with the cold. Then an uglier thought occurred to him: Perhaps, in all senses that mattered, she was in a way dead already. He had seen a despair in her eyes that made that easy to believe.

Were they fools to follow her into this deeper hell than the wild self-indulgence they had already seen? How could he persuade Henry Rathbone not to go with her, when they seemed so close to finding Shadwell, and perhaps enough of the truth to convince Lucien to come back into the warm, breathing world and pay whatever it would cost him to go home again?

Squeaky was disgusted with himself that he liked Henry so much. What use was liking someone? It only ever got you into trouble. And if he imagined that they would like him in return, then he was stupider than the most idiotic drunkard in the halls and taverns they had just left. When this was over, Henry Rathbone would go back to his safe, clean house on Primrose Hill, and Squeaky would go back to keeping the books for Hester in the clinic on Portpool Lane. It would be surprising if they ever met again. Squeaky would have sacrificed his own internal comfort for nothing at all.

At the far end of the alley Sadie led them into another open patch where there was a narrow, scarred door. She pulled a key from around her neck and opened the lock, closing it behind them again when they were inside.

Here a wider stair led down into a labyrinth. They heard laughter, the drip and gurgle of water, and voices that echoed along the tunnels through which she walked as surely as if the way were marked before her.

Squeaky tried at first to keep track of where they were going—left or right, up or down—but after a quarter of an hour he knew he was lost. He was not even sure how far below the surface they were. He began to feel steadily worse about the whole thing. What had happened to the sense that usually warned him of danger? Except that he knew perfectly well what had happened to it: He had let it slip away from him because he was a fool, wanting to be liked.

He caught up with Sadie and grasped her arm.

She stopped abruptly.

“Where are we?” he demanded. “You’ve taken us round in circles! Where’s Shadwell, then?” He held her hard, deliberately pinching the flesh of her arm.

She did not pull away, as if she barely felt it. “Not far,” she answered. “I’ll show you where he is, then I’ll …”

There was the noise of a door slamming not far from them, and then soft laughter.

Squeaky froze. He swore vehemently under his breath, then looked across at Crow a yard away from him. Even in the half-light he could see the fear in his face. Beyond him, Henry was little more than a shadow.

Sadie turned to Crow. “He knows we’re here,” she whispered. “I thought I would trick him coming this way, but he still knows. We’ve got to get out. Come back another time.”

“What does he do down here?” Squeaky demanded.

“We’re not that far down,” Sadie replied. She was shivering. “Tell me where you want to go and I’ll take you there. You can come back for Shadwell any time.” She took the key off the chain around her neck and passed it to him. Her sea-blue eyes were almost luminous in the gleam. “Where do you want to get out?”

Crow named an alley. It was quarter of a mile from the room where they had left Lucien and Bessie, but a tortuous and half-hidden route.

Sadie nodded. “Follow me.” There was urgency in her voice now, and an edge of fear that had not been there before. “It isn’t very far.”

They obeyed. Squeaky glanced at Crow and knew that he would be trying to remember it as well.

She had not lied to them. It was perhaps twenty minutes later when they stood outside in the alley. The wind had dropped, and the fog was thick, so that it lay in a blanket over the roofs and trailed long, white fingers of blindness in the streets.

They parted from Sadie, and she was lost to their sight within moments. Crow crept forward, leading the way. He knew it well enough, even in this sightless condition.

Lucien and Bessie were waiting for them. Lucien was sitting up now and had a little color in his face.

“D’yer find ’im?” Bessie asked eagerly. She sat on the floor close to Lucien. There were several pieces of bread on an old newspaper, and the stove was still just alight. She gave them each a portion of bread, taking the smallest for herself. There was cheese also, but she gave all of it to Lucien. Squeaky wondered how many women she had seen do that for those they cared for, saying nothing of it, pretending they had already eaten their share.

“We know where he is,” Henry told her.

Squeaky was less sure, but he chose not to argue.

Henry recounted to Lucien their finding of Sadie, and her story that she had had no part in killing either Rosa or Niccolo.

Squeaky watched Lucien’s face, judging whether he knew all this: if it were lies, or the truth.

“Oh, just tell my father you couldn’t find me,” Lucien said to Henry. “For the person he wants you to find, that’s true enough. You won’t be lying.”

“Yes ’e would,” Bessie spoke suddenly. “ ’Cause you’re lyin’.” She looked at Henry. “Did ’is Pa say as ’e ’ad ter be a certain kind o’ person, or did ’e just say ’is son?”

“He just said his son,” Henry replied. He looked again at Lucien. “I did not imagine it would be easy for you. You do not simply walk away from people such as these. And before you leave, you have to prove that you did not kill Niccolo, or Rosa. You have to prove it to the people who cared for them, and you have to prove it to us. If you don’t, it is going to haunt you for the rest of your life, quite possibly in the very unpleasant form of someone coming after you. Surely you are not foolish enough to imagine that going back to your home would put you beyond their reach?”

“No,” Lucien agreed. “There is no such place of safety. There is always somebody who can be bought, whether for simple money, or from hunger of one sort or another—or out of fear.”

Bessie was looking at him, chewing her lower lip, waiting to see what he would do.

“They don’t know where you are,” Squeaky put in. “We’ll go and find him tomorrow.”

Lucien hitched himself up on his elbow.

“Not you,” Squeaky told him sharply. “You’re not well enough. You’ll just get in the way.”

“But …”

“You’ll stay here with Bessie. We haven’t got time to be looking out for you. Do as you’re told, unless you want me to set that wound of yours back a few days?”