India Black (18 page)

“Wait a minute, Rowena, dear. I’d like my money now. Who’s to say you won’t just disappear the minute you’ve serviced the old boy?”

I looked shocked. “Goodness, Frank. I don’t carry that kind of sum around with me. I’d be knocked on the head and left in the gutter. The old man will see me right in just a tic, and then I’ll be down to pay you what we’ve agreed.”

He didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue. I suppose my sincerity convinced him. Fool.

And that is how I came to be outfitted in a tidy black merino dress, starched white apron and a hideous mobcap that did nothing for my appearance. The dress was a bit too tight for comfort’s sake, but apparently all the housemaids at Claridge’s were woefully underpaid and underfed, for the largest dress Netherly could find fit my buxom frame like a sausage casing. For the sake of authenticity, Netherly had armed me with an ostrich duster, a dustpan and a broom. The only item I lacked was information: which room was Gladstone’s and had he tired of bending the ears of prominent swells about the Bulgarian atrocities and returned to it already? In which event, I was too late.

But faint heart never stole a case full of War Office documents, and so I gathered my skirts and my wits and set off to ferret out the location of the old turnip-head’s chamber. Getting into the hotel had been a challenge, but it hadn’t half prepared me for the trial of prowling the halls of the place, trying to avoid the other maids and the porters carrying luggage to and fro, any one of which would have recognized me as an imposter and blown the whistle on my escapade. Not to mention trying to simultaneously keep a sharp eye out for Calthorp (to be avoided at all costs), French (likewise) and Gladstone (what to say to that bugger?), and to look modestly down at the carpet whenever I met a guest in the hall. Normally, that wouldn’t be a concern, as most of London’s upper class wouldn’t acknowledge a servant if she was thrashing about on the floor and turning blue under their feet, but you never know when you might encounter a former (or current) customer, and that could prove embarrassing.

So I spent the better part of an aimless hour wandering the halls, flicking my duster over the odd table and growing increasingly desperate at the time I was wasting, calculating my chances of sneaking a look at the register in order to find Gladstone’s room, and hoping that Netherly wouldn’t grow impatient waiting for his money and come searching for me. I could have given up and gone home at any time, slipping out the back door and leaving the field open to French, but by now this little game was exerting a strong attraction for me, something I hadn’t felt since the last time I’d matched wits with Abbess Dorothy Claridge (an interesting story, that; remind me to tell you about it later). Perhaps life at Lotus House had become a matter of routine—riding herd over a bevy of hard-drinking, opium-smoking judies, listening with half an ear to the nattering of bewhiskered civil servants and army officers, fretting over bills. It was good to be on the game again, playing the crooked cross on the likes of Frank Netherly, matching wits with Russian spies, English clerics (if indeed Calthorp was the genuine article, but his pious moping had seemed honest enough) and crafty bastards with malacca swordsticks.

I took the servants’ stairs to the ground floor, creeping along and peering around the turns of the stairwell to avoid any contact with the other employees. Once a door opened and a strapping porter appeared with a suitcase under each arm and started struggling up the steps in my direction. I might play the demure miss with the guests, but I reckoned I could brazen my way past this fellow, for he had the lumbering gait and vacant stare of any beast of burden. I sailed past him, my dress straining across my hips and bosom, looked him right in the eye and grinned saucily, and left him standing in open-mouthed admiration on the stairs.

I reached the ground floor, where all the public rooms were located, and made a cautious exit from the protection of the stairwell. I’d come out into a gaslit corridor, with flocked velvet wallpaper and gold-framed pictures of London landmarks. To my right, the passageway terminated in a closed door with Manager’s Office lettered in gilt, but to the left the hall led into the lobby, with its marble floor and carved mahogany columns. I could hear a low hum from the room and catch glimpses of fine ladies sauntering along in the latest fashions, accompanied by well-heeled gents in evening dress, for it was getting on to the dinner hour.

Among that fashionable crowd, a housemaid in a too-tight dress would stand out like an aborigine at a polo match, so I was limited to scouting the lobby from the hall. I stationed myself against the wall, in the shadow and out of the glare of the flaring gaslights, and assumed an expression of moronic wistfulness. If I was caught out by the management, perhaps I could sell myself as a naïve youngster fresh out of the Lancashire mills and yearning for the bright lights and beautiful dresses on display in the Claridge’s reception area.

For the next few minutes I scanned the room, shifting my position occasionally to get a better view of the crowd in the lobby. I spotted Netherly ensconced behind a wooden desk, smirking and chatting amiably with a brainless young buck just in from the country; Netherly was scribbling on a notepad, a map, no doubt, to the nearest den of iniquity. I scuttled out of Netherly’s range of vision and peered around the lobby.

I noticed Calthorp right away, seated prominently in the middle of the room near the registration desk, with an unobstructed view of the front door of the hotel. He looked hellishly tired, his sleek brown hair rumpled and his glasses askew, as though he’d been up all night duping credulous whores and prowling through the Russian embassy in search of British military secrets. He sat stiffly in a straight-backed chair, his gaze locked on the hotel entrance, and his hands clasping the black leather portfolio on his knees. At least one of my concerns was lifted. Clearly, Calthorp was waiting for Gladstone to return to hand over the documents.

If Calthorp was here, French must be around somewhere. I risked a step forward and craned my neck for a better look. I spied a pair of elegant legs, one cocked over the other, protruding from a comfortable leather chair and a malacca swordstick balanced against the arm. The legs and the walking stick belonged to a fellow who appeared to take no discernible interest in the proceedings around him, for his face was buried behind a copy of the day’s
Times,
with a languid hand appearing now and then to lift a glass of whisky and soda behind the curtain of the newspaper. Though he appeared to be absorbed in the paper, I had no doubt that French could provide an accurate account of every nervous twitch and fevered sigh of Calthorp’s.

“Hello, dearie.” A hand snaked round my waist and a moist mustache planted itself against my ear.

I flapped a hand irritably. “Go away, Netherly. I’m waiting for the old gent now.”

“Now don’t tell me you’ve thrown me over for this bloke Netherly. You’ll break my heart, India.”

I whirled around to find myself staring down at the bald crown and twinkling eyes of Peter Penbras.

Bloody hell.

Penbras cast an admiring glance at my attire. “Costume party at Claridge’s? I can’t believe I wasn’t invited.” He peered around me into the lobby. “Or could you be visiting this august establishment for some other purpose?”

I figured Penbras had deduced my occupation upon sight at the embassy, and so I decided on the frontal attack. “Bugger off, Penbras. I’m trying to make a living here.”

He raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “Are you, my dear? Is it French you’re waiting for, dressed in such a seductive fashion? I see him over there, pretending to read the paper, but I would hardly have thought dressing up games were his cup of tea.”

“French is here?” Even to my ears, my question sounded remarkably lame.

Penbras gave me a dubious look. “Come now, India. Don’t try to pretend you don’t know your sidekick is sitting in the lobby, nursing the same drink for what must be all of an hour now. Clearly he’s waiting on someone, and I assume you’re waiting with him. Who could it be, I wonder?”

“You’ve got hold of the wrong end of the horse, Penbras. I’m to meet a customer here, and whatever French is doing here is a mystery to me. He doesn’t advise me of his social calendar.”

Penbras ignored my statement. “Myself, I’m waiting for Gladstone to appear. He’s always good for a frenzied attack on the Turks, not to mention some choice quotes about our prime minister’s ineptitude. But what the devil would French want with Gladstone, unless he’s here to personally deliver an insult from Dizzy? That really isn’t French’s style. Perhaps French is here for another reason?”

Penbras glanced in my direction, waiting for some reaction to his speculation, no doubt. I didn’t oblige him.

“If my customer gets cold feet and disappears because you’re hovering around me, you’re going to owe me ten quid.”

Penbras looked shocked. “Ten quid! As much as that? You’re a handsome woman, India, but Lord, that’s high. Must be a hell of an outing for that price.” Then his eyes narrowed. He was nobody’s fool, was Penbras, and he’d quickly conned that I was doing my best to distract him. He turned back to the lobby and surveyed the crowd with a practiced eye.

“If not Gladstone, then whom?” he muttered. A moment later I felt him stiffen like a dog on point. “I say, India, isn’t that clergyman with the glasses holding a government portfolio? Now that’s mighty odd. I wonder how he came by it?”

This Penbras fellow was turning into an almighty pest. Things couldn’t get much worse.

Well, yes, they could. Penbras looked at me thoughtfully. “You don’t suppose that portfolio came from the War Office, do you?”

I was considering a reply to this question when salvation appeared in the form of a filthy tornado, barreling down the hall of Claridge’s and into the rotund figure of Peter Penbras. I got a whiff of the human whirlwind as it went by, which was all I needed to confirm that Vincent was in the building. He disappeared down the corridor and out through the servant’s entrance before I’d barely caught a glimpse of him.

Penbras was on his back, waving his arms and legs like an overturned beetle and making strangled noises of rage. I felt inclined to leave him there, for he was beginning to attract attention from the nearest inhabitants of the Claridge’s lobby. His face had turned an alarming shade of red and was screwed up like a baby’s. Any minute now, he’d be shouting the rooftops down. Time for me to exit, stage right. I scurried down the hall, just as Penbras recovered his breath and roared: “That boy stole my wallet.”

Well, there was quite an uproar in the lobby of Claridge’s after that, as you can well imagine. I saw it all from my new vantage point, just around the corner from the saloon bar, behind a potted fern. At Penbras’s cry, Frank Netherly rushed to his side and assisted him to his feet while trying to stifle the reporter’s increasingly vociferous allegations of theft. The croakers who’d been dozing over their papers woke up with a start, and several ladies uttered muted screams at the disturbance. I could see Calthorp (goggling at Penbras and Netherly, the case clutched tightly to his chest) and French (well, just his legs, actually, as he’d taken one look in the direction of the commotion and then retreated behind his paper once again). It took some time for the hurly-burly to die down, but it did eventually, with the old gentlemen settled in their chairs, new whiskies at hand, and the ladies petted and reassured, and Netherly groveling to Penbras so he wouldn’t write a story about the crime wave at Claridge’s, and Penbras no doubt blackmailing Netherly for some juicy tips in the future.

There seemed nothing else to do now but settle down and wait, following French’s example. I was prepared for a long suspension of activity, for it seemed like I had done nothing but cool my heels for hours, but the wait proved short-lived. Suddenly there was a bustle of activity at the hotel entrance, and Gladstone strode into the lobby, followed by a retinue of earnest young men and middle-aged matrons, clutching Bibles and babbling away. Every head in the place turned in unison, and there were muted gasps and muffled applause from some of the guests, while the rest glowered and muttered and mentally calculated the days until their next opportunity to vote Tory. Gladstone ignored them all, advancing on the registration desk to collect his key with the stately and measured stride of a former, and (if Calthorp had his way) the next, prime minister. He was an impressive old bird, with a slab of a face roughly hewn into a hawk-like visage, enormous tufts of white side-whiskers, and a mouth like an Old Testament prophet who’d just gotten wind of the goings-on in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Calthorp sprang to his feet and, clutching the case to his breast, shoved his way through the ranks of Gladstone’s retinue until he was close enough to grasp the great man’s sleeve. Gladstone greeted his acolyte with a hearty handshake and a whispered confidence. I noticed that French had dropped the pretense of reading his newspaper and was now peering over the top of it, staring coolly at the greetings and bustle in the lobby. One of Gladstone’s minions collected the key while Gladstone extricated himself from the crowd of well-wishers and hangers-on, conducting himself as a good Christian should, earnestly wringing the hands of the men and bowing gravely over the plump mitts of the ladies. Then the gaggle stumped out of the lobby in a determined fashion, on their way to sing hymns or to proselytize among the non-believers, no doubt, while Gladstone and four of his followers, including Calthorp, made for the stairs. French drained his whisky, folded his newspaper, and strolled after them. I turned and made for the back stairs.