Marry the Man Today (6 page)

Leave it to men to give an impregnable male institution like the Bank of England a feeble, feminine nickname. While at the same time denying married women the right to open accounts of their own without their husbands' permission.

Their permission! As though women hadn't the sense to manage money on their own!

"Now remember, Lady Ellis," Elizabeth said, tamping back that tic of anger as she hooked the woman's arm and adjusted her aged hunch, "you are Miss Althea Moore."

"Althea Moore. I like the name." The woman started up the wide stairs beside Elizabeth, tottering like an expert toward the bank lobby.

"You've never been married. And you live alone in Pickering Place."

"Never married. Pickering Place. Pickering Place." Lady Ellis sounded perfectly doddering with all that muttering.

"You have inherited the rents on a green grocer and a small boardinghouse, and will be adding to your account regularly."

"Green grocer and a boardinghouse. A regular account." Lady Ellis was gripping Elizabeth's arm in a vise of fear. "I hope I can remember all that."

Elizabeth patted her hand. "Just follow my lead, no matter what, and everything will go swimmingly."

"But what if it doesn't?" Lady Ellis paused as they reached the wide porch and peered at Elizabeth through her wiry spectacles. "What if they catch us?"

"They won't." They can't. She couldn't let them. Because the penalty for conspiracy and defrauding a bank was too many years in a dank, dark prison to endure.

But this time there'd be no meddlesome earl to interfere with her fate.

The footman nodded a bow as he opened the great, glass door for them, and Elizabeth led the trembling woman into the cool air of the vast, vaulted, marble lobby of milling people and bank officials.

The enormously ta
l
l windows streamed sunlight across the floor and up the front edge of the rich, oak half-walls
 
of
 
the
 
elevated
 
teller's
 
counter,
 
which spanned the back wall of the room. The faces of the bank clerks peered down on the lobby from between the short wooden struts, putting the customers at a distinct disadvantage.

"So this is the Bank of England!" Lady Ellis had stopped in the center of the marble floor, staring in open-mouthed awe at the pompous, overly masculine atmosphere. "Imagine, Elizabeth, I'm nearly fifty years old, and in all that time I've had no cause to come here!"

"Because your husband has taken care of everything."

"Including the substantial inheritance left to me by my father, which I'm not allowed to touch because I'm a woman." Lady Ellis harru
m
phed, her eyes now snapping, her mouth set in an irritated frown. "After all, I couldn't possibly be intelligent enough to manage my own personal finances. Though not two months ago my husband insisted that our fifteen-year-old son open his own account. And I wouldn't trust that boy to know a horse from a hairbrush."

"Exactly, my lady." A sobering, hard-fought admission for most women.

Lady Ellis gave a defiant grunt, then tugged Elizabeth toward the wall of teller cages. "Come then, my dear. I'm ready for a little independence."

Brav
a
, Lady Ellis.
Elizabeth leaned on the crook of her cane, and then hobbled up to a waiting clerk.

She had to crane her head to see up over the counter and through the short bars to the needle-nosed clerk in a crisp white collar and a staid gray neckcloth.

"May I help you, madam?" the man asked with a long, doubting drawl that made her want to give him a good whack on his balding head with her cane.

"Let's hope you can, sonny," Elizabeth shot back with a goodly amount of disdain, patting the stoop-shouldered Lady Ellis on the arm as though they were fusty old comrades. "My friend here has come to your bank to open an account.
"

"Indeed, madam." The man rose up off his perch as though the effort pained him, then peered down at them through his pale brows. "However, according to company policy, opening an account here is a matter for your husband t
o
—"

"Miss Moore is unmarried, young man." Elizabeth rapped the tip of her cane against the foot of the counter.

The man gave a satisfying flinch and then narrowed his eyes at her. "Indeed."

"Indeed, yes. She has come into some money and would like to deposit it and any future gains in the Bank of England. Unless, of course, you do not want her money."

He studied Lady Ellis for another moment, his brows pinching together into a single wriggling, caterpillarlike object. "Indeed, madam."

He hemmed and hawed then spoke in hushed tones to the teller beside him, but when the man finally, grudgingly, poked a card through the bars and growled at his new depositor, Elizabeth knew they were going to wi
n
—
a
gain.

"Fill this out, Miss Moore. Over there at the counter." He pointed to a slanted writing space at the side of the lobby. "Then bring it back here."

"Thank you, sir." Elizabeth gave the frowning clerk an elderly grin then led her hobbling companion to the desk. "Good work, my lady."

"Dear Lord, Miss Elizabeth! If I'd known it was as simple as that, I'd have opened my own accounts years ago and saved myself from my dear husband's constant carping about every farthing I ask of him. I ought to be able to collect quite a pot over the course of a year. Do whatever I want with it."

Fifteen minutes later the deed had been successfully done; Miss Althea Moore was the proud owner of her very own account at the Bank of England, and Elizabeth was leading her out the door onto the porch of the wide steps.

******************

"This is the tidiest damned back alley I've ever seen." Drew stood frowning at the dry cobbles and the row of barrels against the back of the row of shops.

"No sign of a skirmish anywhere along here." Ross had walked the length of the alley, looking for indications of a scuffle etched into the granite. But there wasn't a single sign of iron wheels scraping against the stone for a quick getaway. No drag marks leading out of the open back door of the millinery shop.

Not a single window looking out onto the alley. The bulk of a carriage would easily mask the commotion of an abduction from the streets at either end.

He'd awakened early to set the Factory's best forensic experts onto the evidence. They would search out the haberdasher who made the bonnet, the chemist who formulated the chloroform, and the glovemaker.
 
Simple tasks that the Factory's experts did on a daily basis.

Walking through the methods and madness of a criminal required an altogether more ref
i
ned set of skills.

"Find anything, my lord?" The plump-cheeked clerk watched them from just inside the back door of the shop, her brown eyes a familiar mix of concern, horror, and curiosity.

"The police report says that Lady Wallace was here for nearly an hour. Was that normal for her?"

"Normal for most all of our clients. Miss Verdon encourages her customers to take all the time they need. Attends to them herself, while we girls help out with fetching feathers and trimming and ribbons and such from the boxes."

"Did she seem different? At any point? Fearful, distracted?"

"Not any more than usual."

"Meaning?"

"I shouldn't really say, my lord. Miss Verdon doesn't like us to speak about her customers."

"This is a police matter, Alice. Anything you tell us, no matter how inconsequential it may seem, might just be the information that saves Lady Wallace's life."

"Oh, dear. But it's nothing much, sir. Only that the lady wasn't ever very happy. Seemed afraid all the time."

"Not just yesterday?"

"That's right." Alice leaned out the doorway. "A
l
ways jumpy, you know. Fretting about what her husband might think of her hats."

"And that's odd?"

"Most husbands don't care. Wouldn't know a poke from a leghorn."

The one thing Ross knew already about Lord Wallace was that the baron was opinionated, unbending. The sort of man who attempted to control every moment of his existence, and all the people who crossed his path.

"I see. Did she meet up with anyone in the shop? A friend, perhaps? An acquaintance?"

"Sometimes customers meet someone they know. And they chat and gossip while they try on hats."

"But not this visit?"

"We only had three other customers while she was here. I gave their names to th
e
officers yesterday."

"I'll check on those, Blakestone."

"Thanks, Wexford. Now if we could go back inside."

"Yessir."

Ross let Alice precede them through the back door, then he stopped in front of the dressing room. "It says here in the report that Lady Wallace went into the dressing room with her bag and the blue hat she'd come in with, and then she never came out."

"That's right. As though she just turned into a ghost and vanished into thin air."

Drew swung the door open and peered inside. "How long before you noticed her missing?"

"Five minutes, my lord. Maybe a little longer."

Ross stepped inside the windowless, ten-by-ten room, noticing the barest hint of chloroform that still clung to the chintz. "Did anything strike you as unusual at any point after Lady Wallace stepped inside here?"

"Odd noises?" Drew prompted. "Smells, voices, a demanding customer?"

"The police asked us that yesterday, but I don't remember a thing."

"All right, then, Alice, what happened next?" Ross asked as he knelt to inspect the pristine area around the door latch.

"The footman came in asking about the lady. I knocked on the door here, and there was no answer. So Mrs. Verdon opened the door and there was nothing. No Lady Wallace."

"Nothing but a folded handkerchief on the floor, right here, according to the report. Near the dressing table."

"That's right, Lord
B
lakestone."

"And her bonnet outside in the alley." Ross ran the flat of his hand along the floor at the edge of the wall. Three small, blue glass beads stuck themselves between his fingers.

"Miss Verdon says it was a good thing it wasn't a hat from our shop."

"Why is that?" Ross asked, pleased to have settled that particular question.

"Because it's a complete fright. Ugly as a blue toad, she said. And I have to agree with her."

Ross stood, palming the beads and sticking them into his trouser pocket. "Did Lady Wallace mention any plans she might have for later in the afternoon?"

"No, not yesterday. But she did once in a while talk about visiting an elderly uncle."

"Lord Tuckerton?" Ross asked, pulling his notepad out of his jacket pocket.

"That's it, my lord." Alice nodded as she thought more deeply. "And a club of some sort."

"The Huntsman?" Drew asked, striding toward them.

"No, sir. It was a lady's name. My mother's name. Abigail."

Ross's hand froze in midair, his pencil poised above his notepad. "The Abigail Adams?"

"That's the one!" Alice beamed.

Bloody hell!

"Now there's a coincidence, Ross. We were mentioning the place ourselves only yesterday."

"Weren't we, though." Hell and damnation, the woman had played him for a fool. "Come along, Drew, I'll drop you at the Huntsman. Then I've got a call to make on my own."

A call that Miss Dunaway wouldn't soon forget.

******************

Elizabeth and the very smug, very, very happy Lady Ellis were celebrating their stunning victory over the Bank of England in the public tea room of the Abigail Adams, still a pair of well-appointed elderly ladies, sharing a very English ritual.

A ritual that always made the new account holder more comfortable with her new role.

"Dear Elizabeth, you are a wonder!"

"And you, Lady Ellis, were the perfect spinster, still look the part to a T." Elizabeth loved her popular publi
c
tea roo
m
—
t
he cozy chintz, and especially its subversive elements. With a fresh selection of newspapers to read without the husband looking on. With intelligent conversation encouraged. With scones and chocolate and sticky toffee pudding and perfectly brewed cream teas.

Yes, the tea room was proving the perfect tool to recruit new members to the ladies' club.

"I've never had quite so much fun!" Lady Ellis gave a girlish giggle. "I felt just like a spy!"

"You'll have no trouble managing your new account, as long as you come and go from the tea room in an anonymous hack and wear the same wig and bonnet as part of your disguise every time you return to the Bank. You can change into your costume upstairs in the Adams."