The Hidden Blade (25 page)

“I’m all worn-out, Mr. Twombley. Why don’t you lock the door now? I want to go to sleep—without having to wake up to answer you if you were to come at ten o’clock.”

Mr. Twombley always knocked and waited for an acknowledgment from Leighton before he locked the door at night, to make sure Leighton was actually inside. He did not need to be asked twice to grant Leighton’s request.

When he was gone, Leighton listened to make sure that no one else was nearby. Then he took out his file, which he’d stolen from one of the servants in those days after he’d recovered his will to live but before he’d resumed church attendance, when he was left alone in the house on Sunday mornings with no one but a deaf groundskeeper on the property.

In a house full of former criminals, he’d been more or less certain he’d be able to find some useful items—and his intuition had proved correct.

Since then, on the staff’s half days, when those with families nearby went off to visit and others whiled away the hours in pubs or at card games held away from Rose Priory, he had slowly filed away at the bars outside his window. He made sure he always did his filing on the side away from the window, so that the deterioration would not be visible from the inside—and with the ivy climbing around the window frame, it was also undetectable from below. Now he filed off the last bits and brought the grille inside.

He did not wait for dusk: If he didn’t arrive at the nearest railway station, which was seven miles away, by quarter to nine, he wouldn’t get on the last train out.

He climbed down from the window, closing it behind himself as best as he could. Near the house the landscape was largely treeless, but there were still small copses of ash and boxwood hedges. He slipped behind the first hedge, his heart pounding. No hue and cry came from Rose Priory. He ran, half hunched over, and almost tripped over a stone.

He sprinted from cover to cover until he was half a mile away from the house. He remained cautious afterward, skirting farmhouses where the residents might recognize him, and taking only footpaths that bypassed the village.

He huffed a little from the rise and dip of the land—walking inside a house, even if he climbed the staircase many times a day, was still no substitute for actual hiking. But the fatigue was nothing compared to the intoxication of freedom—or the fear of being found and brought back. He moved as fast as he could, praying with every step.

The sky darkened faster than he’d anticipated—a storm gathered on the western horizon. This was not good news. Mr. Twombley usually checked the house only on the inside before he retired for the night. But if he anticipated inclement weather, he was likely to make a round outside too. And if he should notice that the grille on Leighton’s window had disappeared…

Leighton walked even faster. The seven miles he covered in an hour and forty minutes, according to Father’s old watch. Night had fallen by the time he reached the railway station and bought his ticket. Instead of sitting on the platform to eat the sandwich he’d brought, he had his supper in the shadows outside the station, afraid of well-lit and sparsely populated places, afraid of running into someone he knew.

But he got on the train without encountering any acquaintances. The third-class compartment was austere but clean. He kept his hat pulled low on his head and his face turned toward the window—except when the train entered stations. Then he opened a local paper that had been left on the seat and hid himself behind the newsprint.

It seemed impossible that his escape could go off so smoothly. But he arrived at Paddington Station without any incident shortly after midnight. At a hotel several streets away he asked for a room. He had a story ready: He was an Eton student who had gone to visit a classmate during summer holiday and was now on his way home. But no one asked his age, and no one seemed to have the least inkling that he wasn’t where he should be.

He barely slept that night, opening his eyes at the least noise. Before dawn he was already up and rechecking the items in his small bag. At first light he had left the hotel and walked along London’s deserted streets, relying on the map that he saw clearly in his mind for directions to Victoria Station.

Before the sun had risen he was already headed south. At Brighton he changed for a branch line and got off at the village of Claymore. Little had changed here. The smell of the air, the green of the downs, and the sound of his soles on the country lane that led toward Starling Manor were all infinitely familiar. He didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry.

He bypassed the gate of the estate and entered via a hidden path. He had decided that the clue Herb had given,
Think of Mr. Cromwell
, was a reference not to the solicitor, but to the latter’s daughter, for whom Herb and Leighton used to gather their assortment of presents every month. Any item that Leighton thought had potential he stowed in the small cottage where Herb kept his portable darkroom. And it was there that they would make the final selections for each month, which Herb would take with him when he departed for London, to send to Miss Cromwell via the post.

The groundskeeper had the key to the cottage. But there had been another one hidden under a loose brick near the door. It was this key that Leighton pulled out, a little rusted, but still in working order, and used to open the cottage.

Herb’s portable darkroom was still there, in a corner of the parlor, though there were no longer any baths of fixers lying about, with photographic plates inside. Leighton walked into the tiny bedroom—the cottage was even smaller than he remembered—opened the door of the linen closet, and pulled out the storage box. The moment he lifted the lid, he saw the envelope with his name on it.

My dear boy,

I don’t know when or under what circumstances you will come to this. But I trust that the Bank of England should still stand and that you will find some use for these banknotes.

H.

The note was dated October of 1873, and there were five crisp bills inside the envelope, one hundred pounds altogether. Leighton leaped in the air a few times and kissed the envelope, euphoric with gratitude.

He could smell it already, the salty tang of sea air. The scent of freedom itself.

He should leave the way he came, but he couldn’t come so close without stopping by Father’s grave. And then he succumbed to the desire to taking a look at Starling Manor itself.

But as he approached the main house, he noticed the two men in town clothes. They weren’t gardeners or footmen; nor were they anyone from the village come to deliver bread and produce. They whispered to each other, pointing and signaling; then they spread out.

Leighton retreated deeper into the copse of trees he had been using for cover. His gladness evaporated, and in its place, a hard knot of fear. No thieves would come for the contents of a house at ten o’clock in the morning. These men were here for him.

Had Sir Curtis guessed, from all those letters of Herb’s that he had confiscated, or from an understanding of simple human nature, that Leighton would wish to visit home before he ventured farther afield?

And would Leighton’s attempt at escape end before twenty-four hours had even passed?

Chapter 17

Lady Atwood

Leighton tried to think through his panic.

He knew every inch of the surrounding area. He could get back to the railway station unseen. But what if a third man patrolled the platform, waiting for him to turn up?

There was another railway station fifteen miles away. It was on a smaller branch line and the service was infrequent, but under the circumstances it was probably far safer. He looked at his watch and then consulted the
Bradshaw
he had taken from the schoolroom. If he could complete the fifteen miles in four hours, he might yet make the afternoon train to Brighton.

After a long, hot walk, he arrived at the tiny, nondescript railway station with a parched throat, blisters on his feet, and five minutes to spare. He didn’t dare ride the train all the way into the main Brighton station, afraid that there might be someone examining the arrivals. Instead he got off at a smaller station east of Brighton and hired a hansom cab to take him to the station in the town of Hove, immediately to the west of the larger city.

His ploy paid off. He was able to reach Southampton without anyone on his tail—at least none he could see. It was evening. Ticket agents were closed. He found lodging for the night, took off his shoes, grimacing, and collapsed on the bed.

The next morning he woke up starving. He had already eaten all the food he had brought with him from Rose Priory, so he bathed, dressed, reluctantly put his shoes back on, and walked down gingerly to breakfast.

In the dining room there were a pair of ladies. One was rather round, perhaps in her mid-forties, the other quite thin and about ten years older—but judging by the likeness of their features, they were quite obviously sisters. Leighton bowed slightly. The round lady returned a formal nod; the thin lady gave him a smile.

Leighton demolished his plate of hot breakfast. He was systematically polishing off the slices of toast that had been provided when a man in an elaborate turban and a white flowing robe entered the dining room and sat down.

The serving girl approached him rather warily. “The full breakfast, sir?”

She was met with a burst of foreign syllables.

“I beg your pardon?”

Another barrage of foreign syllables.

The serving girl looked around, as if hoping someone might be able to help her.

“You don’t suppose he’s speaking Arabic, do you?” ask the thin lady of her sister.

The turbaned man repeated himself one more time, pointing at the two ladies’ table and Leighton’s table by turn. Suddenly the sounds of his language coalesced into meaning.

“He is asking whether the breakfast contains pork,” Leighton said to the serving girl.

The language wasn’t Arabic, but Parsi, except it sounded harsher and more guttural

than Leighton had imagined.

“Oh, thank you, sir. Can you tell him that we’ll be happy to serve him kippers and potted chicken instead of bacon and sausage?”

Leighton had no idea how to say either “kippers” or “chicken,” so he turned to the Persian and told him in Parsi that the hotel would provide him fish and fowl in place of pork. He was certain he sounded absolutely horrendous—probably incomprehensible. But the man gave a half bow and replied in the same language, “That would be acceptable. Thank you, young man. Peace be upon you.”

“Peace be upon you,” Leighton returned the greeting.

Five minutes later, finished with his tea and the last piece of his toast, Leighton rose from the table, only to see the thin lady beckoning him. He approached their table. “May I help you, ma’am?”

“Yes, I am Miss McHenry. This is my sister, Miss Violet McHenry. And we are off to see the world.”

“That sounds excellent.”

Miss McHenry beamed. “Indeed it is. Allow me to tell you a little about the peculiarity of our family: We run to girls. There were seven of us at one point, four still surviving. But of my four sisters who married, there resulted only three boys, as opposed to eleven girls, who successfully reached adulthood. One of the boys, unfortunately, is good for nothing. Another is a practicing lawyer and very busy. The last, our great hope, after much dithering, decided that finishing university—”

“And courting his professor’s daughter,” added Miss Violet rather grumpily.

“And that, of course. He decided that together they constituted a better use of his time than accompanying his spinster aunts into the great unknown. Naturally we were quite disappointed. Any venture that involves more than two hundred pounds of luggage ought to have a stronger back than ours, don’t you agree, Mr…”

Miss McHenry waited.

“Ashburton,” he said. It was Mother’s maiden name.

“Now you, Mr. Ashburton, seem to be a very helpful young man. And strong of back. And fluent in Arabic.”

“Parsi—the gentleman is Persian,” he said. “And I can speak only very little of it.”

Though he had become quite literate in that language.

“And modest too. I like that. Therefore I would like to propose that you come into our employ and be our…”

“General dogsbody?” he supplied.

Miss McHenry chortled. “Oh, goodness, I was going to say our valued assistant. Unfortunately we can’t pay you very much—it takes money to see the world. But we can provide for your food, lodging, and transport—everything decent, of course. And you will have fifteen pounds a year, in quarterly installments, for three years running—that’s how long we expect to be traveling. Don’t you think it is a tremendous opportunity? To be compensated for seeing the world?”

He couldn’t disagree. “I do very much think so, ma’am. Unfortunately I am traveling myself and have a tight timetable to keep.”

Miss McHenry’s face fell, a disappointment that felt genuine—and greater than what he would have expected on her part, for what must be an impulsive offer to a random stranger. Her sister, on the other hand, seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief.

“Are you sure we cannot tempt you?” said Miss McHenry rather urgently. “Eighteen pounds a year? Introductions to the lovely daughters of our friends in Cairo and Bombay?”

“It’s most kind of you, but I must regretfully decline.”

“Oh, well.” Miss McHenry’s shoulders sagged a little. “We don’t sail until day after tomorrow. You can always ask the reception to give us a message, if you change your mind.”

“I will remember that. Thank you for your generous offer, Miss McHenry.” He offered her his hand to shake. “And I hope you have a wonderful journey.”