The Ruby in the Smoke (6 page)

Jim looked up and released a jet of language that might

have blistered a battleship. He was no respecter of clerks: they were a very low form of life.

"Never mind them," he said to Adelaide. "Listen—you got to tell me about the Seven Blessings. There's a man died in here because of that."

He told her what had happened. She did not look up, but her eyes widened.

"I've got to look for Miss Lockhart, 'cause he said so," she said when he'd finished. "Only I mustn't tell Mrs. Holland, else she'll kill me."

"Well, tell me what he bloody said! Go on!"

She did—haltingly, little by little, for she had nothing of Jim's fluency, and she was so unused to being listened to that she hardly knew how loudly to speak. Jim had to prompt her to repeat much of it.

"Right," he said eventually. "I'll fetch Miss Lockhart, and you can talk to her. All right.^"

"I can't," she said. "I can't never get away except when Mrs. Holland sends me out. She'll kill me."

"Course she won't bleeding kill yer! You'll have to come out, else—"

"I canX "she said. "She killed the last little girl she had. She took all her bones out. She told me."

"Well, how are you going to find Miss Lockhart, then?"

"I dunno."

"Oh, blimey. Well, look—I'll come through Wapping each night on me way home, and you meet me somewhere and tell me what's happened. Where can you meet me?"

She looked down, twisting her mouth, thinking.

"By the Old Stairs," she said.

"All right. By the Old Stairs, every night, half-past

SIX.

"I gotta go now," she said.

"Don't forget," he called. "Half-past six."

But Adelaide had vanished.

13 Fortune Buildings

Chandler's Row

Clerkenwell

Friday 25 October 1872

Miss S. Lockhart

9 Peveril Square

Islington

Dear Miss Lockhart,

I beg to inform you that I have discovered something about the Seven (7) Blessings. There is a gentleman called Mr. Bedwell at present situated at Holland's Lodgings, Hangman's Wharf, Wapping, he has been taking opium and talking about you. He has also said the Seven Blessings but I do not know what it means. The landlady is Mrs. Holland, she is not to be trusted. If you come to the bandstand in the Clerkenwell Gardens tomorrow at half-past two I can tell you more.

I beg to remain,

Your humble and obedient servant,

J. Taylor, Esquire (Jim)

Thus wrote Jim, after the best models of clerkly correspondence. He posted the letter on Friday, in the confident expectation (this was the nineteenth century, after all) of its being delivered before the day was out, and of Sally's tomorrow being the same as his.

Holland's Lodgings

Hangman's Wharf

Wapping

25 October 1872

Samuel Selby, Esquire

Lockhart and Selby

Cheapside

Lx)ndon

Dear Mr. Selby,

I have the honor to represent a gentleman, who has certain information, concerning your enterprises in the East, this gentleman wishes it known, that he will be obliged to publish what he knows in the papers, unless certain conditions is agreed to. As a sample of his knowledge he has asked me to mention the schooner Lavinia, and a sailor named Ah Ling. Hoping this proposal is agreeable to you, and this finds you as it leaves me.

Yours truly,

M. Holland (Mrs.)

P.S. An early reply would be appreciated by all.

Thus wrote Mrs. Holland, after a particularly interesting afternoon with Bedwell, the drug, and her pencil and paper.

Sally stood under the inadequate shelter of a nearly bare lime tree in Clerkenwell Gardens and waited for Jim. The rain had already soaked her cloak and hat, and was now insinuating itself down her neck. In order to come out at all she had had to disobey Mrs. Rees; she dreaded the reception that awaited her return.

But she did not have long to wait. Presently Jim came running, even wetter than she was, and tugged her over to the empty bandstand that stood on a patch of soggy grass.

"Under 'ere," he said, lifting a loose panel in the side of the little stage.

He dived into the gloom like a ferret. She followed him more carefully through the tunnels of folding chairs and arrived at a cavelike hollow where he was already lighting a stump of candle.

She settled down opposite him. The floor was dusty but dry, and the rain drummed on the stage overhead as he set the candle carefully upright between them.

"Well?" he said. "D'you want to hear, or not?"

"Of course I do!"

Jim repeated all that Adelaide had told him, but more crisply. He was good with words: the penny dreadfuls had taught him well.

"What d'you think of that, then?" he said when he came to the end.

"Jim, it must be right! Mrs. Holland—it's the woman Major Marchbanks told me about. Yesterday, in Kent—"

She told him what had happened.

"A ruby," he said, awestruck.

"But I don't see how it ties in with the rest of it. I mean, Major Marchbanks had never heard of the Seven Blessings."

"And this bloke of Adelaide's never said nothing about a ruby. Maybe there's two mysteries, and not one. Maybe there's no connection."

"But there is a connection," said Sally. "Me."

"And Mrs. Holland."

There was a pause. "I'll have to see him," said Sally.

"You can't. Not while Mrs. Holland's got him. Oh, yeah! I forgot—he's got a brother who's a parson. His name's Nicholas. They're twins."

*'The Reverend Nicholas Bedwell," said Sally. "I wonder if we could find him. Perhaps he could get his brother out. .. .

"He's a slave to opium," said Jim. "And Adelaide says he's terrified of Chinamen. Whenever he sees a Chinaman in his visions, he screams."

They fell silent for a moment.

"I wish I hadn't lost that book," said Sally.

"You never lost it. She had it pinched."

"She did? But it was a man. He got in at Chatham."

"Why would anyone want a scruffy old book unless they knew what was in it.^ Of course it was her doing."

Sally blinked. Why hadn't she made this connection.^ But once he had said it, it was obvious.

"So she's got the book," she said. "Jim, it's going to drive me mad! What on earth does she want it for?"

"You ain't half slow," he said severely. "It's that ruby she wants. What's it say on them bits o' paper he left behind?"

She showed him the loose pages she'd found in the train.

"There you are. 'Take it,' he says. He's hidden it somewhere away from her, and he's telling you where it is. And I'll tell you something, and all—if she wants the ruby, she'll be back for this."

On the following evening, three people sat in the kitchen at Holland's Lodgings, where a filthy iron stove gave off a tropical glow. One of the three was Adelaide, and Ade-

laide didn't count; she sat, disregarded, in the corner. Mrs. Holland sat at the table, turning the leaves of Major Marchbanks's book. The third person was a visitor, seated in the armchair by the stove, alternately sipping a mug of tea and mopping his brow. He wore a bright, checkered suit. There was a brown bowler hat pushed back on his head, and a sparkling pin in his cravat.

Sally would have recognized him, for he was the man from the train. He often did little jobs for Mrs. Holland— anything that needed light fingers or a persuasive manner was meat and drink to Henry Hopkins. He'd gone with her to Swaleness, lurked about in the town while she went out to Foreland House, and then (after a hurried conference by the Ramsgate coach) run back to the station just in case Sally had gone that way after all. Which, of course, she had. Mr. Hopkins had boarded the train, too—waited a station or so before getting into Sally's compartment— and then plied his trade, with the results that now lay on Mrs. Holland's bony knees.

Patting her fangs into place, the lady spoke.

"Nice job o' work, Mr. Hopkins," she said. "Very neatly done."

"Dead easy," said the visitor modestly. "She fell asleep, see. All I had to do was lift it off her little lap."

"Very nice. . . ." Mrs. Holland said again, and turned another page.

Mr. Hopkins took another sip of tea.

"That—er—curious, is it, that book?" he said.

"Not to me," said Mrs. Holland. "I know this story off my heart."

"Oh?" said Mr. Hopkins carefully.

"But it'd be news to that young lady. I daresay that if she was to read this, it'd be a first-rate disaster."

"Oh, really?"

"So I think she better have an accident."

Silence. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

"Well," he said at length, "I ain't sure as I wants to know about that, Mrs. Holland."

"And I ain't sure as you've got much choice, Mr. Hopkins," she said, flicking through the book. "Dear me, these pages is terrible loose. I hope you didn't lose none of 'em."

"I don't understand, Mrs. H. I ain't got much choice about what?"

But she had stopped listening. Her ancient eyes narrowed; she read the last page of the book, turned back, flicked through the rest, read it again, held the book up and shook it, and finally flung it down with a curse.

Mr. Hopkins backed away nervously.

"What's the matter?" he said.

"That bleedin' legal earwig," she snarled. "That great mumblin' misery, to let hisself be fooled like that . . ."

"Who're you talking about?" said Henry Hopkins.

"A drivelin' snivelin' nitwit of a lawyer up in Hoxton. Name of Blyth. By God, Mr. Hopkins, he'll have a clear idea of his shortcomings when I'm through with him.. . . And as for you," she went on venomously, "I seen tailors' dummies with more sense than you, you oily popinjay."

"Me? What've I done?"

"You gone and lost the most important page in the whole bleedin' book!"

"I thought you said as how you knew it all by heart, ma'am?"

She thrust the book at him.

"Read this, if yer can. Read it!"

Her horny old finger jabbed at the last paragraph in the book. He read it aloud.

" 'I have therefore withdrawn the ruby from the bank. It is the only chance I have of redeeming myself and saving something from the wreck of my life. The will I made, under the directions of that woman, has been annulled; her lawyer failed to foresee a way out of the contract I signed. I shall die intestate. But I mean you to have the stone. I have hidden it, and to make doubly sure, I shall conceal its whereabouts in a cipher. It is in—' "

There was no more. He stopped and looked at her.

"Yes, Mr. Hopkins," she said, smiling horribly. "You see what you done?"

He quailed.

"It weren't in the book, ma'am," he said. "I swear it!"

"I said something about an accident, didn't I.'"

He gulped. "Well, like I say, I—"

"Oh, you'll manage a little accident for her. You'll do that all right, Mr. Hopkins. One look at the paper tomorrow, and you'll do whatever I want."

"What d'you mean by that?"

"Wait and see," she said. "You're going to get that piece of paper—she'll have it somewhere—and then you're going to finish her off."

He blinked.

"I ain't," he said unhappily.

"Oh, you are, Mr. Hopkins. You take my word for it."

The Consequences of Finance

It did not take mr. hopkins long to find the story in the newspaper. It seemed to leap out of the page at him, accompanied by alarm bells, {>olice whistles, and the clink of handcuffs.

Mysterious Death of Retired Major a survivor of the mutiny

HOUSEKEEPER TELLS OF MAN IN CHECKERED SUIT

The Kent Police were alerted this morning to the mysterious death of Major George Marchbanks, of Foreland House, Swaleness.

His body was discovered by his housekeeper, Mrs. Thorpe, in the library of his isolated dwelling. He had apparently been shot. An empty pistol was found nearby.

The Major lived a retired life, and his housekeeper was his only servant. According to a statement made by Superintendent Hewitt of the Kent Constabulary, the police are anxious to trace a man in a checkered suit, with a bowler hat and a diamond pin. This man visited Major

Marchbanks on the morning of his death, when it is beheved that an altercation took place.

Major Marchbanks was a widower, with no surviving family. He served in India for many years. . . .

Mr. Hopkins was overcome with rage and had to sit down and catch his breath.

"You old crab," he muttered. "You spider. You calculating old bitch, ril . . ."

But he was caught, and he knew it. If he failed to do as she wanted, Mrs. Holland would manufacture some cast-iron evidence that would send him to the gallows for a murder he didn't commit. He sighed heavily and went at once to change his clothes to a new serge suit in dark blue, wondering what this game was that Mrs. Holland was playing. If murder was one of the stakes, what must the prize be worth.^

Mrs. Rees's maid Ellen hated Sally, and didn't know why. Spite and envy were at the bottom of it, and the whole bundle of feelings was so uncomfortable that when she was offered a justification for her antipathy, she seized it at once without examining it too closely.

This justification was provided by Mr. Hopkins. Mrs. Holland had ferreted Sally's address out of the lawyer's clerk, and Mr. Hopkins's smoothness of manner did the rest. He represented himself to Ellen as a police detective and told her that Sally was a thief who had stolen some letters: a matter of such delicacy—family very highly connected—^the slightest breath of scandal—the noblest in the land, and so on. All that, of course, meant nothing, but it was the sort of thing that filled the pages of the magazines that Ellen read, and she lapped it up at once.

Their conversation took place on the area steps. She was very soon persuaded that her duty to herself, her mistress, and her country lay in admitting Mr. Hopkins secretly to the house after everyone had gone to bed. Accordingly, toward midnight, she opened the kitchen door, and Mr. Hopkins, fortified by a quantity of brandy, found his way upstairs to the door of Sally's room. He had some experience at this game—though he preferred the clean, manly sport of picking pockets—and he made no noise at all. Signaling to the maid to go on up to bed and leave him to his task, he settled down to wait on the landing until he was certain that Sally was asleep. A silver flask kept watch with him; it had made two journeys to his lips, and come back lighter, before he judged it time to move.