The Shadow and the Star (16 page)

Leda found herself glancing suspiciously at every scruffy
loiterer among the throngs of people in the street, half-expecting to find Mr. Gerard's clear gray eyes beneath the battered hat of some stoop-shouldered day laborer with coal dust smearing his hands and hair. After she had declined his offer of employment—taking a position as secretary to a thief; impossible!—the manner in which he'd transformed himself had been rather disconcerting: shrugging his coat into shapelessness and using a swipe of coal smut from her grate to rub into his hands and face. That alone hadn't seemed to make such a difference while she stood in her room watching him do it, but after she returned from a brief, furtive journey downstairs to abduct a walking stick from Mrs. Dawkins' hall tree, she mounted the last landing and gave a little gasp of fright upon meeting a strange man in the stair, a ragged and boneless figure leaning like a drunkard on the rail.

It had truly taken her a suspended moment to realize who it was, so convincingly had his frame seemed to slump into the listless hunch of a tramp straight out of the Casual Ward. A soft hat, slung low over his face, showed only the grimy edge of his jaw; his jacket hung open, disclosing his shirt, which had lost two buttons and acquired a tear at the collar seam; he'd ripped the toes out of the strange footwear and stuffed newspaper into the holes—all of a piece with the curious poor-man's splint they'd fashioned for his leg, which was the only recognizable thing about him.

He looked at her from beneath the hat. Amid the gloom of the hall and shadows of coal dust on his face, his eyes reflected translucent gray, a shocking light of intelligence in the sullen and wretched picture.

She held out the walking stick. "You had best keep your eyes down," she advised, "if you wish to avoid scrutiny."

He grunted, touching his hat in a gesture of morose assent. "Ma'am."

If Leda hadn't known perfectly well that his hands were flawless, she would have succumbed to the very effective illusion that his thumb and middle finger were missing. She stood back on the landing, leaning against the wall, pursing her lips. "Are you certain you can walk?"

He lifted his eyes to hers again. Leda thought suddenly that this was the last moment—she would never see him again, likely enough.

"Do you have my card?" he asked softly.

His card was burning quite a hole in her skirt pocket, in fact. She nodded.

"Perhaps you will reconsider," he said.

There was no threat in his tone. No emotion at all. Perhaps when he was gone she would go to the police, but while he stood before her, watching her so intently…

She remembered suddenly that Miss Myrtle had never allowed her to sit on the public benches in the park when she was a child, because a strange gentleman might have sat there lately. And patent leather shoes were indecent, because a gentleman could see the reflection of one's petticoat in the shine.

He leaned on the walking stick, shifting his weight, and she saw a dark hollow form at the edge of his mouth.

"You should not walk," she said. "I'll find a cab."

He came down the last three stairs to the landing in slow and easy moves, graceful even with the crutch, as if awkwardness were so alien to him that even in disability it was impossible. "Is your landlady at hand?"

"She was in the parlor when I came up."

"Her door's shut?"

Leda nodded. "But she'll come out at the slightest disturbance. I almost didn't manage to… ah… borrow her stick. Do you wish to go in secret?"

"I'm afraid that particular hope is long past. But I'd prefer she didn't see me again. You'll save yourself trouble if you let her think the stick stolen."

"I believe it
will
be stolen, by my definition of the word," Leda said tartly.

He smiled from the corner of his mouth. "I paid her enough for it. Remind her of that, if she hits upon me as the culprit. Good day to you, Miss Etoile." He leaned on the stick and held out his free hand.

Leda took it automatically, and then stood there with her bare fingers against his palm, the first time in her life she had ever taken leave of a man without her gloves. A gentleman always removed his, of course, before he offered his hand—it was a natural mistake for Mr. Gerard to forget that she herself wasn't properly dressed.

"I hope I haven't inconvenienced you beyond forgiveness," he murmured, holding her hand firmly in his, as if he were in no hurry to correct his impropriety.

"Oh, not at all," Leda said in a faint voice.

His hold was warm and extraordinarily pleasant. He gave her another of those looks—the way he'd looked at her the first moment she'd set eyes upon him, as if she held some answer to a question that he needed resolved.

Which she did. The question of police or no police.

His eyes dropped away from hers. He let go of her hand and bowed slightly.

He'd left her there on the landing, moving down the stairs with slow fluidity, avoiding the squeaky spot on the fifth step as if he knew it well.

Now, a whole day and night after he'd left Jacob's Island, she kept looking for him, absurdly, as she allowed herself to be carried along with the roaring flow of traffic in Whitehall. The Queen was expected to enter London on Monday, and the congestion seemed tripled already; boisterous; surging and stalling in the streets. Yet Leda looked for him—as if he would be loitering about still, in the midst of this of all places, on a broken leg in his tramp's guise. It was nonsense. He would be comfortably in bed. In bed and under proper care at Morrow House. In Park Lane.

He'd scribbled the direction on the back of his card—as if she were actually in some danger of forgetting it.

Decorating crews making last-minute preparations for the Queen's arrival in London added to the chaos with their scaffolding and thousands of yards of red and white bunting. It all had a festive air—the bright sky, the vivid banners, the endless pushing crowds. Leda walked along in tumultuous gloom, caught between the spirit of the Jubilee and the knowledge that she had two shillings left to her name.

Yesterday she'd spent part of her hoard on her bath and then called on the South Street ladies, finding them at last willing to write a letter of character, but perfectly obstinate that it must be copied word for word from a particular book, published privately by Mrs. Wrotham's late husband, in which the proper locution for every sort of letter might be found—which book, Mrs. Wrotham knew with perfect confidence, had last been used as a prop behind the breakfast-room door. It was no longer to be found there, but she was quite positive she could eventually locate it among her belongings, given enough time. Writing Leda's character from scratch was not to be thought of. Mrs. Wrotham was very sure that Leda would find any letter made up out of whole cloth to be painfully inferior to the brilliant expression and excellent style of the late Mr. Wrotham. Anything less must be such a poor hubble-bubble affair that it would absolutely lose her any position that she had the slightest hope of obtaining.

In her anxiety, Leda had actually contemplated forging a letter herself as she left South Street. Not that it would have made any difference in the end, for upon making an early check at Miss Gernsheim's Employment Agency, she'd found a large card tacked to the door.

Closed in Honor of the Jubilee Celebration Commemorating the Fiftieth Year of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India. Business will be recommenced on Monday, 27 June.

As if everyone was not perfectly well aware of what the Jubilee was meant to observe, Leda thought darkly.

Monday. It was Saturday today—the Queen wouldn't even arrive until the day after tomorrow, and the great climax of the celebration would be Tuesday, followed by a week of festivities. Eight more days at the very best before Leda might even find out her prospects. Eight wretched days, and two shillings.

She thought of the police, and a reward of two hundred fifty pounds. She felt her face go to an agitated flush amid the crowd.

They wouldn't believe her anyway. She was certain they wouldn't.

She was walking without a goal, allowing the traffic to carry her. The day's papers held no new advertisements for employment; everything was the Jubilee, the Jubilee. And yet it was all so lively and spectacular—everyone seemed ready to burst with excitement, talking of how one would have to arrive Sunday evening and stand all night in order to catch a glimpse of the Queen as her carriage rolled into town on Monday. The whole world was there to greet and cheer her, and dear England, and Leda's heart grew so full of it all that in a fit of rebellion against her fate she went right ahead and spent her last two shillings on a commemorative rosette with a miniature of Her Majesty nestled above a long tail of scarlet and blue and gold ribbons, along with a Jubilee Memorial Mug, a precise copy of the ones that the Prince had commissioned of the Doulton Company, the vendor assured her, to be given one each to the thirty thousand British schoolchildren who would greet the Queen on Wednesday in Hyde Park.

It was very foolish. It was so foolish of her that as she walked away her eyes filled up with frustrated tears and she had to pretend a very earnest interest in a shop window.

She would have to sell the black silk showroom dress she wore now, and the gloves, too, likely, to have enough to eat for the week. And then what would she wear to interview for positions? She always looked a quiz in that calico skirt. She looked a shopgirl… and that was what it appeared that she was going to be.

There was still Miss Myrtle's silver brush and mirror. Perhaps the time had come at last to sell them. Or… a less melancholy thought: perhaps Sergeant MacDonald might really be taken with her, and overcome his shyness. He'd never seen her in the black silk and hat she wore now; she'd always changed out of the dress before she left Madame Elise's. Mirrored in the shop window, the colorful rosette of ribbons looked very pretty pinned against the elegant black background of her bodice. She turned from the window. Her wandering steps took on a more purposeful direction.

On Saturdays, Sergeant MacDonald and Inspector Ruby came on duty in the early afternoons instead of evening. When Leda reached Bermondsey they were already there, sipping at cups of tea just poured by a young lady laced into an hourglass gabardine with a large bustle, who looked up and set the kettle aside as Leda entered.

"This will be her," the young woman said in an unfriendly tone, as the two policemen jumped to their feet.

Sergeant MacDonald's face was shining red; he popped his belt and made a stiff bow, smiling unhappily at Leda. "Yes, this is Miss Etoile," he said. "Miss—this is my sister." He looked at the other woman and moved his hand awkwardly. "Miss Mary MacDonald."

Leda instantly saw how it was. Miss MacDonald eyed her with an air of middle-class condescension. "Miss Etoile," she said, pronouncing "Etoile" with an affected, overly French accent. She did not offer her hand. "My brother has spoken of you so often that I felt I must come and see you for myself."

The wording of this comment was so obviously rude that Leda simply ignored it and pasted a social smile on her face. "I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss MacDonald. It's a lovely day for you to come out and into this neighborhood." She spoke as if Bermondsey were as appealing a prospect as Mayfair. "Will you be watching for Her Majesty to arrive with all the rest of us tomorrow?"

"My brother says it will be a vile crush. All the lower orders and hoi polloi will be on the street. I believe I must stay at home in those circumstances. But I assume you don't mind such, Miss Etoile. I daresay you must be quite accustomed to it."

"Would you like some tea, miss?" Sergeant MacDonald asked hurriedly, while Inspector Ruby gave her a dry smile.

"Thank you," Leda said, and held out her mug. "As you see, I have just the proper thing to drink it in. I shall propose a toast to Her Majesty."

The mug gave Sergeant MacDonald and Inspector Ruby something to pore and exclaim over cordially, and the inspector declared that he would buy one for his wife.

"Oh," said Miss MacDonald, "you won't wish to carry home such brummagem ware. I saw a sterling cup engraved with the proper sentiments, if your wife would like something to remember the occasion."

"Now then, I couldn't afford sterling, Miss MacDonald," he protested. As Leda finished pouring tea into her mug, he held up his cup. "To Her Majesty!" he offered.

"Her glorious and beloved reign," Leda added, lifting her mug.

"How very silly, to make a toast with tea," Miss MacDonald said, and Sergeant MacDonald lowered his cup and shut his mouth on the verge of joining in.

Leda and the inspector tapped their ceramic vessels together. He gave her a faint wink.

Leda smiled back, but her spirits had sunk to her toes. It was perfectly clear that Miss MacDonald had no intention of allowing a nobody from Bermondsey to snatch up her brother.

After a moment of silence while they sipped, Sergeant MacDonald said in a reckless way, "That's a bang-up outfit, miss."

"Thank you," Leda said. She took another sip of tea and asked with an air of incidental curiosity, "Have the police made any progress with our infamous thief?"

"Nay, not a mite." Inspector Ruby helped himself to a heaping spoonful of extra sugar. Leda would have known how to prepare his tea just the way he liked it, but evidently Miss Mac Donald had not thought to ask. "Bit of a facer that this Japanese sword disappeared, same way as the others, with a note and—ah—something unusual left in its place… and when they went to where he sent 'em, sword weren't there as the other loot had been. Still haven't found it. There's some think it might be an imitation crime—not the same fellow a'tall."

"Or perhaps—something happened that prevented him from completing his plan," Leda ventured.

The inspector shrugged. "Might be. That's what the chief thinks—that the extra men stationed at all the—" He cleared his throat and glanced at Miss MacDonald. "Well… the places we thought it likely he'd take the sword�the extra men made him sheer off."