I huffed a sigh at her. “Come now, Lady Rose. You are a better liar than that and we both know it. Your delivery was a beat too late, and your voice has gone high.”
She thrust out her bottom lip a little. “Very well. There was a crate.”
“A large crate, taken into the Belvedere.”
She said nothing, but a tiny nod acknowledged what I said was true.
“Now, George or another member of staff is supposed to remain with all deliverymen until they have left the premises, but George was drawn away from his duty—as was everyone else—by what I am given to understand was a rather spectacular display of temper on your part.”
“I may have fussed a little,” she said begrudgingly.
“Lady Rose,” I said, allowing a note of warning to creep into my voice. She tossed her pretty curls.
“Do you think to frighten me?” she demanded. “You dare not strike me.”
I gave her a thin smile. “My sweet Rose, I don’t have to strike you to make you suffer. Now, tell me what you know and I will tell youexactly what to put into your brother’s tea to make him purge his guts up.”
A smile of dazzling radiance broke over her face as she spat into her hand and thrust it towards me. “Word of honor?”
I spat into my own palm and shook firmly. “Word of honor.”
CHAPTER
22
A quarter of an hour later, I quitted the hermitage, in full possession of what I wanted to know and having explained to Lady Rose the precise dosage of rhubarb to dispense to Charles with instructions to administer it in a double-steeped pot of tea for the maximum effect.
Stoker was resting in the snuggery, the little area at the top of the gallery stairs in the Belvedere. It was furnished for comfort, not glamour, and it was the one spot where we often went to brood or rest as we worked out a particularly knotty problem. He was draped long on the sofa, reading theDaily Harbinger, the very copy George had brought that morning.
“Anything of relevance?” I asked as I took a seat in the large armchair that leaked stuffing and provided a haven for a very polite family of mice.
He tossed the newspaper aside, steepling his fingers under his chin as he swung his feet onto the floor, moving gingerly and wincing a little at his injuries. “Just the same old tripe.” He flicked me a glance. “When does it end? These poor souls, living on scraps at the edge of civilized existence. They suffer more than the worst wretch in ourprisons, and yet what crime have they committed except to be born poor and forgotten?”
It was a familiar refrain. Stoker had been a child of privilege and wealth, but he had run away in his youth. His father always had him found and dragged home again, yet those boyish adventures had shaped the man he had become. He had lived cheek by jowl with every variety of person, taking in their knowledge, studying their ways. Some philosophies—most, in fact—he had rejected. He was no respecter of institutions simply because they boasted antiquity. He believed, like all good radicals, that everything ought to be examined anew by each generation. What served society should be retained, and what did not should be discarded without sentiment or reserve. He was a very modern man, his guiding principles in complete accord with my own. We might occasionally quibble about the specifics, but together we wanted nothing more than to leave a world better than the one into which we had been delivered.
I picked up the discarded newspaper and skimmed it quickly. “They have no real sympathy for the victims,” I observed. “No understanding of what would drive a woman to sell herself for a few coppers. They do not care that people are born into the vilest slums and must live the whole of their lives bound by its limitations. For all their faults, I do envy the Americans that,” I told him. “They permit a man to make himself and do not hold it against him. A woman as well.”
He was silent a long moment before asking, “What did Lady Rose say?”
“She was paid to stage her little act, just as we expected.”
He sat forwards. “Paid? By whom?”
“By a man with a great deal of facial hair and a strong smell of licorice,” I told him.
His eyes lit. “That bloody old porter at the club.”
“No doubt,” I agreed.
“And if he was able to manage a crate containing Madame Aurore’s body without assistance, I think we may presume that he is significantly more able of body than he pretends. What do you know about him?”
I shrugged. “We spoke twice. He was outrageous to the point of insult both times, overly familiar and appalling. I wanted nothing more than to get away—” I broke off and Stoker waited whilst I puzzled it out. “But of course. His maladroit behavior was as much a masquerade as his pretended infirmity. If he infiltrated the club in order to spy or to wreak some harm upon Aurore, what better way to ensure he was left to his own devices than to act like a tiresome old ruffian?”
“The only question is why she would ever permit someone like that in her club,” Stoker mused. “She was elegant and refined, as were her surroundings.”
“I mentioned something of the sort to her and her response was that he was new, a sort of charity case, I gathered. She said words to the effect that she believed in giving everyone a first chance.”
I fell silent again, thinking hard. “There was something else. An odor besides the licorice that I could not place. It was decidedly chemical in nature.”
