Chapter Nine
The northwest London borough ofMaryleboneis renowned for an Anglican church of the same name and an eighteenth-century pleasure garden. The church has been rebuilt three times since 1200 AD, but the pleasure garden, including its once remarkable shell grotto, now languishes in ruin.
The only remaining feature is the garden’s musical venue, The Rose of Burgundy tavern, which has remained in business for two centuries and stages concerts daily. Likewise, the church, as ever, carries on.
See bills outside tavern for showtimes and ticket prices. Libations and lite fare available for purchase.
Church tours twice daily, weekly services Sundays 11:00 o’clock.
—fromA Noble Guide to Londonby Sabine Noble
A week later Sabine stood in the shadow of the grotto ruins in Marylebone High Street and transcribed the not-so-discreet conversation being volleyed some five feet away.
One Thomas T. Toose of T. T. Toose Wagons and Carts was giving orders to a foreman regarding an undertaking to which he referred as “Orion’s Light.” Fortuitously, Sabine had learned that “Orion’s Light” just happened to be the code name for the smuggling operation commanded by her uncle. (Thank you, scurvy-ridden sailors from theDreadnought.) After five days of lurking around Marylebone, she had finally stumbled upon a conversation with value.
The illustrious wagon master, Mr. Toose, had been named again and again in the letters from her mother’s maid. Sabine had since discovered that he was a purveyor of wagons, but that was all she knew. Wagon-letting was a legitimate profession, of course, but he would not have been such a frequent guest to Park Lodge without a more nefarious purpose.
Under the guise of research for a Marylebone installment for her travel guides, Sabine had been up and down the high street, just waiting for him to say or do something useful to her investigation.
But now he had invoked the code words, “Orion’s Light,” and she knew she had finally lit on a conversation worth overhearing. Standing beside the wagon house, her drafting kit open and a half-finished map of Marylebone in plain view, Sabine listened carefully and took down every word.
“The barrels leave for the Isle of Portland at the end of the month,” Mr. Toose told the underling. “A quarter of them will have nothing in them, so get your hands on something to fill them with. We’ll sell whatever it is in Dorset. I mean to make money coming and going. You think Dryden and the others aren’t lining their own pockets every chance they get?”
“Get my hands on something... like what?” asked the younger man.
“Don’t care,” said Toose. “If it fits in a barrel and will travel easily, it’ll do.”
“How much are you willing to pay to for thissomething?”
“As little as possible. And then we charge double when we sell it to the good people of Dorset.”
Sabine scribbled madly. When they changed course and began discussing calendar days, she gave Bridget a friendly kick, sending the dog darting between them. The men cursed and leapt back—a disruption that allowed Sabine to catch up.
Five minutes later the men had gone their separate ways and Sabine tucked away her notebook and drafting kit and walked to Oxford Street for a hansom cab. If Stoker was awake when she returned, she could go over every word while it was still fresh in her mind. In Sabine’s estimation, Mr. Toose supplied a fleet of wagons to distribute... whatever it was Sir Dryden smuggled into the country. Also the barrels to transport it, apparently. Sabine couldn’t care less about middlemen like Mr. Toose, but she must follow every lead until she knew exactly Dryden’s game. What was inside the barrels that were not empty? What would go inside the empty ones? These were the persistent questions that kept Sabine and Stoker up nights. She’d paced Stoker’s bedroom for the past week, explaining to him what she’d discovered, showing off her map of London with pins that marked each cog in Dryden’s wheel of smugglers. She recounted notes she’d made, newspaper clippings she’d saved, and every letter received from May, her mother’s nursemaid, which detailed who Sir Dryden entertained at Park Lodge.
Sharing her evidence with Stoker, a man who knew the business of importation and who had a sense of England’s strategically situated barrier islands, was gratifying to Sabine in a way she could not have imagined.
Ultimately, he said very little, but he listened so very well, as if Sabine was explaining the most troubling problem in the world. And when he did ask questions, they made the whole conversation feel like... like a collaboration.
How long had it been since she she’d known the thrill of working on something with someone of like mind and abilities? Her friends had embraced their marriages and moved away. Her father had been dead for five years. Perhaps Stoker only humored her, too ill to do anything else but listen; perhaps he did it to distract from her questions about the Duke of Wrest. Either way, he clearly understood her ultimate goal. And he endorsed it—or if he did not endorse it, he did not discourage it.
And all the while, he struggled with very significant problems of his own, the greatest of which was his painful recovery. There was also the mystery of his missing boat and absent crew and the fact that he’d been left for dead. Yet, he was wholly attentive and engaged whenever she drifted into his sick room with a question or new evidence, and he tolerated mealtimes dominated with talk of her investigation.
Of course, what choice did he have at mealtimes or any time? She fed him, or rather she helped him eat; his strength returned with greater force every day. Talking came naturally to her, and he was not prone to chatter. It was a little bit like having her own useful captive, she thought, a capable man who did not intrude or countermand or do much more than entertain her chosen topic of conversation.
But of course he was not a captive, nor did she wish for him to be. He was a virile man in the prime of his life, suffering from a momentary setback. When he was well, he would leave her and her investigation and go on his way and she would not hear from him again for months.
As well it should be.
As she preferred it.
A quarter hour later, Sabine and Bridget reached Belgravia to see Dr. Cornwell’s carriage parked outside the Boyds’ townhome. Sabine checked her timepiece, cursing her tardiness. She’d known the doctor would call this afternoon, but she’d been disinclined to leave Marylebone without listening to everything Mr. Toose might have to say.
“At least we’ve caught him before he’s left,” she told Bridget, clipping down the cellar steps.
“Ah, Mrs. Stoker, there you are,” said Dr. Cornwell, pushing through the door.
“Oh yes, hello, Doctor. I’m so very sorry to be late. I was detained in Marylebone. How is he today?”
