Chapter Thirteen
“I knew something was off.” Oliver Twist had apparently taken up residence in the nursery suite after the mass departure. He carried a pillowslip into the sitting room and laid it out on a long, low table in front of the couch. He stared at the faintly clicking clockwork of his tablet. The thing was largely torn apart. He flopped on the floor and stared some more, miniaturized tools bristled from his waistcoat and watch pockets and perched behind his ears. He even mumbled around the two clamped in his teeth.
I tried to see how it was that the clockwork still went clicking along when the thing was in so many pieces. I failed and lay back.
“What is it that troubles you, Doctor Twist?” Edward asked, also peering at the strangely self-operating clockwork.
“I was trying to look for a switch-play,” Oliver lamented. “That’s how I figured it’d come off. The documents would switch hands somehow. But what I didn’t see until it was too late was that every one of those document cases was empty as a poor man’s pocket except the one with the clerk who sailed off.”
“How could you possibly be expected to know such a thing?” Zambo asked.
“I set my tablet to have a look inside things,” Oliver responded, popping a tool out of his mouth and adjusting something. “But I was only thinking disguises or weapons. It was so much simpler than that.”
“We almost got bamboozled, fer sure.” Sluefoot Sue scowled. “You mean you got onea them-thar Roetingen rays tucked away in yer tickbox, Doc?”
“Those are are dangerous,” Oliver growled. “But that’s the easiest way to understand it, yes. I got distracted, like a fool, by the beggar horde. They really were just beggars, or at least just a distraction. But when Mowgli held up that case I realized, and he did too, at about the same time, that it was empty.”
Mowgli nodded confirmation. “One of the beggars snatched it. I relieved him of it. As soon as it was in my hand I knew something was wrong. Why would a clerk carry an empty case?”
“I should also have seen that the fellow we chased was armed. That’s the very thing I was checking for. It was my fault, Florizel, that he stabbed you.” Oliver subsided to muttering again as he began to piece the tablet back together. “My fault completely.”
“Has the false clerk been questioned?” I asked.
“He swears he’s innocent,” Sue growled. “He can’t or won’t explain why he was the only one with documents. He won’t say nothin’ ‘bout why he was runnin’, ‘cept that he was afeard a’ bein’ robbed when all them beggars showed up. Didn’t give no explanation fer why he carried that infernal firearm, ‘cept t’ say, ‘I have a right to protect myself.’”
The chimes sounded, indicating someone in the hall below requested admission to the penthouse. Madame Phoebe disappeared into the garden fountain area and returned, pale and trembling.
“The courier we captured is dead,” she reported.
“Dead? How?” clamored all the Legacy members at once.
“Scotland Yard was very reluctant to even tell us,” Madame Phoebe answered. “But, very simply, the man was entitled to counsel. His advocate appeared, spoke briefly with the client, left, and when the guard came to return the man to his cell he found him collapsed on the floor. He had been poisoned. We know nothing else.”
“Dodge will surely turn out to have been the ‘advocate,’” Edward Ferrars sighed.
“No, the advocate was a woman,” Madame Phoebe informed us. She could not help glancing my way.
“Visha?” I felt the room turn sideways. I had believed her. I had set her free to murder again. How could I have been such a fool?
“Uncertain,” Phoebe shrugged. “Florizel, even if it was Visha, you were not to blame. Every one of our auxiliary ladies insisted she seemed genuine and supported your decision. Believe me, they would have descended upon her like furies if there had been any doubt in their minds. You know that.”
“I did not even warn Trevor. Will she eventually kill him?” I was not speaking to anyone in the room, and no one dared venture an answer.
Oliver Twist finished re-assembling his tablet. “We need to go back to trying to find Dodge’s hideout. It’s the only path we have, now that another possible informant is dead. You can take a broom to a spider’s web. You can drive away her flies and clean out her egg sacks but if she’s still living she’ll just move and start over. We haven’t even swept away Dodge’s web. We haven’t done anything but break a strand and brush away a few of his flies.”
“Some of our number should go down to Scotland Yard and try to pick up the trail of the advocate.” Fun See spoke for the first time. “That is a thread worth following, perhaps.”
“I will go.” Zambo rose. “Shall I carry you back to bed, Bohemian?” I turned crimson.
“Yes,” Madame Phoebe responded for me. “Please, Zambo. Reverend Ferrars, will you accompany your partner to Scotland Yard?”
“Certainly,” Edward nodded.
After Zambo deposited me gently into the bed I noted that Madame Phoebe whispered instructions to the giant black before he left the bedroom. I pretended I had not noticed but balked when Madame Phoebe pulled out a dressing gown and moved to help me settle into bed.
“I can manage, Madame Campbell.” My tone was too stiff and she recognized it at once.
“What I whispered to Zambo was that he should make a stop at the newspaper office.” She continued with her work and did not look at me. “He is to drop a hint that the foreign gentleman injured at the docks has suffered a setback, a serious infection, and may not recover from his wound. He and Edward are to speak openly of lodging a complaint with the government about failing to protect foreign nationals from radicals.”
I marveled at how quick and strong this woman was, and wondered if she could have carried me herself. She checked the dressing on my wound and miraculously relieved much of the pain and pressure I had been feeling with a simple adjustment. She put another pillow behind my head and the work of getting me into bed was done. She stood over me and I could see her weigh her next words.
“I trust you, Florizel. But I thought you might object to my plan. That was the only reason I whispered, so that you would not jump in to try to talk me out of executing it.”
“I should remove myself from here. They will come here, thinking I am vulnerable.”
“And that is why you will not remove yourself from here. You are very vulnerable, but we must flush out someone who can tell us something about Dodge. My guess is that we will flush out the poison maiden, who has already told you a great deal and, so far from trying to harm you, has protected you from harm more than once.”
“She has shown no such inclination to spare anyone else. And I marvel at your willingness to dangle me as bait, Madame Campbell.”
“I am actually going to dangle something else as bait, Florizel. I have received word that her antidote packet should arrive back here by the evening post. I don’t think she will be able to resist that lure, even if she does not want to risk coming simply to see if you are really at death’s door.”
“Was Doctor Campbell able to identify it so quickly?”
“Mac kept a small sample and promises to keep working on it.”
“You will extort information from her in exchange for her antidote?” I found myself constantly revising my opinion of this woman. Could she be so calculating and cold?
“This woman was slowly poisoning my husband. My compassion toward her is limited until I understand her better. We are desperate to stop murders in untold numbers and a possible international government overthrow. I will do what I must to protect those I love, those who are my comrades in this fight, and those who are innocent. Visha so far falls into none of those categories.”
Elinor Ferrars knocked and entered with a pot of tea and a bowl of broth on a tray. She set it down on the bedside table, then glanced upward and downward at our drawn, tense faces.
“A nice cup of tea will do you both good.” Sh
e patted my shoulder and linked arms with Madame Phoebe. “Doctor Twist has retreated to his improvised mechanical laboratory. Mr. Fun, Sue and Mr. Mowgli have gone out to see if they missed anything during the excitement at the docks. We ladies were just going to sit down and have tea together.
“I’m terribly sorry to leave you alone, Florizel, but perhaps you’ll just have your tea and broth and try to rest. I think that would be best. Rest, and pray, and perhaps a little reading of the Word will settle your disordered spirits.”
She lifted a napkin from the tray and showed me the little Bible beneath it. I had to smile at her sweet, artless manner.
“Come, my dear.” She drew Madame Phoebe to the door. “Tea time.”
Edward and Zambo sent a report that the advocate who had visited the clerk had left a card from a well-known, highly reputable firm. The firm claimed they had two female barristers and that neither of them had kept any appointments outside the office that day. The description of the woman was sketchy. She had dressed in an olive and brown business suit and had worn a heavy veil. No one had seen her anywhere beyond a two-block radius from the jail.
The evening papers blazed headlines about the scandalous stabbing of the Prince of Bohemia and how his assailant had mysteriously been poisoned. Lurid prose demanded an investigation into anarchists, secret societies, nationalist extremist groups, and a long list of other possible and impossible responsible parties. A small note at the end mentioned that the prince languished at death’s door with a raging fever.
The trio searching the docks found many who testified that the beggars of the fateful day were all new to the regulars of the portside community. They also learned that the clerk who had been poisoned was unknown to his supposed employers. They rounded up the other clerks’ descriptions and his lordship and Lady Anne were staggered to discover that they were unacquainted with a single one of the clerks. This absurd ignorance could hardly be chalked up to the indifference of nobility toward the “hired help.” A search turned up the bodies of the real clerks in gruesome, out of the way places on the Prometheus. Naturally, the false clerks were nowhere to be found except for the one already known to be dead.
I heard none of these bits of news until the next day. I slept the day away, greatly calmed by reading Elinor Ferrars’ tiny Bible and the soft chatter of the Legacy Auxiliary Tea Party. I awoke around midnight feeling better than I had imagined possible. Cautiously I dressed and stole out to the main sitting room. At first the room appeared empty but before long I found Visha sitting in a wingback chair sound asleep. She looked so pale and fragile I hated to wake her. The irresistible impulse to touch her hair came over me again and when I did she grabbed my hand and held it to her cheek.
“I did not think Mrs. Moore-Campbell would lie,” she smiled. “Yet she freely admitted she had pretended you were dying to lure me here. My disguise did not fool her at all. I pretended to be an attaché of the Bohemian embassy looking into an attack on one of ‘our’ nobility.” She pointed at a castoff quiet, dark outfit of walking clothes on the sofa. “To prove that you were mending she allowed me to peek at you. I was told not to disturb you, but I was given permission to wait for you to awaken. I assumed she would interrogate me, but none of them has asked me any questions. The ladies fed me dinner and gave me back my pouch. I do not understand.”
“Is that why you stayed, to have me explain to you how Madame Moore-Campbell’s mind works? It is impossible for me to do that.”
“I came because if you were going to die, I wanted to die as well, here, with you.”
I sat down on the other wingback chair. How could I respond to that? “How long have you been here?”
“Two hours. Perhaps a little more.”
I felt deeply the impossibility of the whole situation, but I stole a glance around, smelling something delicious but uncertain from whence the aroma originated. Madame Phoebe had in the past set up a sort of buffet on the other side of the garden from where we sat, with chafing dishes and tea things.
I knew I should have looked before I had seated myself, and now was unsure whether I could comfortably rise again. “Is there any--” I began.
Visha vaulted out of her chair. “I am so sorry! Of course.” She darted around the garden and I heard clattering. She returned a moment later with a tray laden with food. I laughed aloud at the smorgasbord she had heaped together for me. Partridge, trout, scones, bread pudding, artichoke, two kinds of pasties -- the tray seemed to bend beneath the weight. Apparently the entire Legacy Company had been in to dinner while I had slept the sleep of the dead. After just one day of broth and tea I was desperate for real food and even as leftovers it all looked wonderful. I tried to eat slowly.
“So, I must ask. Won’t Dodge miss you?”
“Dodge thinks I’m guarding Trevor.”
“Won’t Trevor -- ?
“Trevor thinks I’ve been withdrawn because Dodge’s funds have dried up.”
This was all so surreal, and Visha was so relaxed and unassuming the next question seemed to fall out of my mouth. “Did you poison the false clerk who tried to steal Lady Anne’s documents from the Prometheus?”
“I had not even heard that he was dead. No. I didn’t kill him.”
“So Dodge employs another woman poisoner?”
“Dodge employs hundreds of people. Stabbers, shooters, poisoners, garrotters -- Have you not heard of all the disappearances of people you thought you could question? Of course you have.”
“How much does Dodge know about us?”
“Who is ‘us’?”
“Visha…” I set my food aside, my appetite gone. “This is not the time to jest.”
“I am not jesting. Continue to ask specific questions as you did in the beginning, as you did with Trevor, so cleverly getting him to pick Dodge’s brains for you. Don’t falter. Mrs. Moore-Campbell is counting on you.”
Visha spoke as if another person was a poison maiden, a confederate of a ruthless, scheming monster, her manner so detached I wanted to shake that other person. Instead I went on.
“Does Dodge know that Archibald Campbell is no longer in danger of dying?”
“He still believes Campbell is here in the hotel, and in spite of all his wife’s tender care, that he will die. I even extorted from the other doctor a promise that he would pretend he still visits.”
“Does Dodge know Doctor and Mrs. Campbell are back in England?”
“He believes them to still be aboard the Majesty sailing for New York.”
“Does Dodge have specific information about the Alexander Legacy Company and its members?”
“Is that what you call it?” Visha’s dichotomous personalities seemed to reunite and she smiled very warmly, very genuinely. The moment was brief and the detachment returned. “Dodge knows that some savage man with a large black animal rescued the Campbells a few days ago. At first he did not believe it, and beat that unfortunate pickpocket to death quite accidentally because he thought the child was lying. He crept back here to douse the hall with ammonia when he understood that an animal might be used to track him. He has filed that knowledge away but does not know what to do with it yet.
“He also knows that the Doctor Campbells came here to bankroll some undertaking for the Mrs. Moore-Campbells. They do so much charity work together that he paid it no real mind. He knows that Fun See Tokiyo has interfered with his shipments but believes it to be coincidental. He was curious about the display at the docks but really, your heroic charge quite distracted him and he thinks it was simply that, a heroic charge to apprehend a possible thief. He did not connect your members into a unit acting together.”
“Thank God,” I breathed.
“You do not know to ask this question, so I will offer this as food for thought. Dodge became aware of your existence when Trevor broke his three engagements to see you at your club that day. He grilled me for hours to know who you were and why Trevor ground his entire campaign machinery to a halt just to sit at the club with
you. He was very intrigued by you but he can learn nothing about you except that you have no money to speak of and Trevor was not hitting you up for a donation.
“I told him you must simply be old friends but that concept is a foreign one to him. Dodge is somewhat rattled because he cannot certainly confirm it. He did hear that you were once a mercenary. He therefore thinks that perhaps you are a foreign spy and that you may be dangerous to his plans since your presence may mean there is someone in Europe checking up on Trevor. He considered the possibility that you interfered with the Lady Anne theft because you wanted the documents for whatever government you work for, and that they only accidentally fell into the British government’s hands when you were--” she faltered “ -- When you were wounded.”
I with difficulty resisted the urge to burst out laughing again. Visha studied me when I kept silent and it occurred to me that she had been so open and frank with me that I could afford to reciprocate. “Trevor’s father served at the Embassy in Bohemia. Trevor went to university there, and we were classmates. Things fell apart and I had to escape the county ahead of a misguided but very sincere firing squad organized by my uncle. Trevor smuggled me out in a steamer trunk when his father resigned as British Ambassador in order to aid me in my escape.
“Trevor thought it a great lark, took none of it seriously, and to this day has no comprehension that I could not go back and claim my throne as if nothing had happened. He thinks we are blood brothers bound by some childish adventure as if it were a mere storybook imagining. At odd moments he feels he must be in my presence as a reminder of the one adventurous thing he ever did in his dull, stuffy, minor British nobility and diplomat’s son life.”
“What an amazing story! I had speculated that you must have saved his life.”
“I would give my life for his if I could. Do I need to save him from you?”
Visha bolted out of her chair and paced the room. “Do I need to give this back to you?” She held out the pouch. “I have not taken it yet. I have kept your secrets from Dodge. I have bared my soul to you. I have told you everything I am and everything I know about Dodge. But you still do not believe me. What must I do to prove myself?”
“Do you know where Dodge is? Can you tell me how to find him?”
“No to both questions. When he wants me he sends for me.”
“What will he do when he realizes you have betrayed him?”
“He will get hold of me, try to make me tell him everything about you, and then kill me.”
“Have you endangered all of us by coming here?”
Visha stopped dead. She turned toward me, opened her mouth, shut it, and crumpled to the floor, knees hitting hard, hands lax on the carpet, eyes desolate.
“I have, haven’t I? It was such a clever plan I had, to pretend to Dodge that I was with Trevor. But he will know. Of course he will know. What am I to do?” She clutched the pouch. “If I take this, all of it, I can go to some alley and he will find me dead. He will never know I have been here, will he? He cannot know everything so quickly. Two or three hours. That’s all it has been. I just wanted to -- I only thought--”
She began to cry but made no sound. My side had begun to ache, but I got up and moved to stand over her. Once more I put a hand on her soft, shining black hair. She flinched a little but did not raise her eyes.
“Visha, you and I are going to leave here right now, together. I am of no use to the Legacy Company without more time to convalesce. You must at all costs avoid being found by Dodge. We shall both disappear, which will have the dual result of distracting Dodge from the others of the company, and of saving your life.
“We shall let it be thought that you hoped to do Dodge a good turn by removing that troublesome foreign agent. You have learned that I am truly a threat to him, that I was sent to assassinate Trevor. You came here to do away with me while I was helpless. But when you arrived you discovered I had been moved. You are now on my trail, determined to please your master by finding and killing me.”
“He will find us. This is Dodge’s London. You cannot hide here.”
“We will not hide here. We will leave London. But that is beside the point. Why should he hunt you if he believes you are still working for him, doing him a good turn? We could send him your location by the hour and he would simply smile and say, ‘Good girl.’ You must have some way of sending him messages.”
“Yes. Yes!” Visha sprang up and threw her arms around my neck. My side wrenched and I groaned. She pulled back. “I am sorry!”
I breathed slowly and the pain subsided. “Put on your dull weeds. I will get a coat and hat and we will go.”
I watched the girl transform once more as I fetched my outerwear. We headed for the tube lift but Madame Phoebe stopped us by appearing at her door in a soft, pure white nightgown, her black hair thick and tousled around her shoulders.
“I suggest you join the country contingent,” she said.
“Madame, the idea is to remove the threat from the Alexander Legacy Company and especially from those we most wish to protect,” I protested.
“If your plan has any merit at all, it must depend on Visha still being in her master’s good graces,” Madame Phoebe responded, “and He more or less indifferent to her whereabouts. And I think we can get you there in a way that will ensure you are not followed. Let me fetch Doctor Twist. He does not sleep, that I know of, so I am certain I will not disturb him.
“And Visha,” she paused on her way to the doctor’s laboratory suite, “you must stop holding onto your old life and thinking of it as your own to play with and dispose of at your will. Take the necessary dose of your antidote right now. As Christ has put to death the old Visha, and made her new, you must put to death the Poison Maiden and make a new and pure vessel, for His use, not your own.”
Visha stared at me, clearly seeking confirmation, as Madame Phoebe disappeared into the suite now occupied by Oliver Twist. “Madame Moore-Campbell is one of the wisest women of my acquaintance,” I said, taking up a carafe of water and a glass from the buffet table and pouring her a drink. “You cannot do better than heed her advice.”