The Murder of Mary Russell (13 page)

I
had no clear idea how long it had been since I had looked up from my mail at the sound of a motorcar's tyres in the drive—ten minutes? hours?—but sitting in Mrs Hudson's armchair, waiting for her son to murder me, felt like longer yet.

“Papers are papers,” he said at last. “Where would she put them if not in her desk?”

I eased out my long-held breath. “An old house like ours, it could be a dozen places. A knitting pattern might go in that hassock. A personal letter could go into storage. Something she didn't want people to see might be tucked behind her spice cabinet. Legal papers, well, she may have given Holmes something to put in the safe.”

To my disappointment, he bypassed my offer of the safe—one of the house revolvers lay within reach of its door. “Let's start with storage.”

“Would this be something she's had for a long time?”

“Could be. Or…”

I waited, trying to look eager to help. For some reason, this question created a sticking point, for several very long seconds. I could see him come to a decision: his face relaxed, and he might as well have said aloud,
Sure, why not tell her? She's not going to live long anyway.
“I sent a crate of, well, things. Just odds and ends, really, after Mum—after her sister died. Did they get here?”

“I think so.”

“Good! Good.”

It was a fervent reaction, considering that the crate he was talking about had held little more than rubbish—and certainly no passbooks. Its contents had been so badly packed as to have been a deliberate message: granted, the child's string doll must have been tired to begin with, and the once-pretty beaded ladies' evening bag was the victim of time as much as abuse. But half a dozen photographs came out crumpled and gouged beyond redemption; a copy of
The Old Curiosity Shop
was missing the entire first section; several old letters—not even entire, but single pages from different correspondents—had been thrust in to fend for themselves. Three lovely doll costumes might have survived had they not been tumbled against broken porcelain during the long sea voyage. One of these miniature frocks, a full-skirted Victorian costume made out of violet silk with a million unbelievably tiny stitches, had been reduced to shreds.

I had thought, watching Mrs Hudson pick sadly through the mess last November, that this tiny dress was the source of her mourning, until she picked up one of the larger porcelain shards. A pair of tea-cups, she told me: her mother's only possession. Unshed tears quivered in her eyes when she swept the shards into the waste-bin. Afterwards, I rescued the pieces and took them to a porcelain mender. He managed to reconstruct a single saucer, although it showed the myriad lines of his work, and she had looked at it without much enthusiasm. Still, it was given a place on her shelf of mementoes near the door.

Her son now followed my eyes to the saucer. “That's the thing. Looks like it got a bit cracked in shipping.” He put his finger behind it, and tipped it off the shelf. Bits skittered in all directions.

“Let's go look in that storage room,” he said.

F
acing The Bishop was the toughest Cheat that Clarissa had ever talked herself into. She remembered all too clearly her father's condition when he'd returned from negotiating old debts, and while she did not imagine the man would do such a thing to her, she knew full well that he would have an alternative for wayward women. And as for his son, straining at his tethers…

In the end, as with any Cheat, the person she had to convince was herself. The crime boss was just a man, and Clarissa Hudson was his match. The Bishop's demonstrated brutality was less madness than a ruthless dedication to business: nothing like throwing a thieving underling out of a high window to make the man's colleagues think twice about cheating the boss.

Or so she told herself, over and over during the night. Her heart counted off the seconds with dull thuds, her bed resisted any attempt at finding comfort. Even the tiny fish in her belly was restless, protesting her turmoil.

For half her life, Clarissa Hudson's ability to read people and reflect what they wanted had kept her family warm, fed, and clothed in silk. Her audience with The Bishop would be no different.
Follow his lead,
she told herself.
He's only a man. Read the clues he'll give you, then be what he wants
. A hundred times, she repeated,
You don't need forgiveness. You only need to convince him that he's better off using Clarissa Hudson than punishing her for her father's sins.

But all she could think of, that endless night, that frigid morning, were the times her skills had failed. The smooth and impenetrable Mr Bevins, his choking hands in the Ballarat darkness. One or two others like him over the years, when only memory of that glassy façade had raised her suspicions.

Hugh Edmunds, who had somehow got under her guard.

Yes, she was capable, but Clarissa's hands were icy and her body damp as she rode the omnibus across town to The Bishop's palace.

And going against a lifetime of habit, she left the tiny ivory-handled revolver in her room. She might as well place it against her own temple, as use it against The Bishop.

“Yes, Mr Bishop, I am aware that when my father left London last autumn, he owed you money. He owes me as well, for that matter, although I imagine I have even less of a chance at seeing repayment than you.”

The Bishop was in his throne room, a still-big man in a big decorative chair, with a desk before it to make clear that this was the centre of a business establishment, however criminal. The clerkish man who had been sitting there when she was brought in was dismissed. With him gone, every man in the room looked like a bare-knuckles fighter.

Surrounded by large, violent men, Clarissa sat, a demure figure with gloved hands lying across the beaded bag in her lap—a bag that had been pawed through at the door, by the first in a series of men whose rough handling had made their boss's attitude towards her crystal clear. Her voice was reasonable; the position of her back and shoulders politely upright; there was no trace of tension in her eyes or jaw. This young woman's apparent oblivion to the threat that radiated from The Bishop like a hot stove was making everyone in the room uneasy.

Everyone except the two people talking.

To Clarissa's immense relief, The Bishop's face had proved neither smooth nor impenetrable. The Bishop was angry and fed up and would take a great deal of convincing, but The Bishop was a man, and Clarissa Hudson had been shaping men her whole life.

The son, on the other hand…

Her father had called him a mad dog, and she had no doubt that if The Bishop decided to turn his son loose, her life would be over. The old man had already called him to heel twice. The younger man, in his late thirties and with the build of a docks worker, paced back and forth behind his father's throne—where he seemed about equally torn between throwing himself on her, and on the aged father under whose rule he was clearly chafing.

They all expected—Bishop and son, Demander and the others in the room—for her to babble and beg. Instead, she said her piece and closed her mouth, waiting in all apparent peace for his reply. And indeed, she was no longer sweating. Her stomach had settled. Committing to a Cheat was like going off a cliff: the first step was hard; the rest was merely waiting.

Seconds passed, the silence grew profound. One could hear the ticking of two pocket watches, a gurgle from someone's gut, and the holding of breath.

Clarissa permitted one of her eyebrows to rise in a gracious question, but said nothing. Her hands remained loosely clasped, her breasts rose and fell in a slow, even rhythm.

The sudden creak of wood nearly startled a twitch out of her, as The Bishop sat back, dropping one elbow over the throne's arm and resting a foot on his knee. He'd been a big man, once, and was still a physical presence in the room despite his eight decades. The cold rage that greeted her entrance had faded, to be replaced by an expression of interest, even (was it possible?) amusement. For the first time since walking into the room, Clarissa became aware that her lungs were drawing in air.

“So if you're not here to pay what your father owes,” the old man asked, “what's your game?”

She smiled—not as triumph, but an acknowledgement that they had entered the next stage of business.

“As I told this gentleman”—she nodded towards the ginger-haired Demander, sitting to The Bishop's left—“Mr…‘Smith,' I believe, whom you sent to speak with me last October, I neither know where my father is, nor do I have the resources to pay off his debt to you…directly.” She let him listen to that last word for a moment before she continued. “As you may have noticed, I have fallen on hard times. In my current condition, I find myself vulnerable to all the obstacles life sets before a woman, and more. Not the least of those being that as an independent…agent, as it were, I would be setting myself up in some degree of competition with you.

“Therefore, I should like to make a business proposition: my skills, which are considerable, in exchange for one of your employees as a partner. I would give you a percentage of my takings. In return, you would offer me your protection among your associates here in London.”

The amusement on his face was clearer now, although it contained more than a little cruelty. “There's lots of houses need cats, Miss Hudson. Some men like a touch of what you got at the moment.”

She was prepared for threats, and managed to hide her revulsion and terror by lifting the lumpy beaded bag from her knees and placing it on the desk between them. She pulled open its cord and laid out a series of objects on the polished wood: two knives, a gold watch, a silver propelling pencil, and a silver-and-ivory comb with a tooth missing.

At the last, an exclamation came from behind the throne, and the son lunged forward to snatch up the comb. “This is mine! How—Christ, the bloody tail knocked into me when she come in, and…Oh, I'm gonna—”

“That's enough,” the great man said.

“But Pops, the bitch—”

“Shut it.”

“Jesus, wan't it bad enough that 'er father—”

The old villain raised his eyes. “Want Jesse to throw you in the cellar?” The threat was quiet but the effect immediate and profound. The son's mouth snapped shut, and every other man there gave a sort of shudder. The son's gaze fell, and The Bishop returned his attention to the objects on the table before him.

One of them was a mechanical pencil. It had rested on the desk blotter when Clarissa Hudson sat down.

“You're a fly dolly, give you that,” he said. “Clever fingers, the dive and the pinch.”

“In fact,” she replied, “what I am good at is the diversion. If you remember, as I started to sit, my back gave a sudden twinge and I was forced to lean on your desk. Each of these gentlemen had a similar distraction that enabled my fingers to remove something he prized from a pocket. My fingers are adequate, but I'm a better actress than a pickpocket. My father and I paid for a week in Paris with three sessions of the Found Note-Case routine. I have been blessed with a remarkably sympathetic face. Would you not agree?” she asked, a veritable study in angelic virtue.

The Bishop's own face was undergoing a challenge, the muscles working as if a small creature were caught beneath the skin. Finally he gave way to a cough of grudging laughter. “Missy, you ain't what I expected.”

Clarissa permitted a bit of her satisfaction to show. After that, it was just a matter of negotiation.

His first offer of a partner was old enough to be her grandfather, a decrepit old stork with shaking hands.

“Most amusing, I'm sure,” she told The Bishop with a cool smile. “Am I right in thinking you must have a number of apprentices in the trade? Boys young enough to be quick on their feet?”

“Not girls?” he asked, still amused.

“I do better with lads,” she told him.

Before the day was out, she'd had a dozen boys paraded in front of her, aged thirteen to seventeen. Each one was either so shifty-eyed any constable with a speck of brains would have him up by his heels to see what fell out of his pockets, or so blatantly righteous as to raise the suspicions of a saint.

The Bishop's patience was wearing thin; Clarissa's ankles were swelling. “Are these all you have?” she asked at last.

“There's more. Come back tamarrah.”

But on her way out of The Bishop's palace, a small child was coming in. His clothing was sparse and his brown skin had gone a peculiar colour with the cold, but he had about him a cheeky air that caught her attention. “What does that one do?”

The gang leader had to ask his ginger-haired Demander—Jesse—for information.

“Billy? He's look-out for Three-Card Louis.”

“Is he Greek?” Clarissa had problems once with a Greek lad.

“Don't think so. African, more like. He granddad was a street-sweeper.”

“That's fine, then. Let me talk to him.”

Ginger dragged the lad from his bread-and-dripping and set him down in front of Clarissa.

Three-Card Louis must have been working the lower reaches of the city if this was the lad who watched for coppers. The boy wore a variety of hand-me-downs, none of which actually fit his thin frame, all of which had seen long use before coming to him. Despite that, he'd made an attempt at tidiness, with all his buttons fastened, oversized cap at a rakish angle on his tight curls, and a bright orange scarf hiding the dirt around his neck. He even wore stockings, although he did not seem to have learned to darn yet. His delicate fingers were surprisingly clean, and his skin, out of the bitter air, had taken on a warm colour, like coffee richly treated with milk.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I'm seven, and you?” he retorted.

“Can you read and write?”

“Oi c'n read a ‘Keep Out' sign and write me naim 'senough to be goin' on.”

“If I buy a quartern loaf, a tuppence worth of apples, and tuppence of sweets, what's my change from a bob?”

“Why'd'ya buy any of dem fings? They're easy enough to nick.”

“I said ‘if.'”

“Though maybe not if you're old 'n' slow, loik you.”

“You don't know the answer, do you?”

“Thruppence.”

“Good. But you're not seven years old. I doubt you're much more than five. And with hands like yours, you've been practicing the dip. If you want to work with me, you're what I need. But I can't have a partner who lies to me: Can. Not. You either tell me the truth or you keep mum, those are your choices. Your first lie, I hand you back to The Bishop. And I'm very good at catching lies.”

Most of the time,
an inner voice added. As if he'd heard, the lad's black gaze darted down to her belly, then up to her earrings, before returning down to contemplate the toes of her shoes. And he nodded. “Oi'm six. Oi fink.”

“Do you have a family?”