Ringing, deafening explosions. Bright lights. Chaos. Screaming.
Then silence. Utter, absolute silence.
Sir Maurice Newbury came to with a start.
There was a hand on his cheek, soft and cool. Veronica? He opened his eyes, feeling groggy. The world was spinning.
The hand belonged to a woman. She was pretty, in her late twenties, with tousled auburn hair, full, pink lips and a concerned expression on her face. Not Veronica, then.
Newbury opened his mouth to speak but his tongue felt thick and dry, and all that escaped was a rough croak.
The woman smiled. “Good. You’re coming round.” She glanced over her shoulder. Behind her, the world looked as if it had been turned upside down. Newbury couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. He tried to focus on the woman’s face instead. She was watching him again. “There’s been an accident,” she said. “My name’s Clarissa.”
Newbury nodded. An accident? He tried to recall what had happened, where he was. He couldn’t think, couldn’t seem to focus. Everything felt sluggish, as if he were under water. How long had he been unconscious? He studied the woman’s face. “Clarissa?”
She still had her hand on his cheek. “Yes. That’s right.” Her voice was soft and steady. Calm. “Do you remember what happened?”
Newbury shook his head, and then winced, as the motion seemed to set off another explosion in his head. Explosion? A memory bubbled to the surface. There had been an explosion. He shifted, pulling himself into a sitting position. His legs were trapped beneath something hard and immovable.
Clarissa withdrew her hand and sat back on her haunches, still watching him intently. For the first time since waking he became aware of other people in the small space, huddled in little groups, their voices audible only as a low, undulating murmur. Someone was crying.
Newbury blinked. Was it some sort of prison cell? No. That didn’t make any sense. The explosion. An accident.
Newbury swallowed, wishing he had a drink of water. He was hot and uncomfortable. The air inside the small space was stifling. He felt behind him and found there was something solid he could lean against. He blinked, trying to clear the fogginess. Clarissa looked concerned. “What happened?” he managed to ask, eventually. He was still groggy and his voice sounded slurred.
“I’m not sure. The ground train must have hit something. There was an explosion, and then the carriage overturned. I think I must have blacked out for a minute. When I came round, you were unconscious beside me.”
The ground train. Yes, that was right. He’d been on a ground train.
He strained to see over her shoulder again. They were still in the carriage. It was lying on its side.
The vehicle had clearly overturned. How long had they been there? Minutes? Hours? He had no way of knowing. His head was thumping and the world was making no sense. What had he been doing on a ground train?
He rubbed a hand over his face, tried to take in his situation. His legs were trapped beneath the seat in front and his body was twisted at an awkward angle, so that the floor of the carriage was actually supporting his back. He didn’t seem to have broken any limbs, but he wasn’t quite sure if he was capable of extracting himself without help. He looked up at Clarissa, who was still regarding him with a steady gaze. “Are you a nurse?”
She didn’t even attempt to repress her laughter, which was warm and heartfelt and made Newbury smile. “No. I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I’m a typist. Just a typist.”
Newbury shook his head. “No. I’m sure you’re much more than that.”
She gave a wry smile, as if he’d touched a nerve. “Are you hurt?”
“What? No. At least, I don’t think so.”
“It’s just you asked if I was a nurse.”
Newbury closed his eyes, sucking ragged breath into his lungs. He must have bashed his head in the aftermath of the explosion. Nothing else could explain the fuzziness he was feeling, his inability to think straight. “I was wondering why you were helping me. If you’d come with the rescue crew.”
Clarissa shifted from her crouching position onto her knees. She rubbed her arms. “They’re not here yet. I don’t think they can get to us. The explosion...” She looked over her shoulder, tossed her hair with a nervous gesture that suggested she was more concerned about their situation than she was trying to let on.
“They’ll come. I’m sure of it. It’s just a matter of time.”
Clarissa shrugged. “I hope you’re right. It’s just I—” She pitched forward suddenly, grabbing for Newbury as the carriage gave a violent shudder. There was a bang like a thunderclap. Newbury felt himself thrown backwards, and then Clarissa was on top of him, clutching at him, trying to prevent herself from sliding away, across the juddering vehicle. He wrapped his arms around her, desperately holding on. Somewhere else in the confined space a woman started screaming: a long, terrified wail, like that of a keening animal.
Newbury gasped for breath. The engine must have gone up. They were lucky they weren’t already dead.
The carriage slid across the cobbled road with the grating whine of rending metal, windows shattering as the frames buckled, showering Newbury and Clarissa with glittering diamonds of glass. Newbury’s face stung with scores of tiny wounds. He squeezed his eyes shut and clung to the slight figure of the woman until, a few moments later, the world finally stopped spinning and the carriage came to rest.
For a moment, Clarissa didn’t move. He could feel her breath fluttering in her chest, the rapid beating of her heart. Her hands were grasping the front of his jacket, hanging on as if he were the only still point in the universe. Her face was close to his. She smelled of lavender. She raised her head, and he saw the terrified expression on her face.
“Are you alright?” No answer. “Clarissa? Are you alright?”
She seemed suddenly to see him; the vacant look passed out of her eyes. “Yes. Yes, I’m alright.” Her voice wavered, as if she didn’t really believe her own words. She still hadn’t moved. She looked down at him, saw the lapels of his jacket bunched in her fists, realised she was crushing him against another seat. “I’m sorry... I...”
Newbury shook his head. “No need.”
She released her grip and eased herself free. As she pulled herself up into a sitting position, she glanced momentarily at her hands, a confused expression clouding her face. Then realisation dawned. She turned her palms out towards Newbury, brandishing them before her, eyes wide. “Blood...” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Oh God, you’re bleeding!”
Newbury stared at her bloodied hands, unable to associate what he was seeing with the words she was saying. He didn’t know how to react, what to do next; since waking, everything had taken on a dreamlike quality, as if he were watching scenes from someone else’s life unfold around him rather than his own. He stared blankly at Clarissa, waiting to see what she would do next.
She didn’t hesitate. Pawing at his jacket, she leaned over him, searching for any signs of a wound. There was blood everywhere. “Where does it hurt?” And then: “You said you weren’t injured!”
Newbury pinched the bridge of his nose, tried to concentrate. “I didn’t think I was. I—”
“Stay still! You don’t want to make matters worse!” She’d finished fiddling with the buttons on the front of his jacket and she yanked it open, exposing the clean white cotton of the shirt beneath. They both looked at it for a moment, dumbfounded.
“If it’s not your blood, whose is it?” Clarissa glanced down at herself in surprise, her hands automatically going to her midriff. There was blood there, a dark Mandelbrot of it on her pale blouse, but it was only the impression she had picked up from Newbury’s jacket while she’d been laying on top of him.
Newbury reached up and grasped the back of a nearby seat, using it for leverage as he extracted his legs from where they were entangled beneath the seat in front. He called out in pain—a broken metal spar had gouged a long scratch in his calf as he dragged it free. He righted himself, still groggy, then turned to face Clarissa. “Someone is obviously injured. We have to help them.”
Clarissa looked at him, incredulous. “You’re in no fit state... Look, I don’t even know your name.”
“Newbury. Sir Maurice Newbury.”
She smiled. “Well, you might have a knighthood but it doesn’t mean you’re impervious to injury.”
“I’m quite well. A little groggy, perhaps. But I’ll be fine. I can’t say the same about whoever has lost so much blood.” Tentatively, he pulled himself to his feet, wobbling a little as he attempted to orientate himself in the overturned carriage. His head was swimming and he still felt dreadfully woozy, but he had no choice. He had to press on. “We need to find them and see if they’re still alive.”
Clarissa laughed. “You’re a stubborn fool, Sir Maurice Newbury.”
Newbury beamed. “Come on. Let’s check on the other passengers.”
Clarissa offered him a supporting arm, and together they stumbled the length of the overturned carriage, clambering over the ruins of broken seats and baggage that had exploded in a mess of brightly coloured cardigans and coats.
The roof of the carriage had crumpled during the second explosion, shattering any remaining windows and comprehensively trapping them inside. The openings where the windows had been were now nothing but small, ragged-edged holes, too small for even a child to fit through. They were going to have to wait for assistance.
“Ow!” Clarissa winced as she vaulted over a broken table.
“What is it?” asked Newbury. “Are you alright?”
“It’s nothing,” she replied, dismissively. “It’s just... I bashed my leg in the explosion, is all. I’m fine. There are people here who are really hurt. We should focus on them.”
Newbury nodded, climbing unsteadily over the obstruction behind her.
Their fellow passengers had formed into little clusters, huddling around the wounded and trying to calm those who would otherwise have given in to their rising panic. Newbury and Clarissa moved between them, ensuring none of them were seriously hurt. There appeared to be a raft of minor injuries—even a number of broken limbs—but nothing that could have conceivably resulted in so much blood. Not until, that was, they found the passenger at the back of the carriage.
It was Clarissa who spotted her first. “Oh God,” she murmured, putting her hand to her mouth. “She’s dead.” She grabbed Newbury’s arm, pointing to the rear of the carriage.
The woman was still slumped in her seat, her lilac hat pulled down over her brow. Her shoulders were hunched forward, and she was unmoving. There was a dark, crimson stain down the front of her white blouse, and as they drew closer, they could see that the bloodstain had spread to her lap, soaking into her grey woollen skirt. Her arms were flopped uselessly by her sides.
The sight of her caused a cascade of memories to bubble up into Newbury’s still-sluggish mind. “Oh, no,” he said, trailing off as he staggered towards her. He recognised her immediately, from the hat, the clothes. This was the woman he’d been following when he boarded the ground train. He remembered it now. She was the mysterious agent for whom he’d been searching.
The dead woman was Lady Arkwell.
The Queen, Newbury reflected, was looking even more decrepit than usual.
Her flesh had taken on a pale, sickly pallor, and the bellows of her breathing apparatus sounded strained, as if even they had begun to protest under the labour of keeping the woman alive. Her now useless legs were bound around the ankles and calves, and as she rolled forward in her life-preserving wheelchair, he saw that even more chemical drips had been added to the metal rack above her head: little, bulging bags of coloured fluid, feeding her body with nutrients, stimulants and preservatives.
She came to rest before him, folding her arms beneath the bundle of fat tubes that coiled out of her chest and away into the darkness. In the near-silence, he mused he could almost hear the ticking of her empty, clockwork heart.
He stood over her, both of them caught in a globe of orange lantern light in the gloomy emptiness of the audience chamber. She looked up at him from her chair, a wicked smile on her lips. “You do enjoy testing our patience, Newbury.”
He nodded, but didn’t reply. Following the events at the Grayling Institute, during which he’d uncovered the truth about her patronage of Dr Fabian and his diabolical experiments on Veronica’s sister, Amelia, he’d taken to ignoring her summons—preferring, instead, to lose himself to the vagaries of London’s many opium dens. It was only out of protest and a sense of duty to the Empire—not the monarch—that he was here now.
Victoria laughed at his uncomfortable silence. “Know that we are watching you, Newbury. We tolerate your insolence only because you remain useful to us. Do not forget that.”
Newbury swallowed. “You wished to speak with me, Your Majesty?” he prompted, attempting to change the subject. He’d long ago grown tired of the woman’s threats, although he understood all too well that they were far from hollow.
“There is a woman, Newbury,” said Victoria, her tone suddenly shifting from one of amused scorn to one of stately authority, “who is proving to be something of a thorn in our side.” She emitted a wet, spluttering cough, and Newbury saw a trickle of blood ooze from the corner of her mouth. She dabbed it away. Her bellows sighed noisily as they laboured to inflate her diseased lungs.
So, she had a job for him. “A foreign agent?” he prompted, intrigued.
“Perhaps,” murmured the Queen. “Perhaps not. She operates under the alias ‘Lady Arkwell’. It is imperative that you locate her and bring her to us.”
“What has she done?” enquired Newbury.
“Ignored our invitation,” replied Victoria, darkly. She grinned. Newbury nodded slowly and waited for her to continue.
“She is a slippery one, this woman. A trickster, a mistress of sleight of hand. A thief. She has many aliases and she always works alone. She has been linked to a number of incidents throughout the Empire, from thefts to sabotage to political assassinations. Her motives are obscure. Some believe she sells her services as a mercenary, working for the highest bidder, others that she is a foreign agent, working for the Russians or Americans. Perhaps she works alone. We, as yet, are undecided.”
Newbury shifted slightly, drawing his hand thoughtfully across his stubble-encrusted chin. He’d never come across the name before. “Do we have any notion of her actual nationality?”
Victoria shook her head. “Unclear. Her various guises have at times suggested Russian, Italian and, indeed, English.” She gave a wheezing sigh. “It may be, Newbury, that we are dealing with a traitor.” She spat the last word as if it stuck in her throat.
Newbury had dealt with “traitors” before—people like William Ashford, the agent Victoria had mechanically rebuilt after his near-death, a man who was declared rogue because he’d come out of cover in Russia to seek revenge on the man who had tried to kill him. Newbury wondered if he was being handed something similar here. It wasn’t only Lady Arkwell’s motives that were obscure.
“Her age?” he asked, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The Queen wasn’t giving him much to go on.
“Indeterminate.”
Newbury tried not to sound exasperated. “But we have reason to believe she is active in London? Do we know what she is planning?”
Victoria laughed, detecting his frustration. “We have heard reports that she is operating in the capital, yes. We do not yet know why. You are charged, Newbury, with uncovering her motives and bringing her in. Preferably alive.”
Newbury sighed inwardly. Where to even start with such an endeavour? “With respect, Your Majesty, you’re describing a needle in a proverbial haystack. Amongst all the teeming multitudes in this city...” He trailed off, his point made.
Victoria watched him for a moment, a curious expression on her face. When she spoke, her voice had a hard edge. “You are resourceful, Newbury. You will find her.” Newbury was in no doubt: this was an order. Victoria’s will would be done.
She reached for the wooden wheel rims that would allow her to roll her chair back into the darkness, drawing Newbury’s audience to a close. Then, pausing, she looked up, catching his eye. “Be warned, Newbury. She is utterly ruthless. Do not be fooled. Do not let your guard down for a moment. And what is more,” she drew a sharp intake of breath, reaching for her wheels, “do not fail us.”
Newbury watched the seated monarch as she was slowly enveloped by the gloom, until, a moment later, she was swallowed utterly, and he was left standing alone in a sea of black. The only sounds in the enormous audience chamber were the creak of the turning wheels against the marble floor and the incessant wheeze of the Queen’s breathing apparatus.
“Oh God. This wasn’t an accident, was it?”
Clarissa was standing aghast over the corpse of the dead passenger, her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. Newbury wanted to put his arm around her; she looked so young and vulnerable. Propriety, however, dictated he did not.
“No. Someone has very purposefully slit her throat,” he replied, keeping his voice low to avoid any of the other passengers overhearing. He released his hold on the corpse and the head lolled forward again, the body slumping to one side. He straightened the hat on the dead woman’s head, arranging it carefully to cover her blood-smeared face in shadow. He straightened his back.
“Oh God,” Clarissa repeated. She remained staring at the body for a moment longer, before tearing her eyes away to look at Newbury. “Whoever did this... do you think they caused the accident?”
Newbury blinked, still trying to shake the grogginess. He must have struck his head badly to be so concussed. It was strange there was no pain. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. I imagine it was more opportunistic than that. Whoever did this must have remained conscious during the explosion and the ensuing chaos, and acted swiftly while the rest of us were still blacked out.”
Clarissa looked wide-eyed at the dark bloodstains on the front of his jacket. “Why is her blood all over you? You were sitting up there at the front of the carriage near me. How do I know it wasn’t you who killed her while I was unconscious?” She looked startled and terrified, and she was backing away from him.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Of course I didn’t do it!” Newbury didn’t know what else to say.
“So you can explain the blood?”
“Well, not exactly,” he said, with a shrug. “There’s nothing to say whoever did it didn’t move the body afterwards. I don’t know. But I didn’t do it. You need to believe me.” He reached out a hand and leaned heavily on the back of a nearby seat. His legs felt like jelly. “And remember, my legs were trapped beneath that seat. How could I have done it?”
Something about the conviction in his voice must have reassured Clarissa, as she gave a weak smile and stepped forward again. Nevertheless, he could see that she was still wary. Perhaps she could sense that he was holding something back, keeping from her the fact that he knew who this dead woman actually was.
“Alright. Assuming I believe you, that means there’s a murderer somewhere on this carriage.” Her voice was a whisper. “No one could have got out. We’re trapped in here until the firemen arrive to cut us free. So whoever did it is still here.” She glanced around as if sizing up the other passengers, looking for a likely suspect.
Newbury could see the sense in her words. The killer still had to be on board the train.
“And why would they do it? This poor, innocent woman? What could have possibly inspired them to cut her throat?” She shuddered as she spoke, as if considering how different things might have been—how it could have been her, slumped there in the seat with her throat opened up.
Newbury knew the answer to that but chose not to elaborate. It wouldn’t do to go involving this girl in the affairs of the Crown, and if he did tell her why, it would only give support to her fears that he was somehow involved in the woman’s death. Aside from all that, he didn’t want her raising the alarm. The other passengers were scared enough as it was, wondering when—and if—they were going to be free from the buckled remains of the carriage, or whether they were only moments away from another explosion. The last thing these people needed to know was that there was also a murderer on board.
Besides, from everything he knew of her, “Lady Arkwell” was far from innocent. Rumour had it that she was involved in everything from political assassinations to high-profile thefts. No doubt she had scores of enemies, with as many different motives for ending her life.
That suggested the killer had to be another agent. But which nation or organisation they were representing was another question entirely. It wouldn’t surprise him to discover the Queen had organised a back-up, a second agent on the trail of Lady Arkwell, just in case Newbury failed. Or perhaps the intention had been for Newbury to lead an assassin to their target all along. Whatever the case, this wasn’t a motiveless murder. The killer knew what they were doing, and whom they were targeting.
That in itself begged another question: did the killer also know who he was? Was he also at risk? In his current state, with his head still spinning, he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle himself in a scuffle. He had to be on guard.
“What are we going to do?” asked Clarissa, tugging insistently on his sleeve. He looked down at her pretty, upturned face, framed by her shock of red hair, and realised that he hadn’t answered her questions.
“I don’t know,” he replied, shaking his head. “You’re right. The killer must still be on board. But we have no way of telling who he might be. I suggest we tread very cautiously, and stick together. We should cover up the body and try not to panic anyone. When they finally cut us free, the killer is going to try to slip away. We need to be alert, watching for anything that might give him away. That way we can alert the authorities when the time is right.”
“That’s it?” she said, with a frown. “That’s all we’re going to do?”
“I’m not sure we have any other choice,” said Newbury, in a placatory fashion. “If we alert the killer that we’re on to him, things could turn very bad, very quickly. We’re trapped in an overturned train carriage with no exits. A killer loose in a confined space, desperate and wielding a weapon...” He trailed off, his point made.
Clarissa gave a short, conciliatory nod. “Very well.” She stooped and collected up a handful of discarded items of clothing—a man’s tweed jacket, a woman’s shawl, a tartan blanket—and proceeded to set about covering the dead woman.
Newbury leaned against the wall—which had once been the floor—his head drooping. His memories of the events leading up to the accident were hazy at best, but they were slowly returning. It was surely just a matter of time before he could piece together what had occurred. Yet everything felt like such an effort. All he wanted to do was go to sleep. He lifted his hands to rub at his eyes, but realised they were smeared with the dead woman’s blood. Grimacing, he put his right hand into his jacket pocket to search out his handkerchief.
His fingers encountered something cold and hard. Frowning, he peered down as he gingerly closed his hand around the object and slid it out of his pocket. His eyes widened in shock, and he quickly stuffed the thing back, glancing around to make sure no one else had seen.
Clarissa was still busying herself covering the corpse.
Newbury took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. What the Hell was going on? His heart was racing, his head pounding, and he couldn’t remember what had happened, what he might have done.
He wasn’t a killer. He had killed, yes, but he’d been a soldier out in India, and latterly an agent of the Crown. He’d killed in self-defence, in the course of duty, but never in cold blood.
So why, then, was the object in his pocket a sticky, bloodied knife?
“So, how are you, Charles?” said Newbury, swallowing a slug of brandy and regarding his old friend, Chief Inspector Charles Bainbridge of Scotland Yard, from across the table. The older man looked tired, careworn, out of sorts. As if he had the weight of the world resting on his shoulders, and was beginning to buckle beneath it.
The two men were sitting in a private booth in the drawing room of Newbury’s club, the White Friar’s. Over the years Newbury had come to consider the place a second home, enjoying the general ambience and the intelligent banter he often overheard in the bar. The clientele was mostly composed of artists, poets and writers, and although he knew Bainbridge didn’t approve of this more bohemian of crowds, Newbury often insisted on meeting him there. It was good, he assured himself, for the older man’s soul. And besides, Bainbridge’s club was generally full of policemen; useful, perhaps, when one needed such things, but hardly a haven away from the busy matters of everyday life.
Bainbridge gave a heavy sigh. “Darn near exhausted, Newbury, if truth be told. That’s how I am. This Moyer case is taking everything I’ve got.”
Newbury gave a resigned smile. Bainbridge had been tracking a killer for weeks, a surgeon by the name of Algernon Moyer, who had—for reasons that appeared to be politically motivated—taken to abducting politicians and minor royals, chaining them up in abandoned houses and infecting them with the Revenant plague. He would then move on, disappearing into the great wash of the city, leaving his victims to slowly starve to death as the plague took hold and they degenerated into slavering, half-dead monsters.
Three days following each of the abductions, a letter had turned up at the Yard, addressed to Bainbridge, teasing him with the location of the most recent crime. By the time Bainbridge got there, of course, it was already too late. The victims would be beyond saving, reduced to nothing but chattering, snarling animals, straining at their chains as they tried desperately to get at the soft, pink flesh of their rescuers. Every one of them had been put down, electrocuted, their corpses burned in the immense plague furnaces at Battersea or dumped far out at sea along with the mounting heaps of bodies from the slums. Bainbridge hadn’t even been able to let the victims’ families identify the bodies.
There had been four victims to date, and the police expected another to turn up any day. And, as Bainbridge had continued to bemoan, they were no closer to finding Moyer or uncovering the criteria by which he selected his victims. He struck without warning, abducting them in broad daylight, no obvious connections between them. It was a campaign of terror, and politicians and councillors were increasingly growing wary of leaving the relative safety of their homes.
Newbury echoed his friend’s sigh. “I wish I could help you, Charles. I really do. But this Arkwell thing—the Queen...” He trailed off. Bainbridge knew all too well what the Queen was like when she had a bit between her teeth.
Bainbridge looked up from the bottom of his glass. A faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Ah. Well. That’s where I might just be able to help you, Newbury.”
Newbury leaned forward, pushing his empty glass to one side. “Go on.”
“One of our informants, a delightful little man named Smythe...” Bainbridge pronounced the man’s name as if he were describing a particularly venomous breed of snake “... Paterson Smythe. He’s a burglar and a fence, and not a very successful example of either. But he has a secondary trade in information, and that’s what makes him valuable to us.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Times, places, names. You know the sort of thing.”
Newbury nodded. “He doesn’t sound the type to be involved with a woman of Lady Arkwell’s calibre.”
Bainbridge laughed. “Well, precisely. It looks like he might have gone and gotten himself in over his head. He turned up at the Yard this morning claiming he had something big for us, but that he needed our protection.”
Newbury raised an eyebrow. “And?”
Bainbridge shrugged. “And it sounds as if it could be your Lady Arkwell. Smythe said he’d been doing some work for a woman, ‘a right smart ’un’, as he described her, sitting in Bloomsbury Square all night and reporting back to her the next morning to describe everything he’d seen.”
Newbury frowned. “Interesting. Anything else?”
“He said it had been going on for a week. No specific target or brief. Simply that she’d told him to note all the comings and goings in the area.”
“A scoping job?”
“Precisely that. Descriptions of everyone he saw, when they came in and out of their properties, what time the postman or milkman called. But nothing that might give away the actual target. It could be any one of those grand houses she’s interested in, for any reason.” Bainbridge frowned, tugging unconsciously at his moustache. “She’s clearly a clever one, Newbury. She hasn’t left us with much to go on, even after her hired help tried his best to sell her up the river.”
“It’s already more than I’ve been able to ascertain so far,” replied Newbury. “Where do they meet? That would be a start.”
Bainbridge shook his head. “As I said, she’s a clever one. They always meet in the back of a brougham. She picks him up at Bloomsbury Square and they drive around the city while he hands over all the information he’s gleaned. They always take a different route, and she always deposits him in a different street when they’re finished, leaving him with the cab fare home.”
“Fascinating,” said Newbury, impressed. “Does he have a description of the woman?”
“Only that she wears a black veil beneath a wide-brimmed, lilac hat, along with black lace gloves, so as not to be recognised. He says she dresses smartly in the current fashions, and is well spoken, with an educated, English accent. He does most of the talking, and she issues payment and instructions.” Bainbridge shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all we could get out of him.”
Newbury sipped at his brandy while he mulled over his friend’s story. Was this the mysterious woman he’d been looking for? And if so, what was she up to? It seemed like an extraordinary effort to go to for a simple robbery. But then, perhaps there was more to it than that. Perhaps this was an invitation to dance.
Bainbridge was looking at him expectantly. “Well? What would you have me do?”
Newbury smiled. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” echoed Bainbridge, confounded. His moustache bristled as he tried to form his response. “Nothing!” he said again.
“Precisely,” said Newbury. “Tell Smythe to continue just as he is. Tell him to keep reporting back to this woman on all of the comings and goings to the square, and to make a particular effort to ensure he offers accurate descriptions of all the people he sees.”
“Is that all?” asked Bainbridge, clearly unimpressed. “I fail to see how that constitutes an effective plan.”
“Not at all,” said Newbury. “I believe it’s time I offered to play Lady Arkwell at her own game.”
“Stop being so bloody cryptic, would you, and spit it out.”
Newbury laughed. “If she’s as clever as I believe her to be, Charles, she won’t have chosen a mealy-mouthed snitch like Smythe without reason. She has no intention of effecting a burglary in Bloomsbury Square. She’s doing all of this to announce herself to us—to me. She knew full well that Smythe would go running to the Yard. It’s an invitation.”
“An invitation?” asked Bainbridge. He looked utterly perplexed.
“Indeed. An invitation to respond.”
Bainbridge shook his head. “If you’re right—and I am not yet convinced that you are—what will you do?”
“Show myself in Bloomsbury Square. Smythe will do the rest,” replied Newbury, with a grin. “And then we shall see what move she makes next.”
“Good Lord,” said Bainbridge, draining the last of his brandy. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Newbury, laughing. “Absolutely.”
Was it possible? Could he have somehow been driven to kill the woman?
Newbury considered the facts. He’d boarded the ground train while trailing the female agent known as Lady Arkwell, the woman who was now dead from a knife wound to the throat. She’d taken a seat at the rear of the carriage, and so, trying to at least make the pretence of conspicuousness, he’d gone to the front on the opposite side, where he’d been able to keep an eye on her reflection in the window glass. The train had started off, rumbling down Oxford Street, and he’d settled back into his seat, content that he had until at least the next stop before he’d have to make a move.
Despite the fuzziness still clouding his thoughts, he was able to recall at least that much.
The next thing he remembered was waking up with a thick head, Clarissa’s hand on his cheek, his jacket covered in blood. Now, additionally, he’d discovered he had a bloodied knife in his pocket. He had no notion of what might have occurred in the intervening time.
He supposed there were two possibilities. Firstly, that he’d been forced to end the woman’s life during the aftermath of the accident, before he received the blow to his head that had rendered him unconscious and affected his recollection. Secondly, that the killer had taken advantage of his dazed state to plant the weapon on him, thereby making an attempt to implicate him in the murder.
Despite the apparent outlandishness of the notion, he decided the latter was the most likely option. He was, after all, dealing with assassins and spies, people who might have recognised him and decided he’d make a viable scapegoat to cover their tracks.
Newbury searched the faces of the other people in the carriage. There were at least twenty of them, still huddled in little groups on the floor. None of them seemed familiar. A dark-haired young man with a beard was slumped to one side by himself. His black suit was torn and he was bleeding from a wound in his left forearm. He was watching Newbury intently. Could it be him? Or perhaps the middle-aged man at the other end of the carriage, squatting close to where Newbury had been sitting. He was whispering now to two young women, but his eyes were tracing every one of Newbury’s movements, his rugged features fixed in a grim expression.
It was useless to speculate. It could have been any one of the other passengers. He’d have to wait to see if they’d give themselves away. There was nothing else for it.
Newbury rubbed his palm over the back of his neck, wishing the fuzziness in his head would clear. He could feel no lump, no tender spot where he had bashed it during the accident. Why, then, did he still feel so sluggish, so groggy? It was almost as if...
A thought struck him. Perhaps he hadn’t banged his head at all. If someone really was attempting to frame him for Lady Arkwell’s murder, he might have been drugged. A quick prick with a needle while he was down, a dose of sedative to keep him under, to keep him slow. That had to be it. It was the only explanation for why he was feeling like this. Perhaps the killer had been carrying it in his pocket, intending to use it to incapacitate Lady Arkwell when she alighted from the train. The crash had provided him with a different opportunity, and he’d discharged the syringe into Newbury instead, while everyone else on board was still distracted in the midst of the initial panic and confusion.
It all seemed to make a terrible kind of sense to Newbury, but even so, it brought him no closer to identifying the killer, and at present, he had no way of proving any of it. All he knew for sure was that someone on the train was out to get him, or at the very least, was using him to protect their secret.
“Do you think anyone will notice?” whispered Clarissa from beside him.
He glanced round. She’d done an admirable job. The body might have been a heap of clothes, spilt from a burst case. “Not until we draw their attention to it,” he replied, “or one of them comes looking for their coat.”
Clarissa gave a wry smile. “I’m scared, Sir Maurice. I keep thinking that no one’s going to come and find us and we’ll remain trapped in here, with someone capable of... that.” She put her hand on his chest, and, throwing propriety to the wind, he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in. They stood there for a moment, holding on to one another as if they were the only still point in the universe.
“It’ll be alright,” he said, with as reassuring a tone as he could muster. But what he really meant to say was: “I’m scared too.”
“Sir Maurice Newbury, I presume?”
The voice was cultured and luxurious, like the purr of a well-mannered cat.
Newbury peeled open his eyes, but for a moment saw nothing but darkness. Then, slowly, shapes began to resolve out of the gloom, as if the shadows themselves were somehow coalescing, taking on physical form.
Around him, figures lay supine on low couches, draped across the daybeds as if they had given themselves up to the deepest of sleeps. Their pale faces might have belonged to spirits or wraiths rather than men; ghostly and lost, these waifs, like Newbury, were adrift on the murky oceans of their own minds.
Gas lamps, turned down low, cast everything in a dim, orange glow.
Newbury turned his head marginally in order to take in the appearance of the man who had spoken. It wasn’t a face he recognised. The man was Chinese, in the later years of his life—judging by his wizened, careworn appearance—and was standing politely to one side, his hands clasped behind his back. He was dressed in a fine silk robe and wore an elaborate moustache that curled immaculately around his thin lips, draping solemnly from his chin. His eyes were narrowed as he regarded Newbury through the haze of opium smoke.
Newbury blinked and tried to stir himself, but the drug continued to exert its influence. He couldn’t even find the motivation to move. “You presume correctly, sir,” he replied, his voice a deep slur. “Of whom do I have the pleasure?”
The other man smiled for the briefest of moments, before swiftly regaining his composure. “My name, sir, is Meng Li.”
“Meng Li?” echoed Newbury, unable to contain his surprise. He’d heard the name a hundred times before, always spoken in whispered tones, even amongst the upper echelons of Scotland Yard.
Meng Li was perhaps the most significant of the Chinese gang lords to exert his influence on the British Empire. His network stretched from Hong Kong to Vancouver, from Burma to London itself, and was considered to take in everything from the opium trade to people trafficking, and most other illicit trades besides.
That he should be there in the capital was barely conceivable, let alone consorting openly with a British agent in such insalubrious surroundings. This was, after all, a filthy opium den in Soho—about as far from the Ritz as one could imagine. Clearly, Newbury decided, whatever reason Meng Li had for being there, it must have been of grave importance. The Chinaman was putting himself at great risk.
He mustn’t have been alone. Newbury craned his neck. He couldn’t see any bodyguards, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. For all he knew, half of the patrons of the house might be in Meng Li’s employ, ready to leap up from their apparent stupors if Newbury tried anything.
Not, he supposed, that there was any risk of that. Meng Li had timed his appearance to perfection, approaching Newbury while he was still incapacitated from the drug, but cognisant enough to hold a meaningful conversation.
The Queen would be furious if she discovered Newbury had been face to face with the crime lord and hadn’t killed him on sight, but he was presently far from capable of that, and besides, he was curious to see what the man wanted, why Meng Li would risk his life in such a manner to speak with one of Victoria’s agents.
“You do me a great honour,” said Newbury, without a hint of irony.
Again, that subtle smile. “I hope that we may—temporarily, at least—speak as friends, Sir Maurice?”
“Friends?” echoed Newbury. Was this to be a proposition? He would have to tread carefully.
Meng Li gave a slight bow of his head, as if conceding some unspoken point. “If not as friends, then perhaps at least as men of a common purpose, who share a common enemy?”
Newbury raised an eyebrow. “Go on,” he said, intrigued.
“The operative known as ‘Lady Arkwell’. You seek her, do you not, for your English Queen?” The words were wrapped in amusement, not scorn.
Newbury considered his response. Meng Li was obviously well connected, and dangerous, too. Any denial would be seen for the blatant lie that it was, and he didn’t wish to anger the man, particularly given his present situation. “Indeed I do,” he said, levelly. “I take it, then, that you also have an interest in finding this mysterious woman.”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Meng Li. “She has taken something that belongs to me, and for that, I owe her a response.”
“Ah,” said Newbury, “and so you’re proposing an alliance in order to find her?”
Meng Li shook his head. The gesture was almost imperceptible in the dim light. “I wish only to impart to you some information,” he replied.
Newbury frowned. More games. “I’m listening.”
“It is said that Lady Arkwell is an expert at covering her tracks. She passes like a leaf, blown on the wind, and is soon lost amongst the many others that have fallen from the tree. She never repeats herself, and she never returns to the same place twice.” He folded his hands together inside the sleeves of his cheongsam. “She has, however, one weakness—her fondness for a particular blend of tea. It is a Yunnan leaf, grown in China, and is found in only one establishment in this great city of London. A tearoom on New Bond Street known as the ‘Ladies’ Own Tea Association’.” He withdrew his hands from his sleeves. In one of them he held a small, white card, which he handed to Newbury.
“And you believe she will be found there?” asked Newbury, surprised.
Meng Li inclined his head. “What is more, you may identify her by means of an old injury. Two years ago, a bullet was lodged in her right knee during an incident in Singapore. The bullet was removed, but the knee was damaged. The affliction is barely noticeable, but alters her gait: every third step she takes is uneven.”
“Then why tell me?” asked Newbury. “If you know all of this, why not send a handful of your own men after her?”
“Because it amuses me,” replied Meng Li, although this time, his smile did not reach his eyes. Newbury had heard others call this man inscrutable, but to his mind, that was simple ignorance. Meng Li was not so hard to read, and although he hid it well, Newbury could see the truth in the man’s expression: he was scared. When Meng Li spoke of Lady Arkwell, he had the look about him of a man who knew he was outclassed. He was aiding Newbury because he did not wish to engage the woman in her own games, for fear he might lose. The crime lord, it seemed, was nothing if not a pragmatist.
Newbury nodded. “Tell me—what did she steal from you?”
“An object that has been in my family for many hundreds of years,” replied Meng Li. “The Jade Nightingale.”
Newbury almost baulked. He’d heard talk of this precious stone before: an enormous, flawless emerald mounted in a gold ring, and dating back to the ancient, early dynasties of the Far East. Many had tried to steal it, but none had ever succeeded. How it had come into Meng Li’s possession, Newbury did not know, but now the crime lord had lost it again, to Lady Arkwell.
“And you do not wish to retrieve it?”
“It is merely a bauble. She may keep it.” Meng Li shrugged. “My revenge is simply to assist my good friends of the British Crown to locate her.”
Merely a bauble. The Jade Nightingale was priceless. It would sell for thousands of pounds, even on the black market. Newbury could hardly believe how easily Meng Li had dismissed the matter. It had clearly pained him that the gem had been stolen—enough to reveal himself to an agent of the British government and assist them in locating the thief—but to Newbury it seemed that Meng Li was more concerned with revenge, with the embarrassment of the whole matter, than the actual recovery of the stone.
“It is a matter of honour,” said Meng Li, as if reading his thoughts. “Do you understand honour, Sir Maurice?”
“I believe I do,” replied Newbury, meeting Meng Li’s unwavering gaze.
“Then I believe we have an understanding,” said Meng Li. “You may leave this house unmolested, and you go with my blessings behind you. When we meet again, we will not be friends.”
Newbury nodded, slowly.
Meng Li bowed gracefully, and then seemed to melt away into the darkness, leaving Newbury alone on the divan. His head was still swimming with the after-effects of the Chinese poppy, and for a moment he wondered if he might not have dreamed the entire encounter. But then he remembered the card Meng Li had handed him, and turned it over in his palm, casting his bleary gaze over the legend printed there in neat, black ink: LADIES’ OWN TEA ASSOCIATION, 90 NEW BOND STREET.
Newbury smiled. Tomorrow, he would finally close the net on the elusive Lady Arkwell.
“Something’s wrong. I don’t think anyone is coming.” Clarissa was perched on an upended seat across the gangway from Newbury, a frown on her pretty face. Her foot was drumming nervously on the floor, and she was clenching and unclenching her hands on her lap. She kept glancing at the other passengers, and then at the heap of clothes she’d piled over the corpse in the corner. Newbury wondered if perhaps she was showing the early signs of claustrophobia, or whether it was simply the proximity of the corpse, and what it represented, that was troubling her. It was certainly troubling him.
He was slouched against the crumpled ceiling of the overturned carriage, fighting a wave of lethargy and nausea. Whatever was in his system—for he was now convinced that he had been drugged—was threatening to send him spiralling back into unconsciousness. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Too much was at stake.
When he saw Clarissa was watching him, a pleading look in her eyes, he took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay alert. “You know what London traffic is like these days,” he said. “The roads are awash with people, carriages, carts and trains. The fire engines are probably stuck somewhere, trying to get through to us.”
Clarissa shook her head. “No. They should be here by now. It’s been too long.” She dropped down from her perch, crossing the makeshift gangway to stand over him. She offered him her hands, as if to haul him up. “Come on. I think we’re going to have to find our own way out of this mess.”
Newbury shook his head. “No. I can’t. I’m so tired.”
Clarissa folded her arms and glared down at him in a matronly fashion. “You need to keep moving. You know I can’t let you fall asleep. Not after a blow to the head.” She dropped into a crouch, bringing her face close to his. She smelled of roses. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stand being stuck in this tin can, to be honest,” she said, in a whisper. Her lips were close to his ear and he could feel her warm breath playing on his cheek. “I’ve never been comfortable in confined spaces, and the thought that one of those men is a heartless killer is too much to bear. Please, Sir Maurice. Help me to get free.”
She pulled back, her eyes searching his face. He could feel himself relenting. “Very well,” he said. “What are you planning?”
She grinned, taking his hands in hers. “If we can bash a panel of this crushed roof away from where a window frame has buckled, perhaps we can make enough of a space to crawl free.”
Newbury frowned. “It’s perfectly mangled. We’d need cutters to even begin making a hole.”
“At least help me give it a try,” she said, standing and hauling him to his feet, reluctant though he was. His head spun wildly for a moment, and then seemed to settle. “What have we got to lose?”
Our lives, thought Newbury, if we turn our backs on the wrong person for too long, but he couldn’t muster the will to fight—not least because she had a point.
“Over here,” she said, leading him a little further away from the others, towards the body at the rear of the carriage. “This looks like the weakest point.” She indicated a spot where the space between the top of the window frame and the side of the car had been reduced to around two inches.
“The frame is completely buckled,” said Newbury. He placed both of his palms against the metal panel and pushed with all of his remaining strength. It didn’t budge. “We’re going to need something heavy to hit it with.”
“Like this?” asked Clarissa, and he turned to see her grappling with a wooden seat that had broken free from the floor during the crash. She swung it back like a golf club, gritting her teeth.
“Clarissa...” said Newbury, ducking out the way just in time to watch her slam the seat into the roof panel with all of her might. There was a terrific reverberation throughout the carriage, followed by the clatter of broken wood as the now demolished seat tumbled in a heap to the floor. The window frame hadn’t shifted.
A woman started screaming somewhere at the other end of the carriage, and Newbury turned to see three men getting to their feet. “Now you’ve done it,” he said.
“Shhh,” hissed Clarissa. She scrabbled for a foothold and pressed her ear to the opening. “Yes! That’s it!”
“What is it?”
“Listen!” said Clarissa, with palpable relief. “I can hear ringing bells. They’re coming.”
Newbury tried to focus, to suppress the dull roar inside his head. Clarissa was right—he could hear the distant jangle of fire carts, brass bells clanging wildly as they raced through the streets towards the site of the accident. He turned to see the rest of the passengers getting to their feet as they, too, heard the signals, awareness of their impending rescue spreading swiftly amongst them.
Newbury put his hand in his jacket pocket, reminding himself of the incriminating knife that was hidden there, of the difficulties still to come. Whatever happened next, he had to be ready. There was still a killer on board the train. While they were all trapped in there, the killer was, too. As soon as they got free, the man would make a break for it, and all chance of apprehending him would be lost.
He turned to Clarissa. “Whatever happens, you and I have to be the first ones out of this carriage,” he said. “Remember that, at all costs. Once we’re free we need to get the attention of the police, and make sure no one else gets out behind us.”
She looked at him quizzically for a moment, before his intention suddenly dawned on her. “Oh,” she said, “because that way, the killer will still be on the train.”
“Precisely,” said Newbury. “Can you do that?”
Clarissa beamed. “I can do anything if I put my mind to it.”
Newbury laughed for the first time that day. “When this is over, I’d very much like to take you to dinner,” he said.
“Would you, indeed?” she replied, with a crooked smile.
The Ladies’ Own Tea Association on New Bond Street was exactly as Newbury had imagined: overstuffed with dainty decorations such as lace doilies, sparkling chandeliers, pastel-coloured upholstery and overbearing floral displays. Young maids darted about between tables, dressed in formal black uniforms with white trim.
As he peered through the window from across the street, Newbury was filled with a dawning sense of astonishment. It all seemed so unnecessarily... feminine, as if the proprietors had never considered that the women who took tea in their establishment might have been perfectly comfortable in less exuberant surroundings. Veronica, he knew, would have found the place decidedly over the top. He could imagine the look on her face now, appalled at the very idea of spending time in such a garish environment.
He sighed heavily, leaning against the doorjamb. Perhaps, he reflected, they were simply trying to scare away the men.
Newbury had taken up temporary residence in the doorway of a nearby auction house, sheltering from the persistent, mizzly rain. Mercifully, the auctioneer’s was closed for the afternoon, and he’d loitered there for two hours unchallenged, attentively watching the comings and goings of the tearoom’s clientele.
So far, he’d seen no one matching his—admittedly limited—description of Lady Arkwell, but he decided to wait it out for a short while longer. It wasn’t as if he had any other significant leads, after all.
He’d considered enquiring after Lady Arkwell with the staff, posing as a friend, but in the end decided it would be too conspicuous. He didn’t wish to show his hand too soon, and if she had become a regular patron and the staff alerted her to his questions, he’d have given away his only advantage.
So, with little else in the way of options, he turned his collar up against the spattering rain, hunkered down in the doorway and endeavoured to remain vigilant, despite the gnawing chill.
It was almost half an hour later when the woman in the lilac hat emerged from the tearoom, unfurling her umbrella and stepping out into the street. At first, Newbury dismissed her as simply another of the tearoom’s typically middle-class customers, heading home after a late lunch with her friends. She was young and pretty and not at all the sort of woman he was looking for, and he hardly paid attention to her appearance. Except that, as he watched her stroll casually away down the street, she seemed to stumble slightly, as if from a sudden weakness in her right knee.
Frowning, Newbury stepped out from the doorway, ignoring the patter of raindrops on the brim of his hat. He squinted as he studied the dwindling form of the woman. One step, two steps—there it was again, the slightest of stumbles, before she caught herself and corrected her gait.
Newbury’s heart thudded in his chest. Was this, then, the woman he was searching for, the woman with whom he was engaged in such an elaborate game? He hesitated, unsure whether to give chase. Given what he knew of Lady Arkwell, it wouldn’t have surprised him to discover she had paid someone to affect a limp, simply to throw him off her trail.
He decided he had little to lose. If this woman in the lilac hat proved to be a red herring, then either Lady Arkwell had set up a decoy and was never going to be found at the tearooms, or else it would prove to be a case of mistaken identity, and Newbury could return the following day to continue his observations.
He set out, pulling the brim of his hat down low and hurrying after the young woman, his feet sloshing in the puddles that had formed between the uneven paving stones.
He followed her along New Bond Street, remaining at a reasonable distance so as not to arouse her suspicions. All the while the little stumbles continued, like clockwork, with every third step. Such an injury, he reflected, would be difficult to affect successfully, and the woman had evidentially grown accustomed to it; it did not appear to have a detrimental impact on her speed or confidence.
After a minute or two, the woman turned into Brook Street, which she followed as far as Hanover Square. She halted at an omnibus stop and lowered her umbrella, ducking under the shelter to await the next bus. A small crowd of five or six people were already gathered beneath the shelter, and so Newbury hung back, keeping out of view.
It was no more than five minutes’ wait before the rumble of immense wheels announced the arrival of a passenger ground train. The machine was a hulking mass of iron and steam—a traction engine fitted with fat road wheels—and it came surging around the corner into Hanover Square, belching ribbons of black smoke from its broad funnel. It was painted in the green and black livery of the Thompson & Childs Engineering Company, and was hauling two long carriages full of people.
The ground train trundled to a rest beside the omnibus stop. Immediately, a number of carriage doors were flung open and a flurry of passengers disembarked. Newbury watched the woman in the lilac hat step up into the second carriage, and quickly dashed forward, hopping up onto the step and into the same carriage, just as the driver’s whistle tooted and the engine began to roll forward again, ponderously building up a head of steam.
The woman had already taken a seat at the rear of the carriage, and so Newbury, still wary of drawing her attention, decided to take one of the empty seats on the opposite side, close to the front, from where, if he turned his head, he could just make out her reflection in the window glass.
The carriage was around half full, following the mass disembarkation at Hanover Square, with a mix of people from all walks of life: office workers, shoppers returning home with stuffed bags, a mother with her little girl, socialites returning home from their clubs. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.
Newbury eased himself back into his rather uncomfortable seat, certain that he could relax until at least the next stop, where he would have to make sure he didn’t lose the woman if she chose to alight.
He was about to glance out of the window when there was a sudden, jarring jolt, followed by a thunderclap as loud as any he had ever heard.
Everything went black.
“We’ll have you free in just a minute, miss. Remain calm.” The man’s gruff voice was accompanied by the sound of bolt cutters snapping into the iron plating of the carriage roof, as the firemen worked to create a makeshift exit.
Clarissa’s relief was palpable. She’d followed Newbury’s instructions, doing everything possible to ensure they were the first to be freed from the wreckage. She’d rushed to the small opening in the buckled window frame as soon as she heard voices outside, pushing her arm through and waving for attention. Consequently, the firemen had focused their attention on widening the existing gap and forcing their way in.
Despite their imminent rescue, however, Newbury couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that had settled like a weight in the pit of his stomach.
Aside from the injured, the other passengers were all up on their feet, clamouring at whatever openings they could find, calling out to the firemen for help. Soon, someone was going to discover Lady Arkwell’s dead body, and Newbury still didn’t have sufficient evidence to exonerate himself. He was covered in the dead woman’s blood and was carrying a knife that was sticky with his own fingerprints. Discarding it at this point would be a pointless exercise.
Worse still, the real killer had a chance of getting away scot-free in the chaos, or perhaps even implicating Newbury further. After all, they were the only other person on the train who knew that Newbury was carrying the planted murder weapon. All it would take was a quiet word in the ear of the police, and Newbury would likely be restrained and carted away to a cell. Bainbridge and the Queen would, of course, ensure his eventual release, but by then the real murderer would be long gone, and with him, any hope of discovering the truth of what had really happened.
And, just to make matters worse, Newbury was still feeling decidedly woozy.
There was a terrific clang of metal striking stone, and he turned to see daylight streaming into the gloomy carriage through a small, ragged hole in the roof. He squinted against the sudden brightness, and rushed forward to Clarissa’s side. “Go!” he said, urgently, putting his hand on her back and urging her forward.
She did as he said, ducking low and wriggling out through the hole.
Newbury felt a press of people at his back, heard bickering over his shoulder, but paid them no heed. He had to get free and speak to the police before it was too late.
He followed Clarissa out through the hatch, dropping to his belly and worming his way out on to the wet street. The fresh air hit him like a slap to the face, and he dragged it desperately into his lungs. He felt hands on his shoulders and, a moment later, two firemen had hauled him up to his feet.
“Thank you,” he murmured, as he turned on the spot, taking in the scene of utter devastation. The wreckage of the ground train littered the entire street.
The remains of the engine itself were at least a hundred yards further down the road, steam still curling from the hot, spilt coals as they fizzed in the drizzling rain. The engine casing had burst apart, shredding the metal and spewing shrapnel and detritus over the cobbles and surrounding buildings. Nearby windows were shattered, and the front of one building—a hotel—was smeared with streaks of soot.
The first carriage was jackknifed across the road, and appeared to have suffered more damage than the second, bearing the brunt of the explosion. The whole front of it was missing, leaving a jagged, gaping hole where it had once been tethered to the engine. The rest of the carriage was twisted and crushed and, inside, Newbury could see the bodies of passengers, flung around like dolls by the force of the explosion. He’d been lucky—the carriage he’d been travelling in was relatively unscathed in comparison, on its side, its roof crushed flat as it had rolled across the street.
Crowds of onlookers had gathered at either end of the street, and fire carts were parked in a row, their doors still hanging open where their drivers had abandoned them to get to the injured or trapped.
Newbury caught sight of a lone bobby in the midst of it all and staggered over, grabbing the young man by his cuff. The policeman shook him off irritably, looking him up and down.
“You must send for Sir Charles Bainbridge of Scotland Yard immediately,” said Newbury. “There’s a dead woman in that carriage.” He pointed back the way he had come.
The bobby looked at him as if he’d cracked a particularly bad joke. “Yes, sir,” he replied, sarcastically. “There’s been an accident.”
“No, no!” Newbury shook his head in frustration. “You don’t understand. She’s been murdered.”
The bobby raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Indeed, sir?”
“Listen to me!” barked Newbury. “My name is Sir Maurice Newbury, and I’m a good friend of your chief inspector. I’m telling you, a woman has been murdered on that train. The killer is still on board. My friend here can confirm it.” He turned to beckon Clarissa over.
She was nowhere to be seen.
“Clarissa?” called Newbury, perplexed. Had she gone back to help free the others from the wreckage? “Clarissa?”
Concerned, he turned his back on the policeman, scanning the scene for any sign of her.
For a moment he stood there, utterly baffled, while the storm of activity raged on around him. She seemed to have disappeared. One moment she’d been standing there beside him, the next she had gone.
He searched the faces in the crowd. It was then that he saw her, about two hundred yards up the street, walking away from the devastation. Where was she going? “Clarissa?” he called again.
She ignored him and continued walking, her back to him. Confused, he watched as she gave a little stumble, as if suffering from a slight weakness in her right knee. Newbury’s heart thudded. No! It couldn’t be...
There it was again, on the third step—another little stumble. His head was swimming. He started after her, but stumbled, still woozy from whatever sedative had been administered to him. He’d never catch her now, not in this state.
He watched for a moment longer as she receded into the distance. Then, at the last moment, she stopped, turned, and blew him a kiss, before disappearing out of sight around the corner.
Newbury stumbled back towards the carriage, ignoring the protests of the bobby behind him. “Get out of my way!” he bellowed, pushing past the firemen and dropping to his knees before the makeshift hatch in the roof.
The other passengers had all been helped from the wreckage now, and as Newbury wriggled back into the gloomy carriage, he realised he was alone. He clambered shakily to his feet and crossed immediately to the heap of clothes at the rear of the carriage, beneath which the dead woman was buried. He began to peel the layers off, flinging coats, cardigans and jackets indiscriminately to the floor.
Moments later he uncovered the head of the bloodied corpse. He wrenched the hat from the head and saw instantly that the woman’s hair, pinned up, was in fact a deep, chestnut brown. Blood had been smeared expertly on her face to obscure her features, but it was clear almost immediately that this was a different woman from the one he had followed from the tearooms.
How could he have been so stupid? Clarissa had kept his attentions away from the body, had even taken great pains to cover it up so he wouldn’t realise that this dead woman was not, in fact, Lady Arkwell at all. He’d missed all of the signs.
Clarissa—the real Lady Arkwell—must have killed the woman and switched clothes with her while Newbury was out cold from the crash. She’d then drugged him and planted the evidence before bringing him round.
Newbury let the lilac hat fall from his grip and slumped back against the roof of the carriage, sliding to the ground. No wonder Meng Li had been so apprehensive when he’d spoken of the woman. No wonder the Queen had warned him of her ruthlessness. Newbury had been totally outclassed.
“Well played, Clarissa,” he mumbled, his face in his hands. “Well played indeed.”
“We find it interesting, Newbury, that she deigned to allow you to live. Perhaps she has a weakness for pretty men?”
“With respect, Your Majesty, she is a cold-blooded killer,” replied Newbury. “She took that innocent woman’s life purely to evade capture. I suspect she allowed me to live only because she considered me useful. I was her intended scapegoat, and she was relying on me to help her to escape from the wreckage.”
Victoria gave a disturbing, throaty cackle. “Don’t be so naive, Newbury. Do you think for a moment she didn’t know what she was doing? That ‘innocent woman’ you refer to was a German agent, most likely sent to assassinate Lady Arkwell following her alleged involvement in a theft from the Kaiser’s court. She probably killed her in self-defence.”
Newbury frowned. Perhaps things weren’t as black and white as he’d at first imagined. Could she really have killed that woman in self-defence? If so, that put an entirely different complexion on the matter. Perhaps she was more the woman he’d taken her to be, after all. He sighed. “I fear it is a moot point, Your Majesty. She’s probably halfway to Paris by now, or some other such destination where she might go to ground to evade capture.”
“Perhaps so,” the Queen conceded.
“Then that is an end to the matter?”
Victoria laughed. “No. You shall remain focused on the woman, Newbury. You shall track her down and bring her here, to the bosom of the Empire, where we may question her and discover her true motives.” Victoria grinned wickedly, baring the blackened stumps of her teeth. “We think she might yet prove useful.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” said Newbury. He stifled a smile. He knew that what he’d just been handed was a punishment for allowing the woman—Clarissa—to slip out of his grasp, but in truth, he couldn’t help feeling buoyed by the notion that, some day soon, he might see her again.
“Go to it, Newbury. Do not disappoint us again.”
“Very good, Your Majesty,” he replied, with a short bow, then quit the audience chamber to the sound of the Queen’s hacking, tortuous laughter.
“I was played, Charles. There’s no other way to look at it.”
Newbury crossed the room to where Bainbridge was sitting by the fire and handed him a snifter of brandy. Then, with a heavy sigh, he dropped into his battered old Chesterfield and propped his feet up on a tottering pile of books.
“Don’t look so dejected, Newbury,” said Bainbridge, unable to hide his amusement. “It’s no reflection on you that you were beaten by a pretty young woman.”
Newbury offered his best withering glare, but couldn’t help but smile at the gentle provocation.
The two of them had met at Newbury’s Chelsea home for dinner, and now it was growing late, and the mood more contemplative.
“It’s just... I was completely taken in by the woman, Charles,” replied Newbury. “As if she’d somehow bewitched me. I can’t believe I missed all the signs.”
“I refer you to my previous sentiment,” said Bainbridge, grinning. “You’re not the first man to be distracted by a feisty, intelligent—and beautiful—young woman, and you won’t be the last.” He took a long slug of brandy. “And let’s not forget, your brain was somewhat addled by the sedative. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
He knew that Bainbridge was right, but couldn’t shake the feeling that, in losing this first round of the little game he had entered into with Lady Arkwell, he was now on the back foot. He wasn’t used to being the one running to catch up.
Newbury shrugged and took a sip of his drink. “What of you, Charles? Are you faring any better? Tell me about Algernon Moyer.”
“All over and done with,” said Bainbridge, merrily. “It turned out he’d pushed his luck just a little too far. He got careless.”
“And you managed to find him?” asked Newbury.
“In a manner of speaking. It looks as if one of his victims might have bitten him after he’d administered the Revenant plague. We found him climbing the walls in a hotel room in Hampstead, utterly degenerated. The hotel called us in because of the noise and the smell.”
Newbury wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You had to put him down?”
Bainbridge nodded. “The blighter got what was coming to him. His corpse was incinerated yesterday.”
“It brings a whole new complexion to that old adage, ‘treat others as you mean to be treated yourself,’” said Newbury.
Bainbridge laughed. “It does that.”
There was a polite knock at the drawing room door. Newbury glanced round to see his valet, Scarbright, silhouetted in the doorway. He was still dressed in his immaculate black suit and collar, despite the lateness of the hour.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, gentlemen, but I have a message for Sir Maurice,” he said, holding up an envelope.
“Come in, Scarbright,” said Newbury, intrigued.
“A message? At this time of night?” exclaimed Bainbridge, with a frown. He sat forward in his chair, glancing at Newbury with a quizzical expression.
Newbury shrugged. He hadn’t been expecting anything.
“It arrived just a moment ago,” explained Scarbright, “brought to the door by an urchin, who insisted the message it contained was quite urgent.” He passed the envelope to Newbury and waited for a moment while Newbury examined it. “If there’s anything else you need...”
“What? Oh, no,” said Newbury, distracted. “We’re fine, Scarbright. Thank you.”
The valet retreated, closing the door behind him.
Newbury turned the envelope over in his hands. There was no addressee. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed the seal. It smelled of roses.
“What the Devil are you doing?” asked Bainbridge. “Just open the ruddy thing, will you?”
Newbury chuckled. “It’s advisable when one receives anonymous post, Charles, to first ensure it’s not going to kill you.”
Bainbridge’s eyes widened. “You don’t think it’s poisoned, do you?”
Newbury shook his head. “Thankfully not.” He ran his finger along the seam, tearing it open.
Inside, there was a small, white notecard. He withdrew it. Printed on one side in neat, flowing script were the words: Still on for dinner?
Newbury dropped the card on his lap and threw his head back, laughing.
“What is it?” said Bainbridge. “What does it say?”
“It’s from her,” said Newbury.
“Who? The Queen?”
“No. Lady Arkwell. Clarissa.”
Bainbridge looked utterly confused. “And?”
“She’s letting me know that the game is still on,” replied Newbury. “That there’s more still to come.” He handed Bainbridge the note.
Bainbridge glanced at it almost cursorily. “The gall of the woman! You should toss this in the fire and forget about it.”
“That would hardly be following orders, Charles,” said Newbury. He drained the rest of his glass. “You know what Her Majesty had to say on the subject.”
“So you’ll do as she asks?” said Bainbridge, incredulous. “You’ll keep up the search?”
Newbury grinned. He took the card back from Bainbridge and looked wistfully at the note. “Yes, Charles,” he said. “I rather think I will.”