Nothing excites a crowd more than seeing a man who they have already witnessed making a mistake going on to attempt the bullet catch.
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
After Farthing had left, I stripped down and washed, scrubbing the cloth over my skin to remove every trace of the unlit house. Then I dressed in clean clothes and took a brush to my hair once more. Anger at my enforced confinement had kept other reactions at bay. But now my fury began to cool. I held my hand in front of my face and saw that I was shaking.
A gentle tapping triggered my heart to a double-time beat.
“Room service,” came a voice from the other side of the door.
My hand hovered near the bolt.
“It’s Alf,” the voice said. “I have something for you.”
I pulled back the bolt.
He stood in the corridor with a tray of food and drink. Beef and potatoes and carrots and gravy and a pot of mustard.A bottle of ale and a glass. I took the tray from him, my mouth too dry to voice thanks.
“I have your case, miss,” he whispered. “Beg pardon, but I took the liberty of removing it after you were taken. Men came to search. I hope I didn’t do wrong.”
The next morning, I took a sheet of the Modesty Hotel’s embossed notepaper and wrote:
Dear Lady,
Having pursued your brother to Sleaford, where I believe he stayed some two weeks gone, I find I am no longer able to continue with your commission. I would be grateful if you could let me know where to return the fee (minus those expenses already incurred).
Yours faithfully,
E Barnabus
PS On leaving Sleaford, I believe your brother headed west.
I wafted the paper in the air until the ink had dried, then folded it into a hotel envelope on which I wrote: “The Duchess of Bletchley, Buckinghamshire”. Though I did not know the street or town, I felt confident the Kingdom Postal Service would find her easily enough.
Such is the speed of air travel and the efficiency of its integration with other modes of transport that I was able to jump down from a steamcar taxi that very evening and, with the aid of the driver, haul my cases along the short stretch of towpath to Bessie’s aft deck.
Dusk had turned the surface of the water black and silver. I stood watching the taxi puffing away. The smell of frying onions drifted across from a neighbouring boat. Suddenly I felt alone. How could I have believed my luck would change? Instead of earning the money I so desperately needed, I had wasted time and accumulated troubles.
There could be no doubt that John Farthing or some other agent had rummaged the boat. How else could he have produced my pistol in the unlit house? Yet, as I crouched on Bessie’s aft deck and ran my finger around the edge of the hatchway, I felt the stub end of a matchstick trapped just where I had left it four days ago. The searcher had been an expert and had covered his tracks.
The galley smelled of old wood and lamp oil, as it always did. Walking towards the cabins, I shifted my weight from side to side, tilting Bessie in the water, as if to prove to myself that only ropes held her in place. If January came and I still lacked the hundred guineas, I could perhaps haul her away up the canal and try hiding from my creditor. How long could I last before he found me? It seemed the moonlight flit would prove my only option. The Duchess was my sole client. But to pursue her brother would be to defy the Patent Office. And I would rather play dice with a creditor than with the hangman.
I opened the cold iron stove and looked inside. It remained ready, just as I had left it. I struck a lucifer, watched it flare then held it to the kindling. There would be hot water for tea within the hour.
My sleeping cabin did not seem to have been disturbed, though I felt certain it had been searched. Skirts and blouses hung in the cupboard just as I remembered them. I brushed my fingers over the pigeonholes. Shoes, boots, underwear and chemises – each item lay in its proper place. I lifted a roll of stockings and felt beneath them for the slim pile of letters which I kept as if hidden.
The sky outside had faded almost to black. I lit a lantern and moved through to the other sleeping cabin, supposedly my brother’s. For the sake of appearance, I had arranged it as I supposed a man would have done. One creased shirt lay dangling over the edge of the bunk. A pair of mud-soiled shoes I had left in artful asymmetry near the door, one on its side. It was in the secret compartment below the head of the bunk that I perceived the first evidence of the searcher’s hand. I knew to lift the mattress, unblocking a hole in the top of the compartment before pulling out the hidden drawer. Thus I set up no air currents and did not disturb the scrap of tissue paper I had placed there.
Yet someone had disturbed it.
The Duchess of Bletchley’s letters lay uppermost in the compartment. Underneath were bills, letters from earlier clients and receipts. There was nothing here that the Patent Office did not already know. Yet the proof that they had been on my beloved boat left a feeling of queasy weakness in my stomach. I sat on the bunk and placed my face in my hands.
Two things remained for me to check. Lifting a plate in the galley floor, I looked down on the axle that had once turned Bessie’s paddlewheels and the small oil reservoir that had kept the drive mechanism lubricated. I gripped and twisted the cap of the small tank. It unscrewed with a metallic squeal of protest, revealing a dark but dry void below. Also the end of a length of wire, which my thin fingers were able to grip and pull, lifting a small woollen bag clear of the tank. The dull clink of coins was enough to reassure me that the agents of the Patent Office had not been tempted to steal my money in the same way that they had stolen my turquoise inlaid pistol.
Reaching around below the driving shaft, I felt for the small shelf that had served as my pistol’s hiding place. My fingers closed around something. I pulled it up out of the hatch, knowing what it was, even before it came into my sight.
I sat on the floor of the cabin, staring at the turquoise inlay on the stock of my pistol, asking myself if I had perhaps misjudged the efficient John Farthing and the wrinkled man. Had the emotionless rules of their order obliged them to put back what was not theirs? More likely they had returned it with such care in order to entrap me. If they found it in my hands, I would not be able to claim innocence a second time.
Gently, ever so gently, I reached into the access hole and placed the pistol back on its hidden shelf, not daring to make a sound, fearing the door might burst open before I had the hatch fully closed again.