That night the women had a feast. Not in Tilney Street, but in the docks, in Mrs. Bone’s inventions room, cuckoo clocks hooting at them every hour.
There was a queer energy to the air. The first proceeds were already coming in, rushing like dark water through underground tunnels. They came faster than Mrs. Bone could tally them, orders running like wildfire back and forth across the wires, steamer routes, trains, the express—to Paris, Marseille, Kristiania, Venice, Prague. Mrs. Bone had ordered game pie, and boned capon, and cutlets and peas, and chicken in aspic. She gave them melon and green figs, and ribbon jelly, and an amber-colored sponge cake at least a foot high. There were candied oranges and a dish with ices, and a basket of greengages and meringues.
“Too much,” said Hephzibah, clutching her stomach. “I thought you were a skinflint, Mrs. Bone.”
“I can get more,” said Mrs. Bone, eyes flashing. “I’ll get as much as you like!” She knew her largesse was almost indecent, but she felt the need to do it.
Mrs. King had sat with her, studying the books. “Two lots of lucky sevens for you,” she murmured. “Less your advance. We’ll hold my share back for now.”
Mrs. Bone had flushed, trying to cover her shame. “One share will do nicely,” she said. “A great fortune doesn’t suit me. It sends me around the bend. In fact,” she added, “give another portion to my Janes. They’ll make better use of it than me.”
She couldn’t believe she had done it. But the second she had, it felt unutterably right. She told the Janes to burn their uniforms. She wanted them to buy opera coats, and furs, and parasols, and patent-leather boots. She sent one of her men under cover to a department store to buy them a pair of hats. They were shaped like boats and were crammed with white roses. They wore them at the dinner table. “You’re my best girls,” she said, holding them close, feeling teary.
“Thanks, Mrs. Bone,” they replied, unmoved.
Alice sat between them. They’d edged their chairs aside, making a little room for her.
“Thanks,” she said in a whisper. She’d gone pale when Winnie spoke of her own triumphant negotiation with Miss de Vries.
“But I took it,” Alice said, voice hoarse. “I took Madam’s money.”
The silence was dreadful. Winnie’s expression grew taut. Mrs. King opened her mouth—to protect her sister, to smooth things over. But Jane-two spoke first, eyes solemn. “You did what was necessary for your own preservation,” she said to Alice. “There is honor in that.”
Mrs. King touched Winnie’s arm. “Miss de Vries would have reneged on the bargain anyway. She wants to be great. She doesn’t want to be free.”
“You don’t know that,” Winnie said.
Mrs. King looked grim faced. “I do.”
“I’ll pay Madam back,” said Alice, agonized. “I promise.”
“Turns out you’ve got some pluck, after all,” said Jane-one to Alice, forking her jelly. “Good for you.”
“Pluck?” said Winnie, pulling herself together, pointing to Hephzibah. “Talk about pluck. I’ve never seen such fine acting in my life.”
Hephzibah went as pink as her ball gown and threw a shaky smile at Winnie.
Mrs. King sat ramrod straight, eating nothing.
At last, Mrs. Bone leaned over. “Well? What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t ‘nothing’ me.”
“Something’s missing,” said Mrs. King. “That’s all.”
She had been through every item. They came to her for inspection, one by one, carried or hauled or dragged out from under dustcloths. Painstaking, brutal work.
The letter wasn’t there.
Had it ever been? she wondered. She pictured Mr. de Vries’s watery gaze. It could have been another trick, a lie, sickbed delirium...
She sat on an upturned crate in the yard as the sun went down over the factory, and ran her hands through her hair.
A small voice said, “All right?”
Alice had been watching her, keeping her distance, as if uncertain about Mrs. King’s mood.
Mrs. King roused herself. She stood up. Went to her sister, grasped her by the shoulders. “It’s a funny world, this,” she said. “Don’t let it get to you.”
Her sister gave it back at her. “Don’t let it get to you.”
Mrs. Bone had given each of them a bedroom, armored, bunkered, almost without light. “Lie low,” she’d said. “Don’t move a muscle. I need three days to shift the best stuff. And a week to get rid of the rest.”
They obeyed her. Mrs. Bone knew what she was doing.
Mrs. King faced the wall, ancient bedsprings creaking beneath her, and examined her feelings. She was rich already, and soon to be richer still, but she felt empty.
Failure.
It trickled down her spine.
Someone knocked softly on the door. She turned. “Come.”
The door opened, letting in an orangey gleam of light. Winnie was in a long nightdress, her hair in paper curlers. Hephzibah had done it for her.
“Can I come in?”
Mrs. King felt like refusing. “Of course.”
Winnie closed the door, tiptoed across the room. She sat beside Mrs. King on the bed, almost gingerly. “Dinah.”
“Yes.”
“You remember what I told you? When we first started all this?”
Mrs. King looked at her.
“That you need to talk to me. To consult me. To tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing’s going on, Win. It’s finished. We did it.” Mrs. King heard her voice, dead cold.
Winnie gave her a long and searching look. Then she said, “Come on. Buck up.”
Mrs. King felt her heart tightening at the words. They were like an echo, a reminder of those first unfamiliar nights in Park Lane, twenty years ago. Sitting up in that tiny room at the top of the house, trying to understand what she’d done. That she’d left her mother, sister, her whole life behind—for what? For a mysterious benefactor, the sort every girl craved. She remembered all the things not spoken, not explained, not answered, when she asked, “Why have I come here?” But Lockwood had put a stop to all that. “No questions,” he told her. “Just be grateful.” She remembered Winnie staring at her, earnest eyed, knowing nothing. “Buck up,” she’d said, with a gentle smile. “Do.”
“I had some papers,” she said. “Expenses. The menus for the ball.” She paused. “Letters.”
Shepherd had watched her do it. He’d been with her, in her housekeeper’s room. He’d watched her throw them on the fire. And with them, folded with the order bills and receipts and notes for the ball, were the letters to Mother. The letters she never sent. The ones saying sorry, sending love, things impossible to say in person.
Had the packet felt heavier than before? Even fractionally? Had someone put another letter in beside them, tucked away?
She’d burned it all. She remembered the ribbon dissolving, turning to ash.
“What do you mean? What letters?” said Winnie, puzzled.
Mrs. King did something she’d never done before. She leaned forward, arms rigid at her side, and laid her head on Winnie’s shoulder. She felt as if she could not sit up straight any longer.
“Dinah,” said Winnie, as if frightened for her. “Oh, Dinah.”
The night loomed vast and black around them.
The lawyers were emerging from an office in the City, near Middle Temple. Mrs. King had gone with William to keep them under observation. Offers had started coming in overnight. Mrs. Bone’s spies reported that there had been several bids made to take over the de Vries empire. All the major magnates were naming hideously low sums, promising to mop up the de Vries family debts—sweeping the Kimberley mines under their control, divesting the gold holdings and the North American territories, selling off the shipping positions. It would ruin everything that Mr. de Vries had left behind. It would leave hardly anything to inherit. Mrs. King sounded the order silently in her head: Find the letter.
Madam didn’t arrive; she didn’t object. Nobody knew where she’d gone. Some said the country, some said to jail. The house on Park Lane was swarming with detectives, men in trench coats with any number of questions, examining the locks and windows, trying to fathom the biggest burglary they’d ever seen in their lives. One or two were there on more sensitive business. Looking for the kitchen maids, to ask the most delicate questions. But most of the servants had scattered, giving up any hope of getting their wages.
“You were right,” William said. “About getting out.”
Mrs. King tilted her hat. “Now you tell me.”
He sighed. “I’ve been pigheaded.”
She remembered the moment he’d offered her that ring. Cut grass, the park, the stink of the house lingering on them as she told him: “No.” It should have happened at night. By the river, in their secret corners of the city.
“So have I,” she said.
A crowd of gentlemen came hurtling past, papers under their arms. Mrs. King lowered the brim of her hat.
He put his hand out to her. She stood there, and looked at him, and then she took it. She squeezed his fingers. Not an answer, but something.
“When?” he said. He meant, When will we see each other again?
There was an enormous motor car behind her, a Daimler. Vast and rumbling gently. She longed to keep hold of his hand, not let go. But she repressed this. Too soon. Not safe. Nothing was settled.
“I’m taking myself out of circulation for a while,” she said stolidly. She withdrew her hand from his, denying herself the comfort of it. “But I’ll let you know.”
Outside the post office, Alice saw the newspapers tied up with string, stacked on the pavement. They were all carrying the same story, the one that grew wilder by the day: the greatest robbery of the age, the biggest search in history...
She glanced over her shoulder. She half expected to glimpse a man waiting for her at the end of the lane. Her nostrils were flared and ready, searching for an unsettling hint of gardenias.
No one there.
She entered the post office.
It cost a lot of money to send a postcard to Florence. It cost even more to wire a large sum to a foreign bank. She chose the one opposite the Grand Hotel.
“No message,” she said. “No need.”
She felt lighter once it was done. She felt free.
Alice met her sister the next morning, at dawn, five minutes from the Mile End Road. The light was creeping up, birds sounding their chorus. The cemetery smelled fresh, clean, not grim at all.
Mrs. King came in a white dress, not black or navy. She looked strangely loose, untethered, hair swept over her shoulders. There was a fierce color in her cheeks. Alice wondered if she’d been out all night, just walking.
“Where is it?” Mrs. King said.
Alice took her to the grave. She adjusted her crucifix. “It’s very peaceful, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be morbid, Alice.”
Alice put her hands in her pockets. “Want a moment by yourself?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. King stood there for a long time, staring down at the tombstone. The breeze pulled on her skirts and from a distance it made her appear almost small, like a little girl. Alice had to turn away.
Afterward they walked together through the graves.
“I’m going abroad,” Alice said.
“Good,” said Mrs. King. There was a calmness about her. “I might need to do the same.”
“I mean, really abroad. To America, if I can manage it. To take in the latest fashions.”
“You can manage it.” Mrs. King looked at her seriously. “You can do anything you like.”
Alice considered very carefully what she wanted to say. “I wish Mother had been able to see the ocean,” she said. “I wish she’d been able to do anything at all.” The thought carried its own pain: dull, right in the center of the chest, immovable. Mrs. King nodded, lips pressed together. Evidently, she felt it, too.
“Shall we write to one another?” Alice said.
Mrs. King stopped. Straightened her cuffs. “Would you like that?”
Alice laughed, feeling her nerves. “I don’t know. We’re family. I suppose we ought to be in touch.”
Mrs. King reached out and touched her on the arm. “Write if you want to,” she said.
Alice kissed Mrs. King gently on the cheek. Her sister didn’t feel like marble anymore. She had warm skin, warm as any other human’s, warm as Alice’s own.
“You’re marvelous,” she said, solemnly, meaning it.
Mrs. King laughed, startled. “Heavens,” she said. “I’m not.” Something shifted in her expression, something dark. “How can I be? Knowing who I come from?”
She meant her father. Alice hesitated. The women were skirting around it, avoiding it. This topic felt too enormous, too dangerous, to discuss. They were both waiting for Mrs. King to set it out for them, explain what it meant, tell them what they were supposed to think. And yet she hadn’t done so. She seemed to have turned inward, growing fretful, as if there were something constantly on her mind.
Alice was still trying to compose the right reply when Mrs. King pulled away. Her eyes were on the gravestones behind Alice. A small temple had been erected there, a flashy memorial.
“What is it?” Alice said.
Mrs. King closed her eyes. “I need to see Mr. Shepherd.”