I recognized her then—a brief acquaintance from months before, encountered outside Karnak Hall. The last and only time I had met her she had been servicing a gentleman in an alley. She had been quite taken with Stoker, although our encounter with her had been fleeting at best.
“Elsie. It has been some time,” I said politely. “I hope you are keeping well.”
“Better than you by the look of it,” she said. “Who’s yer friend?”
Eddy’s expression was frantic and I had the most dreadful premonition that he was about to blurt out his true identity.
“This is Eddy,” I cut in, stepping neatly on his instep. “He is mute, so he will not be saying a word,” I added. “Not a single word,” I finished with a warning look at the prince.
He nodded vigorously.
Elsie smiled warmly. “Any friend of Mr. Stoker’s is welcome here.”
“That is very kind of you, Elsie. I am afraid we have run into a spot of trouble this evening,” Stoker began.
She gave us a narrow-eyed gaze. “I know someone on the run when I see ’em. Let’s get the lot of you inside and away from prying eyes.”
Elsie shepherded us into the drinking establishment and whisked us to a table in a corner. The others filtered in, resuming places at tables and in front of the long bar. Our hostess raised her voice to the man tending the clientele. “Mind you close that door, Tom. We don’t want strangers about.”
He did as she bade him, and she settled us with all the concern of a mother hen for her chicks. “Now, then, my ducks. I will go and fetch us a bottle. You make yourselves comfortable. I shall be back in a tick.”
She bustled off and I turned a curious eye to Stoker, aware that Eddy was watching us with avid attention.
“It is not what you think,” Stoker began.
“I think that whilst I was in Madeira, you made it your business to find Elsie and make certain she suffered no ill effects from assisting us with our last investigation,” I said calmly.
He blinked rapidly. “You realize in earlier days you’d have been burnt as a witch?”
“Oh, no doubt,” I agreed. “Was it difficult to find her?”
He shrugged. “Not terribly. I started asking around Karnak Hall and eventually ran her to ground not far from here. I bought her a hot meal and we talked for a long time. I returned a few weeks later, and we fell into a sort of friendship, although she would never call it that.”
He broke off as she returned, a skinny barmaid trotting in her wake with a fresh bottle of gin and four clean glasses. “Here we are, my dears. Have a tot. To your health,” Elsie urged, lifting her glass.
The spirits were not unwelcome, I had to admit. Eddy drank with some enthusiasm, and I found the beverage reviving after our ordeal. I hoped as well it would have an anesthetizing effect upon Stoker’s many injuries. Elsie surveyed him with a knowing eye.
“Been in a donnybrook, have you, Mr. Stoker? I know the signs. Well, you’ve no call to worry here. You’re among friends,” she said warmly. She nodded towards me. “You too, miss.”
“Speedwell,” I informed her. “Although you may call me Veronica.”
She drew herself up so that the cluster of silk violets on her hat bobbed indignantly. “I should think not,” she told me, her mouth in a firm line. “That would not be fitting. I will say ‘Miss Veronica,’ but that is as far as I will go.”
“Very well,” I told her, chastened. Eddy put out his hand to pour another measure of gin, grinning a little witlessly as he drank the second down in gulps.
“You’ll want to slow yourself, lad,” Elsie told him kindly. “That is no drink for gentlemen and I daresay you’ve no head for it.”
Eddy blinked and clutched the empty glass to his chest, weaving a little in his chair. He had drunk too quickly and the misadventures we had suffered were beginning to take their toll. When I turned to Elsie, I saw Eddy’s hand snake out for the bottle and I moved to slap it away, but Stoker spoke up.
“Eddy has had a long and tiring day, Veronica,” he reminded me obliquely. “Perhaps it is better for everyone if he drinks himself to sleep.”
Eddy nodded vigorously and poured another measure of gin, nursing it as tenderly as if it were a newborn babe. I shrugged. Perhaps Stoker was right. If Eddy drank himself to the point of unconsciousness, it would at least remove the possibility of him revealing his identity in public.
I turned to Elsie. “Stoker tells me that the pair of you have been meeting since last spring.”
She pinked with pleasure. “That we have, miss. He’s a good man.”
“He is a good man who wouldn’t mind a visit upstairs,” Stoker said, rising from his seat. Elsie directed him to the nearest water closet with careful instructions on the vagaries of the temperamental plumbing. When he had gone, she settled back, regarding him with a fond leer.
“I do love to watch him go,” she said, keeping a practiced eye upon his backside until he was up the stairs. She looked to Eddy, who was slumped in his chair, his fingers slack around his glass, then turned back to me. “You must know that I never saw Mr. Stoker in a professional sense,” she said, suddenly earnest. “He has never laid a finger on me.”
“I know.”
She nodded and refilled my glass. “So long as we’re clear on that. He’s a good lad, innocent as a lamb, and I’d not have him any other way.”
I coughed, choking a little on my gin and more on her assessment of his character.
“You think him innocent?”
She widened her eyes. “Lord love you, miss. If there’s one thing I know, it’s men. And that one is good as gold. He’d never lift a hand against a woman and he would never think the worst of one. Puts us on a pedestal, he does.”
I considered this and decided she was more correct in her assessment than otherwise.
She went on. “He’s made me an allowance, you know. ’Tis anonymous and I’m not meant to know the identity of my benefactor, but he’s not half so clever as he thinks. He sends it through a temperance worker and she brings it, twenty shillings, every time. He wants to make certain I have money enough for a bed and a hot meal, bless him.”
“He could find you employment,” I pointed out. “Better work than what you have.”
She blinked. “I don’t mind my work, miss. I make silk flowers when I can get the materials. I made these,” she added, touching a fingertip to her little bouquet of silk violets. Each one was elegantly shaped with a tiny golden bead at the heart and a leaf of green velvet. The whole affair was bound in ribbon of green and violet silk and added a touch of elegance to her black hat.