“If you are looking for a harlot, might I suggest the alley behind the Karnak Hall?” I said politely to the boldest. “Ask for Elsie. She is a friend.” The fellow reared back and continued on his way, muttering about eccentric women, which I found rude in the extreme. Stoker and I had made Elsie’s acquaintance during a previous investigation,[*] and she was a diligent practitioner of the amatory arts, but only for pay. And since a woman needs to earn a living, it seemed only considerate to send trade her way should the opportunity arise.
I was still ruminating on such thoughts when the door opened and a slender figure in a maid’s uniform stepped out, casting sharp glances left and right.
“I have slipped away but I can give you no more than a minute before I am missed,” she told me.
“It is lovely to see you too, J. J.,” I replied. My friendship—if I may call it that—with J. J. Butterworth, lady reporter, was another souvenir of our adventures with the Tiverton Egyptological expedition and the events that occurred in Karnak Hall. Always in search of a story, she frequently disguised herself in order to gain access denied to her male counterparts. Her favorite masquerade was chambermaid at the Sudbury, a stratagem that permitted her to observe the great and good at close quarters—as well as the chance to examine the contents of their wastepaper baskets, private papers, and bedsheets. Each of these, she had explained to me, could tell a story, and the Daily Harbinger paid well for them. She longed for the career of a serious journalist, but her way was too often barred by men determined to keep her out. So, in desperation, she often got her revenge by assuming one of her little disguises and delivering the type of story that a man could never secure.
J. J. grinned. “Back from the Alpenwald then?”
“And we are off again in the morning.”
She lifted her brows. “So soon? On the trail of something?”
“Like you? I presume you are here in order to spy upon the maharani currently installed in the Empress Suite,” I said.
She pulled a face. “Who told you?”
“No one. It was a guess which you have just confirmed,” I said with a touch of—one hopes—forgivable smugness. “I saw your byline in the piece in the Harbinger about her and assumed she was staying here and that if I found her, you could not be far behind.”
“Well done,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “You are a regular Augustine Dupin. Now, I have precisely two minutes before the housekeeper comes looking for me and has my guts for garters for standing about yammering when I am meant to be turning down beds. What do you want, Veronica?”
“I wanted to know if the name Hathaway means anything to you.”
She paused, furrowing her brow. “Anne? Married to Shakespeare?”
“Not Warwickshire Hathaways. Devonshire Hathaways,” I said in some exasperation. “They’ve a house called Hathaway Hall on Dartmoor.”
She rolled her eyes. “Dartmoor? Nothing but sheep and rocks. Why the devil do they live there?”
“The same reason anyone lives anywhere,” I said. “Inherited.”
I gave her a minute while she thought. Watching J. J. Butterworth work through her immense hoard of knowledge was vastly interesting. Stoker had once taken me to a demonstration of Mr. Babbage’s computational machines. The whirring and clicking and sharp manipulation of information put me greatly in mind of J. J.’s efforts, her freckled nose wrinkling up as she screwed her eyes tightly closed, thinking.
“I did hear something, now you mention it,” she said, opening her eyes at last. “A long-lost father or something.”
“Eldest son,” I corrected.
“That’s it. Lost in a shipwreck or earthquake?”
“Volcano,” I said.
She shrugged. “An act of God is an act of God. In any event, he died and is returned, resurrected as it were. My editor thought it might make an interesting story, but it is not mine. One of the new lads was assigned to it.”
“When did it run?” I pressed.
“It didn’t,” she said. “It was meant to be only a small piece to run early this month, but Boulanger’s flight pushed everything aside and heaps of articles were cut for space.” I was not surprised. The French general Boulanger, nicknamed Général Revanche, had been at the head of his own political party—one that had nearly accomplished a coup and overthrown the French Republic. His reluctance to fully seize power when he had the chance in January had led to a warrant being issued for his arrest on charges of treason and conspiracy, and he had fled Paris at the start of April. Newspapers had been full of speculation as to his whereabouts—and what the French government would do to him if he fell into their clutches.
J. J. went on. “You were just in Paris, did you see anything of interest?” I recognized the sharp-eyed gaze of a hound upon the scent of a hare.
“No, apart from that appalling erection of Monsieur Eiffel,” I assured her.
“It has not been formally opened. How did you see it?”
“It is impossible to miss,” I said. “It dominates the city, quite dwarfing the Arc de Triomphe and Notre-Dame.”
“It is a beacon of modernism and progress,” she began, but before she could warm to her theme, the door opened and one of the errand boys peered out.
“You’re wanted,” he said to her before ducking back inside.
“I must fly.” She bade me farewell but paused with her hand upon the knob. “There is one more thing about your Hathaways,” she said. “I don’t believe it was simply the Boulanger affair that killed the story.”
“Then why was it never published?” I asked.
She rubbed her fingers together in an unmistakable gesture. Money. Then she vanished through the door without a backwards glance. J. J. had sound instincts, I reflected. If she believed her editor had been bribed not to run the story—and he was a bald man with as many scruples as he had hairs upon his head—then it was most likely the truth. And that meant that someone at Hathaway Hall was very keen for the story of the man returned from the dead not to become public knowledge.
CHAPTER
5
The next morning Stoker and I were on the train as directed, heading west as the sun rose behind us in a blaze of pink and gold. It was a breathtaking morning to be taking our leave of London, the sky dazzling enough to make us regret the necessity. The fogs had been blown away by a breeze fit to caress the cheek of a god, the earliest of the budding leaves spreading their bright green capes against a soft blue sky. We traveled in comfort, Sir Hugo’s arrangements having extended to a first-class compartment and a hamper from Fortnum’s filled with every conceivable delicacy.