And yet: someone had been there, only moments before.
Miss Quicke immediately put a hand into the deep pocket of her oilskin coat, no doubt checking for her revolver. Then she went downstairs and out into the fog. She was gone a long while.
She came back shaking her head. “If there was anyone, they’re gone now.”
“There was,” Margaret replied. “Did you not feel it?”
“Feel it?”
“In your—” She gestured to the younger woman’s injured side.
“No,” said Miss Quicke.
Margaret looked around, uneasy. The furniture, dark and still. The ghostly curtains. Outside the fog gathered, thickening.
* * *
They didn’t stay.
Margaret thought of Walter and of her own nameless dread and she tried to be smart about it. Certainly Jacob knew the address. Miss Quicke stood at the window, waiting, while Margaret collected what she needed, and then the two of them left. They took a room just across the intersection, in a respectable lodging house for ladies, with a view of 23 Nickel Street West through the fog. The landlady’s curfew might have been a problem: the lodging house locked up at nine o’clock; but the dormer window of their room let out onto a narrow ledge, and this ledge led to a low stone wall, and because of this Margaret knew they could come and go at any hour that suited.
The fact of it was, it had been fourteen months now since Alice Quicke was hired, and yet Margaret Harrogate hadn’t ever been close to her before, hadn’t ever observed her firsthand, hadn’t ever had the opportunity. The little she’d learned she’d gleaned from telegrams, reports, Coulton’s wry and sometimes sarcastic stories. Quicke had rough-looking hands and a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. Muscular shoulders. Greasy yellow hair, badly cut, smelling of whatever meal she ate last. But if her ribs ached, she didn’t complain. If Coulton’s death grieved her, she didn’t weep. All the long rail journey out of Scotland and south through England she’d said very little, asked nothing, just glared out the coal-smeared window at the passing world, a fierce taciturn creature in a wide-brimmed hat and long stained coat more of a piece with the American West than the civilized violence of Britain.
But, too, she started to see what it was Coulton had come to trust, why he’d argued in her defense so many times, why he’d insisted on hiring her though she was an outsider and a stranger to their world. There was about her a great still strength, like a post driven into the ground. If she said she’d do something, she’d do it. Margaret liked that.
All that first day in London they stayed indoors, resting, collecting themselves, watching their house across the street. But Margaret watched the detective too, looking for signs of collapse, worried for her injury, worried for what it might mean. She was afraid whatever connected Miss Quicke to Jacob connected him, also, back to her; afraid that her presence would be felt on his end, too; afraid that even now, on their long murky first day back in Blackfriars, he would be prowling the streets, circling, sensing her presence.
While they rested, Margaret told Miss Quicke about the exiles. Sometimes, she explained, when a talent came of age, in late adolescence, their ability receded and died away. No one quite understood why. But when this happened to a child at Cairndale, he or she was sent away, usually to London, and it fell to Margaret to keep an eye on that community. They were often listless, sad on some deep level, as if they’d lost a part of themselves, turning to drink or to the poppy in solace. Among them too were those who had left the institute out of choice, who had walked away from Cairndale for one reason or another, to vanish into the maw of London’s slums. And hidden among them, she went on, was the very woman who had once nursed her Marlowe as a baby, and who had stolen him away from Cairndale on that night so many years ago, when Jacob Marber came hunting the child. Her name was Susan Crowley; she could not be older than twenty-six; and in her possession was the weapon that could kill Jacob Marber.
The thing was, she was so well hidden, Margaret had no idea where to find her.
Miss Quicke raised her eyebrows at that. It was late, by then. The detective, tired, was slumped in her stained oilskin with her legs spread, running her knuckles through her hair.
“I did not want to betray her, you see,” said Margaret. “I was the one who found her, all those years ago. She’d been discovered in a freight car and mistaken for dead and the rail workers had dragged her off to a little wooded place for someone else to stumble over. Didn’t want the trouble of it, that lot.” Her nostrils flared tightly with disgust. “Poor Miss Crowley. Burned all over her chest, her pockets turned out, her coat missing. It’s no wonder they thought she was dead. If you’d seen her … Well. I knew Dr. Berghast back at Cairndale was in a fury, I knew he wanted her found on account of the child. But I was afraid for her, I didn’t know what he would do to her. I could see the child—your Marlowe—was gone. So I said nothing. I told no one. Instead I took Miss Crowley south, into London, and saw that she was cared for, and I tried to forget I’d ever found her.”