No, she’d finish this last job, escort this Marlowe boy back to England. And then she’d tell Harrogate her decision: she was done.
Thing was, she’d only met the woman, Mrs. Harrogate, the one time, at the Grand Metropolitan Hotel on the Strand, back at the very beginning of it all. The hotel was dark, with glittering mirrors flaring in the electric lights, polished mahogany wainscotting, candelabra suspended in fiery wheels from the rafters, the works. Tall marble columns at the reception desk and a velvet-lined elevator cage with a kid in uniform operating the gears. Alice had followed Coulton in, up to the fourth floor, with a Colt Peacemaker in one pocket and a set of brass knuckles in the other.
He took her down a long, oppressively furnished corridor, stopping to work a key in the lock of a wide door, and then they were inside a sitting room, with half-opened doors on the far side and a small Chinese table of lacquered red wood with a teapot steaming on a silver tray, and at the far window, with her back to them, a middle-aged woman dressed in black.
“Miss Quicke,” she said, turning. “I have heard such interesting things about you. Do come in. Mr. Coulton will take your coat.”
“I’ll keep it,” said Alice. Her hand was in her pocket, on the revolver.
The woman introduced herself: Mrs. Harrogate, long-widowed, and merely one representative of the Cairndale Institute, its proxy here in London, so to speak. Alice had watched her carefully. She looked rather like a housekeeper, except for the expression in her eyes. She might have been forty, she might have been fifty. She glided forward on the carpet, her hands clasped before her, reddened as if scrubbed with lye, fingers devoid of rings or jewels. A purple birthmark covered her cheek and the bridge of her nose and one eye, making her expression difficult to read. But her lips were downturned, as if she had just tasted something sour, and there was in her dark eyes a ruthlessness. She wore no makeup, only a slender silver crucifix over her breasts.
“I am ugly,” she said matter-of-factly.
Alice flushed. “No,” she said.
Mrs. Harrogate gestured to a sofa, then seated herself; Alice, after a moment, sat too. The man Coulton stepped forward and poured out the tea and then dissolved back into the shadows, and as he did so Mrs. Harrogate explained what she wanted Alice to do. It was all quite straightforward, she said, if perhaps a little unusual. The Cairndale Institute was a charitable organization interested in the welfare of certain children, children who suffered from a rare disorder, who would not be able to get treatment elsewhere. Alice’s job would be to help track these children down; she would be provided with names and places. Once they had been found, Mr. Coulton would then bring them back to Mrs. Harrogate, here in the City. And she would see that they were taken safely up to the institute. Alice would answer directly to Mr. Coulton; he would see that she was paid in full, as well as expenses covered, etc. Alice’s contract would last through the year, to be renewed should her services still be required. It was all perfectly legal, of course, but discretion was required. Mrs. Harrogate trusted the terms would prove satisfactory.
Alice stared at the dark tea in her teacup but did not drink. She was thinking about the children.
“Ah,” murmured Mrs. Harrogate. “You are wondering, what if they don’t wish to come?”
Alice nodded.
“We are not in the business of kidnapping, Miss Quicke. If the children do not wish to come, then they do not come. Though I do not foresee that happening. Mr. Coulton can be most … persuasive.”
Alice looked up. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well. You are here, are you not?”
Alice felt the color rise to her cheeks. “It’s hardly the same.”
Mrs. Harrogate smiled and sipped her tea. “The children will suffer if they do not get treatment, Miss Quicke,” she said after a moment. “That fact tends to convince a person rather swiftly.”
“And their parents? Do they come also?”
Mrs. Harrogate hesitated, the teacup half-lifted to her lips. “These children,” she said, “are all unfortunates.” She leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. “They are without parents, dear. They are quite alone in the world.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.” Mrs. Harrogate frowned. “It seems to be one of the conditions.”
“Of your institute?”
“Of the affliction.”
“It is contagious, then?”
Mrs. Harrogate smiled thinly. “It is not a plague, Miss Quicke. You will not catch it; you will not grow ill. You needn’t worry about that.”