The train had come to a stop on a curve of track, and she could clearly see the gleaming locomotive at the front, the distant figure of the engineer in his coveralls as he jumped down, the cloud of black smoke drifting away from the fire stack. She hoped very much it was not a derailment. There were schedules to keep. A minute later she heard a rap at the compartment.
It was Coulton, of course. Glaring in past her, at Walter in his ropes.
“Everything all right?” he said.
“You’re supposed to be with the children,” she told him. “Your task is to keep them safe until we get to Cairndale.”
“Aye.” His gaze slid past her, again, to the litch. “I know the task. But we need to talk.”
“Not here.” She pushed the gruff man back out, into the side corridor, and slid the compartment shut behind her. She locked it, folded the little brass key into her palm, interlaced her fingers in front of her.
“Well?” she said. “If this is about Walter Laster, I do not wish to discuss it. The matter is closed, Mr. Coulton. Why have we stopped?”
Coulton blinked. “I don’t know. Listen—”
“Did we hit something? Was there something on the tracks?”
“I don’t know. Margaret—”
“If we are late for our connection, I shall be most displeased.”
“Goddamnit, Margaret,” he snapped. “Let a man speak.”
She frowned in disapproval, glanced the length of the side corridor, then met his eye. “I believe I’ve let you have your say already, Mr. Coulton,” she said in a deliberately quiet voice. “And such language is hardly appropriate.”
“But you haven’t,” he said.
“I haven’t what?”
“You haven’t let me have my say. Walter said to me that Jacob’s on his way. He said Jacob knows how to find him.”
Margaret flared her nostrils in displeasure, lifted her chin. “I doubt that.”
“You don’t reckon it’s possible? Or you don’t want it to be?”
“Walter’d been smoking opium, he was quite drunk on it. You said it yourself.”
“Don’t mean it ain’t true.”
“We’re on our way to the institute, Mr. Coulton. Jacob Marber couldn’t get to him, even if he knew how to. He isn’t on this train.”
She watched Coulton glower.
“Aye,” he said reluctantly.
She started to go, then paused. “Was there something else?”
Coulton flushed. “It ain’t too late to change tack. If Jacob’s looking for that bastard, he’s like to have a way of finding him, if you take my meaning. He’s like to follow him north. Why not let me escort him on a different train?”
“I think not.”
“Or you, then. If it ain’t too dangerous. It don’t matter. But get him away from the children. You saw what happened with Charlie.”
Margaret felt a flicker of regret at that. She had thought the opium stronger, the ropes more powerful. She’d been careful, this time, to increase the dosage and the restraints both. And she’d not leave the litch’s side the entire way. It ought to be safe enough. More to the point, she didn’t know how long they had until Jacob Marber came hunting, and she wanted Walter locked away behind Cairndale’s walls before he did.
Through the windows she saw a conductor in his blue uniform and box cap walk slowly through the long grass, waving to someone up the line. Some of the passengers had got off, were standing on the slopes of the cut, smoking pipes, chatting in the sunlight. She shook her head.
“And what do you propose we do, Mr. Coulton?” she said softly. “Drag Walter off the train, here, and carry him to the nearest station? And who would do that—you? You would abandon the children? Or perhaps me, with my tremendous physical strength? No, I fear it is too late entirely to change tack, as you put it. Go back up to your carriage, sir.”
Coulton rubbed at his whiskers. There was something in the way he was looking at her that she didn’t like, a disappointment.
“Anything happens to those children,” he said darkly, “you’ll have to live with it.”
* * *
At the front of the train, Charlie Ovid put a hand to the compartment window, watching the engineer and the conductors trudge back along the tracks, peering under the wheels, kicking through the long yellow weeds. A pale blue sky, clouds like wisps of cotton batting. After London’s fog, he’d nearly forgotten what that looked like. Coulton’s kidskin gloves were laid out, crosswise, on the soft polished mahogany seat, as if to remind them of his absence. A shelf of webbing overhead for hats and parasols. It was a modern compartment, with a sliding oak door that opened onto an interior corridor. Charlie let his eyes travel over the dark panels, imprinted and detailed, he studied the lace curtains obscuring the door glass. Marlowe had his face pressed to the glass, watching the men outside with interest.