Winnie looked around, chest contracting. Mrs. Bone, hidden at the back of the throng, shouted, “We’ve thrown it on the rubbish heap.”
Miss de Vries surveyed the ranks of silent men, her eyes passing over Mrs. Bone without even a flicker.
“I comply,” she said. She moved like a wraith, still clad in black mourning silks, making for the front porch.
“Go,” Winnie breathed, to the others. And then, louder: “Go.”
39
4:00 a.m.
Hephzibah watched it play out from the pavement. Miss de Vries emerged from the house, shoulders bare, eyes on the crowd. A cry went up: “Are you safe? The fire!”
“There is no fire,” she said to those near at hand. “And no cause for alarm. Everybody should go home.”
Disbelief and confusion rippled out across the crowd. It was strange, thought Hephzibah, watching Miss de Vries: this tiny creature, guarding the front porch. It was the men who tried to push their way in first. Shepherd. Then Lord Ashley. But she held her hands to the door frame, a small smile on her face, barring the way. Hephzibah couldn’t hear what Lord Ashley said. She only saw what everybody else witnessed, too. His betrothed didn’t bow to him, didn’t bend: she sent him on his way.
Mr. Lockwood was next. He knifed his way across the pavement. But Hephzibah was on him. “No, no,” she murmured, gripping his arm. He swung around, startled. “Come with me.”
He resisted. “What on earth?” He shook her off.
“I can assure you,” she said, keeping her voice low, “it will be worth your client’s while.”
Earlier, while the crowds were surging outside the house, Winnie had grabbed Hephzibah. She’d given her the paper, pressed it right into her hands. “We’re going to put this right,” she’d said. She was out of breath, eyes fierce, clinging to the Inventory. “I promise you. On my honor.”
Hephzibah had unfolded the paper, reading the names: Eunice, Eileen, Ada… It had stopped the breath in her throat. “When?” she had said, voice dry.
“Now,” Winnie had said. “We’re going to fix it now.”
So Hephzibah led Mr. Lockwood to Tilney Street. The dessert trolley was laden high with trifles. They smelled sour, as if they’d begun curdling in the heat. She closed the door behind Mr. Lockwood with a firm and uncompromising click. “What on earth,” he said, “is this all about?”
Hephzibah kept her hand over her veil. She took a piece of paper from her sleeve. “Crawl over here,” she said with disdain, “and have a read of this.”
He took it from her outstretched hand, scanned it carefully, from top to bottom. She guessed lawyers always did that with pieces of paper. “It’s a copy,” she warned him. “Don’t bother doing anything silly with it.”
Clearly, it required a whole long minute for him to comprehend it, to really take it in, line by line. Name by name. “What do you want?” he said at last, looking up, face ashen.
Hephzibah leaned forward. She felt something uncoiling inside her. It wasn’t glee; it wasn’t giddiness. It was tiredness. Fatigue, bone-deep. Grief: for herself, and all the others.
“Never underestimate the kitchen girls, Mr. Lockwood,” she said. “They’ve got brains the same as anyone. They see everyone coming and going.”
Miss de Vries stayed at the front door for a very long time. People kept coming. “Miss de Vries, are you quite all right? Miss de Vries, are you quite well?” She ignored them. She examined the stained glass and tried to close her ears to the noises behind her. She wondered idly whether they might tell her they had finished. They didn’t, of course. The sound of footsteps simply faded until there was nothing left, and she was alone in her vast and desolate home.
She went straight to the second floor. The chill shocked her: the ballroom was like an icehouse, all the windows to the garden thrown open to the morning breeze. She searched for signs of damage, but there were none. Everything she owned had disappeared without a trace. She felt the queer urge to laugh, to howl.
Her bedroom was as they had promised: untouched. Only the bureau had been disturbed. She went to it. First job: to gather her personal funds.
The top drawer was empty.
She reached into the compartment, as if the banknotes had magically shrunk, as if someone had kindly rolled them up for her.
It wasn’t pain she felt. It was something different. She sat down on her vast and rumpled bed.
Miss de Vries had been betrayed before, by Papa, but that had felt different altogether, a burning sensation in her heart, her skin, as if she’d been dipped in white spirit. Now she felt only short of breath, as if squeezed into an airless box.
I consider this arrangement terminated, she thought, and went back downstairs.
She stayed indoors, sitting on the grand escalier, and waited for Lockwood to return. She heard Cook haranguing him on his way through the door. “Is Madam ruined, sir?” she cried. “Will we be paid?”
Miss de Vries couldn’t catch his response. He slammed the door, the echo reverberating through the house. He looked ghastly. Gray, and drawn, and yet strangely wild-eyed. Vulture. He was loving this. Chaos meant more work for him, for his kind.
“I need you to go to Lady Ashley,” she said, not bothering with greetings.
He jumped. Perhaps he expected her to be upstairs, lying in a swoon.
“Why?” he asked, eschewing pleasantries, too.
“I want to ensure everything is proceeding as planned.”
“Everything relating to…”
She turned the full force of her stare onto him. “My marriage.”
“I am not sure this is the best time for that.”
“No day like today, Mr. Lockwood.”
“You were very terse with Lord Ashley,” he said. “You denied him entry to this house.”
“It’s my house. It’s my prerogative.”
“You barred his way. In public. Everyone saw you do it.”
“Can anyone possibly blame me? I have suffered the most enormous shock.”
“You don’t seem shocked,” he said.
“Go and see Lady Ashley,” she ordered. “Go and do it now.”
He gave her a long, strange look, almost as if he were sizing her up, deciding where to hang her. He said, “A lady residing very near this house has certain papers in her possession. Papers documenting visitors to this house.”
“Visitors?”
He didn’t reply.
At first she didn’t understand. And then she saw the way he pressed his lips together, taking the utmost care not to speak a word before she did.
“Ah,” she said. She felt the world tilting, turning, getting ready to drag her under its wheels.
He said, “You’ll need a lawyer, of course.”
Dawn arrived, sleepless, cloudy and unreal. By nine o’clock a stream of lawyers had crammed themselves into the empty, echoing winter garden. They’d come out of the drains like rats running toward a carcass. Miss de Vries hovered beside Lockwood.
“I’m innocent,” she said.
Lockwood said nothing. No one had accused her of anything. But she knew someone was drafting the story, drawing up the terms. A tale of girls, and gentlemen who enjoyed them, and those who aided and abetted it all…