Shell said, “Do you personally know this owner?”
“No, why?”
“I may have five gold coins that size, and few of silver, too.”
Camilla said, “Only fools would pay that much.”
“There is a lender who will get little if the captain and family are sold on the auction block, and then the ship becomes another liability the lender has to sell. But before we talk of that, you two had better eat your cobbler or there will be hell to pay when Rachael comes back.”
A pair of men entered and shouted for ale before the door slammed shut, obviously old customers. Not long after, three more men entered, talking loudly and teasing each other. Camilla suggested they pay Rachael and go back to their rooms and continue their talks.
The day had vanished while eating and talking, and a cool evening settled over Fleming. Many people out walking wore sweaters or light jackets, but there were almost as many people on the streets as during the day. Oil lamps attached to stone or brick walls glowed at almost every street corner, and more between. Most of the nicer doorways had a lamp providing a cheerful yellow light.
But as they approached the rooming house, there were no lights in the small windows. Shell caught a glimpse of a shadow as someone stood from the chair on the porch where the spy had sat earlier, and it disappeared into the darker shadows between the buildings.
Camilla said, “That’s odd.”
“Did you see him slip into the alley?” Shell asked.
“No,” Camilla said. “No candles or lamps inside.”
They paused in the center of the street, searching for danger. River split away from them and moved carefully closer to the far wall of the building, while Shell was more direct and pulled his knife. People on the street either circled well around them or drew back to observe, sensing something was about to happen. Soon a semicircle of people stood silently and watched the three creep up to the front door, but only after making sure the narrow alleys on both sides of the building were safe.
Camilla eased the door open and left it for the others to follow. Shell hesitated, watching the crowd, looking for the spy, or anything else out of place in the group. The silent reaction of the crowd raised the hackles of the neck. They neither seemed responsible, nor willing to offer help.
“Shell!”
The shout from inside the rooming house snapped his attention to Camilla’s voice, and he ran inside. The woman who rented the rooms lay sprawled on the floor near the chair where she sat and knitted. River was sparking his flint, lighting an oil lamp. A dark stain surrounded the woman’s head. Camilla knelt at her side.
“She’s alive,” Camilla said.
River held the lamp closer as the flame took hold and threw back the darkness. The woman’s face was pale, her breathing slow and shallow, but the blood pool had almost dried and was not expanding.
River sat the lamp on the floor and leaped to the front door, and outside. He shouted to the crowd, “We need a doctor and constable.”
Shell found where the blood oozed from a cut on the woman’s head, and on the floor beside her a stick of firewood larger around than his arm. “Don’t move her until a doctor gets here.”
River didn’t return, but an unknown woman entered and announced, “I am a nurse. Let me see her.”
Shell got out of the way. The new arrival probed the wound with gentle fingers and snapped, “Where’s her bedroom?”
“I’ll find out,” Shell said and ran into the rear of the house. He knew only four doors were upstairs, none of them hers, so she must live on the ground floor. One door took him to the kitchen. Oddly, the rear door stood wide open. The second door was a bedroom. “In here.”
The nurse said to Camilla, “You take her feet. Your man and I will lift her shoulders and carry her.”
Shell and Camilla traded places. They lifted, but the woman was short and thin, so she weighed almost nothing. After a few steps they placed her on a bed and Shell was told to fetch water, while Camilla remained to help.
River returned, a constable wearing a brass badge at his heels. River carried the lamp to the bedroom and soon had several glowing while Shell gave a quick update to the constable, just the bare facts.
The constable asked, “Do you have any reason why someone would do this?”
“We’ve only spoken a few times when she rented us the rooms this morning,” Shell said, but a feeling of dread began to slip over him as he considered the two obvious reasons. The Breslau spy or the money?
Either way, it was their fault. He needed to go upstairs and see if the money was gone, not because of wealth, but because if it was missing, that had been the object of the attack. The constable asked more questions, wanting to know where they had been, if anyone could vouch for them, and if they’d seen anything. River answered most of the questions. Shell had already delivered a bucket of water to the nurse and stuck his head inside the bedroom long enough to ask if they needed anything else.
When they didn’t, he went back to the constable and tried to think of an excuse to climb the stairs, but a man carrying a small leather bag entered.
“I’m a doctor.”
“In here,” the nurse shouted, and he hurried deeper into the house.
“Anything missing?” the constable demanded.
Shell said, “I’ve never been in the rest of the house, but feel free to look. Do you mind if I run upstairs and see if my room is okay?”
The constable looked ready to object, but River must have sensed Shell didn’t want the constable upstairs yet. He said, “Now that you mention it, there might have been a vase on that table.”
“We’d better check it all.” He turned to Shell, “You sing out if someone has been in your room.”
Shell climbed the stairs and went into his room. The drawers were dumped onto the floor and the little money left for bait was missing. A quick check assured him that neither of the other locations had been found. He didn’t know where Camilla hid the rest, but when he opened her door, all was neat and orderly. The other rooms were untouched, meaning they had returned and interrupted the theft, probably. Whoever it was hadn’t had the time to search Camilla’s room.
Realizing that a search of the rooms by the constable might turn up his hidden money and that would certainly raise eyebrows and new questions, and it might shift the attention away from a simple break-in to an investigation of Camilla and himself. He didn’t need the constable upstairs.
It was the work of half a moment to clean his clothing and belongings off the floor and stuff it all into two drawers. He called out, “Everything up here is normal.”
He met Camilla on the stairs and followed her into her room and closed the door. Camilla said, “She will be fine, we think.”
“My room was searched. The small coin sack is gone, but the rest is still there.”
She moved to a floorboard near the corner of her room and pried it up, then put it back in place. “We’re good here.”
“I think we interrupted them in the act before they could search thoroughly. The back door was left open, probably the way they escaped. The one out front was the lookout.” Shell’s voice stuttered as his mind caught up with his mouth.
“River?”
Camilla said, “He’s trying to get rid of the constable. Make him leave.”
“We brought this on her, you know. I’m not sure how, but it was us.”
“We’ll hire someone to stay with her. And we should hire one of those men down on the docks to stand guard here,” she said.
The doctor called to them and met them at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s not as bad as it looks. She needs to stay off her feet a day or so, but I’ve left instructions, and she will be fine.”