“All swept clean as a whistle, ma'am,” she told Mrs. Angell.
“Did you dust the bookshelves?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“And the mantelpiece?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“And that big old African spear?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“And did you polish the swords?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“And beat the cushions?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“And what about the doorknobs?”
“You can see your face in 'em, ma'am.”
“Good girl. Take a piece of fruitcake from the tin and have a rest. You've earned it.”
“Thank you, ma'am.”
Elsie took her slice of cake, put it on a plate, and settled on a stool.
“By the way, ma'am, the musical shriek has left and the master's got a message in the thingamajig.”
“Sheik,” the housekeeper corrected. She sighed. “Oh dear. I'm convinced that contraption only ever delivers trouble!”
She turned to the clockwork man, who was standing at the table, peeling potatoes. “Attend Sir Richard, please, Lord Nelson.”
The valet laid down his knife and saluted, wiped his fingers on a cloth, and marched out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the study. He entered and moved to the bureau between the windows, standing motionless beside it, awaiting orders.
Burton was by the fireplace.
“Listen to this,” he said, absently. “It's from Palmerston.”
He read from the note in his hand:
Investigate the claimant to the Tichborne title.
The king's agent sighed. “I was hoping to avoid all that blessed nonsense!”
He looked up, saw his valet, and said: “Oh, it's you. Lay out my day suit, would you? I think I'll drop in on old Pouncer Trounce, see what he knows about the affair.”
Half an hour later, Burton stepped out of 14 Montagu Place and strolled in the direction of Whitehall. He'd not gone more than three paces when a voice hailed him: “What ho, Cap'n! Fit as a fiddle, I see!”
It was Mr. Grub, the street vendor, who supplied chestnuts from a Dutch oven in the winter, and whelks, winkles, and jellied eels from a barrow in the summer.
“Yes, Mr. Grub, I'm much improved, thank you. How's business?”
“Rotten!”
“Why so?”
“Dunno, Cap'n. I think it's me pitch.”
“But you always pitch your barrow here. If it's so bad, why not move?”
Grub pushed his cloth cap back from his brow. “Move? Phew! Dunno about that! I've been here for years, an’ me father afore me! Fancy a bag o’ whelks? They're fresh out o’ the Thames this morning!”
“No thank you, Mr. Grub. I'm on my way to Scotland Yard.”
Burton wondered how anything from the Thames could possibly be classified as “fresh.”
“Well, you ain't the only one what don't want nuffink.” Mr. Grub sighed. “Cheerio, Cap'n!”
“Good day, Mr. Grub!”
Burton tipped his hat at the vendor and continued on his way.
It was a fine spring day. The sky was blue and the air still. All across the city, thin pillars of smoke rose vertically, eventually dissipating at a high altitude. Rotorchairs left trails of steam between them, a white cross-hatching that made an irregular grid of the sky. Swans, too, swooped among the columns like insects flying through a forest.
The king's agent swung along at a steady pace, with the hustle and bustle of the streets churning around him. Hawkers hollered, prostitutes wheedled and mocked, ragamuffins yelled, traders laughed and argued and haggled, street performers sang and juggled and danced, pedestrians brandished their canes and parasols and doffed their hats and bobbed their bonnets, horses clip-clopped, velocipedes hissed and chugged, steam-horses growled and rumbled, carriages rattled, wheels crunched over cobbles, dogs barked. It was an absolute cacophony. It was London.
He spotted a familiar face.
“Hi! Quips!” he called, waving his cane.
Oscar Wilde, nine years old, orphaned by the never-ending Irish famine and earning his daily crust by selling newspapers, was loitering outside a sweet shop.
“Top o’ the morning to you, Captain!” He smiled, revealing crooked teeth. “Help me to choose, would you? Bullseyes or barley sugars? I'm after thinking barley sugars.”
“Then I agree, lad.”
Oscar pulled off his battered top hat and scratched his head.
“Ah, well now, whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. So I suppose it'd better be bullseyes!” He sighed. “Or maybe both. It seems to me that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Don't you think so, Captain Burton?”
The explorer chuckled. Young Oscar had a remarkable way with words-thus his nickname.
“Are you flush, young ‘un?”
“Aye, I am that. My pockets are heavy with coins, so they are. I sold out in less than an hour. It seems everyone in London is after having a newspaper this morning. Have you seen the news yourself, sir?”
“Not yet. I've had my nose in books.”
“Then you must be the exception that proves the rule, for I have it in mind that the difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read!”
“I suppose the Tichborne business is still making the headlines?”
A nearby organ grinder started to squeeze out something approximating a tune on his tatty machine. Oscar winced and raised his voice: “I'll say! It has all the classes gossiping-from high lords to low layabouts! Everyone has an opinion!”
“What's the latest?” Burton shouted above the unmelodious groans, squeaks, wails, and whistles.
“The Claimant arrived in Paris and his mother has recognised him!”
“By James! Is that so?”
The Tichborne affair was a huge sensation-and one that touched a sensitive area of Burton's life, for the family was connected by marriage to the Arundells, to whom Isabel, his ex-fiancee, belonged.
The Tichbornes were one of the oldest families in the southern counties, but the estate's fortunes had dwindled considerably over the past two or three generations-due, it was rumoured, to an ancient curse. In recent years, the continuation of the line had depended upon two heirs. The eldest, Roger, was a fairly typical example of an ill-educated aristocrat, while his younger brother, Alfred, was even more vacuous, and a gambler, too. Roger had offered the greatest hope for the family until, disastrously, he was lost at sea in 1854, while sailing back from South America to claim the baronetcy after the death of his father. So it was Alfred who became the latest in the long line of Tichborne baronets, and he almost ran the estate-near Winchester in Hampshire-into the ground. Money trickled through his fingers like water. His mother, Lady Henriette-Felicite, was French. She'd not enjoyed a happy marriage and had retreated to Paris long before her husband died. From a distance, she kept a close eye on the diminishing Tichborne coffers, and when the situation became so dire that she feared Sir Alfred would make a pauper of her, she sent a family friend, Colonel Franklin Lushington, to live at Tichborne House and take control of the estate's finances. Lushington had managed to curb her son's worst excesses, but what he couldn't do was turn the young baronet into a good prospect for marriage.
Sir Alfred would almost certainly be the last Tichborne.
Then something totally unexpected happened.
A year ago, while the Dowager Lady Henriette-Felicite was visiting Tichborne House, a down-on-his-luck Russian sailor came begging for alms. The old lady, by this time frail and feeble-minded, asked him if he'd ever heard of La Bella, the ship that took her eldest to the bottom of the ocean. The sailor had not only heard of it but also knew that a small group of survivors had been rescued from a longboat bearing its name. They'd been landed in Australia.
Lady Henriette-Felicite immediately placed advertisements in the Empire and a number of Australian newspapers.
A month ago, she'd received a response in the form of a badly written and misspelled letter.
It was from Roger.
He was alive.
He told her he'd been living under the name “Tomas Castro,” and was working as a butcher in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, about halfway between Sydney and Melbourne.