That evening he dined in Queen Square with two men who might become fellow directors if he decided to accept Brunel’s overtures. Still shaken by his experience, he drank deep and left early. The loss of his watch had been a double blow-first the watch itself, which he cherished, and second the circumstances of its theft. As an old soldier, Sir John prided himself on being a man of action, always prepared for the unexpected. But he had not even tried to apprehend the young person. He had behaved, in short, like a milksop.
But he would not be caught unprepared again. As the carriage whirled him back to his hotel near the Cathedral, Sir John patted the pocket of his overcoat and felt the reassuring outline of his Adams revolver. Only recently patented, it was a double-action model enabling rapid fire; according to his gunsmith, its bullet would stop a charging tiger.
The carriage drew up outside the hotel. A servant let down the steps and opened the door. As he climbed down, Sir John stumbled, and would have fallen if the man had not steadied him. He was perhaps a trifle bosky, but he prided himself on being a man who could hold his liquor. There might even be a case for a little brandy to aid digestion before he retired.
His apartments were on the first floor. He opened the sitting-room door and discovered that the people of the house had forgotten to bring lights and make up the fire. He marched towards the fireplace, intending to ring for a servant.
But something stopped him in his tracks, something amiss. There was a perfume in the air, clearly identifiable despite the underlying smell of his cigars. He acted without conscious thought. He pulled the heavy revolver from his pocket. Simultaneously he glimpsed a shadow shifting on the far side of the room.
The revolver went off with a crash that stunned him, the echoes almost masking the sound of scuffling and a cry and the closing of the door to the bedroom next to the sitting room. He was so surprised he nearly dropped the gun. He had not intended to shoot; he had forgotten that the Adams revolver was self-cocking and lacked a safety catch.
“Stop, thief!” Sir John cried, and the words came out little better than a whimper.
He moved unsteadily to the connecting door and flung it open. The bedroom appeared to be empty. A second door, leading directly to the corridor, stood open; the corridor was empty, too.
Trembling, Sir John returned to the bedroom and tugged the bell rope so hard it came away in his hand. As he looked about him for the brandy decanter, a piece of material on the carpet caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it under the light.
It was a scrap of yellow silk.
During the following day, Robbie earned a few coppers helping a stall holder at the market. Everyone was talking about the burglar at the Great Western Hotel, and how an old gent had put a bullet in him. When Robbie got back to his lodgings, the cobbler called out to him from his workshop.
“There’s a woman asking after you. That nurse, Mrs. Allardyce. She said you was to go over to Mrs. Linnet’s. But first things first. I need a dozen tallow candles from Hornby’s. If you look sharp you’ll catch them before they close.”
Robbie ignored the order, just as he ignored the shout that pursued him up the street. He ran all the way to Hotwells. The house where the Linnets lodged was full of lights and noise but their window was dark. He climbed the stairs and tapped on the door. There was no answer. He turned the handle and went inside the room. The air made him gag.
“Mrs. Linnet? Mary?”
“Robbie?” Mary’s mother whispered from the alcove near the fireplace. “Is that you?”
“Yes. Shall I light the lamp?”
He blundered through the darkness and found the oil lamp and a box of matches on the mantel. Mrs. Linnet’s face appeared in the wavering light. She was lying on her pallet, huddled under a mound of blankets.
“What’s happened? Where’s Mary?”
“She didn’t come back last night. Mrs. Allardyce stayed till morning but then she had to go.”
“Is she coming to sit with you tonight?”
The head rolled on the pillow. “No. I can’t pay her. Mary said she’d bring some money. Where is she, Robbie? I’m worried.”
“I’ll find her. Did she go out again last night?”
“Again? What do you mean? She went out once, and she never came back.”
Mary Linnet was on fire. Her lips were chapped and she felt as though her skin was flaking away. Her tongue lay huge and dry in her mouth. She was aware of the pain in her left shoulder. There was moisture, too, dark and thick and tasting of iron.
She did not know how long she had lain in this dark place, drifting in and out of consciousness. Once, in the glow of a candle, the Reverend Mr. Fanmole loomed over her like a great grey slug in a dressing gown. She remembered Mr. Fanmole waiting for her with a closed carriage when she had stumbled through the side door of the hotel. She remembered his hot breath on her cheek, and how he had made her lie on the carriage floor as they jolted up the hill to Clifton.
“Don’t sit on the seat, you stupid child, you’ll bleed on the leather.”
Now Mary was lying on a thin layer of straw spread over a flagged floor with a mound of logs in the corner. A barred window was set high in a wall. Sometimes there was natural light on the other side of it-not much, but enough to see the outlines of her prison.
But perhaps that was a hallucination, too. She could no longer distinguish between what was inside her mind and what was without. Once she saw the Breguet watch swinging like a pendulum before her eyes, measuring away her life.
Another time she saw as clear as day Robbie’s face framed by the little window. He tapped on the glass with fingers that were pale as bones, and she opened her mouth to call him, but she could no more speak than she could move.
4: A Tribe of One
On the second evening of his visit, Sir John Ruispidge dined at the Great Western Hotel. After his adventure the previous evening, he was pleased to discover that he was regarded as something of a hero. The story had already reached the newspapers-how a distinguished visitor to Bristol had surprised a burglar in his room and coolly put a bullet through the scoundrel. The villain had not yet been apprehended, but traces of blood had been found.
Returning to his rooms after dinner, Sir John passed through the lobby of the hotel. A young man was engaged in an altercation with two of the hotel servants.
“I’m not going,” the man was saying in a strong Bristol accent. “Not till I’ve seen him.”
“You’ll be pitched out on your ear. I’ll summon a constable.”
To judge by his clothes, the young man belonged to the labouring class, but he looked clean and respectable. He had a pleasant, manly face, Sir John considered, and he appeared sober. To the baronet’s surprise, the fellow pointed at him.
“Why, there he is! Sir John, sir, let me speak to you.”
“What is it, my man? Who are you?”
The man pulled off his cap. “Robbie Trevine, sir, at your service. It’s-it’s about your watch. And what happened last night.”
Sir John frowned. “The burglar? What had he to do with my watch? It was stolen hours earlier.”
“I know, sir. If you’d let me explain?”
“Come over here.”
Sir John led the way to a sofa near the fire. He sat down and the man stood cap in hand before him. The servants hovered but kept their distance.
“The watch was stolen by a young woman I know,” Trevine said.
Sir John’s eyebrows rose. It had not been given out that the thief was a woman. “Go on.”
“She’s not a thief, sir, I swear it, not by nature. Her mother’s ill, and she can’t pay for the doctor.”
Sir John waved a hand. “Right is right, Trevine, and wrong is wrong. Nothing can alter that.”