It is with regret that I confess to a previous attempt at contacting you. That was, as you might surmise, the incident at Leeds Station. My two colleagues disobeyed my orders to treat you with proper courtesy. Please accept my apologies for their rudeness. Now let us make our acquaintance under more civilized conditions.
Will you do me the honor of dining with me tomorrow evening? I wish to discuss with you a proposal to serve our common interests. I will send a carriage to your hotel at six o’clock. Should you decide to accept my invitation, all you need do is enter the carriage, and you shall be brought to me.
Much as I would like to include your cousin who is traveling with you, I must ask that you come alone.
I hope that tomorrow will mark the onset of a mutually rewarding association.
“There’s no signature,” I told Mr. Slade. “But can there be any question about who wrote this letter?” Horror filled me. “It was Isabel White’s master!”
“How extraordinary that he should communicate with you, just when we thought we would never find him,” Mr. Slade said.
I hurled away the letter as though it carried the plague. “He knows so much about me. Your true identity seems one of the few things he hasn’t learned from spies he sent to loiter in Haworth and question the villagers.”
He must have heard from the gossipy postmistress about my letters to M. Heger. My revulsion immediately turned to terror. “He’s been following me all along, waiting for his moment to approach me,” I cried. “He knows where I am. He’s here in Brussels.” I jumped up, and my frantic gaze roamed the garden, the roofs of the buildings surrounding the hotel, and the darkening sky.
“If he wanted to attack you, he would have done so already,” Mr. Slade said. “He means to lure you with this.” Mr. Slade retrieved the letter, which had fallen to the ground.
“I can’t go,” I said, aghast at the thought of delivering myself to the man whose minions had murdered Isabel White and Isaiah Fearon and who had almost killed my brother.
“And you won’t,” declared Mr. Slade. He examined the letter and envelope. “These give no clue to who or where the criminal is, but when the carriage comes for you tomorrow, the police and I shall follow it.”
“Will the carriage go to him even if I’m not inside?” I said doubtfully.
“If it doesn’t, we’ll arrest the driver and force him to reveal who his master is.”
I hated to find fault with Mr. Slade’s plan, but I said, “The criminal keeps his identity a secret even from his henchmen. What if the driver knows as little about him as M. LeDuc did?”
“He should at least know where he was ordered to take you,” Mr. Slade said.
“By the time you find out, the criminal might have already vanished,” I said. “We’ll have lost what may be our only chance to catch him. He’ll realize that I have tried to trap him, and he’ll go to ground.” Another possibility frightened me: “He may retaliate against me by attacking my family again.”
Mr. Slade regarded me with exasperation. “Then tell me what you think we should do.”
Despite my terror, I didn’t wanted to go home empty-handed, to face my family’s disappointment and admit that I was neither as brave nor capable as I had purported to be. I confess that I hoped to impress Mr. Slade, for what else did I have to offer him beyond my willingness to risk my life in his service?
“I must accept the invitation,” I said. Mr. Slade exclaimed in protest, but I told him, “When the carriage arrives, I will go where it takes me. You and the police can follow. I will lead you to the criminal.”
26
Dusk descended upon Brussels as I stood waiting outside the Hotel Central. Lights shone from streetlamps and crowded cafes along the boulevard. People strolled; carriages escorted by liveried footmen sped past me. The sky glowed lavender; the mild air sparkled. Lively orchestral music drifted from the park, while I shivered in my plain cloak and bonnet. The evening ahead of me spread like a black abyss from which I might never emerge. How I regretted persuading Mr. Slade that I should accept this invitation! Too soon would I venture within reach of the hands that had instigated murder. I longed to dash into the hotel and hide, but the church bells rang the hour of six o’clock. A black carriage drawn by black horses stopped at the hotel. The driver stepped down and approached me.
“Mademoiselle Bronte?” he said.
He wore a black cape, and a black hat obscured his face. I nodded. The presence of Mr. Slade and the police, waiting in carriages parked along the street, did not ease my trepidation. The driver opened the carriage door. Compelled by the momentum of the events that had led up to this instant, I stepped into the carriage and sat. The driver shut the door, enclosing me in darkness. His whip cracked. The carriage began to move amidst such racketing wheels and clattering hooves that I couldn’t determine whether Mr. Slade and the police were following. I tried to open the windows to look, but I found them fastened shut. I rattled the door; it was locked. I was trapped in the vehicle, which gathered speed and bore me towards an unknown fate.
The carriage veered sharply around corners. The driver seemed determined to evade pursuit. Our route comprised many twists and turns through the city. Motion and fear engendered nausea as I braced myself for a collision. I heard water flowing and felt the carriage rise, then descend, crossing a bridge over the river. I smelled rotting fish in the quayside market. But I soon lost all sense of direction. I prayed that Mr. Slade and the police would be able to keep up with me.
On and on we sped. The city noises faded; clattering cobblestones gave way to rutted earth; I smelled damp soil and fetid marsh. Perhaps two hours passed before the carriage abruptly stopped. Silence rang in my ears. My fear congealed into a cold sickness. I heard the driver climb down from his perch, and his footsteps approaching. The door opened, and lantern light diffused around his figure, which blocked my view of what was outside. He handed me a soft, dark cloth.
“ Bandezvous les yeux,” he said.
I recalled that M. LeDuc had gone blindfolded to meet his master. Now I must do the same. With unsteady fingers I tied the cloth over my eyes. The driver pulled me from the carriage into the night. Through the utter darkness that shrouded me I heard wind whispering through trees and insects shrilling. Hands grasped me and propelled me forward. Two pairs of footsteps accompanied mine as I stumbled on broken flagstones. My unseen escorts never spoke. I gasped with terror, on the brink of fainting.
Was Mr. Slade near? I almost called out his name. Would the criminal guess we meant to trap him? If so, would Mr. Slade rescue me, or would this journey end in catastrophe? Death had become a clear, immediate danger rather than a vague threat in the distant future.
My escorts led me up a flight of stairs. A door creaked open, and the hush of an interior space surrounded me. I breathed stale, musty air. Our footsteps rang on a stone floor. The door closed behind us with a heavy, echoing thud, and my heart sank, for I feared I was locked in a place where Mr. Slade could not reach me. Finally my escorts and I halted. I smelled savory food odors and the same exotic scent that had perfumed the invitation. My escorts seated me in a chair, and their footsteps receded.
“Good evening, Miss Bronte,” said a man’s voice that was quiet, low-pitched, suave, and foreign. “You may remove your blindfold now.” He blurred his consonants in an odd, musical accent that I could not place.
I pulled off the blindfold. I was sitting at the end of a long table lit by candles. Before me lay a meal of soup, roast fowl, potatoes, vegetables, bread, cheese, and a tart, served on flowered china and accompanied by ornate silver, wine in a crystal goblet, and a linen napkin. The room was large, the windows covered in tattered red velvet, the walls hung with faded tapestries that depicted mounted hunters pursuing stag in a forest. The coffered ceiling was festooned with spiderwebs. But where was the man who had just spoken?