The Traitor And The Tunnel Part 19

"But have you evidence that this is a romantic entanglement?"

"As opposed to what?" demanded Jones. "You think he's talking philosophy with the shop-keeper?"

Mary said nothing, except "Go on."

"Anyway, I've been trying, through Amy, to pick up any t.i.ttle-tattle about al this, but the Palace is a grim little pile of stones, ain't it? No gossip, no fun, no high-jinks by night."

"What made you persist, then?"

Jones shrugged. "Wel , one keeps hoping against hope. And Amy was a nice enough child. Besides,"

he smirked again, "why wouldn't I like a woman who ranks me higher than G.o.d? Until this, of course."

Mary smiled for rather different reasons. Even men like Jones, who prided themselves on their worldly savoir faire, could be so easily hoodwinked by girlish enthusiasm. Privately, she thought there would be little difficulty in persuading Amy of Jones's unsuitability; those five golden guineas would speak louder than words. "Why didn't you simply get a job at the Palace yourself?"

He feigned horror. "My dear, the hard work! It would be the death of me."

"Yet it would be so much more reliable than other people's distil ed memories."

"The newspaper pays me only so much, darling Mary sorry esteemed Miss Quinn. Certainly not enough to al ow me to b.u.t.tle. a.s.suming they'd have me."

Mary only half-believed him. Stil , there was nothing to be gained in belabouring the point. "Very wel , then. Anything else you're keeping from me?"

"My dear Miss Quinn! After al you've promised to do for me?"

The answer was almost certainly yes: this was Octavius Jones, after al . But she could verify Jones's interests with Amy herself something he surely realized. And it was enough to rule out his interest in the heirloom thefts, Honoria Dalrymple, the death of Beaulieu-Buckworth and the tunnels. It was the soundest bargain she'd driven since this case had begun.

Twenty-two.

Wednesday evening Buckingham Palace Shock was an effective anaesthetic but it couldn't last indefinitely. As Mary re-entered the Palace grounds, she felt a strange churning in her stomach that had nothing to do with her long-ago dinner. Her chest ached, her lungs were constricted and her mouth was suddenly parched, despite a flood of intensely salty saliva. This would never do. She flew through the service entrance, hoping she'd not run into Mrs Shaw. Her luck held, in a way.

On her way up the servants' staircase, she nearly barrel ed into Honoria Dalrymple, in company with an older gentleman. Both whisked round, then Honoria relaxed. "Carry on, Quinn," she said. Mary hesitated only for a moment her need for privacy was stronger than anything else at this moment but as she hurried past Honoria, she heard the lady-in-waiting say, rather loudly, "I'l see you to the door, Papa." Mary kept running.

She burst into her room the room she'd used to share with Amy, now stripped half-bare and only just made it to the chamber pot. Retched. Choked.

Final y gave up the remnants of her dinner. Dribbles of thin, sour acid. Then nothing at al , except air and m.u.f.fled sobs and yes, as they trickled down over her lips into her mouth warm, salty tears.

She hadn't the strength to fight them now. She'd used up al her wisdom and restraint: in recognizing her father and not breaking down then and there; in bul ying him into tel ing her his story; in not demanding personal answers of him; in leaving him there, without al y. It was time to give up the glowing, idealized father figure she had cherished al these years. The good husband. The loving father. Above al , the brave sailor who'd sailed away on a mission of justice. For two years, she'd thought of her work at the Agency as a kind of homage to her father.

Fol owing in his vanished footsteps, as best she was able. She'd dreamt of his one day finding her, after years of searching. She'd imagined it as a homecoming, a reunion.

Instead, she had found him. Her tears flowed faster as she mourned her losses. The first of her father to the sea, when she was a young girl. The second of the image of her father, bright and brave and untarnished. She forced herself to renounce those childish ideals and summoned an image of Lang Jin Hai as he truly was: a pathetic stick figure s.h.i.+vering, unwashed, possessed whol y by the desire for more opium. A despicable figure, charged with murder and unremorseful. And, if she was very honest with herself, the deepest wound of al : a man who had been in London and failed to contact her; had, indeed, denied his ident.i.ty and refused to acknowledge her.

She was soon cried out. First came the drying of tears, then the mopping and blowing, and final y the hiccups. She stood with difficulty, legs half-dead from having been folded beneath her for so long.

Took a long drink of stale water. Lay down on the bed to think more about her disgrace of a father.

And yet she couldn't quite join the chorus of condemnation. After al , she too had once been an accused criminal. She knew the despair that drove one to il egal acts, the instinct for survival that crowded out al others. But this was only part of the matter. For larger than empathy, larger than understanding was the fact that no matter what he'd done or who he was, this Lang Jin Hai was stil her father. Of that, at least, she had no doubt.

She made it through the evening above-stairs dinner preparation, below-stairs tea and desultory tasks and to bed without further incident. While Mrs Shaw looked askance at her swol en face and bloodshot eyes, the housekeeper was not usual y suspicious except of excess enjoyment and leisure.

Mary's symptoms were so clearly the product of misery that they went unremarked.

Sleep was a long time coming. It was unusual y silent in the room; Mary had become used to Amy's chatter and snores. And try as she might to focus on the tasks at hand Honoria Dalrymple; Prince Bertie; those ever-more-mysterious thefts her thoughts persistently circled back to Lang Jin Hai.

Mary woke in the early hours, rather surprised to find she'd slept at al . It was a rare, clear night the rain had stopped in the early evening and the moon shone brightly even through the tiny garret window. It was the glowing, unearthly light by which Mary, as a child, used to rob houses. Perhaps that's why her thoughts returned to Lang Jin Hai with a sudden clarity that owed nothing to adult logic, her moral training at the Academy, her responsibilities to the Agency. Suddenly, her path became clear.

Rather than frittering away time on s.h.i.+fty ladies-in-waiting, hopeless kings-in-waiting and petty thefts that might never be solved, she had to address the real responsibility at the core of her life.

She had to rescue her father.

Twenty-three.

Thursday, 16 February Cradle Tower, Tower of London It was the same sentry on duty when Mary turned up at nine o'clock in the morning. He looked surprised to see her again, but admitted her readily enough.

"You had a rare reception from the Chinaman yesterday," was his greeting.

Mary gave the smug smile of a certified do-gooder. "Sometimes, al these people want is a civil ear."

"Don't know why you ladies bother. He'l be swinging from the neck inside a week."

Cold terror clutched her stomach. "So soon?"

He shrugged. "Give or take. Ain't no jury going to find for a Chinee what kil ed a toff."

The guard was correct, of course. It was the reason she'd come. No matter how Queen Victoria felt about justice and truth, a jury of stolid Englishmen would always make a foreigner pay the heaviest price for his crime. "I don't suppose he's been seen by a physician."

The guard snorted with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Oh, aye and by the Queen herself, too."

She climbed the stairs to Cradle Tower trying to damp down her hopes as far as possible. She'd shammed il ness that morning as the simplest way of avoiding her Palace tasks. It was irresponsible, of course. But nowhere near as reckless as what she was about to propose to this perfect stranger. Once more, Lang didn't bother to raise his head as the turnkey announced Mary and unlocked the cel . He was stil huddled beneath that stinking blanket he mightn't have moved since she'd last seen him but his shaking was much diminished.

"Mr Lang," she said quietly, reaching once more into her reticule. She sloshed the bottle gently. This time she'd provided herself with several vials, buying from three different apothecaries in order to avoid suspicion.

As if on a string, he turned to face Mary and extended an expectant hand. She waited for him to down the tincture. Al owed another minute for it to take effect. Then, without permitting herself time to reflect or regret, she began. "I asked you a number of questions yesterday. I should like to begin today by tel ing you about myself."

Lang blinked at her, only half-focused. Those eyes were sunk deep in his head, whites yel owed, irises brown-black. And yet they were stil her eyes. Today, they were bright with something other than laudanum: fever, thought Mary. It was unsurprising, given his vile surroundings, that untended gash on his right palm. She should have brought something to clean it. It was a detail she'd forgotten. One that would complicate the escape.

"I was born in Limehouse in 1841. My mother was Irish, a seamstress. My father was a Lascar." He said nothing but his features hardened, settled into determined neutrality. "We were a poor family but a happy one until the year 1848 or so, when my father sailed on a voyage that was to be his last. His s.h.i.+p was wrecked. He was reported missing, presumed dead. My mother was pregnant at the time, and she miscarried from grief. A year later, she died this time from poverty.

"Somehow, I survived. I was eventual y taken in by a girls' school, a charity. I said nothing of my father; concealed my race, for fear they might turn me away.

But last year, I met a man who told me something of my family history. His name was Mr Chen."

Stil no response from Lang, apart from a careful blankness.

Mary steeled herself to continue, although it was a struggle to keep her voice even. "Mr Chen showed me a cigar box containing doc.u.ments my father left in his care. These included a letter, in which my father explained that his voyage was more than an ordinary commercial expedition. He described it as 'a dangerous but necessary' journey, and he left doc.u.ments that, I believe, would have explained his reason for going. I was never able to read the doc.u.ments. They were destroyed in a house fire before I could retrieve them. Mr Chen's body was found in the burned house." She paused again.

She'd hoped that news of his old al y's death would move the man. And yet he failed even to blink. Mary swal owed. Prepared to produce her trump card.

"There was an item that didn't perish in the fire, however." She dipped a finger into her col ar and drew out a thread-thin necklace. "The jade pendant you described yesterday. The gourd." The tiny stone gleamed dul y in the dim light not that Lang bothered to look at it. His gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle distance, studiously not seeing his only child there before him. She waited patiently, hoping the dim light was enough to conceal the slight shaking of her hands; the way her pounding heart made her bodice tremble.

And stil he said nothing.

Eventual y, she spoke. It was either that or flee the Tower. "You are my father," she said, in a voice shaking with unshed tears. "Do you deny that, given the evidence?"

Very slowly, his gaze sharpened and he looked her ful in the eyes. "Yes."

"You deny it?"

A pause. "I am not your father."

"And what of this?" Mary snapped the necklace chain and brandished it in his face. "This pendant, which you described so accurately yesterday. It's proof."

But it was too late: he was withdrawing again, those weary eyes filming over into selective blindness.

She dropped to her knees, forcing her face into his line of vision. "I even look like you! I have your eye shape, and your mouth, and-" To her shame, her eyes wel ed over. She dashed away the tears with a vicious swipe. "And I'm your only child. You're my only living relative. Does that mean nothing to you?

"Because it used to. You used to walk me round the streets of Limehouse at dusk, while Mama prepared our tea. You used to tel me I had to grow up brave and strong, and always remember how much you loved me. You used to say that the truth would set me free, and always to tel it." She was crying now, quietly, dripping tears onto her dress, the ragged bed-linens, Lang's gnarled hands. "You used to be my hero. And now you're lying to me in the face of al logic and reason and compa.s.sion and everything else you taught me to value."

She was fumbling in her bag for a handkerchief why did she never have a clean handkerchief?

when he surprised her by speaking. "That man also used to say that character is destiny."

Mary stared at him. "So you do admit-"

"I admit nothing. But your father said that character was destiny, and with that much I agree." His eyes were sane, focused, despite their hectic glitter.

"Look at me: a weak, vain man, corrupted and destroyed by opium."

"But-"

"If I were your father," said Lang, in tones so gentle that Mary nearly wept afresh, "and I were in this position now, I would never acknowledge you as my daughter." He caught her look. "Never. Not to cause you pain certainly not that. But to spare you the shame of having to own such a man as your father."

Her mind whirled, but only for a moment. "But I want to claim you as my father!" It was difficult not to shout the words but, mindful of the gaoler, Mary spoke with quiet vehemence. "I don't care what you've done, or who you've kil ed, or what you're addicted to. I know the worst there is to know about you, and I stil want to be your daughter!"

He looked at her through half-shut eyes. "No. You are thinking with your heart right now. But once you think with your mind, you wil understand that I'm correct."

"d.a.m.n it!" She pounded the mattress and a puff of brown smoke, acrid and salt-smel ing, flew up into the air and made them both cough. "This is about love and families. I should be thinking with my heart."

He looked down at her, and her heart staggered a beat. It was such a familiar expression of affectionate reproof, one she'd seen hundreds of times as a child. "Young woman, this is not merely about family bonds. It is also about survival. Your prospects. Your life as a free, educated, respectable lady." The emphasis he laid on the last word was unmistakable. "You have been torn free of your roots; that was heartbreaking. But it would be a greater tragedy stil to al ow past griefs and the sins of others to destroy your life now."

Mary closed her eyes, as though doing so would also stop her ears. He spoke sense, of course. Her father always had. And opium fiend or not, murderer or not, he was acting in her worldly best interests.

She pictured him as he had been in his prime gentle, handsome, kind and when she opened her eyes, it was not so excruciatingly difficult to fit together the two Lang Jin Hais. Not now that he'd addressed her so. "What if I want to?" she asked, rising abruptly and beginning to pace the tiny cel .

"What if I want to destroy my social prospects, my English life, this lie I've been living?"

Lang was drooping a little, as though the intensity of his effort had actual y bled him. "If. If you chose to sacrifice everything you had to embrace a foreign kil er and opium addict, you would accomplish nothing. I would stil be hanged. The aristocrat would stil be dead."

"I would be your daughter."

"And what a b.l.o.o.d.y taint that would be."

"What if I chose to embrace it?" She dug in her reticule, found another vial of poison. Of salvation.

He drank greedily enough, but with a new, furtive expression. He was ashamed for her to see him like this, she realized, now that they were talking so very nearly without disguise. "Why stop at social and material suicide? What you propose is tantamount to self-murder."

Mary knew he intended to shock. He managed it al the same. Only the sc.r.a.pe of the guard's boots against stone compel ed her to resume a prim, standing posture.

"Ten minutes, miss."

She nodded, unable to speak, afraid to look at the gaoler lest he see the evidence of tears on her face.

When he left, not without a suspicious look at Lang, she bent low again. "You can't get rid of me that easily," she said. The interruption had been good for her composure. "I've one last question for you. I can help you to escape. I'l organize everything.

I'l make it clean. When I cal for you, wil you come?"

Final y, she had succeeded in shocking him. He sagged back on the cot, hit the wal with a grunt.

Waved off her gesture of concern. "I'm fine. You, however, are mad."

"It's been done before, by a priest in Elizabethan times. And there's a water entrance in this tower: direct access to the Thames. If we chose our time wisely, we could be several miles out of London before anybody noticed."

"I don't question your ability to escape yourself.

But look at me." He sat straighter, holding out his arms, rol ing up his ragged sleeves. He was a mess of bruised skin draped over bones, like gauze over twigs. "Had you forgotten my hand?" He showed her the hideous gash, black and cracked and oozing, with white streaks radiating from its crusted edges.

"I'l never climb down a rope, or even a ladder."

"I'm not a fool. The most strenuous thing you'l have to do is walk down those stairs and climb into a boat."

"And then what? We'l sail to Greenwich and live as happy wanderers, picking berries and poaching the odd pheasant?" His impatience was clear, despite his weakness. "You daft, impulsive girl. I'm marked for death, one way or another. It doesn't matter if I hang at Her Majesty's pleasure, or die of blood-poisoning from this cut, or if one of the gaolers strangles me in the night. I'l be dead in a fortnight's time and to hel with the means."

She hadn't been quite that stupid: her plan had been to go to ground in Limehouse for a time. She doubted the authorities would be able to identify Lang, one Chinese looking so much like another to the English, at least. Then, perhaps after that, Bristol or Liverpool another port town with a smal Asiatic population. But she'd not thought so clearly about Lang's future. The complications of his fragile health, his addiction, his utter lack of interest in survival.

It cut bone-deep. It was also so familiar. It was how she herself had felt, at the age of twelve, being tried for housebreaking. She'd not had a future, then.