A Spark Unseen

9

Mary dropped the stack of hatboxes she’d been holding and ran pell-mell across the foyer, past Mrs. Hardcastle, and sat herself abruptly on my steamer trunk. She lifted her chin and then crossed her arms, swinging her dangling feet. Mrs. Hardcastle gave her and the now-ruinous pile of scattered bonnets a thorough going over through the pince-nez spectacles, and then swung them around to examine me.

“Katharine,” she said, “this is indeed a pleasure. It has been too long. Too long, my dear. You are looking well.”

I smoothed back a chunk of wildly curling hair that had escaped my pins. “Thank you, Mrs. Hardcastle. How pleasant to see you. May I present Mr. Babcock? Mr. Babcock is my solicitor.” My eyes darted to the steamer trunk, where Mary was gesticulating wildly and incomprehensibly at me while Mrs. Hardcastle and Mr. Babcock both inclined their heads.

“I believe I have heard your name before, sir,” said Mrs. Hardcastle. She turned back to me, grinning hugely. “What a head for business you must have, dear, to bring your lawyer with you all the way to Paris.”

“I assist Miss Tulman in all things, Ma’am,” said Mr. Babcock, his ugly face the picture of calm. “Shall I have your trunk brought upstairs, Miss Tulman?”

“Yes, thank you, indeed.” I leaned my head close and whispered, “Three flights, a single door on the left. Mrs. DuPont has not come down, and the daughter is running about somewhere, too.”

He gave a brief nod and then lifted his hat to Mrs. Hardcastle, who was gazing through the pince-nez, watching us whisper. “Your servant, Ma’am,” he said, and hurried out the front door. My glance brushed past Mary, and then remained there. Mary’s eyes had gone very wide, her chin jerking repeatedly toward the trunk. Mrs. Hardcastle followed my gaze over her shoulder, and Mary’s expression became instantly nonchalant. I dug my nails into my palms. I wasn’t sure what Mary had heard, but Mrs. Hardcastle had to leave. Now.

“Well, this has been lovely,” I said quickly, “but as you can see we have only just arrived. We are all rather tired and shall be going straight to bed.”

Mrs. Hardcastle faced me once again, still smiling, brows raised slightly, causing the spectacles to fall, bounce, and then dangle from their chain over her bosom. “The journey from England is wearisome in the extreme,” she said. “Enough to make anyone wish their bed at half past noon, I’m sure. This is why, of course, I came to invite you to dinner this evening.”

I opened my mouth, to make an excuse of I knew not what, and then I heard what Mary must have: a distinct thump from inside my trunk. Mrs. Hardcastle whirled about to see Mary staring at the chandelier like an imbecile, absently swinging her feet, as if her boot heels might be striking the leather-covered wood just behind them. “Would you like to see the ladies’ salon?” I blurted.

Mrs. Hardcastle turned about again, her head cocked a little to one side. “Why, certainly, Katharine dear, if you would like to show it to me.” I stepped around the fallen bonnets and indicated the still-open doorway on my right. Mrs. Hardcastle entered the room with the pace of a royal, lifting the pince-nez. I slid the pocket door closed behind her as quickly as decency would allow, immediately plunging us into an almost complete darkness after the sunshine of the hall.

“Oh,” I said in confusion, “I am so sorry. Let me open a drape.” I bumped into a sheeted chair, looking for a window, then fumbled for the tassel to pull the curtain back, only to discover the window to not only be draped, but shuttered as well. I was feeling about for the latch when I heard a familiar hiss and pop. Light leapt across the room, a globed, gilded sconce now glowing yellow with flame. Mrs. Hardcastle stood below it, her hand on the turning key.

“Won’t you sit …” I stopped speaking. There was not a chair uncovered.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Hardcastle, looking about. “A very nice room, I am sure.”

I clasped my hands behind my back. “I apologize for not being able to properly receive you, Mrs. Hardcastle. As I said before, we have only just arrived. I cannot even offer you a cup of tea.”

“Old friends should never stand on ceremony,” she said, wandering over to examine a watercolor through the pince-nez.

I could recall no time when I had considered Mrs. Hardcastle a friend. “I do thank you for the dinner invitation, but …”

“Yes, yes. We shall have just a few guests, three or four courses, nothing too fancy. Eight o’clock is our usual hour. I do so look forward to introducing you, Katharine. Very much, indeed.”

I narrowed my eyes. There had been genuine enthusiasm in that last statement, and why would that be? I thought of Mr. Babcock’s words in the carriage, and all that Mrs. Hardcastle must have heard at Aunt Alice’s tea table. My lips pressed together. Mr. Babcock, as usual, had been perfectly correct. My reputation had found me. His only mistake was that the process had not taken weeks; it had taken exactly five minutes. But I had no intention of being Mrs. Hardcastle’s item of curiosity for the night. I straightened my back.

“Please accept my apologies, Mrs. Hardcastle,” I said, without the slightest hint of regret, “but I must decline your invitation.”

Mrs. Hardcastle opened her mouth in surprise, her head cocking once more to the side. With the feathers on her hat, it made her look like a very plump chicken.

“Perhaps you are not yet aware that I am in mourning, Mrs. Hardcastle. That — and the newness of my arrival — make it impossible for me to accept invitations at this time.”

“Mourning?” she repeated, the pince-nez now taking in the significance of my clothing colors.

“Yes. My uncle, Mr. Frederick Tulman, he is … gone.” And, as luck would have it, this is exactly what I hoped was true. I could hear low voices and movement in the foyer.

“… had no idea, my child. Is Alice Tulman aware of the circumstance?”

“I am not certain, actually. My aunt and I … are not on speaking terms.”

“No, I daresay you are not.” Mrs. Hardcastle’s breath whooshed through her nose. “Well, that is all the more reason to come, dearest child. No one stays inside the house in Paris. You must let our little party help you forget your troubles.” She smiled at me. “We dine at eight.”

The presumption jumped right beneath my skin, where it prickled. “The idea is out of the question, Mrs. Hardcastle. Another carriage ride today would be most unpleasant. Come to tea tomorrow, if you like, but for now I will stay in my own house and tend to my own affairs.” I took a breath. “And I would be most gratified if you would address me as ‘Miss Tulman.’”

Mrs. Hardcastle’s face wore an expression I remembered from Aunt Alice’s morning room. A smile, but one that hid something ugly, like the prettily embroidered cloth that covers a casket.

“Why, of course, Miss Tulman. I hope I did not offend. I was merely eager to hear more of you and your intended stay in Paris.”

I inclined my head, thinking I would not mind knowing the same of her. I had been too busy dealing with the fact of her presence to even question why it should be here.

“But please,” she continued, “do not think me so rude as to wish you to traipse about the city on the very day of your arrival. I assume you know the Reynolds family? They are set up just next door. Mrs. Reynolds is my husband’s second cousin and I am with her for a several months’ stay. I had the good fortune to witness your arrival from the drawing-room window.”

I stared back at her, trying to process this information, the knot that had become a permanent feature of my insides pulling agonizingly tight.

“Good day to you, Miss Tulman. I do hope we will be favored with your company soon.”

I returned her curtsy, and then, waking slightly from my shock, ran to the pocket door, getting there just in time to block her exit. I cracked the door, saw that the foyer was devoid of trunks, and only then allowed her out. She chose not to comment on my bizarre behavior, but swept from the salon in an elegant rustle, stepping over the fallen bonnets. The front door closed, and less than a half minute later, still standing in the salon, I also heard the faint close of another door, outside and down the sidewalk, just beyond the shuttered window I had tried to open.

I closed my eyes. No one but I, Katharine Tulman, could run across land and sea to hide a supposed-dead uncle from not one but two governments, only to move next door to one of the most blatant gossips on the continent. I really wasn’t sure why I was surprised. And then I remembered my uncle. I picked up my skirts, hurried through the empty foyer, and ran up the stairs.

On the second landing, I passed our two drivers, going down with a heavy tread, one of them rubbing his arms. They tipped their caps, otherwise ignoring me. I assumed this meant they had been paid and continued my dash for five more steps before I met Mrs. DuPont coming down with a smooth, almost unnatural glide. I stopped.

“Have you not gone home yet, Mrs. DuPont?”

“The house, it is full of English,” she hissed.

I squeezed past her on the stairs, in too much of a hurry to consider the sense of this comment, the question of what she might have been doing on the upper floors all that time more prominent in my mind. Light footsteps clacked down the steps and the girl Marguerite blew past me in a streak, another book, larger this time, tucked beneath her arm. She maneuvered around her mother and across the landing, her clamor sinking lower into the house.

I had twisted my head to watch her go, sure I’d already seen her descend once before, and when I turned back again I was facing yet another figure, this time a man I’d never seen. He was short and gray-headed, lines and wrinkles on his cheeks, though the muscles in his chest were still hard, wiry with strength. I could see all this very clearly, as he was wearing no shirt. I stopped dead on the stairs.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

Mrs. DuPont said something in French that I thought might be angry, but the man did not answer either one of us, just kept the pace of his downward tread.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but why are you not … clothed?”

“Ah,” he sighed as if the world were a sad place indeed, “Napoléon est mort.” He shook his head. “Napoléon est mort.”

I found myself pressing against the wall to let him pass. He joined Mrs. DuPont, who was sputtering rapidly in French, and then I remembered my business and ran to the fourth floor, where I found Mr. Babcock. He immediately took my arm, steering me toward the little storeroom.

“Are they gone?” he asked.

“Mrs. Hardcastle is,” I replied, panting from the climb, “but I met a man on the stairs without … well … when I inquired about his clothing, I believe he told me that Napoléon was dead.”

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Babcock. “That would be Mr. DuPont. He informed me of Napoléon’s demise as well. The first Napoléon, I assume, not the current one.” He pulled a ribbon from beneath his shirt, a key hanging on its end. “A helpful man, quite correct in his assertions, though his information appears to be limited.”

I shrugged a shoulder in agreement with this as Mr. Babcock shut the storeroom door and locked it behind us. The trunk was now in the middle of the floor, its contents quiet, and Mary was running her hands over a section of shelves on the far wall.

“You gave him a dose?” I asked Mary, joining her to examine the shelves.

“Had to, Miss. Is the old bat gone?”

“Yes.” I chose a section of the dirty wood and felt carefully, looking for a latch or anything that might be out of place. Mr. Babcock got with difficulty onto his hands and knees at the corner of the room, where the shelf wall began, and peered upward. “We have to get Uncle Tully out of that trunk soon,” I said. The worry was returning, eating at my stomach like an ulcer. “Dr. Pruitt said much longer than this would be unwise, and he’s already been several hours without water.”

“I know it, Miss. And I’m not looking forward to the cleaning of that trunk, if you don’t mind me saying. It weren’t so nice when I opened the lid, though I suppose he can’t be helping it, and them old dresses is only fit for the fire. …”

“Here!” cried Mr. Babcock.

We both turned. He was reaching below a shelf, a shade lower than the height of my waist. A latch clicked, and the shelf swung out and into the storeroom, creaking a bit on its hinges. It was just a door, I saw, half my height, a thin layer of plaster spread over its wood and with shelves built across it, matching the other sections in the room. The whole thing was so simple it made me nervous, though I supposed there would be no reason to think that what lay beyond the wall of shelves did not belong to the next house. Still, I was glad I’d told Mrs. DuPont this room would be mine. The storeroom door would have to stay locked.

Mr. Babcock stuck his head through the resulting doorway, and then crawled through. Mary went next and I bent down and followed, surprised when I needed to step upward once; the wall between the rooms was much thicker than I would have anticipated. I got through the door and straightened, straining to fill my eyes with everything at once.

It was a very comfortable room, not large, but airy in its sense of space. The ceiling was high, with the same slope as the storeroom’s, but instead of one small window and the resulting corner shadows, here the roof was cut by a row of five of them, tilted to the sky, sending a bright swath of light through the air to the carpeted floor. A long roll of pink cloth was set along the top of the windows, a system of crank, pulleys, and thin rope ready to let the cloth down or roll it back up again, to block the sun as wanted.

I left Mary and Mr. Babcock to explore and went to the back wall, past a little stove tapped into a chimney of bricks, and through another door. Behind it was a tiny bedroom, windowless, with a cot and a door on either end. The first door was locked, bolted, and painted shut, but the second opened easily. I shook my head, surprised, and yet not surprised. It was a bathing room. The convenience was not as modern as the one my grandmother had put beside her bedchamber in Stranwyne, but there were pipes connected, a copper tub, and a faucet hanging over a large shallow bowl. I turned a tap, and watched the water run.

“Look, Miss!” I heard Mary calling. I came out of the little bedchamber to see her standing beside a workbench — though I’d hardly recognized it as such, it being so clean — searching noisily through a box of tools. There was a box of metal parts, I saw, and a few dingy tin toys. Other trunks and boxes lined the walls, which instead of being painted or papered were covered in a pale pink cloth.

“There’s most everything Mr. Tully would be needing in here,” Mary was saying excitedly, “though I’m not seeing his hot pen, Miss, what he uses for making them bits of metal stick together. Did we bring this with us? I’m thinking we did but everything was done in such a tearing hurry, I can’t be sure. …”

“Mr. Babcock,” I said, “is all well?” He was standing perfectly still in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back, staring up at nothing, his belly when left in that position looking amazingly close to the shape of his head. He smiled.

“Oh, yes, my dear. It’s just your grandmother … she did a rather good job of it, didn’t she?”

I knew what he meant. I’d felt it, too, the same presence as in my bedchamber at Stranwyne, one that I suspected my uncle also sensed in places like his clock room. My grandmother’s stamp was indelible, and the thought made me long for home. But I only replied, “And she’s managed to get water and pipes up here, too, though I can’t imagine how.”

Mr. Babcock smiled again, and then we both jumped violently at a sudden crash, as if every pane of glass above us had burst into a thousand shards. I spun on my heel to see Mary, wide-eyed at the workbench, holding the ripped lace of her sleeve, the full box of tools now a scattered mess on the floor. “I’m sorry, Miss, I —”

“Shhh!” said Mr. Babcock, holding up a hand.

We waited in silence, listening to three sets of breath. I hadn’t had time to think of it yet, but I realized that what had to be below us was the house next door. The house, it came to me suddenly, where Mrs. Hardcastle was living. I held my breath and heard nothing, not even the noises from the street, and then I understood the raised, carpeted floor, and the thick, cloth-covered walls. The sound in this room had been deliberately deadened. But how much so? If my uncle woke frightened, unable to find the familiar, could this room possibly conceal one of his tantrums from whomever might be directly below?

When the silence continued, Mr. Babcock slowly lowered his hand, closing his eyes for a moment in relief. But I could not be certain that relief had a foundation. How quickly would rumors of strange noises in the house next door get from Mrs. Reynolds to Mr. Wickersham? Or even to the French? We could not allow my uncle to stay here without knowing. I would not. I ran a hand along the side of my head, smoothing the curls that were springing their way out in the warm attic air. I felt infinitely weary.

“What time is it, Mary?”

She snatched up the pocket watch hanging on its chain, and then paused, nose wrinkled. “But I said I’ve already been giving Mr. Tully his —”

“What time?”

“Not quite a quarter past one, Miss. Why?”

“Because I think we must hurry. We need to unload Uncle Tully’s things, have this room ready as quickly as possible, and get him out of his trunk before I have to go.”

“Go? But where do you have to be going, Miss?”

“Dinner,” I said. “With Mrs. Hardcastle.”

If I had exchanged the words dinner and firing squad, I think my expression might have been the same.