A Spark Unseen

8

It was not long after this conversation that the carriage turned onto a small, narrow street marked RUE TRUDON and jerked to a halt. Mary’s eyes flew open and once again we competed for the view from the window. Before us was a house of stone, four stories high, intricate wrought iron decorating the lower half of the windows. Two red-painted doors marked an entrance at the level of a narrow sidewalk. The houses continued on either side, as if rectangular blocks had been stuck together by a playing child, all in differing sizes and hues, making for a changing, yet unbroken, line of dwellings in both directions to the end of the street.

Then I saw that there was a girl on her knees before the red doors, her scrubbing of the paving stones interrupted by our arrival. She was a blue-eyed, yellow-headed, fair-skinned angel of a thing with dirty hands and a sodden apron. She stared at the carriage for a bare second before leaping to her feet. The water bucket tipped, a sudsy pool slowly surrounding the forgotten scrub brush as one red door slammed shut behind her.

“Hmph,” Mary said, eyeing the mess as Mr. Babcock climbed stiffly out of the carriage. He put his cane under his arm, telling our drivers to wait before handing us out. I looked back over my shoulder, at the wagon with the steamer trunk looming large in its back. A few people had slowed to gawk at our entourage, one man in a bright blue vest watching openly as he slouched against the iron post of a streetlamp. I turned away, but I could feel his eyes on my back. We stepped up to the doors, avoiding the puddle, and Mr. Babcock rapped lightly with his cane.

“We’ve a smidge more than fifteen minutes, Miss,” Mary whispered, shutting the pocket watch with a snick.

Hinges creaked, pulling my attention from the watch to the red doors, and the woman I saw standing in the widening space made me positively start. She was tall, skinny to the point of emaciation, skin the color of bleached muslin, made even more severe by the ebony of her dress and hair, both of which shared the same puritanical style. She looked like a corpse. An imperious corpse.

“Lord!” Mary breathed.

The woman stared down her nose at us. “Puis-je vous aider?” she said slowly.

“Parlez-vous anglais, Madame?” replied Mr. Babcock.

Her nostrils flared imperceptibly. “Yes, I speak English,” she said, heavily accented. “What do you want?” Her bone-white hand remained firmly on the doorknob, blocking our entrance.

“I would like to present Miss Katharine Tulman to you, Madame,” he said, indicating me with an elegant gesture. “Miss Tulman is the mistress of this house.”

She looked me over, a brief and somehow dismissive appraisal, her gaze going right back to Mr. Babcock. That would not do. I gathered up my wrinkled skirts and pushed past her restraining arm, forcing her to release the doorknob. “And this is Mr. Babcock, my London solicitor, and Mary Brown, my maid. I take it you are Mrs. DuPont?”

I found myself in a narrow foyer, all creams and pale blue and tiles and gilt, in something of the style that Stranwyne’s ballroom had been, elegant stairs with iron railings winding up from the center. I turned briskly back to the door. “Did you happen to receive our telegram, Mrs. DuPont, or perhaps our letter? Is the house in readiness?”

The woman’s arm had resumed its place, causing Mary to duck beneath it, but her dark eyes were now where I wanted them: fixed on me. “The house, it is not ready,” she said. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Oh, I think that won’t be necessary, Mrs. DuPont. We shall just make shift until it is ready, that’s all.” Mary was trying to catch my eye, tapping a finger on the case of the pocket watch. “There is quite a bit of luggage to be brought in. Do you have a man that could help with the unloading? No?” I turned back to the door. “Mr. Babcock, would you see if someone can be found to help the drivers unload? I will inspect the house and decide where our … things should be deposited.”

Mr. Babcock nodded his understanding and hurried back toward the street.

“And our other luggage,” I said, resuming my conversation with the corpse, “it was sent on before us. Has it …”

“A man brought boxes, too many boxes. They are upstairs, Mademoiselle.” Her face remained expressionless.

“Very well. Then if you would show me the house now, please, very briefly. I will make a more thorough inspection tomorrow. And you may refer to me as Miss Tulman, if you please, Mrs. DuPont.”

The woman gave me a cool little curtsy. “I will show you to your room, Mademoiselle,” she said, emphasizing the last word. I raised a brow.

“You will show me the house, Mrs. DuPont, and then I shall choose my room. And please call me Miss Tulman. Come, Mary.”

I took a few quick steps across the tile floor and opened a large sliding door that disappeared into the wall, like a hand into a pocket. Mary peeked over my shoulder into a dim, dust-sheeted room with draped windows that would overlook the street.

“The ladies’ salon, Mademoiselle,” said Mrs. DuPont, very deliberate. But I did not remark on her refusal to use my name, as I was already hurrying to an identical door on the other side of the foyer.

“The salon for the men,” she announced, coming up behind me. I would have called it a library. The furniture here was also dust-sheeted, the curtains closed. “The room for dining, it is behind this,” continued Mrs. DuPont, “and the pantries, and the kitchen. You could wish to sleep somewhere else, Mademoiselle. It is not a comfortable house.”

I stopped halfway to the stairs. “And what rooms are behind the other parlor? The ladies’ salon?”

“There are no rooms there, Mademoiselle,” said Mrs. DuPont.

Mary looked up from her watch and snorted. “Well, that ain’t right. Why would a body be building one side of a house a different size than the other? I never heard of such a foolish …”

Other than a slight flare of the nostrils, Mrs. DuPont’s face did not change. “Those are for the other lady. The other English lady.”

If Mrs. DuPont’s face was expressionless, her voice was not. She said the word English as if it were something filthy. Mary’s nose wrinkled and she drew a breath to argue, but I put a hand on her arm. “I believe Mrs. DuPont means that the rooms behind the ladies’ salon do not connect to this house, that the space is used by the house next door. Is that correct, Mrs. DuPont?”

The woman gave a tiny nod, and I glanced up at the ornate chandelier above my head, gilded cherubs looking down at me, each of their fat arms holding up a cut-glass globe. If the interior walls had not been respected, then I could better understand how one might hide a set of rooms in a rectangular block of houses. “I will see the upstairs now, Mrs. DuPont. Starting with the top floor going down, please.”

I moved quickly up the stairs. The plaster wall decorations became less and less grand as we ascended, each set of steps narrower than the last. On the first landing, we passed the enormous stack of trunks and boxes that Mr. Babcock had sent ahead from Stranwyne; on the second, a halo of blonde hair that bobbed once before flying away to the lower floors, a book tucked beneath her arm. Mary turned to watch the girl who had been scrubbing the sidewalk descend. “Who is she?” I asked Mrs. DuPont.

“She is my child, Mademoiselle, Marguerite.”

“I see,” I said, though I was mentally gaping. Nothing about Mrs. DuPont’s looks, age, or demeanor could have possibly suggested such a daughter. “And please remember that I have asked to be referred to by my name, Mrs. DuPont.”

At the top of the third set of stairs, we stood in an unpapered, unpainted hallway beneath a sloping ceiling, one oval window overlooking a jumble of foliage below. There was a railing around the stairwell, a row of three doors to the right, and on our left, only one. I took a quick look at the empty chambers on the right — for servants, most likely — then opened the single door on the left. Behind it was an uninviting room, plain lathe and plaster, the wall opposite covered in unused shelving. One high window, cut into the slope of the ceiling, showed a square of cloudless sky, leaving a corresponding block of sunshine on the scarred wooden floor. But it was the shelves that had drawn my attention.

“This shall be my particular room,” I declared. “To be used for matters of business.”

For once, Mrs. DuPont seemed neither angry nor dead, just rather bewildered. “But it is only a room for the storing, Mademoiselle!”

“It is quiet and private, and will therefore suit me well. I will have much to attend to over the next few weeks.” I heard Mary’s fingernail tapping insistently on the pocket watch. “And now that we have that settled, I shall go back downstairs. I am perfectly capable of viewing the other rooms on my own. You and your daughter are free to go home, Mrs. DuPont, but if you would be so good as to come back in the morning, to discuss our further arrangements, that would be most appreciated.”

“But —” Mrs. DuPont began.

“Half past ten will do. Please leave whatever keys you may possess on the table in the foyer. Knock, and we will let you in.”

I turned and nearly ran back to the staircase, Mary trotting close behind me, leaving Mrs. DuPont to make of this what she might.

Downstairs I found a grimy young man I’d never seen before setting one of our boxes onto an already precarious pile of similar packages, while Mr. Babcock was coming backward through the front door, directing the steps of both of our drivers as they hauled in the steamer trunk.

“Careful!” I said, hurrying over to flatten the wrinkles in the rug. “Set it down gently, please.” I motioned Mr. Babcock away from the others and whispered, “I’ve found where the entrance must be, it is just as described, but I have not yet been inside. Three flights up, I’m afraid.”

Mr. Babcock considered. “How long before he wakes?”

“Perhaps five minutes. Ten if we are fortunate.”

“He will need another dose?”

“Yes, I think we shall have to. He shouldn’t wake until we have gotten all his things into the room. This is going to be difficult either way, so we might as well start with all our advantages. The boxes from the workshop are on the first landing. I’ve sent Mrs. DuPont and her daughter home until —”

But my thought was interrupted, cut neatly in half by a high voice, falsely cheerful, saying my name from the doorway.

“Katharine Tulman!” the voice said again, and in an instant the years had melted and I was back in my aunt Alice’s morning room, pouring miserable tea in a gray worsted dress. The feeling of suffocation was so overpowering I had to clutch Mr. Babcock’s arm, making certain I had the capability of breathing, before turning around.

And there she was, smiling beneath a garish feathered hat, complete with overlarge bosom and the inevitable pince-nez perched on her nose. One of the dearest, truest friends my vile aunt Alice ever had.

“Mrs. Hardcastle,” I replied.