Page 53 of A Ruse of Shadows
At various points in the excavation process, the woman had been the kicker, the bagger, and the trammer. The kicker, lying on a plank slanted at a forty-five-degree angle, drove a kicking iron into the clay ahead with their feet; the bagger swept up the loosened material into bags; the trammer then placed the bags onto a cart that rode on wooden rails placed on the floor of the tunnel, and pushed the cart out until it reached a point where the displaced earth could be removed and disposed of.
Every single position entailed cramped and laborious work, all undertaken under complete silence, whenever possible. At the end of every shift, measurements were taken and retaken. Were they still on the predetermined path? Had there been any deviation? Success depended on absolute accuracy; anything less would see them emerge in the wrong place.
Wrong and deadly.
That hour of reckoning was drawing nigh. They had finished the slanting upward portion of the excavation and were now digging straight up.
Most of the digging had been done by the day crew—the din ofa busy thoroughfare allowed them to advance faster, rougher. But now they worked at night, in the hope that their destination would be as empty as possible.
Her hands perspired inside her gloves. Her shoulders ached. And her neck felt like a stem that had been twisted this way and that once too often, barely able to hold up her head in this space that forced her to work at a contorted angle.
The candle near her feet flickered. She almost wished it would go out—that would force them to leave. But no, the candle burned on, its flame feeble yet steady.
She lifted her trowel. Dirt fell. The bagger swept everything up soundlessly. She took another breath. The candle must be lying. The air must be oxygen-deficient. Why else would she feel light-headed—surely not from fear alone?
In the silence, the noise of metal on stone was an explosion. She stilled. The bagger emitted a soft gasp.
So soon—too soon. She was not ready. But they had reached the very lowest level of the structure they had been aiming for.
It was as simple as that.
“My dear, do you remember a time when you broke into places—or attempted to, at least—and I merely stayed home and fretted?” whispered Mrs. Watson. “Now look at me.”
It was almost exactly a year ago that Miss Charlotte performed her first feat of breaking and entering—which had gone none too well. Afterward she’d had to endure a lecture from Mrs. Watson concerning risks that one ought not to take.
Tonight, the two women had been lounging in the parlor of their hotel suite, having a cup of tea before bed, when Miss Charlotte had risen and ambled to the window. “A fog has rolled in.”
Mrs. Watson sat up straighter. “And?”
“And I’ve been asking myself why Mumble and Jessie were so interested in Mrs. Claiborne’s houses. At first I only wondered what they might know that we don’t, and then it occurred to me—”
She turned around. “Ma’am, where do you suppose Mr. Underwood would be safest now, if he were still in London?”
Mrs. Watson stared at the girl a moment. “You mean, at one of Mrs. Claiborne’s houses?”
“To be sure there could still be other parties looking for Mr. Underwood, but two seems about the right number. We represent Lord Bancroft, and Mumble and Jessie, possibly an enemy of his. And if both parties have already searched these houses from top to bottom—”
Mrs. Watson was on her feet. “Then the houses become, for the moment at least, ideal shelters for Mr. Underwood!”
“I was planning to test that hypothesis later, in a few days, but”—Miss Charlotte gestured toward the obscured street outside the window—“a fog has rolled in.”
And there was no better time for breaking and entering than under a thick blanket of London fog.
So here they were. They had already been to the villa, where they’d found no trace of Mr. Underwood. This made Mrs. Watson more nervous about the town house. Since they still had the key for the villa, their entry had been technically legal. At the town house, however, Miss Charlotte had picked the locks to the mews and the back door.
Mrs. Watson’s derringer was in her pocket. In her hand she clutched her favorite weighted umbrella, almost as slender as a walking stick. If Mr. Underwood wasn’t at the villa, then there was a greater chance he was here instead.
They went through the entire house, from the attic to the basement. And the only thing Miss Charlotte could be sure hadn’t been there earlier was a handful of advertisements and circulars that had been pushed through the mail slot on the front door.
“If Mumble and Jessie have been here, they have been very careful and disturbed nothing,” said Miss Charlotte, her expression pensive.
Mrs. Watson was disappointed that they hadn’t uncovered anything, but she was also, deep down, relieved. Mr. Underwood was aman who did not want to be found, and she was not confident they could have left the house unscathed if he had been on hand.
“But there is one place we haven’t looked at yet,” added Miss Charlotte.
That place was the coal cellar.
The town house, as was often the case, had a set of stairs beside the front door, leading down to the basement service entrance. The space was enclosed by a wrought iron fence. From the service door, the cellar was directly opposite on the other side of the enclosed space, its interior entirely under the street.
