Page 81 of A Ruse of Shadows
“At the time I thought he meant that he’d received mundane, tedious tasks. Until he started to talk about Lord Bancroft. I already mentioned that Lord Bancroft rarely came up as a topic of conversation between us, as he was awkwardly both my former paramour and Mr. Underwood’s then still-current superior.
“Yet Mr. Underwood abruptly began to share his recollections of Lord Bancroft—and he did so compulsively. Lord Bancroft plucking him out of obscurity to become his right-hand man. Lord Bancroft enabling him to leave service altogether. Without Lord Bancroft, he would not have achieved a similar level of financial security. Without Lord Bancroft, he would never have met me.
“After a while I realized that these paeans of praise were not expressions of faith and gratitude but manifestations of fear: His faith and gratitude were fading and must be bolstered with recitations of old favors.”
Mrs. Claiborne rubbed her thumb over the old-mine-cut sapphire on her ring. “I let go of most of my staff when I accepted him as a protector, so I had some light housework every day. He used to dustand polish alongside me and frankly did everything better, thanks to his training in the Duke of Wycliffe’s household when he was young.
“I loved those moments—I’d never had a protector who was also something of a partner. When the work was done, we would sit down at the piano and I would teach him how to play.
“Around the time he began to forcibly recall all the ways in which Lord Bancroft had been a positive influence in his life, he started doing heavier and heavier work around the house, tasks I usually left for the charwoman who still came in a few times a week. He would haul coal, shine grates, scrub and polish floors, even in the attic. It was as if he was trying to exhaust himself—or to remain occupied with something, anything.
“And instead of playing music, sometimes he would simply sit on the piano bench and stare at the keys. One day he smashed his fist into the keys and made such a ruckus that I very nearly dropped the book I was pretending to read. After that, he never spoke again of the Lord Bancroft of yesteryear, the one to whom he owed eternal allegiance.
“Not long after that, Lord Bancroft lost his favor with the crown. Before he went into hiding himself, Mr. Underwood sat me down and told me that Lord Bancroft had sold state secrets. But even then he couldn’t bring himself to say anything about Mimi Duffin. It’s only now, knowing everything I do, that I can look back and see that he’d smashed the piano and stopped talking about Lord Bancroft right around the time Miss Duffin went missing.”
“Why didn’t the two of you leave the country after Lord Bancroft was arrested?” asked Mrs. Watson.
It was the most useless question and certain to be painful, but for once Mrs. Watson couldn’t help herself. These two lovers’ failure to escape to a new life saddened and frightened her in equal measure. It made the world seem too cruel, too indifferent.
Mrs. Claiborne gazed down at the engagement ring on her hand that would now never nestle against a wedding ring. “If Lord Bancroft hadn’t been caught soon after Miss Duffin’s murder, if he’dkilled her and blithely went on to sell more state secrets and perhaps arrange for other innocent people’s deaths in cold blood, I believe Mr. Underwood would have found a way to take me and leave.
“But Lord Bancroft had been brought low. He was born a lordship, he’d risen high on his own merit in service to the crown, and now, all of a sudden, he was a prisoner. Mr. Underwood was loyal to a fault; he could not find it in himself to abandon Lord Bancroft right when he had been toppled off his pedestal.
“Another reason it wasn’t so easy for him to flee to the other side of the world was that Lord Bancroft had entrusted him with two keys. He’d never been told what the keys were for or where the locks they would open were located, only that he should guard the keys with his life. Mr. Underwood could not pass the keys to anyone else. But had he absconded with them, he would have ensured retribution from Lord Bancroft.”
Mrs. Watson’s heart thrashed—did the keys lead to Lord Bancroft’s ill-begotten gains? Miss Charlotte listened with the guileless expression of someone who had never schemed to rob Lord Bancroft of his unlawful proceeds.
Mrs. Claiborne sighed. “Around April of this year, Mr. Underwood was told to hand over one of the keys to a stranger at a pub just shy of East London. This worried him greatly. He believed the keys opened safe-deposit boxes and the contents of those boxes must be highly valuable. That Lord Bancroft was willing to give up half of his greatest treasures meant that he was planning something. Or rather, that something had already been planned and would soon be carried out.
“Also, he worried because he considered his—and my—safety linked to his possession of the keys. With one key left, he felt we were only half as safe.
“Six—no, seven weeks ago he received further instruction: I was to move out of the villa. I didn’t object to that. Though the house was in my name, I hadn’t bought it, and I’d only ever considered myself Lord Bancroft’s tenant, subject to eviction at any moment.” So muchfor the scar-faced man Mrs. Watson had been on the lookout for. Lies, all lies.
“But the strange thing was that this woman, Mrs. Kirby, came. She said she was sent by Lord Bancroft and asked me all sorts of intimate questions about myself and Mr. Underwood. When Mr. Underwood learned of this, he told me that he’d been cautioned to stay out of sight—not that he wasn’t already—but to stay out of sight in such a manner that no one could find him. I believe it had been strongly suggested that he ought to vacate London for the time being.
“So there I was, staying in a flat near Victoria Street, with no idea what was going on. One day Mr. Underwood came and said I had to leave immediately. He had a hackney waiting. We got in and he confided that he was in trouble. He’d found out that Lord Bancroft’s recent shenanigans were meant to entrap someone. He wanted to warn that someone but believed that his efforts had been discovered. And now Lord Bancroft had asked for the other key.
“Once Lord Bancroft had the other key, Mr. Underwood would become disposable. But if he didn’t give it, he was afraid that Lord Bancroft would use me to threaten him. So he had to get me to safety. And safety, as I later learned, meant Mrs. Farr’s house.”
She flicked the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. “Mrs. Farr did keep me safe. But Mr. Underwood…there was no one left to savehim.”
Twenty-seven
Mumble and Jessie were now awake enough to leave. As Lord Ingram and Miss Charlotte helped them out, with Mrs. Farr hovering close, Mrs. Claiborne took Mrs. Watson aside.
“I’m a little worried for Mrs. Farr,” she said. “After she learned that Mr. Underwood knew something of her sister’s death, she became excitable and impatient. She had her foster children over frequently—not just Mumble and Jessie but that young man—”
She tilted her chin at the hackney and the cabbie who had taken Miss Charlotte’s message to Mrs. Farr and then brought back Mrs. Farr and Mrs. Claiborne—Mrs. Watson would guess him to be Robert Epping, the man who, on paper at least, owned the house in which Mumble and Jessie lived. “And also a young woman who owns a bakery. They were discussing things and making plans at all hours of the day. But tonight, after news came that you had Mumble and Jessie, it was as if something inside Mrs. Farr collapsed.”
Mrs. Watson knew what she meant. Even on the night Mrs. Farr had learned of her sister’s death, she had not appeared so overwhelmed.
So broken down.
“And you must be careful, too,” continued Mrs. Claiborne. “You and Miss Holmes and everyone else here tonight. I believe that you are the ones Lord Bancroft wanted to entrap—the ones Mr. Underwood wanted to warn. Please…”
Please don’t let anything happen to you, not when Mr. Underwood lost his life trying to save yours.
Mrs. Claiborne did not finish her sentence. She only nodded at Mrs. Watson and hurried to join Mrs. Farr and her foster children in the hackney.
