Page 49 of Ghost in the Garden
Constance stood back submissively while Angela climbed into the carriage. Bert closed the door and suddenly, beyond him, Constance found herself looking straight at Janey.
She stood at the corner of Bond Street, dressed as a lady’s maid and looking bored, as though waiting for her mistress to emerge from one of the other shops.
On impulse, Constance stepped up to the carriage window, and Angela pulled it down.
“Would you mind if I went on some errands of my own before returning to the house?”
Angela, clearly understanding this was on her business, nodded at once. “Just be home before dinner.”
“Of course.”
“Blimey,” Bert said disgustedly. “You get more time off than you spend at work.”
“Perks of an upper servant,” Constance said grandly, and walked away.
Janey still lurked at the corner shop window. Constance pretended to pause to look in. But Janey’s attention seemed to be on a handsome if rather ragged young man leaning against a nearby lamppost. She nodded, and the man ambled off in the same direction as Angela’s carriage.
“Sorry, missus,” Janey said cheekily. “We’re followingyourmissus. Mr. Grey’s orders. He wants to know where she goes.”
“Who iswe?” Constance managed faintly.
“Me and Lenny Knox,” Janey said, and skipped off.
Stunned as Constance was, she now had a reason to speak to Solomon. Instead, she walked westward along Oxford Street to her own establishment. It came as something of a shock to realize that Janey must have followed the carriage from Lambert’s house and Constance had not even noticed. So much for observation and detection. No wonder Solomon didn’t want her.
*
Solomon had thoughtof the task of following Angela Lambert last night, mostly from curiosity as to what the woman got up to all day, but partly to give Knox something to do that Solomon could pay him for, and provide distraction from the man’s unbearable loss. At the last minute this morning he had sent Janey with him, largely because of his early visitor.
His visitor was Juliet Silver.
She arrived at the Silver and Grey office a bare ten minutes after he did, and almost on Janey’s heels. Since Solomon himself opened the door to her, Juliet had no need to announce her name. She merely breezed past him into the hallway, saying appreciatively, “Very nice. Got a moment, duck?”
No one addressed Solomon asduck. He wassir, orMr. Grey, or, very occasionally, some derogatory epithet he disdained hearing. Constance was the only person in years to call him by his Christian name. He should have resentedduckfor its lack of respect, the affront to his dignity. Bizarrely, he found he didn’t mind it. He might even have liked it.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind waiting in here, ma’am?” He showed her into Constance’s office, where he had already lit the fire in determined hope that she would be back. Since Janey didn’t bat an eyelid when they passed her, he could tell they were not acquainted, and he felt obliged to keep it that way if it was what Constance wanted.
“I’ve taken your advice and moved out,” Juliet said abruptly. “Where’s this new shop of yours?”
Well, that will teach me to make promises I am not ready to keep immediately.
“One moment, if you please.”
He bade Janey take her a cup of tea and then come straight back to his office. He didn’t want her and Juliet chatting and discovering their mutual acquaintance. That was up to Constance. He knew the women she lived with were her friends, yet it was Solomon she had taken to her mother’s premises. That inspired both warmth and a sharp regret for last night’s behavior. He was threatening everything that had grown up between him and Constance.
Returning to his own office, where Knox had arrived, he came up with the plan to send Janey to watch the Lamberts’ house.
“She can go closer than you without the danger of being recognized,” he told Knox. “And when it comes to following Mrs. Lambert, you can take it in turns to be nearer her so she’s less likely to spot you. She’s usually with a bodyguard, remember, and he might well recognize you, too.”
He shook out a purse and gave a handful of coins to each of them. “For hackneys and lurking at food stands and tea shops. Don’t take chances.”
Knox nodded and rose to his feet. Since his clothes were on the ragged side and Solomon’s overcoat would have trailed on the ground, Solomon gave him his wool jacket to wear over his own for warmth. They looked an odd couple as they departed, but Solomon was glad to see a brightness about Knox’s eyes, a relief to be doing something, aneedto go after the man he held responsible for the deaths of his wife and child and so many others.
A man needed a purpose. No one knew that better than Solomon. It was only recently he had discovered that making money, even improving the lot of his workforce, was not enough for him.
He took his tea through to the other office and sat down by the fire, opposite Juliet, who was looking around her with interest.
“She always had good taste, my Connie. No vulgar opulence for her. I bet her establishment looks more like a duchess’s drawing room.”
