Sweet Things Dying - Chapters I & II

The second instalment of Cole's first novel...

I

London

December 1887

            There was always bad weather. The night had ended with it, now the day began with it. From his second floor flat Adam Cole peered out at a flurry of snowflakes, streaks of white in the biting Prussian wind. Through it the row of shops and terraces across the road were indistinct blocks. Below, man and horse – mere shadows in the gloom – hurried along, eager to remove themselves from the miserable autumn morning.

From out of this rhythmic movement his eye caught an emerging shape. It wound around the traffic, becoming clearer as it drew closer. The shape flashed into view along the pavement before vanishing again toward the door beneath Cole’s window. He recognised the peaked cap and red piping of the postman, one hand digging in the heavy bag on his shoulder as he brought the first mail of the day. There came the urgent knock at the door, and the stir in the front hall as the landlord went to answer. Then, as quickly as he’d come, the postman went out into the street, and was once more swallowed by the bustle of the morning.

Cole yawned and turned away. Frigid breath trailed and hung in the air, reminding him just how cold the room was. From the foot of the rumpled bed upon which he sat he reached across to the grate where two glowing coals struggled to warm the air. They popped and brightened as he prodded them with a poker, but quickly faded again and left only a tarry scent and no heat.

He dropped the poker to the floorboards with a clatter and stared at the dusty scuttle beside the grate. Where in hell was his coal stock? It was more than a day late – and he’d already paid his board for the week.

The kettle over the grate began to steam but he doubted it could be brought to boil. He’d be sure to complain to his landlord on the way out.

On his way out? He gave another dejected glance to the window. But there was an appointment he had to keep, and his empty stomach begged for breakfast and his chilled bones pleaded for hot coffee. His morning wash-up would have to wait for later, when he was able to boil some water. And he could always get a two-penny shave from a barber after breakfast.

Breakfast, coffee, and a shave. And maybe some cigars and pipe tobacco for later. That would all cost him. His mind raced to his nine o’clock appointment with Mr. Sacker. He needed work before his dwindling funds dried up. His eyes shifted to the small stack of coins at the edge of the writing table below the window. He’d just enough to make the week if he controlled himself. To do that – to avoid the ease and lethargy that clouded his judgment in hard times – would require an effort and drive he could scarcely bring himself to consider, let alone act upon.

He fell back on to his bed. A stack of books by his pillow tipped and spilled around his head. He touched them, afraid he’d have to pawn them again should his situation not improve.

Footsteps creaked on to the landing and a knock shook the wafer-thin door in its frame. An envelope slipped beneath it. The steps made to leave.

Cole called out: “Wait!” He slipped from the folds of his bed. Only in his nightclothes and bare feet, he yanked the latch and threw open the door.

His landlord, a portly German with hair sticking out in all directions, had managed to slink down two stairs. He froze and turned, wide eyes blinking through thick glasses. “Die post für Sie, Herr Cole,” the man said. A fat finger pointed to the envelope between Cole’s naked feet.

“I see it,” Cole replied. “I also see my own breath and ice on my window. What I do not see is coal in my scuttle.”

The landlord gave a helpless shrug. “Ja, I know of it – but zee man has not come. I hope today is zee day!” He gave a wide, yellow smile beneath a wide, yellow moustache. “But z’ere is fire in zee kitchen should you wish some heat, or zee hot water.”

Cole waved it off. “I’m going out.” He wanted to say more – to demand his stock be replenished before his return, or else – but the plump, jolly face of the German was too disarming. His annoyance dimmed as quickly as the last two coals in the grate. “Danke für das binging der Post,” he said in creaky German.

“It came special for you. I brought it up with haste. Haben Sie einen guten Tag!”

The stairs groaned as the landlord disappeared down them.

Cole shut the door and snatched the envelope from the floor. He held it facedown, afraid to turn it over, to see whom it might be from. He had no desire to see another letter from him.

He threw the envelope to the desk, amongst further stacks of papers and books, and got dressed. He stood by the window, a morning pipe clenched in his teeth to help him think, its evil fumes twisting and curling and clouding the room in a wicked fog. Minutes passed and the day outside lightened to a soft grey. He paid no mind to the poisonous atmosphere around him until his pipe died down and his lungs forced out a sputtering cough.

Knocking out the smouldering ash into the now extinguished grate, Cole slipped the pipe into his pocket and, giving in to curiosity, snatched up the envelope. To his surprise the sender was not marked, and the writing was in a neat, girlish copperplate – not what he’d expected at all. Unless, that is, the usual sender had grown clever, and was trying to dupe Cole into opening and reading the letter.

It worked.

He slit the envelope open with a jagged thumbnail and withdrew and opened the folded page within. A short message, again in the same neat, girlish hand greeted him:

Adam,

While some time has passed and I’ve come to accept you are avoiding me, I bear no grudge, and turn to you now with a simple plea. You came to find me once before, and I ask you to do the same again. If it is too late, please do it not for me but for her

There was a sudden break as if the thought were incomplete. A trail of ink droplets ran down the page and, hastily scrawled along the bottom after a wide, blank space, was her name:

Heather.

His heart pounded. If his fingers grew numb it was from the message, not the cold. Cole was as confused as he was mesmerised, and for a minute did nothing but read the letter over and again. He searched the back of the page and the inside of the envelope for more but there was nothing else.

What could this be about?

His mind ran to Heather. How many months had it been? Almost a year. With all the attention she got he was surprised she even remembered him. But it was for a reason. It was a plea, as she had put it. He had little to remember her writing by but had no reason to doubt the note was in her hand. There was much to be read beyond what was written – how it was written was equally informative. It had the lilt and loops of a young woman’s practised style, but the final sentence jarred to a sudden halt. Ink dripped down the page to the scratched signature, as if the whole thing had been concluded in haste.

Cole raised the note to the ashen light from his window and caressed the thick, velvety stock between his fingertips. Setting it on his desk, he traced a finger along each line and over each letter, feeling the transition from gentle pressure at the beginning, to the final line and signature where the nib had been forced into the paper, nearly tearing through it. And the blank space of the bottom half suggested more was to have been said, but for whatever reason circumstance had not allowed her to say it.

It was a remarkable note. Not what he’d expected at all.

He stuffed it into his pocket, grabbed his coat, hat, gloves and muffler and started out.

Like most of the Georgian terraces that lined the streets and thoroughfares of the East End of London, his flat occupied one that was divided into separate rooms for multiple tenants. At ground level, a Jew sold men’s tailored shirts from a shop in front, with the kitchen and the landlord’s rooms squeezed in behind it. A narrow and peeling passage at the bottom of the much-worn staircase extended to a backyard, where a laundress who occupied rooms on the first floor strung up her wares when the weather allowed. A near frozen privy shed leaned awkwardly along the back fence, and it was here that Cole made his first stop before passing the still-darkened tailor’s shop and going out the front door into the pulsing veins of the metropolis.

The sting of the wind and snow had him turn up his collar and bury his face into his muffler. Eddies of dusty snow whirled about his boots as he turned into the roadway, mindful of the gleaming ice patches and steaming mounds of fresh horseshit that pocked the ground.

Brick Lane cut a main line through the centre of Whitechapel, running north from Wentworth Street and into Spitalfields. The sudden veil of cold that had dropped down over London did little to slow the pounding hooves, hawkers’ shouts and newsboys’ cries that throbbed along the thoroughfare. It was just the start of December, yet winter had already seized the city in its grip.

Like slowly awakening eyes, one by one the shop windows flickered to life, their keepers forced to light their lamps and sconces under the grim dawn. Lines of shivering men waited at barrows blazing with the heady smoke and aroma of crackling chestnuts, toasted rolls and piping black coffee.

Hands buried in his pockets, Cole ignored these appeals and wound northward to Crispen Street, a narrow lane buried behind the new Spitalfields market. There, occupying the ground floor of a four-storied terrace was the McWilliams & Co. Coffee & Tea House. It had once been his coffeehouse of choice. Regardless of where in London he found himself come morning, and whatever the weather he’d had to pass through, Cole had made a point, for months, of finding his way to Mac’s coffeehouse.

Now months had passed since his last visit.

The door creaked, a bell chimed and a tide of warmth welcomed him inside. He paused by the door, eyes drawn to a corner table. Its chairs were empty but for the ghosts of memories. Cole shrugged them off as he stripped away his coat, hat and muffler, and draped them over the chair of another table. He frowned at the sight of the round, unpleasant girl who greeted him from behind the counter.

“Is Heather not here?” he asked.

Her face soured. How many men had asked her about Heather these last two days? “I can serve you up just as well,” she replied in a sharp brogue, dagger eyes daring him to doubt her.

He forced an apologetic smile. “I believe it,” he said. “I haven’t been here in a while – just thought she might still be around.”

“She’s s’pposed to be, but she’s not been around these last two days. Now what is it you’d like?”

“Black coffee, one fried egg, a rasher of bacon, toasted butter roll and two cigars, if you could.”

That should see him through the morning. He paid the sixpence for his breakfast and found his seat. Around him the voices of clerks and tradesmen about to start their workday boiled over as they drank and chewed through their coffee and toast.

No sooner had he warmed up, the girl came and set the tray down before him.  She curtsied and turned but Cole grabbed her arm.

“Sir?” she asked.

“If it’s no problem, may I have a word with Mr. McWilliams?”

“He’s busy in the back, but I’ll send him out when he’s freed up.”

He watched her saunter off.

A shadow crossed the table:

“Good morning, Cole.”

“Stewart,” Cole replied, not looking up. “Coffee?” He nodded to the girl who had just returned to her post behind the counter. She rolled her eyes, wiped her hands down her splotched apron, and revisited the table with a false smile.

Stewart dropped into a chair across the table: “Oh, nothing for me just yet.”

The girl soured again and turned away.

Stewart’s smoky eyes glanced over Cole’s tray, settling on one of the two cigars. His fingers settled on it next.

“You don’t mind?” he asked.

Before Cole could answer, the narrow, black cigar was clenched between crooked teeth, and a match had set its tip burning.

“Busy morning, I see,” Cole remarked. He wiped a mark from his fork and dug into his breakfast. The egg split and yolk oozed across the plate. He set the fork aside and dipped the roll into the yellow puddle.

Stewart puffed the cigar into life and inspected the glowing tip. He looked along the ridge of his right hand. Ink scored it from the second knuckle of his little finger nearly to his wrist. He smiled at Cole’s observational parlour trick: “How’d you know it wasn’t left over from yesterday?”

Cole pointed out a trace of ink on the tabletop where Stewart had briefly rested his hand. “Too fresh,” he replied. “A similar mark shows on your right cuff, which is otherwise crisp and clean as if just worn this morning.”

The crooked smile broadened. Stewart removed the cigar with an exhalation of blue smoke.

“Yes,” he said, “you’re quite correct on all counts. Friday is laundry day, so my cuffs are fresh. As for work, I got at it just after four this morning, and kept going after some breakfast around six. Editor has big demands.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Not particularly. Just a piece about school board elections. Not quite as exciting as the story I should very much like to write.”

Cole turned his eyes down to his plate and picked at his food. He sighed: “I am sorry to disappoint you, Stewart, but I’ve little going on myself.”

“No work?”

“It is not a lack of work so much as a lack of interesting work. Just small domestic issues. Little to compel your readers. Certainly nothing your editor would waste ink on.”

“My readers, nor my editor, need not be so discerning. I can often add enough spice to make even a mundane investigation sound more compelling.” He stared, watchful – hopeful – and waiting for something – anything – that Cole could share. “Come, man,” he urged, “there must be something! What has become of you these last few months? Through the summer you were one of London’s premiere private investigators. You uncovered that housekeeper who butchered and then tried to take on the life of her mistress. And from little more than a discarded button you revealed the murder of that poor clerk. My God – what else?”

“I remember,” Cole said. “But with my name being repeated in the Pall Mall Gazette and other papers, it’s brought every sorry bastard in England who wants me to solve their problems. For every enquiry of genuine interest come two dozen not worth leaving my bed for. And as a result – ”

Cole stopped, shrugged.

Stewart said: “As a result you’ve grown bored, tired – lost in the quagmire.”

“Unfaithful spouses. Thieving clerks. Stolen horses. Runaways and those who pretend to be someone they are not. These things, I suppose, earn my bread but do nothing to hold my interest. It’s begun to sour me on this whole business. I may walk away from it.”

“Which would be a mistake.” Stewart flicked ash to the floor. “Have you spoken of any of this with Mr. Sacker?”

“No. He’s pleased with my work, but I imagine he bears a constant fear I shall leave him.”

“A reasonable concern. He earns a fair revenue from you.”

“I suspect a betrayal of his confidence again would be a greater blow – one he’d not forgive me for a second time. He’s told me as much.”

“If you did leave, what would you do?”

“I haven’t considered it,” Cole said. “I like to tell myself I could return to the professional chess circuit, or put pen to paper and publish something, but neither is reliable. I struggle to keep my mind focused on those avenues as much as I do my present work. And the thought of sleeping on the streets and starving my way through each day does not appeal. I’ve been there one too many times.”

He took up his fork again and dug into the remainder of his breakfast.

Stewart chewed on his cigar, empathy in his eyes. “It would seem we have both struck a stalemate in our careers,” he said.

“I’m sorry that I haven’t more to give you. But I am to see Mr. Sacker this morning. Should he present something of interest, I shall…”

A broad shadow fell over the table. Cole followed Stewart’s eyes and looked up. A red-faced man with carroty hair and whiskers smiled down at him:

“Good to see you after all this time, Mr. Cole.”

Cole set his fork aside. “I’m much surprised you remember me, Mr. McWilliams.”

James “Mac” McWilliams, proprietor of the coffeehouse that bore his name, gave a sidelong nod. “Ain’t seen you much, but I’ve `eard tell of your name in the papers. Which is all the better, and a bit lucky for me, as it were. You see, I was just thinking of you and `oping we might have a word.”

Cole looked past Mac, toward the counter where the plump girl stood – where he knew Heather should be working. “How so?” he asked.

“You see,” Mac began, “one of my girls `as gone missing.”

II

The surprise meeting with Stewart and the abrupt statement from Mac did not leave Cole any happier. He’d parted from both gentlemen following another several minutes of talk. Stewart had gone off in pursuit of another journalistic enquiry, while Mac returned to minding his coffeehouse. Both held hopes Cole would consider the matter presented. He’d left them with a promise to follow-up shortly.

“One of my girls `as gone missing,” Mac had said, and Cole knew immediately whom he meant. The hasty, incomplete letter from Heather suddenly felt more sinister than he’d first thought. For now, he said nothing about it to either man.

Heather Bloom was always the treasure of McWilliams & Co. Her presence behind the counter assured an increase in the attendance of men who happily parted with their pennies to exchange a few flirtatious words with “Miss Heather,” as she was known.

Yet McWilliams’ concern went beyond the proprietary. A genuine worry laced the man’s deposition. So Cole agreed to yet another missing person enquiry. And not his first to involve Miss Heather – or her dreadful father.

He left the warmth of the coffeehouse on a slow march across London. From Spitalfields and across the City square mile to the Strand he walked, sullen and silent, guided by reflex more than actual attention to the streets around him. London was too miserable in the grey season to be worth his consideration. All heads were turned down against the unwanted cold and unseasonable snow.

Across from the Royal Courts of Justice a narrow, arched passage funnelled him into Middle Temple Lane, a cobbled street of ornate buildings in Portland Stone. These were the chambers of London’s most effective lawyers, and all others fluent in the complex dialect of legalese. At the bottom of the lane, a four-storey edifice in French chateau style with dormers and turrets and bas-relief sculptures marked Cole’s destination. He made his way up a grand spiral staircase to the third floor and into the chambers of Mr. Edward Sacker, barrister and solicitor.

He stopped in the doorway. A tall, lean man with shimmering black hair sat at the secretary’s desk, head bowed, and nose pressed to some dense legal documents.

“You’ve finally been demoted,” Cole said.

The man at the desk kept his head down. His only action was to lift a slender hand and wave dismissively: “I am quite busy, so bugger off.”

“Was I not expected? It’s nine o’clock.”

The head lifted and grey, intelligent eyes inspected Cole from beneath sharp eyebrows. “Ah Cole, it’s you,” Sacker said. “Now bugger off all the same. I’m busy.”

Cole stepped into the antechamber and eased the door shut behind him. “I was hoping to be greeted by a pretty Irish girl. Instead, I get you.”

“I was expecting a well-kept, professional man,” Sacker said. “And instead…” He sat upright and sighed, slamming shut the tome he’d been referring to. His neat, dark moustache twitched. “It is quite all right, Cole. Miss Albright has not been sacked, nor has she run off to get married. She is merely fetching the morning tea and shall return presently. Had I known you were coming, I’d have sent for a third cup.”

“You did know I was coming. We meet at this time every Friday.”

“Quite so! Then had I cared you were coming, I’d have sent for a third cup.”

“Your honesty is appreciated.”

“Take it while you can. As a lawyer my honesty is limited.” Sacker extended a hand across the desk, and Cole warmly shook it. “Now, come!”

They crossed through a recessed door behind the desk and into Sacker’s cramped chambers. Mahogany bookcases stacked with legal texts lined panelled walls, broken only by a small hearth in which a blaze snapped and warmed the room. A square of lush, sea green carpet covered the floor, and the only furniture was a broad desk and some chairs. The flickering gas jets in the sconces offered a murky glow that lost the corners to shadow, while the French doors behind the desk gave little ambience by way of the slate-grey sky beyond. The air was heavy, thick with the noisome scent of old leather books and countless cigarettes.

Sacker’s long legs carried him across the room in three strides. He sank into the deep armchair behind his neatly cluttered desk and waved Cole to a chair across from him, offering a cigarette from a silver case.

Cole slid into the chair and from his coat removed the cigar he’d acquired that morning at McWilliams’ – the one not taken by Stewart – and struck a match to it. “I was saving this,” he said.

Before long, the chambers were a haze of swirling smoke, the sweet scent of Sacker’s Turkish tobacco outdoing the pungent pall of the cheap cigar. The two men smoked and regarded each other for a moment.

Sacker broke the silence:

“You’re working steadily and earning more money than ever,” he said. “Yet look at you – still dressed like a bloody sailor. And not even a respectable one.”

“My work requires it. Were I to dress as a dandy like you, I’d stand out.”

“And God forbid you should ever be outstanding.”

Cole smirked. “One day I shall drag you into the field. Let you spend the night ducked in some stinking alley, rubbing shoulders with the finest villains London has on offer. You’d not last a minute.”

Sacker turned in his seat and laughed. “Quite right! But only because I’d be smart enough to think up an excuse to remove myself in under a minute. And for that reason I stay here, behind the desk, the brains of the whole thing.”

“The only one who compliments you is yourself.”

“And it’s the only opinion that matters. Now Cole, what have you?”

“Our friend Stewart from the Gazette asked me much the same question a little more than an hour ago. Needless to say I’d nothing to share.”

“Have you no work? What of your on-going enquiries?”

Cole waved away a cloud of smoke that ringed his head. “Oh, there is still all of that.”

“And what of it?”

“It is getting done in its own time, but it’s hardly of the quality – the level of challenge – I should hope to receive.”

Cole felt his cheeks flush. A wave of humbleness washed over him, for what right did he have to complain about work he was lucky to have? But all the same, he knew that the tedium of basic fact-checking which kept him employed was wearing on him and would drive him off completely were some variety not introduced.

He thought of Heather, and of Mac’s plea to look in to her disappearance – and of her own apparent plea to him – but worried it would amount to little more than another wasted enquiry into a selfish girl who would soon turn up on her own, as she had before.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Sacker asked.

“Something beyond the repetitive. Beyond tracing debtors, finding witnesses, serving legal papers and skulking in doorways to see if Mr. So-and-So is out to get his knob sucked behind his wife’s back. It is always just cheats, frauds and runaways.”

“The hell you say! Has it not almost always been that way? You’ve been in this nearly three years now. What are you expecting will change?”

“Nothing, I suppose. Perhaps that is the problem.”

“Perhaps it is your problem,” Sacker said. He sighed, shook his head. “I take it the depression has made its return? At least you’ve granted me some warning this time.”

“It is not like that – not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“I mean I’m not at all depressed. One can be bored without being depressed.”

“But boredom is often a stepping-stone into depression. And I worry you’ll find ways to hasten it. When were you last drunk?”

Cole stared levelly at Sacker: “You needn’t worry about my habits. I scarcely ever think about the past anymore. Not enough to want to chase it. Quite the opposite.”

Sacker knew half-truths when he heard them. He said, “I cannot ask you to forget, Cole, but I can suggest you try not to think on it so much. Let your brother rest in his grave, and leave your father…” He sighed, knowing a flat argument when he heard one. “Does the work not at least keep you distracted?”

“I concede it is reliable and, if anything, it keeps me sheltered and fed.”

“And is that not enough to be pleased about? Or do you wish to go back to earning pennies a day, wasting them on drink and opium while feeling sorry for yourself? You seem to be sorry for yourself as it is. Forgive me if I cannot appreciate why.” Cole stared at the ashen tip of his cigar and the wavering stream of grey smoke curling upward from it. When he did not respond, Sacker asked, “Tell me, have you already given into one or the other? Or both?”

“What?”

“Don’t be dense. The gin and the poppy. Have you partaken lately?”

“Oh, I still drink often. But less than before, and not for the same reasons. And usually only later in the day. As for the opium, the urge remains but I’ve not partaken lately. Instead, I was thinking of returning to a daily tincture of laudanum to calm my mind. Chemists suggest it is a better remedy than smoking the weed – and it would keep me out of the dens.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Sacker groaned, “what lunatic gives you this advice? Do as I do – drink good brandy and smoke quality cigarettes, all in even doses, throughout the day. Your nerves will thank you for it. If you keep on with evil cigars, cheap gin and opium from some dirty Chinaman you’ll go to pieces, man! And laudanum – bah! Too addictive. And your doses – and expense – will only go up each day. The chemists push it because it makes a steady client out of you.”

“With that advice, maybe it is you who is in the wrong profession,” Cole said.

Sacker stabbed at the air with his cigarette: “You, however, are not. I do get your problem. I understand the way your brain works – why the routine bores you so. But unless you are set to retire early to Brighton and play chess against Pollsky the rest of your life, this is a healthy field for you. You’ve a natural skill, a talent. And when the proper challenge comes about you are very much in your element.”

“I understand that,” Cole admitted, “but it is the lack of proper challenge that is seeing my interests begin to sway.”

“So be patient. They do come along.”

“Not so often.”

“What do you mean? Have there not some interesting cases of recent?”

“There were a few, yes.”

“A few? I haven’t the files in front of me but can think of more than a few. There was the matter of the erased man, and the so-called “Phantom Constable” not two months ago. Then there was the absent lady, the absconded bride, the unusually tall woman, and the horrifying matter of the murderous shaved ape.”

“That was two years ago,” Cole said.

“Which one?”

“The ape one.”

“Right. But what of that ship that vanished off the Thames?”

“A trick performed for the insurance money.”

“Which baffled everyone but you,” Sacker added, again stabbing out with his cigarette. Ash cascaded over his desk. He lazily wiped it aside. “The point is these things do arise and your name is known in conjunction with their resolutions. Why else would your journalist friend seek you out for inspiration? God knows you lack it everywhere else.”

Mildly invigorated, Cole relented: “As it would happen, he was not the only one to seek my assistance this morning.”

“How do you mean?”

“I was prompted to take my breakfast at McWilliams’ coffeehouse, with the intent of speaking with Mr. James McWilliams when the man himself approached me.”

“I take it Mr. McWilliams is the proprietor who has lent his name to the business?”

“Yes.”

“Has he lost his grinder?”

“Less prosaic. He’s lost one of his shop girls.”

Sacker shrugged. “Not so strange,” he remarked. “Shop boys and girls abandon their stations all the time. Like a lot of idiots, they forget to be grateful they are earning a wage, get bored and run off.”

“I will try not to take offence,” Cole said.

“Oh, please do try a little. But carry on. What makes this girl so special?”

“She is Heather Bloom.”

The solicitor leaned forward, mashing his cigarette into the copper ashtray on his desk. “Bloom?” He muttered it three times over. “Why is the name so familiar?”

“October of `86.”

A moment’s thought passed before Sacker sprang back in his chair and snapped his fingers: “I remember now! The eighteen-year-old. Her parents hired you – through me – to find the miserable creature after she’d run away from home. Pretty ginger girl, was she not?”

“Indeed. A picture of beauty. Mac turns a good trade just having her at the counter.”

“Probably why he needs her found.”

“Partly, perhaps. But he is a good man. I think he’s genuinely worried.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“She was last seen in his employ Tuesday past – three days now. He’s expected her each morning since, but she’s not shown.”

“What do you think? Another waste of time?”

“Possibly. But it’s different now. Mac is not the only one who’s asked me to seek her out.”

“Christ. Not the father again?”

“No. Heather herself.” Cole brought out the letter and burned down his cigar as Sacker read it over. “It came this morning,” he explained. “Well after she was supposed to have vanished.”

The solicitor ran a hand over his well-oiled hair and whistled. “And you complain that nothing unique ever comes your way?” He handed the note back. “A missing girl asks that you find her, making the request after she’s vanished?”

“The note implies as much, if little else, as does the envelope in which it was sent. It was post-marked yesterday and given that I did not receive it until first delivery today I assume it was posted sometime last evening, after final delivery went out. And it was sent from Norton Foldgate in Shoreditch. The post office there is situated very near the west end of White Lion Street. The Blooms reside on White Lion.”

“You believe she may still be home?”

“I do not know what to believe. I cannot say for certain Heather wrote or posted it herself. I believe it is an educated girl’s hand, but that assures nothing. Nor can I recall the brand of stationery the Blooms preferred. The note is written on standard Commercial Note, and bears the watermark of A. Pirie & Son’s, an Aberdeen-based supplier. It is not an uncommon paper amongst the middle classes, nor the upper classes. The Blooms sit somewhere in between. Unfortunately, she was not good enough to provide a return address to confirm whether she in fact remains home or has secreted herself elsewhere.”

“That would make it too simple, I suppose. But if she is home and avoiding work that hardly makes her missing, just lazy. Which makes nonsense of the note she sent you. But why would she bother?”

“For attention, perhaps? To cause a stir?”

“And that last line – who might “her” be?”

Cole, elbows propped on the arms of his chair, held the note between his hands and stared at it. He read the last line again: If it is too late, please do it not for me but for her… He shook his head. “She has a mother and sister, but, typical of her age, was often too absorbed in herself to care for either. Given that the message seems incomplete – the last line is not even punctuated – it suggests she had no time to tell me.”

Sacker agreed. “So why the haste to stop and post it without completing it?”

“I can make no sense of it any more than you. I would be inclined to believe it were some kind of enticement, a way to have me come see her.” A twinkle of interest showed in Sacker’s eye. Cole hurriedly folded the note and tucked it away. “But that seems unlikely after all this time,” he said. “Besides, Mac presented some intriguing insight to imply there is something more to this.”

The door from the antechamber cracked open. Cool air rushed inward, but the scent of hot tea and the sight of Penny Albright, Mr. Sacker’s personal clerk, brought renewed warmth.

“Good morning, sirs,” she greeted by way of her sugary Irish lilt. “Glad to see you again, Mr. Cole.”

Half-turned in his seat, Cole watched as the petite girl wandered in, balancing a salver with cups, saucers and a steaming pot in Queen Anne silver. There were three cups upon the tray – Sacker had remembered him, after all.

Penny beamed with both her small, pink mouth and large, green eyes. Where he’d normally be thrilled by the sight of the girl, he instead felt a rush of familiarity, almost a twisted sense of déjà vu. It was her tight wound, auburn hair and the light freckles around her small nose. Heather Bloom’s hair was more fiery, and her freckles more marked than those of Penny. The small build of the women and their prominent breasts, too, were similar, as were their ages – Heather now nineteen, Penny two-and-twenty.  It all struck him as oddly aligned, given how tuned to Heather his thoughts had been through the morning.

“What is it, Mr. Cole?” Penny asked. “You’ve cast such a queer eye upon me.”

She set down the salver and poured the tea.

He smiled sheepishly: “It is nothing,” he said, taking an offered cup. “You look lovely as ever, Miss Albright.”

“You’re very kind.” She turned to Sacker with a raised cup and saucer. “Sir?”

Sacker accepted, sipped the tea, and sputtered: “Good bloody hell, Miss Albright!”

“You know it’s hot, sir,” she protested.

“Yes, but you’re supposed to put the coals under the bloody kettle, not in it.”

“You complain too much.”

“You really do,” Cole added.

“The hell with the two of you.” He set the steaming cup aside. “And are you suggesting I complain more than you, Cole?”

“What’re you upset about this time, Mr. Cole?” the girl asked.

“Nothing.”

“Bollocks!” Sacker said. “You just spent twenty minutes deriding your occupation. Too boring, you said.”

“Did he?” Penny asked. She looked at Cole: “Did you?”

“Not in so many words.”

“You did,” Sacker barked. “In a lot more words.”

“We’ve moved on,” Cole insisted.

“You’re still bored,” Sacker added. “Talks of giving laudanum a try,” he said to Penny.

Her eyes widened. “It is not medicine you need,” she said. “Just a good case.”

“That’s what I’ve said,” Cole replied.

“You need to get out of that dreary place you survive in. Whitechapel!” She shuddered. “Find a new home, a new life. Meet a good woman.” She handed him a silver dish from the salver. “Would you like some sugar?”

He shook his head: “No thank you, Penny.”

“You are a man capable of much,” she said. “Do not become swallowed by misery once again. Just my advice.”

“Wonderful, Miss Albright,” Sacker said. “Now write up the bill for your time and be gone.”

“I’m only sharing friendly words, sir.”

“Friendly words are not billable. And if you are not earning than neither am I. Away to your desk you go.” He gestured to the door.

Penny rolled her eyes. With a gentle squeeze of Cole’s shoulder, she gathered up her own teacup and left. Once the door had clicked shut Cole remarked, “You are very lucky – she is a treasure.”

“Still a buried one, I think,” Sacker said. “Now you have your tea, so get on with it. Back to the mystery of the missing coffeehouse girl.”