Pandora(27)

The chain comes slowly, but it comes, and the grating of the links against his flesh seems to her far too loud. Lottie stirs, falls still. Then, when Dora has pulled the chain free, she starts the painful process of twisting it round until the key itself is clasped in the palm of her hand. It is a simple key: small, made of brass, stained from Hezekiah’s sweat to a patched and grimy dark. Gently Dora rests it on the back of the chair, and the chain swings slow and steady like a pendulum.

From her pocket she brings out a shallow tinderbox. Then, one by one, she takes the candles from their sconces, pours melted wax into her makeshift mould casing until there is enough to make an impression. Dora bites her lip. Already the wax has begun to cool. She must be quick.

Very carefully she presses the key into the wax. She holds it down, counts to twenty. When she releases it, the key pulls free with a snap.

Dora slips the key back beneath Hezekiah’s shirt, arranges the cravat neatly around his neck. She clutches the box to her chest. Then, as quietly as she can manage, she slips from the room, Hezekiah and Lottie’s snores following her up the stairs.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN





The light is beginning to fade by the time Dora is able to leave the shop. Though it was, she concedes, her own fault – Hezekiah and Lottie did not rise from their gin-addled stupor until the church bells rang twelve – the impatience which gnawed at her insides made the wait all the more trying. She served three customers, dusted the bookshelves, swept the floor and rearranged the curiosity cabinet. Once or twice she wandered to the basement doors, cradled the padlock in her hand, pulled uselessly at the chain. By the time Hezekiah finally limps onto the shop floor near three hours later with his wig askew, Dora is making a beeline for the door, an excuse flying from her lips.

It is two miles to Piccadilly where the locksmith Bramah & Co. is located, but her impatience gives her speed. Another one of her parents’ former acquaintances, Joseph Bramah had been the one to install a safe in the basement. Dora vaguely remembers the locksmith and her parents sitting together at the dining room table, sheets of paper littered with fine lines and numbers between them, and how – on seeing the finished product being hauled across the shop floor after one of her weekly visits to Mr Clements – Dora thought what a fuss had been made over something so wholly unremarkable.

Now, as she slips past the towering church of St Mary’s off the Strand, she thinks instead of Mr Lawrence.

Handsome, though short, he was neatly dressed, his clothes fashionably cut. He had the look of a gentleman, Dora muses, and yet he did not appear such. Not that he was ungentlemanlike, but there was something in his manner that did not quite fit the mould. And his age … She comes to the conclusion that there cannot be much difference between him and her, though something in his countenance, something haunted in his eyes, makes him seem much, much older.

Lawrence, she thinks. An English name. But there was an unfamiliar lilt to his voice, a bent to the cockney she cannot place. An emphasis on the Gs in his speaking, something altogether warming.

You must have something here that would serve my purpose.

If only she did. And still, perhaps yet she does.

She wonders about this Society of Antiquaries he wishes to join, whether her parents – if not her mother then her father – were members. Dora has no recollection of the fact. Still, she can imagine what a privilege it would be to be admitted to their ranks. It is members such as those who could bring credibility to the shop, if only Hezekiah would treat her parents’ legacy with the respect it deserves.

So lost is she in her musings that Dora walks straight past the locksmith’s, and it is only when the whinny of a passing horse splits the air that she jumps, blinks into the growing dusk, realises what she has done. Scolding herself under her breath she turns back, ducks her head beneath the shop’s low lintel beam and pushes open the door.

Inside the shop is dark and narrow, with only a few small candles glowing in their sconces. At the far end of the room, perched behind a glass counter on a stool very similar to the one she suffers on daily, is a thin man who reminds her of a newt trussed up in parson’s clothing.

‘I wish to speak with Mr Bramah,’ she says, voice over-high.

The man lowers his quill, looks her up and down with a sniff. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No, I …’ Dora stops. She had not thought of this.

He sniffs again, resumes his number-tallying. ‘Then I’m afraid you must make one,’ he says curtly. ‘Come back another day.’

‘I can’t!’

At Dora’s desperate tone the man stares at her disapprovingly, quill hovering over his papers. A bulbous black drop of ink threatens to spill from the nib. She tries to compose herself.

‘Sir, please. If you would be so kind as to tell Mr Bramah that the daughter of Elijah Blake, the antiquarian, wishes to see him on a matter most urgent.’

‘Young lady, you cannot stride into a reputable establishment making demands.’

‘My name is Pandora Blake. Please. Mention the name Blake and Mr Bramah is sure to see me. Please.’

She stares at him over the counter. He meets her gaze without flinching. But when it is clear Dora means not to move until she is accommodated the man sighs, places down the quill, and the ink makes fast its escape, blooms onto the paper like a flower unfolding to the sun.