Jane Steele(96)

Returning to the Weathercock in Orchard Street was a blur of draughty omnibuses and crooked roads, a dreadful numbness settling over me. All I wanted was to call for a hot bath and read Mr. Thornfield’s letters. Trudging into the lodging house, I waved a vacant hand to the clerk who had come, however contrarily, to like me.

“No visitors of any kind, please!”

“Wait, Miss Smith!” he called, but after the strangely painful thought that isn’t my name either, I paid him no mind.

My alias rang out twice more, and urgently too, but my eyes flooded and I fled—up the stairs, half stumbling in my beautiful new dress, desperate for sanctuary. When I reached my room, I fetched the key from my reticule and was surprised to find the door already unlocked. Hesitant, I felt for the knife in my skirts with one hand and turned the knob with the other.

“Hello, Miss Steele,” Inspector Sam Quillfeather said when I discovered him occupying my own room.





TWENTY-SEVEN



Much enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me. . . .


Discovering the man who could see me hanged sitting on my striped chaise, smiling peaceably with his hat in his hand, might have been unbearable had I been in a merry humour; I am sure I could never have withstood the shock had I not just learnt I was the bastard child of a philanderer and an extortionist, which had invested me with a certain flexibility.

“Mr. Quillfeather,” I whispered.

“You are surprised to see me?” He rose and bowed, gangly limbs folding inward. “But . . . no, I see that you are dismayed? Forgive me, but I was eager to have a discussion with you, a very frank discussion, and you quit Highgate House quite precipitously. It was clear that I was the cause, Miss Steele, and I found myself unable to rest until I had located you?”

“How . . .” Swaying, I hid my weakness by leaning on the door as I shut it.

“Only by the most careful searching, Miss Steele! I knew after speaking with Mr. Sardar Singh—interesting man, that, and I’m glad to have made his acquaintance—you had taken the coach to London, and there the trail went quite cold. But doggedness, you will find, works miracles, and I canvassed every respectable guesthouse I could locate where single women of independent temperament might lodge, asking if a woman of your description had recently taken rooms. When I learnt a young lady named Jane Smith had lived here for precisely the right amount of time, could I ignore the possibility it was you?”

Broken in every way imaginable, I turned away from where I had stood with my head bowed before the door.

“Miss Steele!” Mr Quillfeather exclaimed. He crossed quickly to me, hand extended. “Have I already upset you so?”

The ground seemed to heave. For the briefest of moments, I considered a knife to his heart and a mad flight through alleys and over stiles until I had reached another sort of freedom, a true outlaw’s comfortless existence—but it was not Sam Quillfeather’s fault he was a police inspector, and it was entirely my fault I was a killer.

So I stayed my hand and reached for his instead.

“I know your mind, Miss Steele,” he said quietly. “I will share mine with you, and we will reach an understanding after many years of poisonous secrets—does that suit you?”

Such an overwhelming dread possessed me that I thought my faculties must shatter. I opened my mouth, and just as I was about to make an idiot of myself, Mr. Quillfeather urged, “Oh, please, Miss Steele—won’t you sit down before you do yourself an injury?”

I obediently sat upon the chaise he had vacated, neck tingling with terror.

“Now, Miss Steele,” said he, seating himself upon the chair opposite and leaning forward in his sweeping fashion. “I have some hard words, and want you to understand—I don’t wish to say them? But I simply must, and I frankly regret not having said them to you when you were a little girl. I know, you see, why you lied to my friend Thornfield about your name, why you ran without even taking your luggage. You must know . . . I told him nothing? He believes you to be Jane Stone still. But I know the entire contents of your biography, and of your secret fears.”

“This is about Edwin, then.” My voice was parchment thin.

“Could it be about anything else?” he asked softly.

Yes, I thought, and swallowed what felt like a bullet.

“The fact is that I know . . . everything, Miss Steele, absolutely everything, about the events leading up to your cousin’s unfortunate demise.”

My eyes fell shut; so I was to lose my name, my claim to Highgate House, and my freedom, all in a single afternoon. In a way, I thought, it was kinder—in a way, it was better than I deserved.

“You were so young then, so . . . vulnerable? I never saw such a sensitive little girl in all my days. Now I have found you, however, and you have grown into such a lovely young woman, could my cowardice still, to this very day prevent my speaking out?”

A strong wind seemed to blow, a strangely silent one, and I was a leaf floating upon it.

“Oh, Miss Steele, please don’t take on so!” To my shock, I opened my eyes to find Sam Quillfeather’s beaked nose inches away, his dry, calloused hands grasping mine. “Listen here, my girl—take a few deep breaths, if you can? Very good. I must say the words now, and you can hear them bravely, can you not?”

A faint nod was all I could manage at this point.