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Five minutes and ten.
“You, there!” Ellie shouted as she yanked the map from her pocket and waved it over her head. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
The man’s reaction told her everything she needed to know. As he turned toward her, his eyes sharpening like a hound after a fox, Ellie knew that he must indeed be the mysterious Mr. Jacobs—and that she had succeeded in capturing his attention.
“Come and get it, then,” she challenged—and bolted.
Her boots pounded down the pavement in a most unladylike manner. A glance back showed that Jacobs was sprinting very capably after her.
Behind him, Constance slipped past Florence, who was gaping after Ellie from the doorway.
Constance whipped off a cheerful salute as she dashed the opposite way up the road, carrying Ellie’s valise in her hand.
Ellie hauled up her skirts, exposing her wool stockings as she put on more speed.
Jacobs was fast—but she didn’t need to outrun him. She had spent her entire childhood marauding around Canonbury. She knew these streets like she knew her own skin.
She pivoted, skidding to the left and slamming through Mr. Pettigrew’s garden gate, the lock of which had been broken for years. Mr. Pettigrew glanced up at her, blinking, from where he stood watering his hydrangeas.
“Sorry, Mr. Pettigrew!” Ellie called as she hopped onto the back of an overturned wheelbarrow and scrambled up onto the wall.
She half-fell into the adjoining garden, landing beside a three-year-old playing in a sandbox.
“Hi Ewwie!” he said cheerfully.
“Keep digging, Clarence!” Ellie replied.
Clarence’s mother, Mrs. Lovett, stepped out into the garden with a tea tray. She stared wide-eyed as Ellie dashed around the corner of the house.
Mrs. Lovett’s alarmed scream and the crash of breaking porcelain a moment later told Ellie that Jacobs had managed to follow.
Ellie blasted out into another street, swinging left and sprinting past two perambulating widows in elaborate black gowns as she continued to keep her mental count.
Four minutes thirty.
“Well, I never!” the first widow, Mrs. Fairweather, exclaimed.
Only Mrs. Fairweather’s grip on her companion’s arm kept the sour-faced woman from stumbling over with surprise as she gaped disapprovingly at Ellie’s exposed shins.
The tailor, Mr. Granger, tipped his hat politely as Ellie skidded past him. She hopped from the pavement into the road, dodged the plumber’s lorry, and ducked to the right to avoid startling Mr. Twyford’s temperamental cart horse. The poshly irate driver of a gleaming Vauxhall motorcar shouted after her as he fumbled for his horn.
Ellie ignored him as a more alarmed outburst from the two widows alerted her to Jacobs’ proximity.
She raced into a fine little early Georgian chapel. She flew up the nave past the rows of pews, wheeled around the altar, and slammed out the back door into the churchyard. The leaning monument ofG. Edgar Wittlesmithnearly tripped her, but Ellie managed to right herself by rolling across the surface of a raised tomb, scattering a cluster of terrified squirrels.
Two minutes and twenty seconds.
A door slammed open behind her, and Ellie acknowledged that she was unlikely to succeed in shaking her pursuer.
That was all right. She had recognized the possibility and planned for it.
Ellie was very good at making plans.
She raced up a narrow alley, vaulted over a toppled rubbish bin, and skidded around a corner. Back out on the main road once more, she dashed past the news shop, the post office, and the chandlers. A Pomeranian on the end of a lead barked at her excitedly. A pair of children pointed, staring with wide-eyed wonder as she sprinted past them.
Another train whistle sounded, carrying musically to her on the wind from the east.
One minute twelve.
