Page 47 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

Once they were out in the street he paused to let her come up beside him. “Where are we going now?” she asked, keeping her voice down as it was still busy. “And who was that awful man?”

He grinned. “Abner O’Hanlon, my fence. I don’t do business in there though. No one with any sense does. Too many criminals who’d think nothing of cutting your throat for a shilling, and we’ve got more than a shilling on us. We’re going to his place.” He paused. “At least we’ll be off the streets. This way and keep close.”

He led the way along the bit of Ivy Street they’d not yet traversed and out onto Dyot Street, passing, as they went, gin shops so crowded they were overflowing into the street. There was always somewhere you could drown your sorrows for a few pennies in St Giles. Not that he’d ever done so, although, on occasion, he’d taken a drink with Abner. Especially in the early days of their business arrangement.

Abner lived alone on the top floor of a rickety building in Plumbtree Street, a slightly, but not by much, superior area of the Rookery. This road opened up onto Broad Street which in turn became High Holborn, so perhaps that had something to do with its attempted air of gentility.

At least it was a little less crowded with men who looked as though they might at any moment offer a challenge to those slightly better dressed than themselves. People with their own boots, for example, so, on the whole less inclined to want to steal the ones you were wearing. And the road was also less filthy, as it had a bit of a slope to it so rain had a chance to clear it from time to time.

Abner’s building was halfway down on the left at number 6, where the street narrowed into nothing more than a noisome alley. Gabriel pushed open a door from which all paint had long ago peeled, and started up the twisting staircase in a jog. Behind him the clump of Phoebe’s boots on the creaking treads seemed oddly loud.

Perhaps it was due to her enthusiasm, but he was feeling prepared to do some more sleuthing. And, once their deal was done, what better place to start than with Abner, a man who knew not just the rookery but the surrounding area like the back of his hand. Up until now any trail his real mother might have left twenty-three years ago had long gone cold, but, now he had the revised description of her, he felt a renewed zeal. Perhaps a new pair of eyes and a new brain to puzzle his mystery out might help.

And Abner had lived in St Giles all his life, the rather bizarre product of his Irish father, hence his surname, and a mother of French Huguenot descent. Whether that made him Protestant or Catholic, Gabriel had no idea, but he was that rare thing, a trustworthy fence. And the fact that he also knew an awful lot about the rookery and the surrounding slightly more salubrious streets had drawn Gabriel to him in the first place. But fruitlessly, as the description he’d been working with had been all wrong.

On every narrow landing they passed closed doors before finally reaching the top. Only one door here as Abner had the whole of the top floor, or rather the attic space, in the house. Taking the tail end of a piece of grubby string, he gave it a pull which lifted the latch on the inside, and let himself in.

Phoebe followed behind him.

Chapter Sixteen

Phoebe, already feeling somewhat shellshocked by the successive revelations she’d been experiencing, followed Gabriel through the door. She had to clench her fists to still the shaking and fight to regulate her breathing. Being adventurous was one thing, and in itself attractive, but actively going into what seemed to her to be mortal danger in a place of horrifying nightmares was something quite different. And now she’d been dragged, well, maybe not dragged exactly, up the most odious and malodorous set of stairs and into an attic that turned out to be just as smelly. On the whole, she was seeing an awful lot of things that were the worst she’d ever encountered. So maybe these stairs and Abner’s seedy accommodation should have come as no surprise.

And here she was, in the home of that very dodgy-looking gentleman from the Rat’s Castle. If you could, by any stretch of the imagination, call this dark hole a home or its unprepossessing inhabitant a gentleman. Which she could not.

Abner, it seemed, could lay claim to the entirety of the attic, which wasn’t saying much as the low ceiling sloped even lower to front and back with the cant of the roof. Only in the center could Gabriel stand upright.

An unmade bed, whose sheets appeared gray with age and blankets threadbare, and a cluttered table and four chairs were all that furnished the dusty wooden floor. As a pile of jumbled garments lay on the end of the bed, this might mean Abner possessed a change of clothing and might be able to keep clean…she supposed. Although the general smell that hung in the airless room suggested not. Opening a window might help, but the one nearest to her seemed to be rusted shut.

These windows, one at the front and one at the back, and set into the sloping roof, let in dubiously gray light, mainly because Abner had clearly never thought to clean them. They were thick with soot smuts on both inside and outside, along with other things she didn’t want to think about.

On the whole, everything about the St Giles rookery was making her want to hurry home, jump into a hot bath, and scrub herself all over. And what was that scratching sound? Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of something small scuttling along the edge of the room into one of the shadowy corners. Please let it not be a mouse, as she couldn’t be certain Will Booth would not leap onto a chair and scream like a girl if it ran near his feet. Best not to look any more closely.

But she was stuck here now, so, as her papa would have said, she would have to make the best of it and remember how lucky she was not to have to live here. That very thought was enough to bolster her confidence. Or she thought he would have said it. Presumably he’d also had no idea this sort of place existed. Who amongst the people she and Mattie had met did? Certainly not the matrons of the marriage mart and their empty-headed daughters. She almost burst out laughing as an image leapt into her head of their faces if they were to be dumped outside the Rat’s Castle hostelry. That would be a fine thing to see.

Gabriel, who didn’t seem to have noticed her momentary lapse, pulled out one of the rickety chairs and nodded at it. “You might as well take a seat. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

She sat, but Gabriel went over to the window and looked out at what must be the front of the house, presumably looking to see if this Abner was true to his word and was coming. He had to spit on his fingers and rub himself a clean patch in the glass.

After a minute or two, footsteps sounded on the stairs and Gabriel slid his left hand under his coat as though he had something hidden there. Was he armed? Did he have a pistol tucked away where she hadn’t noticed it? To her surprise the thought sent a tingle of excitement running through her. Now she was no longer on those awful streets or in that den of iniquity that masqueraded as an alehouse, she could see this was indeed the stuff of adventure. Plus it made her feel a little safer to think he could protect her with a weapon.

The door banged open and the man from the Rat’s Castle stomped inside.

Upright, he was a smaller man than he’d looked when seated, as he possessed very short, decidedly bandy legs which made him walk with a rocking motion as though he might be at sea. Or at least as though she imagined someone might walk when on the rolling deck of a ship. Having been on a small boat on the lake at Coakham with Papa, and not liking the motion much, was sufficient to furnish her imagination.

He pulled out a second chair and collapsed into it with a sigh as though the walk and the climbing of the stairs had given him pain. With legs like that, surely locomotion of any sort would be uncomfortable. A small nub of compassion formed in Phoebe’s heart. If he’d been born into the sort of family she was most familiar with, and brought up away from the foul air that pervaded here, within the rookery, perhaps he wouldn’t have ended up like this.

Gabriel took the third chair.

Phoebe folded her hands in her lap and looked from one man to the other. Both of them ignored her. Good. The last thing she wanted was to draw Abner’s attention. Or anyone’s. Not here, and definitely not on the streets.

“Well,” Abner grunted. “What yer got then? Any decent gewgaws fer me?” He really was quite difficult to understand with his mangling of the English language. The speech of none of the servants either in Hill Street or at Coakham had been so hard to follow.

Gabriel put his hand back under his coat and brought out one of the jewels she’d given him in her bedroom what now seemed a very long time ago. It was a ring she never wore, mainly because it was so heavy and she didn’t much like the color of the nine red garnets it was set with. He laid it on the table between him and Abner, the garnets winking in a rather lackluster fashion in the poor light. She wasn’t sure which of her ancestors it had originally belonged to, but whoever it was would surely not object to it being redeemed for money intended to help the poor. Mama herself would be pleased, or so she hastily told herself.

Abner, some sort of eyeglass having appeared in his hand, presumably from an inside pocket of his voluminous great coat, picked up the ring and peered at it through the glass, his whole face wrinkled in concentration. After a long silence, he spoke. “Red garnets. Not worth much.”

The cheek of it. Phoebe could remember Mama wearing that very ring one or twice and people complimenting her on it. Not that she herself liked it, but she had other things of Mama’s and Grandmama’s she much preferred. Surely it wasn’t without value or Mama, and Grandmama before her, would not have had it in the extensive jewelry collection that had been passed down to Phoebe.