Page 41 of Secrets of the Heart

“Eh?” The woman seemed to find Rachel’s question amusing, for she began to cackle, slapping her hand against her thigh. “’Elp you, can I? I ’spect so, me lady.” She made a wobbly mock curtsey.

Rachel moved somewhat cautiously toward her. The woman reeked of something it took Rachel a moment to identify, but as the woman laughed again and mumbled something, shaking her head, Rachel realized that it was the same smell that had hovered around the head groom when she was a child. Gin, she had heard the servants say when they did not realize she was around. It was an abundance of this drink in the woman, she assumed, that accounted for the woman’s mirth and for some of the difficulty Rachel had in understanding her.

“I am looking for this address,” Rachel said, reading out the address written on the slip of paper.

This sent the woman off into further laughter. Rachel sighed and started to turn away, but then the woman said, “’is ain’t Poppin’s Way, lady. Free streets over now, ain’t it?”

“Pardon me?” Rachel turned back to her. “Are you saying that I am on the wrong street?”

“Just so,” the woman agreed, nodding. “Ever’body knows the Popper’s over there.” She pointed behind her. “Free,” she added, helpfully holding up three fingers.

“Thank you.” Rachel reached in her reticule and pulled out a few pence and handed them to the woman, doing her best not to breathe in the rank odor that hung about her.

She started up the street briskly and took a right at the next corner, looking somewhat anxiously for some sort of street sign. There were none on any of the twisting, narrow lanes, some of which looked too narrow to even admit a carriage. She also noticed to her dismay that she had attracted a small tail of children behind her, calling out to her for coins. It had been a mistake, she supposed, to pull out the coins and give them to the woman. Turning, she shooed the children away, and they fell back a little, laughing, then followed as soon as she began to walk again.

She took the third street, hoping that her benefactress had not been too steeped in alcohol to know what she was saying. She could not find a number “8” anywhere, but after two or three passes, she located an eight scratched on the wall of one building, so she knocked tentatively on the door.

It opened a crack, and an eye appeared halfway down the crack, glaring at her. Rachel tried a smile and bent down to say, “I am looking for number 8, Poppin’s Way. Is this it?”

“Eh?” came the scratchy voice of an old woman.

“Number 8,” Rachel repeated.

“What ye be wantin’ with ’em, then?” the woman demanded.

“I want to talk to Martha Denton,” Rachel said, trying to look reassuring, although she was not quite sure what would make this woman feel reassured. “I am interested in obtaining a lady’s maid,” she lied, for she would never give up her own Polly. “I understand that she is an accomplished lady’s maid.”

The woman continued to look at her for a long moment. Conscious of the children grouped behind her, Rachel was reluctant to dip into her purse again, but she decided that she had little choice. She opened it and began to search through it for coins, not sure exactly what such information was worth. She had given the other woman three or four pence. Should she pay this one more? A shilling, perhaps? She could find nothing but a couple of florins and several ha’pennies, and she contemplated giving the woman as much as a florin. If she had known that she was going to have to hand out coins, she thought, she would have brought more of them and a better variety.

Suddenly a male voice burst out behind her, “Good God!”

She whirled to see a man striding toward her, weaving through the children. Her first thought was that it was Michael, but of course it was not. It was James Hobson. She squared her shoulders and looked at him coolly.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he exploded, scowling.

Rachel raised her brows. “I fail to see that that is any of your business.”

He looked nonplussed for a moment, then went on, “No, it is your husband’s, and a wretched job he’s makin’ of it, I must say. Have you no sense of propriety?”

“You are going to lecture me on propriety?” Rachel huffed, her usually calm temper rising.

“Somebody ought to,” he responded. “Clearly you don’t know enough about it.”

“I have been taught propriety from the day I was born, Mr. Hobson, and I think I am well able to decide what I should or should not do. What are you doing here, I might ask?”

Her question pulled Michael up short. He had been so astounded by seeing Rachel in this place that he had charged in without any thought to his story. It was fortunate that he had dressed in his scruffy attire today to visit the late Mrs. Birkshaw’s personal maid, so that Rachel assumed once again that he was James Hobson.

“Well, as you said afore, that would be none of your business, my lady.”

Last night Michael had visited the Bow Street Runner whom he often assisted and had asked Cooper if he had heard anything at Bow Street about the death a few months before of Mrs. Anthony Birkshaw. Michael knew, with some shame, that he was acting as much at the spur of jealousy as anything else, and that probably the woman’s death had been perfectly natural, but he could not keep himself from inquiring into it. The death of a woman her age was unusual, and the fact that her husband, still in mourning, was paying calls on the woman he had once aspired to marry was enough to arouse suspicions—even in someone else besides the husband of that woman. Cooper, looking thoughtful, had said that the name sounded familiar to him, but he did not know why and had offered to check into it. This afternoon Cooper had come around to Lilith’s house and told him that the case had, indeed, come under the investigation of one of the other Runners.

“Ben Mowbray, it were, sir,” Cooper had said. “One of the dead woman’s cousins ’ired ’im to look into it. ’E were suspicious, the cousin, of the ’usband, ’count of ’e inherited so much.” He shrugged. “’Course, it were the cousin who would get it if the ’usband ’ad done her in. Anyway, Mowbray couldn’t find nothin’ to say ’e did it. ’E weren’t even ’ome when she come down sick. Come back a week later, when ’e learned ’ow ill she was. Mowbray talked to all the servants and such, and the doctor. Doctor didn’t think it were odd, much. Seems she was allus given to ailments like that. Spent several weeks dyin’. Doesn’t sound like poison. And none of the servants thought it were anything but a regular death. Did you ’ave some reason for thinkin’ otherwise, sir?”

Michael had had to admit that he did not, that he had asked merely out of curiosity. Cooper had given him the address of the late Mrs. Birkshaw’s maid, who had left Birkshaw’s employ shortly after the death, and Michael had decided that he would at least interview the woman, and maybe the other servants, as well. So he had set out to find Martha Denton and had been shocked down to his toes to see Rachel standing amidst a crowd of dirty urchins in the middle of a part of town that he would have thought she didn’t know existed, talking to an old crone hiding inside a wretched house.

He started to go around her to speak to the old woman, who had grown interested enough in the spectacle on the street that she had opened the door another four inches, revealing her whole face.

“Excuse me!” Rachel exclaimed, stepping to the side to block him. “I think I was here first. Please, if you will stand aside while I continue my conversation with this good woman…”