Thing was, she’d only met the woman, Mrs. Harrogate, the one time, at the Grand Metropolitan Hotel on the Strand, back at the very beginning of it all. The hotel was dark, with glittering mirrors flaring in the electric lights, polished mahogany wainscotting, candelabra suspended in fiery wheels from the rafters, the works. Tall marble columns at the reception desk and a velvet-lined elevator cage with a kid in uniform operating the gears. Alice had followed Coulton in, up to the fourth floor, with a Colt Peacemaker in one pocket and a set of brass knuckles in the other.
He took her down a long, oppressively furnished corridor, stopping to work a key in the lock of a wide door, and then they were inside a sitting room, with half-opened doors on the far side and a small Chinese table of lacquered red wood with a teapot steaming on a silver tray, and at the far window, with her back to them, a middle-aged woman dressed in black.
“Miss Quicke,” she said, turning. “I have heard such interesting things about you. Do come in. Mr. Coulton will take your coat.”
“I’ll keep it,” said Alice. Her hand was in her pocket, on the revolver.
The woman introduced herself: Mrs. Harrogate, long-widowed, and merely one representative of the Cairndale Institute, its proxy here in London, so to speak. Alice had watched her carefully. She looked rather like a housekeeper, except for the expression in her eyes. She might have been forty, she might have been fifty. She glided forward on the carpet, her hands clasped before her, reddened as if scrubbed with lye, fingers devoid of rings or jewels. A purple birthmark covered her cheek and the bridge of her nose and one eye, making her expression difficult to read. But her lips were downturned, as if she had just tasted something sour, and there was in her dark eyes a ruthlessness. She wore no makeup, only a slender silver crucifix over her breasts.
“I am ugly,” she said matter-of-factly.
Alice flushed. “No,” she said.
Mrs. Harrogate gestured to a sofa, then seated herself; Alice, after a moment, sat too. The man Coulton stepped forward and poured out the tea and then dissolved back into the shadows, and as he did so Mrs. Harrogate explained what she wanted Alice to do. It was all quite straightforward, she said, if perhaps a little unusual. The Cairndale Institute was a charitable organization interested in the welfare of certain children, children who suffered from a rare disorder, who would not be able to get treatment elsewhere. Alice’s job would be to help track these children down; she would be provided with names and places. Once they had been found, Mr. Coulton would then bring them back to Mrs. Harrogate, here in the City. And she would see that they were taken safely up to the institute. Alice would answer directly to Mr. Coulton; he would see that she was paid in full, as well as expenses covered, etc. Alice’s contract would last through the year, to be renewed should her services still be required. It was all perfectly legal, of course, but discretion was required. Mrs. Harrogate trusted the terms would prove satisfactory.
Alice stared at the dark tea in her teacup but did not drink. She was thinking about the children.
“Ah,” murmured Mrs. Harrogate. “You are wondering, what if they don’t wish to come?”
Alice nodded.
“We are not in the business of kidnapping, Miss Quicke. If the children do not wish to come, then they do not come. Though I do not foresee that happening. Mr. Coulton can be most … persuasive.”
Alice looked up. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well. You are here, are you not?”
Alice felt the color rise to her cheeks. “It’s hardly the same.”
Mrs. Harrogate smiled and sipped her tea. “The children will suffer if they do not get treatment, Miss Quicke,” she said after a moment. “That fact tends to convince a person rather swiftly.”
“And their parents? Do they come also?”
Mrs. Harrogate hesitated, the teacup half-lifted to her lips. “These children,” she said, “are all unfortunates.” She leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. “They are without parents, dear. They are quite alone in the world.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.” Mrs. Harrogate frowned. “It seems to be one of the conditions.”
“Of your institute?”
“Of the affliction.”
“It is contagious, then?”
Mrs. Harrogate smiled thinly. “It is not a plague, Miss Quicke. You will not catch it; you will not grow ill. You needn’t worry about that.”
Alice wasn’t sure she understood. She tried to imagine going out into the world and taking children, one by one, like some kind of monster out of a fairy tale. She shook her head slowly. There was always other work. “I don’t know that this is what I do,” she said reluctantly.
“What? Help children?”
“Steal them.”
Mrs. Harrogate smiled thinly. “Let’s not be dramatic, my dear. Perhaps it would help if I told you what I know. I’m not in perfect knowledge about it. You will have heard, perhaps, of the Royal Society, yes? It was the beginning of an organized scientific approach here, in England, to the world around us. At one of its earliest meetings, a blind girl was brought before them, a girl with a most inexplicable affliction: it appeared she could see the dead. None of the scientists were deceived; such frauds had been perpetrated for centuries; but, disturbingly, none could disprove the girl’s claims either. It troubled them, the anatomists most of all. The Cairndale Institute was founded some twelve months later, dedicated to phenomena that fell outside the realms of scientific investigations. In their very first month, twin sisters were brought before them from a hamlet in Wales. Both had exhibited unusual symptoms around the age of five. And there were others, other children who were similarly—how shall I say it?—afflicted. The institute has been working to find such children ever since, to work with them in their sickness.”
“Work with them how?”
Mrs. Harrogate met her gaze. Her eyes were very dark. “Their flesh, Miss Quicke,” she murmured. “It can appear to do strange things. Regenerate itself, transform itself.”
Alice felt lost. “I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I. I am no expert. But I imagine, to one who has not the scientific mind, that it would appear amazing. Resembling, I don’t know, a miracle.”
Alice looked at the woman, suddenly wary. She was trying to gauge her meaning. “I beg your pardon?” she said softly.
“My dear?”
“Why, exactly,” she asked slowly, “did you come to me, Mrs. Harrogate?”
“But you know why.”
“There are other detectives.”
“Not like you.”
Alice wet her lips, beginning to understand. “And what am I, exactly?”
“A witness, of course.” Mrs. Harrogate smoothed out her dress. “Come now, Miss Quicke, you do not imagine we have not done our due diligence?”
When Alice did not speak, Mrs. Harrogate reached into her handbag and withdrew a long brown envelope. She started to read from the papers in it.
“‘Alice Quicke, from Chicago, Illinois,’” she read. “That is you, yes? You were raised in Adra Norn’s religious community, at Bent Knee Hollow, under the care of your mother, yes?”
Alice, stunned, nodded. She had not heard that name in years.
The woman’s strange face softened. “You witnessed a miracle, when you were a little girl. You saw Adra Norn walk into a fire and stand in it and then walk out of it, unburned. Oh, the story is quite famous, in certain circles. Our director, Dr. Berghast, was a correspondent of Adra Norn’s. They were acquaintances for many years, in fact. It is a terrible shame what happened, what your mother did. I am so very sorry for you. And of course for your mother.”
“She was crazy. Is crazy.”
“Nevertheless.”
Alice got to her feet. She’d heard enough. “You should be sorry for the people she burned in their beds,” she said. “That’s who you should reserve your pity for.”
“Miss Quicke, please. Do sit down.”
“I’ll show myself out.”
“Sit.”
The voice was cold, grim, deep-toned, as if it came from a much older and fiercer woman. Alice turned back in a fury but was surprised to see that Mrs. Harrogate did not appear imperious at all, just the same mild figure, the birthmark discoloring her face, her red-rubbed fingers reaching now for a second cup of tea.