‘Oh,’ she said, ‘how frightfully dispiriting. I had expected teams of searchers, packs of hounds, my husband bearing a sabre and leading a group of men from the village, each of them armed with a pitchfork and sworn to avenge my loss. Instead, I get – no offence, dear – a trussed-up lady’s maid and news of a poor man stabbed and left in the gutter. Ben really is a useless article.’
‘The newspapers said he was distraught,’ I said, consolingly.
‘Distraught, but hopeless, dear. Quite hopeless. Couldn’t arrange a booze-up in a brewery, that man; I’ve no idea at all how he manages to run the tram company. Ah well, can’t be helped. We’ll have to sort things out for ourselves.’
‘I must say,’ I said, ‘You do seem remarkably chipper for a woman who has been kidnapped at gunpoint and held in a dingy room for a couple of days.’
‘Oh, I’ve stayed in worse places,’ she said.
‘And were you taken there at gunpoint?’ I asked.
‘Well…’ she said, slowly. ‘There was this one time…’
I laughed. ‘Have you any idea where we are?’ I said.
‘Somewhere in the middle of town,’ she replied, ‘to judge from the sounds from outside. But exactly where, I couldn’t say.’
‘That’s encouraging,’ I said. ‘If they meant to do away with us, it would be easier to do it out in the middle of nowhere. Have you tried to get out?’
‘One solid door, locked,’ she said. ‘Windows shuttered and locked, too. I tried shouting for help but it earned me this…’ she leaned forwards and showed me a split and bloodied lip, ‘…so I’ve been wary of trying it again.’
‘Probably wise,’ I said. ‘Have you been left alone otherwise?’
‘They bring me bread and water, they empty the gazunder…’ she indicated a bucket in the corner of the room, ‘…but, yes, otherwise they leave me to my own devices. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ I said, and stood up.
The room looked to have been a bedroom in its day. There was a dilapidated fireplace on one wall with the locked door on another opposite the shuttered windows. The fourth wall was featureless apart from the peeling floral wallpaper which also covered the others. It was difficult to make out in the gloom, but I decided it was cream with tiny pink flowers. I ignored the door but instead directed my attention to the window.
‘They’re padlocked shut,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘I’ve had a damn good try at them, but they won’t budge. I thought I’d have more luck with the door, but it turns out that I don’t know how to pick locks. Would you credit it? A woman of my age.’
‘I can pick locks,’ I said distractedly as I examined the shutters. ‘But this one’s too small and I don’t think picking the one on the door would help us much. We don’t know what’s on the other side apart from stairs and large men with guns. We can negotiate stairs and I’d have no trouble with the large men, but their guns bother me a little. A frightened man with a gun isn’t the most predictable of beasts and someone is liable to get shot. I’d rather it wasn’t one of us.’
‘Crikey,’ she said. ‘You’re a bit of a one, aren’t you. Not sure I’d like to meet you in a dark alley.’
‘I’m a pussycat, really,’ I said as I located the screws holding the hasp in place. ‘Now, the thing about padlock hasps is that they’re designed so that you can’t get to the screws once they’re locked.’ I fiddled a little more. ‘And that’s all well and good until someone locks them with a scrawny little padlock like this one.’ I indicated the lock. ‘You see, now there’s a little play in it and we can get behind the hasp to the screws.’
‘And what good does that do us?’ she said, glumly. ‘Surely you haven’t got a screwdriver concealed upon your person. And even if you have, how would you unscrew a screw that you can only just see?’
‘Aha,’ I said, unbuttoning the top of my dress. ‘But that’s where you’d be wrong. Well, you’d be right, actually, but you’d have forgotten something. Have you ever dismantled a corset?’
‘Can’t say I have, no,’ she said, beginning to sound a little intrigued.
I fiddled with the seam at the bottom of my own corset, worrying the thread loose and eventually opening a tiny hole. With a magician’s flourish, I slid one of the spring-steel bones free.
‘This,’ I said triumphantly, brandishing the sliver of steel, ‘is what’s inside. Strong, flexible implements of torture that would make Torquemada blanch, but which are always handy in a crisis.’
‘I say, brava!’ she said. ‘What a handy person you are to have around. Do you think it will work?’
‘We’ll soon see,’ I said, and set about trying to remove the lock.
It took bloomin’ ages. Unscrewing the hasp of a lock with the bone from a corset had seemed like a terribly clever thing to do – and if I do say so myself, there really was a touch of genius in it – but it took so very, very long. The sun was coming up by the time I had finally yanked the hasp from the shutters and tentatively pulled them open.
Lady Bickle had dozed off while I worked. She had protested that she wanted to help, but I had suggested that napping would be more practical – she would need all her strength for what was to come. She awoke as the light streamed into the room and sat looking blearily up at me. She was younger than I had anticipated – late-20s, I judged – and quite a bit prettier than one might expect the wife of a tram company owner to be.
‘I say,’ she said, struggling to stand. ‘Well done, you.’
The window was filthy and its frame faded and peeling, but through the dust and grime we could see the street below and I was shocked to realize that I recognized it. Barely visible below us was the street where I had lost sight of Lurker on the previous evening, and I could see the church with its archway onto Broad Street.
‘We’re on Quay Street,’ I said. ‘Just round the corner from the tramway terminus.’
‘Good lord,’ she said, looking out. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ I said. ‘Now give me a hand and let’s see if we can get this window open.’
‘All right, dear,’ she said dubiously. ‘But what good will that do us?’
‘I’ll know that once we’ve got it open and had a look.’
We had to be careful not to make too much noise, so it took another quarter of an hour to prise the recalcitrant window open. I tentatively poked my head out.
We were on the top floor of an old, neglected building. The window ledge was of very robust stone and looking up I could see a rugged iron gutter and a gently sloping slate roof. The street was three stories below and it seemed to me that our best route would be upwards. I ducked back into the room and turned to tell Lady Bickle my plan.
‘I think we can get to the roof,’ I said. ‘And from there… well, I don’t know where we can get to from there, but it’s got to be better than sitting here waiting for them to get scared enough to shoot us. Are you game?’
‘I should jolly well say so,’ she said with girlish enthusiasm. ‘Lead the way.’
‘Actually, I think it might be better if you went first, my lady,’ I said. ‘I’ll boost you up and then try to cover our tracks a little.’