“None, Mac. No sheets at all.”
I had to stifle a laugh because I knew Mac’s idea of roughing it was a small tent set up in the country with a portable dining table and camp chairs, and a large picnic hamper containing everything from foie gras to Coleman’s mustard.
“And no pillows,” Barker added.
“I do not believe I could sleep without a pillow, sir,” our butler replied.
“I don’t believe I could, either,” I put in. “If it is austerity you want, I believe I could do without a pillowcase, but I wouldn’t want to wake each morning with a crick in my neck.”
“You won’t have to worry about that, Thomas,” Barker said. “I’m giving you the night shift.”
“Thank you, sir,” I replied, putting as much irony into the phrase as I dared.
“I suppose that I may bring a small camp stove, sir?”
The Guv gave Mac a sour look. “For what purpose?”
“For your tea.”
Barker’s face fell. Mac simply wasn’t getting into the spirit of the adventure. On the other hand, our employer couldn’t do without his pots of green tea. It was what that brain of his ran upon, like coal to a steam engine. “Very well. A small stove. But it must be out from sunset to sunrise. As for Mr. Llewelyn, he shall have to suffice upon tea or forage for his coffee. We cannot coddle a man’s whims when we are hunting a killer.”
I bit my lip. He was making sure he had his precious gunpowder green tea, shipped in specially to a merchant in Mincing Lane, but my coffee drinking was somehow too capricious for him and therefore expendable. How did he expect me to wake up in the morning? Oh, I’d forgotten. I had the night shift. Eight hours on nothing but green tea, and cold at that. The mind rebels.
“Drat that Etienne,” I said.
Mac cleared his throat. He is good at it. It had meaning and inflection.
“Very well, I admit it. This is all my fault. I didn’t eat his omelet because I was distracted by a girl.”
“May we bring a book or two, anyway?” I asked. “There should be some light.”
“That isn’t generally the custom,” Barker said. “The standard form of entertainment among the Sicilians is a deck of cards. If Mac takes the day shift, I the evening, and you the night, you shall have very little time to read.”
I did some mathematical figuring in my head, not my best subject. “So if we are working all day while Mac watches, and you take the evening shift while I sleep, then the two of you bed down while I take the night watch, essentially, we will be working a sixteen-hour shift each day.”
“That is correct,” Barker said, emphasizing it with a nod. “The work is its own incentive. Track down our killer quickly and we can return to relative luxury.”
That evening I chose two novels to take with me, Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes and George MacDonald’s Donal Grant. Reading is my chief form of entertainment, and I’d had a bookshelf put in my room to hold my small collection. Barker reads history and philosophy instead of modern fiction. I suppose he thinks the reading of novels something of an indulgence and that my time would be better spent on shooting practice or studying the manuals for self-improvement he often left on my desk. One cannot let these employers always have their way, however, or one should have no time to oneself at all.
My awakening the next morning can only be described as brutal. It was four in the morning when Mac pushed back the curtains. There wasn’t even a morning sun to greet me. Barker was already up and about. For all I knew he hadn’t gone to sleep at all.
We had chosen the warehouse for its good location and view of the Charity Organization Society on Green Street. When we arrived with the rising sun and I looked at the large warehouse, with its scarred old floor and bare brick walls, I sensed a depressing atmosphere and premonitions of doom, but perhaps I was simply in a sour mood.
“Satisfactory,” the Guv pronounced, looking at the empty room with a mattress in its center. Mac had brought his minimum, two trunks and a large hamper. He’d convinced our employer that a supply of food from Fortnum amp; Mason was better than his going out and foraging every night and possibly being spotted by Miacca or someone who might potentially be spying for him. In the hamper there were sausages, cheeses, tinned kippers, olives, Carr’s biscuits, and Barker’s inevitable tea. Mac had also brought a small contraption, a stove that allowed one to boil water. Many of the packages were emblazoned with the royal warrant, purveyors to Her Majesty the Queen and all that. It was about as austere as a hunt club breakfast, but I wasn’t about to protest. At the bottom of the hamper, our butler had secreted a sack full of coffee.
“I’ll have to use the same pot for both,” Mac told me sotto voce. “Then I’ll have to boil water in the pot afterward to get the coffee odor out. You know how sensitive the Guv is about his tea.”
It was true. Barker is a mass of contradictions, and no more so than when food is involved. Though he kept a chef, it was more for Dummolard’s benefit than his own. The Guv had saved his life on several occasions when they were aboard the Osprey, and Etienne felt he was repaying a debt. The fact that Barker could have lumped all his courses into one pile in the middle of his plate and shoveled it down by the spoonful, so careless was he about food, infuriated Etienne. My employer’s tea was another matter. He was a stickler for it. The tea had to be the proper color and strength, it had to be at the proper temperature, and it had to be served in the handleless cups he had brought from China that matched his teapot with the bamboo handle. It all went to prove my theory that the austerity was to be observed only on my side.
“While we are here,” Barker said, “it would be an excellent time to do some physical culture, gentlemen. Perhaps we can get a skipping rope and some Indian clubs in. Thomas is in training for a match, after all.”
It was overcast that morning, and the clouds marched slowly across the leaden sky like chained prisoners. It began to rain, giving me a more practical problem. Barker’s austerity had extended to our not bringing umbrellas.
“Are you coming?” he asked after we were settled in. We had work to accomplish, and an archfiend to track down.
“Yes, sir.” I turned up the collar of my coat, knowing it would be wet shoes and shoulders for the rest of the day for us, anyway. Mac would be watching as best he could from our window. It would not do to call attention to himself during hours of clear visibility. At night, we could not be seen. I seriously doubted that he could see anything out that window save pelting rain, but I knew Jacob Maccabee would not desert his post for the next eight hours.
We exited the building through the back door, down an alleyway one had to walk sideways to get through, and came out on Globe Road. The moving part of the day was over. It was time to get back to business.
“Swanson!” Barker cried, catching sight of the inspector coming out of the C.O.S. building just after nine o’clock. The man had the common sense to open an umbrella.
“Hallo, Cyrus. Any leads as yet?”
“Nary a one,” the Guv admitted. “We’re dining on scraps so far. Tell me, have your men been exploring the sewers?”
“They have until today. I’m sure they are rejoicing that this rain is washing them out and they don’t have to go down today. I do not think they had any reason to complain. I saw that they were provided with waders.”
“Are Dunham’s lads watching the river?”
“Aye,” Swanson acknowledged. A grim smile came to his lips. “It is river police business, but I just happened to have a few lads standing about with little to do.”
“It would be a shame for the good citizens of London to pay for idle constables simply because of a little rain.”
I would have felt sorry for them were I not out in the wet weather myself on the same errand as they. At least these two men led by example. So far, the rain had not penetrated my macintosh or my leather boots, but it was only a matter of time. I was careful to keep my head down, for one quick look upward would send a brimful of water down the back of my neck.
“I would have thought,” I put in, “that Scotland Yard would have put more patrols in the area. In the streets, I mean, not the sewers.”
“Politics,” Swanson said, putting as much loathing into the word as possible. “If they put more constables into an area, that would be admitting there is a problem; and if word gets out about this Miacca fellow stealing and killing children, it would set off a panic in every house in the East End. That’s thousands of women, and don’t
