report it to the police as they would find out you had stolen them to begin with.’
‘The Accountants used the thieves’ only weakness against them.’
‘Right. It was an interesting assignment, which took me deep into the heart of the ring.’
‘Is that when you got arrested and ended up in prison?’
He glanced at her. ‘Does my conviction bother you?’
She shrugged. ‘It is intriguing.’
Dubois laughed softly. ‘Just dangerous, huh, and almost kind of fun? Well, I can tell you it was not fun.’
Alkmene bit her lip. He made it sound like she was completely shallow. It was true she had no idea what it was like to be part of a crime ring, and she might see it a little too much like an adventure. But that was merely because she had no idea of what it was really like. How could she ever know what it was like, unless somebody would tell her?
But she bet that if she asked him to tell her more about it, he’d refuse to share.
So she said, ‘And after your time with that crime ring, you came here?’
‘Yes, after I got exposed, my face was known to a lot of criminals, so I was better off moving. I came here.’
‘To your father’s homeland? I assume since you said your mother was French, she was called Dubois? You have her name?’ She wanted to push on and ask if he was looking for his father, but his grim expression at the mention of it made her reconsider. It didn’t look like Dubois was eager for a reunion.
He nodded. ‘I grew up believing my father had been killed in a robbery gone wrong, at the bank where he worked, even before I was born. Only when my mother was on her deathbed, she confessed to me he had been English, staying in Provence for the summer. He had met her, made her promises of taking her to England, where she would have her own bakery.’
His face set in hard lines. ‘All lies of course. He deserted her even though she was pregnant by that time. He had never meant to take her back here and give her all the things he had promised her to win her for him. He was already engaged to be married.’
Alkmene winced. That made it painfully clear why he cringed at the idea of what his father had been. A liar who had made his mother’s life miserable. Who had forsaken her and his son. ‘You came here to find him. To confront him.’
Now a smile curled the corners of his mouth. ‘The thought crossed my mind. But no, I am not looking for him. I came here to start a new life, not revel in the past. I don’t want to know who he was and why he did it. I don’t want to know what weak excuses he might have had for his behaviour. I would rather just loathe him for what he did and swear I will be a better man.’
Alkmene stared ahead where the coffee house they were headed for already beckoned with its bright red and blue sign.
Dubois touched her a moment, with his elbow, like poking her into attention. ‘I didn’t tell you this to make you feel sorry for me. I just don’t have any liking for my English father and his English privilege. I came here to London to investigate crime stories and see that there is just as much squalor here as in the back alleys of Calais or Marseilles.’
To prove his heritage was no less. ‘There were good people there too, I presume?’
Dubois smiled. ‘Lots.’
‘It’s the same thing here.’ She glanced at him. ‘One bad apple doesn’t mean the entire basket full of them is wasted.’
He didn’t respond.
Outside the coffee house he looked in through one of the narrow windows, divided into threes by small lead bars. ‘Oh, shoot.’
‘What is it?’
‘He is not alone but with this large fellow with the red moustache. I don’t know his name, but he saw me once during a bar fight and he got the idea I was the cause of the fight and the damage. Say, how about you go in and engage him in some story of your umbrella having been stolen just now? Once he is out with you to retrieve the missing object, I will talk to the constable and we can meet up again in say half an hour on the corner of Meade Street. I still owe you that fish meal.’
Alkmene was happy he remembered and wanted to treat her, but she wasn’t so happy with having to deceive a member of the official police force with lies about a stolen umbrella. She cast Dubois a doubtful look.
‘If you can’t do it…’ he said slowly.
She exhaled and made for the coffee house entrance, calling at him, ‘Your fish had better be excellent.’
Inside it smelled of a strong mocha, mixed with sweet baked wares. The constable was sitting with a mug in his hands, the red moustache with him biting into some large cinnamon-strewn bread-like slice. He looked up at her as she approached, appraising her with his sharp blue eyes. She forced a wide smile. ‘Excuse me…’
She made sure only to look at him, not the other man. ‘My dog ran down some steps and disappeared into somebody’s basement. I called out for it, but it won’t come back to me. I also tried attracting the attention of the inhabitants of the house, but I got no response either. I don’t dare go in myself, as I would be trespassing. Would you mind getting the dog for me?’
The moustache looked at the other man. Before he could delegate this small job to his subordinate, Alkmene added with a smile, ‘I am sure that my father, Lord Horatius Callender, would be most happy to recompense you for any inconvenience this might cause.’
The moustache was on his feet already. ‘I am at your service, Lady Callender.’ He looked down on the other man, snapping, ‘Don’t stare like an idiot, Gordon. Wait here for me. I will be right back.’
He followed her outside, pulling his uniform jacket straight. ‘Now where would this have happened, Lady Callender?’
Ignoring the wrong address – after all, the poor man probably didn’t deal with members of the peerage every day – Alkmene took him down the street, in the same direction Dubois and she had come from.
She knew for certain that there was an open basement door there. She had seen nobody at it and suspected that the servants were in the back of the house having lunch and had left the door open by accident.
Moustache could have a look inside without disturbing anybody and when the dog wasn’t found – obviously as there had never been one – she would excuse herself and say it had probably found its own way out and would be home by now. Moustache might be chagrined, but he’d never show it to her, for her father’s sake. Under the cover of her title she was cut out for jobs like this, and if Dubois realized that well, he’d need her to complete the case.
Moustache, however, did not look into the basement door. He immediately marched up the stone steps of the house in question and rang the doorbell.
Cringing, Alkmene waited at the foot of the steps, clenching her hands at this potentially disastrous turn of events.
Nobody came to answer the door.
Moustache rang once more and then came back down to her. He cast a suspicious look at the basement door, then went down the steps to study it up close. ‘There are footprints here,’ he called out. ‘In coal.’
Alkmene smiled nervously. ‘My dog’s?’
‘No, of a man.’ Moustache reached for the short stick attached to his belt and with this assault weapon in hand, he disappeared into the darkness.
Alkmene waited a moment for an anguished cry of pain as the determined sergeant hit an innocent coal delivery man over the head with his stick only to find he had business there and the allegedly missing dog was nowhere in sight.
But there was no sound of grunting, or a struggle, coming from the basement door.
Alkmene paced up and down the pavement, smiling innocently at the passers-by who slowed their steps to