The Journal of Dora Damage(152)

‘You have piped hot water!’ I exclaimed.

‘And you have blood on your hands.’

And so we jumped to, and scrubbed our faces and hands, and mopped at the stains on our clothes.

‘Now go, quickly, with discretion,’ he whispered, holding the door out to us once more.

‘My veil, and my shawl,’ I said, bewildered, to Sir Jocelyn.

‘I do not know. Charles was evidently not intending for you to leave the building again.’ Then he said gravely to Din as he passed, ‘I suggest you take the lady out the same way you entered the building, so as not to draw attention to yourselves.’

Din nodded, and led me silently downstairs, only we did not turn left at the bottom to go to the front door, but right, to the servants’ area, where the flagstones got rougher, and he pulled me into a cupboard as a maid glided past with a candle, then we slipped along further, into the kitchens, which were empty, and out into the area that led up to the mews. But just as we were about to ascend the iron stairs to the gate at the top, Din pushed me into the coal-hole under the street. I could see in the dark at the top of the steps that a woman was pressed up against the gate, and a man on the other side, and they were clearly in some deep embrace, despite the restrictions of ironmongery between them.

Din and I steadied each other on the precarious piles of coal beneath our feet. We must have waited for a quarter of an hour for the amorous couple so to finish their business, and in the interim we, likewise, could not help but find ourselves in each other’s arms, our heartbeats clamouring loudly in fearful unison. Our lips and tongues were dry, but it did not matter. He was my saviour and my solace, and I knew that I loved him. But I could not say so to him; I feared it would mean little.

Then we heard the woman tread softly down the steps, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and laughing to herself, and we pulled away from each other, watched her go inside the house, and crept up the steps ourselves. Din made a foothold for me with his hands, and lifted me up and over the gate, which was as tall as I was, before vaulting it himself, and we dropped into the mews, dirty and black-faced. Din led me across Hill-street, then we ran along Hays-mews and turned right onto Charles-street, from where we could skirt across the south side of Berkeley-square and drop down into Piccadilly.

‘We have to find Lucinda,’ I said to Din, clutching at his arm.

‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know.’ And I related to Din the events as best as I could remember, breathlessly, as we rushed along the pavement, oblivious to the phantoms and menaces of the London dark.

‘Was he Japanese, this man? And his wife?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Oriental-looking.’

‘It’s just I know a Japanese tattoo man, in Limehouse. He is the only, the best. All the slaves go there to get their slave marks changed. That’s how I got to know the Whitechapel crowd. I was lodgin’ just up from him, and saw all these niggers comin’ and goin’. He turned their brands into dragons, or flowers, or patterns.’

‘There was a dragon and a fish on the door.’

‘It’s him. It’s him all right. And that was when you last saw Lucinda?’

‘I heard her, as I was under the chloroform.’

‘Yes. This all make sense. There’s only one professional in London. Diprose couldn’t exactly take you to a sailor in the backroom of a pub, could he? I’ll go straightways, once I get you home safe.’

‘You? I’m coming with you! She’s my daughter! You might need me.’

‘Dora, no. Think. How will we get there? It’s too late for an omnibus.’

‘I will pay for a cab.’

‘Ain’t no way you could even bribe one to take you to Lime-house this time o’ night.’ In the distance we heard a shriek, and the pounding of footsteps that echoed around the stony streets.

‘We will walk.’

‘And you will slow me. I’ll run there. I can run there barefoot. You’re tired.’

‘I am not.’ I quickened my pace as if to prove it, but I was out of breath now, and we were only at Trafalgar-square, where ashen-faced men in black silk and lace loitered on the edges of the pools of light like vampyres.

‘And besides, am I not good at getting secret things out of hidden places? Especially things hidden by Sir Jocelyn.’ And with that, he pulled out a book from the waistband of his trousers, and I could see in the gas-light, as we stood in the shadow of the College of Physicians, that it was that horrific book, the one with the hateful inscription.

But still I tried to argue in the face of such evidence of his skill. ‘This changes nothing. I’m coming with you.’ I took the wretched book from him, and set off at a pace again. ‘Why did you take this?’ I panted.