A Spark Unseen

11

I was the last through the velvet curtain and into the foyer. The ladies were disappearing through the door I’d noticed before, the room I thought shared a wall with my salon, and I saw a little maid in a starched white apron pressed flat against a cabinet, eyes on the floor as the tittering conversations passed. The clock in the foyer said three minutes past eleven, and my heart squeezed. I would have to hurry. When the last skirt had been squashed through the doorway, I approached the maid.

“Excuse me, but can you tell me if there is a … retiring room, for ladies?”

The little thing looked at me quizzically, and I was afraid that perhaps she only spoke French, but then her face unclouded and she said in a bright, brass British accent, “Oh, you’ll be wanting the WC, Miss? Is that it? The water closet?”

I nodded, glancing at the open door to the drawing room. I hoped none of the ladies inside were hearing this conversation. Then I changed my mind and hoped they were.

“Well, you just go straight up the stair thataway, Miss, and be looking for the little door on your left.”

“Thank you, indeed,” I said, well pleased. She scurried off, and with one quick look back, I picked up my skirt and went noiselessly up the stairs, though I did not stop at the first landing. I took the next flight up, and then the next, pausing only to catch my breath. There was a small oval window straight ahead, looking into a bit of garden, the same as on our fourth floor, and surprisingly there were also two doors to the right of the stairwell, where I had thought there should be none. I tiptoed to the first door on the right, found it unlocked, and peeked inside.

The room was being used for storage, dim, dusty, and windowless, but in the light from the doorway I could see that it was shallow, not nearly as long as I might have expected. Leaving the door open, I tiptoed around piled boxes to press my ear against the only clear patch of peeling plaster I could find along the far wall, the rest being covered with cast-off furniture and stacked trunks. I could hear nothing, no voices, no movement. But I also could not be sure that Uncle Tully’s rooms were actually on the other side of this wall. I shut the door to the room as gently as possible, brushed off my skirt, and opened the next.

A plain bedroom, and just as shallow as the storeroom, though it had the sloped ceiling and one of the high windows like Uncle Tully’s new workshop, the moon shining down onto the floor matting. I stole quietly across the room, passing shapes in the dim that it took me several moments to realize were easels, cloths thrown over their canvases. I tried to imagine Mrs. Reynolds in a paint-spattered smock with a brush in her hand, ignored the urge to peek beneath one of the cloths, and again pressed my ear to the far wall.

Silence. Encouraged, I closed the door, hitched up my skirt and padded down to the next landing, pausing just a moment to listen for nonexistent noise. The dinner party seemed to have left the upper floors completely deserted. Directly below the rooms I had just visited, there were again two doors beside the stairwell. I chose the one closest to the front of the house, twisted its knob, and slipped inside.

The gas was on, and I saw a large bedchamber, more than double the length of the rooms above. I smiled. Then Uncle Tully must have been on the other side of the walls I had pressed my ear to, and therefore, had to also be just over the farther half of this room. I stood underneath the far section of ceiling, white plaster roses and ivy vines twisting out from the chandelier in its center, listening for noise or a thump or the sound of a footstep. I hoped Mary had not unintentionally nodded off. If she was asleep and so was my uncle, then this little exercise would have to somehow be repeated, and after my behavior at dinner, I was not expecting any renewed invitations. I saw the same proliferation of doilies and figurines and pictures as downstairs, as well as three separate beds, a pair of curling tongs near the fire, the same circumference as the blonde cylinders bouncing on the head of Mrs. Reynolds’s whispering niece. The wide, feathery hat Mrs. Hardcastle had been wearing that afternoon was perched grandly on a hat stand. Both nieces must be sharing with Mrs. Hardcastle, I thought. I wondered if any would come out of the experience unscathed.

Two more minutes without hearing the first squeak of a floorboard above me, and I decided to be satisfied. I smiled to myself and had taken two steps toward the bedchamber door before it swung open to reveal Mrs. Reynolds. She stood framed in the doorway, as if she were posing for a portrait, beaded bodice winking in the gaslight, her wrinkled face stony.

We exchanged a long look. I put what I hoped was an expression of apology onto my features and said, “I am so very sorry, Mrs. Reynolds, but I’m afraid I was in search of the WC … forgive me, the … water closet.”

I watched her brows go up, much as they had at dinner, and being rather large and prominent eyebrows, the effect was considerable. “The facilities for your convenience are on the next floor down, Miss Tulman.”

“I am sorry,” I repeated. “I must have misunderstood your maid. And actually, I hope you will not think me rude,” — too late for that, I thought wryly — “but I will use this opportunity to take my leave of you.”

I watched the woman’s eyebrows merge with her swooping piles of hair.

“I am quite exhausted from my trip and feeling rather ill.” That part had not even been a lie. “Thank you for an excellent and enjoyable dinner, Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Really, Miss …”

I gave her a small curtsy. “Please do give my regards to Mrs. Hardcastle and the rest of the party.” And I walked right past her, moving as fast down the stairs as my pride would allow. I reached the bottom close to a run, hurried across the foyer, and let myself out the front door. The clock had read twenty-two minutes past eleven.

The streetlamps were out, but the dull yellow light from heavily curtained windows and the moon were sufficient to see the sidewalk. I moved quietly past the glow of Mrs. Reynolds’s drawing room, where the ladies had gathered, and turned the knob of the red door. It did not move. I tried the other, then tried it once more, then rattled the door in its jamb. The doors were locked, and I’d never even thought of bringing a key.

I knocked again. Mary would be on the upper floors, I mused, taking care of Uncle Tully, and if Mr. Babcock was not trying to assist, he was very likely near, to be of help, or perhaps even deservedly asleep. The worry I’d been suppressing all through the ghastly dinner hit me now with full force. I had six, perhaps seven minutes before I was late, and nothing upset my uncle more than not keeping to his clock, if he was not already in a full-blown tantrum. I knocked harder, then ran my fingers all around the doors and the house stones. No bell.

My jaw set. I turned away from the doors and began to walk briskly down the deserted street, my footsteps echoing on the sidewalk, craning my neck through the dark to see where our block of buildings came to an end. There would be a way around to the back, to that bit of garden I’d seen through the upper window, and surely a door.

One, two …

I counted the silent doorways, so I could do the same to the rear entrances when I circled around, and identify my own door. The cool night air tickled the bare nape of my neck. I’d forgotten my shawl, but I did not even consider going back. Mrs. Reynolds could keep it. My arms crept up, crossing over my chest.

As I passed the fourth door something caught my eye, a movement, slight, and on the other side of the street. I slowed, staring into the blank shadows opposite. The stillness was unbroken, wedges of deep black night cloaking my vision. I walked faster, feet keeping pace with my heartbeat. Never had I been on a city street at night and alone. After the fifth house, I saw it again, a moving silhouette against the murky light of a curtained window, across the street and just a little behind me. I could also now see the cross street at the end of my block of buildings. I turned left around the corner, glancing once over my shoulder, and caught the dark figure of a man slipping quickly across the pavement.

As soon as I was out of sight, I picked up my skirts and ran. I could not see what I was looking for, the entrance to an alley that might run behind the houses, and I had no time to find it. A double doorway was just ahead on my left, one of the doors slightly open, a small beam of light shining onto the street. I ducked inside without slowing my pace, neither knowing nor caring whose house it might be. But in the blur of my running, I saw that I was not in a house; I was in a stone tunnel, one glass-paned oil lamp hanging down from a chain in its middle.

Twelve more running steps and I came out the other end, feet hitting gravel in the moonlight. I could see trees and waving shadows and planting pots, smell the scent of green. Stone walls and curtained windows, muffled light in some of them, rose three and four stories high on every side, lighting the branches and leaves below in wavering patches. I fled for a space to my left, black and sheltered beneath low-hanging limbs, realizing that the garden was a courtyard, shared in the open center of a triangle of connected houses; the stone passage had run right beneath one.

I inched farther beneath the trees, panting, as footsteps rang down the passage, not running, just heavy and deliberate, booted, maybe. Another two steps back and I bumped into the stones of a house, edging as fast as I could along the wall, stepping alternately on soft, squelching ground or leaf-strewn paving stones. I passed one door in the stone wall, and then another.

Ten, eleven, twelve came the footsteps, and I banged my shin on a flower pot. Four doors I had counted on the street before I turned the corner. One more now and the next should be my grandmother’s. The footsteps changed to the crunch of gravel.

I crouched down behind a statue in a dark corner where the building changed its shape by thrusting out a wing, clutching at the heavy vines that climbed the house wall. I could see the door I wanted, a little flame of gaslight in a lantern-like frame mounted right beside it. I tried to control my wheezing breath, afraid it could be heard over the fountain that was tinkling somewhere in the courtyard.

The boots stepped along a graveled path, unhurried, and then the man stopped, standing in the light that was flooding from what I thought must be Mrs. Reynolds’s kitchen window. He was thin and slouching, wearing a bright blue vest. My eyes widened, blood beating a thudding rhythm against the prison of my chest. It was the man who had been leaning on the lamppost that morning, watching as I stepped out of the carriage. And he must have been there still when I came out of Mrs. Reynolds’s, waiting in the darkness. Whatever this meant, I could be certain it was not good for me or my uncle.

The man slunk about the garden, poking among the clipped roses, vaulting them with surprising agility when the path did not suit. But always moving closer to me, and to the door I had my eye on. And then a latch clicked and a strip of light, brilliant in the night, reached out, illuminating the man’s shadow for only a moment as he slid behind the pedestal of a statue of Cupid, eyes on the opening door.

The beating in my chest skipped and fluttered. The man was not ten feet away, his statue the twin of mine on a little stone patio, not one obstacle between us. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t seen me already, and then I remembered the dark brown silk, and thanked heaven for mourning. But if he turned his head — when he turned his head — even a quick glance, I was going to be caught.

Water splashed onto the ground, dishwater or some other such being thrown out of a pan, and then the door — Mrs. Reynolds’s, if all my guesses were correct — shut, and the shaft of light was gone. The man behind the statue rose up warily, eyes still on the just-closed door, and he stepped away from the statue, leaping easily back over the foliage. I let out a slow, silent breath. And I waited.

Leaves crushed in my hands, staining my fingers, and my legs had begun to cramp before I heard the booted footsteps moving back down the stone passage. I rose, surveying the silent darkness, still guarded, wincing as I stretched out my legs. I was not going back the way I had come. I would have to get inside from here, and then the tight place inside me seized, making me gasp. I was terribly late. What was happening to Uncle Tully?

I hurried to the door I thought was my grandmother’s and pushed down on the latch. Locked. I stood back from the door, only just resisting the temptation to kick it, eyeing one second-floor window that was dimly lit, a small lamp or perhaps a single candle behind a curtain. I began to scavenge the gravel path for rocks, scouting for the largest, and when I had four or five, I weighed the selected stones in my hand, wondering if I had the strength or skill to attempt this. I wondered if I even had the right house. I threw the first stone.

It was more of a pebble, really. It hit the masonry with a sharp snick and disappeared into the bushes. My aim had been to the right of the lit window, and too low. The knot in my insides was a throbbing, sickening place. I threw again, this time with more strength. Still too far to the right. Once more, and I hit the window glass. I smiled, almost yelled in triumph, but no face appeared at the window. Teeth clenched, I took the next stone, a little larger, turning its heft in my hand before I threw it, hard. The windowpane shattered, a few bits raining down into a flower bed, the rest I am sure, all over the floor of the room above.

“An excellent shot, Miss Tulman.”

My body jerked in surprise, hand jumping to my throat as I spun around. But instead of a blue vest and a slouching frame, I saw an orange glow in the air, just beyond a clump of rosebushes. The glow grew steadily brighter, showing dark hair and a thin mustache before it dimmed again, obscured by a sudden cloud of cigarette smoke. It was Mr. Marchand, the impertinent Frenchman, casually watching me throw rocks at my own windows. I straightened my back, but was saved from speaking when the broken window above me was thrown violently open.

“Katharine, my child, is that you?”

Mr. Babcock’s odd round head disappeared from the window before I replied, obviously needing no other confirmation. I walked with affected dignity to the back door of my house, willing Mr. Babcock’s short legs to run faster down the stairs. When I turned back toward the garden, the cigarette beside the rosebushes was where it had been, silent and still glowing. I could smell the thing now, overwhelming the sweet odor of the plants.

“I hope you find the rest of your evening just as enjoyable, Mr. Marchand.”

My voice had been acid, but he chuckled. “Oh, I do not think I shall, Miss Tulman.” He shook his head. “No, no. I do not think I shall.”

He was still laughing when the lock turned and Mr. Babcock pulled me unceremoniously into the house.