River's Edge Page 2

  She had gone visiting to her aunt’s house yesterday morning, Sunday being her free day. Her aunt’s house lay in Maidstone, an hour’s walk from the Chequers Inn, in Aylesford, where Clover currently lived with Daisy Dumpel. Her aunt was as doddering as her falling-down house. It was an easy thing for Clover to nick the odd few coins or even a banknote from the old lady’s purse. There were pieces of silver in the house, too—plate and cutlery and candlesticks and a set of tankards with a crest on them, but Clover had no idea how to profit from them in the local villages. London had been simple in that regard, given that no one looked at a person twice, especially if there was a profit to be made. She had stolen two pounds, three shillings and four pence from her aunt, who squirreled away coins and small banknotes in drawers and pots and jars, as often as not forgetting where. The take amounted to something more than two month’s wages at the mill, and would pay the reckoning at the inn, supper included, for some time, and she could forego the tiresome visits to her aunt.

  “Clo!” Elspeth said to her. She nodded in the direction of the stairs and took the deckle from Clover without another word. Clover saw that Mr. Davis was jerking his thumb at her. Henley Townover stood inside the office above, looking down on them, and Clover shook her gloves off and called to the runner to take her place. She wondered whether this summons would lead to a bit of luck, or to its opposite.

  Henley’s father was as rich as the Bank of England, which would make Henley as rich as the Bank of England when the old man died. Clover rather fancied Henley, although he had a hard mouth and was said to be a churchgoing man. Among the Paper Dolls, there were rumors that Henley had been involved in scandal in the months before he had left London to follow his father to Snodland and take his place in the mill. Clover didn’t care a fig for churchgoing men, with their prating about virtue and their holier-than-thou airs. It was true, however, that such men had more to lose when they were caught sinning. And there were things about Henley that made her think he would not be averse to sinning. Perhaps, she thought, he and his money might be coerced into sinning with her.

  She bowed respectfully when she walked into the office, where Henley sat at his desk now.

  “Shut the door, girl,” Henley said to her.

  Chapter 4

  The Investor

  GILBERT FROBISHER CLIMBED down from his coach, all eighteen stone of him landing heavily on the ground. A small, black-haired girl of eight or ten years and with freckled cheeks looked out through the open carriage window unhappily. “I must come along with you, Uncle,” she said, “else you’ll be fleeced like a sheep.”

  “My instincts are sharp where money is concerned, as you very well know, Larkin. I mean to get the lay of the land without committing myself to a half-farthing. I purposely left my cheque-book in the coach, there in the black case, so keep a weather eye on it.” He looked up at the coachman and said, “Take a glass of something to drink and a bite to eat if it’s offered to you, Boggs, but I won’t be above an hour, for we’re due at the St. Ives’s for supper.”

  “May I take a glass, also?” Larkin asked him.

  “Barley water, my dear, or lemonade if they offer it. Do you hear that, Boggs? Larkin mustn’t drink ale or shrub or anything of the kind.”

  “Ten-water grog, Uncle?” Larkin asked. “Just a glass of it.”

  “Not a drop, child. Rum is terrible, pernicious stuff.”

  Larkin was Gilbert’s adopted daughter, whom he’d rescued from a life of crime on the London streets. She had evidently been gallows-bound, being the chief of a piratical gang of children that ran wild along the river. She had gone some way toward saving his life, however, quite literally, when he had been poisoned with a dose of narcotic powders made of pulverized glass eels and non-descript chemicals. Gilbert had come near as a toucher to succumbing to what the newspapers referred to as the “Sargasso Sea lunacy.”

  At well under six feet tall, Gilbert was the polar opposite of Boggs in appearance—Gilbert being very nearly round, whereas Boggs was as tall and thin as a mortician and in fact had something of the appearance of a cadaver, which belied his stamina and his abilities as a coachman. He was a rare hand with a whip, which he used solely as an instrument of speech, flicking it very near the horse’s ear but never touching the beast, and carrying on a more detailed conversation by way of whistles and loud clicks of his tongue. He had taught Larkin to drive the horses, and she was a surprisingly quick study, although she was too hellfire rash for her own good.

  A sprightly looking, full-figured girl in a clean white paper cap and apron appeared from the mill entrance, made a very pretty bow, and skipped toward them, smiling cheerfully and inviting Gilbert into the entrance hall.

  “I’m happy to accompany you, my dear,” he said. She reminded him somewhat of his own lost love—Miss Bracken—whom he had last seen fleeing away into an underground cavern, hand in hand with a dwarf. Miss Bracken had quite broken his heart. This girl was younger, much younger. Still the resemblance cheered him. “What is your name, lass?”

  “Samantha, sir. You’re welcome to call me Sam.”

  “Sam it is, then. How old might you be?”

  “Eighteen years, sir, coming on nineteen. I’ve been at the mill the past two.” She glanced up at Larkin and smiled, although she received no smile in return. “I’ve never seen a carriage half as magnificent as this, not in all my life,” she said, attending to Gilbert again. “Is that your crest on the side, sir? What is that creature that’s chewing on the Devil? A hairy dragon, perhaps?”

  “A very ferocious hedge-pig, Sam. And those are my initials in gold foil. Gilbert Frobisher at your service.” He smiled broadly at her.

  “She’s fourteen years old, and not a day older, Uncle,” Larkin said loudly, giving them both a hard look through the window. “She means to set the hook. Don’t be a silly fish. Do you hear me now? It was you who told me of the fool and his money.”

  Sam smiled brightly at Larkin. “Whatever does the girl mean, sir?” she asked Gilbert in a subdued voice. “What hook?”

  “Larkin natters on in her strange way, dear. Pay no attention.”

  “I asked do you hear me, Uncle? Do you take my meaning or shall I rat you out to Tubby?” Tubby Frobisher was Gilbert’s nephew, twenty-five years younger, but the old man’s spitting image. Tubby hadn’t been fond of Miss Bracken, or of his hapless Uncle’s enthusiasms.

  “Your meaning is perfectly clear, Larkin, and perfectly unnecessary.”

  Sam smiled pertly at Larkin, who shook her head slowly, and then ran her finger across her throat. Sam turned away, her smile having evaporated on the instant. She brightened up again, as if by an act of will, and took Gilbert’s proffered arm. Already Boggs was turning the horses toward a large carriage-house fifty yards away, and Larkin’s window-framed face was dwindling.

  Chapter 5

  The Open Door

  CLOVER HAD NEVER before been in the offices of the mill, and she looked down from on high now at the Paper Dolls moving about below. Elspeth was working the deckle, and the new girl was stacking paper on the drying racks. She glanced at Henley Townover, who still sat at his desk, writing in a ledger book as if he had forgotten her. He looked up now, however, smiled at her, and asked whether she was happy in her work.

  “Yes, sir,” she told him. “Quite content.”

  “Contentment becomes laziness quickly enough, Clover. To what do you aspire, here at the mill? Do you see a future or simply one long-suffering present?”

  “Oh, I don’t suffer, sir. I’m happy with my lot.”

  “Come now. Don’t play the fool. Surely you’ve got time to daydream standing at the deckle vats from morning until night. What do you see when you look into the future?”

  “Do you mean what do I wish for sometime, sir?” She tried reading his face to see what he was about, but he seemed to be neither threatening her nor jesting with her.

  “Yes, Clover. Next week, next month, whenever heaven decrees.”

/>   “I’d work the watermark press, sir.”

  “Ah! That’s something. Is that the end of it?”

  “No, sir, I fancy designing watermarks—making them up.” Clover had no aspirations, actually. The idea of remaining at the mill was odious to her.

  “You have an artistic flair, then? Like your friend Daisy Dumpel?”

  “Some say I do, sir. I don’t like to show off, though. My aunt says it’s vulgar.”

  “People often get what they want by showing off, Clover, but there’s virtue in humility, certainly. I’d be happy to look at your designs. You’re a clever girl, and my father and I believe in helping those who are willing to help us.”

  “And who help themselves, mayhaps, as they say?” She smiled, regarding him steadily.

  Henley favored her with a smile of his own now, looking her up and down as men often did, for reasons that Clover very much understood. She raised her eyebrows just slightly to put a hint of lasciviousness into her smile, if he chose to read it that way. “Is there some particular way in which I can help?”

  “There is. I want to ask you about this chalk mark on the door. Surely you’ve heard of it. I can tell you that Mr. Davis observed three of the girls speaking to a union man. He did not choose to name names, but I convinced him that it was for the best, and he named you particularly, Clover, along with Daisy and Nancy Bates.”

  “I had nothing to say to the union man, and I didn’t look at his paper, nor take it neither.”

  “Good for you. But do you believe that he was a union man?”

  “Yes. He was asking questions, you know, about the mill. A troublemaker, I said to myself. I could see it straightaway. And then there was the handbill. We were to share it with the others, he said.”

  “Did he say his name?”

  “He said that we might call him Bill Henry but mustn’t call him late for supper. It was a joke, do you see, which is why I recall it.”

  “And did this Bill Henry offer to abuse any of the three of you in any way? My father will not allow that, nor will I.”

  “I don’t take your meaning, sir.”

  “I believe you do, Clover. Mr. Davis told me that this man laid his hands on Daisy.”

  “Was Mr. Davis there, sir?”

  “Don’t play the mooncalf, girl. It doesn’t suit you, and it certainly doesn’t fool me. Mr. Davis could scarcely have seen what he saw if he was not there. I hope you won’t attempt to protect this union scrub with an untruth.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Clover said, looking down at the floor. “Mr. Davis is in the right of it. The man took a fancy to Daisy and put his hand around her shoulder, very friendly like. More than friendly.”

  “Did he now? And did she take a fancy to him? Tell me the truth, Clover. Such a thing is not a crime. Daisy shall not be punished.”

  “She gave him the glad eye, yes. Later she told me so. We room together at the Chequers, in Aylesford.”

  “Might Daisy foment trouble for the mill, do you think, consorting with this union fellow? Is she possibly an agitator, I mean to say? Do you understand that word, Clover? An agent, a troublemaker?”

  “I heard something like that from Daisy, sir, but surely it’s nothing. It don’t bear telling.”

  “Out with it, then. I’ll know whether it’s something or nothing. It’s for the good of Daisy and the good of the mill.”

  “Well, sir, Daisy’s been out to Hereafter Farm, is what she’s been telling me. Her sister worked there once, in the scullery.”

  “Hereafter Farm? I’ve heard worrisome rumors about that place. Modern, libertine notions. What do you know about it?”

  “It’s just out from Aylesford Village, sir, back in the woods. Daisy says that the woman there, Mother somebody, has got a society about saving the fish. This Mother woman has taken against industry. They have meetings, and Daisy’s gone to them. She told me that she was going again, to a soirée, she called it, with all manner of famous people from London.”

  Henley Townover put his fingers together and worked them like a spider on a mirror, looking through the window at the river, blue-green in the afternoon sunlight. Clover had told him nothing that he didn’t already know except that Daisy had apparently been a turncoat for some time. “I’ve met your aunt,” he said, “the Dowager who lives in Maidstone. She visited the mill some time ago to recommend you for a position. I’ve wondered how she’s getting along.”

  “Fair, sir, but always one step ahead of the wolf. I help her out with the odd half crown when I can. I gave her my savings last Sunday, two pounds and some shillings.”

  “Good for you, Clover, but I’m sorry to hear that it’s necessary.”

  “She’s desperate poor, sir, but too proud to take help except from me—from family, I mean. There’s no family but me.”

  “She’s a respectable woman who has fallen upon unfortunate circumstances. The scriptures tell us that time and chance happen to us all, and to count our blessings. Remind me of her name again.”

  “Emily, sir. Emily Gower.”

  “Of course.” He opened the desk drawer and removed a square, heavy glass chemist’s bottle with a clamped-down lid. The bottle was half full of liquid and sat on a folded piece of cloth. Below the cloth was a leather wallet, from which he took two ten-pound banknotes. It looked to Clover to contain fifty more, and she wondered whether there were larger notes below—twenty pounds, or fifty… “Would you convey our regards to your Aunt Emily along with this gift?” Henley asked. “Twenty pounds might perhaps help her through any present difficulties. If it does not, then surely the two of us can find a means to beget more, so to speak.”

  “Beget, sir—that’s another word from the Bible, I believe.”

  “Indeed it is, Clover.”

  “Well, sir, my aunt will be uncommonly grateful, as am I.” Clover forced herself to weep now—not a difficult trick, since she’d practiced it often enough. She took the proffered banknotes, still thinking of the sheaf of notes left in the wallet. “What’s that sir?—in the bottle?” she asked. “My Aunt Gower has such a bottle, the exact same, full of water with Paris green in it, sitting in a window so that it catches the sunlight. It’s very like an emerald.”

  “It’s called chloroform, Clover. Have you heard of it?”

  “Like chloral? The sleeping potion?”

  “Something like. It quietens a frightened girl so that she’s more…tractable. Do you understand me?”

  “I believe I do, sir. When I was at Miss Sidney’s Academy, tractable was what I wasn’t. That’s what they said when I was sent away.”

  “I’m not at all surprised,” Henley said, and he replaced the cloth and bottle and closed the desk drawer but didn’t bother to lock it.

  He reached out and grasped Clover’s hand, nodding at her thoughtfully. “Keep your eyes and ears open, Clover. Come to see me whenever you have something to say to me—anything at all. Mr. Davis will admit you, although if you’d rather not be seen, wait until the girls have gone along home. My door is always open to you, and our dealings will be perfectly private, if you take my meaning.”

  “What shall I say now, sir?”

  “Say that you’ve been promoted to the watermark press, which is the truth of it.”

  “What of Daisy?”

  “Never you worry about Daisy. She’ll be paid off handsomely and is bound for London on the morning train for the sake of her own safety. She means to live with her family. My father is a generous man, you know, and I try to emulate him in that regard. So sketch out your notions for a series of watermarks. I’ll have a look at them, although I warn you that we have very high standards, my father and I.”

  “Thank-you sir,” she said, putting the banknotes into her pocket. She curtseyed and walked out through the door, forcing herself to swallow the smile that wanted very badly to appear on her face. She was twenty pounds to the better and free of the deckle vats at last. When she passed Davis on the landing, he touched the brim of his hat, thrust his
tongue out at her indecently, and then turned without speaking and ascended the stairs.

  Chapter 6

  The Message

  on the Window

  INSIDE THE MILL, Gilbert Frobisher saw that the great hall was bright in the sunlight coming through windows in the roof. The place was strung with bunting, and there were tables set roundabout with half a dozen girls in paper hats and aprons, folding multi-colored sheets of paper into the shapes of swans and paper boats. He accepted a glass of punch from a girl who wore a bowtie in the shape of a butterfly, painted realistically in half a dozen colors.

  “Is this the origami, then?” Gilbert asked Samantha.

  “Yes, Mr. Frobisher. We’re taught the art of paper folding straightaway. It comes from Japan, which is on the other side of the world, of all things. What animal do you fancy? We’re quite good at birds.”

  “I’m quite fond of peacocks, although I imagine that it must be difficult to fashion such a creature out of paper. I own a score of peacocks on my property in Dicker, my dear. They perch on the roof moaning like unhappy spirits.”

  Sam led him to a table occupied by a thin, dark-haired girl in spectacles, perhaps Samantha’s age or a year or two older. “Daisy is the only one among us clever enough to fold peacocks,” Sam told him, and immediately Daisy began to do just that, selecting a large sheet of tracing paper, her hands folding and creasing rapidly as she turned it this way and that, flipping it over, half dismantling it and then starting out again with counter-folds and fresh creases, clipping bits out with a scissor until she produced a peacock with what appeared to be a full range of feathers as Gilbert watched in fascination. She turned to a palette of watercolor paints now, and without a word she wetted her brush and lapped up the color blue. She worked quickly but with great attention, daubing black along the edge of the blue and then a swathe of green.