“Aren’t we all a little like that?”
“Perhaps.”
They almost missed the Lamberts’ house, for it was set off the road, in one of those unexpectedly quiet corners one occasionally came across in London, where the city’s noise and bustle did not seem to reach. The house was tall and dark, its stone grimy with the years. Iron gates at the front guarded a short path with a tree on either side to the front door. It almost looked unoccupied.
A lane led around the side of a walled garden with no obvious way in, until, at the back, they came to a stout wooden door in the wall. Casually, Solomon tried it and found it locked.
They went back the way they had come toward Victoria Street.
Solomon murmured, “Unless you can get a key to that garden door, we’ll have to meet at the front, maybe just at the corner of Tothill Street.”
“We should certainly do that the first time. Shall we say eight o’clock? You might have to hang around a bit until I can escape.”
Solomon was silent for some time. “You’ll be too isolated in there. I don’t like it.”
“Less so once I get in and see the lie of the land. There’s nothing much we can do here until tomorrow. The house has an air of secrecy, though, does it not?”
“Yes. While you are inside, I think I need to make urgent inquiries into this Lambert, if only for your safety.”
“I’ve faced worse than him with fewer weapons,” Constance said carelessly, her mind on the ghostly sightings. “Let’s find another hackney. I can drop you back at the office on my way.”
“On your way where?”
“To make my own inquiries.”
“Where?” he repeated.
She had to remind herself that they were partners now, that they each had to know what the other was doing and why. Trust was something that had to be constant.
“Seven Dials,” she said reluctantly.
He blinked. “Then I will come with you.”
She took a deep breath. “Don’t be daft. I’m going to see my mother.”
Chapter Two
Beyond his needto protect, Solomon was aware of curiosity concerning the mother of Constance Silver. He knew only that she had been a whore when Constance was born, and that therefore Constance had no idea who her father was. In fact, one of the first vulnerabilities he had discovered in her was her longing to belong to a family, from which he had gathered that her mother had never supplied any sense of that.
Constance rarely spoke of her at all, and then it was only ever in passing. Why this sudden yearning for her company?
As though she heard his unspoken question, she regarded him from her own bench in the hackney. “My mother is many things, among them a veritable font of information about people most of us would rather not think about. It would be interesting to know if she had ever heard of the Lamberts.”
“Does that mean you are giving me permission to accompany you?”
“You would come anyway.”
“I might wait outside the door.”
“No one waits in Seven Dials. It’s an invitation to be beaten up and robbed. Or worse.”
He waited for threats, for excuses, for demands not to judge, but she only gazed out of the window at the impossibly straining traffic on Piccadilly. She had decided to trust him.
Warmed, he said nothing, merely alighted on the edges of Covent Garden where she told the jarvey to stop and handed her down. Immediately, she delved into a warren of side streets and alleys.
“Did you grow up here?” he asked.
“Somewhere very similar. I had my first establishment near here.” She liked to shock him with these brazen little announcements, as if to make sure he never forgot who and what she was. Or to be certainshedidn’t.
