Doubtless there will never be an easy time to confront Quinn, but the question has been so long on the tip of my tongue, it almost has a taste. I plunge ahead. “Will you tell me what Will met up against before he was killed? I want to know it. He was in trouble, wasn’t he?”
“Trouble? He was a hero.” Quinn raises his eye patch for a moment and wipes his forehead with the sleeve of his coat. The eye, though less raw, is thickly ridged with scar tissue. Queasy, I look away. “Don’t we have a telegram from Captain Fleming? Don’t we have a respectable service planned for Will come spring?”
“I deserve better from you, Quinn,” I say. “The truth, for example. I know there’s more to this story.” I don’t dare risk telling him about Nate and the letter. Not now.
A spy’s sixth sense is timing.
In the barbed silence, we stare at each other, faced with the unassailable wall built of what Quinn refuses to confess.
“And after that service,” he says, his voice level, “it might be best for you to leave this house. As I mentioned, there is nothing for you here.”
“Except you,” I murmur, glancing down at my blood-spattered boots.
“Don’t say that, Jennie,” His voice breaks. “Not when you don’t mean it.”
“I’m sorry.” Didn’t I mean it? I’m confused myself and unable to tear my gaze from his.
By now Mrs. Sullivan has come lumbering across the yard. She scoops the lifeless bird to bleed and pluck, oblivious to what, if anything, has just passed between Quinn and me. “Thank you, Mister Quinn,” she says, but he has already turned away.
“Wait! Quinn! I’ll walk with you!” I call after him.
His strides are too long for me to keep up. I stop following. Still in his bloodied apron, Quinn crosses under the trellis that leads from the kitchen garden down to the crab apple orchard.
Dismal by winter afternoon, it appears as a trek of starved gray trees and hard-packed soil. Along its path, Quinn moves steady, casting a long shadow that is wafer-thin and lonely as a reaper against the gray sky.
16.
Although Quinn doesn’t bring up my leaving Pritchett House, he has injected the fear into me. Where would I go? What would I do? Over the next few days, I am a mouse in search of a new flowerpot under which to hide.
Homing in on what she (rightly) perceives as my insecurity, Mrs. Sullivan starts to give me lists, misspelled commands on scraps of brown butcher paper, and though she hasn’t assigned me the charwoman’s work yet my hours are spent sweeping, mending, and so much dusting that my lungs ache from sneezes. But I do everything she asks, afraid to raise a fuss.
But by the week’s end, when Uncle mentions that he’ll be going into town for an early meeting at the bank, I’m resolute. This Saturday is my only chance, for it’s when Mrs. Sullivan takes a half day to commiserate with her elder sister, Millicent, over tea in Fort Hill. She flourishes a newly printed carte de visite that she’d ordered expressly for the occasion though it seems a bit of a pretension, considering Millie has been receiving her sister every other Saturday for the past thirty years.
But Mrs. Sullivan has a dozen and surely won’t miss one, so a I spirit it into the folds of my apron while she checks her hat in the mirror.
She hurries out, lugging her basket that is no doubt stocked with stolen wares from our pantry. But she doesn’t open the carriage door, however, without burdening me with yet another list, this one for items to pick up from Kirke & Sons.
Battleship clouds glower in the sky that morning. I stay downstairs to ensure I’ll catch Uncle as he departs. My photograph and letter are hidden in my pocket, and my excuse is writ firm in my head.
“Mrs. Sullivan needs me to go to Merchants Row. Might I ride with you, sir?”
“For dry goods?” Uncle looks befuddled. “Couldn’t she send someone else? Next Monday, perhaps?”
“No one can be spared,” I demur. “We are sorely understaffed.”
His cheeks bloom with embarrassment. “Such are our sacrifices in wartime.”
“Yes, Uncle.” But he’s annoyed. He is a slipshod manager and we both know it.
On the ride into the city, Uncle Henry pays me no mind, though his dossier seems to perplex him. Once, he looks up hard at me, as if trying to calculate my personal worth versus cost, and then it’s my turn to blush as I imagine him pondering my financial inconvenience to his family.
And I would go! I want to shout at him. If I had half an opportunity, I’d leave today!
“Jennie, I need one word with you about that medium,” he remarks as we enter the heart of South Side, lively with Saturday morning hackneys and omnibuses as well as a few street vendors setting up their fruits and flowers.
“Yes?” There’s a squeeze in my heart. Does he know my morning’s plans?
Uncle brings his pocket watch from his waistcoat and pays excessive attention to polishing its surface. “On further inquiry, it seems this chap Geist is a two-bit fraud. As some of the fellows at the bank explained it, his camera is loaded with mirrors, double images. The specifics are beyond me, but it must not get out that we’d been hoodwinked.”
“Our visit was a private family meeting,” I jump in to assure him.
“Correct. For there’s no reason to doubt William isn’t in heaven with the Lord’s angels. I don’t need proof of it.” Uncle blinks rapidly. “S’pose I can see why Geist’s business might be a comfort to the uneducated. But we Pritchetts are made of sterner stuff.”
“Yes, Uncle. Without doubt.”
And that seems to settle it. Still, I worry that Uncle has just sent me a subtle warning against visiting Geist, and so after the carriage lets me off I pay my legitimate call at Kirke & Sons, where I put in an order for needles, rickrack, and a bolt of twill to be charged to our house account, all the while looking over my shoulder to see if Uncle has followed me.
A spy must watch for all options and exits. I can almost hear Toby whisper it, his words a secret spell in my ear.
“We’ll deliver by early next week. But your account is three months in arrears,” says old Mr. Kirke, looking down over his pincenez and handing me a sheaf of horrifyingly overdue bills. “You’ll need to settle in full.”
I nod, mortified, and resolve to hide the bills away as I take leave for Geist’s townhouse. How awful. Somebody needs to confer with Uncle Henry about the household debt, but it won’t be me. Aunt a seems to have lost any ability to manage Pritchett House. Awkward as it might be, perhaps I should speak to Quinn.