The Midnight Peacock. Katherine Woodfine

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СКАЧАТЬ rose and violet creams, and box after box of glorious Sinclair’s chocolates, nestled amongst feather-light layers of snow-white tissue, and tied with a blue satin bow.

      Sophie had a box of the chocolates beside her on the desk at that very moment. The confectioners had been experimenting with a new festive recipe, and Billy had brought up some samples for them to try. Now, she popped one into her mouth, tasting the melting sweetness of caramel and chocolate as she gazed out at the falling snow, and the shoppers surging in and out of the store.

      As she watched, she saw the figure of a tall gentleman with a military bearing. For one heart-stopping moment, she thought that she recognised him. Then that sense of familiarity vanished as quickly as it had come, and he was just a stranger again. A little girl was clinging to his hand, obviously nervous of the crowds – his daughter, she supposed. As she watched, he paused and bent down to comfort her.

      She turned abruptly away from the window. She had done quite enough daydreaming for one day, she told herself sternly, trying to fix her attention on the document that lay before her on her desk. But even as she began to read, the typed heading CASE NOTES blurred before her eyes and she found herself reaching up to trace the thin, curving line of the white scar that ran across one side of her forehead.

      The scar was barely visible, but for Sophie, it was important. It was a sign – perhaps the only sign – of everything that had happened to her in the past year.

      There was nothing else to show that she was different. She hadn’t grown as much as an inch in the last twelve months – and as for her long, fair hair, however much time she spent arranging it, it still had exactly the same annoying habit of slipping down. Her clothes, perhaps, were nicer than they had been, and here she stroked the skirt of her well-cut frock with satisfaction. Mr Sinclair liked them to wear the very latest styles, and had given both her and Lil a generous dress allowance to spend in the Ladies’ Fashions Department. They both enjoyed choosing new frocks, but whilst Lil liked ornamenting her outfits with all the most fashionable accessories – dramatic fringed scarves, beaded chokers and pendant necklaces – Sophie always found herself coming back to the same old string of green beads that had once belonged to her mama.

      She was wearing them today, and now she let the cool shapes of the beads run through her fingers. Sophie had never known her mother, who had died when Sophie was very small, but she had thought about her a good deal in the past few months. She felt full of questions about her – but there was no one left to answer them now.

      Could it really have been only a year ago that she had first heard the news that Papa had died? Since then, her life had been turned upside down. She had gone from having a father and a home at Orchard House, to being all alone in the world – and then she had found a new place for herself at Sinclair’s. Somehow, she had found friends and a job that – unexpectedly – she had turned out to be rather good at. For a moment, she grinned to herself. Twelve months ago she could certainly never have imagined that she was about to begin a career as a detective.

      But the smile was only a fleeting one. For thinking of that only made her recall all the other things that had happened in the past year – and especially her encounters with the villain called the Baron.

      Last Christmas she had never even heard that name – but since then, she and her friends had crossed the path of London’s most notorious crime lord on several occasions. Between them, they had managed to prevent his scheme to destroy Sinclair’s with an infernal machine – even after being locked up in the summerhouse in the roof garden by one of his henchmen. They’d exposed his disguise as the aristocrat Lord Beaucastle and helped to liberate much of London’s East End from the stranglehold of his vicious gang, the Baron’s Boys. Most recently of all they had rescued two valuable paintings by the Italian artist Benedetto Casselli, which the Baron had stolen on behalf of a secret society known as the Fraternitas Draconum, or the Brotherhood of Dragons. Though the society itself remained a mystery, it was thanks to their efforts that several of the Baron’s accomplices were now in gaol – and that the Baron himself was a wanted man, on the run from Scotland Yard. He hadn’t been seen by anyone since she had come face to face with him in a darkened Chelsea alleyway some months ago.

      Of all their encounters, it was that one that she thought of most. Perhaps that was because it had been the first time that she had faced the Baron alone – or perhaps because he had confessed to her that he had killed not only her beloved papa, but her mother too, many years earlier. She had escaped from the encounter with no more than the scar on her forehead. Now, in spite of the warm fire, she shivered, thinking how lucky she had been.

      I could have killed you a dozen times, he had told her. The words still puzzled her. It was true: so why hadn’t he? The Baron had a reputation for ruthlessness, for exacting the most horrible revenge on anyone who crossed him. Yet he had let her go, saying only: Farewell. This time I know I’ll see you again.

      She found she was tapping her pen irritably against the desk. When it came to the Baron there were always these questions: the same frustrating spiral of mysteries and riddles. She counted them off the ever-growing list. How had the Baron known her parents? He had told her that he had once been a friend of her papa’s – but how could she possibly square the memory of her kind-hearted father with what she knew of the Baron’s cruelty and greed? She knew her papa had travelled during his military career, so perhaps the Baron had crossed his path – but how could he have met her mama? She heard the whisper of the Baron’s voice again. When she was by my side, she was the toast of Cairo . . . she gave all that up for a home and a husband – and you.

      Cairo . . . What on earth had her mother been doing in Egypt? She knew nothing of either of her parents ever having travelled there. Ought she even to believe a single word that the Baron had said?

      She got up from her chair and walked over to the fire. She’d promised herself that she would stop going round in circles like this. She’d spent weeks after her last encounter with the Baron, mulling over everything he had told her, trying to piece together each tiny piece of evidence. It had been their friend and adviser Mr McDermott – himself a private detective – who had put a stop to that. ‘I’d advise you to leave it alone. The Baron is the only one who can answer those questions – and with Detective Worth and Scotland Yard’s top men on his trail, he would be foolish to set so much as a foot in this country. Try to forget about him – and focus your attention on Taylor & Rose.’

      Mr McDermott had been right, of course. He usually was. Reluctantly, she’d taken down the photograph of the Baron and her parents from the wall and filed it away in the folder in their office that was neatly labelled ‘The Baron’. For that was what she was going to do with the Baron now, she told herself: file him away with the rest of their paperwork on the office shelves. Far better to put all that aside and keep her attention firmly fixed upon new mysteries.

      They certainly had plenty of those to keep them busy. In their first two months of business, Taylor & Rose had dealt with half a dozen different cases – from missing jewels to strange anonymous letters. Thanks to Mr Sinclair’s appetite for publicity, everyone knew about his latest innovation: London’s first (and only) young ladies’ detective agency. From where she stood beside the fire, Sophie could see its name, Taylor & Rose, printed in curving gold script across the glass panel of their office door.

      Plenty of people had already come through that door, curious to see Mr Sinclair’s ‘young lady detectives’ for themselves. At first, the stream of visitors had made Sophie nervous. She lay awake at night, wondering how they could show everyone that two young girls really were capable of being detectives.

      But little by little, she found her confidence was growing. With Mr McDermott’s guidance, Taylor & Rose was beginning to thrive – and Sophie had suddenly found herself a person of some consequence at Sinclair’s. СКАЧАТЬ