Читать книгу The Painted Dragon - Katherine Woodfine - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

Sophie turned around to see that a tall, dark-haired young man was striding energetically over to their table. To her surprise, she realised that he looked slightly familiar.

‘What do you think I’m doing here?’ asked the newcomer in a cheerful voice. ‘I’m looking for you, of course! I went to the theatre to find you and the fellow at the stage door said you’d be here.’

Lil’s expression shifted from shocked to delighted. ‘Well, I like that!’ she exclaimed, as the young man gave her a hearty hug – much to the interest of the people sitting around them, who all began whispering and nudging each other. ‘I hope he doesn’t go giving out my whereabouts to any old Stage Door Johnny!’

‘Ah, but I’m hardly any old Stage Door Johnny now, am I? Don’t pretend you aren’t pleased to see me!’ Releasing Lil, the young man turned to Sophie and held out a hand. ‘How do you do? Awfully sorry to barge in like this. I’m Lil’s brother – Jonathan Rose. Most people call me Jack.’

‘Jack, this is my dearest friend, Sophie Taylor!’ exclaimed Lil. ‘You remember – I’ve told you simply heaps about her.’

Jack grinned at her, and Sophie found herself smiling back. It would be hard not to, she thought. His resemblance to Lil was obvious – and it wasn’t only that they looked alike, but he had exactly the same kind of bouncy confidence. She found herself blushing as she shook his hand, and rather wishing she didn’t look so very muddy and bedraggled.

‘I’m delighted to meet you,’ he said heartily. ‘I say – do you mind if I join you?’

A moment later, he had conjured a chair for himself seemingly out of nowhere, and was sitting down beside them, while a waitress hurried over with an extra cup. ‘But whatever are you doing here?’ Lil was saying, pushing the plate of cakes towards her brother. ‘I thought you were back in Oxford. Isn’t term about to start?’

Jack leaned back in his chair. For the first time since his arrival, Sophie detected that he was suddenly a little less sure of himself. ‘Well . . .’ he began, in a rather-too-casual voice. ‘The thing is that I’ve given it up. Quite a lark, don’t you think?’

‘Given it up . . . ?’ Lil’s voice was incredulous. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘I’m not going back.’

‘What? But . . . but . . . you can’t!’

Jack’s voice was impatient now. ‘Of course I can! You know that Oxford isn’t for me. Oh, I had a jolly enough time there last year – and I met some decent fellows – but it was just like school all over again. I don’t want to study law and spend all my days in a stuffy office, like Father – any more than you want to stay at home and go to tea parties with Mother. You know what I want to do.’

Lil nodded. ‘You want to go to art school and be a painter. But you know Father’s never going to agree to that He’s always talking about what a wonderful asset you’ll be to the firm. Jack, do be serious. You can’t leave Oxford – he’ll never allow it.’

‘Too late, I’m afraid. It’s already done.’

Lil looked astounded. ‘But . . . how? What will you do now?’ she demanded.

‘That’s the good part,’ Jack said, all at once looking more cheerful. ‘I’ve got myself a place at the Spencer Institute. It’s one of the top art schools in London. All the best painters have studied there. I met a couple of the professors in the spring and showed them some of my work – and the long and short of it is, they offered me a scholarship, so here I am! Classes there began this week.’

‘Well – that’s marvellous, of course, but you never said a word about any of this,’ said Lil, still staring at him, her cake quite forgotten now. ‘Where are you staying? What about Mother and Father? Have you told them?’

‘No, and I don’t plan to,’ said Jack, rather more stiffly. ‘There’s a fellow at my college in Oxford who is going to forward on my mail to my new digs – I’ve found a studio in Bloomsbury not too far from the art school that I can afford on my allowance. There’s no sense in telling the Aged Parents – it would only upset them. If I can get myself established and get my work noticed – then I’ll tell them. They’ll see I’m serious and that this is going to work.’

‘Oh golly,’ said Lil, her eyes round. ‘Father will have forty fits! He still hasn’t got over me leaving home to go on the stage – and now you’ll be throwing away all their plans for you too. And you know what they think of artists. Why, they’re practically worse than actresses!’

Jack gave a rueful grin. ‘I know. Awful bohemians who live in dirty attics and lead scandalous lives. Sounds rather fun to me. But that’s exactly why I’m not going to tell them. Do say you’ll keep the secret.’

‘You know I will,’ said Lil. ‘But I do think this is all a ghastly mess. Don’t blame me when it all blows up in your face.’

Jack relaxed in his chair. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Then he turned to Sophie. ‘I say, I’m sorry to have interrupted your tea with all this family business, Miss Taylor.’

‘Don’t be so prim and proper, Jack. Her name’s Sophie,’ said Lil.

‘And what do you do, Sophie?’ he asked. ‘Are you an actress too?’

‘Oh no,’ said Sophie hurriedly. ‘I work at Sinclair’s – I’m a salesgirl.’

‘Yes, but much more importantly than that, she solves mysteries,’ chimed in Lil. ‘We both do. But Sophie is an awfully good detective. Fearfully brainy. You know that. I wrote to you and told you all about our adventures.’

Jack laughed. ‘Oh yes, I remember. Stolen jewels – and criminal gangs – and being chased over rooftops. It all sounded awfully exciting!’ He sounded as if he hadn’t believed a word of it, Sophie thought; although she supposed she couldn’t really blame him. After all, some of the things that had happened to them over the last few months had seemed almost too extraordinary to be real.

‘I do hope you won’t mind if I tag along on a few of your adventures, now that I’m in town,’ Jack continued. ‘In fact, what are you both doing this evening? I’m heading to the Café Royal – why don’t you come too?’

‘The Café Royal? You mean that place on Regent Street?’ asked Lil.

‘That’s right – it’s where all the artists spend their evenings. It’s awfully good fun. You can spot all sorts of famous painters there. It’s exactly the sort of place that the Aged Parents would loathe and despise.’

‘Oh, I wish I could – but we’ve got a show tonight,’ said Lil, her eyes gleaming at this description.

‘Sophie? What about you?’

‘I can’t tonight,’ said Sophie hurriedly. ‘Maybe another time.’ Enticing as the idea of spending an evening with Lil’s charming – and she had to admit, rather handsome – older brother might be, staying up late was hardly an option. She was working at Sinclair’s first thing the next morning, and she knew she had to be there early if she was going to get back into Mrs Milton’s good graces.

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said Jack, flashing her a grin.

He and Lil left soon after that. Sophie watched them as they headed down the street arm in arm, their dark heads close together as they chattered. She turned away in the direction of her lodgings, pulling her coat close around her, feeling very cold and tired now. It had been fun to meet Lil’s brother, but she couldn’t help feeling disappointed that his appearance had meant that her rare tête-à-tête with her friend had been over almost before it had begun.

As she passed the newsboy on the corner, she handed him a penny in exchange for a copy of the evening paper. ‘Good evening to you, miss,’ he said, touching his cap just as he did every day. Reading the newspaper each morning and evening had become part of Sophie’s daily routine. She told the others that it was because it was useful for their detective work, but the real reason was that she was looking for news of the man called ‘the Baron’.

The Baron was never very far from Sophie’s thoughts. She and Lil and the others had tangled with him twice now, and she found herself thinking back, as she often did, to the last moments she had seen him, on the edge of the docks in the East End, just before he had made his escape. I daresay we’ll meet again, he had said. For now, adieu.

Lil and the others believed that the Baron was gone, and wouldn’t come back. Mr McDermott had told them that Scotland Yard believed he had fled the country. But Sophie knew that his photograph had been sent to police detectives across Europe, and as far afield as America – and as yet, no one had seen so much as a glimpse of him. She couldn’t feel so confident that they had really seen the last of the Baron, and that he was really gone from their lives for good. She knew he wouldn’t forget that they had been the ones to blow apart his false identity.

Now, she let herself into the lodging house, and trudged up the staircase to her room. Once inside, she took off her muddy boots and hung up her wet things, then settled down in the easy chair, spreading the newspaper across her lap.

Across from where she sat, on the wall above her dressing table, she had carefully pinned up the few pieces of information she had managed to gather so far about the Baron, including several newspaper cuttings from his time posing in the guise of Lord Beaucastle. In the very centre was the mysterious photograph that Mr McDermott had given to her after it had been taken from Beaucastle’s study. It showed Sophie’s parents standing either side of the Baron, with the words Cairo, 1890 inscribed on the back.

This had been her most unexpected – and disconcerting – discovery of all. She had learned that the Baron had known her parents, and that they had perhaps once even been friends.

Now, as usual, she carefully combed the evening paper for anything that might be relevant. A jeweller’s shop in Knightsbridge had been robbed, but only a few cheap trinkets had been taken, and the burglar’s methods were much too crude for the Baron. She flicked to the society pages where, for a brief moment, she paused to grin at a photograph of some friends who had helped them in their last adventure. Two smart young men and a young lady were sitting in an expensive new motor car, the picture captioned: Young gentlemen-about-town Mr Devereaux and Mr Pendleton take the Honourable Phyllis Woodhouse out for a spin! But there was no mention anywhere of Lord Beaucastle. The summer’s scandal was all but forgotten.

But if London society had moved on, Sophie had not. The photograph of her parents still niggled at her. She had to know the truth – how had her parents known the Baron? And worse still, could he really have had some part to play in her papa’s sudden death? She had spent hours searching through what little she had left that had belonged to her papa – a few letters and papers, a couple of postcards, but nothing that indicated even the smallest connection with the Baron, or with Cairo. If she hadn’t had the photograph, she would never have believed it could be true.

She had stopped talking to the others about the Baron. She knew that they were tired of hearing about him. ‘He’s gone, Sophie,’ Lil had said to her in frustration. ‘I understand why you keep coming back to him, I do. But not everything is always going to be about him. Besides, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m jolly well ready to forget all about the Baron. That horrible man wanted to blow up Sinclair’s with us in it – he would have killed us if he had had the chance – and he made life a misery for all those people in the East End. But the Baron’s Boys are safely under lock and key in prison, and the Baron is gone, and I’m grateful for that.’

Now, Sophie gazed for the hundredth time at her collection of cuttings and photographs, trying to make sense of them. As she did so, she twisted her necklace between her fingers. It was a string of green beads, one of the very few things she possessed that had belonged to her Mama. She might have stopped talking about the Baron to Lil and the others, but she knew she would never stop thinking about him. She was determined to find out the truth – even if that was a secret she would have to keep to herself.

She opened her drawer and took out a sheet of writing paper and her pen and ink. There was still one person she could try contacting who might just know something about her papa being stationed in Egypt – her old governess. She knew that Miss Pennyfeather had gone to India to work as a governess for an English family out there. A letter would take a long time to reach her, but it had to be worth a try. Dear Miss Pennyfeather . . . she began to write.