Charles tapped his foot impatiently on the highly polished wooden floor of the Queen’s drawing room, his arms crossed over his chest, his hands fidgeting with the heavy gold chain of his burgundy silk waistcoat. His eyes were fixed on the girl as he leaned back against the white and gilt wall. She wore a plain black dress, buttoned high to the neck, her hair severely pulled back and pinned into a neat knot. Crouched over a writing desk, she paid him no attention, her eyes scanning intently over a handful of papers that lay spread across its surface.
“This is a waste of time, Florence. We should be out in the streets, not rummaging through worthless police reports,” Charles grumbled. “As long as the Home Secretary keeps on insisting that there’s nothing sinister going on, the Bobbies will just be sitting on their backsides and do damned well nothing.”
“It’s Miss Nightingale, if you don’t mind, Mr Dickens.” Her voice snapped sharply, although her eyes remained transfixed on the papers in front of her. “There must be a pattern here, something linking them all together, but I am simply not seeing it,” she continued, adjusting the page beneath her fingers. “Three Members of Parliament are missing. First, Lord Harland vanishes with neither word nor trace, then Sir Geoffrey Denton, and now Baron de Rothschild has disappeared. All living a considerable distance from one another. Upper Belgrave Street, Walpole Road and Cromwell Street… no geographic connection. All disappearing on different days…”
Charles Dickens’ mind wandered off as Florence’s voice blathered on, searching for connections that simply weren’t there. He needed to be out there, talking to people on the cobbles, but instead he was trapped in the Palace doing nothing while she frittered away their time on these pointless police files.
Why Her Majesty had humoured the woman so was altogether beyond him. The entire morning had been thrown away. They had sat around like idle dogs for two hours while waiting for some skinny youth of a constable to fetch these papers from Scotland Yard, reports that had given away no more information than Charles had already deduced. Yet the stubborn girl had insisted on wasting another couple of hours, poring over them as if they’d magically reveal the answer.
“That’s enough of that, Florence! You’re not going to find anything in that lot,” Charles spoke quickly, in a high, clipped tone. “Let us get out of here and pay a brief visit to our absent Baron’s townhouse. See if we cannot fathom out what’s really going on.”
“Please, it’s Miss Nightingale!” Florence corrected him again, looking up at last, her eyes flashing. “Very well! As these papers seem to tell us nothing, you can have things your way. Your impatience is truly insufferable at times, Mr Dickens. After the debacle that you made of the Whitechapel incident, I would have thought you would have learnt better than to charge in headlong.”
Before he could open his mouth to remind her once again that it had in fact been him who had saved her from being chopped up and turned into one of that butcher Moreau’s foul creatures, she was already on her feet and smoothing down the plain black fabric of her dress. The bright light of the room glinted briefly off the only ornamentation that she permitted herself to wear, a white agate cameo brooch fastened to her high collar.
Efficiently, she snatched up a pair of black leather gloves from the desk and pulled them on while striding purposefully towards the high double doors of the room, her heels clicking loudly on the floor. The crisp, clinical scent of carbolic acid drifting in her wake.
The carriage ride from the Palace to Baron de Rothschild’s house in Upper Belgrave Street wasn’t a long one. A little under ten minutes by Miss Nightingale’s reckoning.
Passing through the heavy, black and gilt gates of Buckingham Palace, they rolled out onto the majestic streets of St. James’s, where the opulent townhouses of the highest echelons of society stood shoulder to shoulder. Their perfect white stucco facades gleamed in the afternoon sun.
Miss Nightingale paid those buildings about as much attention as she did Mr Dickens’ constant, inane ramblings.
“As you say, Mr Dickens,” she said absently, her mind preoccupied with other matters. The excited titter of his voice was a background noise that she had long since learnt to tune out.
The wheels of the carriage were almost silent on the creosote-stained wood-block paving. The only sounds were the soft clip-clop of the horses’ hooves, the creak of the carriage springs and, of course, Mr Dickens’ incessant chatter.
Her jaw set firmly, a tightness prickling at the back of her neck. Why must he always act with such reckless haste? What good was rushing out onto the streets when they had, at that moment, not the slightest notion of what they were searching for?
Upper Belgrave Street, Walpole Road and Cromwell Street. The addresses of three prominent members of Parliament. There had to be a pattern, there had to be some sort of logic, she was convinced of it. If only she had been able to study the maps for a little longer, she was sure that she would have uncovered the link. Instead, Mr Dickens had insisted on bundling her into a carriage, forcing her to trudge the streets like some crude detective from one of those cheap, melodramatic, sensationalist serials that he seemed to enjoy wasting his time penning.
The two bay horses whinnied before bringing the glossy black Clarence carriage to a stop outside a four-storey townhouse. Twin Corinthian columns rose on either side of the solid black door, supporting a grand, square portico.
The footman, a young man dressed impeccably in crisp black and gold livery, jumped back with a sharp intake of breath, his polished boots scuffling softly on the flagstones. Mr Dickens threw his arm over the low door of the carriage, swung it open and, with a dramatic flourish, flung himself out before the young man even had the chance to lower the step.
Quickly regaining his composure, the footman looked up at Miss Nightingale, a smile crossing his freckled face. With one white gloved hand he released the step, while the other he held out to her.
“Miss?” he asked softly, bowing his head in respect.
Miss Nightingale gave the boy a brisk nod of dismissal. Her heavy dress rustled slightly as she stepped down onto the stone slabbed pavement, not rushing, but moving with pure, calculated efficiency.
“Come now, Florence! There’s no time to dally. Chop, chop!” Mr Dickens called back over his shoulder. He skipped up the stone steps towards the house, almost knocking a poor servant girl off her feet in his haste. His purple top hat was still slung under his arm, and his highly polished walking cane tapped out an erratic rhythm. The gaudy gold embroidery on his waistcoat glinted in the sunlight.
Miss Nightingale shook her head. The man was like a giddy schoolboy, eager to rush home to play with the new toy soldiers his father had just bought for him.
“Please, Mr Dickens! Try to show at least an ounce of decorum.” Her voice was clean and sharp.
Giving the young serving girl a smile and a nod as she passed, receiving a wide grin and deep curtsy in return, Florence Nightingale stepped up to the front door of number five Upper Belgrave Street where Mr Dickens was already vigorously striking the door with the heavy brass knocker. Five heavy thuds that seemed to echo around the quiet streets of Belgravia.