The hand looked too bold, too practiced. A man’s hand. A little shiver ran up her spine. Was this the work of Nancy’s lover? Proposing assignations?
Or political meetings. She stared at one. 12 Caroline Place. Was that not the address Dragan had given her? She pulled up the short note from M. Cordell, also written from 12 Caroline Place.
What did this mean? That someone had told Nancy to go there? To the other addresses? Lovers’ assignations? Or something more sinister?
Hastily, she seized a sheet of notepaper from the bureau in the corner and scribbled down the addresses on the paper scraps, then the names and addresses of Nancy’s unknown correspondents. Then she bundled the letters back up and retied the ribbon keeping back the address scraps, which she put in the drawer of her bedside table.
Taking only her own notes with her, she repaired to the library and hunted down the most recent map of London. This turned out to be one clearly produced for the upcoming Exhibition, because the building was clearly marked in Hyde Park with all the paths and roads leading to it.
She pored over it for some time, tracking down each address on her list. Most of them were in respectable, though not necessarily affluent, areas. Only one was decidedly dubious in the maze of streets close to Mr. Wells’s soup kitchen in St. Giles.
She shivered as she remembered where she had found Nancy. With difficulty, she found Mudd Lane on the map and realized Nancy had died not so very far from this address. Sheltered as she was, Griz knew only to go into St. Giles in a carriage and never to walk there alone. The place was a maze of rookeries, a morass of poverty and crime. Had Nancy been involved in something worse than radical politics?
Immediately, the memory she had been looking for in Nancy's bedroom popped up to the surface. Horace and Mr. Gabriel in the library, celebrating an important arrest.
We’ve brought down a whole gang of treasonous dogs in the rookeries.
Rookeries, as Griz understood the term, were tenements full of thieves and murderers and other dangerous villains. Places that neither the police nor respectable people dared to enter without very good reason. Was the St. Giles address a rookery? Nancy would never have gone near such a place.
Knowingly.
But Horace’s words seemed to imply an unexpected connection between sedition and straightforward crime. Could Nancy possibly have got mixed up in such confusion? Perhaps via a wealthy lover she called a gentleman?
Griz jumped to her feet and ran, barely remembering to grab her old cloak and bonnet before she left the house.
***
Caroline Place, where the hackney dropped her, was a quiet street of smallish houses with gardens. Griz guessed its residents were better off clerks with a scattering, perhaps, of lawyers and doctors and the like. Number twelve had a bright redpainted front door and a tidy path.
Griz raised the polished brass knocker and rapped.
The door was opened by a slightly harassed looked middle-aged maidservant.
“Good morning,” Griz said civilly. “Is Mr. Tizsa at home?”
The servant bridled, but before she could open her mouth, another woman bustled up behind her. “Who is it, Hilda? Are they looking for Dr. Cor…” She broke off as the servant stood back and she saw Griz.
Griz smiled tentatively. “Mrs. Cordell?”
“Yes?”
“Good morning. My name is Niven. I was hoping to speak to Mr. Tizsa.”
“I’m afraid he is out on a call.”
“Drat, I should have known he wouldn’t be in. I should have sent a note instead.” She hesitated, wondering what best to do.
“If it is an urgent matter, Dr. Cordell could see you,” his wife said reluctantly.
“Oh, no, it is not a medical matter,” Griz assured her, becoming aware of the assessing nature of Mrs. Cordell’s gaze.
Whatever that lady saw did not inspire her to close the door in her visitor’s face. Instead, she stood back.
“Dragan should not be long. Come in and wait, if you wish.”
“Oh, thank you, how kind,” Griz said in quick relief. “Though I hesitate to disturb your Sunday.”
“It is always a pleasure to meet a friend of Dragan’s.”
Griz felt a twinge of guilt, doubting that Dragan would class her amongst his friends, but she smiled and stepped inside.
Mrs. Cordell ushered her into a parlor, where two girls on the cusp of womanhood sat sewing on the window seat. A craggy but still handsome man rose from an armchair by the fire.
“Miss Niven came to see Dragan, Arthur,” Mrs. Cordell explained. “Miss Niven, my husband,