She pressed her arm into the bed to lift herself and felt something solid against the point of her elbow. Sitting up, she turned and pushed down upon the bed with both hands. The horsehair mattress was firm, but at this very point, even more so—and lumpy. She had been in the room ten minutes. Soon Mrs. Paige would be calling up the stairs, or sending the Indian girl to find her. She stood up, rolling back the covers so she might with speed make the bed again, and then lifted the bottom sheet to reveal the mattress. Along one side, instead of stitching, a series of pins held the seam in place. She removed them, setting them on top of the white drawn-back sheet. Now she could reach into the mattress. Her fingers were busy, feeling among the fibers to find something she knew had been hidden by Usha Pramal. Soon she touched a cord, which she pulled. She gasped as she realized the cord was attached to a scarlet velvet drawstring bag, which she drew out to inspect. And there was no mistake, it contained a significant amount of money. She reached in again, and found another bag, then one more, secreted in the hair of a long-dead horse.
Stairs creaked, and a voice called out. Maisie moved with speed, sliding the bags into her document case. She replaced the pins, tucked in the bottom sheet and remade the bed.
“Miss Dobbs?”
Maisie slipped on her shoes, stepped out of the room, and looked into the deep blue-brown eyes of the young woman who had answered the door when she arrived at the house. Her head was to one side, and she smiled.
“Mrs. Paige asked me to come find you. Is everything all right?”
“Yes, indeed. Such a lovely room—but I bet it’s cold in winter.”
She laughed. “The whole house is cold in winter—but Usha used to come to my room when there was a frost. She had nothing above her head except the roof; no loft, nothing to keep her warm. But my room has a fireplace, and we bought coal with our spending money—Mr. Paige sells us a pennyworth at a time.”
“He doesn’t just make up your fire for you then?”
Another laugh. “I wish Usha were here—she would find that very funny.”
“Did you know her well?”
The young woman shrugged. “We came from different families—different backgrounds—but we found some company together. She helped me with my lessons, you know. I learned to read and write at school, but she read books I could not understand, so she helped me.”
“Do you work outside this house—I’m sorry, I should have asked your name.”
“My name is Maya Patel. And I do work outside the house, every day, but my employer did not want me to come today—he has had to leave London at short notice.”
Maisie heard Mrs. Paige call up the stairs, telling Maya Patel to escort Miss Dobbs to the front door, as she was seeing the grocer about the delivery. When they reached the door, Maisie turned to Maya Patel.
“Would it be possible for me to speak to you—alone—at some point soon? It’s about Usha.”
The young woman looked down, and nodded. “Yes, I think I should like to speak about Usha.”
“How might I find you? I don’t think I can come back here in a hurry.”
“I will be at my second employer’s house tomorrow afternoon until four o’clock. I can meet you at St. Pancras station—near the entrance. Would half past four be suitable?”
“Of course. Half past four then, at St. Pancras.”
Maya Patel nodded. “And please, Miss Dobbs, take care of Usha’s nest egg. She worked very hard for her money. We see hardly any wages from our work. It was her passage home, you see, and more important, for her school. She wanted to build a school for poor girls. ‘If I have to teach in the streets, I will, Maya,’ she said. And she meant it.”
Maisie looked at the young woman, into sweet eyes of light and dark that could see with such clarity. “Don’t worry—I will see that her money goes to the right place.”
After collecting her jacket she waved to Maya Patel and made her way along the road to her MG motor car. And as she placed the case into the back of the car, using her jacket to cover the valuables, she looked down at her blouse. A single black hair, long and shining like polished ebony, perhaps caught from the bedclothes when Maisie searched Usha