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not identify
one of the corpses we’ve seen this week as your niece. The coroner
will surely take your word and settle her estate in your
favor.”
    The old man stared out the window for
some time before answering. “No. I cannot risk it. I do not wish to
draw attention to myself by acting too hastily.”
    “Indeed, sir. Perhaps, though, as the
Bard says, the tide ‘taken at the flood’—”
    “Save your Shakespeare, boy,” John
Warren snapped, cutting Hodgson off. “I know all about tide and
fortune. I’ve been watching both my entire life. I can be patient a
month more. Then all of it will be mine.”
     
     

CHAPTER 9
     
     
    Sophy stood at the window in the
hallway and looked out at the street, knowing that change was
inevitable, and that her life was about to change once
again.
    Two days before, Maddie had gone for
an afternoon out, and had never returned. Now no one at Urania
Cottage needed to guess who had stolen the ten pounds from under
Sophy’s pillow.
    The absence of an adversary should
have made Sophy’s life easier, but it didn’t. The others openly
blamed her. They acted as if Sophy had ruined a life. They talked
as if she were the devil incarnate, sent to the Cottage to tempt
and ruin them, as well. Mrs. Tibbs’s mood, usually resembling a
grim gray autumn day, now moved resolutely into winter. Her
previously cool treatment of Sophy now became positively glacial.
Losing a resident was perceived as failure by the benefactors and
placed the matron in a difficult position. The letters she wrote to
her employer began to take on the length of some of Mr. Dickens’
own novels.
    Sophy knew her time at Urania Cottage
was coming to an end. She feared, in fact, that Dickens’s next
visit would finalize the decision. She didn’t know what she would
do if it came to that.
    Sophy moved down the hallway to the
window. It hadn’t been raining earlier, but right now a passing
shower was sweeping across the back yards of the neighboring
houses. The window was open slightly, and as she pushed it shut,
she saw what looked like ghostly apparitions swaying in the dark
yard of the Cottage. She knew what they were—a set of sheets and a
single dress, left hanging on the line. All the other wash had been
gathered and brought in. She didn’t have to look in her room to
know the items belonged to her.
    Common sense said to sleep on the bare
mattress and wait for morning. The items were already wet. Still,
she knew the matron would be upset. She’d already scolded Sophy
repeatedly for her lack of attention and for losing things. The
fault of the stolen ten pounds lay with her.
    Sophy hurried down the stairs and out
through the kitchen door, leaving it open. She quickly crossed the
yard, feeling the rain on her face and on her shoulders. Then, as
she gathered her belongings from the line, the rain suddenly
stopped. Everything was soaking wet; she would have to hang them
again on the line tomorrow. But that would be fine, so long as
Tibbs didn’t see them out there first thing in the
morning.
    With her sheets and dress in her arms,
Sophy started for the house. Before she could reach it, though, she
saw the door swing shut.
    “No!”
    She reached for the handle, but to no
avail. Someone on the inside had turned the key in the
lock.
    “Please open the door,” she said,
hoping whoever had locked her out was still on the other side. “Let
me in.”
    There was no answer. The rain had
already soaked through her dress, and she was feeling the cold
dampness on her skin. The prospect of spending the night outside
was one that she preferred not to consider. She could bang at the
door and rouse the matron, but that would not help her position in
the house, at all. Even if she were to throw a pebble at one of the
bedroom windows and wake one of the girls, which of them would come
to her rescue? Not one.
    Sophy thought of her options. There
was a key kept under an old watering can next to Mrs. Tibbs’s
kitchen garden.