Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [19]
Footsore and hungry, I started towards the harbour to inquire among the fishing boats, thinking my enemies would be less likely to find me there than in the crowds coming and going around the steam packet landing place. Then, when I’d gone halfway, I told myself I was being a fool. Among the fishing boats and obviously not a fisherman’s wife or daughter I might as well carry a banner marked Foreigner. If Trumper came looking for me, he’d find me in minutes. If there was any safety for me, it was in numbers. I turned back for the centre of town, queued at a kiosk and milked my small purse almost to its limits to buy a ticket to Dover on the steam packet.
The quay was already reassuringly crowded with fellow passengers, most of them English. There was a wine merchant with a retinue of porters, clucking over his boxes and barrels, several families with children and screaming babies, even a troupe of Gypsy dancers and jugglers who were collecting a few francs by entertaining the crowd. There was no sign of Trumper or the fat man. I bought a tartine and a cup of strong coffee from a man who’d set up a stall near the gangplank and found a refuge on the edge of the harbour wall, behind packing cases that looked as if they hadn’t been moved for some time.
I sat with my back to a bollard until puffs of steam came out of the funnel of the packet and a shrill whistle blew. That was the signal for the carriages with the richer passengers to set out from the hotels. I watched from the shelter of the packing cases as three of them arrived in a line, with liveried footmen at the back and hotel carts with piles of trunks and boxes following. Still no sign of Trumper’s coach. The gentry from the carriages went on board, fashionably dressed and obviously proud of themselves for surviving their tours of Europe. Their servants followed, arms full of blankets, sunshades, shawls, umbrellas and large china bowls in case the sea turned impolite in mid-Channel.
I was on the point of leaving my hiding place when another carriage came rattling up in a hurry, drawn by two greys, with a hotel’s initials on the door. A tall, dark-haired young man was first out. I recognised him as the brother of the girl who’d been kind to me at the hotel. She followed him out, in a different Parisian hat and a travelling cloak of sky-blue merino, the sun glinting on her bright hair, and they crossed the wharf towards the gangplank. I dodged back out of sight, not wanting her to notice me again after my weakness in the hotel. The man I took to be their father had stopped to say something to the coachman – nothing grateful, judging by the expression on his face as he followed them over the cobbles. I waited until the three of them had disappeared on board, then, as the steam whistle blew a last long blast, pushed into the middle of a final rush of people – one of the families with a crying baby, a porter with a trunk on his back, a juggler with his sack of clubs over his shoulder.
Most of the fashionable passengers had gone below. I made my way to the stern and stood by the rail, watching sandy water churning between us and the quay. Ashore, the carriages that had brought passengers were manoeuvring round each other to go back to the hotels. The little crowd that had watched the steam packet depart was drifting away. A man in a royal-blue jacket was walking slowly towards the town, head bent and hands in his pockets. My heart pounded like a steam engine. There was no mistaking, in