And In Walked Portia Adams

Circling like Fawkes

"It has to be Fawkes."

"You can repeat that until you're blue in the face, BonHomme." I answered, tipping my hat at an older couple as they passed us. We were standing on the corner outside of Wilson's Undertaking, bored and annoyed at our assignment. "Until we actually find a witness who can identify him, or we catch him in the act, we're to watch the shop."

BonHomme grunted a response that sounded like a curse word, making me grin despite the fact that I shared his bad mood.

"Too many coincidences for the man not to be involved somehow." I said, agreeing with my partner aloud, "He is caught on two different occasions near the scene of a crime, and then there is the unexplained settling of his debts at the local pubs and shops."

BonHomme nodded, "But he's a shifty one. Wiggins and Harper searched his house, his business, even his mum's. He must have mates helping him hide and fence the booty, but damned if we've seen him with anyone but his master here at the shop."

"And Master Wilson is beyond reproach," I replied glumly, "he's been undertaker here for more than a half-century. Everyone speaks for him."

"Not so for Fawkes."

"Though none call him friend," I said, kicking at a pebble, "no one has a good word or a bad word to say about the man. He's like a ghost."

So far all we had seen Fawkes do in the weeks we had been following him was arrive on time and leave promptly at six o'clock each night. 

"If he gives us one of his cocky smiles tonight ..." BonHomme trailed off, touching his baton.

Again I agreed with the sentiment. Not only did the man seem unperturbed by our surveillance, but he had taken to smirking at the constables assigned to watch him. 

I shook my left foot, which was was starting to fall asleep.

"At least, the robberies have dropped off while we're at his heels." BonHomme said.

"I suppose." I replied.

"You suppose?"

"It's a circular problem. If he is the man responsible, then our obvious surveillance makes him more careful," I said, my eyes on the undertaker's shop, where I could see shadows of movement behind the paned glass. "If only we could have convinced the Sergeant of a more secretive approach."

"Michaels is a bully, and his approach is to bully the man into stopping." BonHomme said with a shrug, "That makes our job all the more boring because it is working."

"Wouldn't it be better though to watch him from afar?" I said, using the same argument I had used a week ago on the Sergeant, "So that he relaxes back into his criminal activities and we can catch him in the act?"

"That smacks of entrapment," BonHomme said, a grin forming around his cigarette. He gave it a tap and then pointed the butt at me, "Actually, that smacks of a certain lovely Canadian whispering in your ear."

This time, I was the one to shrug because he wasn't wrong.

"You haven't brought Miss Adams by the Yard lately," BonHomme said, bumping my arm with his elbow, "I take it you're keeping her to yourself?"

"Why, has Mary finally put you aside?" I replied, referring to BonHomme's new bride, a lovely red-head from the north of England. My preference for Portia Adams was becoming more obvious, despite the various other ladies I had taken out in the past months. And it was true, she had taken to asking me every day after work if the robberies had started up again. 

"I ask for the benefit of my mate, not for myself," he clarified, ignoring my jibe, "I haven't seen her pretty face since that night at Guy's Hospital."

Portia had been working away at the library at Guy's when we had dropped off the body of a man we found frozen to death on the banks of the Thames. She had been immersed in her research on the decomposition of bodies, something I knew far more about thanks to her. I had walked her home very late that night and she had explained her fantastical hypothesis about how Fawkes was ridding himself of the jewellery that he had stolen. It was completely mad of course, but she was determined to test it. And she couldn't do that until another robbery occurred.

"She's the most challenging woman I have ever met. You know the last time we met she had quite the argument to make about the violence between a married couple."

"It would surely make our lives easier if we could throw a few of those beggars in gaol." I answered, having heard Portia's arguments before and agreeing with them entirely.

"You'll hear no argument from me mate, especially after getting an earful from your suffragette upstairs," BonHomme said, raising his hands, and then lowering them, his eyes on the door to the Undertaker's that had just opened.

The man we had been talking about, the man we were convinced was responsible for the rash of high-end burglaries that had been plaguing London, slid out the door like an eel.

BonHomme made to step forward and confront him as we had every time we'd been assigned this duty, but I caught his arm. The man hadn't noticed us, and as much as our superiors had put this strategy in motion, I could at least have a moment of my own.

"Let us hang back." I said to my partner, watching Fawkes pull his hat low over his head and walk in the opposite direction. We would circle around and then follow him.