Chapter 1: Lord Kingsborough
Charlemagne Griffon, Charlie to his friends, was just finishing breakfast in his Whitechapel house when the front doorbell rang. Etherton, his valet, housekeeper, engineer, and armourer, went to find out who it was and returned after a minute.
“It’s Seamus and some lord, I’ve put them in the drawing room.”
“What do they want?”
“No idea, but they want to talk to you.”
Seamus was the gang leader of the Whitechapel area of London. He ran the docks, prostitution, pubs, and protection. Charlie was stepping out with his daughter Samantha who had her sights firmly set on him as her husband. It was a nervous relationship as he did the occasional job for Seamus and knew he was quite capable of dealing out beatings or even worse to people that displeased him. What he was doing rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy he had no idea.
Intrigued, Charlie mopped up the last of his eggs, stood and pulled on his smoking jacket. The drawing room was at the front of the house which caught the morning sun.
“Charlie me boy, top of the morning to ya,” Seamus said and shook his hand. “Allow me to introduce an acquaintance of mine Edward King, Lord Kingsborough of Cork.”
King stood and shook hands; Charlie’s eyes were drawn to a large volume he had placed on the side table.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr Griffon, Seamus tells me you are an explorer and adventurer.”
“I am. I have been on a number of expeditions including Egypt and Nepal.”
“Excellent, excellent,” King said and sat back down.
Charlie exchanged a questioning look with Seamus and sat down in the chair next to King, Seamus took the third chair and Etherton arrived with a tray of tea. Once they all had a cup Charlie asked, “What is it you are looking for me to do?”
“Oh! Yes,” King said, pulled suddenly from his deep thoughts. He turned the book around so Charlie could see it and opened the cover. The first page caused his eyebrows to rise.
“This is a work I put together to collect a number of different Mayan documents in one place. As you can see from the list, I have copied documents held in museums and libraries from Berlin to Vienna. This is volume one of nine that I have published, but it is volume ten that holds the key.”
He stopped talking and looked at Charlie expectantly.
“That looks like the work of a lifetime, what do you want me to do with it?” Charlie said, still none the wiser.
Seamus stepped in. “Lord Kingsborough, has managed to decipher a document which tells us that, at the time the Mayan empire collapsed, they hid a large number of golden artifacts in a lake in Yucatan.”
That explains Seamus’s involvement, Charlie thought but Seamus wasn’t finished.
“His Lordship believes the artifacts will prove his theory that the Mayans were descended from a lost tribe of Israelites.”
King became animated and launched into an extended explanation of his thesis, which, as far as Charlie was concerned, boiled down to the Mayans being a lost tribe that made its way from the Middle East to Mexico after the Israelites fled Egypt at the time of Moses.
When he ran out of steam Seamus said, “I have agreed to fund an expedition to recover the artifacts and I want you to lead it.”
“Mexico?” Etherton said later, “never been there. America, isn’t it?”
“Sort of. The bit we are interested in is here.” Charlie turned a large globe he had in his study and pointed to the Yucatan peninsula. “There’s a place in the middle somewhere called Hormiguero and near that is the lake.”
“All that from a volume of his book that he hasn’t published yet,” Etherton said, not convinced.
“Which is why he hasn’t published it and may never do so. He thinks the content is so important that it may turn history as we know it on its head. He went so far as to fake his own death in debtors’ prison in ’37 so he could continue work on it in secret.”
“How did he get linked up with Seamus? That’s as unlikely alliance as I’ve ever seen.”
“Apparently their families have been ‘doing business’ for years and when he wanted to disappear, he asked Seamus to help him.”
Etherton barked a laugh. “I bet he found a convenient cadaver to substitute for King.”
“Actually, he did, a homeless man who bore a passing resemblance to King who died of typhus.”
Etherton chewed that over then said, “Alright, what do we do next?”
“I need to talk to Felix,” Charlie said.
Felix Mountebank Esquire was a bon vivant, gourmet, archivist who worked for the British Museum. He was a fount of all knowledge and had been Charlie’s friend for years. He was also, coincidentally, the museum’s acquirer-in-chief of things not on the open market.
“Charlamagne, so nice to see you, old boy, you are looking well. Samantha hasn’t got you to put a ring on her finger yet?” Felix greeted him in The Jack Horner public house on Tottenham Court Road. They sat at a window table surrounded by dark oak panelling, illuminated by crystal chandeliers. The menu was famous.
“Very funny, I don’t see you getting married.”
“God no, I’m not that stupid or desperate. Married women are far less demanding.”
“One of these days, a husband is going to catch you at it and end your sorry life,” Charlie smirked.
“Then I shall go out in a blaze of glory, but you didn’t ask to meet me to discuss my imminent demise.”
“No, what do you know about Lord Kingsborough?”
“Kingsborough? Been dead for years, was an expert on Mayan codices. Had some funny ideas about the Maya being descended from a lost tribe of Israelites. “
“The work he did was it good?”
“My dear fellow, if you want my professional opinion, the least you could do is buy me lunch.”
Charlie sighed. The expression ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’ was never more accurate than when applied to Felix.
Felix ordered a plate of whitebait as a starter and followed it with a large slab of beef and oyster pie, new season potatoes and steamed broccoli. He washed that down with a couple of pints of Fuller’s best bitter. While he ate and drank, he talked.
“Kingsborough spent his fortune on getting his books produced and published. Ended up in debtor’s prison for being unable to pay a minor debt to a printer. While he was in there, he contracted typhus and left this mortal coil. His work, all nine volumes of it, are a fine collection of Mayan codices and documents that would grace any library. His only fault was his obsession with the Israel connection.”
“What if I told you he was still alive and well and had completed the tenth volume,” Charlie said very quietly, “and that he has found evidence to support his claim in the location of artifacts hitherto unknown?”
“I would say you are delusional and that you need to buy me desert before they take you off to bedlam.” Felix laughed then looked at Charlie for a long moment. “Good Lord, you’re serious.”
Charlie nodded, “I am going after the artifacts.”
“You need to buy me desert anyway, I feel quite faint.”
“I need your help.”
Felix recovered miraculously and said, “Naturally I would be pleased to, but what’s in it for the museum?”
“I will get my sponsor to give you first refusal on anything we find.”
The waiter arrived to clear their table and asked, “Can I get you something else?”
“I see you have apple and blackberry crumble.”
“Yes, Sir, with cream or custard?”
“Both. Charlie?”
“I will have a glass of port, a big one.”
“Sounds delightful. I’ll have one of those as well,” Felix said and when the waiter left asked, “I won’t ask who the sponsor is, it could create a conflict of interest. What do you need?”
“What do you know about a place called Hormiguero?”
“Not much, it’s not my area of expertise. We do have a couple of experts in the field who I can ask. Can you give me a couple of days?
“Of course, we are nowhere near being ready to leave yet.”
Charlie and Etherton were in their armoury, which was a strongroom built into the cellar of his house. Triple-thickness walls and a door that a bank would find acceptable for their vault, secured the most extensive private collection of guns in London, if not the United Kingdom. Some were antiques, some souvenirs, the ones they were cleaning were fine examples of the state of the art.
Charlie had a pair of 36 calibre Colt 1851 Navy Revolvers chambered to take the new foil-wrapped cartridges, a Colt 44 calibre six shot model 1855 revolving carbine and a pair of Derringer double-barrelled pocket guns.
Etherton worked on their Westley Richards Cavalry Carbines, breach-loaded, single-shot, snipers’ rifles fitted with telescope sights. Beside them were his brace of brand-new, Remington 1858 pocket revolvers with spare cylinders. These .31 calibre pistols were meant for close use which suited him just fine as he preferred to use a rifle. If anybody got close enough for him to need his pistols these would be more than sufficient, and they were also extremely light. Finally, a couple of Louise Dolne combination knuckle-duster/knife/pistols completed the ensemble.
“We will need to put together a team for this job.” Etherton said as he carefully filed a burr off the trigger seer of a rifle.
“Yes, it’s a shame Stan and the boys stayed in Egypt. They would be ideal,” Charlie said referring to the former French Foreign Legion squad they had worked with in the desert.
“I can put the word out at the Service Men’s Club,” Etherton offered. The club was frequented by former soldiers and sailors and was also known as the Army and Navy Club.
“I expect Seamus will offer a couple of men. He will want someone to keep an eye on things.”
“Protecting his investment,” Etherton smirked.
They both laughed at that. Then Charlie sobered. “One thing has been bothering me.”
“What’s that?”
“If the treasure is at the bottom of a lake, how do we get it out?”
Seamus visited and Samantha came with him. She was everything Seamus wasn’t and, favouring her mother who had died when she was ten. He was a hulking, six foot two, bull of a man. Broad shouldered, barrel chested, long legged, with arms that bulged with muscle from years working as a stevedore. He had a shock of brown hair under a baker’s boy cap and piercing blue eyes. He habitually carried a stick made of an oak root that had a large knot at the end.
Samantha was moderately tall at five feet nine, slim rather than slender with the shapely legs of a dancer, her hips were in proportion to her shoulders and her waist nipped in nicely below pert breasts. She had chestnut hair that, when she let it loose, fell almost to her backside. Her eyes were her father’s, piercing blue and mischievous.
Charlie met them in the drawing room. “Hello Seamus, I was expecting you.”
He embraced Samantha. “Hello, I was hoping you would call.”
“Well, you can take me out to dinner once Daddy has gone,” she purred in his ear.
“Put her down and sit with me,” Seamus said. “You go find that man of his and get us some beer,” he said to Samantha.
She looked at him defiantly, the glint of steel in her eyes.
“Please, I need to talk to Charlie without you interrupting,” Seamus said more reasonably.
“Pfft. Men!” she said and left.
Charlie waited; Seamus would get to the point in his own time.
“You will be taking his Lordship with you.”
“What? He—”
Seamus held up his hand, forestalling Charlie’s protest.
“He is one of very few who can interpret the codex and any stuff that’s written over there.”
Charlie subsided. “Makes sense I suppose.”
“I will send two of my boys with you to look after him.”
“Do they have experience of the jungle?”
“Pat and Danny are woodsmen from Waterford, they will manage.”
“Pat Donahue?”
“Yes, and Danny MacGyver.”
“I know them, good men.”
“I know, they will make sure you come back alive as well.”
“Me? Why? Oh,” he said, just as Samantha returned with Etherton carrying bottles of pale ale and glasses on a tray.
Felix sent a message that he had information, it was qualified with, “not sure how much use it will be.” They met as before in The Jack Horner for lunch.
“Paté to start and some of your delicious fish pie with braised cabbage,” Felix ordered.
“Smoked eel, Shepherd’s pie and vegetables,” Charlie said. “Two pints of Extra Porter please.”
“Porter?” Felix said.
“You look pale, your blood needs thickening,” Charlie said.
The beer arrived dark, nutty, hoppy and delicious.
“What do you have for me?” Charlie said after wiping white froth from his upper lip. He suddenly had the thought that it was strange that black beer had a white head.
“Your target is pretty much in the middle of the peninsula, in the middle of the jungle. There is one report of an expedition by the Spaniards back in 1650ish which says it was a splendid site with grand buildings. Since then, nothing.”
“Do we have a location?”
“The Spanish said it was practically due west of Chetumal, a town on the east coast of the peninsula.”
“How far west?”
“Aah, now there’s the thing. They state that it was thirty leagues. But whether that was measured in land leagues or sea leagues we don’t know.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Oh yes, quite a significant one. A land league is about two and six tenth miles. A Spanish sea league varies from three and six tenth nautical miles and four and a fifth nautical miles.”
“I can see why they got rid of them.” Charlie considered the problem. “Well, if they were travelling over land then they probably measured it in land leagues. So, we are looking for some ruins in the middle of a jungle around eighty miles, give or take ten miles or so, west-ish of a town on the coast of the Yucatan which may or may not be in the same place.”
“Eighty miles through the rain forest is a long way,” Felix said, concern in his voice.
“Eighty miles on foot is a long way over any sort of terrain. This could end up being hell on earth,” Charlie sighed.
Chapter 2: Preparation
Charlie found that assembling, kitting out and provisioning an expedition was rather more complicated than he expected. Someone had always done it for them before. He wrote to Stan Billings in Egypt and told him what he was doing. They were regular correspondents and he expected nothing from it as Stan and his team had signed on as instructors with the army over there.
He placed adverts in The Times, The Mail and The Standard for archaeologists and guards for an expedition into the jungles of South America.
“Mail has arrived,” Etherton said as he dropped a medium-sized sack on the floor in Charlie’s study.
“What the hell?” Charlie said.
They opened it.
“Answers to the adverts,” Etherton snorted as he sorted through a fistful.
“Phew, this lot is going to take some going through,” Charlie groaned.
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“Suggest away.”
“I’ll open them, and you sort them, just a quick look to see what they are applying for and if they look credible. Throw the ones that don’t pass first muster in the bin and sort the rest onto archaeologists and guards.”
Charlie brightened. “Then we only have to read the ones that are left.”
“You only have to read the ones that are left,” Etherton corrected him.
They set up a system where Etherton opened the letters with a sharp knife and passed the content to Charlie who scanned the first line. If the correspondent didn’t say which position he was applying for the letter went straight in the rubbish bin. The pile of applicants for guards was twice the height of the pile for archaeologists.
“I think I need help with these,” Charlie said as he started reading the archaeologist applications.
“Ask Felix,” Etherton said, “he must know what’s a good un and what isn’t.”
“Good idea,” Charlie said and wrote Felix a note.
The next three days saw even more letters arrive, most were genuine applications, a few were from, apparently, crazy people predicting his doom. One from a catholic priest warning him that dabbling in these things would lead to the damnation of his soul. And three proposals of marriage.
“There’s a reply from Felix here.” Etherton said, handing Charlie the letter.
“Oh, good he says he will help, and it will only cost me a bottle of wine. Da de da de da, right, he will visit on the weekend.” Charlie sighed, “I was going to take Sam out to the theatre.”
“Why will he stop you doing that?” Etherton said.
“Felix will want to dine out, at my expense.”
“Tell him you will after the job is done, not before. Would you rather face the ire of Samantha or him moaning he is hungry?”
Charlie nodded, Etherton was, as ever, eminently practical, and right.
Felix made short work of a second sort through of the archaeological applicants.
“The need to have knowledge of the Mayans or they will be bloody useless,” he said.
The pile was reduced to just three possible candidates.
“Professor Anthony Humboldt, Research Fellow, University of York, forty-three years old. Has written three papers on Mayan civilisation. Professor Augustine von Luchner, formerly of University of Tübingen. Retired.”
Felix grinned as he passed over the third, “Mrs. Edwina Barbour, research assistant and curator, Newnham College, Cambridge. I know her. She is thirty-three years old, widowed, husband was a soldier, killed in some pointless skirmish somewhere, five feet one tall and an absolute ball of energy and enthusiasm. Specialises in all things South American and can read the codex.”
“Are you saying I should take her?”
“I am saying you should talk to her.”
The next Monday, Charlie took the morning train to Cambridge from Liverpool Street. It would take a couple of hours to get there which gave him time to read the paper and get a cup of tea from the trolley. He pondered his weekend. Felix’s brutal efficiency in thinning out the unsuitable candidates had allowed him to get away with buying him Sunday lunch.
He had taken Samantha to see the Courier of Lyons by Charles Reade at the Adelphi in the Strand. It was the opening night and Queen Victoria and her consort had been there. The story about mistaken identity and the miscarriage of justice had been entertaining and at the after-show party they met both the writer and the lead actor, Charles Kean.
Queen Victoria was introduced to the cast and Prince Albert said hello to Charlie.
“Does he know you?” Samantha whispered to Charlie.
“Not that I know of,” he had whispered back, but then he saw him chatting to Felix who grinned at him over the prince’s shoulder.
“I didn’t know Felix was coming to the show either.”
He and Samantha walked to Covent Garden and took supper at the Punch and Judy. The pub was famous for its food and a stone’s throw from the Globe, so was popular with actors and the public. They had rubbed shoulders with the great and the good while sampling some exceptional food.
All in all, it had been a very successful weekend.
The train chuffed and sighed its way to a halt in Cambridge. Charlie looked around. It was a relatively new line having been built in 1845 and the station looked modern. He asked and found that Newnham College was a thirty-minute walk away.
He approached the doors and a porter stepped out of a niche to intercept him.
“Can I help you, Sir?”
“I am here to see Mrs Edwina Barbour.” He handed him his card which he read through pince nez glasses.
“Please wait here,” he said and looked him up and down. “Men aren’t allowed inside the college.”
Charlie was tempted to ask what that made him but kept quiet.
He stood in the shade by the porter’s niche and saw that there was a board where the names of any young ladies who left the college were listed. It included the time they left and returned.
“Mr Griffon?” a firm female voice asked.
Charlie looked around then down. He was six feet tall in his socks and the heels of his shoes added an inch to that. He looked down at a perfectly proportioned woman of five feet one. Brown hair tied up in a bun, an errant lock hanging across her forehead and over her left eye. Hazel eyes, fine cheekbones and a strong chin that was thrust towards him. Conservatively dressed she held out an ink-stained hand.
“Mrs Barbour? So pleased to meet you.”
“Call me Eddie please. Let’s walk, the gardens are lovely.”
They wandered off. Charlie noticed the porter kept a watchful eye on them both.
“My name is Charlie.”
She giggled. “Charlamagne is a little pretentious.”
“My parents were in the theatre.”
“Felix told me you were coming; he sent a semaphore message to expect you.”
“You’ve known him long?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
Charlie looked at her, puzzled.
Eddie rolled her eyes, “He is my brother.”
“Oh,” Charlie said.
“He didn’t know I was going to apply for the position!” she said afraid Charlie would reject her because of it.
Charlie looked her up and down. “There isn’t much of a family resemblance.”
“Not since he got fat, but when we were children, we were alike.”
Charlie snorted a laugh, “It’s hard to imagine Felix as a child.”
They stopped at a gazebo and sat.
“Why do you want to go on this expedition?”
“Because you are going into an area that hasn’t been explored since the Spanish conquistadors invaded those lands. No one in modern times has been there and we can learn so much.”
“Did Felix tell you who is sponsoring it?”
“He told me that Lord K is alive and well and has an unpublished tenth volume.”
“Did he.” Charlie said and made a mental note to have a stern word with his friend.
“Please don’t be cross with him, he told me to try and put me off. That old duffer is a genius at pulling together the information, but he is as mad as a fruit bat with his ideas of Zion and knows nothing of field archaeology.”
“And you are an expert?”
“I have experience, I have been on many field digs.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“Yes, I do, I’m quite fluent.”
“Lord K will be coming on the trip. Would that cause you a problem?”
“Not at all, from what Felix tells me I will be watching out for you rather than him. You have quite the reputation.”
“I am definitely going to have some strong words with your brother when we get to London.”
“We? Am I going then?”
“As soon as you can free yourself from your duties here.”
“It’s the end of the school year, I can leave anytime.”
Eddie was given a room in Charlie’s house and immediately started to organise the archaeological side of the expedition.
“I’ve gotten her a tent for herself, a hammock and nets,” Etherton said. “How’s she getting on with Lord K?”
“He ignores her. He hasn’t a clue what she is talking about most of the time.”
“I heard him muttering, ‘That damn woman!’”
“That was after he met Samantha.”
“Oh really?”
“He made a comment like,” and Charlie imitated Lord K’s Irish brogue, “me dear, Colleen, ye should be bearing children like a good catholic not chasing around after that prodi.”
“Prodi?”
“Me, the evil protestant.”
“Pfft, he doesn’t know you.”
“To know me is to love me,” Charlie grinned
“How have you gotten on with the selection of our team?”
“Slowly, apart from the two that Seamus has provided. Hardly any are fit enough, none have any experience and others are just crooks looking for an opportunity. Some were chucked out of the army, others left because they couldn’t take it. The few that stand a chance I’m interviewing on Friday. How are you getting on with the problem of searching the lake?”
“I have a couple of ideas. I will try one out at the weekend.”
Friday came around and a short line of men formed up outside the front door. Samantha volunteered to act as door keeper as Etherton was locked away in the vault with his machines and Eddie was shopping for equipment for the digs.
They were getting ready to start when there were raised voices from outside and the sounds of a fight.
“What the hell?” Charlie said and picked up a cane before heading to the door. He threw it open and stopped dead. Samantha followed and peered over his shoulder.
“Charlie!” shouted a big suntanned man wearing a battered Kepi who was in the process of punching a man he had held by the neck. Another five men were behind him in different phases of disposing of opponents.
“Stan? What the hell are you doing here?”
Stan let the man go and sent him on his way down the street with a boot up his backside.
“When your letter arrived me and some of the lads decided to come and join you. Training the Arabs was getting old and boring, and this sounded like fun.”
“No Griff or Bob?” Charlie asked as he looked around the team.
“Griff’s got himself hitched up with a belly dancer. Got her pregnant so stayed behind. Bob’s dead.”
“Dead? What happened?”
“Stupid bastard got drunk and got into an argument with a camel. Apparently, he was stood face to face with it cursing it out and calling it all the names under the sun. The camel took it for a while then got fed up and kicked him in the head.”
“Stove his head right in,” Razor added, finally free of his encumbrance. “I had to scoop ’is brains back into his skull.”
“Eeuw!” Samantha said.
That evening the eight toasted absent friends and told tall tales of Bob’s prowess with a gun and the women.
The team was completed on Tuesday the following week when Eddie
announced she had found a suitable assistant. She turned up with a, as far as Charlie could see, an athletic-looking toy boy.
“When can we get passage to – where is it?” Charlie asked
“Chetumal. We can’t. At least not directly,” Etherton said.
Charlie shot him a look, “Well how do we get there then?”
“Ship to Havana, then hire a boat or get passage on one that is going to Chetumal,” Eddie said as she walked up to them youth in tow.
“This is Alexander, or Alex for short. He is a post graduate student of Archaeology out of Oxford. He is doing his doctorate on Southern American pre-colonial civilisations.”
“Hello, Alex, what else do you do?”
“I play Rugby and I’m a blue at rowing, I also dabble in engineering. Steam-powered compressors for storing gas. I’m looking for a way to increase the pressure.”
“Really?” Etherton said his face lighting up. “Come with me.”
“Well really!” Eddie said as the two disappeared down to the cellar.
Charlie visited the local branch of Thomas Cook to see about passage to Cuba. He walked through the entrance into a wood-panelled emporium decorated with posters of exotic destinations; a rather pretty clerk greeted him.
“Good afternoon, Sir, can I help you? My name is Penelope,” she said and indicated he should take the chair opposite her desk.
His predatory instinct kicked in. “Hello, Penelope, my name is Charlie. I would like to find out if there are any ships travelling to Havana in the near future,” he said, sliding into the offered chair and looking into eyes that were a delightful blue.
Penelope tagged him as a flirt and pulled out a large shipping timetable from a drawer. She flicked through it.
“There is a ship leaving Liverpool on the twenty-ninth that stops at Havana. How many passengers would you like to book for?”
“Thirteen plus quite a lot of equipment and baggage.”
She looked up, surprised, from the pad she was writing the details on.
“Thirteen? Oh my, that is a lot. How much baggage and equipment?”
“About two tons.”
“Isn’t that a little excessive?”
“It’s an expedition. I’m an explorer.”
“Oh.” She wrote that down. “I will have to contact the shipping agent and see if they can accommodate you.”
“Maybe we could have dinner to discuss the arrangements,” Charlie said.
“If you could give me your details?” she said looking deep into his eyes.
“Charlemagne Griffon.”
“Charlemagne, an impressive name.”
“Thank you.”
“Where can we contact you?”
“4 Nelson Street, Whitechapel.”
She sat up straight and looked at him appraisingly. “We will contact you once we have talked to the agent.”
“Dinner?” Charlie said hopefully.
“Mr Griffon, I would be delighted, and I am sure my husband would enjoy your company as well.”
“Husband? You are married?”
“Does that mean dinner is off?” she smiled archly.
A messenger came and Charlie gathered the team together.
“We can ship out from Liverpool on the twenty-ninth. The Steamship Persia will depart at 6 PM. An express train from Euston Station takes four hours to get there. I propose we get the ten o’clock,” Charlie said.
“The equipment will be collected by Seamus’s waggoneers at seven AM so make sure you have everything ready. If we don’t take it, we will have to do without it as there won’t be an opportunity to buy replacements en route,” Etherton said.
Charlie looked at the document that the messenger had brought.
“We have seven cabins, so I propose that Eddie gets one to herself and the rest of us double up.”
Seamus and Samantha visited. “I hear you are preparing to leave,” Seamus said.
“News travels fast. Yes, we sail to Havana at the end of the month. Once we are there, we will find transport to Chetumal.”
Charlie handed over the invoice from Thomas Cook. Samantha glanced at it.
“Thomas Cook in Fleet Street? My friend Penelope works there,” she said.
Charlie groaned inwardly.