Free Jewel of the Thames (A Portia Adams Adventure) by Angela Misri

hadn’t been one yet this week, so this seemed a good night to test out my theories.
    I intended to stake out a spot on Westminster Bridge, just south of Scotland Yard, where both of those chases had taken place. From there I would be able to hear if an alarm was raised, and pursue my theory of a water-bound escape.
    The driver let me off with barely a glance. I walked up and onto the bridge from the north side. Westminster sat on the north side of this bridge, with the borough of Lambeth to the south. I passed two alcoves that were already occupied, averting my eyes from a couple giggling and fondling each other in public. Finding a deserted alcove on the east side, I sat down, noting its dark gothic structure and feeling a tingle of foreboding that I quickly shook off.
    “More likely than not, nothing will happen tonight,” I whispered to myself as I shivered, half hopeful and half worried. “I could come back here every night for the next week, and the thief could run down Waterloo Bridge instead.”
    People walked by, vehicles, horses, the usual traffic in a busy city. More than a few people looked at me and then quickly averted their eyes, enough of them staring to feed my insecurity that I had failed at my disguise, and I reddened under my makeup, holding the nose in place when the glue gave way. Fortunately, though I continued to elicit stares, no one stopped and actually spoke to me or demanded to know what I was about.
    Hours passed, and my feet went numb. I began to lose my enthusiasm for this stakeout. It was after three in the morning by now, and no one had passed my pathetic vigil for an hour or so. I chided myself that this was a colossal waste of time, even as I encouraged myself to see out the bloody thing despite my increasingly failing disguise. The glue from my fake nose and eyebrows had betrayed me and there was nothing I could do about that, having only two hands. I chose to focus on holding on to my nose, allowing the furry eyebrows to drop into the snow in front of where I sat, like two lost caterpillars that had somehow stayed alive past their summer lifetime.
    I must have fallen asleep. I awoke to a splash and sprang up, despite my numbed limbs, my fake stomach falling at my feet in a tumbled heap. I cursed under my breath, scooped my rumpled clothing off the filthy cobblestones and squinted in the flickering lamplight. A figure was just exiting the west end of the bridge — he must have run right past me. What was that splash, though? A boat where his partner awaited the pass-off of the loot? 
    Excited, I leaned over the side of the bridge — nothing. I ran to the north side: again, nothing. I could see from here all the way to the Waterloo Bridge in the clear moonlight and nothing was on the water, not even a bird … just the usual rubbish and floating debris that always seemed to litter the Thames. I returned to the south side of the bridge, still seeing nothing moving in the water, certainly no boats, and slapped the stone railing in frustration, causing my rolled up clothing to fall out of my shirt again.
    Just then I heard voices coming in my direction from the far west end of the bridge. Quickly, I shoved my extra clothes under me and sat back down in my original spot, trying to feign a drunken slouch, just in time to watch two constables with a roughly dressed man between them, carrying on an animated discussion. The man was shackled at the wrists and had a determined smirk on his face as the constables heaped insults on him and cuffed him behind the ear.
    “Finally slipped up, didn’tcha, old boy?” one officer said, elbowing the shackled man as they passed me without a second look.
    He’d been caught! My shoulders slumped, dismayed that I had been so wrong. He was not using a boat for his escape at all; he was simply running across the bridge to get from wherever he had committed his crime to wherever his hideout was. Some detective I was!
    They had barely left the bridge when a