Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (12 page)

‘Yes, that’s exactly right. You have a remarkable memory, Fannella, but I don’t see . . .’

‘No, listen again, “
This newspaper demands to know
”.
If anyone’s in a position to know anything they are. I reckon they’re working on it now. Even if they don’t have a name I bet you a bottle of Fitzy’s best porter they’ve got something on him.’

Lucca picked some paint from under his thumbnail. After a moment he turned to look at me, watchful. ‘You are much more intelligent than your brother, Kitty, you do know that, don’t you?’

I was exasperated. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone knows Joey had, no . . .
has
a brain like a watchmaker. But what do you think? Will you come to the offices of
The London Pictorial News
with me, please?’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow morning, first thing. And I’m not going out dressed as a Tom again, if that’s what you’re thinking. No, this will be a visit from Miss Kitty Peck, The Limehouse Linnet.’

Lucca grinned. ‘Of course I’ll come. That’s a performance I wouldn’t want to miss. But you don’t need to buy me porter – I prefer champagne.’ He arched his eyebrow.

I snorted. ‘Like you’ve ever had a taste of that, Lucca Fratelli.’

Brushing down my skirt, I stood up. ‘Got to be off now. I’m due at The Comet for six tonight. Danny’s been fretting over the chains and wants to adjust the balance while I’m sitting in the cage.’

I stepped over to the ladder and was just about to start down again when a thought occurred. ‘Lucca, what does “
pulchritudinous
” mean exactly. Is it something dirty?’

He coughed, but I think it was a laugh. ‘It means beautiful – like you, Fannella.’

Sam Collins was skinny as a broom handle. He had to keep flicking his brown hair out of his eyes to see us proper. That could do with a good trim, I thought.

‘I can’t tell you what a pleasure this is, Miss Peck. As soon as Peters told me you were in the office downstairs I asked him to bring you up to see me immediately. You and Mr . . .?’

‘Fratelli. Lucca Fratelli.’ Lucca offered his hand and Sam shook it warmly.

‘Excellent, excellent. Well, please sit down, both of you.’ He gestured at the two chairs in front of his cluttered narrow desk. ‘Can I offer you tea? Peters makes a horrible pot, to be frank, but it’s warm and brown and with an extra spoon of sugar you don’t always notice the under tang.’

He spoke faster than anyone I’d ever met before. The words tumbled out from his mouth like matchboxes coming off the belt at Bryant & May’s. He tapped his fingers on the table too – a right bundle of nerves he was – I noticed they were all stained over with ink.

‘I must say it’s very exciting to meet you, Miss Peck. What a treat on a dull Monday morning. I have to confess that I am something of a follower. I was there at The Gaudy on the very first night, you know. And I’ve been back several times since. You are extraordinarily brave and very talented. Did I offer you tea?’

‘No thanks to the tea.’ I smiled. Despite all his twitching and gabble I already liked Sam Collins. There was something very open about him and I noticed that he didn’t bat an eye when he looked at Lucca. I thought that was good of him.

When we’d arrived at the offices I wasn’t sure what to expect. Certainly I thought they might be grander than the slender four-storey building we found in a side passage off Holborn. I’d dressed up proper for the occasion in my best blue, with all the lace at the neck, and I had a fur borrowed from the wardrobe. But looking at the piles of dusty papers tottering behind the front desk and at the harassed, pinched faces of the grey clerks scurrying around like mice in a church organ, I realised that
The London Pictorial News
wasn’t exactly a top-drawer publication.

Peters – that was the man who met us at the front desk, I assumed – asked our business and as soon as Lucca said my name he was off up the stairs like a Sunday afternoon customer at Mrs Dainty’s.

A minute later he was back, all smiles. ‘Mr Collins would be vewy happy to wecieve you. If you would just come this way, sir, madam.’

I’d never been called madam before. Lucca poked me in the back as we made our way up the dingy stairs. Peters rounded the corner of the staircase above and disappeared. Then his voice came again: ‘Office on the wight, if you please.’ It was obvious that there wasn’t room for all of us on the cramped landing.

I knocked on the door and Sam Collins called out, ‘Enter, enter.’

I’d thought at the time that he sounded very young to be an editor. Now as I sat there in front of him he grinned at me like a schoolboy.

‘I fear you have made the right decision about the tea. Now what can I do for you, Miss Peck, Mr Fratelli?’ He looked from one of us to the other and beamed.

I cleared my throat and adjusted my bit of fur. ‘Are you the editor of
The London Pictorial
, Mr Collins, only you don’t seem . . .’

‘Ah, there you have me. Smoked already! You would make an excellent journalist, Miss Peck. No, you are quite right. I am not the editor of this esteemed publication. At this very moment he is . . . gathering information at The Lion and Seven Stars, three streets away. I am merely a humble correspondent, but as Peters – and, look here, I may as well admit it –
all
of the boys downstairs know of my deep appreciation of your talents, he knew he could not turn you away without me seeing you. And perhaps you have something for us? A freshly minted song, perhaps? A sensational new act? An exclusive?’ His inky fingers drummed away as he stared at me.

‘Well, thing is, it’s not exactly news we’re interested in. Not news for you, anyways.’

Sam looked a bit down, so I carried on quick. ‘Although now we’ve met – and you being so partial – I’ll obviously make sure that you get a first crack on anything I might be doing down the halls. That’s a deal.’

He brightened up. ‘Well, that’s very considerate. Thank you, Miss Peck. And what would you require in return exactly?’ There you see, Sam Collins might have looked green as a leaf in April and he might have had more tics and twitches than an inmate at Bedlam, but he was a sharp one.

I nodded at Lucca and he took over. ‘Would it surprise you to know that we are interested in art, Mr Collins?’ Sam raised an eyebrow under that fringe as Lucca went on. ‘It should not. Although it is true that we work in what some might regard as the lowliest field of expression, my friend and I have a keen interest in all forms of artistic endeavour.’

I grinned into my fur. Lucca had a lovely way with words sometimes. And with his accent he sounded much more cultural than I ever could. If it wasn’t for the scar he could pass anywhere. He carried on, ‘We have an appreciation of painting in particular and, if possible, we would very much like to know the identity of—’

‘Ha! You and the rest of us.’ Sam thumped the desk. ‘You want to know who painted
The Cinnabar Girls
, don’t you?’

We nodded in unison.

‘If I knew, don’t you think
The London Pictorial
would have printed the name by now? The story would be an absolute scoop, as I believe my American counterparts might say. No, I’m afraid I have nothing to offer, unfortunately.’

‘But you are trying to find out who painted it, aren’t you? Your paper
demands
to know his identity. I read it.’

‘Did you, Miss Peck? I wrote that.’ Sam grinned from ear to ear and for a moment he stopped all that twitching and flicking. ‘So I was thinking’, I carried on, ‘that you must be investigating that painting a bit behind the scenes. You are trying to track him down,
smoke
him, aren’t you?’

Sam nodded. ‘Without much luck so far I have to admit. But I have some promising leads and hopes of—’ He broke off and stared at me through his fringe. ‘But why would this be of any interest to
you
?’ His eyes narrowed and he looked at Lucca. ‘Why?’

Of an instant I had an idea – a good one. ‘Listen, Sam, I’ll give you a proper “scoop” if you give us the gen when you get it.’

He cocked his head to one side like a spaniel. ‘Go on.’

‘I’ll give you some information about me if you promise to let us know anything you find out about the painting and the artist,
before
your paper prints it.’

Sam blew his cheeks out and drummed away. ‘It had better be a bloody good story for a deal like that, if you’ll excuse my language, Miss Peck.’

Lucca grinned at me and then nodded across at Sam. ‘It is a bloody good story indeed, if it is the one I think.’

‘What’s this filth?’ Fitzy waved a crumpled copy of
The London Pictorial
under my nose. We were alone in my dressing room at The Comet. I knew what it was all right. Sam had read it back to me once he’d got it all down.

Above the story there was a quarter-page drawing of me all got up as a toff, although if I’d seen a gent with a shape like that I think I might have had a few suspicions about what was going on underneath.

‘Unnatural, so it is.’ The veins on Fitzy’s temples seemed to bulge and the network of spider legs that crawled out over his cheeks pulsed red. ‘I should have known better. Your brother is dirt and you’re no different.’ He crumpled up the paper and threw it to the floor.

‘
I need to see The Lady. I know what’s happening to the girls.
’ Fitzy mimicked my voice again, adding in his own, ‘Now I find you’ve been cavorting around London, pandering to your own perversions when you should have been at work. When The Lady reads this – and she will, mark my words – I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, so I wouldn’t. Most particular about morals, she is. You should have asked your brother about that before . . .’

‘Before what?’ He was breathing like a wounded bear. I could tell he was winding up to lash out at me, but he’d talked about Joey and I couldn’t stop myself.

Fitzy paused and seemed to consider. ‘Before his
accident
, Kitty.’

I stepped back, but I didn’t take my eyes away from his. ‘I think I’ve got a right to hear a bit more about that. You and The Lady seem to know so much about Joey, but all I get is scraps from the pair of you.’ I heard myself echo Lady Ginger’s words and they tasted bitter. ‘What has he done?’

‘Never you mind.’ Fitzy spat on the floor and muttered something under his breath.

‘There you go again. Why do you talk about him like that? He’s my brother.’

He snorted. ‘I wouldn’t want to admit to that, Kitty.’

Now it was my turn to spit – and I caught him straight between the eyes. For a moment he was still, then he lumbered towards me, but I had it all ready. ‘Wait!’ I grabbed the little chair from the dressing table and held it up in front of me, legs first, to fend him off.

‘The Lady knows all about that picture and about me going to see it done up as a Tom. What you need to know is what I told her. Our girls – all our missing girls – was in that painting. All of them – tortured and twisted about like prime cuts of meat at a butcher’s shop. The only one that wasn’t there was Maggie – Maggie Halpern from The Gaudy. Go see it yourself if you don’t believe me. You’re a man, aren’t you, after all?’

That last line came out a bit more challenging than I intended. I had to duck Fitzy’s great paw as it hammered down on the chair instead of my head. He rubbed his hand and stared at me, his watery eyes calculating.

‘Lady Ginger was pleased,’ I lied, ‘but she wants more. She’s told me to find out more and that’s what I’m trying to do. So you just take your grubby mind and your dirty great fists out of here and let me get on with it. I’ll do my job and you do yours.’

I wasn’t sure if that was going to lead to another wallop, but it seemed that last bit about The Lady being pleased with me pulled him up. He chewed at the tips of his yellow-stained bristles where they draped over his upper lip.

‘And another thing,’ I said, ‘that write up in
The London Pictorial
won’t do trade no harm neither. They’ll all be in here tonight now, seeing as how I’ve titillated half of London.’

After a moment he nodded. He might have been terrified of The Lady like the rest of us, but he wasn’t afraid of filling his pockets. He moistened his fat lower lip. ‘You’re to stay on here for another week. We can take more at The Comet than the other two halls put together. That’s something at least.’

‘Is that Lady Ginger’s idea or yours?’

‘I’ve consulted her.’ He stared down at the page of the newspaper, which had crackled open again on the boards showing the drawing of me dressed as a lad. ‘You’re very like Joseph there, Kitty, did you know that?’ The muscle under his eye started to twitch again. ‘I’d keep that page if I were you. Unless you do as she wants, there’ll come a day when that’s the only way you’ll be able to picture what your brother looked like.’

I bent down to pick up the paper. He was right. If I tried to call Joey to mind these days the face that I saw was blurred, like he was looking up at me from underwater. Every time I thought of him he became a little less distinct like he was wearing away. And it wasn’t just him; when I thought about Alice now, all I could see was the girl in that painting.

It was as if Fitzy read my mind.

‘Another one’s gone missing this week, so that makes eight.’ His words felt like the blow I’d just managed to dodge.

‘Who’s it now?’

‘Polly Durkin – chorus at The Gaudy. Know her?’

Course I did. Before I spent six nights out of seven hanging up in a birdcage, me and Peggy had looked after Polly’s boy, Michael, on occasion when she needed to go out of a night. Tell truth, we didn’t ask what she did, but we reckoned she was supplementing her earnings the best way she knew, if you get my meaning. It didn’t make her a bad person; more a good mother, to my mind.

Fitzy grunted. ‘Time’s running out, Kitty.’ He turned his back on me to open the door, but he couldn’t get out into the little passage to the stage because, of a sudden, it seemed that half of Covent Garden was out there trying to get in.

Great pink blooms bobbed about in a forest of green leaves all tied up in a ribbon bow the size of a cartwheel. The flowers moved forward and Fitzy had to stand back as Danny pushed into the room. Some of the petals dropped onto the boards as he shifted through the narrow doorway.

‘Bleedin’ hell. What’s that when it’s at home?’

Danny’s muffled voice came from somewhere in the middle of the ambling fernery. ‘Just come for you they did, Kitty. From an admirer – someone left them at the door.’ He propped the flowers up against the wall and the room seemed smaller by half. It smelt like a tart’s doss-house too.