Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (13 page)

‘There’s this an’ all.’ Danny reached behind and produced a roll of paper that he’d stuck down the back of his breeches. He handed it over and I picked at the thin black cord that tied it together.

It was a drawing of me. My head and shoulders beautifully done and very much to the life. My hair was all piled up on top and my eyes, fringed with lashes like a boot brush, looked out to the left as if I was thinking about something a lot finer than where tonight’s meat pie was coming from. It was a pretty thing – drawn very delicate with fine curling lines and light pen strokes. The smooth skin of my shoulders had a lovely quality. Almost like you could feel something alive and warm there if you touched the paper. I felt a flush creep over my cheeks as I wondered who had sent it. I found myself thinking – no,
hoping
is more accurate – that it might be from James Verdin.

‘I reckon he’s caught you to rights there.’ Danny looked over my shoulder, and even Fitzy came over for a squint. ‘He’s got your name wrong, though.’ He pointed at a spidery word beneath my shoulder. ‘Philomel – who’s she then? I’ll give you this though, girl. You draw up nice, so you do.’

He snorted. ‘After that piece in
The London Pictorial
, you’ll have every moon-calf who fancies himself half an artist on your tail, Kitty. But don’t go getting any ideas – there’s work to do.’ I noted he seemed to have got over his objection to my dressing up as a gent and was now very much alive to the financial benefits of my notorious reputation. ‘Out the way.’ He pushed past Danny and thumped off along the passage.

Danny peered around the tiny room. ‘Peggy here tonight, then?’

His question caught me by surprise. I hadn’t seen Peggy for a couple of days now and I was expecting Danny to tell me why. Even though I’d missed her on the past couple of evenings when the Johnnies came to my room, I assumed there was a good reason why she hadn’t turned up. We didn’t live in each other’s skirts, after all, and I’d heard that a couple of the girls at her lodgings had the winter fever.

I shook my head. ‘Last time I saw her was when she laced me up on Saturday. And then again after the show . . .’

I broke off for a moment when I pictured James, glossy as a new-minted sovereign sitting right there in my dressing room that night, and felt my neck and cheeks flush over. Bloody hell, get a grip on yourself, girl. I busied myself with the pots on the dressing table. ‘I thought she was with you, Dan. Everything all right there?’

He shook his head and clenched his fists.

‘Saturday was the last time I saw her too.’

After the show that night I didn’t go back to my dressing room. I didn’t care what Fitzpatrick and Lady Ginger wanted me to do, I needed time to think.

If what Lucca had said – that the unknown artist was working again – was right, then he’d need a fresh supply of models. I hoped to God I was wrong, but I thought I knew who those models were. I couldn’t sit there tonight in my dressing room making small talk with a queue of bare-faced, gin-fuddled Johnnies wondering if Peggy was out there somewhere with a monster. Because that’s what the man who painted
The Cinnabar Girls
was, whatever polite society might think. And to my mind, there was nothing polite about what he’d done.

There’d been several evenings now when I’d welcomed gentlemen callers. Some of them wanted to paw at me – and I got very deft at dealing with them – some wanted a cosy chat and some, the younger ones who were still wet behind the ears, just sat there and gawped. They didn’t half go a fine shade of puce if I spoke to them direct. But none of them made a move against me.

After I talked to Dan, just before the night’s performance, I’d bundled up my street clothes and left them off to the side of The Comet’s stage. When they pulled me and my cage down at the end of the evening I waited for a bit of hush and then I slipped behind an old bit of scenery stacked up against the back wall to change. I needed to get out of there sharpish. I kicked the costume – a pile of greyish screwed-up netting – further back behind the scenery. I’ll pick that up tomorrow, I thought. It didn’t look nothing now – or if it did it brought to mind one of them cases left behind by a big moth. It was something empty, tattered and dead.

Saturday was the last time I saw her too.

I shuddered like someone had pulled the last stitch through my shroud – that was one of Ma’s sayings when she had the feeling on her. Mind you, that came so regular we all ignored it. But tonight I had the feeling on me all right.

I heard a couple of the hands shouting out to the orchestra boys. They were off to The Lamb for a long one and you couldn’t hold it against them because the next day was a Thursday when the hall was dark. There wouldn’t be another show at The Comet now ’til Friday. It’s an odd thing, but Paradise kept its own time. Lady Ginger’s halls were always closed on Thursdays and as far as any of us knew, no one paid much attention to our blasphemous Sunday openings. Then again, Lucca always said a full purse could buy a lot of things, including a blind eye.

When all the calling and tramping around died off I made my way out through the back to a door that led out to an alley. It was over the other side to the stage door where, sometimes, the punters who couldn’t pluck up enough courage – or shillings, more like – to get access to my room hung around like a fart in crinoline. That was another of Nanny Peck’s fine old sayings.

I thought of the old girl now as I wrapped her plaid shawl around my head, tucking stray curls under the folds. (It didn’t do to look too attracting on the streets of an evening.) What would she have made of all this? If Nanny Peck had still been here, she’d be the first person I’d turn to for sense, not Ma.

Now that’s a funny thing, I reflected, as I pushed the door open a crack and looked out into the alley. Joey and me couldn’t have asked for better when it came to loving, but Ma wasn’t exactly . . . well, I may as well admit it, she wasn’t exactly the strongest of souls. Very fine and very delicate she was and people used to say how the pair of us was the living spit of her. But I tell you one thing, we might have looked like her, but I reckon we took after our Pa – whoever he was – in ways of thinking. Considering the empty shell Ma became after Nanny Peck died, it was no bad thing our minds were strong.

I don’t remember Pa, Joey didn’t neither. We both knew better than to ask Ma about him because that would lead to a black day. Nanny Peck said we were never to speak of him and so we didn’t. Tell truth, it wasn’t unusual for a family round the docks to lack a father – plenty of men were taken in accidents involving the river or the loads.

I don’t think my father was dead, though. Every second month or so, Nanny Peck would take herself off on her own for an afternoon and when she came back, she always brought a purse full of coins with her. She called it ‘family business’ but shut up tight as a limpet if we asked where she’d been. I suspected he had a wife and most likely another family – that wasn’t unusual neither. I can’t say as I worried about the matter a great deal. To my way of thinking you can’t fret over something you’ve never had. We were loved, that’s what matters.

The alley was deserted so I pulled the shawl tight and slipped out. It was late now and the night was clear. At the end I could see the moon, not quite full, hanging just between the gap in the buildings at the entrance. If I was a poetical type I might have said it looked like a shiny penny about to be dropped into a slot – even the nibble of shadow at the side made it look like it was being held up there between the fingers of a giant hand.

I stopped for a moment. That’s just how I felt. Like I was being held over the edge of something deep and deadly, and any moment now I’d be dropped right in it. I don’t mean being up there in the cage without a net to catch me – that was nothing. No, I mean the feeling that I wasn’t in control of my life no more. The feeling that something or someone was playing with me . . . playing with us all.

Peggy – that was the worst yet. How many days had she been gone, then?

I counted on the fingers of my right hand with my thumb. Not today, not the day before, not Monday. Like I said to Danny, Saturday was the last time I’d seen her. And by his account it was pretty much the last time he’d seen her too.

But that wasn’t long, was it? God knows Peggy had good reason to do a vanishing act – even for a short while. What with Fitzy taking it out on her, who could blame her?

I knew that wasn’t right, though – Peggy wasn’t the sort to do a runner. I thought about Sunday. The morning after that visit from James, I’d gone over to her lodgings near St Anne’s to have a little word, but her landlady, old Ma Stebbings, said she weren’t there.

‘With the hours you people keep, how am I supposed to keep track? And it being the Lord’s day an’ all?’ She screwed up her mouth and wiped some invisible speck from her white-starched apron. Honest to God, that apron was so stiff with the stuff, Peggy said it could stand up on its own in a corner.

I remember the sour face on the old crow as she stood there on the step. Right Methody she was and not too happy when her girls made friends . . . ’specially male ones. She didn’t much approve of us theatricals. But she liked our money all right.

Looking back, I suppose I should have twigged that Ma Stebbings was suggesting that Peggy hadn’t come home that night. So, if something had happened to her, it had happened after the show when I’d been sitting there mooning over James Verdin.

I took a deep breath and walked quickly to the end of the alley. It was biting cold, but I didn’t mind that. I wanted to think and I needed a clear head and all my wits about me. The chill air helped. Lucca often warned me never to walk the streets alone at night, but he hadn’t come over this evening. I think he assumed I’d be going back with Peggy and Danny. It was no matter – I could look after myself. I proved that every night.

The front steps up to the entrance of The Comet were over to my right now. The lamps were out. I turned my back on the hall, kept my head down and made my way up the street in the opposite direction. Within a couple of minutes I was in a shabby quarter. At the sound of my footsteps a ladybird stepped out from a doorway, hopeful, only to melt back into the shadow as soon as she realised her luck was out.

I passed her pitch, not looking at her full on.

‘Trade’s as dead as a corpse’s prick tonight, love, so if you’re thinking of working this patch you’d best move on.’ I heard her gin-tight hiss behind me and I quickened my step.

At the far end of the street there was a ragged black mound in the gutter. It was a man so far gone that he’d disgraced himself where he lay. Steam came off the little pool forming around him and the sharp tang of alcohol and piss filled my nose as I stepped over him. He didn’t even know I was there.

This was Lady Ginger’s Paradise.

I snorted and the air in front of me fugged up with my breath like I was a dragon in one of Nanny Peck’s old stories. That’s what I’d seen that first time I looked at The Lady’s dice – three dragons. What had she said?
An element of risk.
She wasn’t wrong about that. And then last time when I’d seen the number four,
the number of death
.

I wasn’t superstitious, not like Ma and Nanny Peck leastways, but I didn’t rule anything out neither. Jenny, Clary, Esther, Sally, Martha and Alice – they were the Cinnabar Girls and they couldn’t be alive if that painting was a record of what had happened to them. But did the dice mean the future or the past? Alice, Polly and now Peggy – perhaps it wasn’t too late for them?

I had to know more about that painting. It was all I had to go on. Sam had promised that as soon as he had anything he’d let me know. But how long was that going to take?

I’d reached a crossroads now and a hack clattered past, spattering my skirt with dirty slush. It was the only sign of life. Apart from the occasional lamp glowing dully behind shutters or window blinds, the streets were dark, and silent too.

Think, Kitty, I told myself, think. What would Joey do?

I found I couldn’t answer that question. Tell truth, since the beginning of this business I’d begun to see that there were a lot of things about Joey that I didn’t know. There – it was the first time I’d said that, put it into proper words.

When I thought he’d died, I’d missed him so bad that at first the grief of it felt like a real pain, as if there was something ripping me apart deep inside. But when Ma went, Joey had forced me to live and that was a lesson well learned.

I made myself go out to the halls every day, I made myself talk to the girls, I made myself sing as I sewed costumes for Mrs C and cleared vomit from the floors, and although it didn’t make the pain of losing him go away, it made it different. That vicious tearing became a dull ache and you can live with that, it becomes a part of you.

See, if you think about an ache you feed it and it hurts you the more, but if you don’t dwell on it, most of the time, it sleeps. I’d let Joey sleep, but now he was awake again inside me. Only this wasn’t the brother I thought I’d lost. It was someone else, someone Lady Ginger and Fitzpatrick knew – a shadow in the mist.

I didn’t know what Joey would do because I didn’t really know him any more.

I felt hot tears streaming down my face and I had to keep rubbing at my eyes with the backs of my hands as I trudged along. The tears kept coming and soon I was aware of a noise, a high-pitched wail that kept stuttering and faltering before building up again. That was me too. I was going off like a flood warning down the docks, but I couldn’t stop. I could hardly see and I could hardly breathe.

‘Kitty?’

The hand on my shoulder froze me in my tracks. A great spurt of something like anger ripped through me and the next sob died in my throat as I shrugged myself free and span around, eyes blazing and every muscle strung up for a fight.

It was James.

Even though he was dressed in a long, dark coat with the fur collar pulled up over his chin, I could still tell it was him all right. His grey eyes glinted in the darkness and I could see his copper hair where it poked out from under his hat at the sides. He frowned, two parallel lines forming between his straight eyebrows.

‘Good God, what the devil is wrong?’

I tried to answer, but my mouth just opened and closed. I felt the tears beginning to prickle at my eyes again as I stared up at him.

‘My dear girl!’ He held his arms out to me and I took a step forward. I couldn’t help it – at that moment the thought of being all folded up with Mr James Verdin was the most comforting thing in the world. But then I recollected where I was and got a hold of myself. I pulled away sharp, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.

‘Here, please take this.’ He offered me a silk ’kerchief that smelt of leather and lavender. As I dabbed at my face I’m shamed to say that the very first thing that came into my head was the fact that I probably looked like a herring girl standing there in Nanny Peck’s old plaid shawl with my eyes all red and watered up. Last thing I wanted was for James to see me like that. I wasn’t the darling of the halls now – there was no theatrical magic to blind a gent to reality out here. No, I was just an ordinary working girl going home down an ordinary working street and he had no right to be here with me. I could feel my cheeks burn as I sniffed and took another step back.

‘What are you doing here?’ I was quite surprised at the tone of my question, but if James noticed I was being less than friendly, he didn’t show it.

‘It’s quite simple, Kitty, I followed you.’

‘You what?’

‘I followed you. After the performance tonight – and may I say that you were as . . . enchanting as ever – I tried to see you in your room again, but a boy said you’d already gone. I was bitterly disappointed; I’ll happily admit it to you. I waited outside for a few minutes in the hope that the boy was wrong or lying, but when they extinguished the lamps and I heard them barring the doors, I knew it was fruitless.

‘I was about to light a cigar and flag down a hackney when I saw you emerge from the passage on the far side of the hall.’

‘How did you know that was me?’ I was feeling a bit more with it now. I planted my hands on my hips and stared up at him. He really did have fine eyes.

‘You have a most unmistakable . . .’ He broke off, smiled and cocked his head to one side. ‘You are unique, Kitty. I would know you anywhere.’

Now, I won’t lie, that hit the spot. And something in the way he was looking down at me made me feel very snug, but I wasn’t going to let on.

‘Never mind anywhere. Why are you sniffing around here? It’s well off your normal beat, I reckon. We’re not in Mayfair now, Mr Verdin.’