The Hourglass Factory (11 page)

Her eyes took less than a second to fall on the illustration of the victim and she felt her gnawing unease turn into shock. Nine lives or no, looking at the clothing the girl had been wearing
she was beginning to get a very good idea of why Ebony Diamond was so terrified.

Later that day Frankie sat at her desk in Percy Circus. She had slipped in without Mrs Gibbons noticing and filched a couple of rock cakes from the afternoon tea tray. They lay
on the desk beside a pile of crumbs covering her notebook. She was trying to put off eating them for as long as possible so that they could serve as her supper.

The Blickensderfer stared up at her. Twelve pounds it had cost, on a weekly plan, and she still wasn’t finished paying it off. But these were risks a newspaper girl had to take. Her
pocket-watch said half past two. Forty-five minutes until copy deadline, two hours until the afternoon edition would be on the streets.

She let her hands spread across the keyboard feeling the lovely smooth circles of the keys press against each fingertip. She loved the noise of typing, the smell of the ink. She had three
options; write up the column and drop the portrait, as Teddy Hawkins had suggested; fudge a quick portrait and dash off the column; or the third option. Without thinking about it, she began to
press out the usual heading, ‘Conversations from the Boudoir.’ Then she tore the sheet of paper from the machine, tossed it into the fireplace and loaded a fresh one. This time she
typed, ‘Conversations from the Suffragette’s Lair: Is Ebony Diamond’s life in danger?’

Outside the London Coliseum a thin drizzle of rain was misting to the ground in silver sheets. Frankie had no umbrella and the brim of her bowler hat wasn’t wide enough
to keep the drips off her cigarette. She flicked the soggy stub onto the ground where it was quickly scavenged by a tramp in a wool coat. She hadn’t seen the paper yet. She had bought a copy
from a paperboy on Gray’s Inn Road then promptly thrown it into a bonfire on Clerkenwell Green without even opening it. She didn’t want to know what had been done with her copy. She had
done it now. That was all there was to it. She would catch Ebony Diamond at the stage door afterwards and pin her down until she told Frankie everything there was to know about that cursed corset
shop and the people who worked in it. If all went well Mr Stark would want a follow-up piece.

On top of the theatre, Frank Matcham’s giant revolving globe beaconed in the theatregoers who drew up in whining tramcars and four-wheelers. The pavements were full of women dripping furs
off their shoulders, casting shadows a yard wide with their huge hats, and men in dress jackets anywhere between tailcoats and scrubby tweed patched at the elbows. Pulled together from all corners
of London, they moved like a colourful soup, tinkling with laughter through the lobby. Over on one corner of the street with a skivvy holding an umbrella over her head, Lady Thorne was
enthusiastically handing out pamphlets with pictures of the devil on them.

Frankie tipped her head one way, then the next, to drip off the rainwater that had pooled in her hat brim, then slid into the crowd making for the entrance.

It was like walking into the gilded stomach of a goddess. The lobby, with velvet and chandeliers, palms, frenzies of stucco sprawled across the ceiling, swallowed everyone who entered her. There
were confectionery stalls for sweets and a row of box office kiosks worked by men in bell-hop uniforms, gold thread on red cotton and hats to match. Staircases rose into Fullers Tea Rooms on the
vestibules above, concierges ran amok with messages from the newly installed telegram service, set up so patrons could never be out of touch, even while at the theatre. Oswald Stoll had spared no
expense when it was built; other theatres may have had more scandal or class, but the Coliseum topped them all for sheer size. Frankie made for the ticket booth with the smallest queue but was
intercepted by a man in a broad collared suit, too big for him at the shoulders. ‘Miss George?’

She puzzled at his recognition of her and looked at his face to see if she knew him. His skin was the colour of an unbaked pie, with little boy’s features. His figure, Frankie thought, was
rather unfortunate for someone who couldn’t afford proper tailoring, narrow at the shoulders, broad at the hips. She racked her brains but couldn’t place him.

He smiled, child-like, and asked again. ‘Miss George,
Evening Gazette
?’

His hand prodded towards her. ‘James Parsons. I’m Mr Stoll’s clerk. Mr Stoll apologises that he couldn’t meet you in person but . . .’ It seemed he couldn’t
think of a good enough excuse for the proprietor’s absence, so let the sentence hang. Frankie met his soft handshake during which he passed her, not very slickly, a ticket, moist from his
palm.

‘I saw your name on the box office list. We’ve arranged for you to have a guided tour before the show. How is Miss Twinkle anyway?’

Frankie shuddered to think that people actually read her column. She forced herself to smile. ‘Very well, thank you. Testing the latest technology in thermal . . .’ she trailed
off.

‘Well, I look forward to reading what she has to say tonight, after the show. I have a copy in my office. My weekly treat.’ Frankie felt her stomach drop, then snuck a glance down at
her ticket and noticed it was in the third row of the gods. Can’t have been that impressed, little liar, she thought.

He flourished his hand into a display of chivalry and guided her by the small of her back away from the crowds and into the hub of the foyer. ‘Drink, glass of champagne as we
tour?’

‘No thank you. Don’t drink and write,’ she lied, and reluctantly followed him into the throng.

To her annoyance Frankie was not offered another drink and, finishing Mr Parsons’ tour, found herself with nothing but a heavy brain and a sticky patch on her back where
his hand had rested for much of the tour. Resentful at the sight of people sipping port in the tea rooms she went directly up to her seat. The growing crowd on the top floor was hot as a farmyard
market, scents of women’s perfumes and men’s cologne stifling the air. Fur and silk had given way to tweed and cotton. Frankie’s chair was hard and wooden with no upholstery, and
she could only see the top of the stage if she craned her neck to an uncomfortable angle. ‘Weekly treat, my eye,’ she murmured.

Down below, stiff bottoms were making their way onto velvet seats while violent discussions arose in the stalls about the size of ladies’ hats. Those who had paid for their tickets wanted
to see, and those who had paid for their hats wanted to be seen. Scanning her eyes round the hall she frowned. Two women in brown were leaning forward discussing something earnestly. Were those two
faces she had seen before? She racked her brains for a few moments, then the memory popped up. They had been in the gallery at the suffragette sentencing. One of them had on the same taxidermied
seagull hat.

The bang of the auditorium doors closing made her jump and as her eyes settled, she found her face had lit on a box below, not the closest to the stage but the next in. She had always had good
long-distance eyesight so it didn’t take her long to realise that the girl sitting in the box was the snake girl from the other night. Now however, she looked different. Her long blonde hair
was pinned up, a faux hairpiece creating curls round her face. She wore a perfectly fitting turquoise gown with exquisite beadwork spidering her fine shoulders, and yet she seemed strangely uptight
with discomfort. She glanced up and caught Frankie’s eye. Startled, Frankie looked away, finding anywhere else to plant her gaze. When she tentatively looked back, the girl was staring at the
stage.

Frankie didn’t have time to think on it because once the lights dimmed, the rumbling of bodies hushed, and the curtain whipped up sharply.

The first half of the show rambled slowly. There was Xandra Beagle, a muscular woman who belted out Wagner from a plasterboard crescent moon; the Boston twins who played ragtime and danced a
two-step; a bizarre German imitation of the Ballets Russes in silk harem pants and dirndls, and a pack of bulldogs dressed as can-can girls who slobbered violently making treacherous piles of slime
on the stage. In between each act the Chairman emerged with his gavel, hurling jokes into the audience like grenades – ‘What’s the difference between a motor taxi and a hansom
cab? One’s got acetylene lamps, the other a set o’lean horses!’ Frankie had begun to grow anxious, not just about Ebony’s act but for the day’s article. She wished she
hadn’t thrown the paper away. She pictured it curling in the fire and wished she’d had the guts just to open it and see if they printed it. She wondered if she had time at the interval
to go out and buy a copy, then remembered that she only had one shilling left in her pockets to last until tomorrow.

The Great Foucaud was up next. The Chairman’s red bald pate nearly burst in excitement. The interval nigh, Frankie could smell wafts of sugary buns and eclairs through the auditorium
doors.

The stage lights dimmed until the footlights were just a glowing hiss. Then came a sound she had heard backstage on Parsons’ tour, an irate roar; a narked catty beast, hot under stage
lights, pacing back and forth. Stripes became visible one by one until the whole back corner of the stage was lit and out of the gloom materialised the striding form of a tiger, its slow hulking
gait rippling behind the bars of a shining cage. Any doubts there might have been about the authenticity of the Great Foucaud’s impending trick evaporated. The crowd shifted quietly.

After letting the sight of the big cat soak in, a jungle drum began to murmur in the pit and a woman in white tripped across the stage, screaming politely. Minutes later, men in tiger loincloths
followed, their bodies greased dark and streaky by some kind of varnish. The woman swayed this way, then that; the drums echoed her movements. Upstage, The Great Foucaud himself appeared in a
mawkish burlesque of savagery, feathers and bones, leather and teeth, little plaster of Paris monkey skulls rattling from him. He snarled and joined the mob until they had the woman pinned on her
back and were lifting her by her wrists and ankles towards the tiger’s cage.

Frankie sat forward. They weren’t going to . . .

They pressed her spine against the bars, one man on each limb, the Great Foucaud casting gigantic spells with his arms around her. A gentleman behind Frankie cleared his throat. The drums beat
louder and faster. Foucaud’s conjuring grew wilder. His men thumped their feet and bent their knees. The woman thrashed her head. The man behind Frankie coughed and she jerked her neck back
at him until he stopped.

Foucaud paused, his hand on the cage. The tiger was crouched at one end, licking its fangs with a slippery pink tongue. Then, without flourish, Foucaud swiftly opened the cage and shoved the
woman inside. He snapped the door shut. She pinned herself to the back bars. Something about her posture said that she wasn’t entirely confident about Foucaud’s magical powers. The
lavish play-acting stopped. She took a couple of steps to the left. The tribal dance picked up and the men ran around the tiger cage, pressing their hands to their mouths and shrieking, waving
their arms in the air.

Frankie leaned closer. The woman inched one way, then the other. The tiger swayed, following the pattern of her pacing. She clutched the bars behind her. It meandered forward, hunched and
skulked, then pressed itself backwards as if it would spring. Suddenly, it took both front paws from the ground. Someone screamed prematurely. But instead of lunging, it raised its paws to its head
as if something was bothering it about its face. Frankie watched intently as the tiger scratched away, eventually managing to tug its own head off, and standing there in the cage, dressed from head
to toe in tiger skin was the Great Foucaud, who even now had seized the hand of the woman and was dragging her out of the cage, spreading his body, wide and cruciform into the centre of the stage
for a huge showman’s bow, his arms up, his head proud, the tiger mask tossed aside.

The stalls were on their feet applauding. The Great Foucaud luxuriated in the approval, bowing first to one side, then the other, then a special twist of the wrist and a flop double at the Royal
Box. Frankie found to her irritation that her heart was racing wildly. She didn’t like to be tricked.

She blew her breath up into her hair. Most children loved the thrill of deception; a coin disappearing behind an ear, a queen of spades turning into a jack. She had always wished she were quick
enough to yank the hand free, see where it was concealing the coin, prise open the folded card. Once or twice she’d had a go, before being hauled out of the magic tent by her mother.

The interval was brief and the show began again, but Frankie found herself unable to concentrate on any of the acts. The two suffragettes in front of her seemed to be having the same problem,
whispering so loudly to each other that a woman with a necklace of taxidermied mice round her throat to rival the seagull hat leaned forward and hissed at them.

And then she was announced. The last act. Ebony Diamond: The circus girl who had spent her childhood in a travelling wagon had made it to the London Coliseum. Peachy footlights slammed to black.
A communal fidgeting rustled round the space, then halted as the scenery began to shift.

From the top of the proscenium arch a trickle of stars rained down, tiny firefly lanterns held on wires, drifting to the floor. They came to rest a foot short of it stretching from the
footlights all the way to the back wall. And in this pitch Milky Way, lowered from the heavens of the theatre with a slow mechanical crank, down she came like a raven, every inch of her skin except
her face sheathed in black stocking, silk or lace, her figure almost disappearing against the twilight. It was as if she knew, in this replica of the galaxy, inside the replica of the world itself,
here was a place she could vanish safely and become just a reflection, a spectre of herself. She looked incredibly calm, the horror on her face that Frankie had seen earlier in the street all
washed away. Frankie held her breath.