The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow (18 page)

S
ophie surveyed her reflection in the looking glass. She had spent the last two weary days traipsing around the newspaper offices placing advertisements, going on foot to save even the few pennies that the omnibus would cost. When she had first arrived home that evening, she had felt so exhausted that she wished she had never told Lil that she would go to the theatre. But now that she was dressed and ready, her black mood had unexpectedly lifted. She was relieved that she would not have to spend the evening alone at the lodging house thinking about the party at Sinclair’s; but more than that, simply putting on her best dress seemed to have performed a sort of magic trick. The heavy, silky fabric rustled as she swished her long skirts to and fro, making her feel like another person altogether.

The dress had been her first proper, almost-grown-up evening frock. Papa had given it to her for her last birthday. He’d hosted a dinner before he went back to South Africa and she’d been allowed to sit up for it, wearing her new frock: she could almost see him now, talking and laughing heartily, very far away from her along the long, gleaming table, until the candlelight seemed to shimmer and the illusion was gone.

Now, she saw only herself, reflected in the cracked, yellowed looking glass. She’d had to give up so many of her clothes, but she had not been able to bear the idea of parting with this dress. She felt glad to put it on again, as if she were putting her own former self back on. Lil had insisted on lending her a beaded evening bag, kitted out with a fan painted with a design of butterflies and some opera glasses, and had actually given her a dainty pair of satin slippers that no longer fitted her. Putting them on, Sophie felt transformed, as if by the wave of a fairy godmother’s magic wand. But there was still something that wasn’t quite right: impulsively, she pulled the pins from her hair, which she had spent so much time carefully putting up, and shook it so that it fell down her back. She added a velvet ribbon and then looked again at her reflection. Now she really looked like herself once more.

For what must have been the twentieth time that afternoon, she picked up the photograph that lay on the chair. Lil had brought it when she had dropped in earlier on her way to the theatre to bring Sophie the bag and slippers. Sophie’s smile faded as she gazed at the man in the corner of the picture. His face meant nothing to her, and yet there was something about his expression – something in the unreadable dark smudges of his eyes, the line of his shoulder, the shape of his forehead – that kept drawing her back.

After contemplating it for a few moments, she propped it up on the mantelshelf – bare of her old treasures now but for the picture of Papa that she had rescued from its broken frame. The two photographs looked incongruous alongside each other. On the left, Papa, gallant in his military uniform, pinned with medals. On the right, Lil striking a pose, and behind her, almost unseen, the man they believed to be the Baron.

Sophie sighed and turned away, picking up her coat and bag. She was glad to close the door of her room and leave the Baron’s face behind her. Just for tonight, she would forget about him, and forget about Sinclair’s, and simply enjoy going to the theatre in her best dress to see Lil make her debut on stage.

But in the hallway she stopped short. Mrs MacDuff was standing in front of the door, her arms folded, watching Sophie with a hostile expression on her face.

‘Is something the matter?’ Sophie asked.

‘Is something the matter?’ repeated the landlady, in a crude imitation of Sophie’s voice. ‘“Is something the matter?” she says, artless as you please!’

She looked Sophie up and down, suspiciously taking in the frock, the slippers, the evening bag. ‘Do you know what this is?’ she snapped out, gesturing around her.

‘A lodging house?’ Sophie replied, a sharp edge in her own voice now.

‘Lodgings for
working
young ladies,’ said Mrs MacDuff. ‘You hear that? Working. And from what I’m told, you’re not working any more. And that means you’re no longer welcome here.’

‘I’ll soon find another job,’ said Sophie.

‘Hmph! That’s what they all say. But I know how it goes. Before you can say knife, you’ll be behind on your money and I’m not having any shirkers.’

‘But you can’t just . . . turn me out!’

‘Watch me,’ said Mrs MacDuff, tapping her foot. ‘I’m giving you a week’s notice. If you’ve got no more work by then – decent, respectable work, mind you – you’re out, or I’ll have the Constable round. And from what I hear, you’ll be wanting to steer well clear of the Law.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Sophie. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘No?’ Mrs MacDuff laughed. She lowered her voice. ‘Well what does
he
want with you then? Oh, you’re a sly puss all right. Pretending that butter wouldn’t melt, and all the time mixed up with the likes of him.’

‘Who?’

‘You know very well
who
.’ Mrs MacDuff’s voice became a rasping growl.

‘Who are you talking about?’ Sophie almost shouted, stamping her foot, frustration bubbling up within her.

‘
The Baron
,’ hissed Mrs MacDuff.

Sophie gazed at her for a moment, then drew herself upwards. ‘I have nothing whatsoever to do with the Baron,’ she said, crisply.

‘That’s not what I heard,’ Mrs MacDuff snapped back. ‘I know what people are saying. I’ve heard –’

‘I think we should discuss this in the morning,’ said Sophie, cutting her off, too angry to listen for a moment longer. ‘I’m going out.’

She pushed past her landlady and went through the door, slamming it behind her, and stalked down the street, her heart bumping furiously. Turned out of the house, on top of everything else! What was she supposed to do? It wasn’t as though she had any money to secure new lodgings. She shook her head. Piece by piece, the life she had been trying to build for herself was being pulled apart – and it was all because of him. The Baron – a face like a shadow in the corner of a photograph. A man whose name she didn’t even know.

But at least she had Lil and the others, she thought, trying to still her trembling hands as she opened her umbrella. She remembered how eager Lil had been for her to come to the show tonight, and of all their sympathetic faces as they had determined to help her find out who was really responsible for the burglary.

Thinking of this, she stomped on through the rain towards the West End, her head held high beneath the old umbrella. She didn’t notice the man in the cloth cap, his collar turned well up, who had been standing in the drizzle just outside the lodging house, and was even now walking swiftly but purposefully behind her.

T
he rain was slowing just in time for the party. Miss Atwood gave a small nod of satisfaction as she looked around the Entrance Hall. The final preparations were still underway: rows of gilt chairs were being set out for the orchestra; the golden clock was being polished until it gleamed; a waiter was arranging rows of champagne glasses on a table swathed in white linen; and Claudine was placing several large floral displays, each featuring Sinclair’s signature orchids, carefully into position.

Everything looked exactly as it should, and Miss Atwood began to feel increasingly pleased with herself. Cooper had blotted his copybook with the burglary, there was no doubt about that – and tonight’s party would give her the chance to really prove her worth. She smoothed down her necktie as she looked over the party guest-list for what must have been the hundredth time, feeling that she was a woman on the up.

A young porter came hurrying up, an envelope in his hand. ‘Message from the hospital, ma’am,’ he mumbled.

Miss Atwood ripped the envelope open and stared at the note inside. For a moment, her expression of self-satisfaction wavered. Then she glanced up to see the young porter still at her side, his eyes full of curiosity. She made a little sound of annoyance and pushed the envelope into her pocket.

‘Take this up to Mr Cooper in his office, at once,’ she said, pushing the guest list into the young porter’s hand.

Billy took the sheaf of papers that the Captain’s private secretary was thrusting towards him, trying to arrange his face into a polite expression. He loathed being expected to nod and touch his cap and be deferential, no matter how rude other people were. ‘Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am, three bags full, ma’am,’ he muttered resentfully under his breath once he was out of Miss Atwood’s earshot.

He couldn’t help wondering what might have been inside that note from the hospital. Could it be news of Bert Jones? Was he finally well enough to tell the police what had happened on the night he had been shot? He longed to linger and try to find out, but he knew what would happen if he didn’t follow orders, so he turned away and toiled up to the store manager’s office.

The door was ajar, and Billy could hear movement inside – the sound of a chair scraping back and then footsteps – but he hesitated on the threshold. He wasn’t sure whether it was Mr Cooper himself or Sergeant Gregson, who as far as he knew was still using Cooper’s office as the base for his investigations. Not particularly wanting to cross Gregson’s path, he glanced through the door, saw that it was only Cooper – but then froze in astonishment as he realised what the store manager was doing.

He was standing by the bureau, polishing what Billy realised in a flash was a revolver. It gleamed, black and heavy, in Cooper’s careful grasp. The store manager weighed it in his hand and then swiftly slipped it inside his jacket with all the practised ease of a man well used to handling a firearm. He locked the drawer with a precise click, and then picked up some papers from his desk before coming towards the door.

Billy jumped backwards but he was still standing just outside, looking blank, when Cooper strode out.

‘What is it that you want, Parker?’ he demanded sharply.

‘Miss Atwood sent me to give you this, sir,’ Billy managed to stammer out.

Cooper nodded and took the papers. ‘Shape up, Parker,’ he said tersely as he strode off down the corridor. ‘On your toes this evening. And mind those hands are clean.’

Billy stood stock still in the passageway. He still couldn’t believe what he had seen. What could Mr Cooper, possibly be doing with a revolver? Could it be that he knew that Sergeant Gregson was secretly working for the Baron? The thought made him feel a rush of relief, but as quickly as it came, it evaporated again. For if Cooper was carrying a gun, it surely meant that the store, and all of them in it, were in some sort of danger.

Following a sudden impulse, Billy went swiftly down the corridor in the same direction as Cooper. At one time he would have thought that there was nothing more thrilling than trailing a man carrying a gun – it was just the sort of thing that Montgomery Baxter was always doing, usually in some sort of cunning disguise – but now that it was happening, he didn’t feel excited at all. Instead there was a sick sensation steadily rising in his stomach. Careful to keep some distance behind Cooper, Billy followed him back on to the shop floor and then down to the Book Department.

Under normal circumstances, the Book Department was just about Billy’s favourite place in the whole of the store. It had thick oriental rugs on the floor, dark wooden panelling on the walls, plenty of comfortable armchairs, and most importantly, books everywhere. It was wonderfully peaceful, with no sound but the low, respectful buzz of muted conversation, the soft hush of pages turning, and the occasional cough of Mr White, Head of the Book Department, who was given to a touch of bronchitis.

Mr Cooper paused for a moment beside a display of atlases and swiftly glanced around him. Billy darted behind a bookshelf, anxious not to be seen. He found himself by the shelves where the books for children were kept: fat, leather-bound volumes of fairy stories, ABC and Mother Goose books printed on shiny paper, and row after row of books by authors like Lewis Carroll and Frances Hodgson Burnett, Rudyard Kipling and E. Nesbit. Usually, nothing would have stopped him from picking up a copy of
King Solomon’s Mines
, or stealing a moment to read a few pages of
Treasure Island
, but now his attention was fixed on Mr Cooper. The store manager was heading towards the doorway in the corner marked ‘Staff Only’ that Billy knew led out into the street. But as he was craning his neck to see what Cooper would do next, a salesman came by with a trolley piled high with books, momentarily blocking his view. He stepped back quickly, not wanting to lose sight of his quarry, but all at once there was a loud crash and he realised to his horror that he had bumped into a display table and sent a stack of books cascading to the ground.

‘Oh – I say – I’m sorry,’ said Billy weakly, scrabbling to pick up the fallen books. Mr White was striding towards him, looking furious. Worse still, a very familiar – and very angry – voice came from somewhere above him: ‘What the devil do you think you’re up to now?’

Uncle Sid grasped Billy firmly by the elbow. ‘I’ve had just about enough of this. You’re coming with me.’

The theatre was lit up like a firework in the drizzle. Huge scarlet letters blazed out
FORTUNE THEATRE
, and below them thronged a crowd of people in evening clothes, giddy with excitement about the first night of a new Gilbert Lloyd show. A long queue of people sheltered under umbrellas as they waited patiently to buy tickets for the cheap seats, but Lil had already given Sophie hers and she was able to make straight for the entrance.

Inside, she made her way through the crush to buy a programme for a penny. She winced slightly when she saw that the show was called
The Shop Girl
, but pushed away the uncomfortable feeling as she spotted the name
Lilian Rose
printed in small lettering at the end of the list of chorus girls. The star, Miss Kitty Shaw, had her name written in big letters at the very top of the page – even above the title of the show itself. Maybe one day Lil would have her name right at the top of the page too.

An usher in a scarlet jacket and white gloves pointed Sophie to her seat up in the curved gallery. Clusters of lamps cast pools of yellow light, and all around her was the low buzz of conversation, the rustle of silk and satin as people settled into their seats. In the boxes above her, the ladies and gentlemen in the grandest evening dress were beginning to arrive: many of the ladies took their seats as late as possible, to ensure everyone would be able to admire their outfits as they entered. It was another world up there, Sophie thought, as she watched one lady in a lavishly beaded silk evening gown and a pearl collar bowing graciously to another, dressed in rippling satin and carrying an ostrich-feather fan.