Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (11 page)

‘. . . who is just
leaving
,’ I continued, nodding my head at the door.

Peggy’s lips went quite tight and then she piped up, ‘But I can happily stay here with you, Kitty, if you feel you need me.’ She pulled a face that suggested I would most definitely be feeling that way.

‘No, that’s not necessary. I know that your Danny will be waiting for you.’

‘Only if you’re sure, Kitty?’ It was an appeal, not a question. I ignored it.

‘Perhaps that odd-looking foreign chap will be joining us?’ Edward seemed to find his suggestion highly amusing. He grinned at me, his eyes all twinkled up like we was sharing a joke, and then he winked. Peggy’s black eyebrows shot up faster than a firecracker.

So much for secrecy.

‘P . . . Miss Worrow is leaving us now,’ I said, rather firmly, avoiding her eyes. As Peggy left the room – with obvious reluctance – John Woodruff actually patted her nancy. ‘Danny, is it? Lucky dog.’

I was glad when she was gone – it would make it easier to cope with her questions later – but now I felt like I was standing there naked in front of them. I pulled the shoulder straps a bit higher. I wasn’t usually lost for words, but tonight I was dumb as a haddock.

‘Please sit down, Miss Peck, we seem to have disturbed your toilette.’ James gestured towards my chair with his cane and I sat down again. ‘You must forgive this intrusion, but after meeting you at the gallery under such intriguing circumstances, I confess that I . . . that is to say my friends and I, have talked of little else.’ Edward smiled and made a slight bow and John made a snorting noise as James continued. ‘And as Woody here had not yet seen you perform – in the traditional sense – we decided to arrange an excursion. So here we are. I am happy to say that your performance tonight was every bit as thrilling as we had led our friend to expect. Bravo once again.’

He began to clap his white-gloved hands together and the other two joined in. I couldn’t tell if they was making fun of me or genuinely appreciating. I felt my cheeks burn up under the stage paint.

‘Thank you very much,’ I said when they’d finished. Then I thought I should add something more so I went on, ‘It’s very kind of you to come. I’m esteemed you all enjoyed yourselves.’

John smirked beneath his crawling whiskers and covered his mouth with his hand and Edward looked at the floor.

‘Tell me, Miss Peck, or perhaps I might call you Kitty . . .?’ James ignored his friends and sat down on the only other chair in the room. He placed his hat on the boards beside him, pulled off his gloves, undid his coat and pushed his thick coppery hair back from his high forehead. He was the only one who made himself at home like that. The other two stayed gloved and buttoned like they were anxious to be on the move.

‘. . . we have all been wondering why you went to the gallery last week.’

He paused and stared at me expectant. I wasn’t sure how to answer, but as I looked at his face and saw the way his grey eyes caught the light I knew I wanted to say the right thing.

I swallowed. ‘I . . . I’m very interested in art.’ I concentrated on James. Out of the corner of my eye I saw ‘Woody’ poke Edward in the ribs. Edward stared at his shoes, but I could see his gloved hands clenched tight together like he was trying to stop himself laughing out loud.

I was furious. They were mocking me. I don’t know where it came from but that article about
The Cinnabar Girls
in
The London Pictorial
reared up in my mind, word for word it did. That and some old painter stuff Lucca had gone on about.

‘
Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian
– they’re my particular interest,’ I said, warming up. ‘When I read that the painting
reminds the viewer of the Golden Age of art –
that being the Renaissance
– in its strength and vigorous physicality
, I had to see it. And my friend Lucca, Mr Fratelli, well, he’s an artist too, sort of, so we went to the gallery together.’

‘Well, I never! You are the most extraordinary young woman.’ James Verdin sounded amazed. He beamed, but the other two gents carried on their smirking.

The lines around Edward’s eyes puckered up as he spoke. ‘It seems that Miss Peck is an art-lover, James. How appropriate.’

‘Edward flatters me. But it is true that I paint – or try to. Tell me, what did you make of
The Cinnabar Girls
, Kitty?’

I chewed at the inside of my lip. I knew what I made of it all right, but what was the right thing to say? How did that piece in
The London Pictorial
go again?

‘I thought it very
ambitious
,’ I said after a moment, shooting a glance at each of them in turn to make sure of my answer. James grinned and Edward nodded. He didn’t seem to find me so amusing now.

‘Ambitious, yes, but successful too, don’t you agree?’ James was very fired up about it. ‘Ambitious suggests that the artist has gone beyond the limits of his talent, but
The Cinnabar Girls
is a masterpiece. It is the work of a genius. What do you say, Edward?’

Edward shrugged. ‘I know very little of art, James. I am a mere physician, after all. John is your man – he has a keen appreciation of the female form.’

John seemed to be more interested in the gin bottle on the table.

‘You can pour yourself one, if you like,’ I said.

He raised the bottle, sniffed at it and began to cough. ‘I fear I must decline your generous offer, Miss Peck. In fact I rather think it is time we moved on. It is late, gentlemen, and I have business to attend to.’

James laughed. ‘Business, Woody? Would that be a legal matter or something more . . . pressing?’

‘Bound to be the latter – I hope she’s worth the trouble you’ll get from your father.’ Edward nudged John’s shoulder.

‘Oh, she’s trouble all right, but the best kind.’ John turned up his coat collar and moved towards the door. ‘And a thousand times more educational than those gloomy old medical books of yours, Edward.’

He seemed to have entirely forgotten that I was there. ‘Come on, James, Eddie. We can take a hackney back into town.’

‘You must forgive our friend’s impatience. I fear he is not a connoisseur.’ Edward cocked his head to one side and grinned. ‘Thank you, Miss Peck, for a most interesting evening. I congratulate you on your many talents. You are an ornament to the arts.’

James stood and bowed. He took my hand and kissed it. ‘We will not tire you any longer, Kitty. You must be exhausted after your exertions this evening and we have been thoughtless. Perhaps you will allow us to call on you again – we could continue our dialogue on art? It would be a great pleasure.’

As I stared up my breath caught in my throat for a moment. All of an instant I was very certain indeed that continuing anything with James Verdin would be a great pleasure.

I was in the workshop down The Gaudy looking for Peggy next day when Lucca turned up again.

Now, I thought I should have a little talk with Peggy because it struck me that she might have quite a lot to say about my visitors. And I wanted to be sure that if she did have a lot to say, she said it to me and not to nobody else, apart from Danny. (He’d probably heard it all by now.)

Anyway, Peggy wasn’t at her lodgings, so I pushed on to the workshop.

She and Danny sometimes shared a bottle and bite together mid-afternoon of a Sunday and I thought I might find them together. In the halls we didn’t much keep to a regular timetable. All the same, even if it was just a bit of boiled bacon and a slice or two of bread, we liked to keep up the appearance that it was a different day to all the others.

But the workshop was quiet – just an old carpenter working on a bit of flat painted up like a garden. Mrs Conway was very keen to do her song about Valentine’s Day and turtle doves choosing their mates. By my reckoning it was about thirty years too late for the old bird to be trilling out that one again, but she was a trier – you had to give her that.

I started back across the cobbled yard when I heard a whistle – Lucca.

I turned round and there he was coming in from the back alleyway – that one Fitzy had carried me down that time I saw Lady Ginger in her carriage. Lucca was bundled up in a heavy coat. It hadn’t snowed for a couple of days now, but the ground was all crusted over with yellow ice.

I was pleased to see him, I won’t lie. I wanted to tell him about Joey and I wanted to ask him something most particular. Even so, I was annoyed too – what with him going off like that and not telling me.

‘And where’ve you been?’ I planted my hands on my hips and gave him the arrow.

He nodded his head at the workshop. ‘Not here – inside.’

‘Old Bertie’s working in there.’

‘He is . . .
sordo
,
deaf. He won’t hear us. Come.’

I followed him through the wide door and slammed it behind us. Lucca began to climb the wooden ladder to the floor above. Bertie looked over and winked at me. Then he made a sucking noise that was supposed, I thought, to sound like a kiss. He gurned and nodded his head at Lucca’s legs just disappearing overhead. He only had one tooth left at the front of his mouth.

Jesus! There’s another one who thinks we’re a pair, I thought, feeling a sudden rush of heat at the memory of James last night. What would it be like to kiss him?

I tried not to think about that as I tucked in my skirt and followed Lucca up the ladder.

When I got to the top I couldn’t make out where he’d gone. There were old props, rags and piles of painted stuff all over the place. It reeked of paint and turps up here too, but there was no sign of Lucca. Then I saw a little glow of light from a hatch at the far end of the loft and I went over, bending double to squeeze through into the space beyond. I’d never been in here before or knew it existed.

‘Welcome to my studio, Fannella.’

Lucca had lit a small lantern and was attempting to light a candle stub in a saucer on the floor. It kept fluttering about in a draught before dying.

‘It is a poor space for an artist, but it is all I have.’

The walls were covered with paintings and drawings – people, animals, trees, houses, all very beautifully done.

‘I never knew you had all this up here.’ I stepped over to the wall where a sheet of paper was pinned to a beam. ‘Who’s this then?’

The boy in the drawing had thick curling hair and wide dark eyes – sad they was and deep like they burned out of the paper and into the wood behind. You could swear they’d leave a mark there after you took the paper away.

Lucca looked over and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. It was the flickering of the candle he was still trying to light.

‘No one – I copied from a book.’

‘He’s good. Come to it, they’re all very good, Lucca.’ I moved along the wall and looked at a drawing of a running horse. Close up it didn’t look like much, just scratchy lines. But if you stepped back it all came together as a tangle of wild limbs and mane whirling across the paper.

‘Blimey – you really are an artist. You’re wasted here.’

Now, we all knew Lucca was good, but apart from the odd sketch of hands or some of the girls and his general paint work for the halls, I’d never seen his proper stuff before, although he talked about it often enough.

Lucca shrugged. ‘I thought it was time to show you. After seeing . . .’ He stopped for a moment. ‘After the gallery and the painting, I thought I should be more honest about myself, my art. That’s all, Fannella. I have nothing to be ashamed of.’ He sounded almost angry.

Lucca looked around at the pictures pinned on the beams and spread out across the floorboards behind him and, just for a second, again I thought he looked . . . it’s difficult to say it exactly, but he looked haunted. Not like he’d seen a ghost, but like a ghost was looking out of him.

He reached into the folds of his coat, brought out a large book and placed it on the boards in front of him.

‘We can talk here. Come, see this.’

I shook my head. ‘I need to talk to you first. She did it like she said she would – The Lady, she cut off Joey’s finger and gave it to me. I went to see her yesterday to tell her about the painting and the girls, but it didn’t do no good.’

The tawny skin of Lucca’s face paled to sallow ash. ‘Surely that’s enough? You have given her information, now she can . . .’

‘She can
what
?’ I mimicked the old cow’s voice. ‘She said I’d brought her scraps, and that she wanted more. Then she gave me this.’ I reached into my bodice and drew out the Christopher and the ring.

‘It’s Joey’s.’ I held the ring forward so that the gold sparked in the candlelight. I blinked hard. ‘I had to pull it off his . . .’

Lucca swore under his breath and then he stepped forward and hugged me. We stood close like that for a moment and I saw our breath mingle in the cold air.

‘So what now, Fannella?’

I looked down at the ring in my hand. ‘That’s just it. I don’t know what to do next. I had some callers in my room last night after the show . . .’

I stopped myself. Of a sudden I didn’t want to tell Lucca that James Verdin had come to see me.

‘And?’ Lucca looked anxious. ‘Did any of them try to . . .’

I shook my head and didn’t catch his eye as I went on. ‘They was just . . . admirers. I don’t see how I’m going to find anything out that way, despite what Fitzy and Lady Ginger might think. She said she was prepared to give me more time, but I don’t trust her. She’s already hurt him. The only thing we’ve got is that painting and she didn’t want to know.’

‘That is why I wanted to show you this.’ Lucca knelt down and tapped the book lying on the boards. It was old and the leather cover was decorated with gold fancy work.

‘Where did you get this then?’ I sat next to him crossing my legs under my skirt.

He didn’t answer so I pulled the book over and turned to the first page. A square label was gummed onto the paper:
From the Library of The Fellowship of British Landscape Artists
.

‘So you nicked it?’ Lucca had told me before how he had a knack of ‘borrowing’ books. Most of the books under his bed was ‘borrowed’. A lad like Lucca couldn’t afford fine print.

I tried to smile. ‘Well, that’s a nice thing for a Sunday, isn’t it?’

He shrugged. ‘I needed to show you something, Fannella – and anyway no one has looked at this for years. Why shouldn’t I have it?’ He stroked a long brown finger across the cover and immediately the curling golden patterns in the leather glowed. He loved them old books and he certainly had a knack for getting hold of them. I sometimes wondered what would happen to him if he was caught.

‘Come on, show me then.’ I rubbed my chapped hands together. ‘And after that I’ve got something I want to ask you.’

He began to turn the pages all reverend like it was a bleedin’ Bible. The book was full of pictures just as I expected – all protected under sheets of thin paper that crackled as he smoothed them back.

‘Here – look.’

He angled the book and moved the saucer with the candle so that I could see it more easy. ‘Do you see?’

I shook my head. ‘See what? It’s a field, isn’t it? And a mountain – and that dollop there could do with a few more clothes.’

Lucca sighed. ‘The sky, Fannella – look at the sky and the river – there.’

He traced the line of the water through the picture. Even in the print it seemed to have a particular shine to it. Like the sheen on a toff’s coat. I thought about James again, of a moment, but then I got what Lucca was driving at.

‘It’s the paint! The Sillian Gold you was on about at The Artisans?’

‘Sicilian Gold,’ he nodded. ‘Now read from here. He pointed to the lines under the picture.

I leaned a bit closer. The writing was cramped and the page was stained at the bottom making it difficult to see the words clearly. I followed the lines with my finger – starting off slow.

‘“C . . . Corretti’s masterpiece,
Pers . . . Persephone in the Fields of Elysium
, painted for The House of Bagnia in Palermo” – blimey, Lucca, why don’t they have normal names like the rest of us? – “was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1693. Acclaimed as the artist’s most successful use of Sicilian Gold on the m . . . mon . . . monumental scale, the loss of
Persephone in the Fields of Elysium
is considered one of the greatest tragedies of art. Even in 1693 it was known as the last of the artist’s five great commissions to have survived. When Corretti died in 1534, the secret of Sicilian Gold ex . . . expired with him. Although many have tried to recreate this remarkable, some said “magical” pigment, all have failed. The only certainty that remains is that the process was r . . . riven with danger and involved sub . . . substances of the most toxic nature. Corretti himself was just twenty-four at his death. Fellow artist Br . . . Branc . . . Brancazzo wrote that his body had grown old before its time. This fac . . . facsimile was created from contemporary drawings of Corretti’s original work now securely lodged in the collection of the Counts of Bagnia.”’

I stopped and looked at Lucca. ‘It’s poison then, this Sicilian Gold. That’s what toxic means?’

He nodded. ‘Nearly all paints are poison. It gives them depth, sometimes the colour and often it helps them stay to the canvas.’

‘Like arsenic?’

Lucca nodded again. ‘But Sicilian Gold was different. When I was an apprentice in Napoli it was . . .
leggendario
 . . . a legend? They said Corretti had found a way to make the most perfect and beautiful paint. His works were admired and feared because they seemed to be alive . . .
soprannaturale
. But they were also feared because the paint itself was deadly. There are old stories about his works bringing misfortune – people thought they were unlucky. It’s why they were all destroyed. This . . .’ he pointed at the picture in the book, ‘. . . was the last, but then the great earthquake . . .’

‘Destroyed that too – so all we have now is this copy and the story about the paint?’

Lucca nodded. ‘And after he died no one found the way to make it again.’

He closed the book. ‘Until now. I went to see
The Cinnabar Girls
again.’

It was like someone gripped my backbone and gave it a twist. I shuddered as I thought about that picture.

‘I don’t know how you could go back there. That thing was evil . . .’

‘It wasn’t easy, Fannella, but I had to see it again to be sure.’

‘To be sure they was all in it? I thought that was bleedin’ obvious. No, I think all you were interested in was that old yellow paint.’ I was furious with him.

‘Exactly – I had to see it again to be certain and now I am. The painter
is
using Sicilian Gold. He has found a way to make it again – three hundred and fifty years after the secret was lost. He is not merely a great artist . . .’

I opened my mouth to let something ugly out, but Lucca raised his hand.

‘For all that
The Cinnabar Girls
is evil, just as you say, it is the work of a master. The artist is an alchemist as well as a genius.’

‘A what?’

‘
Alchimista –
in English you say alchemist, like a magician,
si
?’

‘No, I don’t see. But I tell you one thing, if he is a magician he’s bloody good at doing the disappearing act. I’ve got to find out who he is, Lucca.’

I rubbed my thumb over an old nail poking up through the boards. ‘The girls in the picture, do
you
think they’re still alive?’

He didn’t say anything, so I knew what his answer was.

I pressed the ball of my thumb hard down on the nail so that it hurt. ‘This isn’t just about Joey any more, is it? I keep dreaming about Alice with that little plait hanging over her shoulder and that collar round her neck. Maggie Halpern – if he’s got her as well then what . . .’

‘What will he do next?’ Lucca paused for a moment. ‘I was afraid to tell you this, but there is talk of a new work. The artist is painting again. One of the attendants told me that The Artisans Gallery has negotiated for exclusive rights to show his next work.’

‘What else did he say? Did he know anything about him? Who he is? Where he’s from? There must be something?’

Lucca shook his head. ‘I tried to find out as much as possible, but there is nothing more to tell. He has demanded total secrecy. The attendant told me that
The Cinnabar Girls
was delivered and hung by unknown hands in the middle of the night. No one from the gallery was allowed to be there. The only certainty is that no one knows anything about him.’

I felt a rush of excitement. ‘Well, I reckon that’s where you might be wrong. That’s the other thing I want to talk to you about. Remember that newspaper piece you showed me, the one with all that guff about the
unknown genius
?’

Lucca nodded.

‘It went on, didn’t it? The first line was “
This newspaper demands to know the identity of the master whose hand has brought
The Cinnabar Girls
so perfectly, so pulchritudinously and so piteously to life at The Artisans Gallery in Mayfair
.”’