Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (20 page)

‘Please stay, Kitty, I’ve missed you very much.’

I felt the skin on my back crawl beneath the stiff material of my dress as he patted my hand and continued. ‘I fear after our last . . . meeting you may have been left with quite the wrong impression of me. I treated you unfairly and I wish to make amends.’

I noticed that he slurred his words as he spoke.

‘Very soon after that night, I began to regret the fact that I might not see you again. Truly. Woody and Edward have heard me speak of you so often they think me a love-struck fool. That’s why at the club this morning Woody showed me this . . .’ James tapped the page on my knees with a gloved hand. His fingers stroked the picture of the plump chick with huge frightened eyes and rose-bud lips caught in a pretty O of terror. The girl on the page looked like a victim. Not a survivor. Not like me.

‘I don’t mind telling you that the thought of you in danger was intolerable. Woody encouraged me to renew our acquaintance – said this was the perfect time to express my concern. He’s a good fellow, eh?’

I didn’t answer and I didn’t move. I just kept staring at the road ahead as James carried on. The smell of brandy rolled off him into the cold air.

‘I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me, but Woody, now, he pointed out that a girl like you would be glad to see me again. I hope he might be right? It seems foolish for friends to lose touch.’

James’s hand burrowed under the newspaper and he began to stroke my knee. His voice ran on, smooth as watered silk. ‘So I came to The Gaudy today to find you. The article here is most specific that your act will continue at that venue. I waited outside like last time and saw you cross the street. When you mounted this omnibus, I decided it was the perfect opportunity for me to apologise and to make amends. What do you say?’

I turned to look at him now. He’d been drinking – a lot. His handsome face was flushed and his copper hair was awry beneath his tall hat. He stared at me and smiled; he reminded me of a lady’s lap dog yearning for a tit-bit.

In the sharp light of day, James Verdin looked very young.

Of an instant my head was clear. I pushed his hand out from under the paper and shifted so that we weren’t touching.

‘What do you say?’ he repeated.

I stared up at him and then spoke clearly and distinctly: ‘
Magna cadunt, inflata crepant, tumefacta premuntur
.’

He looked bemused so I said it again. He shook his head. ‘You have me. Is this a game, some private language you theatre people use, perhaps? You do say the most peculiar things. When I told the boys about you that night – I trust you’ll forgive my indiscretion, but I had no idea what a very powerful effect you might exert over me – they agreed that it is extraordinary for a girl like you to have such a very vivid imagination. You quite captured their attention. Now, Kitty, I would like us to begin again.’

I shivered, only it wasn’t the cold. James grinned. ‘Perhaps a sip of this might help?’

He reached into his coat and took out a new flask, finer than the last.

I shook my head. ‘No – I don’t think so. Not again.’

‘Don’t worry, this is good brandy, not that medicinal concoction.’

He unscrewed the stopper and took a sip. ‘Now, there’s a fine fellow too. Do you remember I told you my uncle approves of Edward? He has managed to persuade Uncle Richard that I should receive an allowance while I learn how to run his business affairs. Good Doctor Edward suggested that the only way to . . . interest me was to pay me. And the old boy actually listened – he has been much more amenable recently; I’d even call him generous.’

James took another long pull on the flask.

‘My uncle took me to dine at his own club, you know? A stuffy place, full of dust and desiccated corpses. He knew all about my visits to the halls and about you, Kitty – I suppose Eddie let something slip there. They chatter like a couple of old women sometimes.’

James grinned and waved the flask. ‘Uncle Richard made me promise not to “lose myself in sin”.’ He said those last words in a slow, heavy voice that was, I guessed, an imitation of the old man. ‘He said I had to renounce all vice before I saw a penny and, of course, I agreed to his terms.’

James wiped his lips and snorted with contempt. ‘So I am to be in trade.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘But I will use my time and my uncle’s money on better things. Art, that is my passion – my vocation.’

He turned to stare at me and this time I didn’t flinch or look away.

‘You are a sweet creature.’ He smiled, but his googling eyes suggested he was finding it hard to focus on my face. I realised then that he had been drinking to get up the courage to speak to me.

The bus lurched and I jolted forward. James put his arm around me.

‘Woody says it’s easy to set a woman up with a residence. He has experience of these things. Now I am assured of the funds I could do that for you, Kitty. I could find you rooms in a better part of town and visit you there as often as I liked. I could bring you flowers more beautiful than the ones I sent to the theatre and I could sketch you or paint you – then all the world would recognise my talent.’

‘Like that drawing?’ I asked, looking straight into his eyes. There wasn’t a flicker of recognition.

I put it more direct. ‘Are you saying you’d like to draw me again? The sketch you sent to the theatre was very fine.’

He shook his head. ‘There you go again, riddles. I’ve never drawn you, Kitty, but I will. When you are my . . . companion you will be my muse, I will draw you every day. Perhaps I could take you to Paris?’

I recalled Fitzy saying much the same thing as James shuffled even closer on the slatted seat and tucked the flask into his coat. ‘You have no idea how exciting it is to be near you again.’

I shook him off and stood up. ‘And you have no idea at all, do you?’

He stared up at me and his mouth opened and closed. ‘But surely you cannot refuse – a girl like you? I am offering you my . . . protection.’

He spoke too loudly because of the drink and a couple of men behind us laughed.

They were an audience and I played to them. I pulled myself up straight, pushed past him and half turned to the passengers on the top deck as I delivered my next line, gripping the front rail with my left hand to steady myself.

‘Protection – is that what you call it?
A girl like me
would call it setting her up as your whore. Good day to you, Mr Verdin.’

There was a roar of laughter now and one of the men called out, ‘You tell him, girl! Verdin, is it? Vermin more like.’

I made my way to the wooden steps at the back of the deck. A man yelled at me to be more careful when the bus jerked about and I knocked his bowler askew, but I carried on and didn’t look back.

At least there was one thing I was certain of now. James had sent me them flowers at The Gaudy, but that picture came from someone else. He was a pink-cheeked fool and the very worst kind of skirt-sniffing toff, but James Verdin wasn’t a murderer.

‘I want to see Sam Collins. Now. Tell him Miss Kitty Peck is waiting.’

The print boy gawped. If he was expecting The Limehouse Linnet to look like the fat little bantam on page three no wonder he didn’t know her stood on the other side of his counter in the reduced flesh. He mumbled something about appointments and opened a marbled diary on the desk top. ‘There’s nothing here, Mrs, er, Miss Peck, is it? Mr Peters hasn’t made an entry for you. Not for this afternoon leastways. Mr Collins is a very busy man. Perhaps you could come back tomorrow?’

I was about to be say something sharp when the door to the street jangled open behind me.

‘It’s clouding up out there, Ben, so much for better weather. It might even snow again.’

I whirled about to see Sam standing there, rubbing his hands together. ‘Miss Peck! You got my message?’ He must have seen something spark up in my eyes, because he hurried on. ‘Of course you have. A little artistic licence here and there, but otherwise most satisfactory, I hope you’ll agree. The block boys in the basement did a lovely job filling out my sketch. Very quick workers they are. And I’m sure it’s not done trade any harm, eh?’ He flicked his brown fringe aside and winked.

I frowned. ‘We’ll see tonight, I expect. You certainly know how to pad out a story, Mr Collins, just like you’ve padded out that girl in the picture.’

‘As I said, Miss Peck, artistic licence. Keeps everyone happy.’

I cocked my head to one side. I’d begun to wonder about Sam Collins too, as it happens. How had
The London Pictorial
managed to get the story about my accident into print so fast?

‘You were quick off the mark, weren’t you?’

He grinned. ‘Contacts, Miss Peck, contacts. I like to think I’ve got your neck of the woods well covered. I have my sources, you know.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Some of them in the most surprising places. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

He loosened his muffler and began to fumble with the buttons on his overcoat. They were all done up in the wrong places making him look like a badly wrapped package. It struck me that if Sam Collins was a murderer he’d need to employ someone with a lot more in the way of physical dexterity to carry his knife bags for him. It took him a long time to get out of that coat and when he threw the muffler at a hook on the wall he missed twice before managing to get it to stay. When he finally succeeded he turned back to me and smiled. ‘Please come upstairs to my office. A bargain is a bargain and I owe you, Kitty.’

Sam’s small office was untidier than the last time, with teetering piles of books and newspapers covering every surface and most of the floorboards. He practically had to burrow under his desk to find his own chair.

‘Do sit, please – there’s another chair beneath that pile. If you could just pass those papers to me, thank you, there it is. Sorry, I can’t offer you tea today. Peters has the most terrible influenza.’ He drummed the table and flicked his fringe before adding, ‘But perhaps that’s for the best, eh? He does make a disgusting pot.’

I smiled at him, despite that picture in the paper. Sam gabbled like a costermonger’s boy with a crate full of cabbages to shift, but I liked him the better for it. I don’t think he ever managed to think through a fully formed thought before blurting it out and beginning on the next one. His mind was as cluttered as his office, but in both cases I suspected he knew where everything was.

‘Mr Fratelli not with you today?’ There – he remembered Lucca’s name, for a start.

That drawing of Joey unfurled itself in my mind. I shook my head. ‘He . . . he couldn’t come. But as soon as I got your message after the run-through I took an omnibus west. You say you’ve got information – about the picture?’

He rustled through some papers on the desk. ‘Not exactly. Now where is . . . ah, here.’

He produced a small black book from the midst of the pile and flicked through thumb-stained pages covered with his fat looping scrawl.

‘Not about the picture, but about the gallery. Look there.’

He handed me the notebook. It was a list of names.

Sir Anthony Woolley, Geoffrey Manners, Viscount John Monclear, General Alexander Preston . . . I followed the names down the page with my finger until I got to one I knew – Sir Richard Verdin.

Something fluttered in my belly, something like a crow.

‘What is this, Sam? Who are they?’

‘They are the trustees of The Artisans Gallery. All decisions taken about the gallery’s activities – whether financial or artistic – are taken by that group of men . . . until quite recently, that is.’

I heard the note of excitement in his voice and looked up. Sam was staring intently at me. He twitched, flicked his fringe aside and reached across the desk. ‘May I?’

He began to read through the names. ‘Sir Anthony Woolley – bed-ridden, crippled by a fall from his horse last summer. Geoffrey Manners – wife’s gone off with some minor European princeling and he’s followed her. They say he’s in Bavaria. Viscount Monclear – he’s eighty-seven, never leaves his estate in Scotland. General Preston – went to India last May and not back yet.’

Sam continued down the list for another three or four names explaining why they were unlikely or unable to play a part in the direction of the gallery.

When he got to Sir Richard Verdin he stopped and tapped the page in the notebook.

‘Now, here’s the interesting one. My source tells me that for the last six months, Sir Richard Verdin has made every decision about The Artisans Gallery and what goes on show there.’

‘And that includes
The Cinnabar Girls
?’ I asked.

Sam nodded. ‘And that’s not all. Apparently Sir Richard was able to make certain stipulations regarding the presentation of that painting. Done late one night, it was. No one from the gallery was allowed to be present when it was delivered and hung. He had his own team working on it.’

I could feel blotches of colour spreading up from my neck into my cheeks. I loosened the shawl around my shoulders. The room was suddenly stifling.

‘How did you find this out, Sam?’

‘As I said, Kitty – sources. It pays to have friends across the city.’ He grinned, leaned back in his chair and a pile of papers toppled over behind him. He shot a rueful glance at the mess and continued, as if he’d been prompted to tell the truth.

‘Actually, to be frank, this was quite easy in the end. One of Peters’s cousins is married to a warder at The Artisans Gallery so I simply took the old chap out, stood him a pint or two and got him to talk very freely. But it is interesting, isn’t it?’

It was more than that.

I thought about that meeting with James earlier today. I was certain after talking to him that he wasn’t the one behind all this, but now I began to see a pattern. Wooden jigsaw pieces bumping around in my head were slotting into place.

‘What else have you found, Sam? Anything more about Sir Richard?’ I was careful to keep my face a blank as I spoke.

‘Only this,’ he flicked the notebook again. ‘It’s really very odd. Until three years ago Sir Richard Verdin showed no interest whatsoever in the arts. He is a businessman, you know, very successful, quite ruthless apparently.’

He carried on leafing through the pages. ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘What happened three years ago?’

‘He approached the gallery and bought himself a seat on the board with a very significant sum of money. He’s interested in new artists, it seems, the younger the better. Likes to interview them personally and nurture their careers. A couple of them are quite the thing at the moment – Robert Rollaston, Clifford Weir, know them?’

I shook my head as Sam continued. ‘Can’t say their work appeals to me – naked shepherd boys with pan pipes and herds of goats tramping over hillsides – but in certain quarters, I understand works by the Pastoral Brotherhood are very sought after.’

‘So you’re saying that
The Cinnabar Girls
is by one of his young artists. Do you know who?’

Sam stopped fiddling with the notebook and turned down the corner of a page to mark it. He flung the closed book into the pile of papers on his desk.

‘Of course not. I would have run the story by now – after consulting you, Kitty, naturally.’ He leaned forward, cupped his chin in his palm and brought his ink-stained fingers to his lips.

‘You still haven’t told me why you’re so interested. You and Mr Fratelli . . .’

Under that fringe his brown eyes were keen with interest. He looked like a terrier on the scent of a sewer rat.

I stared at the only patch of wood visible on the desk top. ‘We told you before, we’re interested in art, that’s all. You might think people from the halls don’t have a thought in their heads except drinking and gambling and worse, but it’s not true. Lucca . . . Mr Fratelli – he’s from Naples originally and very passionate about art. We talk about the Renaissance – does that surprise you? Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael – Lucca, he calls them The Trinity. And he’s a painter himself – a good one. When all London was talking about that picture, don’t you think it was natural that we would want to find out more?’

I was amazed to hear those names dropping so easy from my lips, but I went too fast and I didn’t look at Sam as I spoke. So much for Kitty Peck the great performer – even I could hear the lie.

The office was silent for a moment. ‘You intrigue me, Kitty. You really are a most interesting young woman . . .’

I looked up hopefully as Sam finished off, ‘. . . but I am not an idiot.’

‘I don’t know what you mean!’ I could feel my cheeks burn.

‘Oh come on now. At least credit me with a little sense. Tell me the truth – why is it so important for you to know?’

I bit my lip. ‘I can’t tell you, not now anyway. When this is all over perhaps I’ll have a story for you, but I can’t risk . . .’

‘Risk what?’ Sam’s eyes narrowed. ‘And what do you mean by “when this is all over”?’

The question hung in the air. I regretted saying that.

‘Please, Kitty, perhaps I can help you?’

I stood up, flustered. ‘I’ve got to go, there’s a show at eight. Thank you for the information about the painting and Sir Richard.’

Sam didn’t move. He just watched as I straightened my skirt and pinned my shawl. He looked like he was going over a bit of difficult mental arithmetic. I made my way over to the door.

‘Wait, Kitty!’

I paused with my hand on the doorknob.

‘There’s something else that might interest you. Sir Richard Verdin has a warehouse at Limehouse Basin.’ I turned to look at him.

Sam picked up the notebook again and opened it at the marked page. ‘I thought that might interest you. It’s in Skinners Yard – 3 to 10, Limehouse Basin. According to the register it’s been leased to him for the last thirty or so years by an L. Rosen. Verdin imports fur or used to. Any use?’

His clever eyes scanned my face. I nodded and opened the door. As I stepped out onto the dingy, narrow landing I heard his voice behind me.

‘I’m expecting another exclusive from you, Kitty, remember that. You owe me now. That’s how it works.’

The cold hit me immediately when I stepped out into the alley. Turning right, I walked quickly past the dingy window of the Holborn offices of
The London Pictorial
, where a copy of the most recent edition was spread open at page three.

If I could find a street bus heading east I’d take it. I’d even pay the extra to sit inside. It wasn’t just the cold that made me quicken my step and pull my shawl up over my head. The air had a metallic tang to it – smoke and soot that filled your nose and scratched at the back of your throat. A mist was licking at the cobbles and coiling round the railings of the grander houses lined up round Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The sky above looked like a bowl of porridge. It would be dark soon.

My heels tapped as I swung into Carey Street.

Now I was in a warren of little passages that cut through to Fleet Street. I reckoned it would be easy to pick up an omnibus going my way there, or maybe just a bit further along on Ludgate Hill.

I’d been to this part of town once before – it seemed a long time ago now – with Joey. He was making a delivery to a house of legals off the west side of the Fields. I’d asked him about all the papers tied up with black ribbon, a couple with seals as big as a dinner plate hanging off them. At the time he said he was doing a favour for a friend. I knew who that ‘friend’ was now – he’d been working for her.

It was closer to the river down here and in places the mist was stirring itself into a fog. I’d step into a patch and come out again a few yards later. It wouldn’t be long before all the street fugged up so you couldn’t see no more than a couple of foot ahead of you.

That seemed appropriate.

First James, now Sir Richard. Sam had given me more help than he knew, but how did it all come together?

Apart from Lucca, Fitzy and Lady Ginger herself, no one knew I’d made a connection between
The Cinnabar Girls
and the girls going missing from the halls.

But that’s not true, is it, Kitty? I heard the sharp voice in my head. You told James Verdin that night, didn’t you? He gave you the lixir and you gave him a fantastical story about dancing girls and paintings and murder. And afterwards he told his friends. Oh they all had a good old laugh at the drunken chorus girl and her vivid imagination . . . only someone who heard that story didn’t really find it so amusing.

I thought back to what James said about his uncle when we were on the street bus.

He has been much more amenable recently; I’d even call him generous.

No wonder there. It seemed to me that James and his uncle had been on ‘better terms’ since Sir Richard had received some useful information.

I ran through what James said about his uncle again –
He knew all about my visits to the halls and about you, Kitty – I suppose Eddie let something slip there. They chatter like a couple of old women sometimes.

Edward Chaston had let ‘something slip’ all right, but he had no idea what it really meant to Sir Richard Verdin.