Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (22 page)

I was going to find out one way or another. I looped it round the bottom of the rail and tied the best knot I knew – one taught me by one of the old ship ropemakers who was a regular at The Lamb. Quickly I pushed the material out through the metal rails so that it was hanging down over the edge. Taking in a lungful of air, I climbed over.

I tried not to think of the deep pool of nothing at my back as I clung to the outside of the balcony and crouched low. I don’t know why, but just then one of Lucca’s stories came into my head – Michelangelo and a chapel in Rome.

Old Mickey – he’d painted the whole ceiling for one of them papals lying on his back a hundred foot up with just a bit of rackety old wooden platform between him and kingdom come. And when I say painted, I don’t mean a lick of whitewash. Lucca had shown me pictures in one of his books. Bible scenes, they was – God making the world, Noah and the flood, Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden with an angel hovering overhead pointing out the way.

That was the picture that came to me now. Adam, cast out of Paradise, naked and beautiful, just like Joey in that drawing in Lucca’s attic.

Not now. I couldn’t think of that now.

I shook my head to clear away the images and felt for the loop in the shawl with my right foot. Carefully I pushed through, sliding down to allow the material to take in my leg and thigh. I tightened my grip on the rails as I shifted to tuck my left foot through the loop and then, gradually, I leaned back and allowed the shawl to take my weight. It felt more like a sling than a swing.

Holding tight to the bottom of the rails with my left hand, I reached out to test the knot for one last time with the tips of my fingers. It was tight as Fitzy’s trousers.

I breathed out slowly, cleared my mind, released my grip and slid down into the sling seat.

It held.

Tell truth, it was easier than being up there in my cage at the halls. If I didn’t think about the yards and yards yawning open between my nancy and the slabs of marble down below, I was actually comfortable – as comfortable as any girl who found herself in such a position might be, you might say.

Silent as a moth, I swung there, listening.

Slow footsteps sounded above to the left and the cane scratched across stone. He was going clockwise – now I had him. Once he’d passed by and gone on a way, I’d climb back up over the rail, take the other direction and make for the door.

I tightened my grip. What if that sound earlier meant he’d locked it?

Footsteps sounded directly above.

A moment later the rails just overhead were thrown into sharp silhouette by a sudden light. I closed my eyes and began a silent prayer as a voice came from just above.

‘Excuse me, sir, the cathedral is closed. Didn’t you hear the bell? All visitors should have been out half an hour ago now. Mr Austin! I’ve found a straggler.’

I heard more sounds and laboured breathing as if someone large was clattering down some steps just above and to the left. Another voice echoed across the space. ‘Good thing you came across him before he went up to the Stone Gallery or, God forbid, to the Golden Gallery up top. I’ve just come down from there – it’s all clear for the night. You done, Mr Thomas?’

‘All clear, except for this gent. Now sir, it’s a very good thing you didn’t go any higher without our knowing. If you’d been locked outside up there you’d have had a most uncomfortable evening of it. This way, please . . .’

There was a muttered reply that rose to a sharp rebuke. I caught the last words, ‘. . . think you’ll find I have every right to be here.’

The second man spoke again. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I think
you’ll find
I have every right to be back at home with a nice plate of muffins on my lap. Last entry is five-thirty of a weekday evening and we like to clear everyone out an hour later, except for special services. That’s why we lower the lights and close every door except . . .’

The warden broke off for a moment before continuing. ‘Ah that’s it, isn’t it? Old Barker’s left the side door at the front open again. We must have a word about that with one of the vergers – he’s becoming very lax. That how you came in, is it, sir? I’m sorry, but after six that’s for exits only. Now, we’ll be going out that way too. I hear it’s a filthy night out there. Follow me.’

I twisted in my sling and watched the wardens’ lamps as they bobbed around the balcony. Three huge shadows flickered up the curved walls as they escorted the man with the cane back to the door. I heard the sound of rattling and bumping as one of the wardens tried the door.

A voice came again. ‘Funniest thing – where is it now?’

The words bounced off the walls. Then: ‘Why thank you, sir. Can’t think what it was doing down there, must have jiggled out, I suppose? Down we go then, after you. Watch your step there.’

I heard the door open and the fading sound of footsteps on the stairs. Then I was alone in the dark.

The windows were barred and shuttered. I stood in the narrow cut and looked up at the flat front of the blackened building with its bent railings and cracked stone steps. If you didn’t know better you’d never guess Lady Ginger lived in a palace.

I wasn’t sure what time it was now, very late I guessed, but I needed to see her and tell her about Sir Richard and his painter boys. It was enough to exchange for Joey, wasn’t it?

Bring me more.
That was what she said – and that’s exactly what I was doing.
She
could deal with it now.

There was no one else in the dingy passage off Salmon Lane and I can’t say I was surprised. Her reputation was enough to patrol these streets – and anyway, only a bedlam would come to Lady Ginger’s Palace without an invitation.

I couldn’t see a sliver of light from the windows on any floor. I took another step back and peered up to the top where I knew her receiving room was. She was probably there now with her lascars and that bleedin’ parrot. I pictured her curled up on a pile of cushions, eyes closed, sucking on her pipe – tendrils of thick sweet smoke weaving up into the air. I wondered if she could tell the difference between her opium dreams and the real world. And even if she could, would it matter?

My feet were raw. I could feel sharp cobbles through the strips of material I’d ripped from my underskirt and bound over my stockings.

There hadn’t been a chance to find my boots.

I’d waited there, dangling under the great black dome of St Paul’s until I was sure I was safe and then I’d hauled myself up over the edge of the balcony and untied my shawl.

I bent forward, and my hair brushed the stones as I planted my hands on my thighs and breathed deep. My knees began to twitch and the bones in my legs felt as if all the marrow had been sucked clean out of them. If I allowed myself to dwell on what I’d just done, I thought I might just faint away right there up on the balcony.

I straightened up.

The single lamp was still alight over the open door on the far side, but the wide, spiralling stone stairs beyond were in darkness. I bundled up my shawl and darted round the balcony.

I listened for a moment, but I couldn’t hear a sound from the stairwell. I stepped through the door and felt my way down using the wall as a guide.

After an age in the dark I crept out into the vast empty cathedral. At the sound of footsteps I shrank behind a column and watched as a small man with a lamp, one of the wardens I’d heard earlier I presumed, made a final circuit. He was humming a tune, but it didn’t sound very reverent. In fact, I knew it from the halls – something about a fella and his girl having a picnic, only when the chorus got to a bit about the unpacking of the fancies, it wasn’t just bread and cheese that got laid out on the grass.

I slipped out and followed him as quiet as I could, making sure he didn’t catch sight of me. He made his way back to the side door where I’d first come in and disappeared behind a wooden screen. He sneezed twice and I heard the sound of rattling keys.

This was my chance. My stockinged feet didn’t make a sound as I flew down the side aisle. The door stood slightly ajar and I slipped through the gap, racing down the steps into the swirling fog. Dodging left I found myself among the tumbledown stones and crumbling table tombs of St Paul’s churchyard.

That was when I remembered my boots.

I’d walked most of the way back east and it was hard going. It began to rain as I reached more familiar streets, but at least it thinned the fog to a mist before it washed it away completely.

In Spitalfields by the brewery I took a seat up top with a carter lad. As the big wagon rumbled past he’d shouted out some clever words, but when I looked up at him he must have felt guilty because he asked where I was going and budged up.

The big horses flicked their tails and twitched their ears as the carter boy talked about his employer and some funny business with the wages. When he asked about me and I told him about the halls he asked if his sister could get a start there.

‘Pretty she is, neat figure, voice like an angel. What d’ya fink?’

I thought it was the very last place I’d want a little sister of mine to work, but I said I’d keep an ear out.

‘You know who I’d like to see?’ he said, pulling hard on the reins as the horses spooked at a hack racing out from a side street.

I shook my head.

‘That Limehouse Linnet. Kitty Peck, ain’t it? They say she’s got all London at her feet these days – that she can do just what she wants.’

‘Is that what they say?’

He nodded.

I stared ahead. ‘She’s a very lucky girl then, isn’t she?’

The carter boy took me as far as Shadwell and dropped me off just past another St Paul’s – the old seaman’s church this time. He was collecting a load from the New Basin and couldn’t take me no further.

Now, this was a poor place, even compared to St Anne’s. The grimy hovels around St Paul’s in the east had a reputation for offering entertainment to sailors, if you get my meaning, and I didn’t want to linger there for fear of being mistaken for a brass. I tucked my hair under my shawl and kept my head down.

There was no point in going to The Gaudy now, it would be closed for the night and Fitzy would be breaking the china and chewing the cushions in his office. But who knew what hours Lady Ginger kept?

I wondered if she even slept in a bed.

It was past one when I climbed up the steps and reached for the big metal ring in the centre of one of the double doors. I knocked twice and waited for a minute before knocking again four, five, six times. The hollow sound bounced off the damp brick walls around me.

I went back down to the street and stared up at the building. On the top floor there was a momentary glint of yellow in one of the windows as if someone had loosened a shutter or shifted a curtain.

‘I see you, Lady Ginger.’ I took another step back. ‘I know you’re in there. It’s me, Kitty’.

My voice rang out clearly in the darkness. I was surprised at its strength and the challenge in it.

‘I’ve brought you more, just like you said.’

When no one came I raced up the steps, took hold of the ring and hammered it down again and again with my right hand, all the while thumping on the cracked paint with my left and shouting up.

‘Do you hear me, Lady? I’ve brought you more. I’ve got a name.’ The longer I pounded on the door, the more frantic I became. I didn’t care now. ‘Where’s my brother? Where’s Joey? You promised me, Lady Ginger. You owe me!’

I must have beaten on those doors a hundred times before I faltered, crumbling into a little heap at the top of the steps. My voice had dwindled to a cracked whisper of defeat.

I started to cry then, not great noisy sobs, but silent tears that trickled down my face and rolled off my chin into the folds of my shawl. I tried to wipe them away with the backs of my hands but they kept on coming.

I couldn’t feel a thing – not the tiredness, not the cold, not my blistered feet and nothing inside neither. It was like I’d been wrung out and cast aside like a rag poppet dropped by a child.

I wrapped my hands around my knees and rocked backwards and forwards on the step. I kept repeating Joey’s name again and again. Why had he done this to me?

The doors clicked open and swung silently inwards.

I looked up. One of The Lady’s Chinamen stood in the candlelit hallway. He had a scar running down his face from the upper lid of his right eye to the corner of his mouth. It gave off the impression he was smiling, but when he turned to look down at me the left side of his face was blank. Something sweet and musty rolled out into the air.

He reached into the folds of his gown.

Remembering that performance with Sukie and Frances, I stood up sharp and dodged to the bottom of the steps and out onto the cobbles. If he had a blade tucked away I was out of reach now.

But he stayed exactly where he was. I watched as he pulled something from the sleeve – a roll of paper. He raised his arm and offered the paper to me. His black eyes glinted as he stared.

When I didn’t move he shuffled out onto the top step and stooped to place the paper on the stone, then he straightened up, bowed his head once, turned and went back inside, closing the doors softly behind him.

I raced up the steps and grabbed the paper. It was too dark to see anything here so I crunched it up in my hand and ran up to Salmon Lane, where there were a couple of lamps.

My hands were shaking as I unfurled it. The page was as empty as the Chinaman’s face except for one thing. Right in the middle, written in red and enclosed in a circle, was the number four.

I knew what it meant immediately. Lady Ginger was a subtle bitch – I had to give her that.

The number of death – that’s what she called it, wasn’t it?

And it was the number of days I had left until my own brother died.

Lucca’s face was creased and heavy with sleep. He blinked and rubbed his hand over the scars on the right side of his face.

‘Fannella! Thank God, I thought . . .’ He shook his head as if to clear away the last remnants of a dream and stared at me. ‘Fitzpatrick is as mad as a rabid dog. Where have you been?’ He was sharp now.

‘You going to let me in or are you going to leave me freezing me out here like a bleedin’ slab of hokey-pokey?’ Those bold words echoed in the alleyway, but my voice was tight and oddly pitched as if it was going to slide up into something close to a scream.

He frowned, opened the door wider and placed a finger to his lips as he ushered me inside. ‘People are asleep. It’s late or haven’t you noticed?’

Tell truth, I hadn’t. After receiving Lady Ginger’s message the only thing I wanted to do was find Lucca and talk to him and I hadn’t given a thought to the time.

When I’d got to his lodgings everything was dark, so I’d thrown handfuls of pebbles up to his window in the eaves.

I wasn’t entirely sure he’d be there or what I was going to say to him if he was, but when he poked his head out I was so glad to see him.

Lucca led the way up to his room, pushed open the door and stood aside to let me go in ahead of him. I sank down on the bed; of an instant there was nothing left in me. I was a candle burned down to the last feeble, guttering spark.

It was dark and cold. Lucca crossed over to the little fireplace and struck a Lucifer to light a stub of grey wax in the single brass stick on the mantle. Then he crouched down, crumpled up some papers and pushed them into the gaps between the scanty nuggets in the hearth. He lit the paper ends from the candle stub and neither of us spoke as the damp coals spat and then, reluctantly, began to glow. Within a couple of minutes a small fire was crackling. He leaned back, folded his arms and watched the flames.

‘So, where have you been, Fannella?’

I slipped off the bed to kneel next to him and reached out towards the hearth, but it didn’t make much difference, I was numb to the core. My hands were shaking – I noticed that, but it was like I was watching some other girl, not me.

Lucca saw it too. He took my hands between his like we was praying together and rubbed them. I shifted to get closer to the fire and the ragged, muddy hem of my skirt lifted over my feet.

‘Jesus! What have you done to yourself?’ Lucca dropped my hands, leapt up and fetched a jug and basin from the corner. ‘Where are your boots?’ Gently he unwrapped the shreds of torn, dirty fabric from my feet and I winced as the material pulled at the crusted blood.

He swore under his breath as he dabbed at the scabbed and grimy skin. The water must have been ice-cold, but I couldn’t feel it. I watched as he dipped a scrap of stained linen into the bowl and the water clouded red obscuring the dainty flowers painted on the china.

He looked up and pushed a curl back from my face. ‘You have been crying.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘When will you learn that you are not immortal, Fannella?’

I tried to smile. ‘I think I learned that tonight.’

I wondered how much to tell him. He unpeeled another strip of material from my right foot and I yelped.

‘I’m sorry, but it will be painful. The heat – it makes the feeling come back.’

I bit my lip and nodded. ‘It’s all right, go ahead – and thank you.’

He dipped the rag back into the bowl and smoothed it over my toes, speaking softly as he worked.

‘When you didn’t come to the theatre this evening. I didn’t know what to do or who to ask. I was worried that you . . . you had been taken like the others.’ His dark curls fell forward as he bent to dab at my heel where a blister the size of a penny was raw and bleeding. I couldn’t speak for a moment as a stab of pain made me clench my jaw.

‘Lucca, I . . . I’ve been to see Sam Collins again. He sent a message to The Gaudy saying he wanted to see me. I came to find you after the rehearsal but . . .’

(The thought of that drawing of Joey insinuated itself into a corner of my mind. I knew I could trust Lucca with my life, but there was a distance between us now – a secret. I realised with a sudden shock of recognition that Lucca didn’t trust
me
.)

‘. . . But you weren’t there, so I went to Sam’s office on my own. I took an omnibus. I thought I’d be back in time for tonight—’ I gasped as Lucca ripped another strip from the sole of my foot.

He looked up and frowned. ‘You took a foolish risk. After the cage . . .’ He sighed and tapped his head. ‘You are clever,
si
, but sometimes you are like a little child. You act when you should think. You jump before you see. Tell me, how could you be sure that Sam Collins was telling the truth?’

He was right, of course, but I hadn’t been of a mind to examine the situation too closely, had I? When I’d gone to find Lucca after the rehearsal I’d found that picture instead. There were questions I needed to ask about that, but whether I
wanted
the answers, now, that was a very different matter. Fact is I wanted to get away from that drawing. That’s why I went to Sam Collins on my own, but I wasn’t going to tell Lucca that.

I shifted on the rug. ‘He asked about you, he even remembered your name. He’s a sharp one right enough, but he’s not dangerous – at least not in the way you think. I reckon he’d sell his mother for a good story, but he wouldn’t kill her for it. He kept his promise too. He passed on some information about the gallery and about that picture. I . . . I think I know who’s behind all this now.’

The firelight glowed on the smooth left side of Lucca’s face. I couldn’t read his expression. ‘You need fresh linens on these. I’ve got an old shirt we can use. You can tell me everything while I finish cleaning you up and make some fresh bandages. I mean
everything
,
Kitty.

It was the name ‘Verdin’ that did it. Most particularly the name ‘Sir Richard Verdin’.

Lucca had gone quiet when I told him about James and the bus, but as soon as I got to that bit about the gallery and the trustees it was as if someone had chucked a bucket of water on the fire.

I shivered and took up an iron to poke the coals. Little flames were still dancing around in the grate, but the room suddenly felt chill as a butcher’s locker.

I set down the iron. ‘Sam says Sir Richard’s interested in young artists, the younger the better. Apparently he takes a very personal interest—’ I broke off as Lucca stood up abrupt and swore in Italian. I didn’t understand what he said, but as the curses spat from his lips the meaning was clear.

I sat there in silence watching. Lucca had gone to the far side of the room. Now he stood with his back to me, his forehead resting on the wall and one hand clenched above his head. I could see all the muscles in his arm strung tight. He’d balled his fist up like he wanted to punch a hole in that thin old board right out through to the stairwell beyond.

I stood up and limped over. My feet were stinging like hell now.

‘Lucca?’ I stroked his back, feeling the tightness of his shoulders beneath the thin material of his shirt. He was like something coiled up and ready to strike. I reached up to his face.

‘Don’t!’

He stepped away and turned to stare at me. His eye glinted in the shadow.

‘Look at me.’ He pushed back his hair on the right so that I could see the melted skin that pulled his once-handsome features into a mockery of a face. Deliberately he moved into the firelight and held back his hair so that nothing covered his scars. It was as if everything had slipped to the wrong place. The front of his burned scalp on the right side was patched with tufts of hair, his eye and the side of his nose were fused into a fleshy lump, raised strips of livid red and unnaturally pale skin stretched down his cheek and onto his neck. His ear was a gnarled stub of gristle. I’d never seen him so clearly before. I felt like an intruder.

Lucca’s mouth twisted into a smile.

‘Verdin did this to me. Look closely, Fannella. This is his artistry.’

‘James?’ I wasn’t thinking clearly.

Lucca snorted and shook his head. ‘Collins is right that the great Sir Richard Verdin is interested in young artists. I was one of them, but it’s not their painting skills he values. It is something else altogether. He is a connoisseur of the flesh – do you understand what I am saying?’

Another bit of that old wooden jigsaw bumped into place.

I nodded slowly. ‘You mean he . . . he used you, like a girl? You were a shilling boy?’

‘He paid me more than that, Fannella.’

Lucca sank to the ragged little rug in front of the fire. ‘And then he took everything I had.’ He stared into the flames and didn’t look at me as he spoke.

‘I was young, poor and easily flattered. We all were. Giacomo and I had come here to make a new life. In our village we were . . . discovered and it was not good. Our families – they tried to part us, but we were in love. We couldn’t live apart. So we went to Napoli, worked hard and then we booked a passage on a ship as soon as we had saved enough money. We hoped that here in London where no one knew us life could be different.’

Lucca paused. ‘He was beautiful, Fannella – like an angel.’

I went to sit next to him in front of the hearth and I took his hand in mine. We sat there in silence for a moment looking into the fire. Nanny Peck used to read the flames to me and Joey when we was small. Right then I discovered I could read quite a lot there myself.

I squeezed his hand. ‘Giacomo – he’s the boy in your pictures in the room over the workshop?’

Lucca nodded.

‘What happened to him?’

He didn’t answer at first and I didn’t want to push it, but then he took a deep breath. ‘A short time after we came to London I was . . . introduced to Sir Richard and his circle of artists. At first it was easy. I was one of several boys who posed as models for his protégés. One day, while I waited for my turn, he saw me sketching. He admired my work and he invited me to draw for him. Imagine, Kitty, the great Sir Richard Verdin interested in a boy like me. He said I was talented, a true artist. He said I could be part of his special school.’

He laughed bitterly.

‘There were several of us in Sir Richard’s “school” – others like me, boys without a past . . . or a future. He invited us to his house, gave us money and made us pose naked for him. He liked to watch as we drew or painted . . . or touched each other.’

He paused and gripped my hand tightly. ‘I burned those pictures. I could not keep them afterwards.’

I didn’t say a word. If he wanted to tell me more he would.

A coal sputtered in the hearth and a tiny cinder spat out onto the back of Lucca’s hand. He didn’t seem to notice as he continued. ‘Giacomo had found work in a theatre – he was a musician.’

I noted the fact that Lucca said ‘was’.

‘But he wanted to know how I managed to earn so much more in a single evening than he could in a week. At first I couldn’t tell him – I was ashamed. But Giacomo became jealous – he accused me of finding a new lover. The only way I could convince him it wasn’t true was to introduce him to the school.’

His voice dwindled to a whisper. ‘That was how I killed him.’ The room seemed to shrink around us, every peeling, damp-stained wall leaning inwards to listen.

‘That can’t be true, Lucca.’ I turned to look at him direct, but he was knotted up, his hair falling forward. ‘You would never kill anyone. I know that.’

I couldn’t see his expression as he answered. ‘Do you? Then you are deceived. I would gladly kill Sir Richard Verdin and every member of his sick, degenerate family.’

The thought of James in my bed and of him trying to buy me as his whore on the top deck of that omnibus came to me. It struck me then that the only thing dividing the poor from the rich was the fact that a wealthy man could buy himself a nice clean conscience – along with every dirty secret his appetites ran to.

‘Lucca, tell me, what really happened to Giacomo?’

He turned to look at me then and his eye glittered with tears. ‘You remember I told you once that I liked champagne?’ I nodded and his lips curved up to the left into a sort of smile. ‘So did Giacomo. When I introduced him to Sir Richard he acquired a taste for it. And Verdin acquired a taste for him. He became the favoured one.

‘For weeks he was Sir Richard’s constant companion. It went beyond the school. Verdin bought him fine clothes, paraded him at restaurants, galleries, theatres, the opera. Giacomo was like a pet, a lap dog, a performing monkey, but he could not see it. Quite the opposite, in fact, he adored the life. If people of Verdin’s class knew what was happening they closed their eyes and shut their mouths. Silence, like people, is easily purchased.’

He took up the poker and thrust it viciously into the coals. Yellow flames licked the back of the hearth as he continued. ‘At first Giacomo told me it was a game. He said he was doing it for us, but he was lying. I knew that he was becoming . . .
infettato –
infected by something. It was like a sickness in him, a greed. We were still together, yes, but day by day the space between us grew wider and deeper. When he looked at me sometimes I could see that he despised me. Can you imagine how that felt, Fannella?

‘Then something changed. Verdin took a new companion – someone very different. It drove Giacomo mad with envy. He’d grown used to that life, you see, and it was unbearable to be replaced and locked outside.’

Lucca began to pick at the flaking skin around his fingernails, pulling the flesh so tight he drew little droplets of blood. ‘It was like a madness. Verdin had changed Giacomo so much I did not know him any more. I only discovered the truth about that terrible night afterwards, when we escaped.’

He brought his finger to his mouth and sucked at the blood. ‘You should never play dice with the Devil, for he will always win.’ The thought of Lady Ginger rattling that little green box in her clawed-up fist came into my mind as Lucca spoke.

‘I found out later that Giacomo tried to blackmail Verdin. He threatened to reveal everything about the school and about his . . . tastes unless he took him back or paid him a great deal of money.’