Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (24 page)

‘So, what would you need if you were painting something like
The Cinnabar Girls
? I’m talking practical, Lucca, so don’t think about inspiration and passion. What’s the first thing that comes to mind?’

I pulled up the breeches and buttoned the fly. Lucca knelt to tuck the flailing ends into the work boots. They were small for a man, but I still had to wear three pairs of woollens to make them a snug fit. Beneath the wool my tattered feet were bound in clean rags.

He looked up. ‘Space – lots of it.’

I nodded. ‘But what kind of space? If you was working in secret it would have to be where no one would think of looking for you. Somewhere you could move things in and out without anyone thinking anything of it. Somewhere people come and go and don’t ask too many questions. Now do you see?’

Lucca stopped pushing the ends of the rough material into the boots and sat back.

‘The warehouse – the one Verdin has taken a lease on?’

I nodded again and reached across him to take a brown jacket from the bed, pushing my arms into its over-long sleeves.

‘Tell me again about that paint.’

He frowned as he stood to turn up the collar of the jacket to make it cover the bottom half of my face.

‘But you already know this. Sicilian Gold was thought to be a fable. There were descriptions of paintings where it was supposed to have been used, but as none of them survived, there was no way to know what it really was, or how it looked.’

He pinched the jacket’s shoulders and folded them towards my neck. ‘You are thinner than he was. If we wrap a scarf around you too, just here, it will be better.’

I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck. Lucca was dressing me in a dead man’s clothes for the second time, but now I knew exactly whose boots I was stepping into. I pushed the thought of Giacomo away like he might bring bad luck. We were going to need all the help we could get tonight and a notion like that was a jinx.

‘You mean no way to know how it looked until now. That painting at The Artisans – you’re sure that’s Sicilian Gold?’

He took a step back to look at me. ‘I am certain. The way it shines, the deep quality like a pool or a mirror. The way it seems . . . unnatural, strange. This is what was written of it.’

He paused and then he reached forward to touch my arm. ‘I thought it was the only clue we had to help us find the girls, Kitty. That’s why I went back to the gallery to see the painting again. I wanted to help you, but I couldn’t tell you everything – not then anyway. Do you understand?’

I nodded, thinking of all the secret lives and hidden worlds that had been playing out around me. It wasn’t the time to open that door.

I pushed my hair up and knotted it tight behind. I was going to hide it away beneath the cloth cap lying on the bed. My mind was ticking over like a gentleman’s fob.

‘That book you stole, Lucca, how did it go? Wait – you don’t need to find it. I have it . . . “
When Corretti died in 1534, the secret of Sicilian Gold 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 riven with danger and involved substances of the most toxic nature. Corretti himself was just twenty-four at his death.
” That’s right, isn’t it?’

Lucca raised an eyebrow. ‘I think that is exactly right. You have a gift – did you know?’

I reached over him for the cap. ‘I’ve got a memory, if that’s what you mean. Ma did too. She could read a page in a storybook just the once and then say it all back to us without looking and without changing a word. Joey could do it too.’

I dipped my head so that Lucca couldn’t see my face. I pulled the cap down tight, pushing the knot of hair under the rim at the back. Just saying his name twisted a knife. I locked up another room in my mind.

‘Listen again: “
The only certainty that remains is that the process was riven with danger and involved substances of the most toxic nature.
” What do you make of that?’

He went to the door to take a coat down from the hook on the back. He shook it and a cloud of dust and dried-out moth wings went up into the air. ‘It is as I told you, this artist he must be a magician.’

‘No! That’s not what you said, is it?’ My voice was sharp, but I wanted him to understand why I was so certain. ‘You said he was an “
alchimista
” – an alchemist, a chemist. To make up that paint you’d need to know a lot about mixing up poisons and the like, wouldn’t you?’

Lucca nodded. ‘
Si
– all paint is toxic to a degree, but Sicilian Gold was said to be deadly – you remember I told you Corretti’s works were feared because they seemed to bring misfortune?’

‘Exactly!’ I spoke in a rush now. ‘But there was nothing supernatural about that, was there? His works brought misfortune, all right, but that’s because they were poisonous. Just breathing in the smell of them over enough time was probably enough to kill a person. And what would it do to a mind on the way? Just think, Lucca. Remember the gallery and the way it felt in there? If you were using that stuff, touching it and taking it into your lungs day after day, how would you be?’

‘
Mio Dio!
’ Lucca flung the coat onto the bed. ‘You would go mad . . .?’

I nodded. ‘And how would you get access to them poisons in the first place? Have you still got the drawings of me?’

‘The ones sent to the theatre? Yes, I have them here. I . . . I took them with me.’

I knew he’d kept them. Something told me that even though Lucca was revolted by the man who drew those pictures, he was fascinated by him too. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he admired him, but there was something there that drew him like a magnet. It was professional appreciation, I suppose.

‘Can you find them for me? I need to show you something.’

Lucca knelt to pull a sheaf of papers from under the bed. The two drawings of me were on the top. He handed them over and I knelt down in Giacomo’s breeches and flattened the papers out on the floor.

I poked a stray ringlet up under the cap and looked from one drawing to the other. I knew I was right.

‘When I was practising again after the cage slipped, Lucca, something about these drawings kept going through my mind. Look at them carefully – what do you see?’

He crouched next to me and pulled the sketch of my head and shoulders towards him.

‘You are right, they are both by the same hand, that’s certain, but . . .’ He paused and brought the side of his thumb to his lips.

‘But something’s changed from one to the other. I’m right, aren’t I?’

Lucca nodded and reached over to smooth the second sheet, the drawing of me in the cage. His finger caught on a tear where the pen had slashed through the page in the word ‘songbird’. The gash in the paper pulled wider.

‘Thing is, when I was up there practising, something Madame Celeste told me about performing kept going through my mind. “No jerking about and no hard angles – they’ll give you away, expose you for what you really are.”’

Lucca looked up. His face was blank as I continued. ‘Don’t you see? The first drawing – it’s all fine and delicate. It’s a pretty thing.’ I sat back uncomfortable at what I was going to say next. ‘Lucca, I think the man who drew this . . . well, he admired me. You might even say he was quite taken with me. And there’s the name too, Philomel – the nightingale – the bird who can’t sing. I reckon he didn’t much like my dirty song, but he liked me. He’s made me look like a lady here – all quiet and demure. Untouched.’

Lucca looked at the paper and bit his thumb.

‘But when he drew
this
picture . . .’ I pushed the drawing of me in the cage towards him. ‘He was angry. Look at the lines – see the way his pen rips through the paper? It’s all hard, jagged angles. The first picture – it’s like he was . . . caressing me, it’s all delicate lines and little inky kisses. But in this one . . .’

‘He wants to hurt you?’

I nodded. ‘Or kill me. So what changed?’

Lucca nodded slowly. ‘When he drew this . . .’, he tapped the torn paper, ‘. . . he knew about you and James. You were tainted.’

‘Not just that. He knew about James all right – but he also knew about me and
The Cinnabar Girls
. He knew I was on to him. When he drew this and left it for me he hated me, and he was frightened of me too. That’s why he’s tried to kill me – twice.’

‘Twice?’ Lucca’s head shot up.

I didn’t have time to explain. ‘Look at the window. It’s getting dark – we have to get going.’

I took the drawing from his hand and began to fold it again. I didn’t want to see that girl in the cage or those spite-filled lines a moment longer than I had to. As I turned the sheet in on itself I noticed a faint stain running along the bottom edge – too regular and neat to be an ink splash or a thumb mark.

I held the paper up and looked closely. Then I took it to the window and flattened it against the glass. It was a watermark running through the grain of the paper. A lion’s head and the name of a company:
Leo
Rosen Imports
.

I was right.

There was a nice irony to the fact that my brother and me both took to the attire of the opposite sex so easily. ‘Degenerate’ – that’s what Fitzy said it was, but I liked to see it as ‘flexible’.

It was certainly useful. I remembered Lucca’s advice from the last time I went about dressed as a boy and I was careful to walk broad and heavy.

This time it was easier. The clothes Lucca had chosen for me were the gear of a working lad, not a gent. There weren’t so many buttons to fiddle with and under my coat there was a loose shirt open at the neck.

He had arranged a scarf around my shoulders and it hung down at the front of the coat, disguising my shape. Giacomo’s old clothes were loose on me and that helped to keep my secret too.

We stepped out of his lodging and onto the cobbles. I could hear the river slapping against the stone steps at the end of the passage. The tide was in and the water was high tonight. Arching my neck, I took a deep breath to clear my head.

‘Remember to keep your head down.’ Lucca nudged me as a big man came towards us.

He wore the close black cap of a stevedore and his boot steps echoed from the sooty walls. The last shift had ended a couple of hours back.

‘If anyone recognises you on the streets word’ll get back to Fitzpatrick and he’ll send a party out to look for you.’

I pushed my chin into the folds of the scarf. If Fitzy went to The Lady and told her that I’d hadn’t turned up at The Gaudy, what would she do? I thought about the note her Chinaman had left on the step of The Palace. Surely she knew then that I hadn’t been up in that cage – and she’d given me time. Or was it a warning?

The number of death
.

Lucca’s low voice came again. ‘You’ve already missed a night.’

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to think about that, couldn’t allow myself to.

‘After tonight that won’t make no odds. If I’m right, Fitzy can squeeze himself into my stockings and sequins and go hang himself up that cage every night from now on. I’m not going back to the halls. Once I’ve got Joey and we’ve . . .’

I stopped. I was going to say ‘found them girls’. Tell truth, I wasn’t sure what we might find at Sir Richard Verdin’s warehouse. I only knew we had to go there.

After Lucca told me everything about Joey, Giacomo and Sir Richard Verdin it was like seeing a map of the Empire laid out in front of me for the first time and being able to give a name to nearly every little patch of pink, no matter how far away or how small and inconsequential it might be. I doubt that Queen Victoria herself could’ve made a better job of it.

But there were still a couple of places that troubled me.

Bodies – that was the word that kept coming at me now. If he’d killed the Cinnabar Girls, where were their bodies? God knows that grey old river can keep a secret, but there were six of them in that painting. You’d think at least one of them would have turned up by now, bobbing around in the scum like that cellarman from The Carnival?

And then there were the others – little Maggie, Polly Durkin and Peggy – a lot of women there to keep hidden away.

(It was important that I didn’t allow myself to think they might be dead, ’specially not Peggy.)

We’d sat tight in Lucca’s room all morning and all afternoon.

The paint, the lixir, The Artisans Gallery, Verdin, the warehouse, the pictures – I talked myself hoarse setting it out for him and then going through it again and again to be certain I hadn’t left a loose end trailing that could pull it all apart.

I had the right man, didn’t I? It couldn’t be anyone else. The question was
why
? I circled that point until my head felt like a bucket of eels.

Eventually I slept for a short time when the afternoon sun slanted across the bed and brought some warmth into the attic.

When I woke Lucca was laying out clothing for me – plain, homespun pieces that belonged, I guessed, to Giacomo before he became tainted by Verdin.

‘It’s time, Fannella.’

We walked fast. Out on the river huge ships were riding four deep in shadow. I could hear the creaking of rope and smacking of canvas as wind caught at the rigging and rattled through the forest of masts. Waves slapped at the piers and sucked at the lowest stones of the slime-covered steps that led from a network of crooked alleyways down to the water. If you met a man coming up from the river at one of these black mouths of a night-time you didn’t ask what he was doing or where he’d been.

We dodged into a side court and I lowered my head as a party of sailors lurched into view. Even in the gloom their white-blonde hair gleamed bright as the moon, marking them out as arrivals from the North as surely as the angular sound of their ragged drinking song.

Lucca pulled me close as they passed and we melted into a gap between the buildings. We both knew that when sailors have money in their pockets, drink in their bellies and the liberty of the shore, a sort of madness comes upon them.