Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (4 page)

Jenny narrowed her eyes. ‘As a matter of fact I do have an appointment myself this evening with a gentleman so I won’t be around to see your performance, Kitty. That’s why I particularly wanted to see you to send you on your way, so to speak. In fact, me and a lot of the girls here will be thinking about you tonight and sending our
wishes up to you.’

Peggy pulled the ribbons so tight that I gasped. ‘Ignore her, she’s a jealous cow with an ugly mouth on her. We all want you to succeed.’

‘Do
we
now? It’s a long time since you’ve had a proper chat with the girls, isn’t it, Peg? But then I suppose you’ve been too busy sucking on old Fitzy’s whore-pipe to pay much attention to us.’

Peggy grabbed a scent bottle from the rickety dressing table by the fire and hurled it at Jenny’s head. It missed her by inches and smashed against the far wall, filling the air with cheap violets.

Jenny snorted, tossed her brassy hair, stepped over the shattered glass and turned to the door. As she reached for the handle, the door opened to reveal Lucca standing in the gaslit hallway. He was carrying a large cloth-bound parcel.

‘And here’s your ugly boyfriend, right on cue.’

Lucca pushed past her.

‘Have you finished them?’ Peggy’s voice was bright and expectant. Lucca nodded and handed me the parcel. I could feel something hard and angular beneath the wrappings as I looked up at him. ‘What’s this then – a good-luck charm?’

He grinned and shrugged. ‘You’ll have to open it to see, Fannella.’

‘Well, isn’t that just the sweetest thing?’ Jenny’s voice was like sugared vinegar. ‘A first-night gift from your doting beau.’

‘I am not her beau.’ Lucca practically spat the words into her face. There was an uncomfortable silence and Peggy started to tighten the ribbons again.

‘That’s what
you
say,’ said Jenny. ‘But we all know that a half-faced milk-turner like you would give his left eye’, she paused unpleasantly, ‘for a chance with a girl like Kitty. I’m not going until I see what you’ve brought her.’

Lucca reddened and turned his back on her. ‘There isn’t much time. Please open it.’

I stared at Jenny and the urge to slap her big shiny face was hard to resist, but I’d already made too many enemies among the girls at The Gaudy to risk her spreading more lies about the high and mighty ways of Miss Kitty Peck. So I just took a deep breath and turned back to Lucca and the parcel in my hands. I began to unwind the cloth and as I did so a single golden feather fell to the floorboards. A second later and I was holding the most beautiful pair of gold and silver wings. Real feathers were worked with painted plaster and mounted on a network of fine wires to create the delicate arcing shape.

‘Oh Lucca,’ I breathed. ‘They’re wonderful. Thank you.’ I bobbed up to kiss his cheek, but he quickly turned away, conscious, I thought, of his scars and perhaps of Jenny.

‘It’s nothing. In Napoli, we make these as gifts at
Natale
– at Christmas – for the little ones. I thought you would need them tonight to help you believe that you can truly fly.’ He paused and an odd expression crossed his face. ‘And to remind you of Joey – a cherub, remember what you told me? Tonight I thought you might need . . .’

He shrugged and smiled, but he looked worried.

‘A guardian angel! Lucca, you are so feeling, and clever with it. They are beautiful.’ Peggy cooed as she took the wings from my hands and started to fiddle with the bodice. ‘Look, I’ve made a place to fix them to Kitty’s costume just here. Oh!’

She stopped and started to dab at the sequin-strewn netting at my waist. ‘I’m so sorry, I must have pulled too tight.’

I looked down and saw little spots of bright red blood seeping out through the silvery gauze and into the fabric of the bodice just above my waist. Some of the glass crystals sewn into my costume had dug too deep into my flesh when Peggy was tightening the ribbons. For a moment the image of a robin flew into my mind.

‘Out, out damned spot.’ Jenny stared at the stain and smiled. Peggy gasped, dropped the ribbons and covered my ears. We Gaudy girls might not have had much in the way of book learning, but we knew our Shakespeare when we heard it and most particular we knew that the Scottish play was never to be mentioned or quoted aloud unless you were actually on the stage. And even then only if you was in it.

‘Lights in ten.’

Fitzy’s great red face loomed round the door. He stepped into the now-crowded room, smiled and rubbed his hands together. ‘Lovely job, Peggy. A hand’s span waist there – very nice. We’ll have to think of some way to reward you.’

I felt Peggy’s shudder.

‘Off we go then, Kitty, through the back so as no one can see you. This is going to be quite a night for The Gaudy, I can feel it in my water.’

He grabbed hold of my hand and yanked me out through the door and into the hallway.

As I passed Jenny she said, very loudly and very slowly, ‘Break a leg, lovey.’

That was almost the last time I saw Jenny Pierce – in the flesh.

Fitzy dragged me along the hall, down the stairs and into the warren of passages at the back of The Gaudy. We had to pick our way through old bits of scenery and a toot yard of props before we came to the door to the workshop out back. Snow was ankle-deep on the cobbles of the yard. Fitzy stepped out, still gripping my wrist, but I held back.

‘I can’t walk on that – look at my feet. They’ll be ruined. And it’s bleedin’ cold too. Madame Celeste says I have to be kept warm, remember?’

Fitzy turned back and for a moment I thought he might do me one. Instead he looked down at the silver slippers and the ribbons that criss-crossed my legs up to the knee. Highly indecent it was. If my poor old Nan – God rest her soul – could’ve seen me she would have had something to say about it.

He swore under his breath and took off his jacket. ‘Put this on then.’

The jacket smelt of cigar smoke, gin and dirty old man, but at least it was warm.

‘Better, are we? Come on now, girl.’ He set out across the yard, but I still didn’t follow.

‘Like I said, I can’t go out there with these on my feet. And, anyway, that’s not the way to the stage, is it?’

Fitzy swore again, more audible this time, and crunched back. He gathered me roughly up in his arms and started back across the yard with my feet dangling over the crook of his elbow. I could feel Lucca’s lovely little wings crush and mangle up under the jacket. I wriggled and started to squawk.

Now, I wasn’t a heavy packet by any means, but the cold and the effort of carrying me took old Fitzy’s breath away. It was a couple of seconds before he was able to puff out, ‘Just shut your trap, Kitty. Someone wants to have a word with you, so do as you’re told.’

We went up by the side of the outbuildings where Lucca and the hands worked, and Fitzy turned into a narrow brick alleyway I’d never noticed before. It ran between the back wall of the workshop and the wall that divided The Gaudy’s yard from the streets beyond. At the end of the alley a wooden gate stood open and through it I saw a neat black carriage pulled up on the street. Fitzy shouted something and the carriage jerked. Little steps clattered down into the snow.

A moment later and we were standing in front of the open door. The half-shuttered windows of the carriage were misted over, but I could see the pale glow of lamplight inside.

‘Come in, Kitty Peck. We need to have a talk before your performance this evening.’

The peculiar, fluttering voice of Lady Ginger was unmistakable. I kicked and twisted about, but Fitzy gripped tighter and more or less posted me through the small door and into the carriage, which rocked about a bit as I landed ungainly on the seat opposite the old witch. The door slammed and one of the horses gave a low whinny.

Lady Ginger stared at me, her eyes glinting in the yellow light. The carriage smelt of leather and opium, but beneath that there was something else too – something sweet and sour, something like milk on the turn, I thought.

After a moment she spoke. ‘I assume that is not your costume, Miss Peck? Take it off. I want to see what I have bought.’

I bit my lip, shrugged away Fitzy’s jacket and sat there with my shoulders hunched up and my hands clasped tight in my lap. The lamplight caught on the sequins and crystals sewn into the net of the bodice and my scrap of a skirt. The scandalised voice of old Nanny Peck piped up in my head – ‘As naked as a pig in shit, but not as warm!’

Nanny Peck had come over from Ireland in the Thirties, bringing my mother with her. She had a rich turn of phrase – which, in time, had been elegantly supplemented by the language of Limehouse – and a country girl’s natural suspicion of anything that smacked of loose morals. Indecent clothing had always been a subject of particular interest to Nanny Peck, but it was odd that I thought of her again now.

Lady Ginger narrowed her eyes and leaned back. She assessed me in a calculating, professional way, moving from my feet to my knees to my waist (I had my hands held tight just over the blood stain) and up to the top of the bodice where Peggy’s ministrations with the ribbons had produced two white mounds that looked likely to escape at any moment. Tell truth, I didn’t much like to catch sight of them when I looked down – they got in the way of the floor.

‘Very nice. Very nice indeed.’

She nodded and leaned forward to adjust the thin gauze stuff on my shoulders, pulling it down so that even more of me showed. The indignant voice of Nanny Peck went off again.

Lady Ginger was wearing watered black satin crusted with jet beads. Her silver plait was wound up on the top of her head and rubies as big as marbles hung from her ear lobes. Her knees were covered in a thick fur rug, not that she needed it. The carriage was as warm and stifling as her room at The Palace.

‘Fitzpatrick tells me you are a natural. He tells me that your performance tonight will be a sensation.’

I picked at a nail and nodded. ‘I . . . I’ve worked hard at it, Lady. The moves came easy and I’m not frightened of the heights.’

‘So I understand.’ She paused for a moment and when she spoke again her voice was crisp as old leaves. ‘I trust you have not forgotten why you are doing this?’

I looked up and stared direct into her face. She had a lot of rouge on her cheeks and today her black lips were painted red like the rubies.

‘No, I couldn’t do that. Lady Ginger, please, my brother . . . I have to know. Is he . . . that it to say, where is . . .’

‘Silence!’ She raised a hand and the bangles on her arms clattered down into the lace at her elbow. ‘That is precisely why I have come to see you – to remind you.’

Despite the cold, I could feel my naked back prickle with moisture against the leather of the seat as she continued. ‘I do not want you to
fly
away with the idea that you are anything more than my employee. Even if your performance this evening makes you the talk of London, that is nothing to you, or to me. Do you understand?’

I was silent as she went on. ‘Martha Lidgate is missing from The Comet. She hasn’t been seen for nine days now. At this rate every girl I run in Paradise will be a memory within a year. So, do you see, Miss Peck, I don’t want your head turned tonight. I want you to sing a pretty song, show that pretty body and titillate the punters with the possibility of your pretty death – but, most of all I want you to keep your wits about you, watch the theatre and tell Fitzpatrick what you see. You will have an unparalleled view of every corner of the hall.’

She broke off to cough, dabbing her mouth with a coloured silk square. She settled back, drew up the fur and licked her lips. Now that the red had rubbed off I could see they were stained black.

‘If you survive the week without a safety net we will move you and your cage to The Carnival and then to The Comet.’

‘But what about Joey?’ I blurted. ‘You promised. How do I know you aren’t lying to me? If he’s really alive, like you say, why can’t I see him? At least give me something to show he’s alive – a letter, he writes a lovely hand, I’d know that anywhere.’

Lady Ginger laughed and coughed again.

‘How touching. When you have completed your service, we will consider his . . . situation. But be assured, Miss Peck, that unless you satisfy me, you will never see him again. Now go. Fitzpatrick tells me that the doors will only be opened tonight once you are in position. Apparently there’s quite a crowd gathered in the street already. Fitzpatrick!’

She rapped on the side of the carriage. The door opened to reveal Fitzy shivering in the snow.

‘About time, so it is. My trinkets are like ball bearings. Come on then, Kitty, there’s a cage waiting for you.’

I made to pull the stinking coat back over my shoulders, but just as I turned to wrap it round me Lady Ginger leaned forward, swift as a greased adder, and plucked Lucca’s little broken wings from the bodice.

‘Shabby and pointless,’ she smiled, crushing up the feathers and plaster in her heavily ringed hands. ‘Take her.’

Fitzy bent forward and scooped me off the seat. The carriage rocked again and the horses spooked about, eager to be on the move. As he lifted me out I looked down at the feathers scattered around the bottom of Lady Ginger’s fur. It looked like a cat had been there with a pigeon. The angel wings Lucca had made for me and for Joey were damaged beyond repair.

The door slammed like a trap and the lascar on the box above us cracked a whip over the heads of the horses. Lady Ginger’s carriage rolled off into the snow and Fitzy swore and grumbled as he trudged back into the alleyway to deliver me to my cage.

As the cage, with me hanging on inside it, was winched into position out from the stage and up higher and higher until it was swaying from the very centre of The Gaudy’s painted ceiling over the empty seats, tables and the four tiers of red and gold booths set around the hall, all I could think about was Joey.

To be fair to the old bitch, that little talk had done the trick. I didn’t like to admit it, even to myself, but during all those days in Madame Celeste’s attic and more recently when we’d practised at night at The Gaudy after the shows and into the early hours, I’d begun to enjoy it.

I was good – I knew I was. And what’s more, the hands who’d been specially selected by Fitzy to work the ropes and wires said so too.

Now, they’d seen it all a hundred times or more, so when you hear them all fizzing and boiling up about a new act, you know there’s something tasty on the range. God forgive me, but there were actually nights up there in the cage as I practised my twirls, perfected my balances and tried out my voice, when I completely forgot about Joey and Alice and all them missing girls, and allowed myself to imagine a time when I was as free as the bird I was pretending to be, with all London at my feet, so to speak.

To be straight with you, Jenny Pierce and the other girls in the halls had every right to be jealous. I was beginning to revel in the attention. I loved the danger and the glory of it. There – that’s a shameful admission, isn’t it?

Now, as I perched up there on my bar listening to the sounds of The Gaudy filling up below, I wasn’t thinking about myself any more: I was thinking about my brother, just as she knew I would.

Be assured, Miss Peck, that unless you satisfy me, you will never see him again
.

I could feel my eyes stinging – it was the smoke – but I didn’t want to rub them because the exaggerated make-up Peggy had spent so long over would be ruined. So I just sat there in the dark with tears streaming down my face.

No one knew I was up there at first. The cage was covered with a hood of thin, dark silk with slits at the seams, which meant that I could look out quite easily, but no one could see in. Even if they had looked up, it’s unlikely they would have made much of the great dark shape hanging seventy foot over their heads. Fitzy had ordered that The Gaudy’s lights be kept low so the cage was lost in shadow and the smoke that rose up from the punters.

I hadn’t thought about the smoke. Below me, scores of glowing red dots showed where someone was puffing on a cigarette or a cigar. It looked like an infernal version of the constellations Lucca sometimes showed me when we sat on the steps out back. My favourite was the Plough because it was easy to find. Lucca said his father had called it the
Sette Principi
, which, apparently, meant the sign of the Seven Princes and sounded very romantic to a girl from Limehouse.

The fumes coiled upwards filling my nose and then my lungs with the treacle fug of tobacco. It got pretty thick in that cage under the hood so I gripped the ropes of the swing and leaned forward, hooking my feet around the bars. The cage began to judder about a bit, but after a while it came steady. I pressed my face against one of the slits in the silk and breathed deep.

Below me to the left, The Gaudy’s orchestra was filing into the pit in front of the stage. I say ‘orchestra’, but actually there were only four of them. ‘Professor’ Ruben the pianist, Tommy and Isaac the fiddle players, who cordially hated each other, and Old Peter, a gloomy Russian. He claimed his skills as a cornet player depended on the amount of firewater he necked back.

‘It helps me forget,’ he’d told me mournfully one evening at The Lamb.

The girls loved The Gaudy orchestra. They were all proper gentlemen with the soft-eyed sadness that musicians often seem to carry about them. After a show, they always took themselves and their instruments and their sadness to The Lamb two streets away, and often as not we’d join them. Three years ago Joey would be there too, sometimes alone and sometimes with his fancy friends. Where were those boisterous young men now, I wondered?

The raucous sound of laughter came up. Now I could smell the sweet tang of gin in the smoke. It was going to be a full house – word on the street was that The Gaudy was about to unveil something extraordinary. Well, that was Fitzy’s word, anyway.

But it was true that my perspective from up there was remarkable. I could see into nearly every part of the hall. Directly below I watched as a well-dressed woman with bright red hair picked her way between the tables. She brushed against a man, apologised, moved on swiftly up the row and deftly pocketed a glinting gold fob watch into the folds of her skirt before trying the same routine on another Johnny. Interesting.

I looked over to the right and saw that the booths on the second tier were already busy. The Gaudy wasn’t really a first-rank hall, but it still had a dozen or so boxes for the use of private parties and what you might call gentlemen patrons. A couple of them already had their curtains drawn.

I caught a flash of something bright in one of the booths – a brassy head bobbing up and down in a punter’s lap. I couldn’t see all of the man because the curtain was drawn up on his side, but I could see Jenny Pierce’s purple bit of fluff quivering away as she went at it.

As a matter of fact I do have an appointment myself this evening with a gentleman . . .

I snorted. She might have had a face like a docker’s nancy but at last she’d found a use for that nasty tongue of hers, I thought. And it’s not as if the ‘gentleman’ had to look at her. After all, you don’t have to watch a kettle to bring it to the boil.

I’d enjoy telling Lucca all about that later. But then I thought better of it because he didn’t always appreciate me talking low. In fact, when I tried my new song on him he’d been furious and we’d had a right set-to. I think the wings were a peace offering.

The orchestra started up and the punters began shouting and laughing even louder.

The first act up was Dismal Jimmy, a droll Scot whose convoluted stories were usually a sure way to settle the hall. Only tonight it didn’t work. The air was full of hoots and cat-calls as Jimmy finished up and Mrs Conway came on in her Britannia rig. Fitzy had promised her the slot before mine by way of compensation.

‘I’m not here for tough old game. Where’s the fresh meat?’ called a voice from the dark.

‘Fuck off, horseface, and give us all a break,’ another added, more loudly. He seemed to be speaking for quite a lot of them. People in the gallery started to stamp and the gaslights shook in their brackets.

Within seconds The Gaudy was in uproar and, from my cage, I could see that Mrs Conway was in tears. Fitzy – all shiny buttons and straining mustard velvet – came bounding on stage right, whispered to her and patted her off. Then he turned to the punters and smiled. His big, red greasy face looked like a harvest moon with the pox, so it did.

He waved his hands in the air and called for a ‘bit of quiet in the hall’.

The shouting stopped but the stamping continued. Fitzy nodded, more to himself than to anyone else, then he took a step forward and cleared his throat.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to present to you this evening a performance of dazzling aerial artistry, a display of death-defying courage never matched before in this theatre or any other. With the voice of a nightingale, the grace of an angel and the body of Venus herself . . .’ He stopped and rubbed his hands suggestively as low, appreciative whistles ripped through the hall. ‘May I present to you, The Limehouse Linnet herself, Miss Kitty Peck!’

There was a drum roll and the hood covering my cage was whipped free by hands stationed at the ends of ropes at four quarters of the hall. The limelights came up strong and for a second I was almost blinded. I’d never sat in the cage in the dark that long before starting up.

But there wasn’t even time to blink. My music struck up and immediately I began to dip and twirl into the first stages of my routine. I’d done it so many times now I didn’t have to think. Not about the grips, not about the balances, not about the swaying and creaking of the glittering cage and not about the empty seventy foot between me and the heads of the punters below.

At first they were quiet – stunned, I think. And then the whistles and the cat-calls started up – very appreciative they was. Not like the ones for Mrs C.

And then I started to sing . . .