Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (8 page)

At the far end a slender girl swung from an archway. Her bound hands were hooked over a metal spike that pointed out from the middle of the stonework. There were weeping stripes across the pale skin of her back, like she’d been whipped. She was so horribly real you wanted to dab at that torn flesh, clean the wound, take her down and comfort her.

A lump came in my throat and I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to cry or if I wanted to spew my guts up, right there on the polished wooden floor. I looked at the gents around me in amazement. Couldn’t they see it? These girls weren’t desirable, they were dead. The only living thing in that picture was the sky and that was all wrong too.

Just above the hanging girl a cloud seemed to crack in two and a shower of dirty gold fell upon the right side of her body so that she seemed to glow. It made her skin seem diseased rather than beautiful, although you could sense how much the artist liked painting her flesh – every brush stroke revealed the curve of muscle or the imperfect stain of a freckle or a mole. There was even a small painted tattoo on the girl’s left ankle, just below a circlet of thorns that bound her feet together. A tattoo just like the one Clary Simmons had.

I looked closer . . .

And then I looked closer at all the Cinnabar Girls, ’specially a small naked creature crouched in the far corner of the painting covering her face in her hands. Her mouse-brown hair was braided into a thin plait that hung over a metal collar at her neck and down across her bony right shoulder to the nipple of her flat right breast.

Oh no, please, no.

I looked at Lucca. He was staring up at the left side of the painting and I couldn’t see his face properly.

‘Moving on now please, gents. Out to the left there. Next group.’

My hair prickled under the hat and I could feel beads of sweat on my forehead as we filed out of the gallery in silence and found ourselves in an anteroom with plush red velvet chairs arranged around the walls. Several gentlemen in our group sat down to . . . contemplate, I imagined. A couple of them dabbed at their drool-bubbled lips with squares of silk.

I dragged Lucca over to a couple of chairs set against the far wall. His face was a blank.

‘Did you see?’ I hissed. He nodded as I continued.

‘At first I didn’t realise, but once I really looked . . .’

He nodded again. ‘I never thought anyone would rediscover Sicilian Gold. It has been lost for centuries, but now, here in London. It is, truly . . . amazing.’

I stared at him and my jaw dropped. ‘You what?’

‘Sicilian Gold – the sky, Fannella. It is a technique that has been lost for centuries.’

‘No!’ The word rang out in the silence and one of the dribbling old gents looked across at us. I lowered my voice.

‘I wasn’t looking at the paint, you idiot. I was looking at the girls –
our girls
.’ I grabbed his arm tightly. I didn’t care what the old gent thought.

‘Nearly all the missing girls from Paradise were in that painting. Alice too – didn’t you notice her? For Christ’s sake, Lucca, what were you seeing in there? You’re as bad as the rest of them.’

The blood drained from his face. It was like he’d suddenly woken from a dream. Then he moved his hand to his mouth and his shoulders clenched up tight.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ I carried on, dropping my voice to a whisper as someone sat in the seat next to mine.

‘And I believe I am right in suspecting you to be a young lady.’ The voice was posh and silky with it. I twisted round and found myself staring directly into the eyes of the man next to me. He smiled and extended a gloved hand. ‘Miss Kitty Peck, I believe. The Limehouse Linnet, no less. How extraordinary to find you here.’

I scanned the room. No one else had heard him. Beside me, Lucca stood up quickly and tapped my shoulder. I rose too. I could feel my face burn as the man continued softly.

‘Please don’t disturb yourself, Miss Peck. Your secret is safe – although you must allow me to say how very exciting it is to view two of London’s most topical sensations . . . in the
flesh
.’ He smiled again, stood up and held his hand forward. I just looked down at it.

‘It
is
customary for gentlemen to greet each other in this fashion,’ he whispered after a moment, adding, ‘If you refuse to take my hand in such a public place it may cause quite a scene.’

I reached out. His grip was tight and he squeezed as he pumped my arm up and down. ‘Splendid! How surprising to see you here,
old fellow
.’ His voice was louder now. Then he turned to Lucca and briefly shook his hand too, but he didn’t look at him. He was staring at me all the while.

The man was young, around the same age, I guessed, as Lucca. He was tall with clear, grey eyes and, from what I could see under his hat, reddish gold hair. He was a proper toff too, his gear was top ticket all right – sleek and plush it was, fitted to his frame like a fine lady’s glove. It made our get-up look shabby. Standing next to him, Lucca and I looked exactly what we were – fakers.

Lucca caught my eye and nodded towards the stairs. I took a step back from the young gent, but he laughed and gripped my arm quite hard. ‘Before you go, you really must meet my friends. Now, where are they . . .?’ He turned to the double doors leading back into the room where the painting was on display. He had the nose of a toff too, I noticed, all long and narrow with a bump at the top that made him look like a hawk.

‘Ah, there they are. Edward! John!’ He called out and waved his silver-topped cane at two young men just emerging from the gallery. ‘Come and meet a most interesting acquaintance of mine.’

Lucca tugged at my sleeve, but the gents were over in a second.

‘What an extraordinary work, James. How clever of you to bring us here.’ The speaker, a dark-eyed man with a well-groomed set of whiskers clambering all over his face, continued. ‘But then, you always seem to know the latest thing.’

‘Doesn’t he just? And who do we have here then, James?’ The other man was stockier, fresh-faced and fair. I saw how he flicked his eyes over Lucca and me and then dismissed us. Instead he looked back at the doors where people were still filing out of the room with the painting.

The first gent grinned at his two friends. ‘Allow me to introduce . . .’

‘Lucca Fratelli and my . . . my cousin . . . Joseph,’ Lucca cut in and spoke up for us both. His voice came quick and his accent was thicker than usual. He nodded at the men and offered his hand. Neither of them took it. I could see them both looking at his scar and I felt for him.

‘Ah, but there is a great secret here, isn’t there, Mr Fratelli?’ James – that was what I took my discoverer to be called from what his friends said – whispered something to fuzz-face, who stared down at me and then snorted. ‘Incredible!’

James tapped the fair man’s shoulder. ‘Edward, stop watching the door for my uncle for a moment and pay attention.’ He bent a little to pass on the information. Immediately the stocky man stopped searching the crowd and turned to look at me proper. His eyes were very blue with crinkles at the corners as if he laughed a lot. He stared at Lucca more closely now too.

‘So, The Limehouse Linnet is bold as well as brave, I see?’ He spoke quietly and held out his white-gloved hand; I took it. ‘Enchanted.’ His grip was warm and friendly as he continued, ‘You really must introduce us all properly, James. It’s not every day one gets to view the sensations of the season in such
intimate
circumstances.’

‘My thought exactly. But, of course, you are quite right! I am forgetting my manners.’ James’s grey eyes glinted as he gestured to his friends. ‘This is John Woodruff.’ Fuzz-face nodded at me. ‘And this is Edward Chaston.’ The fair man smiled broadly.

James added, ‘The former is a lawyer – or would be if he could be bothered to apply himself to his books with the alacrity with which he applies himself to spending his father’s allowance – and the latter will, one day, be the greatest physician in London . . . so he tells us.’

The men laughed. Edward Chaston slapped his friend on the back in a good-natured way. ‘You flatter me, James. But what should Miss Peck know of you? How would you describe yourself?’

‘Ah, there he has me. I am James Verdin, dreamer, writer, aspiring artist and . . .’

‘And not much else!’ John Woodruff snorted. ‘But then, when your uncle owns half of London, you don’t really need a profession, do you?’

James Verdin smiled tightly. I could see that Woodruff’s words had picked at something there.

I was beginning to feel more  comfortable with them all now that it was quite apparent they weren’t going to expose me. It was actually interesting being at such close range. I don’t know why, but a memory of a day long ago when Ma and Nanny Peck had taken me and Joey to the circus camped out on Hackney Marshes popped into my head. Before we went into the tent we walked about outside and saw the lions and tigers in their painted cages. There was something very thrilling to see them dangerous animals looking back at you from just a few foot away, safe in the knowledge that they wasn’t going to chew your head off.

‘Perhaps we should ask him. Here he comes.’ Edward was looking over to the door leading back to the painting room where a tall, older gent in a long fur coat was deep in conversation with one of the button-fronted warders.

‘Sir Richard – we’re over here!’ Edward raised his right hand as the old gent turned and stared across the room. He looked like a faded version of James, but his eyes were keen and chill as the ice on West India Dock.

‘We are leaving now!’ Lucca’s voice piped up loud and urgent. The other men looked at him oddly. ‘We go . . . the game, it is over.
Finito!
’ He pulled up his collar and began to walk quickly towards the door to the staircase. ‘Come!’ he called without even looking back. The word was sharp.

‘I . . . I have to go.’ I bit my lip. ‘Sorry, gents, but . . .’ I gestured at the way Lucca had gone.

‘It has been brief but delightful, Miss Peck.’ James smiled as I backed away. ‘Off you go. Your peculiar chaperone seems most anxious to be away. And it wouldn’t be seemly for you to remain here, alone with us, would it now? Or would it?’ He cocked his head to one side.

Now, I don’t like to admit this, but right then I found myself noticing the way James looked at me. Quite warming it was. And that had been an invitation, hadn’t it? As I stared up at his sharply handsome face I felt a shameful jolt of excitement run through me.

Of a sudden my neck began to prickle under the stiff collar. I was shocked. How could I be thinking about something like that
now?

How?

I saw little Alice as she’d been in the painting, crouching naked in the corner hiding her face in her hands. I rolled my fist into a ball and clenched my fingers so tight they hurt. I deserved to be punished.

Despite myself, my stomach gave a flip as he carried on. ‘But as we know exactly where to find you, I’ve no doubt that we shall be able to continue our conversation in the very near future?’ He nodded like a little bow and I felt my face flame up as I turned to follow Lucca.

‘You are a remarkable performer,
young sir
.’

I heard them laughing behind me as I scuttled across the polished wooden floor to the top of the staircase. I looked back just once and I saw that the old man had joined them. Now he was staring at me too.

Lucca was waiting at the bottom of the marble stairs. As soon as I joined him he turned his back on me and headed out through the doors, down the steps and into Half Moon Street. It was snowing heavily now and it was almost dark.

I tumbled down after him. ‘Wait!’ I shouted, but my voice was carried off by the wind and muffled by the snow. Good thing probably, because I’d quite forgotten I was a man. The bald-headed flunky on the door gave us both an old-fashioned look as we pushed past.

Lucca trudged on just ahead of me and didn’t once look back. His head was low and he’d pulled his hat right down over his face. I crunched up next to him, panting a bit because he was walking fast. ‘Aren’t we going to get a cab back then?’ I asked hopefully. I think he swore.

We must have carried on like that in silence for a good hour. Lucca moving like the Devil himself was on his tail and me sliding and skidding along just behind him. Every time I tried to talk he ignored me and I gave up trying, but eventually I couldn’t go no further.

‘Lucca, stop. I’m frozen to the marrow. I can’t feel my bleedin’ feet. Please!’

He paused and turned round. We were in a narrow, quiet backstreet somewhere near Smithfield. A gas lamp on the corner was fizzing. Beneath Lucca’s eye a single tear track snaked through the snowflakes on his cheek; it showed up ghostly in the faint light.

It was like he’d hit me.

What a stupid, selfish little cow I’d been. There was me, lapping up all the attention I was getting from the gents, when Lucca was thinking about all them girls –
our
girls, the girls from The Gaudy, The Carnival and The Comet. The Cinnabar Girls.

It was like when I was up in that cage sometimes, so wrapped up in myself and basking in all my glory that I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing up there –
really
doing, I mean. And sometimes I completely forgot about Joey too.

He was right to be angry. I pulled my bare right hand out from the deep coat pocket where I’d been trying to keep it warm and reached forward to wipe the trail of ice from his face. He flinched.

‘Don’t touch me.’

‘But Lucca, I—’

‘You don’t understand, no one . . .’ He chewed his lower lip and looked down. I saw he was rubbing his hands over and over. He was much deeper than I was, sensitive with it.

I’d
seen
the truth of that picture, but Lucca, now, it was like he could
feel
it all – every lash, every cut, every chain. I felt tears pricking at the backs of my eyes too. I reached for his hands and took them in mine. ‘Look, I . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the men back there. I’m sorry about those girls and I’m sorry about calling you an idiot. You’re a much better person than me – you’re caring, you’re kind and you’re good.’

He pulled away, made a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh and he leaned forward. His shoulders hunched up and his body was all bent and twitching. At first I thought he was having a fit like a ’leptic, but then I realised he was sobbing. He collapsed into a little pile of heaving material right there on the snow and I crouched down next to him.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and rocked him back and fro like Ma used to do with me when I was a child and something bad had hurt me.

After a minute or so he quietened and looked up at me. Curls of hair all frosted with snow were springing out from under my hat now and he reached out gently to push them back. He wiped the tears that were streaming and freezing down my face too.

‘If only you knew the truth, Fannella,’ he whispered. I just hugged him tighter.

‘We’re both going to know the truth, Lucca. When I tell Lady Ginger about that painting it’s all going to come out and it’s going to stop. She’s one of the Barons, isn’t she? They have people working for them all over the city. The Lady has a network of spies – and worse – in places we can’t even dream about. She’ll find that artist.’ I wish I felt as confident about that as I sounded. Sitting there in the snow with Lucca folded up in my arms I had a very bad feeling indeed, like something vicious and cruel was slipping about in the shadows around us.

I shivered, but it wasn’t the cold that got to me – I was so numb now I couldn’t feel a thing. No, it was the memory of the girls in the picture.

Esther Dixon staked out on the stones; Sally Ford spread-eagled over a wheel; Martha Lidgate down on all fours, her hands all torn and bloody; skinny tattooed Clary Simmons hanging off that spike; and blank-eyed Jenny Pierce chained to the column, that brassy hair of hers all matted with blood and her tongue ripped from her mouth.

These were girls I knew, girls I worked with. I might not call every one of them a friend, but the thought of what had happened to them sliced like a knife, leaving me raw and open. I pictured Alice curled up in the corner again, that great metal collar digging into her tiny neck, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was dead. They all were.

I pulled Lucca closer. ‘Come on. Let’s get back to Paradise.’

We shifted ourselves and moved off. Huddled tight, we made our way back to Limehouse. Even if Lucca had any more money on him for a cab it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference – the streets were deserted.

As we tramped along in silence I kept thinking about Maggie Halpern. She was the only missing Paradise girl who wasn’t in that painting. Was that a good thing or a very bad thing?