Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (25 page)

I reached for the chain at my neck and felt for the ring and the Christopher. They were warm to the touch. I rolled them between my fingers.

‘Did Joey tell you where he was going, Della, who he was seeing?’

She shook her head. ‘He said it was better if I didn’t know.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘That sounds like him. What about the travel papers? You’ll need them.’

‘I have this . . .’ She hefted Robbie onto her hip and pulled a small tapestry purse from the folds of her coat. She loosened the drawstring at the neck and delved inside to take out one of the emeralds.

‘Sergei gave them to me before Christmas when I last saw him. He told me they were our insurance and he begged me to leave Paris, but I couldn’t, not then, for Robbie’s sake. I sewed the stones into the poppet. It was the only place I could think of where no one would look.

‘And I was right. Just after you left with Robbie my room was torn apart. It was an act of vengeance. We’d been there less than a week – we had to keep moving. They knew Robbie had gone and they wanted to punish me. If I hadn’t sent the emeralds ahead with him and the . . .’ Della took a deep breath. ‘That’s the past. We have a future to think about. Joey gave me this stone at the station this morning. He kept the smallest to pay for our papers and he told me you have the third?’

‘It’s here.’

I reached for the emerald sitting near the lamp on the desk’s leather worktop and dropped it into her open palm. The two stones, one slightly larger than the other, chinked together and glinted in the light.

‘Wherever we go next, it won’t matter who we are if we can pay our way.’

There was a truth in that I couldn’t argue with. As Della pushed the stones back into the pouch and slipped it into her coat Robbie stirred and made a soft sucking noise. He had fallen asleep.

‘Is the poppet in the trunk with the rest of his things, Kitty?’ I glanced up at something in her voice as she continued. ‘He loves it so – he can’t be parted from it. I told you that at the station, remember?’

I pulled the drawer open and handed her the cloth toy held together now with quick crude stitches. It wasn’t my finest work.

‘Here. It’s been in the wars. I’ve sewn it up again, but you’ll have to do a neater job yourself when you have the chance.’

Della snatched it from me and dropped it into the trunk on top of the blankets. I thought about the strip of paper in my pocket and some devil in me told me to keep quiet, for a while anyway. We can all play tricks, Della Lennox, I thought.

Robbie made a cooing sound and his perfect curved lips puckered for an invisible bottle.

She smiled and nestled him closer. ‘When he wakes I’ll feed him, Kitty. He’s always greedy.’

‘There’s some pap in a bottle here. Peggy . . . and me, we’ve been giving him that.’ I stood and went to the trunk, but Della caught my arm. ‘He won’t be needing pap any more.’

Of course not. Stupid of me. She was his mother. I bent to take the bottle from the trunk and the Christopher slipped out from beneath my collar, dangling over the blankets.

‘Does Joey know the boat you’re taking tomorrow?’

‘He arranged it. It’s called the
Albertine
. It leaves from Steam Boat Dock near West India Dock. It’s a regular timber carrier.’

‘And he knows it leaves at six?’

Della nodded. ‘Do you think he’ll meet us there, Kitty?’

I hoped so. In the meantime, she and little Robbie needed help. I put the pap bottle on the desk and went to the door to take my coat.

‘I’ll come with you. You can’t manage alone.’

There didn’t seem to be much sense in waiting around at The Gaudy for Joey. If we could find a hack at this time we’d take one down to West India. I’d get Amit to come with us. As I pulled the coat from the hook a thought struck me. I whipped round.

‘Della, when you came in here ten minutes ago, was there a man outside?’

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t see anyone except the girl who let me in at the front. She was emptying a bucket into the gutter. I asked for you and she took me back through the lobby into the hall and showed me your office.’

Edie hadn’t gone home when I told her to, then? She was a good girl, but I wished she’d done as I said. There was a reason I’d locked the front. Something prickled at the back of my neck.

I opened the office door.

‘Amit?’

The Gaudy glowed red and gold in the soft light of the gas jets ranged along the first tier. The light they gave off was generally enough to clean by. Edie must have left them on.

I scanned the hall. It wasn’t like those grand jewel-box palaces Joey had taken me to in Paris. They were beautiful enough, for them that like that sort of thing, but they weren’t big on comfort. The stiff-backed golden chairs in the tiny curtained boxes made you perch like a canary out on a pole, made you think that you were being scrutinised as much as the performers on stage. Which, I suppose, was the point.

My hall gave out a faded, threadbare welcome that didn’t ask questions, didn’t look too close and didn’t care who came so long as they paid. I walked a little way forward.

‘You there, Amit?’

I turned about. Tonight there was something almost edible about The Gaudy. I wondered that I hadn’t seen it before. The plaster decorations – swags of fat-bellied fruit – on the booths and on the tiered horseshoe balconies ranged above looked so real I could almost reach up, pluck one free and take a bite.

The twisted columns put me in mind of the penny sugar canes set out in trays in the window of Geddlers on the Mile End Road. Once, when we was out for a stroll, Nanny Peck bought me and Joey a stick each and she let Joey carry them home in the brown paper. When we got back to Church Row he hid them away for himself. I never got a lick.

I loved my brother. I always looked up to him, worshipped him, you might say. When I’d thought him dead, in my mind he’d become like one of them painted statues in Lucca’s churches. Standing up there on his plinth, hand on heart, lips pursed in prayer, his wide blue eyes locked onto something celestial – in death Joseph Peck had become someone perfect, flawless, almost holy. Just recently, now he was very much alive again, I’d been turning up things that cracked the feet of that statue.

Why wasn’t he here now?

I took a deep breath. The air was thick and warm. Despite Edie’s best efforts with a mop and a bucket, the smell of spilled gin, rough tobacco and soap-shy bodies lingered. I savoured the familiar taste. This was my real home.

I stepped forward and something hard snapped underfoot. I bent to gather the bits of broken oyster shell from the floor. Edie had missed it. As I straightened up I caught a movement at the far end of the hall beyond the stacks of tables and chairs.

I dropped the shell into my pocket. ‘Amit?’

Something moved again – my reflection in the big French mirror behind the serving board. Of an instant there was a ticking sound and a soft familiar hiss as the lamps lined up along the wall beneath the first balcony tier flared. The flat, stale smell of gas came strong as The Gaudy’s lights burned up bright.

I blinked. The magic was gone. The sudden, unnatural brilliance showed the hall for what it was. There was nothing comfortable about the stains on the boards, the holes in the curtains, the smears on the rails, the great grey lump crumpled against the wall.

For the longest moment I didn’t entirely understand what I was looking at, my mind couldn’t make sense of it. It was bulky and formless, a jumbled heap of something covered with a bolt of cloth.

Only this something had a hand – a big one – and it was resting flat in a pool of black.

‘Amit!’

I ran over and knelt beside the slumped form. His square jaw rested on his chest and his legs were splayed out beneath him at an awkward angle. I touched his arm and he toppled forward. A slim knife was embedded in the centre of his back. The curved silver handle was patterned with a swirling enamelled design and the wall behind him was patterned black with his blood. Amit Das was dead.

The hissing came on stronger. I turned from the body to see the gas jets along the walls at ground level spurt anew with a vicious energy – the flames dancing unnaturally high above the crimped rims of their moulded glass cups. This wasn’t right. I ran a hand over my damp forehead. It was hot in here.

Over to the left another black stain began to spread across the red varnished wall beneath the balcony. I watched, mesmerised for a second, as the paper above the gas flame detached itself.

It peeled gracefully away, the darkening edges fringed with a filigree of intense gold that blossomed into a bouquet of fiery curling petals when it reached the wooden boards. I sprang up and darted across to stamp on the burning paper, grinding my boots into the crisp scorched embers until they were powder beneath my feet.

I span round to take in the rest of the hall, only it was too late.

The flames from the gas jets were climbing the walls now, flattening themselves out under the overhanging balcony. Pools of yellow fire fanned out overhead – lapping greedily for tassels and the trailing ends of curtains from above. The plaster fruits draped in swags along the first tier were black with smoke, popping and shrivelling in the heat.

I covered my nose and mouth with my hands and ran out to the centre of the hall. The same thing was happening on every tier. Overhead a cloud of billowing grey obscured The Gaudy’s painted ceiling.

I felt a hand on my arm and jerked round.

Della was standing behind me, Robbie clutched tight to her side. He was completely silent, his brown eyes huge as he took in the flames spreading above and around us.

‘We’ve got to get out, Kitty.’ She started to wheeze. ‘C . . . come on, girl. What are you waiting for?’ She pulled the veil of her hat down and tucked Robbie’s head beneath it. ‘The front doors will be open. It’s where I came in.’

‘You and who else?’

Della ignored me. I caught her arm as she pressed forward. ‘The Gaudy, it . . . it’s my theatre. I can’t just leave it.’

‘We can’t stay here. I have to take him away.’

I tightened my grip. ‘And I . . . I have to do something. I have to call the brigade. The sand buckets are over there, help me.’

She shook me off roughly. ‘The only thing you can do is leave with us, now! Look at the place, Kitty – it’s going off like a tinderbox. Open your eyes – don’t be a blind fool.’

A blind fool!

That’s what I was all right. I couldn’t bear to look at her. My eyes locked on Amit’s body propped against the wall. I was a fool to have been taken in by her and Joey. A spurt of anger hotter than anything scorching around us blistered my tongue.

‘You selfish bitch, Della Lennox! I see things very clear now. This is all on account of you. All of it! Them murdered kids, Old Peter and now—’

I broke off as my mouth and nose filled with smoke. It forced its way down my throat blocking my lungs with hot tar. I bent double as I started to choke. At the same moment there was a whiplash crack as the old mirror glass behind the board bar exploded into a thousand fragments. A hail of deadly glittering splinters burst across the hall.

I gasped as something cut into my scalp and into the top of my arm. I straightened up. Della’s head was bent low, the baby cradled close in her arms. On her left shoulder and down her back small red marks bloomed through the coarse grey material of her travel coat. Robbie started to cry. I moved closer to shield him in case it went off again. Of an instant, I couldn’t bear to think of the mirror glass tearing into his smooth brown skin.

‘Is he . . .?’

Della grimaced. ‘He’s fine – I caught it.’

We both span around at a roar from behind. All along the apron the limelight flares were spitting and burning like columns. I’d never seen them fire up so bright or so high. The blinding, white-hot light they threw off was cruel.

She pointed. ‘Did you see that?’

I couldn’t look straight at the stage. I had to shield my eyes, but when I looked again, I saw it too.

Between the pulsing, crackling columns of flame something moved on the boards. A huge shadow reared across Lucca’s beautiful painted scenery boards. It darted to the left and was gone. Moments later the long velvet curtain to the left of the apron burst into a brilliant sheet of rippling golden flame. Anyone hiding there would have been roasted alive.

As we stood there, the banner curtain along the top of the stage caught. A delicate ribbon of golden fire began to spread like embroidery through the red velvet cloth. It would almost have been beautiful if it hadn’t shown that The Gaudy was beyond my help.

It was beyond anyone’s help now.

I grabbed Della’s arm. Together we ran under the burning balconies towards the lobby leading out to the street. Broken glass crunched under foot as we hurtled to the double doors.

I reached to pull one side open and cried aloud as the metal handle seared into my palm. I couldn’t see the lobby beyond, but I could hear the growling of the flames and the groan of burning wood. Even if I managed to yank open the door I knew it was hopeless.

I spat into my stinging palm. Edie’s bucket was lying on its side at my feet. The foul mop water had puddled on the boards and was turning to vapour.

Oh, Christ – not Edie too? I span round trying to see if she was lying nearby, but the air was filling with smoke.

‘Edie!’

I choked out her name over and over, but it was lost in the sound of splintering wood and cracking plaster.

Robbie’s muffled sobs were coming between bouts of wracking coughs.

‘It’s no good.’ Della held him close. ‘We . . . we can’t get out this way, can we?’

‘No.’ I covered my nose and mouth again as a billow of smoke from the lobby crept under the door and coiled upwards. We both turned at a screeching, ripping sound from the hall behind us. A flaming curtain rolled down from somewhere high above, hooking on the balcony overhead and draping over the serving board, blocking half The Gaudy from view. Once the gin caught, the whole place would go up in a minute.

‘Is . . . is . . . there any . . . oth . . . other way, Kitty?’ Della could hardly get the words out for coughing.

When I didn’t answer she began to cry and Robbie, catching his mother’s desperate misery, wailed loudly with her. She held him close and stroked his head through the muslin veil. I bent double again and retched. Black smoke was everywhere – in my eyes, my nose, my lungs, and now my stomach. My hair came loose, falling forward to brush the boards.

I found I could breathe deeper near the floor, the smoke was thinner here. I gulped deep, coughed again and tried to clear my head.

There was another way out.

The door from the back of my office, the one Fitzy had always draped over with a fancy curtain, led into the passages behind the stage and out to the workshops. I hacked again as another plume of smoke wound around us. The air was foul with gas now too.

Forty foot away on the right I could just make out the shape of the door to my office through the smoke.

I reached for Della’s arm.

‘This way.’

We huddled low and picked our way back across the hall. The flames had taken hold on the left-hand side and now they were spreading to the right. Overhead they were licking round the curtains of the balconies and leaping from tier to tier. We had to dodge as gobs of flaming stuff started to rain down on our backs.

I glanced over at Amit’s body as we neared the office. He had my keys, didn’t he? I shrugged Della off and scuttled towards him, trying not to breath. His huge right hand was lying flat in a pool of blood, but I could see a metal loop poking out beneath it. I mouthed a silent apology as I knelt and lifted Amit’s hand from the sticky mess to fish the keys from the boards.

If I managed to get out of this alive, I’d make it up to his brother Ram. I swore it to myself on Joey’s Christopher. As I caught hold of Della’s arm again I thought about that knife in his back. The man I’d seen on the stage – the flaming curtain? Surely it was Ilya?

And surely he was dead?

I kicked open the office door and bundled Della and Robbie through first. The room seemed to be filled with mist. The air was tainted here, but not as bad yet as the hall outside. I slammed the door behind us and ran to the passage door on the far side of the room.

My hands shook as I lifted the bloodied ring and sorted through the keys until I found the right one. I fitted the key to the lock and pulled back the door. The wood-panelled passage beyond was lit up like the mouth of hell. As I swung the door back, the fire gathered itself together, forming itself into a ball that rolled towards me. I swear it was like a living, knowing thing seeking us out.

I slammed the door, but I felt the heat flatten itself against the other side, roaring with hungry disappointment. It wouldn’t be long before it ate its way in. We’d die here, basted in our juice like fatty joints in a cookshop oven . . . that’s if the smoke didn’t suffocate us first.

Della coughed and the muslin flattened itself against her face like a winding sheet. She pushed it back. Beneath the veil her face was grey with ash and rigid with terror. Robbie squirmed and wailed like a banshee in her arms.

‘There . . . there’s nowhere else, is there, Kitty? This is our c . . . coffin.’ She started to choke.

Something leapt in my mind.

Coffin. That was it!

The secret room under the office, I always thought it was like a coffin. If we could cram ourselves down there with the stone walls to protect us, then perhaps, if there truly was a God and He was in the mood for a miracle, perhaps we could still come through?

‘Lay him down in the trunk for a moment and t . . . take this.’

I pulled off my boot and offered it to her.

‘Smash the window glass.’

She stared at the boot. A tear brimmed over and slipped down her right cheek, marking a dark trail in the ash.

‘It’s no g . . . good. We can’t get out that way, there are b . . . bars.’ She could hardly get the words out for the smoke filling her lungs.

‘We’re not going out that way. We need the air. Put him down and use this.’

I heard the sound of breaking glass as I turned from her to take Nanny Peck’s blue and white jug from the mantle. I threw the fading daffodils I’d filled it with into the hearth. I looked at the jug and then at the shawl tied to the back of the chair. For some reason I needed the old girl with me. I took up the fraying plaid and wrapped it round my shoulders.