Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (19 page)

He looked from one drawing to the other and nodded slowly. ‘Philomel. Do you know who she is?’

I shook my head.

‘It is an old myth. Philomel was a beautiful princess turned into a nightingale by the gods. Some say she became a swallow – but the end is the same. The swallow and the female nightingale they are mute. They have no song.’

‘What does that mean then?’

Lucca shrugged, then he looked closely at the foreign words under the picture of me in the cage and frowned. ‘When did you get this?’

‘Fitzy gave it to me just before I went up last night. It was left in Mr Leonard’s room by whoever it was that broke in.’

‘So it came after Verdin drugged you and took advantage of you?’

I nodded. I was glad to hear the way Lucca put that.

‘Do you know what this means?’ He pointed at the neatly written words and read them aloud. ‘
Magna cadunt,  inflata crepant, tumefacta premuntur
.’

I shook my head again. ‘So it’s Italian, is it? I thought as much. Something insulting – you know, dirty language?’

Lucca looked up. ‘No, Fannella, it is Latin from the Bible. In English you would say something like,
pride goes before a fall
.’

The run-through was easy enough. Danny had fixed the chain so it didn’t make that horrible grating sound no more and, even though Peggy wasn’t there, it was almost good to be back at The Gaudy, which always felt more hospitable than Lady Ginger’s other halls.

When they let me down I was surprised to find Mrs Conway waiting. We Gaudy girls all knew that Mrs C wasn’t to be disturbed of an afternoon on account of it being the time for her ‘medicinal’. Peggy used to go round with her prescriptive sometimes, that being half a pint of neat gin straight from the cellar under the bar.

Mrs C wasn’t a bad woman, but she liked being a star, even if it was only somewhere quite low in the sky. Since my act had started I’d been a very painful reminder that it was taking longer and longer to burnish herself up of an evening.

After the rehearsal I was itching to go straight back to Lucca. If we could talk everything through, without a row this time, then perhaps we’d see something.

The cage had bumped onto the stage and a couple of the hands had just lifted the side to let me crawl out when Mrs C tapped me on the shoulder.

‘I’m so pleased to see you back here, Kitty my love. You must have had a terrible fright.’

I noticed that the dry red paint on her lips was creeping up into all the little lines around her mouth. She was wearing a lot of violet over her eyes, her arched brows were inked in the most unlikely places and the black wig on her head looked like it might jump off if a mouse ran past.

She took in my gear and sniffed. I must have looked like a boy in the same thin breeches and camisole I’d worn during all those rehearsals in Madame Celeste’s attic.

‘You’re thin as a whip. The Johnnies don’t like that, remember? Give them a bit of meat, that’s what I always say.’ She patted my arm, maternal like.

‘Tell me, how did you feel up there just now? Did it all come flooding back?’

It hadn’t, to be honest. All the time I was up there my mind was turning over what Lucca said.

Magna cadunt, inflata crepant, tumefacta premuntur – Pride goes before a fall.

It was a threat, wasn’t it, or a prediction? And it pointed direct to that business with the ropes and the ceiling at The Comet. Kitty Peck – the fallen woman.

But why would James Verdin, brazen as a barrow boy, break into the theatre, meddle with the cage and then leave that picture in Mr Leonard’s office when he knew someone, Lucca most likely, would know what those words meant?

He’d already asked if I liked his first picture so why would he send me another one, with a threat scrawled across it? It was almost like an announcement. He might just as well have taken out a page in
The London Pictorial
.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to think that James wasn’t the one I was looking for.

Or was he?

He could draw, he’d been hanging around the halls – he admitted that himself – and he’d used that stuff to drug me. Is that how he’d caught the others?

Danny’s voice had come up from below. ‘Can you go into the dips now? And then we’ll try the bit where you twirl upside down. We need to check the weight on that. You ready, lads?’

There was quite a crowd watching. Several of the chorus girls were sitting cross-legged on the stage, the hands who weren’t hanging off the end of a rope were leaning against the side wall smoking, and even a couple of the orchestra boys were tuning up in the pit. It was an unusually early start for them, I thought.

They all wanted to see if I still had the mettle for it – and I didn’t like to disappoint.

I hooked my knees over the bar, leaned back, stretched out my arms and swung free. I heard the ropes creak as they pulled tight, but the cage stayed locked into place, which is more than I can say for the thoughts in my head.

If James wanted me out of the way, why hadn’t he done something about it a couple of nights back? Why would he break into The Comet and set me up for an accident when he could have smothered me in my bed and tipped me into the river?

Think, girl, think, I told myself as I began to spin. All the while I kept my eyes on a single point in the hall just as Madame Celeste had taught me.

Every time that gilded vine on the front of Lady Ginger’s box snapped into view I counted.

One:
Philomel

Two:
At night your cagebird sings an ugly song

Three:
Pride goes before a fall

One, two, three: I went through them again seeing the black lines on the paper as I twirled and arched my back. There was something there on the pages, something important.

A smooth transition, Madame Celeste had been most keen on that. When I went from one set of movements to the next she explained that it must always look effortless, like I was a wisp of silk slipping around the bar.

‘All the time you’re up there you must make them believe you can fly. You must soar, Kitty – graceful, beautiful, seamless. No jerking about and no hard angles – they’ll give you away, expose you for what you really are.’

Danny’s voice came up from the hall. ‘That’s enough, Kitty. We don’t need the song. We’ll bring you down now.’

I pulled myself onto the bar and sat there, my mind ticking like a clock shop, as the cage was winched carefully back down to the stage. Madame Celeste was right about the hard angles. I had to show Lucca.

‘You’re the darling of
The London Pictorial
again.’ Mrs C pushed the newspaper into my hand. ‘Page three – a very lurid account of the incident. Most particular that I should give it to you, the boy was. There’s another picture as well, although I must say it doesn’t look much like you.’

She held it under my nose, but I didn’t look at the drawing. There was a line of writing across the top of the page.

My heart started to beat very fast.

‘As I said, you really must eat more, Kitty. Now, what with Peggy being away and you being back here at The Gaudy this week I was wondering if you’d help with my wardrobe and hair, like before?’

She patted the mass of black hair on her head. It lurched to the side and stayed there. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m revisiting some of my most popular numbers and I’d be most obliged if you—’

I cut her off. ‘Sorry, Mrs Conway, but I have to go. I’m late already.’ Her crimson mouth crumpled up like a dry old rose as I darted past her into the slips and went to find my street clothes.

I took
The London Pictorial
with me.

Once I was dressed I went straight back to the workshop. I slid open the door and called Lucca’s name. Old Bertie was shuffling about near the work bench at the back, but there was no one else around.

I stepped inside and pointed upwards to the studio when Bertie caught sight of me. He shook his head and nodded at the door. I wasn’t entirely convinced he’d have heard Lucca coming back in again – if he had – so I climbed up the ladder and poked my head over the edge.

‘Lucca, you there?’

The little hatch that led through to his private space in the attic was open so I hitched up my skirt, clambered onto the boards and went across. I bent my head and called again.

‘Lucca – I need you to come out with me.’

Lucca’s studio was deserted. A small cobwebbed window high in the eaves allowed a shaft of direct sunlight to slant across the room and I could make out the papers pinned to the walls. There was no doubt about it, Lucca was good. His drawings were full of movement and character. I recognised faces I knew from the halls, sketched lightly and quickly. It was like he’d caught them unawares in a flash of a moment when they was laughing or talking or thinking. There was a large black book bound up with ribbon propped against the wall partly covering a drawing of Peggy.

She was smiling. Her wide eyes sparkled and her pretty lips were parted like she was about to remark on something. It was so true to the life that I could almost hear her voice followed by her throaty laugh. I missed Peggy something bad, and if that’s how I felt, what must Danny be like with her gone? I screwed the newspaper up in my hand.

Something hard balled in my throat.

I tried to swallow and stiffened my shoulders. If I allowed myself to start crying now I knew I’d never stop, not just for her, but for Joey, for the other girls, for me – for all of us. I drew a breath and made a promise to the girl in the drawing.

‘I will find you, Peggy, and I’ll make this stop. On my life I will.’

I’m not one for hocus pocus – like I said, that was Ma’s territory and old Nanny Peck’s too – but something made me feel I had to look direct at Peggy’s face to make that vow work – to give it a meaning. I tried to move the book to one side to get a better a view of her, but it fell open, sheets of drawings falling to the boards.

I knelt to gather them up, pushing them back between the stiff covers as neat as possible. They were mostly drawings of the boy I’d seen in the sketch pinned to the wall last time. Thick curls, fine eyes, strong nose – the sort of classical face Lucca liked to show me in his books – the sort of face that Michelangelo might have drawn. I smiled at that. I’d surprised myself. Lucca was a good teacher as well as a good artist.

I wondered again who that boy was as I reached out for the last two sheets. I turned the first over. It was me, asleep. Lucca had sketched me in his bed that night after we’d seen the painting that first time. I knew it was me, even though my face was mostly hidden in a scribble of curls. There were freckles across my nose and my pointed chin rested on a hand just visible on the pillow.

Lucca was a deep one. I turned the last page over.

My brother was standing there naked as the day he was born – only this was clearly several years later. He looked up at me from the paper, his eyes bright and his lips curved into a wide smile. It was the expression on his face that haunted me afterwards. Was it a challenge, or maybe an invitation?

I dropped the sheet like it was something scalding, then I picked it up again. I looked more closely, all the time feeling odd, like I was earwigging on a private conversation. It was a fine drawing – one of Lucca’s best, no doubt about that. The soft lines that came together to make the outline of Joey’s body feathered across the paper and the smudge of shadows suggesting muscle and flesh made you want to reach down and touch him.

Carefully I followed the line of his arm and neck with my forefinger. Something ached in my chest and my throat felt blocked and tight again. My handsome brother – what was he doing here in this file? My hand went to the neck of my dress and I drew out his Christopher and his ring. I could see the Christopher in the sketch and now I rubbed the real thing between my thumb and forefinger as I stared at the fine young man on the paper.

‘What’s all this about, Joey? What have you got me into?’ I whispered to the drawing and tried to find the answers in his dancing eyes. My bold brother just smiled back at me.

I am not a liar, but there are things . . .

When had Lucca drawn this? It was from life, I could swear. A hundred questions rattled in my head, but the more I thought, the more confused I became – and angry too.

A bell started tolling outside. It was two o’clock. I didn’t have time to sit here stewing and waiting.

I pushed my brother back into the black book, tied the string and fled. Tell truth, I was glad to get away.

I opened
The London Pictorial
and spread the rumpled paper across my knees. Mrs C was right, that didn’t look like me at all. The girl in the picture, clinging on by her fingertips to the bottom edge of the cage, was more generously endowed in crucial areas than I was, although she had managed to cram herself into a costume even smaller than mine. I read the untidy looping scrawl across the top of the picture. ‘
I have information. Come and see me when you are able. SC.
’

I looked down at the street. It was the first bright day in a long time and people were bustling about their business in the sunshine. If any of them had seen that story no one would recognise me as the plump, doe-eyed doll on page three – not like I’d recognised the Cinnabar Girls.

I wondered what Sam Collins had turned up. I hoped to God it was something useful.

The omnibus juddered as it came to a halt at Colet Place. Over to the left I saw the pale sun caught between the ugly grey towers of Christ Church on Watney Street. I wondered what time it was now. The horses swung their heads and waited as three more passengers climbed up the curved stairs at the back and joined me up top on the garden seats.

It was cold up here, but cheap too. I pulled my shawl tight and blew on my fingers.

Not only was the picture all wrong, but Sam hadn’t even got the facts right neither.

‘A miraculous survival. It is a thrilling, story, Miss Peck. Kitty?’

I sat completely still as James Verdin’s voice came from somewhere behind. ‘May I join you?’

I didn’t answer. A moment later he slid onto the wooden seat next to me. I felt my body go rigid as he nudged up. He smelt of brandy, good cigars and leather and he was wearing the coat with the wide fur collar. I could see it from the corner of my eye although I wouldn’t look direct at him.

I offered a silent prayer of thanks that there were at least five others up there with us. James leaned close and began to speak into my right ear. I could feel his warm breath on my skin and I wanted to scream. I stood up just as the omnibus went over a rut in the street and I lurched forward. James caught my arm and pulled me down into the seat.