Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (25 page)

This part of London was a labyrinth, but there was safety in the winding passages and shoulder-wide cuts, if you knew them by heart. I pushed the jacket collar higher and stepped back into the alley. Of a sudden one of Ma’s stories came to me. Something about a monster hiding at the centre of a maze. I shivered.

The shipmen were gone now but these streets, the gateway to London, were never quiet. Wagons rumbled through archways, chandlers stayed open for the tide, and gin shops of the lowest type – where punters stood upright to swill their guts through with Christ knows what – didn’t take much notice of the hour. Tonight it seemed that every third doorway was the trade pitch of a bobtail. One of them pulled at my sleeve.

‘It’s a brisk night. Five ships in today. You gents up for a quick one?’

I pulled away and sank my chin deeper into the coarse fabric of Giacomo’s jacket. Lucca quickened his step.

She called after us. ‘I’ll do you both for a penny.’

We walked on in silence trying not to draw attention to ourselves. The oversized boots rubbed my skin through the layers of wool. The blisters on my feet were opening again. The night was thick with the scent of trade. Every step brought a sharp new tang – coffee, spice, rum, sweat, tar, tobacco, stale wine and the meaty, fatty smell of wool – if you could bottle the air of the docks you could carry the world in your pocket. Old labourers boasted you could blindfold a regular, set him down on any corner and he could tell you exactly where he was from a single lungful.

I took in a deep breath now. Coal and smoke. We were getting close. I could hear machinery whirring too.

Limehouse Basin never rested – smaller boats were still built here, coal barges queued in the cuts night and day and the engine that drove all the lifting gear wheezed and bellowed round the clock. I could feel it now, throbbing like a great beating heart through the soles of my feet on the cobbles.

‘There is just one thing that worries me.’ Lucca’s hushed voice made the air steam around him as we walked.

‘Just the one?’ I tried to make light of it.

He sighed. ‘When we get there. If you are right about this. What are we going to do?’

I didn’t answer. Lucca had me there. I wasn’t sure of that myself. I just trusted my instinct that I’d know.

There weren’t many lamps down by the basin entrance where narrow buildings huddled close together. With their black arched windows and load doors gaping high above the street they looked like old women keening at a graveside.

Platforms jutted out over the passage almost touching across the gap in some parts. During the day they blocked out the light, but tonight they gave the darkness substance – like you could hold out your hand and feel it slipping through your fingers.

I reached out to the right, rested my hand on the bricks and stepped forward, letting the wall guide me. ‘This way, Lucca, keep close.’

‘Do you know which side?’

‘No, but once we get out into the open we’ll be able to read the numbers.’

The passage broadened out at the end and we found ourselves on the south side of the basin. The smooth black water at its centre reflected the viaduct that cut above the northern edge.

Over to the left there were lights and people moving about. Heavy lifting gear clanked and groaned as men scurried like ants over mounds of coal. Rows of open barges lining the edge of the basin were filled with more glittering black piles of the stuff.

We shrank back against the walls, careful not to be seen. I looked up. Flaking paint letters over a loading door above told me that the premises of
The Samuel Carter Coal Company
occupied numbers 34 to 36. Just to the right the Jeffries family (father and son, according to their sign) were at number 33.

‘This way.’ I pointed right and we began to edge our way around the basin. A train screeched across the viaduct, filling the air with steam, as we reached the double wooden doors of Warehouse 21.

‘Run, Lucca!’ We took advantage of the smoky cover and the noise and pelted round the stone wharfside. I looked up again.

‘Number 2 – we’ve gone too far.’

Lucca peered up, uncertain. ‘But the next one back is 11, Kitty.’

‘That can’t be right.’

The warehouse to my left, a squat sturdy affair, was definitely number 2 –
Millett & Co.
– but, as Lucca said, the next warehouse along to the right was a tall building clearly marked as number 11 –
Francis, Kenyon & Beedy.

‘Sam said Verdin had a lease on a warehouse at Skinners Yard, 3 to 10, Limehouse Basin. In that case, where is it?’

I scanned the flat brick fronts of the buildings. One thing was clear – this section was older and not as well used as the southern edge.

I took a step back so that the water was just behind me and counted the warehouses again from the end – one, two, eleven, twelve . . .

That was when I noticed it. Attached to a wall about ten foot away to the left there was a wide enamelled sign all rusted over with trailing weeds poking through it. I couldn’t read the words from here, but I could see the arrow running along the bottom.

I motioned for Lucca to follow me.

I pulled away the weeds and rubbed at the layer of green slime that covered the metal. The sign creaked and dipped sharply to the left as a rusted bolt worked its way out of the wall and rattled down onto the stones. It didn’t matter, no one could hear us over here – not with the sound of all that machinery hammering away – and I very much doubted they could see us in this shadowy corner.

I pushed the sign straight as Lucca rubbed with an old bit of cloth revealing three words.
Leo Rosen Imports
. There was a picture of a lion’s head too – just the same as on that watermark.

‘That’s it, Lucca! This is the one we want. Sam said Verdin leased it from someone called Rosen. So where is it?’

Lucca squinted doubtfully in the direction the arrow once pointed.

‘It must be down there.’ He nodded to a crack between the first two of the warehouses.

I stared at the black slit between the walls. It didn’t look like a passageway to me, more like a place where a man caught short would take a piss.

‘I’ll go first, Fannella. Stay just behind me.’

Lucca stepped into the gap and I followed. The air was rank and at the fifth step I felt something soft underfoot. Giacomo’s boot sank into something that made a wet sucking noise when I pulled free. I gagged and brought my hand to cover my nose and mouth as the stench of decay rolled up.

‘It was a dead rat – a big one. I did that too.’ Lucca’s low voice came from just ahead. There was a sudden yellow flare as he struck a single Lucifer. He held it up and stared back at me, the scarred side of his face hidden in shadow. He turned and carried on, holding the match high. We were in a passageway about a foot and a half wide. Sheer black walls reared up on either side.

The Lucifer fizzled and died.

‘Don’t look down.’ Lucca’s voice was steady and reassuring. ‘There are all manner of things at our feet here. Come. It doesn’t go on much further. There’s a sort of corner here and beyond that I can see – well, not light exactly, but the dark seems to be thinner.’

We came out into a little courtyard of buildings that mostly looked like shrunken versions of the warehouses round the basin. Overhead, the moon – half of it – came out from behind a rag of cloud and I could see quite plain. There were buildings lined up on either side of the yard and a single taller building at the far end. There was a stone well in the middle of the cobbles with a broken wooden cover balanced over the opening.

These buildings were older than the ones around the basin and they were derelict. The ripe smell of damp, rotting wood, mould and dead vermin filled the space. Most of the doors hung open on rusted hinges and broken glass from the lower windows crusted the stones. It glittered in the moonlight. A couple of the loading platforms high above were missing most of their boards, and several of the wide double doors, where once, a long time ago I reckoned, goods had been hauled up from the yard and taken into store, had been crudely barred over with slats of wood.

I doubted anyone had done business at Skinners Yard for a long time, not even a working girl looking for a quiet corner to trade her glove.

Only the tall, narrow building at the end seemed to be complete. I noted the ropes and pulleys dangling from the solid platform four levels up and the fact that the ground floor windows were still glazed.

There was a long sign painted direct on the bricks running down the whole left side of the warehouse too. The writing was slanted and in the old-fashioned style. In places it had worn away, but not so as you couldn’t read it:
Leo Rosen Imports. Fancy Goods and Oriental Silks. Est. 1834.

For a moment I froze. My hair prickled beneath Giacomo’s old cloth cap, something cold slithered down my spine and I had to force myself to breathe. It wasn’t the smell in that closed-up space that choked me. No, it was the thought that I’d found them at last.

We’d found them. If they were anywhere in London, the Cinnabar Girls – Peggy, Maggie, Alice and the others – were here. I could feel it.

‘Have you gone mad?’

Lucca hissed at me as we crouched behind the well. I was taking Giacomo’s boots off.

‘No, and you’d better do this too if you’re coming in there with me. The sound of these boots could wake the dead.’ I thought of Peggy and I bit my tongue.

For some reason we were both whispering, even though the only signs of life in that God-forsaken yard were the rats turning over the bloated bodies of long-dead pigeons in the corners. It must have been the thickness of the walls around us, but you couldn’t hear the machinery out on the basin here.

I winced as I pulled off the left boot. Blood from my blisters was already beginning to seep through the wool, all three layers of it.

‘But there is glass everywhere – and worse.’ Lucca swore under his breath, yet he bent forward to remove his own boots.

‘How are we going to get in, Fannella?’

I pointed at the rope pulley hanging from the loading platform high on the wall.

‘Up there and in through that opening on the right side – second floor. Easy.’

‘Easy for you, maybe, but you forget I have not had the benefit of Madame Celeste’s training.’

Lucca’s face was hidden by his hair as he untied his left boot.

‘And I cannot climb a rope.’

‘You won’t have to. I’ll get in and make my way down to let you in. There must be a door down here out to the yard.’ I scanned the building uncertainly. The only opening onto the courtyard side of the building appeared to be the doors of the loading platform high above us.

Then I saw a way. ‘Look! Over there to the left, just by that spar of wood leaning against the wall. There’s a row of wooden shutters half set into the stones leading to the vaults under the warehouse. If I can get in up there I’ll make my way down to that level and let you in. You can slide through.’

The half-circular openings along the base of the wall looked like a row of eyes staring at us.

Lucca bit the side of his thumb. ‘What are you expecting to find in there?’

Bring me more.
Lady Ginger’s voice came sharp into my head. But the old bitch hadn’t even opened her door to me when I came to her with
more
.

I looked up at the building behind us. If he really was using it as his ‘studio’, Christ knows what we’d find. It would be
more
all right, but would it be enough?

I clenched my fists. ‘I don’t know exactly, Lucca, and that’s the honest truth. Evidence, I suppose – maybe something more . . .’

I felt my guts coil into a knot as The Lady’s own word sprang from my lips. Admit it to yourself, girl, I thought. You’re expecting to find Peggy’s body in there, her and them others too.

I busied myself with the other boot, not wanting Lucca to see my guilty face.

‘We should just go to the police and end this now. Let them find . . .’ Lucca paused, obviously thinking the same as me and not wanting to share it.

I stared at him. ‘And what about Joey? I can’t bring the rozzers down on Paradise or Lady Ginger, can I? This has gone too far for that. And Verdin would only buy them off, like he’s bought everyone he’s ever come into contact with. Think about Giacomo, Lucca. Do it for him. You still love him, don’t you?’

Lucca took a deep breath and felt into the folds of his coat. ‘I brought this. Take it with you.’

I looked at the little ivory-handled gun in his hand with horror.

‘No!’

I didn’t want to think where he’d got something like that, but the thought came to me that I knew exactly who he might want to use it on. Like I always said, Lucca kept more secrets than one of his Roman father ’fessors. I was beginning to suspect I only knew the half of them.

‘I’m not taking that. You keep it.’

He tried to press it into my hands, but I held them behind my back. ‘No. It’s not for me.’ I’m not sure why, but I was definite on that. I didn’t even want to touch it.

‘Then take these, at least.’ He handed me the box of Lucifers. ‘It will be dark in there. You’ll need them.’ I nodded and stuffed the little box into the pocket of the jacket.

‘I’m going up there now,’ I whispered, pointing at the rope dangling in front of the painted sign. ‘Wait for me over there. I’ll try to get that half-shutter open and then we’ll go through the building together.’

Getting inside was easy.

The ropes hanging down from the platform were new and strong. Now I was close to, I realised Rosen’s warehouse wasn’t the forgotten shell it presented to a casual view. The gear connecting the ropes was well oiled – which is why I didn’t make a racket as I climbed – and some of the platform boards overhead had been replaced.

When I got to the opening I’d pointed out to Lucca I shifted my weight and swung forward catching the brick sill with my foot.

The gap was tall and thin and not glazed over and when I managed to pull myself inside I realised why. It led direct to a wooden staircase. The opening was the only source of light and air.

A warehouse owner wouldn’t spend a penny to keep his workers warm, but he’d like them to breathe, ’specially given the fumes coming off some of them goods.

Joey had taken me with him to a skin house once when they were unloading a cargo of hide. I’ll never forget the stench of it, worse than a sewer it was. All around us were bins full of horn sorted for shape. Some of them were black and twisted, others were creamy white – ivory, I guessed. The sour smell coming off the horn bins was worse than the hide. It got into your nose and worked its way down into your throat so that everything you put in your mouth for hours afterwards tasted of death.

I felt into the pocket for the box of Lucifers and struck one against the wall.

The wooden stairs were broad and strong. Like the ropes and pulleys outside they were good, none broken or missing as far as I could tell.

The match sputtered and died. I shook the box in my pocket – plenty there. I was about to strike another when I noticed that I could make out the outlines of the steps below. The opening allowed a gash of faint grey moonlight to fall across the twisting stairwell.

I stood there for a moment allowing my eyes to grow accustomed and then I began to go down, keeping one hand on the wall to guide me. At every ninth step the stairs turned and led to another level below.

It got colder as I went down. After three or four turns the air changed. The tarry wood and sawdust smell of the stairs faded and now there was a metallic, bitter scent in the air.

It was pitch black. The moonlight couldn’t reach this level so I struck up another of Lucca’s matches and held it high. I was in the store vaults beneath the warehouse.

The floor beneath my feet was stone and just ahead of me a row of great brick arches leaned into the shadows. I counted three of them, but I knew that old storage cellars like these often followed a different plan to the buildings above them. Some of the vaults under the docks stretched for miles. People said there were passages too where it was easy to move your gear out from under the eye of the Customs men.

The match burned down to my fingers and I dropped it. By my reckoning, the row of half-moon windows where Lucca would be waiting outside should be just behind me to the right. I felt my way back to the steps and struck up another match. There was nothing – just a blank wall of greasy brick. I must have gone down too far. The match fizzled out in my fingers.

I sat on the lowest step, dipped into the pocket again and fumbled with the box, but just as I was about to strike I realised that there was another light down there with me.

I stood up and took a step forward; perhaps it was a trick of the mind or an optical illusion like one of Swami Jonah’s magic tricks?

The light disappeared, but then it came again when I moved a couple of steps back to the right. There
was
a faint light far across the cellar – when I moved, the curved stone pillars blocked it from view.

I dodged behind a span of arches and carefully followed their line across the cellar, slipping from one black space to another until the light was clear ahead. It came from a partly open door – a great wide metal thing covered with studs and straps. It put me in mind of the box in the wall in Fitzy’s office where he stashes the takings of an evening.

The sour smell was stronger here and there was something else: the air was thick with a sickly sweetness. It wasn’t the fragrance of flowers, nor even like Lady Ginger’s opium smoke; it was a harsh, unnatural scent and I’d known it before – that night in St Paul’s.

I froze. Was he down here now?

I dodged under an arch and flattened myself against the ice-cold bricks. You should go back now, girl, I told myself, you can’t do this alone. You need Lucca . . . and his gun.

I took a deep breath but that stink coiled into my lungs and made me want to gag. I heard a scrabbling sound at my feet and looked down to see a rat staring up at me. The sheeny black creature blinked, snuffled at my foot and skittered away across the stones when I kicked out. It watched me warily for a moment, then it pressed its body close to the wall and slunk to the open door. I watched in disgust as its thick, grey, hairless tail slipped around the metal and disappeared.

‘Oh Jesus! Another one. Get it away from me, please.’

I heard a muffled scraping as if something was dragged across the floor.

‘No! Please!’

‘It’s no good, I can’t move, Peggy. Keep still and it might . . .’

There was a sharp scream.

Without thinking, I ran forward and pushed the door further open to reveal a long, narrow chamber with a barrel ceiling and another studded, barred door at the far end. The walls were plastered and whitewashed over. An oil lamp placed on the stones about halfway down cast a flickering circle of light across the three kneeling women whose hands were tied above their heads and roped to great metal hoops in the walls. Their bodices gaped open and their skirts were soiled and ripped. Even in the gloom I could see the scratches and bruises on their skin.

But they were alive – all of them.

I stepped into the circle of light. The women moaned and shrank back against the walls, lowering their heads.

‘Please, not now. Not again.’ The cracked voice came from a woman behind me.

I turned and found myself looking down at Peggy. Her lovely thick hair was matted into a filthy knot and there were long scratches down her arms. The cord at her wrists had cut into her flesh and the wounds were crusted and weeping.

‘Peggy!’ I fell to my knees and gently lifted her head.

Her eyes were sunk so deep into their sockets that they were almost closed over and her bottom lip was split and swollen.

She didn’t look at me, but she whispered the words, ‘Don’t. Please, sir.’

‘Oh Peggy.’ My eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m not him.’

I ripped Giacomo’s hat off and pulled my hair free. ‘Look. You
know
me – I’m Kitty.’

Peggy slowly raised her eyes to mine. At first she didn’t seem able to focus. Her blank eyes rolled across my face as if trying to find something there she recognised.

After a moment, she whispered, ‘Kitty? Is that really you? Oh thank God. Thank God.’

The ropes binding the women at their wrists were tied so firmly that I had to burn them with Lucca’s matches to make them break. When I’d finished on Polly Durkin she slumped onto the stone floor and kept repeating the name of her boy, Michael, over and over.

‘It’s all right, Polly.’ I crouched next to her and stroked her hair, knowing full well that it was not all right in this stinking pit. ‘You’ll see him again, soon. I promise. But we have to get you out of here first. All of us, we’ve got to go.’

I’d never seen the other girl before. I reckoned she was about the same age as me, maybe a year or so younger. She was a redhead with that fine chalk-white skin that bruises like a peach. She wasn’t as badly hurt as the other two – so far as I could tell. There was a welt on her shoulder and blood at her wrists where the rope bit too deep, but he’d left her face alone.

The veins in the skinny arms stretched above her head showed blue as I burned the rope.

She winced when the flame licked too close.

‘What’s your name?’ I tried to distract her.

‘Anna. Anna March.’ She flinched as I struck a new Lucifer. I knew that name – Tally March was a comic singer at The Carnival.

‘You Tally’s girl?’

She nodded and tears came into her eyes.

‘How long have you been here, Anna?’

‘I . . . I’m not sure. Not long . . . not as long as the others.’ She looked across at Peggy and I saw a tremor go through her.

‘There’s no daylight, see. Just the lamp and he lets that go out sometimes, so we’re left in the dark.’

‘When was he last here?’

Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t know. When he comes to take one of us he gives us all something to drink and then it’s like everything in your head goes wrong. He could have been here a day ago or . . .’

The rope burned through and Anna fell forward. Like the others she cried aloud as she moved her arms again and the blood came rushing back, but she was more alert.

‘Anna, listen. I need you to help me. We have to get out of here before he comes back, but Peggy’s in a bad way and Pol’s not much better.’

Anna rose stiffly to her feet. She pulled the ripped material of her dress together at the neck, folded her arms around her and rubbed her aching muscles.

‘You’re Kitty Peck, aren’t you? Mum says you’re a wonder. The bravest thing she’s seen.’

‘Most foolish, more like. Do you think you can let Pol lean on you?’

Anna nodded.

‘Peggy.’ I ran over to where she sat against the wall and gripped her hand. ‘We’re getting out. You’ve got to try to stand. Can you do that?’

Peggy pushed herself up from the stones, held my arm and hauled herself up. I felt her grip tighten and I knew she was in agony. I reached down for the oil lamp.

‘Anna, can you take Pol now?’ The pale girl slipped down beside Polly Durkin and whispered. Polly nodded and staggered to her feet. Anna put her arm around her shoulders and looked across at me. ‘Where are we going?’