Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (26 page)

The lamp made things easier.

Me and Peggy went first and Anna and Polly stuck close behind. It was slow going, but as we went back across the cellar Peggy became more herself with every step. I imagined she’d given up hope in that prison and now every yard away from it put a little piece of her spirit back.

The stairs were the hardest bit. Polly’s leg was bad and climbing the wooden steps made her cry out loud.

We got Peggy up first and then me and Anna went back.

As we supported Polly up the two flights, one of us on either side of her, I hoped to God that Lucca was still waiting.

I was right about the half-moon windows. At the top of the next flight of steps the lamp showed a row of them set into the wall at head height. They were shuttered from the inside but not glazed. If you removed the lock bar you could open them out to the yard.

I placed the lamp on the boards and looked around. We’d need to stand on something to get out that way. Against the wall there was a bench and an old crate. The faded letters
OSEN4
on the side suggested that a long time ago the crate had been packed with Rosen’s goods.

I pushed it over to the first half-moon window, clambered on top and freed the lock bar, pushing the shutters outward.

‘Lucca.’ I called his name softly and then again when there was no answer.

‘Lucca, you there?’

Nothing. I leaned forward and scanned the yard. ‘Lucca!’ This time there was a movement in a corner but it was only a mangy old cat poking around for rats. I looked down at the women standing around the crate.

‘He came with you then?’ Peggy tried to smile despite her broken lip.

I nodded. ‘He was supposed to be waiting here for me.’ I looked out into the shadowy yard again. It was deserted.

I couldn’t worry about that now.

‘Polly – you first. Me and Anna can help you through.’

I hauled Polly onto the crate and together we pushed her up and out through the window onto the stones.

‘You next, Anna. I can push you through and then you can help pull Peggy out into the yard after that if I support her from below.’

Anna nodded and pulled herself up. I pushed her from below as she struggled to clear the last inches.

‘Just you and me now, Peg.’ I tried to smile at her.

Peggy shook her head. I couldn’t see her face properly in the shadow as she spoke. ‘The others, Kitty. They’re still there. Alice, Martha, Jenny, Maggie – all of them. They’re in the other room.’

At first I didn’t understand what she was saying. ‘They’re all alive – the Cinnabar Girls?’

Peggy didn’t answer. She had no idea about that picture.

I started again. ‘All them girls who went missing from Paradise – you’re saying they’re still here?’

She nodded and looked back down the stairs. ‘Maggie – she was here when he brought me. Only fourteen. Like Alice.’

The thought of that faded scrap of a thing came to me then. I remembered the last time I saw her trying to dodge round the tables in The Gaudy while I watched her from the cage.

‘And she’s still in that room – the one beyond the place I found you?’

Peggy nodded.

‘I’m going back.’

‘No!’ Peggy gripped my hand. ‘You can’t, Kitty. It won’t make no difference, not now.’

I wasn’t listening properly as I shook her off. I’d failed Alice, but if I could still save Maggie . . .

All that time I’d been up in that cage lapping up attention like a kitten in a whorehouse and imagining myself to be a proper little victim when Maggie and all the others had been here.

I owed little Alice Caxton that at the very least.

‘Listen, Peggy.’ I pulled her up onto the crate and turned her face towards me. ‘I know you’re in a bad way, but when you are out in that yard you’re going to run. I want you to run through the gap in the wall opposite and out onto the basin – all three of you. Run without stopping. Go to The Gaudy, find your Dan and get him to take you to The Lady. Tell her everything you know about this place, every single thing you can remember happening to you here.’

Peggy shrank back. ‘Not Lady Ginger. I couldn’t go there.’

I took both her hands in mine.

‘You can, Peggy, and you must. I won’t be far behind. And this is important: you must tell her that I’ve got
more
, just like she wanted.’

The long stone room where I’d found Peggy and the others reeked of piss and worse. I hadn’t taken it all in before, but I shuddered now when I went back and saw the way they’d been kept. You wouldn’t treat an animal like that.

I raised the oil lamp so it threw more light around the walls. There were marks on the plaster where Peggy, Anna and Polly had been bound to the rings above their heads and there were other stains – dirty ghosts of women who’d been there before them.

The door at the far end of the room was metal like the door behind me. It was barred across by a single band held in place by brackets on either side. I went towards it and set the lamp on the stones. I tightened my fists. Did I really want to see this? I thought about Maggie again. I had to know.

I reached for the bar. My fingers tingled, I could feel my hair crackle and my ears rang. Lady Ginger’s dice tumbled into my mind, the little red squares rolling over and over – every side of them showing the number of death.

Warehouse number 4, Skinners Yard.

‘My congratulations, Miss Peck, on yet another brilliant performance.’

Edward Chaston’s voice was soft and pleasant.

I didn’t turn as the sound of his footsteps came closer.

‘Allow me to help you with that.’

I felt his grip on my shoulder.

Reaching across with his other hand, he lifted the metal bar and propped it against the wall. His cufflinks glinted in the light as he pushed the door and it swung inward, a cold wave of decay and that peculiar, sweet-metallic scent came rushing from the black hole beyond.

Now I knew what it was. When we laid out Nanny Peck before sending her ‘home’ to Ireland to be buried in her village, I’d complained to Joey and Ma that the funeries had painted her face wrong and doused her with a lousy cologne. Joey told me what it was and why they’d used it.

Embalming fluid– that’s what Edward Chaston smelt of.

‘Do you want to see them?’

I could feel his breath on the back of my neck but still I didn’t turn to look at him. Every muscle in my body felt as if it was aflame. The room shrank around me as I tried to concentrate
.

Draw it all in, girl, feed on it and make it work for you. The Fear is your greatest ally, Kitty, if only you knew it.
I’d never needed Madame Celeste and her ‘state of perfection’ more keenly.

‘Then again, perhaps not?’

He was all reason and smooth politeness, his voice comforting as a fox fur trim as he continued. ‘Some of my earlier pieces are now quite disappointing, to be frank. They present a sorry sight. But I am in the process of perfecting my art.’

He reached around me, caught at a leather loop set into the metal and pulled the door shut again. It closed with a heavy sigh that whispered off the stones.

‘As I am sure you already know, clever little Miss Peck, this used to be my father’s fur store. The cool, even temperatures here are ideal. To preserve animal hide you need a cold, dry place and this is most certainly that. My intention was to keep them all here – my school of silent models – and then to arrange them in a variety of compositions. I apologise for the scent, but it is most necessary. I have tried a number of fixatives. I found cavity solution to be very successful, but, of course, the fumes tend to attach . . .’

He paused for a moment. ‘Do you know, Miss Peck, it is extraordinary but the younger the body the faster the rate of decay.’

Alice and Maggie.
Christ! What had this madman done to them?

‘Well, no matter. It has been an interesting experiment – we learn through our mistakes, don’t we? For my latest work live models have proved more . . . malleable. Look at me, Kitty, when I speak to you. It is most impolite to ignore a gentleman.’

He whirled me about. Edward Chaston’s clear blue eyes glittered in the lamplight.

I’d thought he had a kind face, the face of someone with a ready laugh and an easy nature. When I’d first known it was him that was the one thing that kept coming back at me to make me doubt. Sir Richard Verdin – now, he had the face for a murderer – but Edward Chaston, he looked like a scrub-cheeked choirboy all grown up.

I stared direct at him. In the lamplight the crinkled skin around his eyes was pitted and heavily lined. Deep grooves ran from the side of his nose to his mouth. When he smiled at me now he looked like one of them half-size marionettes from Signor Malinetti’s act. They were supposed to be a comic turn, but, tell truth, I always found their slack mouths and button-black eyes most unsettling. I didn’t like to come across them hanging up on their own out back when I was clearing up of an evening.

‘A pity.’ Chaston sighed and brushed a ringlet away from my face. ‘And so beautiful too, until you speak . . . or sing. I hoped you might be different, Kitty, but you are just like the other filthy bitches from the halls. James tested that for me. You lost me a guinea, did you hear?’

His fingers followed the line of my cheek and caressed my neck. I shuddered, but I didn’t take my eyes from his and I couldn’t stop my tongue.

‘And I thought you just said you was a gentleman, Mr Chaston.’

He grinned, showing a neat row of little teeth that struck me as too dainty for a man. ‘Doctor Chaston, please, or soon to be anyway. I have many interests, Miss Peck – many talents. I am more gifted in every way imaginable than that idiot James.’ His voice suddenly became hard. ‘But you liked him, didn’t you?’

I didn’t answer as Edward’s clammy hand crept into the neck of Giacomo’s shirt. ‘Still, I suppose I must be grateful that you threw yourself at him. The drug I supplied loosened your tongue as well as your morals, did it not? James’s account of your . . . congress was most enlightening, in so many ways.’

He brought his hand up again and tipped back my chin. I flinched, but it wasn’t his touch. Not only that, leastways. It was the sight of his hand – all flaked and scaled over. The big gold ring on his smallest finger was loose and moved as he stroked my cheek.

I saw Lucca’s book again, the words clear in my head like the page was open in front of me.
The only certainty that remains is that the process was riven with danger and involved substances of the most toxic nature. Corretti himself was just twenty-four at his death. Fellow artist Brancazzo wrote that his body had grown old before its time.

Just like Edward’s.

His blue eyes narrowed and the dry skin puckered around them. There was no humour there now.

‘Just when I was on the brink of my greatest artistic triumph I will have to start over again. You set my birds free, Kitty. I cannot forgive that.’

‘Forgive,
Doctor
Chaston?’ I heard myself laugh. ‘That’s a fine word coming from you, isn’t it? There was I thinking a doctor saved lives. Call yourself a man of many talents, do you? Well, let me tell you what I call you – a murderer.’

He slapped my face and I felt the ring cut into my cheek. I didn’t budge – I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear. Instead I spat up at his face, catching him on the chin. Then the words came tumbling. I couldn’t stop them and now I didn’t care.

‘And your picture,
The Cinnabar Girls
, do you want to know what I really thought of that? I’m going to tell you anyway. I thought it was a pile of horse shit – an evil, stinking smear of rot and misery. All them fine gentlemen at The Artisans – they weren’t looking at the “
ambition
”, they were buying flesh like a punter pawing at a backstreet doll. Only they cleaned it up for themselves and called it artistic appreciation to make it nice, make it legal. But that’s what you people do, isn’t it? You buy your morals by the yard. Well, don’t fool yourself on that score. Meat – that’s all they came for and that’s all they saw – not what you’d really done. You think you’re so clever with your chemicals and your fucking Sicilian Gold, but what does it all amount to? Nothing. And I’ll tell you why, shall I? A real artist needs to create, not destroy. A real artist deals in life, not death. A true artist has a heart – has a
soul
. But you’re barren. There is nothing living inside you but hate.’

When I stopped he didn’t move and he didn’t say a word, he just stared at me. Then he wiped the spittle from his chin and looked down at his glistening palm where the bubbled flecks of saliva caught the lamplight. He balled his fist up tight and began to laugh.

‘Bravo, Miss Peck – a passionate recitation. What a fiery actress you would have made. I think tragedy would have been your forte. And I must thank you for your artistic . . . insight. The thought that a girl like you would be familiar with the work of Corretti. I confess I am astounded.’

Chaston clapped slowly like punters do in the halls when they’re tired of an act.

‘But how would you know about Sicilian Gold?’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Ah, I have it – your friend. The one with the ruined face. Mr Fratelli. The art-lover.’ The last two words were mocking.

He lunged forward and grabbed my arm. I tried to pull away but he was surprisingly strong, forcing me back against the wall next to the door. He moved his hands to my throat and tightened his grip so that I couldn’t breathe. I kicked out but he held his body rigid against mine, flattening me to the wall.

‘I don’t know how you found me here, little Philomel, but I do know that it will be the place where you sing your last song.’

Reaching into his coat he produced a syringe and jabbed it quickly and viciously through the coarse material of Giacomo’s jacket into my shoulder. I yelped at the sudden pain.

Chaston stepped back. ‘Don’t fight it, Kitty. It will only hurt more.’ I tried to scream but the room was already fading around me. As I sank down the wall, his voice seemed to come from the end of a tunnel. ‘I didn’t use enough to kill you here. That will come later.’

When I moved it was as if my head was full of fireworks. Great blooms of pain exploded behind my eyes and shot my vision with coloured sparks that distorted and fractured the room.

I was laying on my side on a pile of rags. My hands were tied behind me. The air smelt like the workshop at The Gaudy. It was thick with sawdust, paint and turps, and I would almost have found it a comfort if it hadn’t been all mingled up with that other stronger scent, the one that meant bodies and decay.

Gradually my sight began to clear. I was in another part of the warehouse now. From the tall, double-shuttered opening over to my right and the network of beams overhead I guessed I was on the top floor where the loading platform overhung the yard below.

There were oil lamps and candles placed on work benches by the wall and on the floor. In the centre of the room, propped against two thick wooden pillars, there was a huge rectangle half shrouded with grey cloth.

Edward Chaston’s new work was half the size of
The Cinnabar Girls
, but if the broad strip of sickly, transparent gold clearly visible along the entire length of the lower edge was anything to go by, he’d perfected his mastery of Sicilian Gold.

The paint reflected the gleam of the candles on the floor and seemed to shiver with an unnatural light of its own. As I looked, there seemed to be movement in the pigment as if there was something coiling in its depths. I wanted to keep looking at that strip of gold until I was lost in the paint. I’d been wrong earlier; Edward Chaston had created something after all – but the fact that it was almost alive was repulsive.

The boards behind me creaked.

‘Awake so quickly? Good. I wasn’t sure how long that would last. When it is administered directly the dosage can be difficult to calculate. It is all a question of scale. I am grateful that you are lighter than most of your friends.’

Chaston crouched down next to me. He took a handful of my hair and yanked my head back. ‘The dark one? Peggy, was that her name? She was a dead weight. I made a mistake early on in making her one of the central figures. I began to dread the days when I needed her up here. But the red girl was promising.’ He pulled my hair up tight and I cried out. ‘I had plans for her, but you ruined that.’

He stood abruptly and rubbed his hands together. He’d taken off his coat and rolled back his shirt sleeves. The skin of his arms was raw and crackled over and he scratched at crusted patches of scales at his wrists and elbows. ‘We don’t have much time. I should begin.’

He walked over to a bench, took up a sheaf of papers and leafed through them, frowning occasionally, tossing some to the floor and carefully placing others back on the pile.

‘Tell me, Kitty, how familiar are you with the work of Corretti?’

Even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t answer him. My tongue felt like a lead weight in my mouth. Chaston continued brightly as if he was explaining an effective cough remedy to a mother whose baby had a bout of the croup. ‘Little is known of him as a man and as none of his paintings survive it is difficult to judge his work. But his contemporaries spoke of him with awe. They feared him and they feared his genius. They thought his Sicilian Gold was the work of a devil. It was lost until I found a way to create it again – and it is beautiful.’

He glanced at the shrouded canvas and smiled.

‘Corretti’s greatest work was said to be
Persephone in the Fields
. I have chosen to paint a companion piece as an act of homage.
The Rites of Eleusis
is a bolder, more direct work than
The Cinnabar Girls
, as you will see.’

He held two sheets of paper in front of him and looked from one to the other, holding his head on one side and squinting. The lines around his eyes folded into deep channels.

‘In myth Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the earth. When Persephone was compelled to spend part of each year in the world of the dead as the bride of Hades, her mother’s grief was so terrible that the earth mourned with her. When Persephone rose from the underworld again, the sun returned and crops grew once more. In ancient times, the Eleusinian Mysteries were performed each year to ensure the return of Persephone. They were rites of birth, death and sacrifice.’

He dropped another one of the papers to the boards and looked from the remaining sheet in his hands to me.