The Silk Thief (7 page)

They caught up with Mrs H and Harrie at the bottom of the staircase inside the Siren’s Arms. Harrie looked awful. Her face, even her lips, had leached of colour and she was breathing far too fast and sweating visibly, though it was hardly a warm day.

‘Harrie? What’s wrong?’ Friday asked. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Where have you been?’ Elizabeth demanded. ‘We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Hello, Sarah.’

‘Harrie, what’s the matter?’ Sarah echoed.

‘She’s had some sort of dreadful shock,’ Elizabeth said unnecessarily. ‘She arrived at the house about a quarter of an hour ago, Friday, asking for you. I’ve offered tea, and brandy, but she only wants to see you.’

Friday was struck by a horrible, if irrational, thought. ‘Can you not talk, Harrie?’

‘Of course I can talk,’ Harrie said, despite the fact her voice was wobbly.

Friday nearly wilted with relief, though that didn’t last long.

Harrie thrust a folded piece of paper towards her. ‘I got this. At the market, this morning.’

‘Oh, shit,’ Sarah muttered.

‘It’s another blackmail demand, isn’t it?’ Elizabeth asked.

Sarah gasped, then fixed Friday with a venomous glare. ‘For God’s sake. You bloody fool. You and your big mouth! Why don’t we just put an advertisement in the newspaper?’

‘Well, do you expect us to believe you haven’t told Adam?’ Friday fired back, her face flaming. Bloody Mrs H; she’d told her that in confidence.

‘I can’t keep it a secret from my husband, can I?’

‘He does know? Since when?’ Friday demanded, immediately leaping for the higher moral ground. ‘And who the hell has
he
told, eh? We swore we’d never tell anyone.’

‘That’s rich, coming from you. Anyway, Adam’ll keep his mouth shut.’

‘Don’t mind me,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Or Harrie. Look at the colour of the poor thing.’

‘Stop it!’ Harrie cried, her hands over her ears. ‘Just stop it!’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs H,’ Sarah said. ‘This is our business. Could we have some privacy?’

It was a cheeky request given that they were standing in the middle of Elizabeth’s pub, but she gave a single nod and said, ‘I’ll be in my office if you need me,’ then turned and walked off, only the sharp rap of her boot heels on the floorboards betraying her tension.

‘Not here,’ Friday said. ‘Upstairs.’

They retreated to Friday’s room. She locked the door, produced a bottle of gin and sat on the bed to read the note. ‘Jesus Christ. Four hundred!’

Startled, Sarah stared at her. ‘What?’

‘She wants four hundred quid this time. And she actually says she’ll go to the police if we don’t pay it. And we’ll hang.’ Friday handed the note to Sarah, slumped in the chair in front of the dressing table.

Grim-faced, Sarah read it. ‘Who gave this to you?’

Beside Friday, Harrie took a deep, hitching breath. ‘Some boys, at the market. They crowded around me and I thought they were going to take my purse, but they didn’t. They left that in my basket.’

‘Did you know any of them?’

Harrie shook her head.

Friday said, ‘Bella probably paid the little buggers.’

‘But how did she know I’d be at the market?’ Harrie asked. She swallowed: her throat made an audible noise.

‘You do the shopping every day, don’t you?’ Friday asked.

‘Nearly. Has she been spying on me? She has, hasn’t she?’

‘I doubt it. She knows you’re in service. That’s what housegirls do.’ Friday did wonder, though. She wouldn’t put it past Bella to be keeping an eye on them.

‘But how did they know who to give the note to?’ Harrie went on. ‘How did they know that I’m Harrie Clarke?’

‘Well, I suppose she told them what you look like.’

‘But how does she know?’ Harrie’s voice went up an octave. ‘How does she know what I look like?’

Sarah and Friday shared a deeply shocked glance. Very gently, Sarah said, ‘We were on the
Isla
with her, remember? And in the Factory. She knows who you are, Harrie.’

Harrie stared at her in confusion, a red flush creeping up her face.

‘Love, are you all right?’ Friday asked.

‘I … Yes, I just … I forgot.’

To cover the awkward moment, and because she didn’t want to think about what it might mean, Friday rose, noisily opened her window, sat down again and took a massive swig from her flask.

‘We can’t pay. We don’t have four hundred pounds. Do we? How much is in the Charlotte fund?’ Sarah asked.

‘About sixty-five,’ Friday said, stifling a burp. ‘That and the two hundred Walter took off Furniss doesn’t add up to four hundred. We’d still be a hundred and thirty-five short — and it would leave us with absolutely nothing for Janie and the girls. And Janie’s due a payment for Pearl soon. We just can’t do it.’

A moment of silence ensued. It stretched on and on until Friday couldn’t bear it.

‘Fuck it. We’ll have to borrow it.’

‘Borrow it?’ Sarah was incredulous. ‘A hundred and thirty-five quid? That’ll certainly improve matters. Christ, Friday.’

Friday took another defiant mouthful of gin, and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘Then tell us your clever idea, Mrs Smartarse.’

‘Well, going to a bloody moneylender won’t help, will it?’

‘No! Not a moneylender. We can’t!’ Harrie exclaimed. Her mother, Ada, had once got herself into terrible trouble after borrowing five pounds from a shylock.

Friday frowned. ‘Who said anything about a moneylender?’

‘You did,’ Sarah said.

‘I did not.’

‘Who the hell else would lend us that kind of money?’

‘Mrs H. She’s already offered.’

Sarah drew in a long, nostril-flaring breath and let it out again, visibly struggling to calm herself. ‘What exactly have you told her? You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone, Friday. You swore.’

‘I had to tell her. She guessed. Anyway, you made the same promise.’

‘She guessed?’ Sarah was appalled. First Elizabeth Hislop, and now Adam. ‘What did you say to her?’

‘She doesn’t know it’s Bella. She just knows I’m being blackmailed. I haven’t told her anything else. But she did offer to help with money. How much have you told Adam?’

Now it was Sarah’s turn to go red. ‘He’d guessed as well, sort of, except he’s got as far as working out it’s Bella.’

‘Bugger.’ Friday raised her bottle again, drank, and let out another loud burp. ‘When did you realise?’

‘He confronted me when I got home the other night. He’d followed me down to King’s Wharf.’

‘God, Sarah, did you actually tell him you were seeing Walter off? That was a bit stupid.’

‘Hardly. I’d said I was going out to visit Harrie.’

‘Not very trusting, is he?’ Friday said.

Sarah ignored her. ‘He’d pieced things together around what happened in the old burial ground, because of Furniss, and he was nearly right. He’d already worked out that Bella’s blackmailing us, though not why, thank Christ.’

Harrie, who had lain down with her head on Friday’s pillow, groaned at the reminder of their crime. Friday patted her hip comfortingly.

She asked, ‘So why
does
he think she’s blackmailing us?’

‘I told him she hates us, and that if we don’t keep paying up she’s threatened to tell the governor that you murdered Liz Parker on the
Isla
—’

‘Oh, thanks very much.’

‘I told him you didn’t. I also told him Bella’s threatened to shop Harrie and me to the governor for lying on your behalf.’

‘And he believed you?’

‘I think so. But I can tell you, I didn’t enjoy lying to him,’ Sarah said bitterly. ‘And he’s really shocked at the amount of money she’s been demanding.’

‘I bloody well am, too!’ Friday said. She sighed. ‘So is that everyone who knows? Just Adam and Mrs H?’

‘And Walter,’ Sarah added. ‘But he’s out of the picture now.’

Friday gave Harrie’s flank a gentle push. ‘Harrie, have you told anyone?’

Harrie sat up and looked at her hands, resting in her lap. ‘No.’

‘Not even Mrs Barrett or Leo? Not even in confidence?’

‘No.’

‘What about James?’ Sarah asked.

‘James?’ Harrie blinked. ‘Why would I tell James?’

‘He’s been to see you a few times lately, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, but I wouldn’t tell him that.’ Harrie let out a high-pitched and rather hard-edged laugh. ‘We’re getting along quite well, at last.’

She stood and moved to the window. In the yard below, the stable boy, Jimmy, was shovelling up horseshit. There were no doubt flies all over it, even in winter. Rowie bloody Harris was a fly, buzzing endlessly around James, being indispensible as his live-in housegirl. Not that James was horse dung, of course, though, honestly, he must be just as thick, Harrie thought, if he couldn’t see how much Rowie’s presence was a thorn in her side. And her heart. There was something about that girl she really didn’t like.

Oh, she knew James wasn’t sleeping with her — James just wasn’t that sort of man — but the very idea of it still drove her wild with jealousy. Well, she thought she knew it, in the bright light of day, but at night, when she was lying in bed and couldn’t sleep and her room was at its darkest and so was her mind, the nasty, insistent voices in her head would whisper to her, do you really know James that well? Are you sure he isn’t sharing Rowie’s bed night after night? She would imagine their naked, writhing bodies, the sweat from their passion dampening the sheets, and snap! she’d be caught in the trap and round and round her tortured thoughts would go; Rowie was so much prettier than her, so much more self-assured and confident, and, of course, thoroughly at ease with manipulating men. And now she’d taken Harrie’s place — her potential place, at least — in the home of the man for whom Harrie felt so much. Whom she loved. Those were the nights she barely slept at all.

‘Harrie?’ Sarah said. ‘Are you still with us?’

Turning away from the window, Harrie said, ‘Why
would
I tell him? Why would I tell him I’m being blackmailed because I kicked someone to death?’

‘Well, you know, you haven’t been yourself lately,’ Friday said. ‘Er, again.’

Harrie realised then that Sarah and Friday must have noticed the change in her. Her heart sank. She hadn’t been fooling anyone. ‘No,’ she mumbled. ‘I haven’t said anything to a soul.’

‘Will I talk to Mrs H, then?’ Friday asked.

‘A hundred and thirty-five quid,’ Sarah said, shaking her head. ‘How will we ever repay her?’

Friday flapped her hand dismissively. ‘Easy. It’s not that much. We’ll make it a proper business arrangement. She can withhold it directly from my wages.’

‘That’s not a business arrangement,’ Sarah said. ‘That’s you getting your pay docked.’

‘She won’t take it all. She’s far too soft-hearted. I’ll have plenty left over.’ Friday didn’t care, as long as she had enough in her pocket to get drunk whenever she felt like it. ‘And you can pay your usual contribution to me, Sarah, to pay me back, instead of into the Charlotte fund. That’ll work, won’t it?’

‘No, it won’t. We need my money going into the bank. We can’t not support Janie and the girls.’

‘Shit. That’s true.’ Friday hadn’t thought of that.

‘I can give what I make from my flash straight to you,’ Harrie said, referring to the money she earned drawing tattoo designs for Leo Dundas. ‘Except for what I send home.’

What Harrie made from her flash wouldn’t make much of a dent in a one hundred and thirty-five pound debt, but Friday and Sarah were far too sensitive to Harrie’s feelings to say so.

Instead, Sarah, who had the best head for figures and whose job it was to balance the Charlotte fund, said, ‘No, that should go into the bank as well, otherwise we’re going to get very confused. We should make repayments to Friday from the account.’

‘So am I talking to Mrs H or not?’ Friday asked.

Sarah said, ‘Let me think about it for a couple of days.’

‘Well, you’d better hurry up. We’ve only got four more days before we have to bloody well pay the bitch.’

Leonard Dundas finished washing his breakfast dishes, dried them and put them away on the shelf. Then he stoked the fire, opened the window in the small room that was his kitchen-cum-parlour, and tossed out the dirty water from the washing basin. He wondered how Walter was getting on, and he wondered, too, where Clifford was. He was fairly confident that one of the girls would have taken her home — he just wasn’t sure who’d been brave enough.

It was so quiet without Walter. He missed him desperately, and Clifford, regardless of her nasty temper. Perhaps he’d get himself a cat. Cats were more independent than dogs. Far more self-serving and arrogant as well, that was true, but more able to look after themselves. There’d always been at least one cat on every ship he’d sailed in all the years he’d been at sea, taken aboard as both ratter and mascot. Yes, that’s what he needed — a cat.

He sat on the cot under the open window and tamped tobacco into his pipe. No, he didn’t need a cat, and he knew it, though he still might get one. He needed human company. He was lonely. It was time to visit Serafina Fortune, and not just for a glimpse into his future. He’d lost track of the number of times he’d asked her to move in with him, but she wouldn’t. She said she liked her independence. She was just like a bloody cat herself, Serafina was. Sleek, moody, mysterious and more than a little bit arrogant. He told her that if she looked into her own future, she’d see in it a perfectly nice existence for the two of them, even if she was twenty-five years younger than he was, but she refused. She swore she’d never poke around in her own future, but sometimes he suspected she already had, and that’s why she wouldn’t share her life with him.

He’d never married, though he’d loved several women and slept with many more. When he was younger and a sailor, he’d believed it unfair to marry then leave a wife ashore by herself for such long periods, but now, when he slid into the cold and empty bed in his little room upstairs, he wondered if he might have made a mistake. He’d fathered several children that he knew of. He had a daughter in Japan, where he’d lived for some time, and a son in England, long grown now, whom he’d not seen for more than fifteen years, and a son born in Sydney to a woman with whom he’d had a short fling while he’d been in port, before he’d settled in New South Wales. He’d offered to make provision for that child on a subsequent visit, but the mother had declined. The boy had gone to sea at a very young age and Leo rarely saw him, though he’d heard he was quite the young gamecock, and he did occasionally run into the boy’s mother, with whom he remained on friendly terms. In Leo’s opinion, finding Walter huddled among a stack of barrels behind a pub in Harrington Street, his arms wrapped around that scruffy little dog, had been a blessing — a last opportunity to raise a child properly.