Chapter 3
Outside, I rounded the corner, flipping my cloak from blue silk to black for good measure. It had been a narrower escape than I liked. My heart beat out of time until the next street, where I forced it back into order.
I strolled south and east, the weight in my thieving pocket lying heavy along the crinoline. We were all used to being off-kilter, accustomed to hiding the limp it gave us. Better to have a limp from the pocket than to be a man and limp between the pockets, as Josie would say.
I reached the west end of the Charing Cross rail footbridge and started across the Thames, knowing Mary would have taken the Waterloo.
I paused, resting my hands on the parapet, and looked east, for it was one of the rare afternoons when the sun slipped the clouds, laid the bridge’s shadow across the river, and dusted gold across the boats’ chop.
From below rose the rank smells of rotting fish and tangy brine, of filthy old stone and molding green muck crawling up the pillars.
From behind me came the distant blare of a locomotive whistle followed by a screech of brakes as a train drew into the London and South Western station.
The sound was lost in the grind of a motor as a tugboat avoided ramming a lighter not fifty yards from me.
I shaded my eyes to watch as a coal carrier plowed its way along, its flaring blast overwhelming the sound of the tug.
That’s the way London was, one sound drowning another.
I walked on and waited for Mary at our usual corner on Waterloo Road.
As she appeared, I was gratified to see lightness in her step and a quietly confident smile on her face.
I felt a moment of misgiving at the thought of deflating her spirits by telling her about the brown-suited man who’d escaped her notice. But Mary and I told each other the truth.
“That was neat,” I said as she looped her hand through my elbow.
“Except for Sid, the little wretch. Another few minutes and I was going to call it off.”
“We’ll box his ears tonight,” I said.
She let out a groan. “It’s the bloody dice, Kit. He’s running a game on Water Street. He probably lost track of time.”
My steps slowed. “What? He’s running a game? Here?”
Southwark was Silas Pike’s patch, not just for gaming but for gambling, extortion, and receiving stolen goods. For Silas Pike, Sid running a game meant he was old enough to be punished for it, no matter if he was only twelve.
“I’ve tried warning him, believe me,” Mary said.
“How much is he bringing in?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Two or three pounds a week. Now he won’t leave off it, and with my ma gone, he doesn’t mind me.”
It gladdened me to catch Mary slipping in the mention of her ma.
She’d done it several times lately, as if testing her ability to say that syllable without her voice breaking.
The first month after her mother died, Mary had folded in on herself with grief, sobbing so hard in my arms that I begged her to breathe.
Eventually, her grief had softened, along with her need to know why her mother was killed.
A murdered woman from this part of London didn’t hold the attention of detectives for long.
Not like us thieves.
I drew Mary into the alcove doorway of an abandoned shop with the glass panes broken, the empty window frames covered by splintered wooden planks. “Mary, there was a detective in Pickford’s.”
Her jaw sagged in dismay. “What? I didn’t see—”
“There’s no way you could’ve,” I interrupted. “He was in plainclothes and out of sight until you fell.”
Her eyes darted as she retraced the shop in her head. “The wide pillar in the back corner, by the table linens.”
I nodded.
“Damn.” She bit her lower lip white. “How did you see him?”
“He stepped in front of the pillar. He wasn’t watching you. He was looking for me.”
Mary drew a breath. “You’re sure he didn’t make you?”
“I was staring at you by the time he turned in my direction.”
“Bloody hell,” she whispered, and her gaze drifted across the muddy rutted road toward the Three Boars pub, with its crooked shutters and a two-bit boardinghouse on the upper floor.
I kept silent until she nodded, slowly at first then more firmly.
Her eyes returned to mine. “You didn’t keep it from me. ”
“You said you were ready. That means I tell you, like we always do.”
Her look of gratitude pinched at my heart.
“I am not, however, telling Amelia,” I added. “There was no harm done, and I don’t want her wondering if you should’ve seen him.”
“Thanks for that.” She looped her hand through my arm, and we walked on to the corner. We paused, waiting for two carriages to pass, and she gave a little shake of her head, as if to put the detective out of her mind. “Sarah’s home tomorrow night, isn’t she?”
The sudden shriek of a railway engine made us press our hands to our ears.
As the noise subsided, Mary spoke over it.
“We could have tea together before she goes back, with Sid.” Sid and Sarah had grown up together, and they got on.
He never mocked her for the wine-colored birthmark by her temple like other boys did.
“I could make a cake for us, special,” she added as we paused at the corner of Granby Street. “Mrs. Jonas has me baking pound—”
The screech of railway brakes drowned the rest of her sentence.
Again, we covered our ears, I nodded agreement, and we hurried south to leave the noise of the station behind.
To St. George’s Circus and onto London Road; past Marshall Street, with Seamus Ardle’s pawn shop where I worked, and the Trunk Lodging House in York Street, where Mary and I roomed together since Sarah went out in service two months ago.
At the end of London Road sprawled the cobblestoned quadrangle where six old stagecoach roads coming from as far as Dover and Canterbury met in front of the Elephant and Castle.
Together Mary and I approached the square front of the inn with the famous motif above the door: a left-facing elephant with the crenellated tower on its back.
Dusk had fallen, and the light from the windows feathered onto the cobbles.
To the side of the inn lurked a few Castle men—Billy, Tommy, Jake, and Nick—in a rough scrum, talking in low voices.
If the Castle men were dogs, always scavenging for more, these were the four most dangerous, the sort who would maul a mark half to death if he fought back.
Some of the younger ones, standing slightly apart, were friendlier with us, more like pups, all horseplay and boasting talk.
Although even pups could cause trouble, as any woman knows.
Fanny’s brother Caleb, a card sharp who ran a spieler of vingt-et-un in rooms nearby, called out to Mary, “Good take today?”
“Aye,” she called back noncommittally. To the Castle men, anything more might sound smug.
Still, Jake’s eyes had latched on to us, his face sour, his mouth twisted.
Two years ago, our ring was clearing three times what the men were from dead lurking and dragging luggage off cabs, and Amelia had taken the inn’s upper stories for our own.
Jake had been the one who’d resented it most, throwing a brick through our goods room window one night when he was in his cups.
Amelia had a word with Silas Pike, who ran the Vine Street fences that received most of our take, and from then on Jake only growled; he didn’t bite.
I pulled open the door. As we stepped inside, the warmth of the room and the tang of ale from the taps came at us in a wave.
I started up the stairs to the goods room, while Mary, with nothing in her pockets, stayed below to have a pint.
I pushed open the door to find Amelia seated at the desk, recording the day’s take in her neat hand, with the bottle of ink and an open ledger before her.
Nell was loading boxes of goods into the dumbwaiter, which would be lowered to the ground floor, where the goods would be retrieved by one of Pike’s henchmen.
For secrecy, this occurred on different nights each week.
Before the drawn curtains stood other thieves—Josie and Bea, Fanny and her new jenny, Cathy—in various states of undress, having doffed their thieving garb.
Here in this room, the danger that kept us keenly watching our backs dropped away.
Wordlessly, I turned so Nell could undo the buttons at my nape.
“How are you?” I murmured over my shoulder.
Nell’s fingers paused, and I felt a stab of regret. I was never sure if I should ask, in case I recalled her grief at a moment when she wasn’t thinking on it. Mary’s mother, Rose, had been Nell’s cousin and dear friend, and Rose’s murder had hit her hard.
Nell’s fingers restarted on my buttons. “Some days I can’t stop thinking about her.”
The cool air chilled my shoulder blades. “Sorry.”
“Mary all right?”
“Perfect.”
Nell’s hands continued down my back as I watched Cathy roll the long stem of a silver hatpin between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes fixed on its sparkle in the lamplight.
My mouth twitched in sympathy. We’d all felt longings like that when we started, some fancying the pretty trinkets, others hoping someday to be the sort of woman who could wear one in public without anyone wondering if she’d stolen it.
Well, we all want things, I thought.