Chapter 4 #2
“Go on,” Amelia said to Bea. “What happened next?”
“I dropped my parcel, and this time she noticed, but she could hardly put the brooches back. I stood at the counter for another few minutes, raising a fuss to give her time to get away, but the Yard man went straight after her, and he and a constable dragged her back to the store. I left, turned my cloak, threw my parcels in a bin, and came straight here.” Bea’s face was tight with worry.
“She never looked at me, not once,” she added softly.
Amelia paced to the window, her habitual serenity slipping. “Damn,” she whispered under her breath.
If the police found the brooches, Josie would be tried within days; if convicted, she could serve up to four years.
Amelia could produce eyewitnesses who would swear to Josie’s character, insist it was her first time thieving, call into question the veracity of the plainclothesman or constable, and even suggest the goods had been planted on her.
But paying witnesses carried its own risks, and two police testimonies were harder to refute than one.
“Did she have time to shift the brooches?” Mary asked.
The police might know about the thieving pocket, but no matter how avid a copper was, even he wouldn’t grope a woman’s skirts in a West End shop.
He’d likely take Josie to the station or the Yard, and on the way, Josie might have a chance to tear the bottom of the long pocket to ditch the poke.
If they didn’t find it, they couldn’t convict.
“I don’t know.” Bea looked at Amelia. “What do we do?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Amelia said evenly as she retrieved her reticule from a drawer.
We all knew Amelia kept a mental ledger of allies and spies across London—some inherited from Patty Wirth, others gathered over the past fifteen years: politicians, theater managers, judges, barristers, doormen at gentlemen’s clubs, heads of gambling rings, gaolers at Newgate, clerks at the Old Bailey, even costermongers and sweeps.
She kept a special fund for the rare instance when one of us was nabbed.
In Josie’s case, I assumed Amelia would distribute bribes to the necessary officials, though none of us knew their names, or the cost, or any of it. It certainly wasn’t written down.
Amelia left, and the four of us soberly filed down the stairs after her. Cathy said something about it being rotten luck, and Mary assured Bea that Amelia would manage it; she always did.
My thoughts, however, had leapt to my own narrow escape. What were the chances of two of us thieves being caught, or nearly caught, in two days, by plainclothes? Unease ran like heat down my spine. Something had changed, and it wasn’t just the number of constables.
That evening, in the thieves’ corner of the taproom, the air was thick with resentment against the police, dour predictions for Josie, and, in Bea’s absence, muttered questions about her loyalty and adeptness, which brought sharp words from her brother John.
Night fell, the rain persisted, and Amelia still hadn’t returned.
Sarah knew to find me here, for we usually had supper together when she arrived.
I left the group to sit at the bar and sip my ale.
What was I to tell Sarah about Josie? Should I tell her?
Keeping it from her forever was impossible.
But by the time my sister learned of it, Amelia might already have got Josie off.
The arrest would only worry Sarah about me, and what was the point of that?
Sarah usually arrived before eight, and by half past, my nerves were bunched like badly carded yarn. The rain slapping at the windows made me fret at Sarah walking alone from Mayfair. I wished for the hundredth time she wasn’t working, that I’d stood firm in refusing her.
When Sarah told me she wanted to go out in service, “to make a wage, so I can help,” I’d imagined her slender form bent over huge copper pots or hauling iron scuttles up and down narrow stairs and said no straightaway.
But her brown eyes were so earnest, and her pointed chin rose as she’d reminded me that plenty of girls went out in service even younger than she was.
Did I forget that I’d worked for a seamstress at age ten?
In the end, I told her she could try, but if it was too tiring or dangerous, she’d quit.
After her first month, she handed me her wages proudly, insisting it was going well.
She didn’t even want me to come to Grosvenor Street to fetch her anymore.
“I’m old enough to walk home by myself,” she’d said stoutly.
“Or I can take an omnibus.” She’d rolled her eyes.
“And yes, I know about the nips and knuckles on the buses.”
I looked out the window. With this rain, the omnibuses would all be packed tonight. She’d be walking.
When the clock struck half past nine, Pat offered, “She might’ve waited, hoping the rain would stop.”
I slid off the stool. “I’m going to meet her.”
“Take my umbrella.” Pat thumbed toward the corner where it leaned. “And wear a warm coat.”
Upstairs in the costumes room, I pushed aside the fancy silk cloaks and found a plain woolen one.
I took a sturdy black umbrella as well as a lantern, the loop of the metal handle cold against my fingers, and headed out.
I’d made Sarah promise that she’d always take the same roads home, so I walked the reverse, reaching Waterloo Bridge where the lights on the far bank blurred and bobbed in the rain.
As I reached the middle, I spotted her at the end.
She carried no umbrella, and her head and shoulders were hunched forward, her face buried in her bonnet.
I hurried toward her. “Sarah!”
She looked up, her face startled, and as I reached her, she threw her arms around me. She was more demonstrative than I, but this was rather more than her usual display. I couldn’t return her embrace, as my hands were full.
“Is something the matter?” I asked, holding the umbrella over her.
In the light from the lantern, her eyes were wide, her face shiny with rain, despite her bonnet. She shook her head and gave a shiver. “Just cold. Thanks for meeting me.”
“All right,” I said, relieved it was nothing more. “Here, take the lantern.”
With my right arm around her, and my left holding the umbrella, we matched our steps back across the bridge and toward the inn.
I pushed open the door for her, shook out the umbrella, and stepped inside as she removed her sodden bonnet.
She was trembling with cold, and her lips were blue.
“Take off your cloak, it’s drenched,” I said.
With shaking fingers, she did as I said, but her dress was damp too.
“I’ll be fine by the fire,” she chattered, and we made our way toward it.
As she put her hands out, I looked at her sideways.
My sister was nearly as tall as I was, and there was less of the childish softness in her cheeks than there had once been.
She was thinner, and something in her manner made me uneasy.
Still, my first thought was to get her fed.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, and she nodded. I caught Pat’s eye, and as we sat at a table, his wife, Jane, brought us steaming bowls of soup with bread and butter and glasses of ale.
Sarah finished every drop of her soup, and I pushed my half-finished bowl toward her. “You’re sure?” she asked, and I nodded.
But as Sarah ate, I had the growing sense that something besides cold and hunger troubled her.
She kept her eyes on her meal, which wasn’t like her.
Curiosity and fear sprawled like an itch over my skin.
Time was, she would have blurted out any worry the moment she saw me. What was she keeping from me?
“Did something happen?” I asked quietly, studying her face. “You didn’t write to me these two weeks, and you usually do.”
She looked up, contrite. “I’m sorry, Kit. I’ve just been tired by day’s end. Honest.”
“All right,” I said dubiously.
She finished the last spoonful, and we left the inn and went to our lodging house.
As we climbed the stairs, my stomach knotted, for I knew what could happen to young maids in wealthy houses with sons, and the Willits family had two, Philip and John, in addition to a daughter, Clara.
My fear was Sarah wouldn’t tell me if something happened because I’d never let her go back.
As we reached the landing, light from under the door cast a glow onto the stairs. Mary was still awake. With a hand on her arm, I pulled Sarah to a stop.
“What happened?” I said, keeping my voice low. “Did someone hurt you? Was it one of the sons? Or the father? Did he come at you?”
She drew back, her astonishment genuine. “No, Kit. Nothing like that. I hardly ever see the gentlemen, and if I do, they walk past as if I’m not there—which is exactly as it should be.”
Some of the tension along my neck and shoulders eased. “Then what?”
She slid her arm away and set her back against the wall. “I wasn’t sure I should come home tonight.”
“Why?”
Her face was solemn. “Because I don’t want to get a chill and be ill again.
” I grimaced, remembering Sarah’s whooping cough, the weeks of her fighting for breath, the hot poultices.
I still couldn’t bear the smell of mustard or boiled onion.
“The last scullery maid was always begging off sick, though she was perfectly well, so Betty had to do her chores on top of her own, and finally the housekeeper dismissed her without a character.” Sarah’s gaze was appealing.
“I don’t want to get sick and have them think I’m a shirker, too. ”
“But it wasn’t raining so hard earlier,” I said. “Why were you late?”