Chapter 16
I found Maggie alone in the goods room the next day standing before the large map of London that hung on the wall. All Amelia’s pins had been removed, and it was bare.
“Well,” Maggie said. She crossed to her desk and drew up her chair, motioning me into the one opposite. “What do you think?”
“I can tell you a good deal about Hatton Garden,” I said, as I sat. “But you mentioned a favor I might ask.”
She turned over a palm. “Go on.”
“I’ve heard you’re pushing Nell and Mary out of the ring. Is it true?”
“Nell has decided to move to Lambeth, to live with her sister,” she said matter-of-factly. “And Mary shouldn’t be thieving.”
I swallowed down my argument that I’d seen with my own eyes that Mary was fine. Instead, I said, “I want you to let Mary stay in my room with me.”
Her green eyes met mine coolly. “The ring pays for the rooms, and it isn’t fair to the other girls if one isn’t pulling her weight. It cuts down their take.”
“Mary has earned the ring plenty over the years, and she needs time to find a new situation. I know the beds are for the ring, but I’ll pay her share of rent. The only thing you’d be losing is her take.”
“Which is not insubstantial. She brought in nearly fifty pounds a month back when she worked.”
“All the more reason you should bend on this,” I retorted.
“Very well.” She tapped the first two fingers of her good hand lightly on the desk. “I’ll give her three months. Is that sufficient?”
It was something. “Yes.”
“Now, what did you find?”
“I think it’s foolish to try Hatton Garden when there are so many other places,” I said frankly.
“I visited twenty-four shops, and most have more than one clerk. Nine have private detectives. Sixteen have at least one mirror for visibility around corners, and most have two. All have locks on the cases, most of them keyed. Most have Yale locks on the doors and, from what I saw, black Chubb safes in the offices and workrooms.”
She appeared unperturbed. “That’s all excellent, Kit.”
“Of all the shops I went to, only five would take out more than two items at a time.”
“Oh? Which ones?”
I named them.
“Ah.” Her eyes glinted.
“But every one of those had clerks and mirrors.”
She smiled. “But you have only thought to thieve during the day, when the shop is open.”
“Actually, I considered what it would be like after dark, so I stayed late last night. Most stores have two or three locks on both doors, front and back. There are very few with windows in the back, none on the ground floor, and at closing, everything is removed from the plate glass windows in the front, which are so large that if they were broken, a constable would notice immediately. There are four uniformed constables that patrol and three more that are fixed—not to mention there might be plainclothesmen I didn’t see. ”
“Hm.” Maggie pulled open a desk drawer and drew out the map she’d shown me before. “It’s easy enough to get in through the back alleys, here.” She pointed.
“All of the alleys I saw had iron gates with padlocks,” I said.
“There’s a narrow wall to one side that wouldn’t be difficult to get over, with a boost.” She glanced at my dress. “If someone wore trousers.”
“And the constables? There was one posted at the end of the alleys at dusk.”
“He could be paid to look the other way,” she said placidly.
A hefty bribe, no doubt.
“So you’re thinking to hit a shop after dark, when it’s closed.”
“It’s a better time,” she agreed.
From inside an alley, one might pick the back door and enter the shop. But there was still the problem of entering the room with the safe, not to mention the safe itself.
“You said you were thinking of me for it, but I’m rubbish with picks, and I’m useless with a safe,” I said.
She waved away the objections. “I have a cracksman.”
That twanged at my nerves. Amelia never would have planned a dodge that required bringing in a man from the outside. I wondered who it was.
Maggie looked at me expectantly.
“I’m sorry. I’m not interested,” I said. “I know you’re clever, and you probably have it all planned. But this is too risky for me.”
“Would the risks be worth it,” she asked, “for a cut of two hundred pounds?”
That figure silenced me.
“You would certainly secure your place in the ring by it,” Maggie added, her voice cream smooth. “Or you could leave with Mary.”
Was that what she wanted? Me to leave?
It would please Sarah, no doubt.
Two hundred pounds.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“I’m after a special piece of jewelry. You may have heard of it,” Maggie said. “It’s a family heirloom belonging to the Marquess Hargrave. The family has a full page in Debrett’s.” My ear caught the faint sneer about their listing in Peerage and Baronetage. “A necklace.”
She unfolded a paper and slid it across the table.
The paper was thick, of high quality, and shiny, which suggested it had been taken from a bound book or a catalog of some sort.
It showed a tinted drawing of a choker-length necklace of gold, cabochon sapphires, and round diamonds, ascending in size as they approached an enormous ruby pendant dangling at the bottom.
I’d seen this, or something very like it, recently. In a shop window, somewhere in Hatton Garden.
The description, in elegant script, was below: Designed by Pierre Couillard of Couillard and Sons, Place Vend?me, Paris, 1820, for the first Marquess Hargrave, given to his wife the marchioness upon the birth of his first son.
My mouth twisted at “his first son.” Did the son not belong to the marchioness as well? But perhaps not, in families such as this.
“How much is it worth?” I asked.
“The marquess would likely say it’s an heirloom beyond price. But the gold is worth about five hundred quid and the sapphires and diamonds around fifteen hundred. The ruby is from India, a cabochon cut, very singular.”
“If this is to scale,” I said dubiously, “that ruby is the size of a guinea.”
“It is,” she said, a smile playing about her mouth. “I told you this would be worth your while.”
Providing it in fact can be stolen, I thought. Otherwise, it’s not worth the paper this picture is printed on.
“It’s been deposited at Simonson’s jewelry shop for cleaning,” Maggie explained.
Simonson’s. My mind flicked through the shops. It was near the south end of Hatton Garden Street.
“They had it on display in the window,” I said.
“They’d want to advertise that they had the piece—unless it’s a paste copy.
” It was a common practice of late, given the thefts.
“Either way, the real one will be locked in the safe every night. But your safecracker can bring it out. What do you need me for?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Do you really need to ask?”
I wanted to hear her answer. What would she admit?
“You’ve worked at Seamus’s—Mr. Ardle’s shop,” she said. “You’ll be able to tell if it’s real jewels as opposed to paste. I don’t want to go through all this just to have some worthless glass.”
Did she think I was a fool? A few days with a jeweler’s loupe and she could show anyone how to tell the difference. My guess was she didn’t wholly trust her cracksman.
I passed the illustration back to her. “So you’d want me to verify it’s real.”
“Yes. That’s all.”
“You’d share the plan beforehand?” I asked.
“Of course.”
Two hundred pounds, I thought. And if I knew the plan beforehand, I could minimize the risks. “I’ll consider it.”
“Good,” she nodded. “Let me know what you think of Simonson’s.”
Knowing the jeweler, I could study the mark more particularly.
In a heavy disguise, including a flaxen wig that covered my ears so a jeweler wouldn’t be able to detect that my earrings were paste, I retraced my steps to Hatton Garden.
Simonson’s shared a roofline with Willingham’s to the north.
They occupied one of the taller buildings, with several windows on the two floors above.
The two shops had similar brickwork, and the doors were positioned at the far edges, away from each other, the large plate glass windows between them.
I visited Willingham’s first, briefly, to examine the composition of the common wall, just to see if there might be a passage between, giving the possibility of going into one shop to reach the other.
The wall was plaster, and a large vertical mirror that hung in the middle could potentially hide a door.
The floor was wood planks, bare but nicely polished.
I left and went into Simonson’s, adopting a pronounced limp favoring my right leg.
I recalled the shop from my first visit; it had been one of the nicer ones, well lit, with four gas-lit chandeliers and half a dozen sconces on the walls.
The cabinets were wood, with glass at the front and top.
There were two locks to each, one at each back corner.
A thick red Turkey carpet covered the center of the floor, which was made of wide wooden planks, clearly old but polished to a high gleam.
The wall shared with Willingham’s had a long horizontal mirror, not a vertical one, behind the case of watches.
Still, there could be an overlap of nearly three feet square between them.
Behind one counter was a man of about forty-five with blue eyes, dark hair, and a face that had likely been handsome once but was now heavy, the skin on his neck gone to jowls underneath his beard.
The owner, perhaps? His coat was a fine serge, fitted, and his collar and cuffs pure white with no visible frays on the buttonholes.
He’d be less agreeable than the young woman who stood between two display cabinets, and I turned toward her, adopting the guise of a wealthy watch-buying wife.
“It’s my husband’s birthday next month,” I explained. “He has two watches already, but they’re both silver. I thought I might buy him a gold one. Do you think he’d like it?”
I felt the man’s gaze alight on me, but I kept my eyes on the young woman, and he left us alone.
She smiled. “I’m sure he would like anything you chose, mum.”