Chapter 19
The rain thinned as the cab headed north.
Emma’s warning had only heightened my unease.
What had Emma meant when she said that Amelia had done the best she could for us but had had no choice?
Did Amelia have any idea Maggie was bent on revenge against the jeweler?
I tried to squelch my sense of urgency, but it sparked like a blade scraping flint, making me want to seize the reins from the driver and whip up the horses myself.
Hurry, damn it, I breathed.
At last, we crossed Fleet Street and arrived in Shoe Lane, with its terraced shops, topped by three stories of rooms and crowned by triangular rooftops.
I dismounted and paid the driver. The pavements ran down both sides of the cobbled road, with lamps at intervals, though it was barely tea-time and they weren’t lit.
Just south of St. Andrew’s churchyard stood number thirteen.
The bottom floor was occupied by a linen draper; I climbed the stairs beside the door to the top floor.
There was no answer to my knocks, which left me nothing to do but wait until Amelia returned.
A cold draft tumbled from somewhere above—a leaky rafter or a broken window.
I leaned the sodden umbrella into the corner, plunked myself down on the landing outside her door, set my back against the wall, tucked my legs up, and wrapped my cloak close.
Over the staircase was a small arched window, set slightly askew, like an afterthought. It allowed a dim light for navigating the steps; there were no wall sconces. The clock chimed four, then the quarter hour, the half, three quarters. Still Amelia did not return.
At last, a door creaked open below and a few steps advanced. Light from a lamp drifted up the stairwell. Then the steps halted. Then began again, but this time descending. The outer door opened, and I leapt to my feet. “Wait,” I called down the stairwell. “It’s Kit.”
The door shut again, and the boots resumed their journey up the stairs until they reached the landing at the turn. My hands rested on the banister, and Amelia peered up, a lamp in one hand, a pistol in the other.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked.
“The thread across the stair was broke.” She eyed me for a moment before she continued up the steps. “Emma told you where I was?”
“I made her. It’s important.”
Her mouth pursed and she shrugged, as if she’d known this day would come. “Let’s have a cup of tea. I’m bloody cold.”
She turned the pistol’s handle toward me.
“Take this.” I palmed the cold metal, and she withdrew a chain from around her neck and used the dangling key to open the door.
We entered, and she lit a lamp. “It’s dark in here.
Light the others, yeah?” I set the pistol down on a table and lit two more lamps, taking care not to let them smoke.
She busied herself at the stove, and I looked about.
It was a large rectangular room, with its ceiling slanted on one side for the roofline and small windows.
The kitchen contained the usual single brass tap and sink, a tarnished black stove, and shelving.
In the living area were two doors, one likely to her bedroom and the other to a cupboard.
The frayed upholstered chairs with the yellowed antimacassars, the ugly carpet, even the dents in the copper kettle she was using to boil water told me she’d rented these rooms furnished.
I recognized nothing but her satchel in the corner.
She could leave here on a moment’s notice.
I waited until we were both settled into chairs. The delicate cup was blisteringly hot between my palms, but I was so bone cold, I welcomed it.
Amelia balanced the cup and saucer in her lap and waited.
“I need to ask you about Maggie,” I began.
She sipped her tea. “What’s she done?”
“Nothing much yet—aside from pushing Nell and Mary out of the ring.” I raised a hand. “Nell is on her way to her sister’s in Lambeth, and I’ve saved Mary’s place in my room for the time being.”
Her lips tightened, but she didn’t reply.
I sipped the tea. It was too hot, but I swallowed it anyway, welcoming the burn down my insides. “Maggie wants me for a special dodge in Hatton Garden.”
Amelia’s cup stopped on the way to her lips. “What?” Her voice was razor sharp. “You haven’t agreed, have you?”
“No, and I won’t do it, especially since she’s brought Billy into it.”
She made a hard sound in the back of her throat, for she knew what he was. “God, no.”
“I just don’t know what to make of Maggie,” I said.
“The very first time I saw her was in the taproom one afternoon, even before you told me you were handing over the ring.” My tea was down to the leaves, and I set the cup and saucer aside.
“She gave me the strangest look. But later, she said I resembled my mother, so I think she’d already guessed who I was.
From the start, she’s paid me special attention.
Asking me about Sarah, flattering me, saying what a wonderful thief I am, even confiding in me about Swan River.
But the whole time, I feel like she’s trying to get round me. ”
“Why would she do that? To get you for this special dodge?”
“I don’t know.” My voice cracked. “I’m afraid it’s for revenge. She said she doesn’t blame my mother for being caught that day, but what if my mother tagged Maggie and Maggie found out? Is this revenge on my mother, through me?”
Amelia looked bewildered. “Why would you think your mother tagged her?”
“Because she was her jenny! James told me there was some bad blood between Maggie and her jenny over a man they both liked.”
Amelia set her cup and saucer on the table with a muted clink.
“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick here, Kit.
First off, I don’t remember bad blood between your mother and Maggie, over a man or not.
And back then, we changed jennies all the time because Patty believed that having the same two girls going into a shop would make them easier to identify, as a pair, yeah? ”
I sank back into my chair, feeling a mixture of relief and dismay that I’d put pieces of information together wrongly.
Amelia shook her head. “Annie didn’t tag Maggie.”
“Perhaps not.” I wasn’t wholly convinced.
She set her elbows on the carved wooden arms of the chair and clasped her hands at her waist. “How do you know that Mary wouldn’t tag you?”
“Because I know her. She’s loyal.”
“And so was Annie,” she said firmly. “Maggie made sure your ma got away! Why would your mother betray her?”
“Because she didn’t care about anyone but herself.”
Amelia’s spine stiffened. “You think some terrible things about your mother.”
“Because she was terrible,” I retorted. “Drinking herself to stupidity and letting men in the house with me and Sarah on the other side of the sheet—”
“And why do you think she did all that? Happy people don’t act so.” Amelia’s eyes sparked with something like resentment. “It might be hard for you to understand, being only twenty, but grief and tragedy can change a decent person down to their bones, Kit.”
I bristled. “You think I haven’t felt grief? I’ve—”
She leaned forward in her chair, her voice rising over mine.
“When your father left—when he betrayed her—it broke her. Do you understand? She loved him, and she thought he loved her. Then, a month after Sarah’s born, he up and runs off with that woman, Violet.
So, aye, your ma might have been drinking and neglecting you girls, but that was years later.
Back in the day, Annie was good-hearted and clever and loyal to the ring, the way we all were. ”
“Then how did the police find out about the hotel theft?”
Amelia’s eyebrows rose, questioning.
“Fanny’s mother told her that Maggie’s sentence was doubled because the police linked her to a hotel theft. Now, it could’ve been just the police pinning it on her, but—what if my ma told the police about it?”
Amelia’s expression stilled. “Your ma didn’t do that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she didn’t know,” she said, her voice thin. “Good lord. Oh, good lord.” Amelia wrapped both arms around her belly. Then, with a moan, she stood and began to pace in a semicircle behind the chair like a dog at the far reach of its tether.
“Amelia,” I said.
She turned. “Rose was Maggie’s jenny at the hotel.”
“Rose?” I echoed. “Mary’s mother?”
Amelia’s face had gone white, and I understood. A chill ran over me.
“So the bad blood over a man was . . . between Maggie and Rose,” I said, my voice faint.
“Over Tim Lowry,” she said. “Damn that man.”
“What did he do?”
“Oh, nothing other than be stupid and selfish,” she replied, her eyes darkening at the memory.
“He strung Rose along, and she liked him, but then he started chasing Maggie, who knew he was only chasing her because she’d refused him.
She had her eye on a bloke she’d met at the theater where she’d been an actress. ”
“What did he look like? Tim Lowry?”
“Tall, fair, handsome, wore a mustache.”
“A small one, like this.” I drew it above my lip.
“Yes,” she said, surprised.
“He was in a picture Fanny showed me,” I said. The pieces were falling into place, properly this time. “So you think Rose tagged Maggie somehow? She wasn’t there.”
“She could’ve sent a note to the jeweler. She could have known where Maggie was going that day.”
“And then she told the police about the hotel theft to have Maggie sent away for longer,” I guessed.
She bit her lip. “It’s possible. Terrible, but possible.”
“And somehow Maggie learned that Rose had betrayed her. But when? Before she left?”
“Police would’ve had to present evidence at trial, yeah? Likely a written statement about the hotel theft.”
“All this over a man’s attentions,” I said in disbelief.
“It might’ve been more than that.” Amelia’s eyes darted about, the way they did when she calculated figures. “If Rose was already carrying his child, she’d want a father for her bairn.”
Carrying a child? But Mary has no siblings.