Chapter 19 #2
“Mary?” I asked. “She’s Tim Lowry’s daughter, not her father’s—I mean, not Charles’s?”
“It’s likely, near as I can figure. Rose took up with Charles soon after, but she said Mary was born early.
No one questioned it, she was such a little thing.
I remember holding her.” She shook her head.
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.
Mary looks a good bit like Lowry, the fair hair, the high forehead, the roundness of her chin. ”
I sank back in the chair. I might have misread everything, from Maggie’s penetrating look that very first night. It might not have been for me alone. After all, her expression had hardened after she’d seen Mary, who had been standing beside me.
I drew a breath. “Rose was murdered in March.”
Amelia followed my thought, for she shook her head. “Maggie wasn’t here yet. She came to see me in June and said her boat had docked in Liverpool three weeks before.” Her expression changed. “Although that could be a lie.”
“I think it was,” I said, “and I think Maggie killed Rose.”
“You’ve no proof of that,” Amelia said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but—”
“Maggie said that God kept her alive in Swan River so she could have revenge. That balancing the scales was the most important thing.” My mind was leaping from point to point.
“That first day when I saw her in the taproom, I knew I’d seen her somewhere before.
I remembered her face, and nearest I can recall it was in a shop, months before. ”
“When, Kit?” Her voice was tight.
I closed my eyes and pressed my palms to the side of my head, trying to remember.
Where was it? A West End shop? But even as I thought it, I rejected the idea. The West End shops tended to be large and brightly lit, and the place in my memory had been smaller and dimmer.
Where the devil was it?
Someplace small, someplace smelling of fabrics, woolens, the faint smell of glue used in hat making.
Then it came to me.
Emma had run short on some threads and buttons for a coat she was making for Mrs. Prentice. A red coat, with a thick collar.
I opened my eyes. “Mr. Thorpe’s shop, back in February or early March at the latest. There was snow on the shoulders of her coat. I was buying notions for Emma.”
Amelia rested a hand on the back of the chair. “February or March,” she said softly. “My God.”
“Do you think Maggie killed Rose herself?” I asked. “Or had it done? By Billy?”
Amelia considered a moment before answering. “Two stabs of the knife under the ribs toward the heart? I’d say that’s the way a woman like her kills, if she’s bent on revenge.”
I shuddered, imagining the scene.
“You need to be bloody careful with her,” Amelia said soberly. “Will she let you say no to her dodge?”
My heart gave a sickening thump. Knowing Maggie was capable of murder with her own hands changed everything. “I said no tonight, but she told me she wants me to think on it and come back tomorrow. She . . . she seems fixed on it.”
“Oh, Kit.” Her eyes were dark with sympathy. “What did she offer you?”
“Three hundred pounds,” I said. “Enough money to leave. She’s all but said she’d want me to.”
“Three hundred! What the devil are you nicking?”
“An heirloom necklace from Simonson’s,” I began and relayed everything about Roger Simonson, the Hargrave necklace, the store, the constables, the mirrors, the locks, the safe, the alleys, and the family living upstairs.
“You’re right,” Amelia said, her voice hollow. “It sounds near impossible.”
“James and I figured out a way to get the necklace without going into the jeweler’s shop—because the marchioness is wearing it at a ball in just over a week. We could take it from her there. But Maggie wants it taken from the jeweler, to disgrace him. To ruin him.”
“I can see it,” Amelia said, coming around to the chair to sit again.
She put her elbows on her knees, her fingertips on her mouth for a long moment before she sat back with a sigh.
“Well, she’s had months to plan this, and she’s clever enough to pull it off.
God knows, she uses every tool she has.”
There was a dark note in her voice that drew me up.
“How did she get you to hand over the ring?” I asked. “I know you said it was hers by rights, from her mother . . . but Emma told me—and these were her exact words—that you did the best you could for all of us, but you had no choice. What did she mean?”
Amelia took a moment to answer. “The first time she asked for the ring, I told her I’d think about it.
” She tapped the first two fingers of her left hand on the chair arm, soundlessly.
“When she came back the following week, I refused. I told her that I cared about all of you, and I didn’t want anything to change.
Plus, I’d built it into something beyond what her mother had done.
Patty was clever, but there were only eight or nine thieves then, including herself, and no rhyme or reason to where we went or when.
I reminded her that mostly, they’d only work when they were sober, which wasn’t often. ”
“So what string did she pull to convince you?”
She lowered her chin and looked up at me as if I was being willfully obtuse. “Come now, Kit. What would do it?”
“She threatened us,” I said slowly, thinking not only of Josie’s arrest, mere days after Maggie appeared at Elephant and Castle, but of the brown-suited man who had nearly caught Mary and me. “There was a man at Pickford’s, the day before Josie was arrested.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I didn’t tell you because nothing happened,” I said hurriedly. “I didn’t want you to think Mary should’ve seen him and keep her from working.”
“Oh.” Amelia pressed a hand over her face with a groan. “God, I wish I’d known. I thought Maggie was bluffing about having you all tagged. That takes time to arrange—finding people you can trust to alert the shops. I didn’t think she could organize it in a matter of days.”
“You didn’t know she’d been here months,” I reminded her. “Or even longer. February was just the first time I saw her. And didn’t you say that Silas Pike had been her lover? All she had to do was connect with him, and her network would start coming back to her.”
Regret deepened the lines around her mouth. “If I’d known about you and Mary, I’d have believed it sooner.”
“I know,” I said. “I should have told you.”
The silence was broken only by the fizz of coals in the stove.
“She threatened to burn you all, until I gave in,” she said.
“I told her I’d halt every bloody dodge if she kept on, and that she was being stupid—that she was cutting off her nose to spite her face.
Training thieves takes time.” She raised a shoulder and dropped it.
“I told her I could hold out for months, given what the ring has saved and set aside.” She paused. “That sent her into a rage.”
“Because she wanted to pull this dodge at the jeweler’s,” I said. “She didn’t want to wait months.”
“Aye. So she pulled out her ace.”
“What?”
Her eyes met mine. “Adam.”
It took me a moment.
Adam was her brother, a mostly harmless ne’er-do-well drifter and drunk. Amelia paid his rent and hired a woman to keep house for him.
“Your brother?” I asked. “She knew him?”
Amelia’s tongue darted out, licked her lips, and vanished as her mouth tightened. “When he was nineteen, he killed someone and was never caught. It wasn’t outright murder—he was fighting back to protect himself—but still. Maggie knew.”
“How?”
“Another Castle man was there when it happened. He was eventually sent to Australia himself. He found Maggie there and told her what he saw. She could tell the Yard.” Her expression was resigned. “She has a witness.”
“Who did Adam kill? Is it someone who matters, after all this time?”
“It was a Yard man who’d been arresting him,” she said. “They’ll care.”
“Oh,” I breathed. Yes, they would, even all these years later.
“He’d hang for it,” she concluded. “If she tells them—and if they can find him.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe this.”
Her smile was thin. “No honor among thieves.”
“But there is,” I replied. “None of us would do this to each other.” The bleak look on her face made something in my chest twist. “Where is Adam now?”
She glanced at one of the two closed doors.
My hands tightened on the chair arms. “He’s here?”
“He’s out at the moment, but aye, he’s staying here.” An unhappy look came over her face. “We already had to move once because Maggie came close to finding him last week in a gambling den in Bethnal Green. He only escaped because a friend of mine risked his own neck and went in after him.”
No wonder Amelia took precautions like the thread on the stair.
“Couldn’t you send him away? Somewhere safe?” I asked.
“Where?” She spread her hands, a jerking movement. “Where would be safe, unless I’m nearby? I left for four weeks once, and he nearly drank himself to death.” Her voice fell. “He’s a drunkard and he’s trouble, but he’s my only family, yeah?”
“I know,” I said.
I’d do the same thing for Sarah.
Sarah.
The thought slammed into me, screeching my heart to a stop, like a freight train avoiding a crash. I swear it did. Because I knew what Maggie’s next move was—she might have already done it—
I bolted out of the chair, snatching up my coat and shoving my arms into the sleeves. I was at the door before Amelia asked, “Kit—what the hell—”
I spun back. “Sarah!” A single word, a cry that scraped my throat hoarse.
Amelia’s face froze in horror—I whirled and went clattering, flying, half leaping and stumbling down the stairs—onto the street—into the spittle of rain—I’d left Emma’s umbrella behind, and there wasn’t a cab in sight.
I pelted west toward Mayfair.
I pounded on the servants’ door, paused to listen, and beat it again. At last, through the crack at the bottom of the door the darkness changed, a bobbing light approached. I waited, gasping, bent over, my hands on my knees.
“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice.
“It’s Kit. Sarah’s sister.”
The lock clicked, the bar scraped, and the door opened. The housekeeper stood, arms akimbo. “This is a decent house. You’ve no right to—”
“Is she here?”
“No. She quit this afternoon.”
I shook my head, my voice ragged and breathless. “She didn’t quit. She’s been kidnapped.”
The housekeeper drew herself up, her eyes darting up the stairs behind me, to the street above, in the direction of the Fairleigh house. That crime had brought the possibility close, and she stepped back. “Come in out of the wet.”
I shuddered in the sudden warmth, and she shut the door behind me.
“You’re Mrs. Rice,” I said, my voice shaking. “She told me about you. How you said her cleaning was impeccable. She was so proud of the compliment.”
Her face softened and then took on a troubled look. “I thought it was odd she left her satchel behind. But she left for the market with two pounds and didn’t come back.”
“Two pounds.” The laugh came out shrill. “She wouldn’t have left for five times that. Where’s her satchel?”
By this point, a young, dark-haired maid had come down the hallway in a wrapper, peering at me curiously.
“Fetch Sarah’s things, Betty,” the housekeeper said, not unkindly.
“Yes, mum. I have it right here.” She vanished back up the stairs, a white hand on the railing, quick steps on the wooden stairs.
“Why would someone kidnap Sarah?” she asked me. “She’s just a girl.”
“To hurt me,” I said.
Her eyes widened with bewilderment. “Why would someone hurt you?”
Betty reappeared on the stairs and hurried toward us with the satchel.
“You were her friend,” I said. “Did you think she had quit?”
Betty bit her lip and looked sideways at the housekeeper. “No.”
Mrs. Rice’s face was pinched. “You did say so,” she murmured to Betty before turning back to me. “Perhaps I should have called the police. But we’ve had maids disappear before.”
“Sarah’s different,” I said.
“She was,” Mrs. Rice admitted. “Shall I send for the police now?”
“It’s too late. They won’t find her. Besides, they won’t lift a finger for a scullery maid who’s been dismissed.
” I set the satchel on the bench and opened it.
Clothes. Her photograph of our ma. The yellowback novel I’d given her last time she was home.
I closed it back up. All of Sarah’s life, all remnants of her, in this small, dilapidated bag. It cut my heart to pieces.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Rice said awkwardly.
I left without another word and started for Elephant and Castle.