Chapter 28 #2
I hadn’t yet broken it to Sarah that the thought of running a shop didn’t appeal to me in the least. A new idea was brewing in my head, but I didn’t want to say anything yet.
Sarah and Mary found us rooms in Crane Court, not far from James’s and the new shop. Sarah and I shared a room, and Mary took the second.
Sarah took to our new life gratefully, making our cups of tea in the morning, curling up with a novel in the comfortable chair for an hour, then going out with Mary to shop for shelves, tables, chairs, lamps, and such.
For my part, I went out for long walks, gleaning a sense for my new surroundings and reflecting on the events of recent weeks, teasing apart the rough tangle of threads so I might wind them more properly around their spools.
With Sarah safe and Maggie no longer a threat, my thoughts turned down odd and unexpected paths.
I would be twenty-one in a fortnight, the same age as Maggie when she’d been transported.
Maggie’s death had freed me from being frightened of her—and in the absence of fear, I found myself feeling a measure of pity for her.
What might Maggie’s life be had she been allowed to continue acting at the theater?
Or if Tim Lowry had never come to Southwark?
If Simonson hadn’t been a fiend? If Rose hadn’t turned on her?
If she’d found a more benevolent man in Swan River?
Some of what happened to Maggie was of her choosing, but a good deal of it wasn’t.
I felt no small resentment at a system so weighted on the side of wealthy men, who flaunted the rules.
And what would have happened to me, if I’d had a jenny who betrayed me? There but for the grace of God went I.
With my pity for Maggie came pity for another person as well: my mother.
Some nights when I lay awake with Sarah beside me, I thought of her.
Sarah looked more like my father than ever, and I probed at the possibility: If Sarah were, one day, to simply walk out, what would that do to me?
It would unmoor my heart. I might hate and distrust the entire bloody world.
As grateful as I was to have Sarah back, I felt the loss of Amelia keenly.
As I walked the pavements of my new neighborhood, more than once I could’ve sworn I saw her across the street or at the end of a lane.
Of course, it wasn’t her, just the shadows of her in another woman’s figure, in her walk, in the way she turned her head, in the way her cape swung out as she turned a corner.
I worried about her and wondered where she had flown.
Were she still here, she would have insisted the decision to kill Maggie was hers and hers alone, but I knew I’d had a hand in it.
Had I thought farther ahead, I might have wrested a promise from Amelia to let Scotland Yard find the diamond and put Maggie through the process of a trial and into prison.
But as Mary reminded me, it was Amelia’s choice, and she might have found some relief from her guilt, however unwarranted it was.
Between the money I obtained from pawning the fifth diamond, funds Mary and I had put by from thieving, and a modest sum contributed by Sarah, they were able to purchase the necessary cooking implements, chairs and tables, and the first supply of sundries without taking on credit.
Sarah was in her element, dusting shelves and sorting books.
When the shop opened after weeks of preparations, it was almost an immediate success, partly because the tea was always hot and not watered-down and the biscuits and cakes were homemade by Mary.
I was pleased for them. They fell into chairs at the end of the first week, arms flopped over the sides, their legs sprawled toward the stove, exhausted but happy.
James had left the hospital on crutches and returned to the Custom House, where he was allowed temporarily to keep records at a desk, with his leg propped on a stool in front of him.
He’d fully recovered, without even a limp to show, the only sign of his injury being a reddish scar a few inches long.
One afternoon when I was alone in our new rooms, the street bell rang downstairs. Our landlady answered it, and a few minutes later, a knock sounded at our door.
I opened it to find Mr. Stiles, and I welcomed him in. Stepping over the threshold, he removed his hat and looked around at the bright room appreciatively.
“How are you, Miss Jimeson?”
“You can call me Kit, you know,” I said. “And I’m fine.”
He set his hat on the table, removed his coat, and gestured toward a blue chintz-covered chair, one of a pair that Sarah had chosen. “May I?”
“You’re too polite,” I said. “Of course.”
He waited to speak until I’d taken a seat in the other chair.
“I came to tell you that Billy and Tommy were tried and found guilty in the Fairleigh murders,” he said. “The verdict was returned this morning.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“I thought it would set your mind at ease, but that isn’t the only reason I came,” he replied. “May I ask, what do you plan to do with yourself?”
I chuckled. “Are you afraid I’ll go back to thieving? Give you more trouble?”
“Well, I don’t want that.” His eyes were frank, and he gave a good-natured laugh. “I came across someone at a theater who is looking for help. Would you consider becoming a costumer?”
“A costumer?” I echoed.
“It’s the person who creates the costumes for the actors.” He paused. “It isn’t just needlework. You design them, too. It’s important to get them right.”
“Here in London?”
He nodded. “At the Arthurian.”
I hesitated. “To be honest, I am still considering what I’d like to do for work. But thank you for thinking of me.”
His face fell. I understood that he wished to help, and I added, “Don’t worry, Mr. Stiles. Whatever I do, it won’t be thieving.”
“Well,” he said as he rose, reassumed his coat, and picked up his hat. “You can let me know if you’d like an introduction.”
“Mr. Stiles,” I said. “Are you happy as a policeman?”
That stopped him in his tracks. He gave a snort and a rueful chuckle.
“Oh, I wish we could have you at the Yard. You’d be a better source than all the books of photographs.
Not to mention you’re cleverer than most of our constables.
” I opened my mouth to protest that I hadn’t been hinting for a position.
“Someday we may allow women to become detectives, but not yet.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Besides, I’d look dreadful in those hats you all wear.”
He looked befuddled.
“I’m asking,” I said, “because it seems to bring you satisfaction, and . . . well, I was wondering why you became one. You’re clearly educated, and you seem as if you might have chosen banking or even the law.” He didn’t reply at first, and I added, “You needn’t tell me, if you’d rather not.”
“No, no, it’s a reasonable question. I don’t mind.
” Mr. Stiles redeposited his hat on the table nearby and lowered himself back into the chair, crossed his ankles, and interlaced his fingers at his waist. “I know there are lads at the Yard who are disgusted with London, sour about all the filth and detritus, the constant wave of crime, the many ways people injure each other day upon day. Burns calls it ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ that ‘makes countless thousands mourn.’”
“That sounds like poetry.”
“It is.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “But I don’t think man is innately inhumane. I believe crime and cruelty are caused by things such as hunger, exhaustion, illness, death of loved ones, loneliness, a feeling that no one cares.”
He must have seen my puzzlement, for he smiled and drew a breath, with a look that suggested he was reminding himself to tell a story from the beginning rather than the conclusion. “I told you I grew up on a farm, in a small town outside London. And I told you about my sister Cathy.”
“The one who’s fourteen, like Sarah.”
“Fifteen now,” he amended. “Her birthday was Saturday last.”
He seemed to expect something, so I murmured, “Ah, lovely.”
“When she was eleven, she saw her best mate, Ellie, run over in the street by a cart that had rolled backward on a small hill. The wheel crushed the life out of her. And Cathy gave such a shriek that . . .” The memory halted him, and his face was bleak.
“I was coming out of a shop across the way, so I couldn’t see beyond the cart, and for one awful, awful moment I thought it was Cathy under the wheel. ”
I knew exactly how he felt.
“I ran to where I could see her, standing with both hands over her mouth as if she was trying to stop her shriek, but it just kept coming out of her, on and on. Then she dashed toward Ellie. Within seconds, the entire town came forward and gathered around, trying to help—the doctor, the apothecary, her parents, her friends. Nothing could be done. Ellie died in her mother’s arms, with Cathy holding her hand. ”
The scene arose vividly before my eyes. “It’s terrible,” I managed.
“It was,” he said. “But afterward, there was such kindness.” His brown eyes were bright.
“For Ellie’s family and for Cathy. Even for the carter, who was nearly out of his mind with guilt.
‘I didn’t see her,’ he said over and over, tears running down his cheeks.
The poor man was nearly broken by it. Ellie’s family could have blamed him out of anger, but they didn’t because the truth of it was, he’d done nothing wrong.
Mr. Banks had seen the whole thing. Ellie had tripped and fallen at the very moment when the cart rolled backward, hardly a single turn of the wheel.
It was just an accident.” He rubbed at his temple.
“We all took care of each other out of loyalty and decency. Oh, we always had small feuds. Arguments over who should be elected magistrate or where the new school should be built. But in that moment, our loyalty was stronger than our squabbles.” He gave a rueful smile. “I’m waxing philosophical, aren’t I?”
“I asked,” I reminded him.
He tapped his fingertips on the chair arms. “I’d done my schooling in London, and I thought I’d like to try to help people here take care of each other. That sounds very grandiose of me. One man trying to change a bit of London.”
“Not at all,” I said.
He looked almost wistful. “I do believe a tragedy can remind us of our better natures. The loyalty and compassion we owe each other. Our duty to make the world a better place for everyone. The importance of finding the truth, not just blaming the easy mark. I could do a small bit of that, for whoever stood in front of me. We all can do that, policeman or no.”
I’d rarely been to church, only for funerals, but his words resonated like a solid chord from the organ at the end of the final hymn, perhaps because I’d been feeling something like this myself in recent weeks.
I knew what loyalty looked like—not just my own to others, but that of Mary, Amelia, Sarah, and James to me.
I’d seen kindness from strangers. I knew the importance of truth telling.
I’d seen Mr. Stiles and Mr. Fuller trying to create some fairness in this corner of the world.
My fingers pleated my skirt absently. “Mr. Fuller said something like that, about how newspapers could make the city a better place, bring justice and help to people who need it.”
“How did you convince him to write that article for you?” he asked.
“I told him all that Maggie had suffered, beginning with Simonson brutally assaulting her in the back room when she was caught.”
His entire expression changed, and he looked sickened. “Well, that would do it.”
“Why do you say so?”
“It’s a particular cause of his,” he said. “Did he not tell you?”
“No.”
“Two or three years ago, Fuller wrote a series of articles about women who had been outraged in London. He interviewed nearly fifty of them, and the articles stirred up enough public sentiment that they led to the creation of the Society for the Protection of Women, which has worked tirelessly to advocate for laws requiring mandatory fines and punishment for offenders. They work out of one of the churches in Covent Garden.”
“He didn’t tell me.” I had observed Mr. Fuller’s distress when I told him about Maggie. “Did he know someone personally?”
“He never said so,” Mr. Stiles replied slowly. “But I would guess perhaps he did, given the way he pursued it. You might read the articles sometime. They’re very moving.”
Or perhaps taking down fifty stories, all of them terrible, had profoundly affected him.
“Well.” Mr. Stiles stood with a smile. “Let me know if you think more of the costumer position.”
I thanked him again, and he plucked his hat from the table a second time. He looked at me sideways. “It seems that five diamonds were stolen from the necklace, not just one. I don’t suppose you know what happened to the others?”
I shook my head. “If I were Maggie, I’d have hidden them all separately.”
He pursed his mouth. “And I don’t suppose you know who killed her.”
He’d been truthful with me, and I felt sorry I couldn’t be more truthful with him. “I didn’t witness it.”
“It wasn’t ten steps from where Rose Pratt was stabbed—and in exactly the same manner.” He turned his hat in his hands. “Seems someone had a sense for poetic justice.”
“I don’t know anyone but you who’s much for poetry,” I said.
“She didn’t have many friends that we could find.”
That made me think of Mr. Ardle for the first time in weeks, and my heart sank, knowing the grief he’d surely feel at her death.
“The Yard has pretty well washed their hands of the case,” he said. “There are no clues to speak of, and she was a dangerous woman.”
“She was an angry one,” I said. “And not wholly without cause.”
“Most of us come by our anger honestly.” He settled his hat on his head. “Goodbye, Kit.”
“Goodbye.”
The door closed behind him.
A costumer, I thought. It was kind of Mr. Stiles to ask me. It was certainly suited to my talents. But with other things he’d said, Mr. Stiles had unwittingly given me encouragement in a wholly different direction.