The Hourglass Factory (25 page)

Frankie tried to hold his darting gaze. ‘John.’

John Bridewell shifted uncomfortably. ‘No one wants to read about that over their toast and marmalade. Perhaps . . .’ he pushed back his hair, ‘you paper folk like this stuff
but . . . Frankie, perhaps there’s some things that should be left alone. For the dignity of everyone.’ He wouldn’t meet her eye. He was holding something back.

‘What time did he die?’

‘Not certain.’

‘But he was found in the morning?’

‘It was during the night. Rigor mortis was full. One of the girls worked for him found him.’ He chewed on his lip.

‘Spit it out, John.’

‘Frankie.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘I don’t see what relevance it has. The man had funny leanings.’

‘So he liked to wear corsets. So what? Come on, God knows what people say about me. Or you.’

The blood rose rapidly in his cheeks. His eyes flicked to the door. ‘You ought to watch your tongue.’

‘You’re not telling me the whole story are you?’

He sighed deeply. ‘You heard of Toxicodendron radicans?’

‘Yes, I had some with my morning coffee. What do you think?’

‘Poison ivy. You get it in botanical houses. It’s an exotic plant, from America.’ He shifted his weight anxiously. Frankie stared at him. He let his breath out and his eyes
lowered. ‘All right. There was a rash on his body, the torso, underneath the corset. I think, well, boss thinks – although he wouldn’t commit to it – that was what made him
swell. He bloated up inside the corset, you know like when you get stung by a bee, and it suffocated him. It was front opening so he could have put it on, then when his body reacted, it expanded,
strangled him. Whoever put the poison on,
if that was the case,
wouldn’t have needed to be there.’

‘Have you tested it?’

‘Frankie, there’s some things should be left alone. Don’t put that picture in people’s minds. You’ll be put on trial for . . . well, you know he made corsets for
the royals.’

She cut him off. ‘He was murdered. He deserves justice.’

‘If you knew that already, why did you come here?’

She sighed deeply, thinking of Mr Stark’s words. ‘Because I need facts.’ A noise from outside whipped both their heads up sharply. Frankie looked at the door. John Bridewell
saw her skittish eyes.

‘It’s cats, Frankie. They’re everywhere in the yard. I’ve never seen you like this before. Anyone would think someone was out to murder you.’ He laughed his nervous
laugh but there was a questioning edge in his eyes.

Frankie let her breath out again slowly, resisting the urge to steady her heart with her hand. She realised her whole body had tensed, bracing just in case another stone came flying through the
window. ‘I went to Smythe’s corset shop to interview that acrobat, Ebony Diamond, for the paper the day before she went missing. You must have heard about her going missing.’

He nodded uncertainly.

‘Well, you want to talk about skittish? She was bloody skittish about something. I saw her again at his shop, the day they found him, and she was even worse.’ She breathed out.
‘I know something’s going on, John, something I don’t understand. It’s not like them suicides I used to write about for the
Tottenham
.’

John looked shiftily at the pile of clothes in the corner. ‘Look, there was something else,’ he said slowly. ‘It came in with the body. I haven’t given it to the police
yet.’ He headed over to a short cabinet in the far corner of the room, near a high window with panes dripping yellow-tinted condensation. From the third drawer he withdrew a small silvery
object and flicked it into his hand.

‘A gift from a lover?’ He held it out to her. It was a brooch, a small silver brooch, long and thin, with a bronze or gold picture carved into the front, a shield with a trio of
lions heads surrounded by vines.

‘Boss said it looks like a family crest. But it wasn’t his. Wasn’t the crest of the shop.’

Frankie shook her head, not understanding. ‘It was on his body?’

‘He had it in his hand. Tightly gripped. Police couldn’t even prise it out, we had to wait overnight for the rigor mortis to subside. Don’t know if it means anything. Most
likely a token. But it’s always the lovers that drive folk over the edge, isn’t it?’ He gave a cheerless smile.

‘Always the lovers,’ Frankie repeated quietly.

It was an odd lover’s gift, a family crest. Surely the gift a husband would give, not a lover. And why would he have been clutching it? Why would he have clutched hold of anything if his
corset was strangling him? She turned the brooch over in her hands. If he knew there was nothing to be done, he would know that he was going to be found. He would know that eventually someone would
peel his hand open. Suddenly she remembered Smythe’s words to his seamstress: ‘I’ll try it myself.’ They had been talking about a costume the girl was stitching for Ebony.
Was it possible that was the very garment he had died in? That whoever had laid the trap had meant it for . . . ?

She pulled her thoughts back. ‘Can I keep this?’

John Bridewell looked doubtful. ‘It should go to the police really.’

‘Even if it was all just a nasty accident?’

John looked uneasily at the clock.

An idea struck her. She quickly took out her notebook and the one blunt pencil she had left in her jacket. Sliding the brooch between the pages she took a hasty rubbing. The carving of the lions
didn’t come through but it was enough to see that it was heads and leaves. As she was finishing, John began to snap his fingers. She withdrew the brooch and tossed it back to him. He placed a
fleshy index finger to his lips. Just as the door began to creak open he managed to slip it back into the drawer and extract from the top of the cabinet a sheaf of papers. He tucked them close to
his body, using his other arm to usher her quickly to the outer door. She didn’t look behind her until they were back in the yard. John was sweaty-faced and panicked. ‘He don’t
like journalists.’

‘I know,’ Frankie said, tucking her notebook back into her jacket. ‘Thank you.’ She met his puffy blue eyes for a second then looked back towards the door of the morgue.
It waved in the wind and closed with a nasty creak. ‘You don’t still have the corset?’

He shook his head. ‘Took a sample for the laboratory and we burned the rest. Safety.’

She narrowed her eyes.

‘Safety from your Fleet Street lot. You’re the second one come asking for it.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah,’ he scratched his head. ‘Woman came by the day we got him in, said she worked for him. Horrible-looking woman. If I was a cynical man, which I’m not, I would have
said she was one of yours in disguise.’ He chuckled stiffly.

Frankie shook her head fast. ‘What do you mean?’

He tilted his head. ‘Come on, Frankie, you know all the Fleet Street tricks. Who gets the story first? What do you call it, milking, when you steal someone else’s newspaper story . .
.’ Frankie continued to stare at him. ‘Well, you know, she had her face all bundled up. With a scarf. All filthy, like. Worked for him, my eye. If she did, I’d not have let her
out in public. What’s that thing they get at the match factories?’

Frankie frowned. ‘Phossy jaw?’

‘Yeah. Phossy jaw. Awful.’

Frankie said quietly, ‘She does work for him.’

John Bridewell shrugged. ‘Oh well, goes to show what I know. Anyway, I didn’t give it to her.’ He looked down and rummaged in the manila folder then pulled some papers free.
‘Now about this letter.’

Frankie took a second to snap back out of her thoughts. Then she smiled weakly and took the paper from John’s outstretched hand.

The Lyons tea room was at the tail end of its opening hours when Frankie arrived. She was shown to a plush table big enough for four, decked out in velvet. A brass chandelier
was reflected in the gilt mirror on the wall in front of her.

It was only end of the day food left. Scones were off, éclairs were off, tarts were finished, profiteroles done for. There was no cucumber left for sandwiches. Just meat paste and tuna
fish.

‘We have toast and cream fingers,’ a waitress in a Lyons’ pinny offered with her notepad poised in flushed hands.

Frankie ordered cream fingers and tea for two and waited for Milly, slowly flicking through the pages of her notepad, trying to decipher her own shorthand. She had decided what it was they would
do next, whether Milly would join her or not.

At quarter past six she saw a figure dashing past the window, blurred by the steamed-up panes and the hazy streetlight. She didn’t wait to be shown to the table, bustling her way past
pairs of ladies in wide hats with Fortnum’s bags at their feet.

Milly sat down with a thump and exhaled in one long breath until her cheeks were sucked flat. She clumsily took off her hat, leaving strands of her hair pricked up with static electricity in the
wake of the felt.

‘Calm down. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

She met Frankie’s eye with a cold look of disbelief. ‘I feel like I have. Ebony’s.’

They waited for the waitress to pour the tea. Frankie could feel Milly’s leg hovering and twitching under the table, counting the seconds for the girl to leave.

‘That’s quite an operation they have in there,’ she said when they were alone. Her eyes were fixed on the plate of cream fingers. Impulsively she reached out for one and
crammed it between her lips. ‘I’m famished. They gave us tea at four but it was shared between about sixty of us. Their stomachs must have all shrunk, being in Holloway. Where’s
the boy?’

Frankie shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen him since yesterday.’

Milly spoke with her mouth full of cream. ‘They’re planning something. There’s a closed office upstairs, no one’s allowed in but the committee.’

‘So?’

‘So I spent most of the day in the press room writing letters to prisoners. If you can write you get to do that. If not, it’s banner-stitching or making trinkets for the next bazaar.
They tried to send me out on the streets to hawk papers but I resisted. First time, you see, I had a good excuse.’

‘What about Ebony? What did you mean about her ghost?’

She wiped her mouth with a napkin. ‘I got talking to an old woman called Mrs Dale. We bonded. We both left our husbands.’

She dropped it in as casually as if she were talking about hats. Frankie frowned but didn’t dare interrupt.

‘By the time I arrived, there had already been one meeting. There’s a couple of women coming out of Holloway tomorrow so they’re organising a deputation. They’ll put on a
feast and, bizarrely enough, a bagpiper because one of the women is Scottish. Flora Drummond, she’s the one they call “The General”, she’s arranging that.’ She took a
mouthful of tea. ‘That’s better. It’s icy cold out there.’

Frankie looked down at her own clothes. She couldn’t bear winters, and wasn’t looking forward to getting back to her room and the meagre pile of coal Mrs Gibbons considered a fire.
‘So what happened when you arrived? What did the building look like inside?’

‘Be patient and I’ll tell you.’ Milly looked for a second at the plate of cream fingers then took another one, nibbling it more delicately this time. ‘There’s a
hallway where you go in, and that’s where the noticeboard is. They have all sorts up, notices for bazaars, calls for demonstrations, a register of political meetings that you can put your
name down to attend in secret and they’ll sort you out with some help. And then there’s the pictures and postcards, morale boosters; there’s one by Bovril that says, “After
having my Bovril now they need six officers to arrest me rather than one”, that sort of thing.’

Frankie raised a smile.

‘Downstairs is the press room, that’s where Mrs Dale sent me first. There were a few new ladies today, she said, and I ended up sitting next to quite a singular girl called Roberta.
I wasn’t sure whether I liked her; she was one of those boyish women, quite cold. I didn’t mean—’ She looked at Frankie’s suit jacket and her fingers flew to her
mouth.

‘Don’t worry.’

‘Well, you know what I mean. She had strong cheekbones, that sort of thing. Maybe I’m just jealous, her clothes hung off her the way they do off models these days. And I was thinking
to myself, I suppose this must be what suffragettes look like. Then I started to wonder what they must have thought of me. Anyway, we wrote letters to prisoners all morning, mostly to women in the
north-east, congratulating them on their effort, telling them about the fight. The press room was used for the journalists who worked on
Votes for Women
, but that’s changed now
they’ve launched
The Suffragette
. They have a few typewriters set up, two telephones. Mrs Dale said the police are always trying to cut them off. And there are three very stern looking
women who wear navy blue and do the sub-editing.’

‘Sounds about right.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Nothing, go on.’

‘Well, then there’s the office, where the treasurer and secretary sit. It looks like it was once the study of the house. It’s the only room with a decent fire. And I suppose
they take charge of donations and funding for all the costs of publishing pamphlets and zooming women around the country on trains. And in what I suppose would have been the parlour or dining room,
there were women boxing up little posies of lavender and designing brooches to sell in the next bazaar. Did you know,’ she frowned, ‘that they are encouraged to melt down their
jewellery and have it re-set in the suffragette colours, amethyst, emeralds, pearls. There’s some of the most expensive jewels you ever saw on some of their throats. Family heirlooms,
gone,’ she flicked open her hand, ‘just like that. Would you do that to your jewellery?’

‘Do I look like I own jewellery?’

Milly blushed. ‘No, well, neither do I. I sold mine to pay for my passage back to England.’ She hesitated, breaking gaze with Frankie. Once again Frankie burned with the urge to ask
her about her past, but before she could open her mouth, Milly suddenly said, ‘This skirt is so itchy, you know.’ She reached down under her blouse and, as discreetly as she could, gave
her waist a good scratch. A bulbous-eyed woman at the next table glared.