The Hourglass Factory (35 page)

‘Was she meeting Mr Reynolds on Thursday?’ Frankie asked urgently.

But Beth wasn’t listening. Her eyes had drifted beyond them to the road outside. ‘She shouldn’t have been walking the streets by herself that time of night. Is that what a
gentleman does? Leaves a woman by herself.’ She looked at her guests in turn, suddenly aware of the humiliation of having strangers in perfectly tailored clothing sitting in her unwashed
parlour asking questions about the sister she had just buried.

Frankie glanced around the room at the orange walls and smoke stains from the paraffin lamps. Her mind was working. She had seen Reynolds in the dock that afternoon for window-smashing, so he
couldn’t have turned up to meet Annie. He must have stood her up, leaving her to walk the streets alone. That eliminated him, but didn’t bring them any closer to who might have killed
her. Frankie looked back at Beth. ‘The factory Annie went to work in, was it on New Bond Street?’

Beth nodded.

‘What did she make?’

‘It was seamstress work. Corsets. You only had to look at her fingers. All made to order, fancy stuff.’ Her eyes fell onto Milly’s silk patterned skirt. She didn’t need
to say the rest of the sentence. The look was in her eyes. For people like you. ‘That’s what beauty gets you. Everyone always said Annie’s face was her ticket.’ She heaved a
huge breath in. The sigh that came out was quiet and controlled.

‘And she worked every day at this corset shop?’

‘Every waking minute.’

‘Who got her the job there?’

Beth’s eyes thinned into narrow black pools. ‘Who are you?’

Frankie hesitated, swallowing. ‘I told you. We’re suffragettes.’

‘You don’t look like suffragettes. Where’s your green, white, purple? What do you want to know so much about Annie for?’

Frankie let the girl stare at her for a moment, shadows of betrayal moving through her stomach. Sitting in Beth’s family home, wondering who had murdered her sister while she prised gentle
answers out of her. ‘Who got her the job at the corset shop?’

Beth bowed her head. ‘It was a friend she knew from the suffragettes. A famous girl. She came by the house one time, with another of the seamstresses that worked there. An old lady with
her face all bandaged up. Annie said she’d had an accident or disease. But you couldn’t catch it.’ She picked at a sore on the side of her lip. ‘They didn’t come in.
Sat outside in a hackney waiting for Annie.’

‘Phossy jaw,’ Frankie murmured. Beth looked up sharp. Frankie leaned forward. ‘Did it have a name, this corset shop?’

Beth picked at her lip again. Then a look of languid scorn came into her eyes. She snorted with laughter and shook her head. ‘It had a nickname all right. On account of what they were
making in there. She said they called it “The Hourglass Factory”.’

‘No, Frankie George. No. Not again. Not this time.’

‘I think you know it’s necessary. Anyway, Liam’s meeting us there.’

‘Well, he can be your dirty partner in crime. I’m not getting whacked on the head again. Not for the sake of your bloody scoop.’

‘But the answer to it all has to be in there. Twinkle said it. Those maids, not as enlightened as you’d like to think. How would you feel if you spent your days with bleeding
fingers, lacing in rich men with fancies? They’re up to something.’

They were standing at the side of the pavement, waiting for the next tram. Frankie had a cigarette hanging from her lips like a long growth. She was scribbling fast in her notebook, ash soiling
the pages like grey snowflakes.

Milly put a hand to her forehead. ‘Well, in that case, isn’t it about time we went to the police?’

‘Hang the police.’ Frankie suddenly became aware her voice had risen and took a few breaths to stop herself sounding hysterical. ‘Don’t you ever have a hunch?’

Milly looked at her as if she had just sprouted wings. ‘A hunch?’

‘A feeling. I know that the answer to whatever happened to Ebony and Olivier and Annie is in that shop, and we aren’t going to get anywhere at night.’ She smoked the rest of
the cigarette quickly, aware that Milly was watching her and that manners dictated she should really offer Milly one. ‘The shop’s closed just now; it’s the only chance we’ll
get. That woman she mentioned, the one with phossy jaw. I saw her. Did you ever see a woman with her face bundled up with Ebony, at the club?’

Milly said something quietly in the direction of the traffic. The wind muffled her voice.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said I think you should leave it to the police. You’ve got enough to write up a piece, just put a bit of intrigue into it. Didn’t you say the
Evening Gazette
make
most of it up anyway?’

Frankie fixed her eyes on Milly in disbelief. Her features had become repugnant all of a sudden. She resented the high large nose, the perfectly cut cheekbones, the aristocratic brow. ‘Is
that what people of your world do, leave it to the police?’

‘Oh Frankie, for God’s sake.’

The tram approached with a heavy rattle and Milly made towards it. Frankie flinched as her notebook fluttered out of her hand and with it a couple of loose leaves of paper, scraps she had
stuffed in. She almost lost her balance as she reached to stop them spilling into the road. Milly had already boarded and Frankie followed her up to the open top deck. There was a woman at the back
reading a copy of
The Suffragette
, who watched them as they took the front seat.

‘I saw you flinch when I said that last night. I didn’t mean anything by it, just that we’re different.’

‘You don’t have to work for your living. I do.’

Milly locked her eyes on her. ‘I work for my living good and proper. I enjoy what I do, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t work and there aren’t nights when I wouldn’t
rather be curled up in a nice big house with hot water bottles and maids to turn down my bed. I ran away. I didn’t want to live that way even though I could have.’

‘And I suppose that makes you more righteous than poor jugginses who don’t have a choice.’

Milly looked straight ahead at the streets branching off each side of the thoroughfare’s bony spine. ‘Spare me the match girl act. You have a choice, Frankie.’

‘This or scrubbing floors.’

‘You’re not like that girl in there, that Beth. Or Annie.’

‘Annie’s not in there. She’s dead.’

Milly shook her head, irritated. ‘Why don’t you trust the police? You just hate everyone, don’t you? Suffragettes, Twinkle . . . you most likely hate all women by the way you
dress. You’d hate Ebony too, if she gave you the chance.’

Frankie looked down at her black trousers. Milly’s words stung and the trousers suddenly felt ostentatious on her, foolish and provocative rather than practical.

‘I want to get to the bottom of it. I thought that was what you wanted too.’ She let the words stew in her mouth for a few seconds and then came out with it. ‘This
doesn’t have anything to do with your brooch being found on Smythe’s body, does it? Care to tell me about that?’

Milly’s shoulders froze. She kept staring at the road disappearing under them. The electric whine of the tram suddenly seemed unbearably loud.

‘You should be more careful what spoons you hand out to guests. Family crest, is it? Beautiful. You should see mine. Got a leg of mutton on it, a bar of carbolic soap, barrow
wheel.’

Milly held up her hand. ‘All right.’

Frankie waited patiently for her to speak.

‘Frankie, I don’t know how he got that brooch. I didn’t even know I had it.’

‘Ebony had it on her, at the corset shop.’

Milly’s cheeks stiffened, her eyes widened for a split-second. She recovered quickly and said, ‘Well, she must have stolen it. Maybe she was going to sell it or something. I have
noticed things go missing sometimes in that dressing room, I thought it was Lizzy but perhaps—’

‘Why didn’t you mention it when you saw the rubbing?’

‘Because it’s not relevant. I thought it would just complicate . . . You might not trust . . . I don’t know. I was tired when you showed me the rubbing, I didn’t even
know what I was looking at.’

‘Curious.’

Milly turned her head to face Frankie. There again was that downward scoop of her lashes, the scorn sliding down her nose. ‘You think I’m behind this. I would come after a show-girl
in a basement supper club because she stole a brooch of mine? You think I care about family crests and heirlooms? More than people’s lives?’

They rode in silence for a while. As the tram curved round towards Oxford Street, Milly reached to pull the bell.

‘Where are you going?’

Her mouth was set in a solid pout and she looked at Frankie for a couple of seconds as if contemplating long and hard whether to share what was on the tip of her tongue. Then she leant close
enough for Frankie to smell the frankincense on her collar and the faint tang of orange blossom on her breath, and whispered, ‘If we’re going in there, I want to be armed.’

‘You what?’

She rubbed her lips together. ‘I want a gun. A pistol. It’s dangerous. That’s two people they’ve murdered. And my head’s still sore from last night.’

Frankie looked confused. ‘Where are you going to get a gun from? Do you just have a stash of them at the club in case you want to go pigeon-shooting in Hyde Park, taking pot shots at
peasant girls down Frith Street?’

Her jaw was still tight. ‘I’m going home.’

Frankie tilted her head back in the direction they had come from. ‘But Talgarth Road’s—’

‘I’m not talking about Talgarth Road. I’m talking about
home
. Belgravia.’

She started to descend the winding stairs of the tram when it pulled to a halt sending them both knocking into the sides of the staircase. Once again Frankie cursed as the loose papers came
fluttering out of her notebook. She stumbled to retrieve them all from the sticky stairs of the tram, then stuffed them back in with one hand, swinging herself off onto the street with the other.
By the time the tram moved off with a jerk she saw that Milly was already crossing the street, dodging horse-drawn hansom cabs and black motor cars. Tucking her notebook away, she hopped the few
steps to catch up, thanking her stars as a horse and cart whizzed past at a full trot, just missing her.

Frankie did as she was told and waited on the street outside the scoop of stairs and the columned portico, feeling like a petulant footman who had spoken out of turn to his
mistress. It was an impressive house, right enough: five floors including a basement and a balustrade at the top. The street was wide, with a green square on one side, and so full of quiet air it
seemed as if a muffler had been placed between it and the rest of London. There were no newspaper boys crying their pitch, no shopgirls or clerks, no drunks. Only a few purring motorcars and the
occasional carriage. At the next house along, a lady in a long string of pearls with streaked iron-grey hair was twitching her first-floor curtain.

Frankie stuffed her hands in her pockets and whistled for a while, still shaking off her sulk. What Milly had said about her hating everyone wasn’t true. It was only a temper, only her
shooting her mouth off without thinking. Some people seemed to always find time to think about what they wanted to say; for Frankie, those extra minutes and seconds didn’t exist, she
didn’t know where they were found.

She scuffed the dirt on the path with her foot and looked up as she heard the rattle of a carriage approaching. The horses drew closer, the vehicle began to slow and she saw that it was bound
for where she stood. She hopped back a few paces to give them room. The door of the carriage opened, a foot in a squeezed brown kidskin boot stepped onto the path. Just as it made contact with the
crunch of dirt, Frankie heard a crash behind her: the sound of a slamming door. Milly came charging down the steps. Then Frankie saw her freeze.

The rest of the figure appeared from the carriage.

Frankie saw the stack of pamphlets in the woman’s hand first. Bold printed, some smeared, the smell of burnt ink and paper coming off them, the words ‘This way to the gates of
hell’. They bore the stamp of the National Vigilance Association in the bottom corner. The woman adjusted the cloak on her shoulders and Frankie saw before her a curtain lifting so vividly it
made her want to laugh in shock. The features were the same. Why hadn’t she seen it? The high nose, the proud cheeks, the fine ice blue of the eyes. Granted there was far more skin round the
old woman’s jowls but it was unmistakable. Milly was the daughter of Lady Thorne.

Lady Thorne took a few heavy, unsettled breaths and adjusted the stack of pamphlets in her hand. Her eyes fell to the pavement. Frankie thought back to the exchange on the street outside
Jojo’s. She should have made the connection. She had put it down to the spitting familiarity of a showgirl troubled by her nemesis, nothing more.

Lady Thorne’s daughter dancing with a snake round her waist! Frankie’s first thoughts were on the scoop. How delicious to have walked blindfolded into an exposé on the
licentious life of London’s most notorious moral guardian’s daughter? She tried to keep the smile from her eyes. It vanished properly when she saw the coldness on Milly’s face.
Her lips were drained of their colour. The lines on her cheeks fissured deeper. It sent a chill through the back of Frankie’s neck. She had never seen a look so loveless between a mother and
daughter.

Milly grabbed Frankie’s wrist like a walking stick. ‘Come with me.’ She led her roughly off the path and down onto the road, speeding up until she had broken them both into a
run.

When Frankie dared to turn her head back, she could see Lady Thorne staring after them with a distanced look in her eyes, a carefree gaze that was enough to make her shudder.

At the end of the street she yanked them both to a halt, feeling the burn in her lungs. ‘I’m not made for this.’ She watched Milly splutter and pant, refusing to meet
Frankie’s eye. ‘Did you get the gun?’

Milly nodded.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Milly could hear the smile in her voice. ‘Don’t.’

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s—’