The Hourglass Factory (36 page)

‘It’s what, Frankie? The scoop of the century? National Vigilance Association daughter dances like prostitute in Soho? It’s none of anyone’s business is what it is. She
made her living by marrying. You don’t think that’s prostitution? You ever heard of a debutantes’ ball? You don’t think that’s prostitution? Arranged marriages,
parents plotting behind your back. At least I’m only letting the men look at me.’ There was a sour downturn in her mouth. Frankie was astonished to see her spit phlegm onto the
pavement, as if she could rid herself of a bitter taste. She touched the silk of Milly’s arm.

Milly shook her head and wrenched her arm away. ‘Let’s just get on with it, shall we?’

They arrived at Bond Street to find it bustling with shoppers and pleasure-strollers wrapped up in furs taking arm-in-arm turns. A short nimble man in brown pinstripes was
handing out flyers for a show in the West End.

Outside the Maid in the Moon, Tommy Dawber was watering a trough of winter seedlings, weedy looking holly and ivy. Frankie closed in on him quietly, making him jump and choke on his own
saliva.

‘Stone the crows, Frankie.’

‘I’m sorry, Tommy.’

He made a pantomime of clutching at his chest. Then his eyes, like everyone’s seemed to have in the past two days, fell on Milly. He straightened up and adjusted his tie.
‘What’s brings you here? You on another newspaper job?’

Frankie glanced across the street to see if she could spy Liam. It wasn’t quick enough for Tommy to miss.

‘Leave it. I saw you here the other day. Let a man have some dignity in death. I’ve had nothing but questions, questions, questions from everyone. I’m doing better than that
drinking-hole in Whitechapel after the Ripper business.’ He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably and set down the watering can. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if . . . don’t give me
that look, Frankie. You know as well as anyone, it’s not right . . . what he wore.’

‘I don’t care what colour knickerbockers he wore. I just want to know, has anyone been in there? Anyone you’ve seen?’

Tommy’s teeth hovered threateningly over his bottom lip. ‘The police a couple of times, on the morning it happened.’

‘No one else?’

His eyes dangled on Milly for a second, fishing for an introduction. She was fiddling in her deep silk pockets, pretending to watch a woman down the street heaving two giant poodles from a
carriage into a hotel lobby.

‘I’ve got my nose in a brewer’s tap half the time, Frankie. You know that. I haven’t been watching.’

Frankie fought the urge to scowl. ‘Well, can you watch now, just for a second. Give us a whistle if anyone does come?’

‘Frankie.’ His face turned down.

‘Come on, Tommy. One for the Spurs.’

‘You had your one for the Spurs off me, couple of nights ago.’

Frankie discreetly wiped a fleck of his spittle from her lapel. He noticed. ‘Just once. But if any police come sniffing round, wondering what two,’ he hesitated, ‘ladies were
doing in that shop when it’s supposed to be locked off, private property.’

‘Then you tell them, both short, fat, corset-wearing types, one of them had a glass eye and a Scottish accent, the other one walked with a limp, like she had a peg leg. Thanks, Tommy, keep
an eye out. Both ways, mind.’ She gestured in both directions up the road as they moved to cross it. She could hear Tommy tutting loudly under his breath.

‘Where the hell is that boy? Only time we could bloody use him.’ Apart from not being able to see Liam anywhere, Frankie was relieved to find Lancashire Court empty. Milly made a
careful check that no one was around then very casually drew a silver pistol from her pocket, monogrammed and engraved with elaborate patterns. A thrill of revulsion swelled through Frankie.
‘What does he use that for?’

‘Who?’

‘Your father.’

She frowned. ‘This is mine.’

‘You can shoot?’

‘Keep your voice down. Of course I can shoot.’

‘But I thought women . . .’ she trailed off, seeing the scornful triumph in Milly’s eyes.

‘Don’t shoot? Of course not. That would almost be as bad as them writing the news.’ Milly busied herself picking away at the lock with fixed concentration.

‘What’s taking so long?’

‘It’s stiffer this time. Not just the latch. It’s been twisted twice, deadlocked.’

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it, it means there’s no one in there?’

Milly looked at her with an eyebrow raised. She had started to say, ‘I think you’re going to have to smash it,’ when there came the familiar tiny snap, and the lock slid
across. She eased the handle with the tips of her fingers and they both stepped inside.

The place seemed dustier in the blue haze of day, murky streams of sun picking out particles floating in the air. There was the same smell of linen and cotton but it was fustier, warmer and
ranker, as if damp was already setting in with no door blowing open and closed, no customers to air the garments out.

They crept up the high stairs, feeling for the creaks in advance until they were on the tiny landing between the two rooms. Frankie pointed to the one she had peeped through the night
before.

‘Hold it out. In front of you.’

Milly’s brow creased.

‘The pistol.’

‘I don’t want to use it, Frankie.’

‘Better you than me.’

‘Don’t joke.’

‘I’m not. I can’t even piddle straight let alone shoot.’ Frankie dropped to her knee, wincing from the pain still there from the night before, and peered through the
keyhole. It was harder to see now. The curtains blocked out most of the day’s light, filtering it to a dirty emerald. She could see the iron corset on the carved dummy once again and
shuddered. ‘Drink tea and play bridge,’ she muttered.

Feeling like she was about to jump into iced water, she gave the handle a sharp twist. It jammed and she waited. No noises came from inside. ‘You’re going to have to pick
this.’

‘I’m not going to have any pins left to hold my hair up.’

Milly carelessly dropped the gun into Frankie’s hands, catching Frankie off guard with the weight of it, still warm from her grasp, the polished metal smooth. The engravings gripped
Frankie’s palm and she shivered, feeling the dread immediacy of the weapon, the heavy possibility of her finger slipping and killing someone faster than she could blink. Her hand felt too
large for it, the gun dainty like a lady’s comb, shiny against the grime under her fingernails.

Milly scraped and scrabbled for a few seconds then came the prise and click. Frankie shoved the gun back at her and inched the door open.

‘Be gentle with it. It’s not an ornament.’

The room was in two parts, a small white-washed warehouse stuffed with gaudy embellished designs, and a splintered mezzanine which stretched halfway across the length of the space, accessed by a
thin wooden ladder. Underneath it, more rows of antiquated corsets hung, gathering dust; crushed moth wings and beetle droppings. A rack was tucked separately from the rest, with conspicuously
larger bodices lined in a neat row, cleaner, worn more recently, and each pinned with a piece of paper identifying it by a nickname: ‘Jess’, ‘Bobby’, ‘Alfie’. On
the mezzanine a row of seven neat Singer pedal sewing machines sat, lovingly polished.

‘Careful,’ Milly warned, as Frankie placed a foot on the pale ladder. They climbed to the top and found themselves in a clean, well-kept workshop space. Reams of silk and linen were
stacked tidily in one corner, the floor had been recently swept and the boards, though sticking with the odd nail and splinter, were in good condition. Patterns had been arranged in little bundles
tied with ribbon on a shelf. By the edge of the platform next to a gas lamp sat a box filled to the brim with bobbins of cotton in various colours – whites, golds, peaches – then next
to it a casket of lace trimmings; spidery French lace, strips of Chantilly, some thicker Finnish lace Frankie recognised from a bedcover in Twinkle’s boudoir. The organisation was spotless, a
factory as neat and boutique as the shop below it. It was not at all what Frankie had expected from Beth Evans’s description of bleeding fingertips and merciless hours. But then, appearances
were deceptive. A boiling laundry house looked clean and calm at the end of a shift.

Milly began picking over the piles of cloth with her eyes. The gloom silhouetted the shape of her gown, billowing round her body in the draught from below. Frankie tugged a loose floorboard. It
came up half-way and she peered into the dirty gap underneath, sniffed, then replaced it.

‘You’d better keep an eye on the door and have that thing ready.’

‘I’m only using it as a threat. There are no bullets in it.’

‘What?’

‘There are no bullets in it. I don’t intend to use it.’

‘But you were the one wanted to be armed.’

‘As a threat,’ she said firmly, then sat on the platform, tucking her legs underneath her, flicking her eyes between the room below and the door.

There were a few ledger books on the shelf. Frankie opened them, wishing she knew how to decipher sums and figures. They looked like her father’s accounts from the vegetable stall. She ran
her eyes down the notes, looking for a name, an order placed, something that might chime with anything she had heard before. She scraped the flaps at each side of the book, where the paper was
glued to the blue pasteboard, to see if they would give, but they were stuck firmly and running her palm along them revealed that nothing was wedged between the book and its casing. When she
replaced it, she noticed that on the same shelf, underneath the account log, lay a little black address book. With her heart giving the tweak of a jig she creaked open the leather, hoping to see
the names and addresses of Lords and MPs, members of The Hourglass Club. It was only clients though, the names of some suppliers of fabrics and seamstresses for outsourcing specialised labour. She
gave a sigh, looking back at the row of sewing machines. After a few seconds of staring at the black wood cases she heard Milly’s breath hiss, a sound like gas escaping a valve.

‘What?’ A wave of fright trickled down her spine. She braced herself for a confrontation. But Milly wasn’t staring at the door. She was staring at something below the platform
on the clothing rail, a white and black rectangle stuck to a moth-eaten black lace veil.

‘What is it?’

Milly didn’t answer. Frankie scrambled towards the wooden ladder but couldn’t see clearly through the slats. She made to descend.

‘No, don’t. I’ll get it.’

‘You sit there, watch the door.’

‘No Frankie, I’ll get it.’ Milly gingerly prised herself off her knees and clambered down the ladder backwards, pointing the gun to the ground. She reached forward, straining
into the rack of corsets. From above, the object looked like a palm-sized photograph with holes cut into its border. The seconds stretched as Milly stared at it, then she climbed back up, clasping
it to her throat.

‘What is it?’

It took Milly a moment to prise her tight fingers off it, then she held it out, watching all the time as if she could change the face of it by staring.

Frankie squinted in the green light. At first it just looked like a nude on a penny playing card, a woman posing with one arm loosely braced behind her head. Then Frankie clocked the snake and
her lips moved into a tight ‘o’ to whistle.

Milly cut her off. ‘It was when I’d just got back. I was feeling very, very rebellious.’ Her voice fractured. ‘Like I wanted to liberate myself or something. Be naked
after what had happened. I did it in one of Lillian’s friend’s studios. A greasy little man who works off the Aldwych. Lillian had told me it was empowering, posing for men. Oh, she
loves to take her clothes off. Thinks it’s revolutionary, like she’s a courtesan in the Belle Époque. A bit different when it’s an oil painting to a penny pack of
cards.’

‘Hold on a second, what’s that?’ Frankie was peering beyond her, to the ground. She wedged past Milly, hopped onto the ladder and dipped down. Dress hangers smacked together as
she pushed the clothing rail aside. Nestled underneath it was a sack, the top lip just draping open revealing another playing card with a picture of Milly on it, nude and pouting. Again the suit
markers in each corner had been torn out. Frankie dragged the bag towards her and it tipped, spilling masses of the same cards all over the dusty floor.

She picked one up and ran her hand along the edge, then dropped down and fumbled through the rest. The corners of the hearts and diamonds cards had been gouged, leaving ragged gaps in their
place. The black suits, the spades and clubs, had been left alone.

‘What are the holes for?’ she wondered quietly.

‘That’s what I don’t know. Although they would have been where the red suits are. Hearts, Diamonds.’

‘Diamonds,’ Frankie muttered gently.

Milly looked down at her.

‘Did Ebony have a pack of these?’ Frankie asked.

‘Not that I knew of.’

Frankie thumbed the hole carefully.

‘What did you mean, “diamonds”, Frankie?’

‘Nothing. Just that it’s Ebony’s name and it’s a coincidence that the Diamonds were—’ Her throat went tight. She could feel her eyes jam in her head.

‘What?’

A memory stirred. Harry Tripe out in the communal yard at the back. Bonfire night. Throwing playing cards onto the blaze. Guy Fawkes night. Tonight.

‘Oh Milly, Lordy.’ Frankie scraped her hair off her forehead as she began to sweat. She moved her arms around in front of her, scattering the cards about, trying to divine what she
was looking for.

‘What?’ Milly snapped. ‘What have you thought of? I wish you would share what goes on in that head of yours.’

‘We have to find them.’ She scrambled to her feet and climbed back up the ladder, scrabbled at boxes of cotton and linen, tipping over rolls of silk, sending bobbins tumbling onto
the floor.

‘Frankie, tell me what you are looking for.’ Milly climbed to her feet, stepping out of the way as Frankie toppled a ream of cotton.

She stopped for a second, biting her lip. ‘Gunpowder.’

‘What?’

‘The red dye on packs of cards is – it’s gunpowder, it’s got gunpowder in it. Nitro-something or other. You add liquid and a spark to it and it will blow up. What night
is it tonight?’