Moonlocket

by Peter Bunzl

  “This place has got more security than the Royal Mint,” Malkin muttered.

  “But we don’t want him getting in, do we?” the woman explained. “He broke out of Pentonville Prison – and they said that was impossible.”

  She led them wheezily up five flights of stairs to the top floor of the house, where she turned a key in a door and threw it open.

  There was a single bed, in a tiny, squalid room, and a sash window with thick gauzy curtains drawn aside to let in the light. On a narrow chest beside the bed were various framed old lobby cards from the Door Family Show.

  “You kept all their stuff?” Lily asked the woman incredulously.

  “Well, I’d sell it if I could,” she snapped. “But it’s damaged.”

  Lily looked closer and saw she was right. A figure had been ripped from each framed lobby card, their name erased from the line-up and from family history.

  “Besides,” said the landlady. “I can’t leave the house.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “I’m cursed. The old woman cursed me before she died.”

  “What woman?”

  “Artemisia, of course. Artemisia Door!”

  Tolly examined the lobby cards. “These are old London theatres,” he said. “Some of these gaffs don’t even exist no more.”

  “How highbrow,” Malkin sneered. He was snuffling around a stack of loose drawers, filled with interesting-looking pieces of theatrical junk.

  “The Doors must’ve tread the boards in all these places,” Robert said, peering closely at the family pictures. In the ones where Selena couldn’t be ripped away her face had been scratched out, making her look like some sort of half-materialized ghost. “They really did disown her!” he whispered, shocked. “Why would she go back to theatre after that?”

  “Maybe she loved it despite her family,” Lily suggested. “The inspector said he thought she was probably still a stage performer in London.”

  The old woman shrugged. “Who knows.”

  But Robert thought Lily might be right. He remembered Da saying Selena was an actress when they’d met – wasn’t it likely that she’d returned to her old life?

  The damaged lobby cards were all sorts of varied designs. But each had the Doors with a scrolled banner above their heads displaying the name of their show. Robert felt flabbergasted. Somehow they had stumbled upon a shrine to his family, a family that until this week he hadn’t even known existed.

  In the first card, the Jack of Diamonds appeared to be flying in the air, leaping between two grand buildings.

  “Blimey,” Tolly exclaimed. “He looks proper like old Spring-heeled Jack in this one.”

  In the second card, Jack had his arms out in a dynamic pose and was making Finlo and a scratched-out Selena levitate live onstage. In a third, he stood behind his wife, Artemisia, who was sitting on a chair with both hands at her temples and appeared to be summoning ghosts from the ether. The final card showed Jack bursting free from heavy chains and riding on the back of the giant mechanical Elephanta, a red diamond glinting in her forehead.

  See Jack make the Elephanta disappear! said the caption.

  “That one’s from the show where he robbed the Queen,” the landlady explained. “After that the police crawled all over this house searching for clues. Jack tried to make one of his famous escapes, but they caught him. And his wife and children were left here alone. Then it was just his wife, Artemisia.” She pointed at a large iron bed, pushed against the wall in the corner of the room. On it was a bare mattress, with a big grey stain. “She died right there. Penniless – despite that priceless diamond, which everyone reckoned she had stashed. I’d been wanting to kick her out for years – since the day the police came and turned over my house and threw her husband in jail – but I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?” Lily asked.

  “They were a dark family,” the woman explained. “Artemisia especially. She was full of black magic – could call spirits from the dead lands. She said if I threw her out she’d put a curse on the house and summon them to haunt me. For ever. So I let her be. But I reckon the place is cursed anyway, on account of her dying in it.”

  The woman gave a little shiver. “Those Doors brought ill repute here. I should’ve never rented to theatre folk. Not the likes of them – magic ones. Nowadays no one comes for a room. No one! Not even overnighters.”

  “You don’t know anything more about Selena?” Robert interrupted.

  “That I don’t. Sorry. She last came the day Artemisia died. I didn’t recognize her at first. Then the son, Finlo, came an’ all. Searched through everything, looking for something – ten years ago that was, but it’s all still such a mess.” She waved a hand at the room. “Nobody took the body, and her husband was in jail, his funds confiscated, so I had to send her to a pauper’s grave. But then, as I recall, she didn’t have many folks she called friends. Crossed a lot of people, or her husband did.” She ran a finger thoughtfully through the dust on a side table, and wiped it on her pinny.

  “Why don’t you have a look through their things?” she advised, pushing open the door. As she shuffled off down the passage, she called back, “Take a keepsake if you want!”

  “Thank you.” Robert stared numbly at the wealth of Door family memorabilia scattered around the room. This would be his one opportunity to examine it thoroughly, he realized, without creating more trouble. He took a deep breath.

  “Come on,” he told the others. “Let’s get started.”

  They set to, turning the room over from top to bottom; rooting through the various drawers and boxes shoved in corners and under the bed. They discovered all kinds of magical paraphernalia; crystal balls, ouija boards, rune stones and yarrow sticks, tarot decks and stacks of playing cards with knaves missing. They even found a suitcase filled with tangled ropes and chains, and a bag of oddly designed padlocks and keys that must’ve been part of Jack’s act.

  Despite these many interesting things, Robert was disappointed to realize that their search had uncovered neither the other half of the Moonlocket, nor any clue to Selena’s whereabouts. The only thing they did find that must have once belonged to her was a children’s book called:

  This book had obviously, at one time, been Finlo’s and then was handed on to Selena. But why did it then say For Jack? Robert wondered. It was another strange find to go with the locket. He closed the book and put it under his arm, then nodded to Tolly and to Lily, who shooed Malkin off down the corridor to find the landlady to let them out.

  As they walked away from Queen’s Crescent, Lily’s stomach began grumbling terribly. It was almost breakfast time, she realized, and she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday’s lunch. “Can we get some food, please?” she asked Tolly. “I’m starving.”

  They stopped at a street stall and Tolly bought a meat pie with some of the coins from Lily’s purse to share between the three of them. As soon as the seller had handed the steaming pie over, wrapped in newspaper, Tolly broke it into three, passing one crumbly piece to each of them.

  When he’d finished his share, Tolly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What now?” he asked.

  Robert didn’t know. As far as the investigation was concerned, they seemed to have come to some sort of dead end. They’d found neither Selena nor the other half of the locket, and most of what they’d discovered about the theatres, and so forth, they had already known.

  The theatres – that was it!

  “We could visit some of the theatres the Doors played, and ask about Selena,” he proposed.

  “Good idea!” Malkin said. “I’ve a good nose, I’ll guide us.”

  “Maybe not,” Robert replied. “You said that last time we were in London and look how far that got us. Where are all these theatres, anyway?” he asked Tolly.

  “In the West End,” Tolly explained. “It’s not too hard to get to on the Underground. I’ll take you if you like.”

  “We’ve never been on the Underground,” said L
ily.

  Tolly grinned and shifted his satchel across his back. “Oh, you’ll love it. Follow me and I’ll show you.”

  The tiled lobby of the Underground station was thick with crowds. Morning commuters, hustling along in grey suits and black bowlers, thrust Robert, Lily, Tolly and Malkin through a turnstile, where a mechanical man in the uniform of the Metropolitan Railway took money for tickets.

  Malkin’s clockwork echoed loudly as they walked along a tunnel and down a set of winding spiral stairs that descended into the earth. Robert laughed at the strangeness of it all, and glanced at Lily, whose eyes were lit up with intrigue.

  When they thought they could get no deeper, they were spat out at the base of the stairs onto a railway platform crammed with people, jostling and squashing against one another to keep back from the edge.

  A railway line ran in the recess beneath the platform, entering pitch-black, sooty tunnels at either end of the cavern. There was a tooting blast of a horn and a steam train chugged out of the furthest tunnel, slowly screeching to a stop alongside the platform. Smoke belched from its engine stacks, pluming off the arched roof of the chamber and covering everything in thick fog.

  “It truly is an underground railway!” Lily said breathlessly.

  “Just as I told you.” Tolly snatched open a door. “Climb aboard!”

  Robert looked at crowds of people doing the same. It was a bunfight of shoving and he thought that there would barely be room for them. They crammed in behind a large group of ladies in bustles, and Malkin gave a squealing yap: “Someone’s stepped on my tail!”

  “Mind the gap!” called a porter from further down the train, and blew his whistle as he hopped onto the rear platform.

  Then they were off. The train picked up speed and coasted away, and Robert saw the crowds and the station blur into the distance. There was a flash of sudden blackness as they sped into the tunnel, but the few blinking lamps down the length of the carriage were enough to see by.

  No seats were available, so Tolly grasped a small leather strap that hung from the ceiling. Lily and Robert copied him. Malkin settled between their feet, crouching in the small space between Lily’s legs. He grumbled softly to himself, examining his tail and poking at the injured appendage with his nose.

  “It definitely looks less fluffy than before.” He glared at the gaggle of ladies opposite. “Some people should watch where they’re putting their feet. Could’ve pulled it right off my backside.”

  “Be quiet,” Lily told him. For there seemed to be some sort of rule that everyone had to sit on the train in deathly silence, staring dead ahead and not speaking to one another, or anyone at all.

  The dingy black tunnels were scary and a little disorientating, and the carriage rather stuffy. You couldn’t open a window, Lily realized, as they all appeared to be locked. Anyway that would’ve let the smoke in, which seemed to waft constantly down the side of the trains, smearing the windows and the surfaces with soot; because of this, she didn’t much want to touch anything.

  As the train stopped at each station, more and more people got on, and soon they were hemmed in by bodies. The passengers swayed with every jerk and jostle of the carriage until Lily, squeezed in amongst them, thought she might topple over. But then a man in a bowler hat stood up, leaving a space. Lily grabbed the seat and, settling onto the wooden bench, caught her breath.

  Some stops later they finally disembarked in a blaze of people and were thrust, in a tumbling rush, along another platform and up flights and flights of stairs, until they arrived back in the world above in an entirely different part of London. And not a moment too soon, Lily felt – for to be underground away from the light for so long had been rather horrible!

  Tolly led them along a street filled with theatres. Lily, Robert and Malkin followed him, their faces tilted up, taking in the colourful hand-painted billboards. Each hoarding advertised a unique show that could be seen beyond the gaslit porches and gold-painted entrance lobbies.

  “Ignore all this,” Tolly said. “We need the stage doors.”

  They stepped down a side alley, and came out in Drury Lane. Robert thought he caught a glimpse of a short dark-haired figure in a suit and dusty bowler hat, a little like Finlo, following them at a distance. But when he looked again the fellow was gone.

  “Where should we try first?” Robert asked.

  “The Adelphi,” Tolly proposed. “It’s right round the corner. I know the door hand and he’s acquainted with everybody in theatreland. Maybe he can give us a clue to where your ma is.”

  The Adelphi had a long brick wall and a columned portico at the back. Actors and flower girls clustered in doorways and leaned against the tall grooved columns, smoking and gossiping. Tolly pushed his way past them, guiding Lily, Robert and Malkin to the stage entrance, where an old mechanical was working.

  When the mechanical man saw Tolly, his eyes lit up like new-fangled light bulbs. “Master Mudlark, how are you? And who’s this?”

  “Morning, Mr Snapchance,” Tolly said. “These are my friends Lily, Robert and Malkin.” He shoved Robert to the front of the group. “Robert is looking for his ma, Selena Door. She used to be an actress. And we thought you might know something about her.”

  “The Door family, eh?” Mr Snapchance gave a racking cough that made his body shake and looked around nervously, as if even to mention that name might make them suddenly appear out of thin air. He scratched at a line in the scuffed paint on his chiselled chin. “They never worked here. Never.”

  “But we’ve seen a poster for them with this establishment’s name on it,” Tolly told him.

  “That’s as maybe, but I know nothing about it. They blackened the name of theatre. Not only this one, but all the playhouses that put on their show.” The old mechanical shooed them away and began closing the stage door behind him.

  When there was barely a crack of an opening left, he paused and pointed a finger through it at them. “I’ll tell you something else for nothing,” he said. “You won’t find any performer, actor or sideshow magician in the whole of the city who’s got anything good to say about the Doors. And if you want my advice, you won’t go looking for them – Jack especially, but the rest too. They’re a cursed lot and they’ll bring you nothing but trouble.”

  And with that he slammed the door in their face.

  Robert thrust his fists angrily into his pockets. He noticed that as they walked away from the theatre, the actors under the archways distanced themselves from him, disappearing. It was as if they’d let off a firecracker in a flock of pigeons. The name Door seemed to scare off the possibility of any clue. Robert’s downheartedness must’ve shown on his face, for Tolly placed a hand lightly on his back.

  “Don’t give up,” the paper boy said. “There’s plenty more theatres we can try.” He glanced down at Malkin. “You’d best tell your mechanimal not to walk in the gutter,” he warned Lily. “He’ll get run down by a steam-wagon if he’s not careful.”

  “I will not!” Malkin huffed. “I am perfectly capable of looking out for myself!”

  Just then a blare of a horn made him jump from the road and skitter across the pavement into the shade of the nearest building.

  Robert laughed for the first time in days.

  “See?” Tolly said to the mechanimal.

  “The steam-wagons should watch out for pedestrians,” Malkin said, “not the other way round.” But still, he was a lot more careful after that than he’d been before.

  At each auditorium, they showed the photograph of Selena to the actors and stagehands who hung out there, but every single time they got the same response: scared, angry expressions and slamming stage doors.

  As the morning trickled into the afternoon, Lily really had given up hope. “Let’s go find Papa,” she said. “He can help organize us a room for the night. We should show him the locket too – he might be able to help us decode the message on the back and then, tomorrow, we can take it to Inspector Fisk, or Anna, for help.” />
  “Who’s Anna?” Tolly asked.

  “She’s an investigative reporter on The Daily Cog,” Robert said.

  “A friend of ours,” Malkin explained.

  “Anna Quinn,” Tolly said. “Why didn’t you say? I know her!”

  “You do?” Lily asked, amazed.

  “Of course. I see her sometimes at The Daily Cog offices. She’s not just a reporter, you know? She writes for the penny dreadfuls as well, under a pen name. She did that series, The Zep Pirates Versus The Kraken – filled with gore, it was. One of my favourites.”

  Lily nodded. She remembered it well.

  “Tell you what,” he continued, “after I’ve finished selling my papers tomorrow morning, I’ll meet you outside wherever you’re staying and take you to see her.”

  “I suppose we’ll be staying at the guild, with Papa,” Lily said. And then she remembered: “But we don’t have the address. It was in our bag, which we lost.”

  “It’s all right,” Tolly said, “we can ask a cabbie.” He walked them to a cab stand a little further down the road, where a line of hansoms, pulled by mechanical horses, were lined up. Tolly tapped on the side of the first one. “If you have a few coins he can take you there,” he explained.

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” Lily asked, getting out her purse and checking her money, while Tolly helped them all up into the cab.

  He shook his head. “I’ve got to get back to the mission, but I’ll come see you first thing tomorrow.” He shut the hansom’s door behind them and Lily heard him speak to the cabbie.

  “The Mechanists’ Guild.”

  “On Fenchurch Street?” the cabbie asked.

  “That’ll be it,” Tolly said. “Quick as you like. See you tomorrow then!” he called up to Robert and Lily. Malkin stuck his head out the window as the cabbie stirred the horse to action and the cab pulled off down the street.

  The Mechanists’ Guild was the grandest building Robert had ever seen. Lily paid their hansom fare and they climbed the stone steps that led up to the arched entrance, hidden beneath a three-storey-high classical pediment of finest marble. A single gold cog hung above the entrance – the insignia of the guild.