by Susan Green
I’d been to Ma and Pa’s grave only once. Auntie Sarah took me when Uncle Bill was away. It was in Brookwood cemetery; that’s where all the East Enders are buried, and we went there by the London Necropolis train. It looked like the gravestones rolled on and on to the world’s end. Auntie told me it was the biggest cemetery in the world. I was only nine, and it didn’t seem quite real to me then. I remember worrying about Ma and Pa being there in the ground with so many strangers.
I tossed and turned, and in the end I got up. I lit the candle and opened the top drawer of my chest. I’d tried the ring and I’d tried the lucky piece. What about the little quilt? It was Ma’s handiwork and if I could read anything, surely it would be this. Breathing slow and steady like Miss Lillingsworth said, I took it out and spread it on my lap.
I concentrated. Miss Lillingsworth had told me she imagined she was in a mist, and I tried that, but my mind just ran on foggy London days with wet feet and traffic accidents. I tried to see a clear blue sky, but how often d’you get one of those? I tried to see nothing at all.
I was about to give up, when my fingers tingled, just like before.
Thread. That’s what I saw. White thread and a silver needle. A pair of hands, working quickly, pecking like little birds at the patterned silk. That was all.
“Ma?”
The sound of my own voice broke the spell. Ma was dead, and this was all wrong. Let her be, I thought. I crumpled the quilt into the drawer and blew out the candle. I was no nearer to the truth than before.
Mr Opie – or Daniel as I now called him – had contacts everywhere, and he found someone who could help us. Mr Octavius Orchid, a stage manager at the Theatre Royal, suggested we visit an elderly lady called Miss Minnie Love. She’d worked as a fitter in the theatre’s costume workshops until about ten years ago, and knew all the workers and performers. And what was more, she had scrapbooks of clippings relating to the theatre that went back thirty years.
“D’you want to come with us, Miss Judith?” Daniel asked with a twinkle in his eye, but she didn’t twinkle back. She’d had a call from Mr Tissot the day before. Kathleen was ill, and she was going to sit with her.
“Is it as we thought?” asked Daniel, suddenly serious.
Judith nodded. I looked from one to the other.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Consumption,” said Judith.
“Oh.” A shadow fell on the day. Consumption – tuberculosis, doctors called it – was as good as a death sentence. Consumptives could try all sorts of cures – quacks and faith healers and rest homes and spas – but they got paler and thinner and coughed up blood, and in the end they faded away and died. There was nothing anyone could do about it. Poor Kathleen, so pretty and bright. Poor Mr Tissot.
Daniel squeezed Judith’s hand as we left the house. “Give her my love,” he said, but he was looking straight into Judith’s eyes.
Miss Minnie Love lived in a theatrical boarding house in the shabby end of Golden Square. We opened the front door into a narrow hallway that smelled of cabbage, and were stopped from going further by a big, tall woman who swung out from one of the side doors. She stood with her arms crossed in front of the staircase, blocking our way.
“Mrs Costello?” asked Daniel.
“That is my name. How may I help you?” Her voice was ever so genteel, but her face, all shiny and mottled, looked like a common pork sausage.
“We’ve come to see Miss Love,” said Daniel, drawing back slightly. Mrs Costello reeked of sweat and beer.
She stood there for a few seconds, as if thinking hard. Then she yelled, so loudly it made us both jump, “Ivy!”
A maidservant with a greasy apron and smuts all over her face darted out from the other side door. “Ma’am?”
“Pray, show these visitors up to Miss Minnie.” She turned and slammed the door behind her.
“This way, sir, miss,” said Ivy.
She went to lead the way, but Daniel said, “Just tell us. I’m sure we can find it.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said. “I’m that busy.”
And tired and put-upon and underfed, I thought. Daniel slipped her a coin as he passed, and I hoped that Mrs Costello didn’t take it off her.
The stairs were so steep they were the next thing to a ladder. The cabbage smell and the sound of someone practising scales on the violin followed us up into the hallway. There were five attic rooms, and Miss Minnie’s was the last. Daniel knocked softly.
“Who’s there?” The voice was barely a whisper.
“My name is Daniel Opie. Mr Orchid suggested I call on you. He said you may be able to help me with some enquiries about the opera.”
“The opera!” We heard mouse-like scrabblings from behind the door, and then it opened a crack. Two bright eyes peeped out. “You want to find out about the opera?”
“Indeed, Miss Love, if you have the time. Mr Orchid says that your scrapbooks are incomparable. Here is my card.” A tiny hand flashed out and snatched it. The door shut again for a few seconds, and then opened wide.
Miss Minnie Love looked like a little girl – a wizened, elderly little girl with grey hair hanging in loose ringlets down to her shoulders and a dress like a frilled lampshade. It was hard not to stare, because it was more than twenty years since that had been the mode.
Waving her hand like a duchess, she said, “Mr Opie, won’t you come in? And Miss … Miss?”
“Forgive me, Miss Love,” said Daniel, bowing. “Allow me to present my friend, Miss Verity Sparks.”
I bobbed a curtsey, and she held out her hand, smiling. It was like holding a dead sparrow, limp and light and barely there.
“Tea?”
We refused, just to be polite, but she insisted. She lit a spirit lamp to boil the kettle and even brought out a box of fancy biscuits to go with our very weak brew. “They’re a present from Mr Orchid,” she said. “He knows cherry macaroons are my weakness.”
She whisked a quilt and pillows off the sofa and gestured to us to sit. I looked around the room. The walls were papered with posters and playbills and pictures cut from the newspapers. Every other surface was covered. She had sprays of artificial flowers and framed pictures, piles of velvet and tumbles of gold braid, three hatstands with fancy hats on them, a stuffed peacock, a statue of a naked lady, and books. Stacks and stacks of books. They were atlases and albums and illustrated guides and goodness knows what, swelled to two or three times their natural size and fanned open from the clippings pasted inside. I imagined the hours and hours she must she have spent on them.
“Yes,” she said, seeing my wide eyes. “They are incomparable, Mr Orchid says. Mr Orchid is most kind. But I think he may be right, you know.” She murmured something that Daniel told me later was French and Italian, “Thursa … Les Belles Fromagieres … Il Gattopardo di Palermo …” She stroked her scrapbooks as if they were pets.
“Now, Mr Opie, what is it that you wish to know?” she said, all of a sudden quite businesslike.
“We are seeking information about two different parties, Miss Love. The first is Lizzie Hughes; Lizzie Sparks was her married name. She was the adoptive mother of Miss Sparks here.”
“Lizzie?” Miss Love’s hands ran like spiders over the covers of her scrapbooks. “Yes, yes, I remember her. She was one of our costumiers. She sewed all the costumes for the ballet in La Princesse de Russie. Beautiful they were, all white velvet and fur.”
I remembered the day I dozed off outside Mr and Mrs Rhodes’s house in Carisbrook Grove. I dreamed Ma had been sewing white velvet and fur. Only it wasn’t a dream.
“Do you remember anything about her?” I asked eagerly.
Miss Minnie thought for a few seconds. “She was a good worker. Quiet. Her stitching was even and neat, as if done by machine.”
I was disappointed. Was Ma nothing but neat stitches and good, quiet work?
“Is that all?” I asked.
“I think so.” She put her head to one side like a little bird.
“Lizzie … Lizzie Sparks. There was something …” But she couldn’t remember. “And the other party?”
“The other party is a man, a dresser called Victor Drummond. He worked at the opera about thirteen years ago.”
Miss Minnie frowned, and her fingers all on their own started reaching towards her towers of books. She fingered them until she found the right one, and she slipped it onto her knee. “1865,” she muttered to herself. “Who was there that season? Signor Boldini, Signor Bandelli …” She gazed into nothingness, face lit up by memories, and her lips moved silently. Then she said in a decided tone, “You are not looking for a man at all.”
I didn’t understand. “I beg your pardon?”
“It is Victoire Drummond you seek. A woman. Mrs Vic, we called her.”
The sudden tingling in my fingers was so sharp that I gasped out loud. I stared at my hands. Were they telling me I was close to knowing who my mother was?
“Here we are,” said Miss Minnie dramatically as she opened the book and put her finger on a newspaper cutting. It was not about the opera, however.
TRAGEDY STRIKES TWICE AT PRIMA DONNA’S MANSION
The musical world is still reeling from the tragic fire which took the life of prima donna, Isabella Savage, and her infant daughter. But now tragedy strikes again in the death of Madame Savage’s devoted dresser and personal maid, Mrs Victoire Drummond. Only a week after the fire, Mrs Drummond accidentally plunged to her death down two flights of stairs, breaking her spine.
Before I had time to feel too cast down by the fact that Victoire Drummond was dead, Miss Minnie flipped to another book and opened at a page from the Weekly Sketch. It showed a pretty dark-haired woman in some kind of fancy dress with two maids fussing around her and a woman in black standing alongside.The line underneath said:
Prima Donna Madame Savage prepares for her performance in Les Orphelines de Marseilles.
Pointing at the woman in black, Miss Love said, “That’s she. That’s Mrs Vic.”
“Are you sure?” I squinted at the yellowed picture.
“Oh, yes.”
“That’s Mrs Vic?”
“Of course it is. I know everything about the opera,” Miss Minnie said, quite without vanity.
Victoire Drummond was an old lady, and she couldn’t possibly have been my mother. So who was? Questions and more questions, possibilities and more possibilities. Did Mrs Vic have children – a daughter perhaps, whose child she took to Seacoal Lane? Or maybe she was close to one of the other costumiers or performers. Who was the desperate young woman who entrusted her baby daughter to Mrs Vic?
“Look, Verity,” said Daniel, pointing. The line above the picture, in bold black letters, read:
LA BELLE SAUVAGE IN LONDON DEBUT
Prima Donna Madame Isabella Savage, also known as la Belle Sauvage …
“La Belle Sauvage.” I turned to Daniel. “It isn’t a place, it’s a person.”
18
CASE CLOSED
We got home to find that the Professor had to consult on a case, and was staying for a couple of nights in town at the Megatherium Club. Judith was still with the Tissots, and SP was propped up on a couch in the small downstairs sitting room. He was half asleep when Daniel and I burst in to tell him of our discoveries, but he was soon sitting up straight and scribbling notes in one of his leather-bound casebooks.
“At least we’ve another lead,” he said. “Victoire Drummond. Victoire is a French name, and I wonder if there’s a connection with the septième étoile.”
“And there’s la Belle Sauvage,” I added. “Mr Egg told us it was the name of an old inn in Seacoal Lane where I used to live, but it’s the name of an opera singer as well. Isabella Savage was known as la Belle Sauvage.”
“Can we find out more about her?”
“We’re going to visit Miss Love again on Friday,” I said. “She’s going to consult her albums and make us a list of all the people who would have worked at the opera with Isabella Savage and Mrs Vic. And she’s going to see if she can remember anything more about Ma.”
“It seems as if we are making progress at last,” said SP. “Just as well I’m over this blasted concussion at last.” He swung his legs off the sofa and stood up. “And this time I can come too.”
When Judith got back from visiting Kathleen, it turned out she didn’t want to be left out either, so there was a party of four to visit Miss Love. She was expecting us to call at two o’clock on Friday, but we left early, for I’d asked if we could call in to Mr Plotkin’s shop. I would have hated him to think I’d forgotten his kindness. Or that I still owed him the cab fare.
At first Mr Plotkin didn’t recognise me, for I was not the bedraggled girl who’d come into his shop that night a week ago. But then he looked again.
“Little miss,” he said. “How good it is to see you again.” Behind his wire-rimmed specs he was taking in every detail. “You are well?”
“I am very well, Mr Plotkin,” I said.
“Thanks to God.” He took both my hands in his. “It is good that you are safe now, and with your friends.” He glanced sideways at SP and Judith, and SP stepped forward.
“Mr Plotkin, please allow me to introduce myself,” he said, holding out his hand. “I am Saddington Plush, and this is my sister, Miss Judith Plush. We are most grateful to you, sir, for helping Verity on that terrible night.”
“Are you, sir, the gentleman who was attacked? But no bones broken, I see.”
“No damage done,” said SP heartily. No bones, that was true, but whatever he said to the contrary, Miss Judith and I both knew that he wasn’t quite over the concussion.
“We’d like very much to repay you,” said Judith. “Verity told us that you generously paid for her cab fare home.”
“The little one was in trouble, Miss Plush,” he said. “What else should I do?”
She opened her purse and took out a coin. “Here, Mr Plotkin, with our thanks.”
“No, no, no.” He took a step backwards. “The cab fare was not even a quarter that, Miss Plush. I have no need of a reward.”
“But I insist.”
“So do I. Please do not insult me.” He really looked distressed, and SP quickly changed the subject.
“You have some wonderful things here,” SP said. “These for instance.” He pointed to a glass case. In it was a flight of tiny butterflies the colour of peacock silk, set on black velvet like jewels. “How perfect they are,” said SP.
“Wouldn’t Aunt Almeria love them?” said Judith. “They’re from Northern Queensland – in Australia, SP. Let’s get it for her as a surprise for when she gets over her snit and comes home.”
Smiling, Mr Plotkin named a price. The butterfly in its case was wrapped up in tissue paper and then brown paper, and with lots more smiles Mr Plotkin saw us out of the shop.
Our carriage was waiting for us around the corner. We’d only gone a few steps when SP swayed slightly and sank to the pavement.
“I told you it was too soon to come out, but you wouldn’t listen,” scolded Judith.
“Oh, Judith, always the pessimist,” he said. “I am perfectly well.” He struggled to his feet between the two of us and then his knees gave way again.
“Let’s take him back into Mr Plotkin’s shop,” I said. “I’ll go and get John to come with the carriage so he doesn’t have to walk.”
Mr Plotkin calmly shifted a stuffed owl off a sofa, and sat SP down with his legs up and a small glass of brandy in his hand.
“No trouble, no trouble at all,” he kept insisting. “It is good for an old man to feel he is of some use.”
When SP had a bit of colour back in his cheeks, I set off around the corner. I could see our carriage, with John up in the box reading the sporting news, a little way down. First, I had to pass by another carriage. A tall man wrapped up in an overcoat and with a scarf half covering his face was waiting next to it, and I expected him to move sideways to let me pass. But he blocked my way. I had a prickling
feeling all along my spine that something wasn’t right, and then I looked up at his face. Those eyes, so fishy and cold. I recognised them at once.
“You!”
He grabbed me by the arm. “Miss Sparks, you’re coming with me.”
I tried to shake him off, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Come on!” He attempted to force me towards the carriage, so I stamped on his foot and then punched him on the nose. He just stood there, so surprised it was almost comic, and then he fell to his knees in the gutter, holding his face and moaning. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been busy yelling for John to go and get a constable.
John ran off up to the main street, and all of a sudden there was someone else beside me on the footpath. I glanced up. It was a tall, handsome, fair-haired gentleman. It crossed my mind that he seemed vaguely familiar.
“May I help?” he said. “It appears this man is bothering you.”
“He certainly is,” I said, and at that my would-be kidnapper glared at me.
“Bothering?” he said. “Bothering? Why, this little she-devil has just broken my nose.”
Who was he to call me a she-devil? I’m afraid I really lost my temper then. They say you shouldn’t kick a man when he’s down, but I did. Hard.
“And you, Dr Beale, are no gentleman,” I said.
Quick as a wink, John was back with a member of the Metropolitan Police.
“What’s this then?” the constable asked sternly. “Robbery? Assault?”
“Assault!” cried Dr Beale. He was practically frothing at the mouth by now, what with being punched in the nose by a mere girl and then held with his arms behind his back by a tall and very strong gentleman. Not to mention being sworn at by John. “I’m the one who’s been assaulted.”
“Or is it kidnapping?” asked the constable.
“Of course it wasn’t kidnapping. I’d offered her fifty pounds for a week and the unreasonable chit refused. After all, my sister would have been there.”
