Frankie boiled with rage and rejection for a few minutes, before putting two and two together, and beginning to see an idea that she thought Miss Bly would have been proud of. She used kohl to subtly darken the skin on her throat and chin, and purchased a sixpence false moustache from the joke-shop floor of Gamages. She would do a woman’s exposé inside the Savage Club.
It could have worked beautifully. She was whisked through the door, name-dropping her editor without an eyebrow being raised, and found journalists she had seen on Fleet Street playing poker and bridge in the library. Better still, in the Lounge, decorated with statues of feathered American Indians in savage poses, she saw the publisher of the paper himself, Lord Thorne, reading The Times. She invited herself onto one of the Chesterfields opposite and took out a pair of wire spectacles with plain glass in the lenses, another purchase from Gamages. He nodded. She smiled. She ordered a brandy and took out a cigarette. She drank three brandies in all, smoked two cigarettes and batted a brace of sentences back and forth with the publisher.
Parched on alcohol, dizzy with brandy she took the sensible move to order some soda water, at which point a young sub-editor next to her struck up a conversation. He worked for the Daily Mail. They chatted about skittles and trains and the terror of child-snatchers. They talked about football and Frankie did not hold against him the fact that he supported Woolwich Arsenal.
Her bladder, by this point had begun to strain. She caught herself just in time before asking for the ladies’ room, and instead requested directions to the conveniences. But she was only halfway there when she noticed to her horror that the young man was following behind. He tipped her a wink.
Inside she headed for the cubicle, flushed, harangued, fit to burst, only to find the Daily Mail man still following. Panicked into forgetting her disguise she shrieked an obscenity at him in her natural voice – at which point the man, stunned only for a second, saw fit to turn the indiscretion to his advantage and began hollering, ‘A woman, a woman in the Savage Club! She almost foxed us but here I’ve tracked her down, look, here, help!’
Before he could grab her, she darted to the door, sprang down the corridor and out into the street, praying she could hold her piddle until she reached home. She only got as far as the Camden canal before she had to give in, and threw Nellie Bly’s book in along with it.
Frankie never tried an exposé again. As she rounded the corner into Duck Lane, dreading seeing the man with the cape and the blue cheese nose, she thought that perhaps it was time to gather a little courage again now.
Jojo’s was boarded up fast. The posters on the front had been soaked by the rain and sagged unhappily on their tie-ribbons; ink had run down Ebony’s upside-down front, casting streaks across her face. There was no one around, not even a lamp lit outside.
She hopped down the steps and banged on the red door, her fist stinging with the cold. The rain was starting to pick up, drips trickling down her neck. There was a scrabbling inside, the press of footsteps, then the door opened a crack and a warm draft escaped, along with the face of the tiny woman in striped trousers she had seen smoking in the doorway the night before. She glared at Frankie with green eyes. ‘We’re closed,’ she said in a Scottish accent. ‘Can’t you take a hint?’ She nodded to the empty lamp and the wet posters. ‘No show tonight.’
‘But it’s Saturday.’
The woman shrugged. Her skin was covered with a thick layer of greasepaint.
‘I left my hat the other night. Thursday.’ Frankie tried to peek past her into the club but the woman cottoned on and narrowed the opening of the door. There was a kitcheny smell drifting out, liver and gravy.
‘We’ve had no hats. You’ll have dropped it in the street.’
‘What time are you opening next?’
‘We don’t know.’ She pushed the door, and was an inch from shutting it when Frankie wedged her hand in the gap. ‘I’m a reporter. I’m investigating the disappearance of Ebony Diamond. I knew her, I met her. If she’s in there . . .’ She held her breath, bracing her fingers for the pain of a slammed door. ‘I think she’s in danger.’
The woman paused, then opened the gap a fraction more. The liver smell grew stronger along with the stink of old red wine. A voice Frankie recognised called from the pitch black inside. ‘Let her in.’
The small woman took a sharp breath, before opening the door wide. She stood in the way, making Frankie edge round her to get inside. Once they were both in, she slammed the door and shoved a great bolt across the lock. It was dark in the lobby, powerfully scented with meat residue. In the gas-lamp glow Frankie could see that the walls were painted a dark blood red, like the inside of an eyelid. She jumped as a chattering came from behind her shoulder and looked round, startled to see a monkey in a waistcoat and fez screeching at her. The small woman grabbed it by the haunches and bundled it up like a baby into her arms.
‘He thinks it’s the show. He’s trained to do that. People think he’s Jojo’s baby.’ She gave a horrible smile as if anticipating that Frankie would be alarmed or repulsed by something she was about to see. She led the way down the corridor, past a wooden ticketing desk to a set of double doors inlaid with stained glass. Still clutching the hissing monkey, she pushed the doors open with her bottom.
The lights were at full blast inside, cruelly displaying the cracks in the red paint, stains on the wood floor. The room, no bigger than a large parlour with a stage at one end, was filled with round tables draped in yellowing white cloths, and chairs with pieces of upholstery missing. The stage curtains were a dusty turquoise fringed in gold. Curios were pinned to the wall; exotic masks, a stuffed crocodile, a print in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec, a stiff black corset with a tiny waist, signed in white chalk. The monkey struggled out of the little woman’s arms and hopped up onto one of the tables, picking at a plate of leftover stew and pastry.
Frankie stopped short when she saw the trio assembled in front of her. If she hadn’t known Jojo straightaway from the posters, she would have guessed him from the way he was standing, proprietorial, his shoulders back, both hands in his trouser pockets. Every inch of him was covered with a fleecy golden mane, brushed to a shine over his face. An expensively cut suit of dark green velvet followed the contours of his body, a pocket-watch chain dangled over his abdomen. Salome, the snake girl, the voice Frankie knew, was slouching on the left, wearing a loose silk robe painted with blue and gold flowers. Despite her pose, she couldn’t disguise the darkness on her face, nor the sallow rings round her eyes. And in the centre, with his arms tied fast to the chair he sat on, was the ginger-haired boy.
Seventeen
Primrose cleared his throat quietly as his team settled onto thinly upholstered chairs, arranged in a circle in one of the Scotland Yard meeting rooms. He was uncomfortable without his desk in front of him. His lap felt exposed. On it he balanced a notepad with a fine sheaf of yellow lined paper, and tapped his pencil gently.
There were six of them drafted in to assist from the different threads of Special Branch. The speed and efficiency with which Stuttlegate had helped him assemble the group had unnerved Primrose slightly. It was almost as if the Chief had them sitting on alert, waiting for the right moment.
When they had settled he spoke. ‘Do you know why you have been called here?’
The men nodded and shifted their eyes around, taking one another in. On the far left was Sergeant Mathers from Hammersmith, a cell breaker at the time of the Walsall anarchists. He was nearing retirement age now and looked disgruntled to have been called to headquarters on a Saturday. Next to him sat a square military type with a neat blond moustache and wire spectacles, oddly dainty on his huge pink face. That was Donaldson, the motorcyclist on loan from Westminster. Next was Bain, a photographer who specialised in prison yard surveillance. Sergeant Wilson sat directly opposite Primrose, his grasshopper legs twined round each other. His head was slouched as if he might have a hangover. Completing the circle was a slender boy who could have passed fo
r twenty, although Primrose knew he was several years older. Robert Jenkins had been a precociously talented sapper, sent abroad with the military on various assignments before an ill-judged mine clearance landed in him in hospital for almost a year. He had since decided that the police force was a safer bet, and Special Branch had made good use of his bomb knowledge on some of the anarchist intelligence operations. He had a lean, slight physique and a delicate way of speaking.
The air in the room smelled of men who had been working since six that morning, some since the night before: cigarettes, weak coffee, shrimps scoffed from paper bags. Five sets of weary eyes watched Primrose.
‘Good,’ Primrose went on. ‘Well, the uniforms have been doing a round of questions at the Coliseum today and by all accounts the trapeze Miss Diamond was using had been tampered with. The early suspicions are cocaine solution on the mouth strap.’ He checked his notes. ‘If she had caught it, Miss Diamond would likely have fallen.’
‘So we’re looking for someone with knowledge of old Charlie. That should be easy. Did they check B Division?’ Bain, the photographer, smirked. There was a titter of laughter.
Primrose coughed. ‘They are looking for someone who had knowledge of Miss Diamond’s act. And obviously access backstage.’
‘Would they have needed to climb the rig then, to fit the mouth strap?’ asked Mathers, leaning forwards.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘The strap was taken up by a stagehand just before the second act began, and passed to Miss Diamond midway through her performance.’
‘That doesn’t explain where she’s gone,’ Donaldson said.
Primrose nodded. ‘But I think it rules out an accident and cover-up by the theatre . . .’ He let the thread hang.
Wilson frowned. ‘Do you think she’s been kidnapped?’
‘That is one possibility. The other is that she twigged someone had tampered with her equipment and managed to escape herself.’
‘But how?’
Primrose opened his palms. ‘One of the performers has taken some notion that she stole his tiger suit. There was an incident that night with a tiger getting loose. How feasible that is . . .’ There was general derision round the room.
Primrose swallowed. His palms felt clammy holding the yellow pad. He had rehearsed this last part with Stuttlegate at the Chief’s insistence. ‘But the more important question is who might be connected to this? Miss Diamond’s disappearance may be linked to one or more deaths that occurred over the past two days.’
There was silence.
‘On Friday, Olivier Smythe, corset maker by appointment to Queen Alexandra and also to Ebony Diamond, was found dead on his shop floor, wearing one of his own designs. It was not unusual for him to go corseted, but this one was laced so tight it had suffocated him.’
A few of the men swallowed loudly. Donaldson, the motorcyclist, looked at his muddy boots.
Primrose went on, ‘The same night, just off Tottenham Court Road, a woman was killed. We don’t know who she is yet but she was wearing items of Ebony Diamond’s clothing.’
‘So they knew each other?’ Jenkins asked.
There were a few seconds of silence. Primrose continued. ‘She was attacked from behind. The killer cut her throat. There was no –’ he hesitated, ‘follow-up. Not like the Ripper victims.’ He sighed and rubbed his brow, then fished into his pocket and held out the small portcullis badge Stuttlegate had given him. ‘This was found on the body.’
‘Let me see that,’ Donaldson leant forward. ‘Holloway Gaol badge of honour? The one they get given if they’ve done a stint inside for the WSPU.’
Primrose nodded.
‘So the murdered girl was a suffragette?’
‘It would certainly look that way. Possibly one known to the authorities.’
Bain, who had been very still up to that moment, shifted his weight and eyed the camera bag at his feet, with its telecentric lens poking out. ‘The authorities? Which authorities? Do you mean to suggest that the government might be bumping off members of the WS—’
‘I mean to suggest nothing. You have images of Miss Diamond?’
Bain nodded. ‘I looked them out.’
‘What about the people she was acquainted with? Anyone in prison at the same time as her, anyone you saw her speak to in the exercise yard?’
‘Anything we did take will be in the archives.’
‘So we can start from there.’
Wilson stifled a yawn.
‘I need someone to look into her other contacts: the club, the circus, the landlady. Wilson, perhaps you can take charge of that this afternoon? You look good and lively.’ Wilson’s face turned sour but he said nothing. Primrose turned back to Bain. ‘How long is the range on that camera?’
‘About thirty feet. Any more than that and you lose detail in the developing.’
‘And did you do the mug shots or just the yard surveillance?’
‘Yard surveillance.’
‘Good, so hopefully no one will recognise you. Now, rumour has it that Christabel Pankhurst was in town on Thursday night. Mathers, can you make contact with the arresting officers in the Pankhurst conspiracy trial? It was April this year when Miss Christabel disappeared. She’s hiding out in Paris. Keep as close an eye as possible on any movements. I assume you have contacts in Paris?’
Mathers fixed him with a contemptuous look. ‘Of course.’
‘Keep an eye on the paper as well: Votes for Women. They’ve just launched another one, The Suffragette. Find out where Miss Christabel’s filing her articles from.’
Primrose turned his attention to the younger officer, who was looking slightly anxious that he hadn’t yet been dished a task. ‘Robert Jenkins, I have a very special job for you.’ Jenkins’s cheeks had a rosy flush at the best of times. But what Primrose said next turned the young man’s face the colour of beet.
Eighteen
Frankie stared at Jojo, the snake woman and the copper-haired boy for some time before any of them made a move. Finally Jojo gestured to her to take a seat. She scraped one of the chairs from the cabaret tables towards her and hesitated until Jojo sat down.
The snake woman continued to lean on the chair of the tied boy. ‘Do you know why I let you in?’ She turned her cool eyes on Frankie.
Frankie shook her head.
‘First I think we’d both like to know who she is,’ Jojo said. His voice had an indefinable gruff circus timbre, with notes of Lancashire, Birmingham, London.
‘She came looking for Ebony.’ The snake woman slid a hand into her silk pocket and pulled out a scrap which she tossed at Frankie. Frankie caught it, recognising her own calling card.
‘How did you . . . ?’ Frankie looked at the tied boy. ‘You were in her dressing room.’
The boy kept his lips tightly shut.
‘Is she here?’ Frankie watched them each in turn, their faces ruined in the harsh light. The snake woman’s make-up was fierce and thick. The boy had soft young cheeks but pointed features, halfway between cherub and rat. Up close his hair had lost its shocking flame and looked greasy and festering, his forehead was puckered as if he had all manner of things on the tip of his tongue he dared not say. The glare picked out patches of skin where Jojo’s fur had thinned and flecked with grey. He looked keenly back at Frankie, then his brow knotted into a frown.
‘No, she’s not here. I think Millicent thought you might be able to tell us where she is.’
Frankie stared at the snake woman, trying to picture her with the name Millicent. Millicent stared back, then raised both of her eyebrows rudely in defiance.
‘She was backstage last night,’ the boy murmured, gesturing with his chin towards Frankie. He had a Northern Irish accent, Belfast perhaps. ‘I saw her.’
Millicent grabbed him by the chin and forced his gaze into hers. ‘You’ll speak when you’re spoken to. You’ve done enough damage.’
His green eyes blazed. ‘Do you think it’s my fault she got away?’
Jojo put hi
s hand on the boy’s knee. ‘No one is blaming you.’
‘Then why have you fucking tied me up?’
‘Don’t curse in front of our guest,’ he said softly. ‘She’ll think we’re savages.’
‘I watched that sulky bitch for five days. I didn’t take my eyes off her. Ask her.’
Frankie nodded. ‘I saw him at the corset shop.’
‘And in the street. And at the theatre,’ the boy protested.
‘What were you doing at the corsetier’s?’ Jojo asked Frankie.
‘Interviewing Ebony. For an article.’
‘So you’re a journalist?’ She saw him glance briefly around his chamber, the tatty curtains and the flaking paint. ‘And you were at the Coliseum?’
Frankie nodded. ‘When Ebony vanished. She was there too.’
The snake girl shifted on her feet. ‘I knew the second I saw that so-called tiger that it was Ebony.’ She looked down at the boy who was starting to squirm in his binding, then with a sigh reached down and loosened his cords. He shook his hands free and rubbed his wrists. As he leant forward Frankie heard his neck crack.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Liam.’ His neck crunched again and he sat back.
‘How do you do?’ she muttered. The boy repeated the phrase without feeling. Frankie looked back at Millicent. ‘How did you know it was her? She done that before?’
‘Lots of times. She used to do it for the Stork brothers.’
‘He stole it from her,’ said Jojo. ‘That . . . whatever he’s calling himself. Great Foucaud. Billy Grayson. He used to travel with The Storks as a labourer. Tent peg boy. Now look at him.’
‘You could see though,’ the snake girl took over; ‘she hasn’t quite got the hindquarter movements right. Her back is crippled from the trapeze. She’s been pushed too hard.’ She flashed a glance at Jojo.
‘Is that how you know her?’ Frankie looked at Jojo. ‘From the circus?’
The Hourglass Factory Page 13
