The Hourglass Factory

by Lucy Ribchester

  ‘Who’s CH?’ Primrose demanded.

  The man was chewing the flesh of his cheek. ‘Yeah, his wife was in again just half an hour ago. She come in earlier today as well, but they hadn’t told her neither. Not that there’s any reason they would but for a transfer of this kind . . . Of this nature, I mean.’

  ‘Dammit, what do you mean?’

  The officer looked shocked, then affronted, then reproachful. Primrose looked around to see that the people beside him had fallen silent. Blood swam to his cheeks. He leant towards the officer, close enough to smell the man’s soap. ‘Tell me where the prisoner has been taken. I have a murder investigation dependent on it and a warrant for his release.’

  ‘Release?’ the man snorted. ‘That’s a laugh. You’ll have a fine time trying to get him out of there.’

  ‘Out of where?’

  The man squared Primrose in the eye. ‘Colney Hatch. Lunatic Asylum. Governor signed the warrant just after lunch. Should have seen his wife’s face, she was almost as hysterical as you, Inspector.’ He coughed quietly.

  Primrose said nothing but as his hand slammed into the officer’s desk he startled even himself.

  Twenty-Seven

  Jojo’s was dark and cavernous, the only light coming from candles shielded in hurricane lamps or jugs, giving off a warm oily smell and a glow like dirty moonlight. Frankie had spent the last few hours in a Turkish coffee shop round the corner, drinking a thick brew that Milly had ordered for her, and trying to separate in her heavily caffeinated mind each of the facts she had learned.

  Someone had attacked and killed Annie Evans on Thursday night. The same evening, a black corset was laced with poison ivy, and Olivier Smythe had tried it on. Ebony Diamond’s equipment had been booby-trapped at the Coliseum on Friday and she had second-guessed it and escaped. She knew that Ebony was afraid Annie had been mistaken for her, but could it be possible that Ebony was the only target for both deaths? That phrase she had used, sitting outside on the pavement, ‘nine lives’. Did she already know that two were gone?

  Then there were the poisons. Cocaine drops could be easily sourced from a druggists, but poison ivy, John Bridewell had said, was a rare botanical. So that meant someone with a hothouse or access to an exotic garden. But the murderer would also have needed access to Olivier’s corset shop and the Coliseum. And she couldn’t for the life of her see how a cabinet minister could have either. A suffragette on the other hand . . .

  And then the brooch. One image had been permeating Frankie’s thoughts for the past while. Ebony holding up a brooch in the gaslight before hurling it at Smythe. She had yelled something too, but Frankie couldn’t remember what. There were too many open questions, and she was certain now of where the answers had to lie.

  She was grateful to Milly when a waiter came over and slapped a plate of chops down in front of her. They were grizzled little things, more fat than meat, but they soaked up the gravy and she hadn’t had a proper meal for two days. She bent her head and tucked in. Halfway through, she felt eyes on her, looked up and jumped. Liam had silently taken the other seat at the table and looked like he had been staring at her for some time.

  ‘Can I have one of those?’ He pointed to the remaining chop.

  An emptiness tugged at Frankie’s stomach but she looked into his pasty freckled face and nodded. He pulled the plate towards him and picked the chop up by the bone, rubbing it in the leftover gravy, concentrating on peeling every fibre of meat off with his front teeth. She was about to open her mouth to ask where he had been, when a compère in a top hat and tailcoat threw back the turquoise curtains with his cane and the audience began to applaud.

  The show got off to a sorry start. There were some fire jugglers and a man who talked in rhyme. The patrons knew when to laugh and when to coo and were mostly men grouped at tables clutching mugs of ale. A few had bored-looking women seated on their laps, fondling the men’s hair. Cups of cocoa laced with whisky, gin and absinthe were being offered for a ha’penny, and the monkey capered around with an upturned hat collecting donations.

  Next came a contortionist who claimed to play the piano with her feet but made a bad job of simulating Strauss on a pianola, and a woman with a talking raven, that looked suspiciously like a parrot inked black, and that she’d taught to say ‘Fanny Fairbrass fucked a Frenchman’. They brought out a man who had allegedly been fasting for thirty-four days. He staggered onto the stage, the hollows of his eyes gazing outwards.

  Frankie was beginning to grow anxious, and withdrew her pocket-watch from her jacket, but the candlelight at her table was too dark for her see the face. She was about to poke Liam and ask him the time when there came a crackle from beyond the wings and the floor filled with the sickly choke of incense. The footlights flickered to black. Two tiny glows became visible in the mist. From a gramophone in the corner a hard nasal drone struck up and down, jogging and scratching as the record settled. Drumbeats joined in, crisp and fast. It was like nothing Frankie had heard before. As the footlights slowly came back up she could see Milly shrouded in a long translucent purple veil, clutching in each hand a candle in a small glass like a milk bottle. The men stopped their carousing. Laughter faded.

  Milly swayed from side to side, snaking her arms out until the veil dropped away and the candles in her hands seemed to stretch far from her. Her belly was naked – except for a small chain of tumbling bells that rang in time to the music – and looked as supple and soft as pale clay. Trinkets and pearls dripped from her hair. Clasping her hips tight were a selection of scarves – some fringed, some with shells or pearls dangling and running towards the pantaloons that puffed round her feet in the light breeze of her movement. Her breasts were enclosed in a top of rippling silk that ran the length of her arms and floated to points beneath her wrists. In and out of the smoky light her face ebbed, and when she paused to place down her candles Frankie saw the expression on it, her brows set firm, her soft proud cheeks calcified with a determination that extended into her pale eyes. She looked almost frightening.

  A boy emerged with a basket and Frankie’s nerves began to prickle. She looked around the room and saw Jojo staring at Milly, concentrating.

  Slowly Milly reached down and pulled from the basket her snake, wrapping it first round her waist while she tilted her hips, then letting it weave up her arms until its face found her throat. The licking of its forked tongue was enough to give Frankie the horrors; she fancied she could see its black eyes catch the light even from a distance. The compère spoke up. ‘And now, Miss Salome from Cairo, Egypt, will swallow her serpent.’

  ‘Where on earth did you learn to do that?’

  ‘I told you, Cairo.’ Milly was still dressed in harem pants but had thrown on top of them a silk gown and a periwinkle cloak. Her greasepaint had been taken off in haste and she still smelled faintly of cold cream.

  ‘Yes, but not everybody who goes to Cairo comes back swallowing snakes and dancing the hoochie-coochie. I could come back from France and I wouldn’t know how to make Swiss cheese.’

  ‘Swiss cheese is Swiss,’ Liam said.

  ‘You shut it,’ Frankie spun to him. ‘What have you been doing all day, anyway? Apart from brushing up your cheese knowledge.’ She watched his little twig of a hand prise open the greasy pocket of his wool jacket, then withdraw from it a fragile wisp of paper folded into quarters. He paused under a streetlight and with great ceremony untucked the paper and smoothed it into his palm. Frankie bent over him, breathing in his sour odour. The paper was a playbill capped by inch-thick letters and a swirling ribbon. ‘Englebert Fink, Travelling Curitorium and Big Top.’

  She took a step back. ‘Oh. Enjoy yourself, did you? Don’t suppose you won me a little tweeting bird in a cage? While I was off at the morgue and she was taking tea with Boadicea’s barmy-army, you were having a nice time up Hampstead Heath, were you?’

  Liam waited until she had finished and he had her in his needling eye. Then he pointed to a picture of a man on the flyer, g
rossly overweight, with rolls of fat waterfalling down to his knees. ‘That’s her Da.’

  Frankie peered at the drawing, remembering the postcard propped against Ebony’s dressing table, the strong man in the leotard. ‘I thought her dad was a strong man.’

  ‘He was. Attila the Hungarian. Not any more.’

  She looked closer. Underneath the picture of the man was written the word ‘FATTILA’.

  ‘So what?’ she said. ‘You find her?’

  ‘Not this time. But she’s there.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know for certain. But it was better than following you around for the abuse you give me. I should report you to Dr Barnardo.’

  Frankie blew spittle between her lips. Liam folded the paper again and they resumed walking. ‘I thought she cut her ties with the circus,’ she said.

  Liam threw up his hands. ‘There’s a lot of circuses. They don’t blacklist you just because you ditch one. Besides, I told you, her Da is there.’

  They reached a crossing and stopped to let a pirate bus amble past. Frankie turned back to Milly. ‘Anyway, you still haven’t told me where you learned – that.’ Milly sighed and picked up pace as the traffic cleared.

  ‘You don’t really believe I swallow it, do you? You saw the silk top I wear. There’s a pocket that runs up to my throat. It’s a trick of the light. It’s so dark in there and the men are so drunk they wouldn’t know the difference. I’m not so cheap I’ll risk my life for the money he pays.’

  ‘What about the dancing?’

  ‘Nobody dances with snakes in Egypt. They’re as petrified of them as you are. But that’s not what Jojo’s idiots want to believe.’

  ‘But where did you learn?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘I’ve heard enough far-fetched tales these past few days I’ll believe anything.’

  ‘A hammam.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A Turkish bath.’

  Frankie blinked, thinking of the contraption in Twinkle’s room.

  ‘I told you you wouldn’t believe me. The women would dance in the baths. It’s very sociable. We’re alone, it’s the chance to gossip. Sometimes they have sweets, pipes.’

  ‘You learned to dance in a bath?’

  ‘It’s not like a gem-wood cabinet. It’s a bath house. Anyway that’s only half of it. The rest’s too long a story. Are we going to walk the whole way to this damned corset shop?’ She stopped again, puffing her cheeks out.

  ‘It’s not far. Come on, it’s late, they might already be gone.’

  ‘Who?’ Liam asked.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  It took a quarter of an hour to reach New Bond Street. The streets were busy, despite it being Sunday. Revellers spilled out of the Music Halls as they drew closer to Oxford Street. Down Regent Street a muted glow came from the restaurant rooms in the hotels, and doormen in livery stood rubbing their hands, watching cold breath drift from their mouths. As they walked through Hanover Square the shops and hotels gave way to fashionable townhouses and the streets grew dark and quiet, drapes drawn in first-floor parlours.

  Frankie halted on the corner of Brook Street. She pointed at Liam. ‘You’re going to be look-out. Me and her are going in. Understand?’

  Liam blew out smoke from a cigarette he had acquired en route. ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t argue. There’s . . .’ She stopped as footsteps behind them drew heavy and close. A low melancholy whistling and the bulky outline of a policeman crossed their paths. He paused, surveyed the trio and tipped his hat at Milly. ‘Mister, Miss.’ He glanced at Liam, then kept walking.

  Frankie let her breath out. ‘God, we could almost pass for a respectable couple if it wasn’t for Fagan’s valet.’

  Liam fired the cigarette at Frankie’s shoe, showering it in sparks.

  Milly was looking across the street. ‘What are you hoping we’ll find in there?’ Her voice clouded on the cold air.

  Frankie followed her gaze. She could just make out the lines of the shop front, the curved window with its dainty square panes and the discreet ‘Closed until further notice’ sign hanging in front of a black drape inside the door. She thought of the last time she had ventured inside, the smell of linen and Mr Smythe’s eyes on her thick waist. ‘I don’t know. But we won’t find it looking in from the outside.’

  Frankie glanced to her left where the painted doors of the Maid in the Moon were padlocked shut. She turned to Liam. ‘If you stay over there, we’ll shout if we need you.’

  Liam jammed his hands into his jacket pocket, and pulled his cap low on his head. As they started across the street he whistled. Frankie turned.

  ‘Hey, want me to dip any pockets for you while I’m waiting?’ He saw the alarm in her eyes and burst out laughing.

  A fresh needle of irritation pricked her but she brushed it off and walked on, trembling inside, heart thumping. Bond Street was near empty, but further down a few of the hotels had their lobby lights on and carriages idled outside. A clock chimed half past eleven and was answered shortly by another from the opposite direction.

  Frankie looked up at the windows on the first floor. The curtains were drawn but there was a very faint bronze glow slicing the middle. They could hear sounds of muted conversation coming from upstairs. Frankie raised a brow at Milly.

  As they approached the front door Frankie touched Milly’s wrist and pointed with her chin towards Lancashire Court. Passing the shop window, they caught a glimpse of the inside. Corsets hung in uneven rows from the ceiling, like dismembered torsos in a butcher’s shop.

  The alleyway was wet and dark but they found the back door easily. Frankie wrapped her palm round the brass handle. It was icy cold and creaked as she turned it. It stalled. She gestured to Milly to stand behind her and angled her shoulder to the door in preparation to force it.

  ‘No,’ Milly hissed, pulling her back. She began fumbling in the pile of fine gold hair under her hat and pulled out a hairpin. ‘This is surveillance, not an ambush.’ Bending towards the lock she wiggled the pin until they heard a small snap like a twig breaking. ‘Need another,’ she mumbled reaching up into her hair again. She pulled out a second pin and jammed the first one up, wriggling the other until she heard the click she was looking for. Turning, her lips spread into a wicked grin. ‘My nanny used to lock me in the attic if I was bad.’

  Frankie grunted and moved past her to open the door. Immediately, the smell of dust and fabrics drifted out, sweet cotton on musty air. Frankie recognised the back passage of the shop from before, a pitch-black lobby, the feel of a velvet curtain on one side and a staircase on the other. Gently, Milly touched aside the curtain and a wedge of streetlight from beyond the windows lit up the front chamber of the shop. She ran her eyes down the rows of hanging corsets, braced open with wooden pegs and wire frames and gave a shudder.

  ‘Good lord, I’m glad my nanny didn’t know about this place. She used to lace me up like she was stuffing a divan.’

  Frankie peered into the space beyond the curtain. Suddenly something touched her wrist, silky, almost alive in texture. She jumped and looked round to see a padded mannequin, headless, its midriff covered in a dark turquoise bodice piped with French lace. Her hand reached out curiously to caress the silk. It felt like oil under her fingertips. Milly flicked the hard, brittle catch of whalebones with a fingernail.

  ‘I will never understand Ebony’s passion for stays. I burned all mine.’

  They pushed the mannequin out of the way and moved towards the stairs, a jute carpet underfoot absorbing the sound of their tread. Overhead they could hear the irregular lilt of trodden floorboards. The staircase had a high Dutch feel to it, almost vertical in its steepness as if it would reach right up into the attics of the building. They had reached halfway when a loose board made a pitching groan as Frankie’s weight bore down on it. She felt her breath seize. Milly’s cool fingers wrapped round her wrist. No one stirred on the uppe
r floor and they continued on.

  At the top, light was coming from a keyhole on the left and from under the doorframe on the right. Voices carried from both sides; laughter and the gentle chinking of ice or teaspoons on saucers.

  With her fingertips in front of her, hearing the seashell thrashing of blood in her brain, Frankie moved towards the keyhole. A fine ghostly finger of light extended towards her. She could feel Milly’s breath on the back of her neck. As she drew closer she crouched to the keyhole’s level, braced her hand against the wood and put her eye down low to the gap. A small portion of the room came into focus. She let her eye adjust to the light, and her mouth gaped.

  At first it looked like a plain storage room, bare wooden floorboards, brick walls painted in a thin coating of white lime. A curtain hung unevenly over the window. Beside it a candle flickered in a hurricane lamp, firing shadows up the walls. To the left stood a rack of flesh-coloured corsets, thick with buckles and rivets, more like surgical braces. Over on the right stood a tailor’s dummy, pale wood at the belly revealing where it had been gouged to narrow the waist. A garment of beaten metal was strapped to it, a lattice of worn steel tightly clasping the wooden bosom. Squinting at it Frankie saw that it wasn’t only the shape that held it to the wood but each join in the lattice had a sharp stiletto protruding inwards, making a deep wound in the dummy’s chest. It reminded her of something she had read about in a book passed behind the privies at school, an iron maiden. Only snugger, tailor-made. Her gaze rose to see hanging above the dummy something that looked like a trapeze, fixed on both sides by thin lengths of rope, immobilising it so that it couldn’t swing. Frankie had seen one of those before too at her convent school. A lacing bar. The wearer would stand with their arms aloft while someone else laced them in, the stretch allowing for a tighter pinch.