“What’d you get?”
I drew the poke from my pocket—the gold ring, six pounds and a few shillings in coins and notes, and a silver pocket watch. I examined it closely. There was a monogram,SRB, but that could be churched. Plate, not real silver, but Mr. Ardle would take it.
James picked up the gold ring. “I can’t believe these fools fall for you saying it gets tangled in your hair.”
“They’re not thinking with their brains,” I reminded him. “A few kisses and you’re all fools.”
He had thrown back his head and laughed. “You’re right, we are.”
It was the same laugh James was giving now, with Dick Yellen and the other men. Unreserved and buoyant and easy. Nearly everyone liked James, perhaps because he genuinely liked most people. He had more faith in them than I did. Then again, he didn’t grow up with a ma who made a fussy show of locking the door carefully at night, as if she wouldn’t open it later for Jack McShane. Who topped up the gin bottle with water, to make it appear she hadn’t been drinking all afternoon. Who looked shocked at coins missing from the tin cup, as if she hadn’t filched my meager wages for herself.
One last loud guffaw from the men and James turned away and pulled open the door. Unexpectedly, he turned and caught me looking. A roguish grin creased the skin at the corners of his eyes. With a quick lift of his chin in farewell, he closed the door behind him, leaving me rolling my eyes. He might work away from the Castle now, but he was the same as ever.
Chapter 4
The weather turned warm and humid overnight, and the next morning I woke sweaty under the bedclothes. Mary snored softly in her bed against the other wall. Trunk Lodging House could be stiflingly hot in the summer, but our coal stove kept us warm in the winter. Of the two torments, cold was the one you could die from.
I dressed quietly, carrying my boots into the stairwell, and on the way to Seamus Ardle’s shop, I stopped by the inn for tea and toast.
At eight o’clock, half the people in the taproom were like me, starting their day; the other half were still snoring off the previous one. I counted nine men asleep, with an arm flung across the table for a pillow—or face down on the wood. Some dark impulse made me kick one of the benches as I walked by, just to see the man lift his head, his eyes red and bleary, his cheek crosshatched with the wood grain and a knothole. He grunted and plunked his head back down, the other cheek on the boards this time. Well, he’d look balanced when he finally woke.
I headed to a table that held some of yesterday’s newspapers, glad to seeReynolds’son top. My father—the son of a schoolmaster—had taught me to read from its illustrated pages, and together we laughed at how they mocked the police, with a regular cartoon about Constable Jack Anapes spinning haplessly as thieves made off with pouches of loot. TheDover Chronicle’s headline wastragic maritime disaster!about a small French ship that had run into the shoals and capsized the previous day. The front page of theCanterburyJournalfeatured an orphanage that had burned to the ground, and the article made an impassioned plea for donations to rebuild. I refolded the pages, pleased at a newspaper doing some good in the world.
Under the last paper was a dog-eared penny dreadful, which I took for Sarah—though I had to be careful with what I brought her. A few months before, I had found her in our room weeping as fiercely as when Ma died. Panic stricken, I’d taken her by the shoulders. “Sarah! What’s the matter?” She held up a tattered yellowback, a cheap version sold in railway stations. The front showed the title:The Old Curiosity Shop. I’d never read it myself. “Little Nelldied, Kit!” Sarah wailed. “How could hedothat?” I’d released her and slumped against the wall, silently cursing Dickens and letting my heart settle back into its usual place.
“More?” Pat’s wife, Jane, asked, the pot ready to pour, and I nodded.
I sipped my tea—blessedly hot, though murky, from the bottom of the pot—and munched my toast, which Jane put before me with an extra pat of butter. When finished, I handed Jane my coin, and together we observed the snorers. “You think their wives miss them?” I asked.
“Nae, not at all,” she grunted. “Best they’re here, let their poor wives sleep of a Saturday morning.”
I laughed, thanked her, and headed out into the street, pausing on the pavement to let a costermonger cart pass, the wooden wheels clunking across the uneven cobbles, jouncing the crates of parsnips and potatoes inside. As Mrs. Dobbs, the cat’s meat woman, sang out “Meat! Meat!” from across the way, Mrs. Jonas’s tabby nearly tripped me up in his dash. I crossed the cobbles to Mr. Ardle’s shop, with its green-striped awning flapping against itself in the morning breeze, the wooden door carved with the letterA.
Ardle’s was one of three shops on the short street, occupying a building between a chandler and draper, and a role between a lawful pawn shop and an unlawful fence. The plate glass window was crammed with goods—lamps, dishes, gloves, hats, bottles, boxes, porcelain shepherds, maps, mourning bands, frayed books, bits of ivory, clothes, and an aspidistra that drooped in a pot shaped like an angel’s head—a tumble of items that would have been laid out neatly in a West End department shop. The shelves of Ardle’s were poorly lit, which gave an extra measure of delight when people stumbled across a treasure. Often, it was as surprising to Mr. Ardle as to themselves. He wasn’t a shrewd proprietor like his father. However, the Ardles had served Elephant and Castle for over thirty years, since before Silas Pike, and had earned Amelia’s loyalty, so his stock was constantly renewed by goods we brought him.
I knocked at the back door at half past nine and waited. Mr. Ardle was a solemn giant of about forty-five, stoop shouldered and ponderous, with a shock of brown hair turning gray, sad pale blue eyes, a horsey face, and a reclusive demeanor at odds with that of most of the Castle men. Unmarried and with no remaining family, he lived above his shop. Even with his spectacles, he couldn’t see well enough to do the fine handwork jewelry and watches required, so at Amelia’s suggestion, he’d hired me. Each Saturday, a wooden tray held rings with twisted prongs, bracelets with loose stones, watches that no longer kept time, ceramics that needed gluing. Some items I repaired were legitimately pawned, but most were poke, and I’d change out the stone from opal to garnet, say, or cleave a gold necklace into three bracelets, so it no longer matched the police’s descriptions of stolen goods.
At a rumble of thunder, I knocked again, louder. For God’s sake, where was he? I didn’t want to get drenched. At last, the lock clicked and Mr. Ardle opened the door. The emanating odor was the same as always—vinegar and linseed oil—but Mr. Ardle’s appearance most certainly wasn’t. He’d had his hair cut, and his overgrown beard and mustaches had been trimmed neatly by a barber. Instead of one of his old shirts, yellowed at the collar, he wore a crisp white new one and a jacket taken from the rack of finer clothes in the shop.
“Mr. Ardle,” I managed.
He gave me a nod.
With any other man in Elephant and Castle, I might have teased him about sprucing up for a woman. But I’d never seen Mr. Ardle with one. The last time I’d seen him neatly barbered, he’d inherited fifty pounds from an uncle.
“You look ... well,” I said.
A tentative smile stretched his mouth, revealing his front teeth. “I’ve had a bit of news.”
“Oh?” Another unexpected inheritance?
He didn’t elaborate, however, and after an awkward moment, I patted his arm. “Well, whatever it is, I’m pleased for you.”
I took my usual spot at the workbench in the back room, turned up the two lamps, and drew the tray of work toward me.
“The hands on that silver repeater ain’t turning proper,” Mr. Ardle said. “The rest, you’ll see the problem easy enough.”
“All right,” I said, and he moved away, leaving me to it.
