Ripped (24 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

Fisticuffs and Sore Feet say the Bells along Fleet Street

A
s
ix-minute walk
down Hanbury and around the corner brought the three teenagers to the waiting carriage. The coachman sat dozing on the bench overhead, snoring loudly. Inside the carriage, Toby and Collin settled into the leather seat across from Katie, their backs to the coachman. Ladies always faced forward in carriage compartments due to their delicate constitutions.

Toby signaled the driver by rapping on the roof with Collin's umbrella, and a moment later, the carriage lurched forward down the street, joining the procession of horse-drawn vehicles sweeping west toward The Strand.

“Got your pocketknife handy, mate?” Toby asked Collin. “Left mine at home in case I was searched at the inquest.”

As the four-wheeler rumbled along, Toby opened the rucksack Mrs. Richardson had given him for safekeeping and made a careful inspection of Georgie's shirt, waistcoat, and cap. Then his boots.

“Every Cockney within earshot of the bells of St. Mary Le Bow hides a bit of the ready in his daisy roots,” Toby explained, turning over the worn boots. “Me mum, er,
my
mother,” he corrected himself, “kept her baptism certificate in the heel of her roots.”

Collin handed Toby his pearl-handled pocketknife.

Toby snapped it open and slipped the three-inch blade gently between the heel and welt of the boot. He gave a slight flick of his wrist and the heel cantilevered outward like a Chinese puzzle box.

Nestled inside were three bright copper pennies.

Katie leaned closer. The boots looked like her favorite Doc Martens back home, but with a cuff of canvas folded over the top, tied with rawhide laces. Nails rimmed the sole from heel to toe. They even smelled like Doc Martens. A blend of saddle leather and wet dog.

Toby did the same flick of the wrist with the sharp blade, and the heel of the left boot slipped outward. This time Toby pulled out a ticket stub.

“What is it?” Katie asked, eyebrows raised.

“Pawnbroker's stub. Looks like we hit the jackpot.”

“I say! Good show, old boy!” cried Collin. “But, er . . . how does this help us . . . exactly?”

“We know two things,” Toby answered, his voice low. “First: The person who pummeled Georgie near to death in Mrs. Richardson's kitchen yesterday wasn't a bleedin' Cockney or he'd have checked his roots. Second: Whatever we find at the pawnshop is probably connected to the murder of Mary Ann Nichols. Something Georgie found on or near the dead girl, more 'n likely. Some sort of evidence, perhaps. And if Georgie pawned it, it must be valuable, else he'd have left it alone. Not like Georgie to steal from the dead. I'll bet you a touch me on the knob, it's shepherd plaid.”

“Huh?” Katie blinked at him.

“Bet you a bob—a shilling—it's shepherd plaid. Bad. Whatever we find is not going to be good.”

“But if Georgie Cross is a thief,” Collin harrumphed, “stands to reason he's a murderer as well. We should let the police do their work. When they find Georgie, they'll chuck him into Newgate Prison and throw away the key. Has it coming, I'd say.”

“Just cuz he bloody nipped something, doesn't make him a criminal.”

Collin bristled. “Yes, it does!”

“Not in my book, mate. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Cockneys are bound by different rules of honor.”

Collin's eyebrows shot up like little red pup tents. “If the boot fits, might as well wear it. This boy, Georgie, stole something from Mary Ann Nichols and murdered her to get it.”

Katie glanced out the carriage window. The pawn ticket might provide a clue like Toby said, but they still had to find Jack the Ripper before he attacked Dora Fowler, Lady Beatrix, and the others.

“Where to next?” Collin asked. “To the pawnbroker's? That would be a ruddy adventure! Never been to a pawnshop.”

Toby scowled. “That's because you've never been down and out, mate, or you'd be as familiar with ‘me uncle's store' as you are with caviar and oysters.”

“Your uncle owns a pawn shop?” Collin asked, incredulously.

“It's just an expression, Collin. Everyone calls pawn shops ‘me uncle's store' like it's all in the family and whatnot.”

“Really? What fun!” Collin rubbed his hands together like a gleeful kid on his first excursion to see lions at the zoo. He pounded the ceiling of the coach with his umbrella handle, slid open the trap door, and shouted directions to Stebbins, the driver. “Move on, man! Move on! We've work afoot!”

Katie laughed.

“What?” Collin caught her eye.

“You sound like Sherlock Holmes.”

“Sherlock who? Oh yes, right. Dr. Doyle's story about a detective, wasn't it?”

Katie remembered that
A Study i
n Scarlet
, the first Sherlock Holmes story, had only just come out.

“Right-oh,” Collin said. “Onward and upward to the pawn shop.”

Toby stared at Katie, his dark eyes intense. “Have you read
A Study in Scarlet
by Dr. Doyle?”

“Of course! It's one of my favorites. I love all—” Kate stopped in midsentence. “It's one of my favorite short stories.”

“Mine, too.” Toby's eyes bore into hers.

Katie smiled. She couldn't help herself. “I predict that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will write many more stories . . . all bestsellers . . . for years to come.”

“
Sir
Conan Doyle?” Collin said incredulously. “The bloody fool hasn't been knighted. Not that I'm aware of. His wife, Touie, and Beatrix are chums.”

“But he
will
be knighted, won't he?” Toby blinked at Katie.

“Are
you
bloody clairvoyant, too?” Collin glanced from one to the other.

“If the . . . boot fits . . . wear it,” Katie said, staring back at Toby with unwavering, twinkling eyes.

Toby tore his eyes from hers.
Bloody hell!
he thought to himself. Katie's laugh was magical, her smile like golden sunshine. The girl was a menace. He folded his arms across his chest, and scowled at the scenery passing by outside the carriage window.

Crack!
went the coachman's whip as the four-wheeler barreled steadily east toward Billingsgate. Toby tried hard not to think about the American girl sitting across from him. He lowered his window and continued staring morosely out as they jounced along cobbled streets heading for Pudding Lane where the Great Fire of London had started two centuries before.

Crack!
went the coachman's whip a second time as the carriage rattled through the mist along Thames Street, passing warehouses and sugar refineries, until the road divided. The carriage skittered to a halt in front of a bustling market street full of secondhand shops.

Katie craned her neck out the opposite window, mesmerized by what she saw. The street opening up before her was the image of Diagon Alley from Harry Potter, with the same crowded, bustling air. That could be the Leaky Cauldron over there; the Owl Emporium across the street; Gringotts Bank up ahead. Katie smiled, happy just to be here. It felt as if she were in a movie. Any minute magical creatures would stare back at her.

Instead, when they descended from the jiggling carriage and hastened down the busy cobbled street, Katie saw shop windows displaying fishing rods, bird cages, blankets, bottle openers, pots, pans, knives.

Across the street a plump woman, bundled up in several shawls, cried out: “Penn'orth of needles! Get yer penn'orth of needles right here! H'penworth of buttons, farthingworth of thread! Step right up!”

They moved past a linen-draper and haberdashery, and Katie was over the moon. It looked exactly like Madam Malkin's Clothing Shop for Wizards! Katie wondered if J. K. Rowling had traveled back in time as well. Is this where she got her ideas for all the magical shops in Diagon Alley?

Katie tugged at Toby's sleeve. “Where are we? What's this place called?”

“Billingsgate Market.”

Katie felt disappointed.

“What's the name of the street?” she persisted.

“No proper name. It's called Diagonal Alley by folks around here, on account of it's a diagonal to the Market Square and the quay—”

“I knew it!” Katie made a fist and punched the air. “Rowling must have studied olden-day Victorian photographs.”

“Olden day?”

“Er, I mean present-day, black-and-white photographs.”

Collin scratched his chin. “What other types of photographical picture images would there be?”

“Perhaps some day there'll be photographs taken that show vivid colors. The green of your waistcoat, Collin. The deep blue of the sky.”

The two boys stared at her.

As they walked farther along, the lane narrowed considerably and Collin managed to step in a saucer-size mound of dung.

“Bloody hell!” he cried, tugging his patent leather shoe from the muck with a squishy sound. “I say, Toby, this is rawther an unfashionable destination, don't you think?”

“You were expecting moneylenders to put up shop in Grosvenor Square?”

“Well, rich people have to pawn their goods, too, I shouldn't wonder,” Collin chortled, scraping his sodden shoe against the cobbled stones at the curb. “
Especially
after a bad round at the races.”

Minutes later they passed the customs-house quay and emerged in front of a market square that loomed like a crumbling Roman coliseum, all heavy puddingstone and cracked archways leading down a long thoroughfare of secondhand stores.

Collin jabbed his umbrella into the air. “I say, I don't much care for these coarse, cheap shops.”

“
Disce aut dicede
,” Toby muttered in Latin.

“Learn or depart?” Collin asked.

“More like shut up or leave,” Toby answered.

“To that I say,
Jedem das Seine
. To each his own. I'll stick with my posh West End shops, you can have this assortment of . . . of . . . rabble.”

“It's a deal, mate, if you'll just hold your gob. There's thieves aplenty in the side alleys. You'll be spotted for a proper toff with loads of the ready, make no mistake. Keep your voice down.”

The winding lanes were narrowing, making it impossible for carriages to pass. The only horse Katie could see was a bone-thin mare tied to a post up ahead. Branching left and right were pathways and shadowed alleys filled with children playing, dogs barking. And everywhere bells could be heard jangling against the door jambs of secondhand shops selling old clothes, old jewelry, and other wares of all kinds.

Katie took a deep breath.

From the hay and straw market to the east came the pungent smell of alfalfa and clover and fresh-cut grass. The biggest difference between her century and this one was the smell of horse dung and hay. She blinked and glanced around.

Reflecting off shop windows, scattered glints of sunshine threw brilliant colors of fractured light on an amazing array of tangled fishing rods, crooked birdcages, faded blankets, bent corkscrews, old doll houses, and jars full of mismatched buttons. In the milliner's window on the corner, bolts of crimson silk glistened with a lustrous, blood-red sheen.

Crisscrossing the busy, narrow street scurried all manner of dock workers, oyster-boatmen, market porter lads, serving maids, shop girls, paupers, and common people. Lean-to sheds were piled high with coal; wheelbarrows brimmed with potatoes and oysters; and tea dens reeked of fried fish and grease-soaked chips. Outside the Boar's Head tavern, a man in an ankle-length leather apron stood hunched over a kettle-drum cauldron, spearing sausages that sizzled in the fire-flame depths, luring passersby with its strong, smoky aroma.

Katie's stomach growled.

“Fancy a bit o' beef stew or hot eel soup?” Toby asked.

The thought of eel soup made Katie's insides lurch, but she was so hungry, she hastily nodded and pointed to a stall where potatoes lay roasting on red-hot coals in a stone pit.

Toby scooted across the lane.

Katie could hear him haggling over the price, and a moment later, Toby returned with three piping-hot potatoes wrapped in newspaper. They sat down on a cobbled stoop below a scrawny tree and unwrapped their prizes. The potatoes had been smile-sliced end to end, the mouthlike opening brimming with melted cheese and grilled onions.

“Potato pasties for your pleasure.” Toby gave a little nod.

Collin glanced down at his lunch, wrapped in days-old newspaper, scowled gloomily, and set it on the hump of a bulging tree root. But Katie, knowing that the burnt-toast smell of the baked potato would eventually lure him in, decided to hasten things up by making exaggerated “mmmmmm-goood” sounds as if she'd never tasted anything so delicious in her life. And the potatoes
were
delicious. In no time at all, Collin succumbed. He snatched up his steaming potato in its ink-smeared newspaper, blew on it several times, and began devouring it with gusto.