The Hourglass Factory (19 page)

‘Who?’ asked Millicent.

‘You’ll find out. On the way I’ll teach you how to hop a tube fare.’

Liam met her eye with a scornful twinkle.

‘I meant her.’ She nodded at Millicent.

‘I already know how to do that,’ Millicent said curtly, raising the silk hem of her gown above the mud.

As the pavement narrowed towards Tottenham Court Road underground station, Liam fell behind and Frankie found herself walking abreast with Millicent. She caught sight of them both in a blackened
shop window and was startled for a moment by the odd burlesque of a respectable couple they made. Her suit and Millicent’s dress, watery in the reflection. Millicent was rambling on. ‘I
suppose I’d better call you Frankie. It suits you better than Francesca and far better than Miss George.’

Frankie sniffed briskly, ‘Fine by me.’

‘And you can call me Milly by the way. Millicent sounds like an old cobwebbed aunt you keep in a drawer. And no one ever called me that. Except Jojo. And my mother.’

Frankie was not surprised to see a new parlourmaid at the door to Twinkle’s flat. Her worried face peeped out from under a white bonnet, framed by dark curls. From down
the hall came a wailing sound, a rising and falling, like a dog singing opera.

‘I’m not sure she should have guests,’ the girl said. ‘She’s been like this since last night. Something about the papers.’

Frankie cursed under her breath. The girl’s arm was poised between the door and the frame and Frankie gently took her by the slim wrist and prised a path inside.

‘Please, miss,’ the maid cried. ‘Who should I announce?’

Frankie noticed with a cringe that as they passed Liam winked saucily at the maid.

She barged open the boudoir’s frosted doors, sending them cracking into the wall. Twinkle was sitting upright in her fur-covered bed, a satin turban binding her steel curls to her head. In
her fleshy hands she brandished a copy of the
Evening Gazette
, flapping it about, only pausing to point at chunks of text here and there. Her face was coated in a glaze of cold cream like
the wet finish on a ham. In the couple of days since Frankie had been there last, she had acquired a huge ginger tomcat who sat on the bed regarding the spectacle squarely with his fat face.
Frankie stood appalled while Milly’s eyes roamed round the paintings and sketches covering the walls. She saw Liam extend a wily hand towards the paste jewels on the bedside table and slapped
him back.

‘I was just looking,’ he hissed.

Twinkle didn’t notice. She was mid-soliloquy. ‘And there will be no recompense. None. He has even had a letter printed under his name, ugly name, Fox-Pitt, pointing out the errors in
the write-up of Lady Barclay’s masquerade. My chance, my chance to bring him to heel, and a mockery is made. Meanwhile Polly C. sits up there on the ladies’ page like daughter of the
duchess, bragging about her own eau de toilette . . .’ She stopped in her tracks. The muscles in her brow seized into a frown as she hooked her eyes onto Frankie. ‘I ought to spank your
bottom,’ came her low growl. ‘But something tells me your sort would like that.’

‘Twinkle, I can explain everything.’

‘The Aeolian Orchestrion? That’s what I get, is it? Replacing my column? The Aeolian Orchestrion? Let’s try wearing one of those for winter fashions, shall we? Parading Rotten
Row in the latest flattering fabric of wood and piano keys. I ought to strap you into the Aeolian Orchestrion and hope it drums some sense into you.’

‘I can explain.’

‘No need to, that grotty Stark man paid me a visit.’

‘Mr Stark? Came here?’ Frankie couldn’t conceal her surprise.

‘He thinks I should have you back as my diarist, I don’t know what you did to bribe him,’ she spat. ‘I know what happened. You and your deviant fantasies got the better
of you over that little trapeze artist.’ Frankie saw Milly out of the corner of her eye, looking at the ground.

‘Twinkle, Ebony Diamond’s disappeared. Vanished.’

Twinkle thrust the paper out as if it were a dagger. ‘Do you think I am blind? Do you? Do you think I don’t have eyes in my head, or hands to turn the page? I do read the paper. It
seems either she tricked that nasty little theatre man or he tricked her, none of them can agree.’ She waggled a finger. ‘It makes it even worse because now she’s disappeared what
was the bloody point in writing a portrait piece about her in the first place? Try copying the invisible woman’s outfits.’

Frankie snatched the rag off Twinkle and scrunched through the pages. Inside the cover was a long thin article with Teddy Hawkins’s byline below it. ‘Suffragette in Mystery
Kidnapping.’ She read aloud, ‘“Ebony Diamond, once hunger-striker of the notorious WSPU dramatically disappeared in the middle of her act at the London Coliseum on Friday night.
Eye-witnesses and sources at the theatre, quoted on the grounds of strict anonymity, say that the kidnapping was a revenge attack by Coliseum impresario Oswald Stoll, for monies she owed him, lent
to purchase costumes.” Is that what he thinks? Idiot.’ She read on. ‘“This strikes a further black mark against Stoll who has already seen two showgirls perish on stage, one
under the feet of an elephant, the other thrown from a horse.”’ Blood began to simmer in Frankie’s temples. ‘How dare he tell me my stories aren’t properly written and
then publish this?’

Twinkle shrugged, ‘No secret that Stark has never liked Oswald Stoll.’

Frankie let out a grunt of frustration.

‘Maybe she killed herself, and they covered it up.’ Twinkle shrugged again. ‘Showgirls and laudanum go together like gin and tonic.’

Frankie ignored her. ‘What about the others?’

‘There’s a copy of
The Times
in the hall. That new maid bought it by mistake.’

Frankie left the room for a second and came back with the paper hanging open. ‘Tragic accident at the Coliseum. Page two. Ebony Diamond savaged to death by tiger. Bones found.’

‘
Pall Mall Gazette
’s somewhere,’ Twinkle rummaged among the furs. Eventually she gave a groan and yanked it out from under her buttocks. Frankie took it and began
rifling through. The pages were still warm.

‘Page four. Suffragette Stunt Girl Mysteriously Disappears. Oswald Stoll looking like he’s in hot water. Murdered her and hid the body. This is all wrong. None of them were there,
none of them saw what I did.’

Milly leaned over her. There was a picture of Ebony in soft focus, sitting upright and smiling on her trapeze. ‘That’s an old one,’ Milly said gently. ‘Comes from the
Stork Brothers days.’

Twinkle, who had not yet acknowledged the two other people in the room, now peered closely at Milly with the same scrutiny she might have given to a specimen in a glass jar. She raised her eyes
up and down the loose gown, pausing on the stains, then looked into Milly’s chill blue eyes. ‘Who’s Scheherazade?’

Milly pressed a fine-boned hand into Twinkle’s gnarled one. ‘Millicent Barton.’ She smiled. ‘Also known as Salome but only when I’m performing. Apologies for the
stage get-up. I’ve just come from rehearsal.’ The charm worked. Twinkle looked at her curiously, as if she were having some kind of hubble-bubble pipe effect.

‘A showgirl? Another? Pussycat must be making a collection.’ She straightened herself, breathed out calmly and smiled, as if weighing up Milly’s value like jewels in a pawn
shop.

‘She’s from Jojo’s; she knew Ebony. And,’ Frankie grabbed a chair from near the window, ‘that’s why we’re here.’

As she pulled it close to the bed, Twinkle looked up, latched eyes on Liam and let out a yelp. ‘A man, in my bedchamber. Get him out, shoo!’

‘Hardly a man,’ Frankie muttered. ‘May I introduce Liam?’

Liam, who had been busy taunting the cat with a piece of ribbon, held off for enough time to open his mouth and reveal a browning grin. He took off his cap. ‘Pleased to meet you,
ma’am.’

It was too late. The teeth had done their work. ‘Absolutely not. No. He has to go.’

His face fell. Violence looked to be bubbling beneath his skin.

‘He’s my assistant. He’s learning phonography so I have to take him everywhere.’

Twinkle looked unconvinced. ‘Couldn’t Mr Stark afford to get him some new teeth? Fleet Street’s full of dentists.’

Liam looked on the verge of wresting the cat’s orange tail off.

‘Actually he’s our bodyguard,’ Frankie said. ‘Makes us fit in, you know, in the rougher parts of town. You said yourself Ebony Diamond was a circus girl. Can’t he
stay? Please.’

Twinkle sighed as if Frankie had just asked her to recite the book of Genesis. She fuddled with her bed furs and wouldn’t look at Liam. ‘He can sit in the parlour. Tell him to ask
that maid, what’s-her-name, Alice to bring him some tea. Nicely.’

Liam let out a bullish breath then tossed the ribbon to the floor and went out through the double doors.

Frankie pointed Milly to the chair and braced herself as she lowered her rear onto the furs. ‘This is important, Twinkle. That night I last saw you, you remember we were talking about
Smythe’s?’

Twinkle scowled. ‘That’s funny, I thought we were talking about Turkish baths for my column but I’ve already been proven wrong on that.’

‘Twinkle, please . . .’ Frankie pulled out her pocket-watch. It was getting late. She flicked a lock of hair out of her face and went on. ‘I told you I’d seen some men
going in there. Men in top hats, and you said that there was something about that place, something strange.’

Twinkle held up a hand. ‘I said nothing of the sort.’

‘You said that I might find out something I wished I hadn’t.’

‘That’s not to say it’s anything strange.’

‘I don’t have time for games. That night there was a suffragette demonstration down the street. The next morning Olivier Smythe was dead. Police say it was an accident. At least we
know they can’t say that about the girl wearing Ebony Diamond’s clothes who had her throat cut that same night, just outside the Rising Sun.’

Twinkle looked uneasy. The colour had drained from her cheeks and her eyes had hollowed. ‘I read about that girl. It’s a hazard of the job.’ She looked around her at the
paintings and fabrics, the spoils of her own career.

Frankie shook her head. ‘No, Twinkle, she wasn’t a punk, she worked for Smythe. I saw her in there that very day. She told me where to go looking for Ebony. She knew her. Now I want
to know, and you’re going to tell me, what goes on in that corset shop?’

Twinkle looked stubbornly down at her enormous cat. At last she closed one languorous eye and said, ‘It’s an underwear maker’s, Frankie. If it’s a conspiracy you’re
after, you’re looking in the wrong place.’

‘What were thirteen men doing going in there after hours? And what do you mean, conspiracy?’

‘How am I to know? Perhaps they rent the room above it for bridge? If you want to know what I think . . .’ she slowly trailed off. ‘No, of course you don’t.’ She
turned to Milly. ‘I give Puss my opinion every time she drops by, but she very seldom listens.’

Milly made a weak effort at a smile. ‘Miss . . .’

‘Twinkle.’ She fluttered her hand.

‘Very well. Miss . . . Twinkle. I know it might seem as if Ebony Diamond has run away from a debt, or had a fight with a theatre man. That seems to be the consensus of a few people I know.
She had an arrogant streak. But she was not a blackmailing, squabbling showgirl. A woman who starves herself for a cause doesn’t get into petty disputes with theatre men. There’s too
much at stake.’

Twinkle was silent for a long time, stroking the cat.

Frankie spied out of the corner of her eye a half-drunk gin bottle on the bedside table and dragged it towards her. She fumbled in a nearby cabinet until she found three mismatching frosted
glasses, then poured them each a generous round.

Twinkle knocked hers back in one. ‘I’m willing to forgive,’ she said huskily, ‘our mutual friend’s carelessness over the column I write with her. You know about
that, of course.’

Milly looked confused. Frankie bit her tongue and gulped her gin. She noticed Milly was pecking at hers like a bird, just wetting her lips.

‘But if I were you, I wouldn’t be round at the door of . . .’ she paused, ‘an old society girl asking stupid questions about corset shops. It seems to me there’s a
reason Teddy Hawkins is covering the big stories and you’re not.’

‘Oh leave it, Twinkle, he just makes it up.’

‘If you watched your tongue a bit more you might get further. Maybe he makes it up better than you. You can’t blame every failure on being a woman. I didn’t.’

‘That’s entirely different.’

‘Use your head, Frankie. You’re supposed to be a journalist. Who has the resourcefulness, the weapons, the opportunity and the militancy to do away with someone getting in their
way?’

Frankie carefully put down her gin glass on the bedside table and looked shiftily at Milly.

Twinkle rolled her whole head, swaying the turban precariously. ‘Where do seamstresses meet showgirls? Buckingham Palace?’ She gave another of her weary sighs, reached into her
bedside table and grunted as she rooted around, coming back with a pair of pince-nez and a stack of papers.

‘They’re in here somewhere.’ She rumpled through a heap of newspapers, tossing some of them aside. The cat looked as if it was thinking about making a play for them but either
it knew where its bread was buttered or considered the effort too great. Eventually she found what she was after.

‘Yes. Here. Isabel Kelley, broke into Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, via a skylight. 1909. Wonder where Miss Diamond acquired her Albert Hall idea. Emily Wilding Davison – she’s one to
watch out for – broke into Big Ben on the night of the census. A government building, Puss. Where they have guards on standby to watch out for those dynamite-wielding Irish like your little
friend out there.’

‘He’s . . .’

Twinkle cut her off. ‘Alice Paul, hid on the roof of St Andrew’s hall in freezing rain. Miss Philips, broke into an organ, two of them hid on top of Bingley Hall in Birmingham and
hacked slates off the roof to throw at Asquith. These are dangerous women, Puss. They have money, they have resources, they have wherewithal. To kill. To kidnap. To make someone
disappear.’