Page 102 of Guardian
Mr. Stiles thanked Sarah for her testimony and then turned to me. “Do you have anything else to add?” he asked.
Mr. Fuller cleared his throat, and I shot him a glance.
Mr. Stiles had set down his pen, and I couldn’t help but smile inwardly. He had no idea just how much I would be adding.
“Billy Winston is Maggie Wirth O’Connell’s cousin,” I said. Mr. Stiles picked the pen up and noted that down. “Do you know who Maggie Wirth is?”
Mr. Stiles’s mouth twitched. “Peggy Wirth’s daughter. She recently became the head of a thieving ring in Elephant and Castle, or so I’ve heard.”
Mr. Fuller stifled a chortle.
“Maggie raised Billy from the time he was little more than a child,” I said, “and he took lessons at her knee. Those two are cut from the same cloth.” Mr. Stiles’s face sobered as he took my meaning. “Twenty years ago, Maggie was transported for thievery, with her sentence doubled to fourteen on the word of another thief named Rose Pratt.”
That pulled Mr. Stiles up short. “Rose Pratt,” he echoed as he drew out his pocketbook and flipped through some pages, pausing at one. “She was murdered at the London South Western railway station five months ago.”
“Yes, she was,” I said, letting the words sit heavily in the air.
I felt Sarah go motionless beside me, but I fixed my eyes on Mr. Stiles.
Understanding lit his face.
“Maggie’s been back since March of this year,” I said. “If not before.”
As he jotted that down, I played my last card.
“Also, you’ll find one of the diamonds taken from the Hargrave necklace in a secret compartment in the goods room, which is on the first story of the Elephant and Castle.”
Mr. Fuller sucked in his breath; Mr. Stiles looked up, his pen frozen; Sarah whispered, “Kit.”
“Astonishment all around,” I observed.
Mr. Stiles sat back in his chair as if I’d shoved a hand against his chest, caving around the blow. “Well.” He blinked several times. “Where exactly?”
“It’s behind a panel on the wall to the right of the window,” I replied. “There are bottles of liquor and wine and glasses in it. I suggest you send someone promptly.”
He held his pen at the ready above the page. “Anything else?”
I looked at Sarah. Her face was full of questions for me, but she shook her head. “No,” I answered for us both.
He scribbled a few more notes and stood. “Thank you, Miss Jimeson.” He turned to Sarah. “And Miss Jimeson.” We rose, and as we reached the door, Mr. Stiles said, “Fuller, stay a moment, would you?” His voice had warmed, and he shut the door, so the two of them occupied the room alone. I hoped for Mr. Fuller’s sake that Sarah’s story was enough to earn him back some trust. Mr. Stiles’s trust seemed worth having.
Sarah and I walked down the short corridor to the entrance, Sarah murmuring, “Mr. Stiles was kind, but I’m glad that’s over.” We nodded goodbye to the desk sergeant, whose eyebrows had returned to somewhere close to their usual position, and stepped out into the cobbled yard and the weak sunshine. Three constables stood together by the single arch that led out to the street. I wondered if one of them would fetch us a cab. We couldn’t be on foot. Billy might guess where we’d gone.
“What should we do now?” Sarah asked. “We can’t go home, now that you told him enough to break the ring.”
“It won’t break the ring,” I said. “I asked Mary to warn Bea. She’ll be just the person to take it over, and she’ll have moved them. But Billy will have told Maggie we went to the police.”
“Oh, of course he will. Stupid of me.” Sarah chewed her lip. “Where can we go?”
This would not be easy.
I drew a breath. “We need to leave London.”
Her eyes widened and her jaw sagged, though she remained silent.
“You know how dangerous Maggie is, and I don’t know how far her reach extends. She found Amelia’s brother, all the way up in Bethnal Green. He got away,” I added hastily at her look of alarm. “But he’s left London for good.”
“What about Amelia?”
