Page 10 of Guardian
I slid out the drawer that held my tools. It had taken me months to find ones that suited my hands, smaller than Mr. Ardle’s great paws: pliers of different sizes, some with flat edges and others curved, tiny screwdrivers, a ring clamp, a holder, a sliding gauge, a prong lifter. A wooden box held spare springs and miniscule parts, false gems made of paste, glue, buttons, and thread.
Mr. Ardle’s shop didn’t open until eleven o’clock, so all was silent as settled dust. I bent over my work, my hands mending fine objects and my mind mulling problems that, for the most part, I couldn’t fix.
The rain spat on my umbrella on the way back to the inn. I flapped the black folds and pitched the wet mess into the dented tin bucket by the door. Mary sat at our usual table. The new thief, Cathy, sat with her, and in front of them stood a squat green teapot, three cups, a wooden board with cheese, and half a loaf of bread. I took the third chair and shifted out of my cloak as Mary poured my tea.
“How are you getting on, Cathy?” Mary asked as I tore off a piece of bread.
“Aye, all right, I think,” Cathy replied. “Fanny’s a fine jenny. I’m looking forward to working the theaters, though, rather than the shops. It’s where I come from—”
The front door swung open, hard, and we all turned. Bea entered the inn, alone, and headed straight up the stairs.
Mary set down the teapot with a thunk. “Where’s Josie?”
“Did you see her face?” Cathy asked, her voice tight. “Something’s the matter.”
I was already standing up from the bench.
The three of us hurried after Bea to the goods room, pushing open the door that stood ajar.
“What happened?” I asked.
Amelia looked over, her face emotionless. “Shut the door, Mary. Josie was caught. Bea’s just telling me now, yeah?”
“We were at Whiteley’s,” Bea said. “I was looking at brooches, and the clerk took three of them out, putting them on velvet. They were only silver plate; and when I started to leave, the clerk added more of silver. I went to the looking glass, and that’s when I saw a man near a pillar, standing too still.”
“A privy or a Yard man?” Amelia asked.
“I’d say a Yard man,” Bea replied.
“What did he look like?” I asked, my heartbeat uneven. By keeping silent about Pickford’s, had I put Josie in danger?
Bea considered. “Around forty, tall, thin, egg-shaped head, pale hair.”
Not the brown-suited man, I thought with some relief. He’d had dark hair, which could have been a wig, but he couldn’t change his height and weight.
“I gave a yawn and three pats.” Bea mimed the action, covering her mouth. “But Josie didn’t notice. She kept slipping brooches into her sleeve, and I yawned louder, and shestilldidn’t notice.” Bea’s voice was fretful.
Into my mind came the image of Josie in the practice room the day before, swinging the walking stick. Her boldness and bright spirits stood her in good stead most of the time, but sometimes she verged on reckless, which is why, after one outing, I’d refused to be her jenny.
“Go on,” Amelia said to Bea. “What happened next?”
“I dropped my parcel, and this time she noticed, but she could hardly put the brooches back. I stood at the counter for another few minutes, raising a fuss to give her time to get away, but the Yard man went straight after her, and he and a constable dragged her back to the store. I left, turned my cloak, threw my parcels in a bin, and came straight here.” Bea’s face was tight with worry. “She never looked at me, not once,” she added softly.
Amelia paced to the window, her habitual serenity slipping. “Damn,” she whispered under her breath.
If the police found the brooches, Josie would be tried within days; if convicted, she could serve up to four years. Amelia could produce eyewitnesses who would swear to Josie’s character, insist it was her first time thieving, call into question the veracity of the plainclothesman or constable, and even suggest the goods had been planted on her. But paying witnesses carried its own risks, and two police testimonies were harder to refute than one.
“Did she have time to shift the brooches?” Mary asked. The police might know about the thieving pocket, but no matter how avid a copper was, even he wouldn’t grope a woman’s skirts in a West End shop. He’d likely take Josie to the station or the Yard, and on the way, Josie might have a chance to tear the bottom of the long pocket to ditch the poke. If they didn’t find it, they couldn’t convict.
“I don’t know.” Bea looked at Amelia. “What do we do?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Amelia said evenly as she retrieved her reticule from a drawer.
We all knew Amelia kept a mental ledger of allies and spies across London—some inherited from Patty Wirth, others gathered over the past fifteen years: politicians, theater managers, judges, barristers, doormen at gentlemen’s clubs, heads of gambling rings, gaolers at Newgate, clerks at the Old Bailey, even costermongers and sweeps. She kept a special fund for the rare instance when one of us was nabbed. In Josie’s case, I assumed Amelia would distribute bribes to the necessary officials, though none of us knew their names, or the cost, or any of it. It certainly wasn’t written down.
Amelia left, and the four of us soberly filed down the stairs after her. Cathy said something about it being rotten luck, and Mary assured Bea that Amelia would manage it; she always did.
My thoughts, however, had leapt to my own narrow escape. What were the chances of two of us thieves being caught, or nearly caught, in two days, by plainclothes? Unease ran like heat down my spine. Something had changed, and it wasn’t just the number of constables.
