The Housekeepers(15)

Miss de Vries smiled, a cold line. She lifted the sketches into the air, out of reach. “They’re good,” she said shortly, spreading them out on the dressing-room table, expression unreadable. “You’re a remarkable draftsman,” she said. “Or draftswoman, I suppose.”

Alice shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that, Madam.”

Miss de Vries’s eyes narrowed. “Nonsense. I can’t abide false modesty.” She pressed a finger to one of the pages. “This one. What would it take to make it?”

Alice felt a prickle of unease. “Make it?”

“Yes.” Miss de Vries tapped it with her nail. Alice went to the table, examined her own design. A gown with a waist strapped and laced, a fanciful and cloud-like train, shoulders that were mere skeins of thread, slipping off the skin. Something that would ripple when it moved. Something entirely unsuitable for a lady in mourning. Alice reached for the paper, to hide it. “I really shouldn’t have, Madam.”

Miss de Vries placed her fist on the table, holding the page in place. “Shouldn’t have what? Imagined something nice for me to wear?”

Alice shook her head. “They’re just scribbles, Madam. Silly drawings.”

“My dress is ghastly. It won’t do at all—I see that now.” Miss de Vries stepped back. Up close, at this angle, it was perfectly possible for Alice to inspect Madam’s skin, the tiny freckles and wisps of hair on the back of her neck. It made her gentler, more human. “I want something like this. Could you do it?”

“Me?” said Alice, in disbelief.

“They can help you down at Bond Street, I’m sure,” said Miss de Vries. “I suppose it’s simply a matter of stitching it all together.” She nodded at the sketch. “You’ve got your pattern, after all.”

Alice’s mind started ticking, assessing this for problems, for risks. Simply a matter of stitching it together? A dress like that would be a mountain of work, bigger than anything she’d undertaken before. She had the urge to go and seek Mrs. King’s advice.

“I’m not sure there’s time, Madam,” she said.

Miss de Vries looked straight at her. “You’ll be rewarded handsomely for your efforts, of course.”

That settled the matter.

7

Twenty-two days to go

There was a haze on the waterfront, a tissue-paper mist. The Thames smelled of brine and coal smoke. Mrs. Bone’s favorite factory sat between the sugar refinery and the India-rubber warehouse, on a road swamped with mud. Men struggled through it, getting swilled like pig food. Mrs. King wondered why they couldn’t take the other path. People should consider all their options, she thought dryly.

There was a villa attached to the factory, with high walls around the perimeter, and blood-colored glass in the windows. A wraithlike porter bolted the door behind her when she entered. She unpeeled her gloves. Better to meet this lot bare-skinned, knuckles out.

Mrs. Bone was standing in a dim-lit parlor, shutters drawn, drapes drawn, hands on her hips. “This is my inventions room,” she said, raising a warning finger. “No memorizing anything. I’ve got patents. Don’t even try.”

Old-fashioned lamps gave the room a rum-colored glow. There were flecks of paint and varnish everywhere, and rifles holstered to the walls. Guns, in all shapes and sizes. A striking choice in decoration. Mrs. King understood this impulse entirely. Mrs. Bone was just making a point.

The women were punctual: a good start. Hephzibah raced in like an emu, feathered and beaded, wig bobbing, eyes everywhere.

“Good to see you, Hephz,” said Mrs. King, going to embrace her.

“Is that a pudding trolley?” Hephzibah exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “Bring it here at once!”

Winnie steered her straight to the couch, giving Mrs. King an agonized expression. Long day, she mouthed.

Alice followed close behind, ducking a half curtsey and pecking Mrs. Bone on both cheeks, then kissing her hand.

Mrs. Bone had brought in a pair of housemaids in mismatched aprons. “You said you wanted my best girls. Here they are. Sisters,” she said. “Useful. They come as a pair. They’re called Jane.”

Mrs. King eyed them. These girls weren’t sisters. They were too deliberately alike, hair like broom bristles, squashed under their caps. Country girls, carted into town. They weren’t called Jane, either. Mrs. Bone always reserved rights of nomenclature.

“Worked in the circus, didn’t you, girls?” said Mrs. Bone. “I like my girls to have some capability,” she said, facing the room. “You learn all about mechanics when you work at the fair. And they’re entirely schooled—I always make sure of that. We all know our letters in this household.”

Mrs. King studied the girls. Eighteen, maybe nineteen, no older. She pictured them at the edge of a field, perched on a gate, scaring villagers. She could guess where they’d have ended up if Mrs. Bone hadn’t acquired them. A paid-for flat, somewhere off the Charing Cross Road, taking calls after dark. Girls like these, with no family to speak of, didn’t get shop work, or secretarial positions, or positions in decent houses. They got swooped on. Everyone knew that.

“We’ll differentiate between them somehow, Mrs. Bone. We can’t just call them Jane-one and Jane-two,” she said.

“That’s what I call ’em.”