The Housekeepers(36)
Mrs. King’s concentration broke, and she accidentally gave herself a paper cut, a fine, long trail across the tip of her forefinger. She sucked it quickly, and left a stain on the letterhead. A pale, pinkish watermark. Signed in blood.
“You’re the cleverest,” she said. “What do you think?”
Winnie’s eyes brightened. “It should be something grand, something with meaning. What about the Fishwives of Paris? Or the Monstrous Regiment? Or the Army of Boudicca?”
“We’re not fishwives, we’re housekeepers.”
“We were housekeepers,” Winnie replied, hotly. “We’re not anymore.”
“You shouldn’t forget where you come from,” said Mrs. King thoughtfully. She took out her pen, signed the first letter with a flourish. “The Housekeepers will do nicely.”
At sunset they carried the sacks to the postbox, frog-marching the postman down the lane with one of Mrs. Bone’s stony-faced guards.
Winnie patted her sack as it was borne away from her hands. “Godspeed,” she murmured.
Mrs. King glanced at her. “You’re enjoying this.”
Winnie considered this seriously. “I am,” she said.
“Come on,” Mrs. King said. “Let’s have a drink.”
She felt it then: that burst and tingle of pleasure, that thrill of surety. She had her funds, her women, her plan. She pictured the messages flying out into the night, lifting off like starlings in flight: looping and undulating and gathering force like a storm cloud. To Europe, to America and beyond. Spreading the word: there was a big job on the horizon, bigger than all imagining, a fortune to be made…
Godspeed, she said to herself—in private, deep inside.
Alice came downstairs while the other servants were managing the dinner service. She’d been at her worktable nearly four hours, mouth parched, eyes blurring, and there was an intractable ache in her neck. Madam’s costume was at the stage where it controlled her, not the other way around. Unpicking one thread meant unpicking a dozen more. The shoulder seams were immensely delicate, spun as finely as silkworm threads, and they needed to carry so much weight: the rich lining, jet ornaments, the far-reaching acreage of the train. The dress seemed to unspool every time she looked at it, growing uglier, wilder, blacker. She hoped never to see crepe de Chine again.
Miss de Vries hadn’t sent for her all day. Alice hounded the other servants with inquiries: had Madam given word as to when she next wanted to be fitted? Had she left any message, any instructions for Alice at all? She needed some assurance that she was still doing well, that she was excelling, that she was safe.
The weaselly-looking errand boy was lugging a bucket of coal in for the range. “Whatchoo asking so many questions for?” he said, staring at Alice without compunction.
Alice rounded on him. “Bugger off, little rat,” she said, showing her teeth.
His eyes widened, startled, and he scuttled off across the yard, his ragged coat flapping in the breeze. Alice had startled herself. She put her hands to her crucifix. By any measure it was too late for Miss de Vries to still be eating her dinner. Evidently, she was preoccupied, absorbed in business.
Alice lingered in the front hall, trying to invent excuses to enter the dining room. William, the head footman, came out and spotted her. “You’d better make yourself scarce before Shepherd sees you,” he said, eyes narrowing. And then, voice gentle: “What’s got you in a twist?”
“Nothing,” she said, anguished.
“Hmm,” he said, turning his gaze away from her. “Do I sense a tragedy?”
She blushed at that and scurried outside, crossing the garden, then the yard. Mr. Doggett and his boys were playing Racing Demon outside the mews house, flicking cigarette ash behind the ornamental urns. They didn’t notice Alice, or else she supposed they didn’t care to acknowledge her presence, taking her to be a plain and stupid girl, with no purpose in this house, nothing at all to recommend her. The dress was calling silently to her, summoning her back. She wanted to avoid it. She needed a break. She marched to the mews door, as if she had an errand to run, as if she were on a mission of great import. As the clocks chimed the quarter hour she stepped out through the mews door into the lane.
She froze.
Two men, wearing rich, silk-lined overcoats, were standing under the streetlamp. The air smelled of gardenias. She recognized the scent, and then their faces, at once.
They came to the gate. The taller of the two lifted his hat, tilted it toward her, perfectly courteous. He had a smile on his face that Alice knew by instinct, that she would have known even if she were a babe in arms. Danger, danger, danger.
The debt collectors had found her, after all.
Perhaps they didn’t think she was going to run. Or if she did, they didn’t care. They continued to smile at her, eyes steady, as if to say, We’ll track you anyway. They had one message, and they handed it over on a piece of paper.
She opened it once she was inside the house, in the kitchen passage, back to the wall. Breathing hard, she made out the words under the flickering lamplight: One week.
15
Twelve days to go
It was time to get some more skin in the game. Mrs. King had gone over the calculations with Winnie. They needed enough hands to manage the pulleys, set up the winches, pack and wheel the crates, dismantle the runners and the slides, lift the heaviest articles of furniture, and more. Mrs. King went to Mrs. Bone’s villa on the docks to start hiring men. The wraith-like porter eyed her with suspicion from the second she arrived.