“You in there?”
She turned with a start, scurried back to her bucket, whipped a brush from her pocket.
The door slid open.
Cook appeared, arms crossed. Peered at the frames. “These don’t look any cleaner than before. You’ve got some nerve.”
Mrs. Bone abased herself. “I ought to have asked your opinion first, Cook.”
Cook’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, you ought,” she said. But her chest swelled all the same.
This lot, thought Mrs. Bone, rolling her eyes inwardly. They’re easy pickings.
She corrected herself. Presume nothing. Disaster lurked in every corner. Fate was waiting to crush her pride. But she liked the odds. She wouldn’t have admitted it to Mrs. King. But she liked them a lot.
The next day she went to snare the policeman with her stolen goods. Mrs. Bone never took on a job without compromising the constabulary. No use launching a burglary if you didn’t have a bobby up your sleeve. The chauffeur, Mr. Doggett, and two of the under-footmen were sitting in the mews yard, playing cards. Mrs. Bone dropped them both a free cigarette in exchange for their silence. “You’re like a bloody chimney,” the chauffeur said.
“I’ve got bad nerves,” Mrs. Bone replied, and slipped out to the lane.
Oh, there was a lot of waiting around in this place. It was going to make her back ache, standing up for hours and hours, for days on end. She was keeping a list of pros and cons in her head. That went firmly under Con. Mrs. Bone heard the clocks chiming distantly from the house.
At last, the bobby lumbered around the corner of the mews lane, following his beat. He spotted her and frowned. She gave him a wave. “No, you don’t know me,” she called, scrunching her nose, tipping a curtsey. “I’m new.”
“They let you have cigarettes here, do they?” he asked.
Mrs. Bone wagged a finger at him. “Don’t tell.” Extended her hand. “Want a puff?”
The constable laughed. “Nasty habit on a lady.”
Mrs. Bone winked at him. “A lady’s got to pass the time. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me?”
“I thought you might want a bit of business.”
The constable’s face went blank. “I don’t know about that.”
“About what?”
Mrs. Bone knew that the thing to do in situations like this was to stay extremely still, be extremely careful, send out all the right signals.
“Oh?” he said, at last.
“Oh, yes,” she replied.
A long moment passed. And then she saw a grin tweak the edges of his mouth. “Give me a puff of that, then,” he said, beckoning for the cigarette.
Mrs. Bone handed it to him, pinching her fingers so their hands didn’t touch.
“Now, have a look at this.”
She glanced down the lane, checked they weren’t being observed, and planted her legs firmly apart. The constable raised his eyebrow.
“In my apron. Go on, have a look.”
He leaned forward, whistled. “You left them something to eat with, didn’t you?” He cleared his throat, leaned back. “Oh, I see. You’ve brought me the cheap stuff.”
Mrs. Bone cocked her hip. “Don’t be difficult. Which bits d’you fancy?”
The constable may have been crooked, but he knew his business. “I’ll give you a guinea for the lot.”
Mrs. Bone was civil. “I don’t deal in guineas. And we’ll discuss things piece by piece or we’ll not discuss them at all.”
He shrugged. “All right. What’ll you take for the teaspoons?”
“Two pounds three and six.”
He sucked his teeth. “I’ll give you thirty bob. And you know that’s more than they’re worth.”
Mrs. Bone closed her apron. “I see. You want knock-offs. I don’t trade in those, Constable.”
He stepped back. “I didn’t know you was in trade at all.”
Mrs. Bone clicked her tongue in impatience, rummaged in her apron. “Fancy a saltcellar? Egg cup? How about a muffineer?”
A shadow moved in the distance, and the constable stiffened. “Someone’s coming.”
Mrs. Bone held up the saltcellar, gave it a little shake. “Now, thirty bob for this I will countenance.”
The constable put his hand over hers. “Put that away.”
“One pound ten and I’ll throw in a spoon. What d’you say?”
Yes, there was a figure coming through the mews yard. A woman, making for the gate.
“I said put that away,” said the constable, trying to block Mrs. Bone from view.
“And the muffineer?”
He glanced at her, looked over his shoulder, shuffled notes and coins in his pocket. “One pound six. But tie your apron up, for Gawd’s sake—there’s someone coming.”
“One pound six? Oh, you’re a thief, Constable. You’re a regular padfoot.” But she lifted the articles from her own apron, taking his money. “You’re running rings around a poor widow.”
She slipped a silver spoon in his pocket, in full view of the woman approaching them from behind.
The constable lurched. “Morning, miss.”
It was Alice, slightly out of breath. She eyed the constable, and then his pockets, and he reddened.
Mrs. Bone whispered to the constable: “I think she saw you. Naughty rascal. We’d best keep this between the two of us.”
His eyes flashed with worry.
Alice glanced at him, then back to Mrs. Bone. “We haven’t met,” she said stiffly to Mrs. Bone. “I’m the sewing maid.”
Mrs. Bone looped her arm around Alice’s shoulders. “Oh, I’ve ever such a lot of mending for you, my girl.” She sent a brilliant smile over her shoulder. “Good day to you, Constable!”
They sped up the garden. “Got him?” Alice whispered, anxious. “What d’you think?”
This could work, Mrs. Bone thought. She could almost feel Danny watching her, fury sizzling on the surface of his skin. Pro, she decided, marking up her list.
“Don’t be nosy,” she said, not uncheerfully, and linked her arm through Alice’s. She was feeling better and better about this.
11
Fifteen days to go
3:00 p.m.
Sundays were the dullest day in this place, thought Alice. In the morning the servants went to church, traipsing down to St. George’s in two neat lines like schoolchildren. Madam didn’t accompany them. She said her prayers in her private chapel, a turreted and curlicued box suspended over the garden, or else went to the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Mount Street. Alice asked Mr. Shepherd if she might be allowed to do the same.
“Certainly not,” he answered, as if she were launching a papist plot. She kept her rosary beads out of sight.
After luncheon, the servants were dismissed for their afternoon off. Alice stayed behind, to catch up on Madam’s dress.
A stillness descended upon the house. Sometimes Madam was the only person left in the building, save for the under-footman on rota. She didn’t keep a personal maid, Alice noted. She simply rotated through the senior house-parlormaids, getting them to button her into her dresses and carry out menial tasks. It was as if she preferred to keep herself unconstrained, aloof: when she grew bored of one girl, she simply moved on to another. At present she was attended by Iris, who was hotel trained and impressed Alice immensely. She had blueish lips and curls done with hot irons so that they looked like bedsprings. Alice stayed in the dressing room, per her instructions, eyes peeled to the crack in the door. “You’re our canary, remember,” Mrs. King had said. “If something smells off, start singing.” But working on Madam’s new costume made it difficult for Alice to keep her eyes peeled. It took every spare moment of the day, and she was already sewing long into the night. It was an assignment beyond anything she’d encountered before.