28

“Rose! Rose! Please wake up.”

Rose opened her eyes to see Amy’s pale, haunted face. She touched her head and winced. Amy was still holding the poker she had used to hit Rose. But Rose had to admit that Amy didn’t look like a ruthless, cold-blooded murderer who had dispatched her father and was now planning to finish her off. She looked hopeless and unhappy. Amy helped Rose to her feet and led her over to the sofa. Rose sank into it, still eyeing Amy warily.

“Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry about your head. Is it all right? I thought you were someone else, come to kill me.”

“Billy Proctor?” asked Rose, feeling the tender spot on her head. Fortunately the skin wasn’t broken.

Amy shook her head. “Billy Proctor? Why would I hit Campion’s barman over the head, and what reason would he have to want to kill me?”

“Because he’s here in Southend.”

Amy looked even more puzzled. “It must just be an odd coincidence.”

“I don’t know,” said Rose. “I got the distinct feeling that he was looking for someone. I assumed it was you. I thought perhaps the two of you were in league together and that he killed your father on your instructions. Gandini was your father, wasn’t he?”

Amy nodded and burst into noisy tears. “I’d never have killed my father. I loved him. He was the kindest of men.” She stared at Rose, looking horrified. “Is that what you think, Rose? That I’m a heartless murderess who orders people to kill for me?”

“To be honest, Amy – or should I say Melly or Amelia – I don’t know what to think. All I know is that Effie is locked up for life in Holloway Prison for killing your father, and I’d stake my life she didn’t do it. I also know that everyone thinks that you’re dead, and quite clearly you’re very much alive. If that’s not suspicious I don’t know what is. And you put a note in my pocket saying that you needed saving, and a significant clue as to where to find you.”

Amy smiled. “That was a spur-of-the moment decision when I saw you outside the court. I only had a second to scrawl it. I was nervous that you wouldn’t work it out, but I thought you would because you’re so clever, Rose. In fact, when I faked my death, you were the only person I was worried would think it odd that I had left my dress on the steps before jumping into the river. I doubted Inspector Cliff would notice.”

“I told the inspector how strange I thought it was,” said Rose. “And I know you saw Edward that night. He told Aurora and me that he spotted you on the Devil’s Steps.”

“Yes,” said Amy. “I almost fell into the river in shock when he turned up in Rotherhithe on the night I was supposed to be faking my suicide. It was such bad luck. He’s a blind fool, just like my dad, but I felt really terrible that I was deceiving him so monstrously. I was worried that dozy inspector would arrest him for killing me, because I was sure that Edward would tell him he’d been there when my disappearance became public. I felt bad about sending him on a wild goose chase by saying I’d seen Jem heading towards Campion’s, particularly when I heard the awful thing that happened to Jem. Is he any better?”

Rose nodded. “Doing surprisingly well. Lottie says there’s every chance he’ll make a full recovery. But tell me, Amy – what happened after Edward left you on the steps?”

“I was wearing boy’s clothes under my dress, so as soon as he’d gone and I was certain nobody was around, I slipped out of my dress, put up my hair under a cap and walked away, leaving my dress folded on the steps.”

Rose remembered the boy that Edward reported seeing walking along the river path after he had doubled-back to the steps. That must have been Amy.

“So you faked your own death. But why? And you have yet to convince me that you didn’t kill your own father – it’s quite clear that you did steal the Doomstone,” said Rose, nodding towards the jewel on the sideboard.

Amy laughed. “Oh, Rose, don’t be silly, that’s not the Doomstone. It’s just a Christmas tree bauble. But it’s very precious to me. It’s a memento of freedom – of the first Christmas my father and I spent alone together after we escaped from the Duchess.”

“The Duchess?” Rose leaned forward in excitement. “Who exactly are you and your father?”

“We are Paul and Amelia Bray. My grandmother is Ruth Bray, known as the Duchess. She is currently locked up in Holloway Prison, where I hope and pray she will stay until she dies. She is as ruthless as a stiletto. My father was her son, known for many years as the Gentleman Dipper. From a boy he hated his life in the criminal underworld. But there was no escaping the Duchess. If you crossed her, you paid. Even if you were family. My mother ended up dead in the Regent’s Canal when I was seven, for telling the Duchess that she was evil and she wanted out. My father’s younger sister, a lovely woman with dreams of being an actress, suffered a similar fate. After that, my father waited patiently and planned. He knew that if he left with me the Duchess would do everything in her power to take her revenge. He had to get as far away as he could from her, and he needed a way to earn an honest living in a place where we would be safe.

“The honest living was stage magic. He realised that conjuring is just another form of prigging and conning – except, for one, you get paid and applauded, and for the other, you steal and risk ending up in the clink. Eventually, just before the Duchess was about to get me started as a prigger on the streets, we managed to escape and went to America, where my father rechristened himself Gandini and started working the halls there as a magician. He took the name because the Gandini family had been so kind to him when he was a boy – kinder than his own mother, who saw all goodness as a weakness. And my dad always loved a penny lick. In America we were beyond the reach of the Duchess. But then my father heard that the Duchess had been arrested and convicted with a life sentence, and so he decided we should return.”

“So,” said Rose excitedly, “it must be somebody working for the Duchess who killed your father.”

Amy shook her head. “No! Although my father was always nervous about her reach, I doubt that even the Duchess could organise my father’s murder from Holloway Prison. I’m pretty safe from her malevolence as long as she’s inside. There is little honour among thieves. Without her son to keep the family firm going, her power probably evaporated as soon as she was banged up.”

“So when you hit me over the head with the poker, who did you think had come to kill you?”

“Haven’t you worked it out? Lydia, of course. It was Lydia who stole the Doomstone from around her own neck and then killed my father. She was my father’s assistant before she became his wife.”

Rose’s eyes bulged. “Lydia is Gandini’s wife?”

“Well, technically,” said Amy bitterly. “I suppose she is now his widow.”