With its low sloped ceiling and oddly angled cupboards, Ladybird was just as Lily remembered. Anna showed them into the starboard compartment, where the porthole window was open, letting in a nice, cooling breeze. In the centre of the tiny space stood a wooden chair and a small fold-out table with a typewriter perched on it. Beside the typewriter was a pile of magazines and papers, topped with a loaf of bread and a knife.
Squeezed in behind all that a miniature clockwork propulsion engine and a tiny stove were wedged snugly into the stern.
A frying pan hissed on the stovetop, wafting out a strong scent of sausage, eggs and bacon that made Lily’s mouth water. She felt a pang of hunger and her stomach rumbled as loud as a steam engine when she realized that once again this morning they hadn’t eaten.
Anna raised an amused eyebrow. “You caught me at an opportune moment. I was just taking a break from cooking up a few dreadful stories to enjoy some elevenses.”
She picked up the frying pan and gave the contents a good shake. “Extra-breakfast, I like to call it. It wasn’t meant to feed the five thousand, but there’s enough for a butty each if I divide it up between us.”
Tolly, who seemed right at home, cut four slices of bread from a loaf on the sideboard at the other end of the cabin, and began buttering them.
Anna glanced worriedly at Robert, Lily and Malkin. Lily expected her to ask what was going on. But instead she said, “Do you like my new mooring?”
Lily squeezed round the table to peer out the porthole. “I love it,” she exclaimed. “You can see the whole of London from up here!”
“You certainly can,” Tolly said, pausing in his task as if he’d had a thought. “Here, Anna, this’d be an excellent place to watch the Jubilee parade from. Mind if I stick around till tomorrow afternoon to check it out?”
“Course not,” Anna replied. “Long as you’re prepared to kip down for the night on the floor in the passage.”
“Excellent.” Tolly handed Lily and Robert each a slice of bread and butter and gave them a confidential nod. “Anna’s hiding from the bailiffs. She’s in a spot of financial bother and The Cog hasn’t paid her for her last piece, so she can’t get a mooring at a proper airdock.”
“Been nosing again, have you?” Anna scooped up the contents of her frying pan. “You’re a proper little Sherlock Holmes!” She doled out a sausage each to Lily and Robert, rashers of bacon to Tolly, and kept the egg for herself. “I’m sure you’ll make a lead reporter in no time.”
Tolly bit into his bread and bacon. “I will when you hear the big scoop we’ve got for you about Jack Door.”
“Oh, and what might that be?” Anna asked.
“We’re searching for my ma, Selena,” Robert explained. “She’s Jack’s daughter, you see, which means he’s my grandfather, and Finlo’s my uncle.” He took a bite of his sausage butty, but a shiver ran down his spine – his story sounded odder and more frightening each time he told it out loud.
“Finlo’s Jack’s son, who broke him out of jail,” Lily explained.
“And we think they’re both after Selena,” Robert continued, “because she has the key to the whereabouts of the Blood Moon Diamond.”
Anna’s eyes widened. “Your mother…” she said, and she seemed a bit lost for words. Malkin even thought for a moment that she might drop the rest of her butty, and he wished that he was a real animal so he might snatch it from her and eat it.
But she soon found her voice again. “Have you seen Jack Door then?” she asked. “We’d a few sightings reported at the paper, but none turned out to be real!”
“Jack’s as real as the nose on my face,” Robert said.
“And twice as scary,” Malkin added.
“So he’s after the diamond?” Anna asked. “And revenge?”
Robert shook his head. “Not only that. There’s something else. They need…” He took a deep breath; should he mention the locket to Anna in front of Tolly, who they barely knew? “We have part of a map,” he explained. “And we think my ma has the other half and the key to what it means. That’s why Jack’s looking for her…and for me.”
“Where is this map then?” Anna asked. “Let’s see it.”
Hesitantly, Robert reached for the Moonlocket around his neck. He still wasn’t sure about revealing it. It was the only thing he had of his ma’s and he’d rather not give it away, not even for a second. But Anna would help them.
“Blimey! Will you look at that!” Tolly’s eyes went wide as coins as the Moonlocket was revealed. Robert felt a flash of awkwardness handing it over to Anna, but she seemed to sense his reluctance.
She took it delicately and inspected the curved ivory face with its unsettling Punch-like features. “A crescent moon,” she said, turning the locket over and examining the map. “This may be a place marker.” She tapped the single red jewel.
“That’s what we thought,” Lily said. “A starting point.”
“Or an end point,” Robert added. “Like X marks the spot.”
“You mean it could be the location of the Blood Moon Diamond?” Tolly asked excitedly.
“These two words,” Anna said, “and the triangle – they’re some sort of code. Perhaps it’s a place name? Except there are no capital letters…”
“We’ve solved the cypher,” Robert explained. “It says: flows underground.”
“Very cryptic!” Anna muttered.
“Isn’t it?” Lily replied. “But there’s another part of the locket – we think Selena might have it. A gibbous moon that we’re guessing makes a whole map and the rest of the riddle.”
“I see,” Anna said.
“And that’s why we have to find her before Jack does,” Robert added.
Anna opened the locket and looked at the picture of Robert’s family inside. “Is this the only picture you have of your mother, Robert?” she asked.
“No, we’ve this as well.” Lily took out the inspector’s theatre poster and unfolded it, revealing the picture of the Doors.
“This picture won’t do you any good,” Anna said. “It’s too old. Selena’s only a girl.”
“We’ve already been round the theatres with it,” Malkin added. “And everyone’s so clinking scared of the Doors, they don’t want to give us information.”
“That’s no good.” Anna tutted. “We shouldn’t make assumptions about the message or the map until we know more. But lucky you came to me with this, we should be able to dig up something more about the Doors and Selena in the records of The Daily Cog.”
She closed the locket and handed it carefully back to Robert. “Now, eat up, there’s work to be done! I find I think better on a full stomach. Soon as we’re finished, we’ll head to the records office and start our investigation.”
“Our investigation – you mean we can all help?” Tolly asked hopefully, finishing his butty.
Anna patted his shoulder. “Course, Tolly! We need every brain we can get. And you’re the best detective I know… Apart from Robert and Lily, that is.”
“And me!” piped a voice from under the table. “I’m the best investigative nose I know.” Malkin gave a loud sniff.
“And you, Malkin, yes.” Anna patted his head and took a bite of her fried egg.
Anna directed them across a factory floor filled with the most enormous printing press. The noise was deafening. Loud clanks and bangs emanated from the machine as a big roll of newspaper was dragged through it to produce the daily edition.
At the far end of the production line, where men and mechanicals took the printed pages from the machine and stacked them in piles to be bundled and sent out, she led them through a door and into an office room. It was filled with dusty shelves stacked floor to ceiling with yellowing newspapers. Above the door was a clock embossed round the edges with the emblem of The Daily Cog.
“This is the records room,” Anna explained, pulling out the drawer of a card catalogue in the centre of the space. “We’ll start by going through the theatre ads, reviews and classifieds for the last six months. If your ma’s been performing in London, Robert, we’re bound to find some evidence of her somewhere amongst those pages.”
Anna took down stacks of papers and she, Lily, Robert and Tolly took a pile each and began to leaf through them. Malkin they kept out of the way; he was too impulsive and they didn’t want him shredding any important documents before they’d had a chance to read them.
It took nearly two hours to go through the papers from the last six months, and still Lily could find nothing that might be a clue to the whereabouts of Selena Door.
Finally, in despair, she picked up the newest issue of the paper, hot off the press, with the ink still wet, and turned to the advertisements.
A line-drawn portrait of a woman with her eyes shut and her fingers pressed to her temples caught Lily’s attention. Behind her head was a large white circle that looked like a halo or crystal ball, or…yes, Lily realized, a moon! Underneath the picture was a headline. She read on.
Lily rushed over to show Robert, Tolly and Anna, who were sitting at another desk.
“Look!” she cried. “This can’t be a coincidence, surely?”
Robert peered closely at the picture, trying to decide if the portrait resembled Selena or not. “I can’t be certain,” he said finally.
“Lunar powers sound promising though…” Lily said. “You did tell me that Selena means moon, which also sounds like Celine, and if you think about it, Door and D’Ore are the same name too.”
“D’Ore also means gold in French,” Malkin added.
“Golden Moon,” said Tolly.
Robert pushed his cap back on his head, and examined the poster again. “Maybe it is my ma,” he said. “But if it is, she must know Jack’s out of prison and desperate to find her. Why take such a risk…?”
He stood and consulted the clock above the door. “Today’s Saturday. Matinee day – which means the next show is in less than an hour. We should go and see if it is her, and warn her immediately.”
“Anna, will you come with us?” Lily asked. She was feeling rather anxious about everything all of a sudden.
Anna shook her head. “I don’t agree with spiritualist shows. They’re hokum. Besides, I want to find out a little more about this Moonlocket – there must be some mention of it in the archives somewhere. But Tolly will take you, he knows Valentine Street. I’ll meet you outside afterwards.”
“Please,” Robert begged. “We need your help.”
Anna shook her head. “I’ve far too much work to do,” she said.
“Can’t you leave some of it until later?” Lily asked.
“All right,” she finally relented. “If you’re both nagging me, how can I refuse…? Let me finish up here first. You go on ahead and buy some tickets, but don’t go in without me. I shall see you there in a short while, I promise.”
They crossed the River Thames at Blackfriars Bridge then followed the railway line behind terraced cottages down towards the riverbank. All along the backstreets, people were decorating their windows and front doors with ribbons and pictures of the Queen in preparation for the parade tomorrow.
As they turned into Valentine Street they heard the lap of the river up ahead. A cool breeze with a mossy stink floated up from the water, banishing the muggy grey June heat. The smell of coal dust and smoke from the fires burning in the braziers along the front made Lily’s nose and eyes itch. Grey smog floated across the cobbles and Robert covered his mouth and coughed.
Malkin, unaffected, trotted along beside them. Because he didn’t breathe, the city air didn’t clog him up the way it did humans.
Tolly too seemed fine. “Pea-souper of a London smog,” he said. “People get ill from the fumes sometimes, but not me. I’m used to it.”
They followed Tolly along Valentine Street, brushing past people humping crates and barrels. The road bent round a corner, passing rows of little shacks clustered on the quayside.
Out in the river, boats were moored three deep. Tethered airships of various shapes and sizes floated above the water, grazing the clouds. The quay was buzzing with people bringing in last-minute provisions for the Jubilee celebrations.
Further on, they reached the insalubrious end of the docks, where scuttled wrecks lay like beached whales in the shallows of the Thames. Strange spiderwebs of metal, the ribs of rusting airships, were swarming with scavengers, mudlarks and beachcombers – hunched figures in torn coats and britches, who crawled about on those skeletal surfaces trying to prise free a likely-looking dongle or screw from the carcass – anything that might be sellable.
Tolly led Lily, Robert and Malkin past these wrecks and along the wharf, to where a sailor was stowing ropes. Tolly stopped and spoke to him.
“We’re looking for The Theatre of Curiosities.”
The sailor nodded. “At the end of the dock. Be careful! It’s a dangerous place – a house of spirits, so they say.”
Lily felt a queasy sense of foreboding.
They thanked the man and scurried along the dockside, towards the place he had pointed out.
It was a small building with a wooden porch. The bricks had been painted in grey colours, and ghostly faces were faintly visible, chalked onto the shutters. The shadow of a zeppelin drifted over the roof, scaring up a murder of crows. The birds cawed and took flight, flapping past a faded white sign painted on the building’s brickwork, whose six-foot-high letters proclaimed the place was indeed: The Magnificent Theatre of Curiosities.