To Spitalfields, and a cloud of dust was rising high into the air over Commercial Street. Mrs. King perched on the edge of a fruit barrow, munching an apple, waiting for her aide-de-camp. She had her eyes pinned on the hat shop across the road. The sign sparkled in the sunlight: Mr. Champion, Milliner. In normal circumstances she would have found it very disagreeable, wasting time like this. But of course she didn’t have chores anymore. Her objective for the day had become altogether more interesting. There was something very particular she needed.
Nobody noticed her waiting there, except for a little girl in a mud-spattered pinafore who watched her hungrily. Mrs. King flicked her a sixpence.
“That’s for good observation,” she said. The girl leaped for it, scrabbling on the cobblestones, and hurtled away.
Mrs. King didn’t need to check her pocket watch. She knew exactly what time it was. She crunched apple pips with her back teeth, counting seconds in her head.
It was another five minutes before her quarry appeared. Winnie Smith came lurching around the corner with her gigantic perambulator, heading for Mr. Champion’s shop. That pram carried hatboxes, not babies, stacked in teetering, dangerous piles. Mrs. King felt a familiar stirring of affection. Winnie: trussed up in a violently mended purple dress, hat pinned at a hopeless angle, steering the perambulator as if it were a tank. Something snapped, the suspension or a spoke, and she staggered. Oh Lord, thought Mrs. King, and closed her eyes.
She finished the last of her apple, licked her fingers, and sauntered across the road.
Winnie was wrestling the pram over the curb when she spotted Mrs. King. “Today?” she said, disbelieving.
“No time like it,” said Mrs. King with a wry smile.
Winnie sucked in all her breath, straightened her hat. “I’ve an appointment to keep,” she said, frowning.
Mrs. King remembered the first time they’d met, twenty years before, in the kitchen at Park Lane. She’d sensed then that Winnie, five years her senior, would make the perfect elder sister. Someone fierce, someone reliable, someone you could trust right down to the bones—even at her most harried, as she was today. Mrs. King nudged her.
“Hang your appointment, Win. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
Winnie hauled the perambulator up onto the curb. She shook her head, stubborn. “Ten minutes. Then I’m all yours.”
Winnie was raised very nicely, very properly. She had such enormous scruples. It made Mrs. King click her tongue in impatience. She peered into Winnie’s perambulator, flipped open one of the hatboxes. A squashed, queasy-looking article gazed back at her. It had taken on the shape and color of a blancmange, festooned with ghastly brown ribbons.
“Lovely,” she said.
“Don’t touch it! I’m calling it the Savoy.” Winnie stroked it. “Champagne satin, chocolate velvet. And silk-finished braid, do you see? It goes right under the brim.”
“Is that hair?”
“It’s braid.”
“Whose hair is it?”
Winnie batted Mrs. King away, rammed the lid back on the box. “It’s what they’re showing in New York.”
Mrs. King put her hands behind her back. “How much are you charging for it?”
Winnie hesitated.
Mrs. King smiled. “I’ll help you negotiate.” Winnie was stolid, steady, the most industrious person Mrs. King knew. But certain things needed to move with a clip.
Winnie looked annoyed. “Dinah...”
“Don’t worry. It’ll speed things up.”
“I don’t need you to speed things up.”
Mrs. King simply raised her eyebrow at that. She kicked the shop door open, the bell pealing in alarm, and Winnie sighed, battling with the pram. “Dinah, go easy...”
The light inside the shop was clean, the shelves stacked with eggshell ribbons and bolts of satin. Mrs. King disliked dainty things. Muslin made her teeth ache. “I’m on my break,” said a voice from the back of the shop. “Come back later.”
“But it’s your lucky day,” said Mrs. King.
“It’s just Winnie Smith, Mr. Champion,” called Winnie, colliding into everything. “We have an appointment!” She gave Mrs. King a warning glance: Not another word.
Mr. Champion sat in his office like a ham stuffed into a picnic basket, pink-cheeked and glistening, surrounded by wicker and wires. The air smelled of dried fruit and vinegar. He started, spectacles quivering on the end of his nose. “No, no, no,” he said. “Not you. I’ve told you already. I ain’t buying any more tat.”
Winnie grabbed one of the hatboxes, knocked the lid to the floor. “Just a moment of your time, Mr. Champion,” she said, planting her feet firmly apart. “Have a look at this one. I’m calling it the Navy. Blue rosettes, do you see? I’ve dressed it with heliotrope flowers, and of course I could do white ones, too...”
Mr. Champion pointed at the perambulator, neck reddening. “Get that great heaving article out of here!” He addressed Mrs. King. “And who are you?”
Mrs. King smiled, cracked her knuckles. “Her agent.”
“A trial offer, Mr. Champion,” Winnie said quickly. “How about that? Your customers might like to try something new.”
“My customers,” said Mr. Champion, “buy quality.” He looked Winnie up and down—and Mrs. King knew what he saw. A faded dress, skin gray and saggy under the chin. Nothing to respect, nothing to worry about. “Now, clear off.”
“Did you take her last delivery, Mr. Champion?” said Mrs. King.
His eyes swiveled to meet hers. A sneer. “I doubt it.”
Winnie appeared troubled. “That’s not correct, Mr. Champion. I gave you my very best stock.”
“I daresay you might have off-loaded some old handkerchiefs on me. I really can’t recall.”
“I’m sure you have the receipts,” said Mrs. King.
“I’m sure I don’t.”
He looked like suet, a sick-making color. “Might I check?” she said.
“Might you...” He paused, taking a breath, reddening further. “No, you may not. You can show yourself out.” His eyes rattled back and forth between them. “Here, what is this? Some job you’ve worked up between you? I said to clear off!”
Winnie lifted her hands, alarmed. “Mr. Champion...”
“Five guineas, Mr. Champion,” said Mrs. King.
He stared at her. “What?”
“Five guineas for the Navy. Or I want to see your order book.”
Mr. Champion let out a scornful laugh. “Don’t make me send for the constable.”
“Be my guest,” Mrs. King said in a congenial tone. “I’ll report exactly what I can see occurring here. You’re cheating ladies out of their dues.”
“Say that again,” he said, voice dropping, “and you won’t be able to sell a stitch to any living body in town.”
“Order book, please,” said Mrs. King, pressing her palms to the table.
There was a long silence. Winnie was holding her breath.
“Three guineas,” Mr. Champion said.
Mrs. King sometimes wondered, How do I do it? How did she get people to capitulate, to bow? She didn’t exactly like it. It made her feel chilly and contemptuous of the world. But of course it was necessary. Somebody had to put things right in life.
“Done,” she said, keeping her distance from Mr. Champion.
He made a lot of noise, a lot of fuss, counting out the change. “You’re nothing more than a thief. You won’t be coming around here again. They’ll lock the doors on you two, that I can tell you for sure and certain—”
But they got their three guineas.
Winnie shoved the pram out into the road. “For heaven’s sake.”
Mrs. King closed the shop door with a bang. “Here,” she said gravely, counting out shillings.
Winnie gave her a long look, as if deciding whether to say thank you or not. She pressed her lips together. “I need a sherry,” she said.
“Lead the way,” said Mrs. King, reaching for the perambulator. “I’ll mind Baby.”
They quick-marched to Bethnal Green, the perambulator listing and keeling all the way, men throwing them filthy looks as it ran over their toes. Mrs. King watched the sky changing. The sun drained away, as if giving up. It stirred her, the dusk: it put her in the hunting mood. And she was hungry for a very particular object. Mrs. King wasn’t the only housekeeper ever employed in that house on Park Lane. Winnie had held that illustrious title herself, only three years before. And she still held a most useful item in her possession.
Winnie lived in dreary lodgings at the top of a damp and narrow building: cramped and low ceilinged and desperately well scrubbed. So, this was freedom. Mrs. King looked at the bleach-stained floorboards, comparing them to the gleaming parquet in the saloon at Park Lane, and felt a quick, fierce flare of anger. She refused to end up like this.
Winnie shoved the cork back in the sherry bottle. They clinked glasses, swallowed.
“Have you got it?” said Mrs. King.
Winnie sighed. “Just a moment.”
She ducked out of the room, and returned carrying a large object wrapped in tissue paper. “Here.”
Mrs. King felt her heart start ticking. At last, here it was. That marvelous leather-bound book, those gray-green covers inlaid with gold, those thick pages crackling as they turned.
The Inventory.
“So, you’re the naughty thief,” said Mrs. King, reaching for it.
“I didn’t steal it,” said Winnie solidly. “I wrote it, didn’t I? It’s mine as much as anyone’s. I had every right to take it with me.”
The Inventory had everything listed in it. Every painting, every chair, every toothpick in that house. The pages smelled like gruel: oaty and wet. Oval Drawing Room. Boiserie. Long Drawing Room. Ballroom. Lines and lines and lines written on each page. All the way down to the smallest pantry. “One set snuffers, tin. One pair candle molds, tin. Two pairs paraffin lamps, blue. Two pairs paraffin lamps, yellow.” Mrs. King could picture them. Purple mottling, buttery tin. “Tinderbox. Three sets brass candleholders. Three sets candle boxes—dry room.”
She felt her breath tightening in her throat. She placed her hand against the page, covered the words. I can make everything disappear, she thought.
“Good,” she said, voice flat. “Thanks.” She closed the book with a tremendous thump, pressed her hands to the cover, possessing it.
“You’re welcome,” Winnie said, giving Mrs. King a dry look. Then her expression changed, hardening. “What now? Is your woman going to pay us?”
“Don’t let Mrs. Bone hear you call her ‘my woman.’ She’ll have your guts for garters.”
“But will she pay? We can’t do a thing without funds, Dinah.”
Mrs. King laughed. “Hark at you. Don’t worry about funds—I’ll sort those. You just worry about getting our final friend on board. We’ll need everybody in place by Sunday, not a day later.”
Winnie reached for her notebook, flipped through the pages. She’d already given herself hundreds of instructions; Mrs. King could see arrows and crossings-out and scribbles running slantways across the page.
“I hope you burn that book when we’re finished,” she said.
“This won’t give us away. I’ve made up a code.”
“Of course you have,” said Mrs. King with affection.
It was four weeks since Mrs. King had first mentioned the plan—obfuscating at first, circling around it, looking for the subtlest way in. “Do you mean you want to commit a robbery?” Winnie had asked, disbelieving. Mrs. King had backed off, shaking her head: “Goodness gracious, steady on, hold your horses, Win...” But Winnie’s frown had deepened, her thoughts burrowing down, down, down into the darker reaches of her mind.
“What do you think?” Mrs. King had finally asked. Winnie needed the money. That much was clear. Mrs. King remembered what Winnie had said when she’d first left Park Lane. “I’ve got to go my own way. I need to make something of my life.” There was something desperate, hurried, inexplicable about it. Winnie was fast approaching forty: she’d been working at Park Lane nearly all her life. But it wasn’t as if she had any fine prospects on the outside. She had no grand schemes. She barely made a pittance hawking those hats around the East End.
“If anyone could do it, you could,” she’d said, looking up at Mrs. King. “You know all the right people.” Winnie’s eyes had gleamed a little. She’d started to smile.
Because it was mad, this job. Of course it was. The best games always were. They were like the illuminations at the pantomime, laid with magnesium wires and quicklime blocks, fizzing and exploding before your very eyes. They drew in even the steadiest of folk, even Winnie.
“Oh, I know all the right people,” Mrs. King had said with a grin and a nod.
Winnie had always turned a blind eye to Mrs. King’s outside interests. She was no fool: they’d shared a room, and she noticed Dinah running side jobs for Mrs. Bone—passing messages, delivering hampers. Winnie had spotted goods being sneaked in through the back door: sealskin gloves, a tortoiseshell parasol, the most heavenly emollient soaps...
“Who gave you this?” she’d asked sternly, holding up a bolt of fine lace, concealed at the very back of Dinah’s wardrobe.
“I bought it myself,” Dinah said, truthfully. It was a risk, taking those side jobs. But risks always paid well.
Mrs. King had never worried that Winnie might snitch on her. The bond between them was absolute. “Here,” Winnie had said, rummaging inside the wardrobe, grimacing, loosening a back panel. “Hide your treasures if you must.” She paused. “But you should save your pennies. You might want them one day.”
Mrs. King remembered the advice. She stopped buying scent bottles and bracelets, and put her cash in old stockings instead.
“Sunday,” Winnie said now, scribbling in her notebook. She bit her lip. “Awfully soon, Dinah.”
“Sooner the better.”
Winnie looked serious. “I suppose you’re right.”
Mrs. King stretched out a hand. “You’ll make a terribly good thief, Win.”
Winnie frowned. “Don’t tease me.”
“I’m not teasing in the least,” said Mrs. King, with mock seriousness. “I’ve never met such a bloodthirsty woman in my life.”
Winnie stared up at her from her chair, with an expression in her eyes that made her look suddenly much older. “And I’ve never met a woman in my life who decided to clear out a whole house, strip it right down to the bones, for no more reason than she feels like it.” She studied Mrs. King. “Remind me never to cross you.”
Mrs. King kept things easy. “I’m sure you don’t need reminding.” She tapped her pocket watch. “Now, come along. You’ve got a job to do, my fine lady-felon. Clock’s ticking.”