The World's Finest Mystery Part 13

"Come along, Kate dear, give a little more."

"Me knee's stiff."

"Rub it then. Ah, that's good. Keep your hand there like that. Don't move."

"Thought you said I could rub it."

"Shhh. Keep still."

"Rub somewhere else if you want."

"Only ten bob extra. Yes, I know."

"So what's ten bob to you?"

"A lot of money. Now try lifting your petticoat up and holding it there on your knee. Knees apart for goodness sake."

"Ten bob's not a lot when you're selling them for five guineas."

"Who says we're selling them for five guineas?"

"Urse knows a man."

"Ursula talks too much. Stop fidgeting."

"Me t.i.tties are getting cold. I'll get goose pimples."

"It's not cold in here."

" 'Ow would you know? You've got a jacket on.

"Alright, five minutes' break if you must."

"Something to warm me up?"

"Help yourself. I only hope it puts you in a better mood."

"Ten bob'd put me in a better mood."

"Pity, because you're not getting it. We have a lot of expenses to cover."

"Like bribing policemen to look the other way."

"Just get your drink and sit down."

"Only bribes don't always work, do they? You know Dutch Joe was raided last week? Took all 'is pictures and plates away and 'e's had to do a bunk."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Ten bob."

"I'll have to ask Ned."

The door of Trillow's studio stayed closed. Ella and Ned lunched in the kitchen off tea, bread and cold mutton. His long hands were flecked with acid burns and a distinctive smell clung to him; of ammonia, linseed oil and resin, overlaid with the strong tobacco he smoked when he wasn't working to drive the chemical fumes out of his lungs. Ned had to sleep in his workroom. Through the winter his thin face had turned yellowish and there was a boil on his neck that wouldn't go away. When Ella had cleared up the lunch things, she went through to his room to help. There was a new batch of copper plates to be prepared, first cleaned with ammonia and whiting, then heated over a burner and spread with a fine film of wax. Ned had taught her the business as if she were a proper apprentice and she did all the preparation work and clearing up.

Ned stood at his big table by the window with a drawing Trillow had made the day before spread out in front of him, copying it onto a waxed copper plate with a sharp engraving tool. Ella left her first plate drying and went over to watch. The picture was of Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, a snaking line of them with their palm branches, stretching to infinity in correct perspective. Ursula was tall and stately, with dark hair stretching down nearly to her feet. Ella thought of Trillow's long charcoal strokes drawing it and felt as if her own hair were being stroked into sleekness by his hand. A little shiver went through her.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?"

Ned didn't answer. He'd seemed preoccupied over the past few days. She noticed that he kept pa.s.sing his hand over his eyes.

"Eyes tired?"

"A little."

"You're working too hard."

She heard him from her cupboard bed next door working late into the night, coughing from the fumes of nitric acid.

"We have to work while the market's there."

"Surely people always need saints."

He laughed and it turned into a cough. "Wouldn't you like to live in a house, Ella, with bedrooms and meals on a proper table and a skivvy to make up the fires?"

"I suppose so."

"I suppose so too."

"And Trillow?"

"Oh, I don't know what Trillow wants."

The possibility that there might be a future without Trillow sent a different sort of shiver through her.

She said, diffidently, "Trillow works too hard as well. He's out every night."

Evenings were a good time to sell, Trillow said. It surprised her a little that Sunday school people should be doing business in the evenings. She waxed another plate and tidied the workroom. Artists like Trillow could work in confusion, but engravers had to be orderly: the sharp tools in racks on the walls, sheets of dampened paper piled between plates of gla.s.s ready for printing, bottle of linseed oil for mixing the ink, bottle of nitric acid for biting the design into the copper plates. Damping the paper, keeping the tools clean and the bottles topped up were part of Ella's work. At about half past three they heard feet stamping down the stairs and the front door slamming. Soon afterward heavier feet tramped upstairs and Trillow came in, carrying a sheet of paper.

"That b.l.o.o.d.y woman..."

Ned gave him a warning look and glanced at Ella. Trillow went over to the work table and dumped his paper on top of the picture that Ned was copying.

"One Saint Catherine, as per specification."

Ned looked at it, frowning.

"More of a sketch, isn't it?"

"The light was going. You can put in the detail when you're copying."

"It's not that easy."

"For heaven's sake, I have to deal with these women. It's all very well for you to sit up here and-"

"Ella dear, would you go and make us a pot of tea?"

She went obediently and, from the kitchen, was aware of low voices rumbling next door. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but knew it was an argument. It hurt her that the two people who meant most to her should argue.

"So I told her I'd ask you."

"You decide."

"No. You're not putting it all on me. Equal profits, equal risks."

"It seems a lot of money. But then if she's a good model..."

"If you catch her quick between the third and fourth gla.s.s of gin she's not so bad. I'll bring the other ones up later, when Ella's out of the way."

"So you mean, you think she's worth it?"

"Nothing to do with it. It's not a model fee she's asking, it's blackmail."

Ned put down his engraver's point and stared.

"She wouldn't, would she?"

"She dropped a hint about Dutch Joe."

"Oh G.o.d, don't you think we ought to leave off for a while?"

"No! With Joe out, we can take over his market. Every porter at every gentleman's club in London knew Joe. They'll need somebody to send their people to now he's gone."

"We shouldn't get in so deep. Just a few months of it, we agreed."

"Oh yes, enough for the rent on a little house in Barnes for you and your sister, then puppy dogs and prayer book markers for the rest of your life. Ned, there are thousands of pounds, tens of thousands in this- town house, flunkeys and carriage."

"Is that what you want?"

"I certainly don't want to spend the rest of my life in a scrubby studio getting wh.o.r.es drunk."

"Shhh."

"Oh for goodness sake, your sister must have some notion of what's going on."

"Of course she hasn't, and she's not going to."

Trillow shrugged. "So?"

"So?"

"Do we pay Kate's ten bob or don't we?"

"I don't know."

The raid came three days later at around four in the morning while it was still dark. Ella, closed into her cupboard, heard the knock at the front door like something at the back of a dream, then woke as noises of outrage rose through the house, with tenants poking heads out of doors to ask what was happening, and heavy steps clacking on the stairs, strange voices. While she was sitting up and blinking, trying to separate reality from dream, she heard the door open and steps coming into the kitchen, soft steps, not like the ones on their way upstairs. The fire was out and the room quite dark.

"Ned? Ned, what's happening?"

Somebody pulled the cupboard doors open and stood close to her in the dark. Not Ned. Not Ned's smell.

"Ella, take these. Keep them in there with you and stay where you are."

Trillow. He pushed something at her, something that dug against her ribs. Her hands closed around it and she knew at once what it was. Parcels of copper plates were as familiar to her as bread and cheese. Then the cupboard doors closed on her and Trillow was gone. She heard his voice out on the landing, louder and grander than usual.

"There's a sick girl in there. If you must go in, show some humanity."

Then Ned's voice from the doorway, not all loud or grand.

"Ella dear, I'm afraid there are some people coming in."

Through a gap where the doors didn't quite meet she saw oil lanterns beaming over the kitchen, making ordinary chairs and bowls look sinister. Then steps toward her cupboard and Ned's voice, "No, my sister..."

Trillow's voice, full of contempt, "If they insist on violating a poor girl's sick bed, let's get it over and done with."

The doors flapped back. She shrank against the wall from the lamplight, pulling the blanket up to her chin. The parcel of plates was pressed between her spine and the wall at the back of the cupboard. The light beamed at her for several heartbeats, making her screw up her eyes until a rough voice murmured, "Sorry, miss," and the doors shut on her.

She heard Trillow asking, "Are you quite satisfied now?" in a voice as sharp as any engraving tool. Then the feet went clacking away downstairs.

Much later, when the house was quiet again, Ned came to her. She heard his apologetic whisper through the doors.

"Ella, are you awake?"

She sat up and opened the doors. He was carrying a candle in an enamel holder. His face in the light reminded her of a severed head in an engraving of a cannibal feast.

"What happened?"

He pulled a chair over and sat down.

"Ella, my dear somebody... oh, so much malice..."