Rose Campion and the Stolen Secret

by Lyn Gardner

  Lizzie had come across him in the street all those years ago, holding the baby and weeping. She’d hoped to pick his pocket but he’d clutched her arm and told her his desperate story. As soon as she set eyes on the silver cup with the blue ribbon tied to the handle that the desperate young man was offering to give her, Lizzie had seen her opportunity.

  She told him to come and see her later at the Victorious. When he did, she had assured him in her most motherly tones that his little baby would be in the safest possible hands with her, an experienced nanny. She showed him a number of references from satisfied parents that she had forged herself, and also the other little newborn that she was looking after temporarily for a friend in need. Well, that was her story. In fact, she had filched the child out of a pram by the Haymarket stage door only that morning, intending to strip the mewling little thing of its clothes and flog them as soon as it was safe and she could dump the babe in the river. She had even slipped her friend Eliza a few bob to come and assure young Edward that Lizzie had looked after her sister’s babe and even saved his life when he had gone down with the measles. Eliza Chowser didn’t have a sister.

  The young man said he had nothing else to his name but the cup, and if she would take it temporarily, along with his daughter, when he returned from his tour of the provinces playing Ferdinand in The Tempest he would be able to pay her what he owed her for caring for the babe and reclaim his daughter and cup. The poor fool. He clearly had no idea of the value of the silver cup. Solid silver. He could tour the provinces for a year and still not have earned anywhere near its value.

  Lizzie had asked how he came by it. Edward said his dad Joe, who was originally from Yorkshire, had told him it had been given to him and his wife, Abigail, in return for good service, and that it wasn’t worth much, but that Joe held it in great sentimental value. He had told Edward that the boy should always keep it because it connected him with Yorkshire, where he had been born.

  Lizzie thought this was an unlikely story. The gentry didn’t hand out silver cups for good service. This Joe and Abigail had obviously prigged it and left Yorkshire in a hurry.

  And then came that nasty business with the tenor, and she’d had to dump the babies and flee to her sister’s. That’s where she heard another version of the story – a version that she knew would make her fortune. She also realised what a mistake she’d made in getting rid of that baby. It was only lucky that she hadn’t thrown the infants in the river as she’d intended, and just dumped them on a music-hall step instead. The cup plus the ribbon plus Edward’s child were blackmailer’s gold.

  So she had returned to Campion’s to retrieve the baby. Only, when she had looked down at the two infants in their cribs she’d no idea which one was which. She had stood there dithering, when she realised she’d been spotted. She had picked up both babies and fled, but she’d had to drop one again or risk being caught.

  Coming back to the scene of the crime with the Infant Phenomenon risked discovery, of course. Thomas Campion only had to realise she was the woman he had spotted that day and she’d be in big trouble. But running into Edward outside the post office was even more alarming. She had been so confident that he was far, far away. If he recognised her, all would be lost. Instead of milking Lord Easingford for every penny she could get, she would end up behind bars for child abduction, maybe worse. The young man had to go. It was his fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In some ways, killing him had just been self-defence.

  Lizzie took a slug of gin and continued to think things through. And now, after everything, someone had taken the box containing the cup and ribbon. At first she’d been quite certain that Snetherbridge had had a hand in its disappearance. She’d been furious at the thought of the lawyer and Lord Henry laughing at how they’d got one over on Lizzie Gawkin. But who was to say that someone from Campion’s hadn’t prigged the box? They were a bunch of lowlife thieves and vagabonds, every one of them. Whoever took it probably just slung the papers in the river and flogged the silver cup first chance they got.

  It made her task harder, but she still knew what she knew. Nobody could take that away from her. And knowledge was power. She’d just have to bluff it out.

  She determined to write to Mr Snetherbridge again. She would be elegantly restrained, and test the lie of the land. If he didn’t reply, she would know they had the box. If he did, then she might still be able to squeeze something out of them if she was clever. Perhaps if she told them how she’d murdered Edward, they’d realise how far she’d go to protect the interests of the Easingford family. She had made quite sure that Lord Henry’s nephew couldn’t make things difficult for him and he should be grateful to her. She just had to make him see it that way.

  Rose found O’Leary sitting outside the theatre, wrapped up against the cold and guarding the stage door. He put a leg out to stop her passing.

  “What’s this?” she laughed.

  “I’m redeeming myself, Rosie. I’ve not touched a drop of the gin before noon since the afternoon of the robbery. I’m like a guard dog here; I’m not letting anyone in or out unless I knows them.”

  “But you do know me, so you can let me out,” said Rose.

  O’Leary nodded. “Oh, I know you all right. And I knows Thomas, who went out a few minutes past for his appointment with that bank of his that gives him so much grief. But I wouldn’t let in the man with the waxed moustache.”

  Rose looked alert. She was certain she knew who O’Leary meant.

  “Was he wearing a low crown bowler hat?”

  “Yes,” said O’Leary, looking surprised.

  “What did he want?” asked Rose.

  “He said he wanted to talk to little Effie.”

  “Did he now…” said Rose.

  “Yes,” said O’Leary. “I told him he would have to make an appointment. He wouldn’t get in without one. Not with me on the door.” The old man looked pleased with himself. “In fact, it wasn’t his lucky day. He wanted to see Grace and little Freddie too, but I told him he couldn’t because they’d gone to Shoreditch.”

  “Did you tell him where?” asked Rose urgently.

  O’Leary shook his head. “Didn’t need to. He said he already knew where they lived.”

  Rose turned and ran back into the theatre and found Aurora. “There you are!” she cried. “Quick! We’ve got to go to Shoreditch. I’ve a feeling that Grace and Freddie are in terrible danger.”

  As they headed over London Bridge, Rose told Aurora that she thought the man with the slug-like moustache might have something to do with Ned’s death.

  “Some might say you’re being fanciful, Rose, but now you say it, I know I have seen him before at the Four Cripples. He comes and sits at the next table when Lizzie is drinking.”

  Rose frowned. What was the man’s interest in Lizzie? “Maybe he’s trying to overhear your conversation,” she said.

  “It’s never a conversation,” said Aurora, tart as a plum.

  Just then Rose gave a low whistle and pulled Aurora back. “Look!” she breathed, pointing down a narrow passageway. Effie was standing with the very man they were discussing. They were shouting at each other. At that moment, a woman turned down the passageway and Josiah stalked off quickly, leaving Effie staring after him.

  “I know this sounds awful, and I don’t even want to think it,” said Rose. “But do you think Effie might be involved? Given that she knows that bloke?”

  “Effie?” said Aurora. “Murder? Don’t be daft, Rosie. You’ve taken two and two and made at least seven. There could be any number of reasons why that man’s been hanging around. Maybe it’s Effie he’s really interested in, and not Grace and Freddie at all. Maybe she’s the one who needs protection. Maybe we’re off on a wild-goose chase to Shoreditch to help two people who don’t need help at all, when it’s Effie who needs looking after.”

  “Then why did he ask O’Leary about Grace and Freddie?”

  “I don’t know,” said Aurora. “But I really d
on’t have Effie down as an accessory to murder. If Ned was even murdered! We don’t even know that, and we certainly have no proof that man was involved, let alone poor little Effie.”

  Rose started walking very quickly with her eyes fixed ahead. Aurora knew that she had upset her but she’d begun to think that she shouldn’t have listened to Rose’s hunch. Grace and Freddie were probably already in a hansom cab on their way back to Campion’s.

  As soon as they entered the network of narrow streets behind the Bethnal Green Road it felt as if they were in a fiendishly difficult maze. As they plunged further in, the rumble of the traffic from the road grew muffled until they could hardly hear it at all. Rose walked ahead, and Aurora feared that if she let her out of her sight Rose would disappear into one of the passageways and vanish forever.

  They picked their way through the Shoreditch streets, stepping over piles of rubbish as they went. People watched them pass, curious about these unknown children walking deep into the labyrinth of courtyards and narrow passageways. Dogs yapped at their ankles and chased chickens out of their way. Down one dark alleyway Rose even thought she glimpsed a pig. A few bare-footed urchins ran after them, begging for money. Some disappeared down secret alleys and then reappeared unexpectedly a few steps in front of them. Aurora sighed and just hoped she and Rose wouldn’t get hopelessly lost.

  Rose turned another corner and led them into a narrow street. “It’s number one hundred and five,” she said shortly.

  They stopped outside a run-down house. It was in far better condition than the tumbledown dwellings on the other side of the street, many of which had missing doors and no glass. Rose rapped on the door. “Grace!” she called.

  There was no reply. Rose tried the door handle. It turned and she pushed the door open. The bare room in front of them was damp but scrupulously clean. There was no sign of Grace and Freddie. The room, thought Rose, was filled with a melancholy emptiness as if their absence was as tangible a thing as a chair or a table. It made her feel more concerned than ever.

  Aurora looked at her pensive face. “I’ll ask down the street, see if anyone has seen them,” she said, and disappeared out of the door.

  Rose knew that Aurora was humouring her. She thought Rose had brought them on a wild goose chase and at this very moment Grace and Freddie were probably sitting with Thomas in their new house having tea and crumpets. But what if they weren’t? Her unease at the empty room was growing, not dissipating. She eyed the room for clues, trying to study it in the way that the police might look at the scene of a crime. She noticed one of the bricks at the bottom of the fireplace was wonky and loose. She bent down and tried to pull at it. When it wouldn’t budge, she pulled a hairpin from her pocket and slid it down the side of the brick. She applied pressure and eased it forward. The brick shifted very slightly. She tried again and this time managed to move it forward far enough so that her fingers could grip it. It slid out with only a little resistance.

  At the back of the small dark cavity where the brick had been, Rose saw a flash of white. She reached in, wary in case a mouse or worse was living there and nipped her fingers. She felt something. She pulled and it came away. It was an old envelope, dusty and streaked with mud. The envelope was empty but it was addressed to Ned and postmarked just before Christmas, around the same time that the Dorsets had first returned to London. She turned the envelope over. There was a return address: The Reverend Oliver Dorset Woldingham, The Parsonage, Easingford, Yorks.

  There were also two lines scrawled in what Rose recognised as Ned’s distinctively untidy hand:

  Bess Jingle, Eliza Chowser, the Victorious.

  Rose started because of what was written on the second line:

  Campion’s, Rose and?

  Why was her name there? And who or what did the question mark stand for? Aurora burst back through the door, so she stuffed it into her pocket for safekeeping.

  “Good news, Rosie!” she said. “I spoke to a neighbour. Grace took some stuff round that she didn’t want to take with her, and both she and Freddie are fine. We’ve only just missed them. This neighbour said she’ll show us the quickest way to the Bethnal Green Road where they were headed to pick up a hansom. Thought we might even catch them if we hurry.”

  The woman was as good as her word, leading them expertly through the narrow alleys and pointing them towards an archway that led out on to the Bethnal Green Road. The children ran gratefully towards the light, pleased to be out of the dingy, depressing maze of streets. Immediately they hit a wall of noise. The street was thronged with people and hawkers all shouting and calling. The cabs rolling across the cobbles sounded like large animals growling. A blind fiddler stood in the corner recreating the sound of farmyard animals with his bow, while further down the road a woman was playing a cornet extremely badly.

  “Look, there they are!” shouted Aurora over the din, pointing across the road to where Grace was holding Freddie’s hand and looking for an empty hansom. “All safe and well; nothing to worry about.”

  The girls went to cross the road to catch up with them but the carts and cabs were thick and they had to wait. They saw Grace turn down a quieter side street, walking quickly. Rose guessed she was cutting through to the next main street in the hope it would be easier to pick up a cab. A rather fancy carriage with a crest on its side, entwining an ‘I’ and an ‘H’ in a flowery motif, turned down the narrow street after Grace and Freddie.

  There was a sudden gap in the vehicles on the main road and the children darted into the middle, then waited while another cart rumbled by before making it to the other side. They turned right down the side street where Grace and Freddie had gone. They could see that the fancy carriage had stopped up ahead with its door open, just a little way in front of Grace and Freddie. A man – brawny and squat like a toad – stepped out in front of Grace. The children saw her take a step backwards, and she shouted, “Run, Freddie!” as the man seized her by the arms. Freddie stood frozen with shock, while Grace shouted again for him to run. But it was too late because at that moment the man with the slug-like moustache and low crown bowler appeared from around the other side of the coach and grabbed him.

  The children raced towards Grace as she was manhandled towards the carriage door. She was protesting loudly, but the street was almost deserted and nobody helped.

  Rose launched herself like a small steam train at the man who was pushing Grace into the carriage. Aurora came to her aid and was rewarded by being punched so hard in the stomach that her legs folded beneath her. Rose looked wildly around. Slug Face had Freddie in his arms, who was kicking and screaming.

  “Aurora, help Freddie!” yelled Rose as she renewed her efforts to pull the man off Grace. But he was too strong for her, and he held a handkerchief over Grace’s mouth and nose as he forced her into the coach. Rose caught a whiff of chloroform and Grace went limp.

  The man snapped down the blinds. Rose beat her fists helplessly on the glass. Slug Face had Freddie by his arms and a hand over his mouth. Aurora was hitting and kicking the man, who was trying to push her away.

  Rose turned and stormed Slug Face, slamming her body into him as hard as she could. His elbow caught her on the nose and she reeled in pain. But she wouldn’t be beaten. She moved around to his front and dealt him a sharp kick on the shin that made him loosen his grip on Freddie. Rose grabbed Freddie by one arm and Aurora succeeded in landing a low punch in Slug Face’s stomach. Rose began pulling Freddie away, but at that moment the carriage door opened and the other man jumped out, throwing Aurora to the ground. Slug Face picked up Freddie and slung him over his shoulder while his accomplice pushed Rose so hard that she reeled into the display of cabbages outside a shop, sending them flying. The battle was lost.

  But before Slug Face reached the carriage door, there was a furious battle cry. Effie – a pedalling Boudicca on a green bicycle covered with daisies – ploughed straight into the men at top speed, scattering them like skittles at a country fair. Aurora grabbed Freddie
by the arm and ran with him up the street. Rose leapt into the coach to try and rouse Grace as Effie spun round on the bicycle and pedalled furiously back towards the two men, once again intent on a head-on collision with them.

  “You’ll pay for this, Effie. I’ll see you hanged by the neck before I’m done,” shouted Josiah as she careered into him and the bike skittered into the road, sending Effie sprawling. He nodded curtly to the other man. “Get on your way with the woman; I’ll find the kid and deal with him.”

  The men hurried into the coach, hauled Rose out of it and flung her to the ground like a piece of rubbish. The coachman flicked his whip and the horses set off at a gallop, only narrowly avoiding Effie. Slug Face melted away into an alleyway. Rose, bruised and battered, pulled herself painfully to her feet and went over to help Effie up, but she shrugged her away.

  “Leave me, I’m fine. Go after Aurora and Freddie. They’ll need your help if Josiah Pinch is after them.”

  “So you do know that man, Effie,” said Rose sharply.

  “Yes,” whispered Effie. “I lied to you.”

  Rose stared at her for a second, then she turned and ran in the direction the others had taken. Effie looked sadly after her. She had seen the look of mistrust mingled with disgust on Rose’s face. She knew she could never return to Campion’s. Not now. They would all know that she wasn’t to be trusted.

  Rose, Aurora and Freddie crouched in an alleyway off a small side street and tried to catch their breath. Freddie was crying softly. The two girls tried to soothe him.

  “Why have those men taken my mum?” he asked.

  Rose hugged him. “We’re going to find out, and we’re going to get your mum back.”

  “Now?” asked Freddie hopefully.

  “First we need to get you safely back to Campion’s.” She turned to Aurora. “Did you see the crest on the side of that carriage? It might help us find out where Grace has been taken.”

  “I did,” said Aurora, “and I’ve seen it before.”