The Hourglass Factory

by Lucy Ribchester

  ‘Oh words. Words she’d got from somewhere. She kept talking about the men’s uprising and how the MPs were saying that the women hadn’t done anything half so violent, seeing as how no one had died yet for the women’s vote, and the men killed at least two when they burned Nottingham Castle. I was swept up, I was furious.’ She paused to scrape the hair off her forehead. Her voice was tight and defensive. ‘You have no idea how long it took to rig that Albert Hall stunt. The reccies we did, the ropes. And at any moment I could have fallen and broken my head. And for what? Nothing. Taken from the front pages by a ship that sank because it was badly built by men. I wanted to do something. The suffragettes, they had their limits, but I wanted to do something big. I said I knew a man could help us; some girls who’d want in. When we got out, me and Annie, we took her to the Hourglass Factory.’

  ‘All right,’ said Frankie, ‘so you made your plans. You built the bombs. And then you found her brooch.’

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘I saw you throw it at Mr Smythe.’

  Ebony swallowed. ‘It had dropped out from under her skirts. I wouldn’t have been half so interested, would have thought it was one of her petty thefts, but I knew the pattern. She’s got the same design,’ she nodded towards Milly, ‘on the clasp of the wicker picnic hamper she keeps her snake in. So I started to remember. Confrontations you’d had outside Jojo’s some nights with that Vigilance Association woman. Oh, there was rumours going about for months that you were her daughter. But it all just started to fall into place with the brooch.’

  ‘Mr Smythe had it on him when he died,’ Frankie said tentatively. She didn’t elaborate but Ebony caught her look.

  ‘Ollie.’ She rolled a nugget of foam round her beer cup. ‘Smart boy. Must have kept it when I threw it at him.’

  ‘Did he know?’

  Ebony shook her head vigorously. ‘He knew I wanted out at the end. I got him into the mess. He offered up his shop so we could meet. Ollie was a gent that way. He never asked questions. He was good on privacy, was Ollie.’ She sighed and her red mouth hung open. ‘Even I didn’t know what the full plan was, until the day I met you.’

  ‘What is the full plan?’

  Ebony sat still and silent.

  Frankie leaned across the table and said more firmly, ‘Miss Diamond, what is the full plan?’

  Ebony swallowed again. She looked as if her collar was giving her some trouble. ‘They’re going to stitch the bombs inside the leather benches so they detonate when sat on. They don’t just want to blow the houses. They want to blow the politicians.’

  Frankie felt her stomach turn. She looked sidelong at Milly who was staring into her beer glass.

  ‘As soon as I knew that, I said I wanted out. I never wanted to murder no one, just do some damage, raise our voice. She knows and I know that murder’s too far, not only that but it’ll turn folk against you. I think she knew that if I spoke out I’d take the women with me.’ Ebony’s eyes darted nervously to the clock above the bar. Quarter to five. The sun had sunk already, dimming the light outside to mauve. Parliament would be winding down soon, the politicians returning to their offices and the terrace where they took their drinks. The women would wait until they were all away home for the night. And then . . .

  ‘But why didn’t the other girls want out too? When they knew? She must have told them by now.’

  ‘Those women? You don’t know what they’ve been through. They’ll do anything.’

  ‘What do you mean? Were they suffragettes?’

  Ebony shook her head hurriedly. ‘Suffragettes? No, no, never. They didn’t have time to be suffragettes. They worked all hours God gave, and then with children, some of them in the double figures, men that had buggered off. I’m not making excuses. There’s plenty good folk rage, but some just hate . . . There’s so much anger in that shop. You get the right people, given the wrong chance. They don’t stop to think . . .’

  ‘We know about the men. I mean what goes on at the Hourglass Factory after hours,’ Frankie said quietly.

  Ebony looked sharply at her, colouring slightly. ‘You mean The Hourglass Club? The tightlacing? They’re not involved, got nothing to do with them. The seamstresses just do that for the money. But anyway,’ she bowed her head, ‘that corset on Ollie was meant for me. It was me that had said he should try it on. And it wasn’t the seamstress girls who poisoned it. She must have dabbled with it after I left that night.’ Ebony was trying very deliberately not to look at Milly. ‘Same as what happened to Annie was meant for me, I know it. Annie’d only said she wanted to borrow my jacket and hat cos she wanted to look nice for her gent.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Annie.’ She put her forehead in her palms and rubbed. ‘God couldn’t have made a better girl than Annie.’

  Ebony’s lips twisted and her eyes grew grave. ‘I did mean to meet you that night. I really did. But she was there, backstage at the Coliseum, and I lost my bottle. Would you have stuck around after two of your closest friends were murdered, both dressed as you? Circus was the only safe place. No one going to touch you when you’re sleeping next to a tiger’s cage.’

  ‘What about going to the police?’ Frankie asked impatiently.

  ‘And have them do to me the bonnie job they did on you pair? Policemen love to believe a dirty deviant woman with a far-fetched story, don’t they?’

  Milly shifted. ‘The suffragettes told me you wanted to set tigers free from the zoo.’

  ‘That would have been a stunt,’ Ebony said quickly.

  ‘People could have been killed.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have been.’

  Milly opened her mouth to protest but thought better of it. The image of Ebony calmly wrangling a live tiger through the streets of London flashed on Frankie’s mind.

  Ebony drained her drink. ‘She’s dangerous, you know.’

  ‘You don’t say. She followed us.’ Frankie told her about the stone through the Barclay-Evans’s window.

  Ebony pursed her lips. ‘Sounds about right. She’ll have guessed that sending you to Lincoln’s Inn would keep you away from Smythe’s for a while.’ She sat up and smoothed her hands tightly down over her bodice. ‘But your turn now, tell me what you know.’

  Frankie looked at Liam, who was watching them from beneath the hood of his wool cap. ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She pushed the beer cups to one side and pulled out her notebook where she had sketched from memory some of the pear-shaped diagrams from the Evening Gazette’s spread.

  ‘That’s them.’ Ebony nodded queasily.

  Frankie filled her in quickly on what they knew, Ebony occasionally stopping her to ask for more detail or clear up a question. When Frankie had finished, Ebony sat back against the grimy wall of the public house. Milly was leaning her chin on her hands. Liam dipped his fingers in his empty beer cup to scrape up the foam.

  Frankie turned to Ebony. ‘How much money have you got on you?’

  ‘Some.’

  She looked at Milly. ‘You?’

  Milly rattled her pockets; the sound of coins made a small chinking.

  ‘There’s a chemist’s on High Holborn, down that way.’ Frankie jerked her head then drew out her pocket-watch and looked at the time. It was creeping closer to five. ‘Buy me two shillings worth of Muller’s flashpowder, would you? Don’t ask, just do it. Please.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Milly’s voice wavered.

  ‘I have to fetch something from Gray’s Inn Road. But I’ll meet you in Parliament Square in an hour.’

  Liam eyed her with suspicion. ‘I’m not letting yous out of my sight. I’ve already bailed you out once today.’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Ebony said softly. He twitched and sat up straighter. ‘Where are you going, Miss George?’

  Milly was also looking at her with thinned eyes. ‘Yes, where are you going, Frankie?’

  Frankie looked back at them, Milly’s calm, pale and serious face, Ebony brist
ling under the surface of her powdered skin with a tension that threatened to erupt. ‘Trust me this once,’ she said. ‘Milly, you stick with Liam, and don’t let him talk you out of it. Miss Diamond –’ she ran a grimy finger down her pocket-watch’s face. Her hands, she realised, were filthy with the dirt of the day. ‘– Miss Diamond comes with me. We can pick up some rope on the way.’

  Ebony looked doubtful. She hardened her black eyes at Frankie and clasped her gloved palms on the dusty tabletop. ‘I’d rather know what you expect me to do before we leave this saloon.’

  Frankie looked back down at her grandfather’s watch. The years of scratches had faded into a haze on the surface of the glass. ‘Trust me this once’, that was what she had said to them. And her father had asked for her trust too when he gave her the watch. She clenched her hand round it until it pinched, then, looking through the window, measured the distance in her head between the corner of the street and the little Italian repair man on Gray’s Inn Road. ‘We’re going to need a good vantage point.’

  ‘For what, Frankie?’ Milly sounded irate now.

  ‘You think we can stop those women from setting the bombs?’ Frankie asked.

  Ebony turned her palms upwards. ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘Well, I don’t either. But we can make sure they’re caught before they go off, and we can make sure everyone knows exactly who set them. I’m going to get my camera back.’

  Forty-Two

  The sun had disappeared, the streets were smothered in pillows of mist. Carried on its cold wet fronds came the sweet smell of wood smoke and bitter smouldering junk. From the corner of Gray’s Inn Road Frankie could hear the pop of fireworks going off in domestic gardens and children squealing nearby. Somehow the children’s voices made her feel even sicker and more choked than the smoke. She had in her hand the camera she had carried so carefully on her back to Bond Street a few days ago, traded with the man in the repair shop for her grandfather’s watch until she could stump up the money. The man had managed to straighten out the bent clasps and polish up the leather but it still bore the grazes of its adventure, scorchmarks and a burnt musky smell. The wind probed through Frankie’s jacket as she peered into the dark of the street.

  ‘Got you,’ came a whisper from behind. Frankie’s heart leapt.

  ‘Don’t jump, I’m sorry.’

  She spun to see Ebony carrying a large red and gold carpet bag. In her slick black crepe dress she looked no different from a respectable woman about to take an evening journey, a governess on her way out. Her hat rested at an angle, her black eyes were alight; there was a flush on her face from the cold. Frankie breathed out.

  ‘Got my camera,’ she said patting it. ‘Listen, if you don’t want to help with this—’ she began.

  In response, Ebony started walking smartly down the street ahead of her. Frankie inhaled another gush of cold, smoked air and followed.

  Traffic was backed up and from down each street came the impatient snorting of horses and catcalls from the cabbies stuck behind omnibuses and trams. Behind the smoke and fog the moon was a rheumy unblinking eye. Halfway down The Strand, Frankie turned to Ebony. ‘How did you know about the cocaine?’

  Ebony tilted her head. ‘Cocaine?’

  ‘That’s why you ran away. From the theatre.’

  Ebony sighed and switched the carpet bag into her other hand. ‘I knew she was planning something. That backstage boy that always follows me around let slip there was a new dresser for the chorus girls. Someone with phossy jaw. She was stupid to think that people inside a theatre wouldn’t notice that and talk.’

  Frankie shuddered, thinking of her backstage tour with Stoll’s clerk and how close she may have come to brushing against Lady Thorne.

  ‘I didn’t have to know what it was she had planned. I checked all my own knots and did my own rigging, but I knew I wasn’t coming out of that theatre through the front door. Not as myself anyway.’

  ‘There must have been an easier way to escape.’

  Ebony stopped and looked at her square, and Frankie caught the prickle of whatever it was she had felt at their first meeting. She could feel herself shrink back in her skin and wished she had kept her mouth shut. But Ebony simply said, ‘I thought it was easy. I let the hatch before the act began. It was hanging open all the time I was in the air, but folk don’t notice that, do they? That’s the whole point about magic and diversions. I’d already shoved around some hay bales to land on. Closing the hatch quietly was the tricky bit but Old Fouc-up or whatever his name is has a pole to keep the tiger at bay so I used that. He was stupid enough to leave his costume lying around at the interval while he was leching over the chorus girls, so I’d already nicked it and put it waiting by the cage. And that tiger was a charm. Dopey old thing only had three teeth left anyway. I don’t know what all the fuss was about. I can’t stand the way they treat tigers in theatres. Give me a zoo or menagerie any day. A circus even. But a theatre? I wish it hadn’t been caught.’ She blinked a couple of times, shifted the bag to the other hand and upped their walking pace.

  When they reached Parliament Square Frankie was surprised to see a small bonfire smoking in the centre. She picked out Milly and Liam in the spiked shadows of Victoria Tower and hurried over.

  Liam spotted her and took a few steps away from the pyre’s licking flames. The heat was immense despite the fire’s size. Some people were dancing and drinking beer from tin cups, others were still and quiet, trying to let the warmth melt their frozen flesh. The smoke had already started to make both Milly’s and Liam’s eyes red and raw.

  ‘Did you get the flash powder?’

  Liam reached into his pocket and held out a tiny glass bottle with a rubber bung and a matchbox of guncotton. In a thin paper packet was a bundle of brittle fuse papers.

  ‘Good. Keep hold of them for now.’

  She turned to address Ebony but Ebony had disappeared.

  Frankie spun a circle, trying to pick her out on the grass among the revellers. Eventually she spotted her idling close to a railing, in the dark patch between two street lamps. She hurried over. ‘Where did you . . . ?’

  Ebony held her finger to her red mouth then pointed. It seemed at first as if she were pointing towards Milly and Liam who were making their way over to them. Then Frankie followed the line of her glove to the fire where three or four tramps were cavorting. ‘I didn’t think you were allowed fires on Parliament Square,’ she said.

  Frankie squinted closer. A noise had started up behind her in the distance, a heavy but familiar thumping sound. She turned to see Parliament Guards pounding across the frozen lawn in navy blue uniforms, their warm boots throwing up powder puffs of white air. Some of the revellers held off dancing and began to scatter.

  ‘Scarper!’ a cry rang out. The mob dispersed like cattle struck by lightning.

  Frankie suddenly realised the one thing that was not being watched. ‘Clever little witches.’

  Ebony nodded grimly. ‘Start a fire on Parliament Square. Get the guards to abandon the palace gates. Come on.’

  Two guards were careering towards them; they dodged outstretched arms just before the men crashed into the railings. Ducking to the right, they ran parallel to the length of Westminster Abbey.

  ‘Liam!’ Frankie suddenly realised and turned.

  ‘No time,’ Ebony shot back over her shoulder.

  ‘But he’s got the flash powder. We won’t be able to get a clear shot without it.’

  She heard a thump behind her and peeped over her shoulder, trying at the same time to keep pace with Ebony who was surefooted in the mud. Milly had slipped and fallen and was sliding around on her knees in wet muck. She was trying to get purchase on her hands but it was too late. A guard reached for her waist and toppled her again, wriggling a pair of handcuffs from his waistband with his spare hand. ‘Got ya!’ Frankie heard him cry. ‘You behave yourself and you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  The guards were going berserk, grabbing anyone
they could lay their hands on, knocking them to the ground with truncheons, jamming them in headlocks and armlocks until they could be cuffed.

  As they reached the corner of the square and ran into the traffic Frankie saw that Liam had managed to dodge them all and was barrelling towards the public entrance to Westminster Palace. She did a quick check around her and saw that there were guards stationed on every corner. So the police had taken them seriously. She wondered if anyone was watching the Peers’ door. They stopped in the shadow of another lamppost and Frankie ducked to her haunches. Ebony joined her.

  ‘How’s he going to get in?’ Ebony jerked her head towards Liam who, a hundred yards off, was hanging back beside the public gates to Westminster Palace, where the majority of the guards had run from. Frankie looked and saw him poke his head out of the shadows, scanning the street. Suddenly a white hot spark flared and a sharp cry rang out. Liam, his fox-tail hair flaming under his hat, threw a flash of guncotton and magnesium in the face of a guard. Frankie couldn’t see clearly but suspected from the swaying of the guard’s body and the shape around him that Liam’s fingers were working his pockets for keys like a squirrel, while he was blinded. A second later the guard hit the ground; the fox tail was gone.

  ‘That’s how,’ she murmured. Liam was in. ‘Fat lot of good it does us, though.’

  Frankie turned back to Ebony and found her staring into the distance towards the Thames. After a few seconds she pulled Frankie close. ‘If we follow parallel to the river we’ll come to the Peers’ carriage court. There’s an entrance there.’

  ‘Yes but . . .’

  ‘Will you grab the bag?’ She pushed the rough carpet bag into Frankie’s arms. Frankie took the camera off her neck and slipped it inside. They rose and began to hurry in the foggy direction of the river. They hadn’t made it fifty yards when a black shadow swelled up ahead of them.