by Kim Newman
A paladin couldn’t kick a fallen foe.
Much less flatten her to pavement paste.
But Kentish Glory could arrange not to be here when Swift woke up.
Amy looked around, hoping to spot a street name. The fire in the lamp had died down and the fog was thickening at sign height.
‘What’s the matter, Miss Glory?’
‘I am late for an, ah, appointment, Young Alfred…’
The lad was a year or two older than her, but she hoped the flying helmet made her seem grown-up and authoritative.
‘You wouldn’t happen to be able to give us directions to Piccadilly?’
A gleaming smile appeared on his grubby face.
‘I’ll do better than that, luv. I’ll tike yer there meself.’
A sharp laugh sounded, prickling Amy’s nerves.
It wasn’t Stephen Swift, awake and dangerous… but Sterlyng, who’d been watching and listening all this time. Her face was stone again, but she found something hilarious.
‘Don’t mind me, Miss Glory,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m out of play. You keep going as you are. School Spirit rah rah rah! We’ll get you back next year.’
H’Alfie shot a glance over his shoulder at the tethered Draycott’s girl and cringed.
‘She can’t hurt you any more,’ Amy said.
The Knout laughed again.
‘What is so funny?’
‘It’s just you,’ she responded. ‘You’re so… Oh, nothing, what’s the use? We’re beaten and no use peesing and queusing about it.’
Amy knew she was being joshed…
But also remembered that Draycott’s would use any tactics, including psychological warfare, to put rivals off their stroke. Even the hog-grunting was a tactic. The trick was to ignore the ragging.
So, not listening, and moving on…
She addressed H’Alfie. ‘You can get us to Piccadilly, like a…’
She was going to say ‘native guide’, but thought better of it.
‘Knows the ’ighways and byways of Old London Town I does,’ said H’Alfie. ‘The inns and ahts. The secret ways most passes by.’
‘Just so long as you don’t mean the sewers.’
H’Alfie was horrified again.
‘Wouldn’t catch me goin’ down there!’
She was slightly surprised.
‘Because of the filth?’
‘Nah, ’cause of them giant pigs!’
IX: Eros and Venetia
DESPITE HIS INFIRMITY, H’Alfie set a pace Amy and Larry were hard put to match. When he got ahead in the fog, they caught up by following the squeaky clump of his crutch. Might he be exaggerating his limp for sympathy? She supposed he earned his living as a beggar. He probably picked pockets too.
By comparison, Amy dragged her feet. Her cloak was damp, heavy and caught on things. She couldn’t stop yawning, which meant swallowing gulps of foul London air. One of her boots squelched. It had a permeable seam and she’d stepped in a puddle of something awful.
First, they had to cross Oxford Street – not free of traffic, even in the small hours and this weather. Fog churned along the thoroughfare like a river of melted ghosts. Amy took Larry’s hand and plunged into the road, hoping they wouldn’t be run over by a stray taxi. At the other side, Larry took her hand away and wrung it out as if she suspected she could catch an infectious disease from Amy.
They darted from one street lamp to the next, resting briefly in each thin cone of light. H’Alfie led them down the curve of Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus. Neon signs shed sickly light on the statue of Eros. A cowboy flicker was announced at the Pavilion, Wanderer of the Wasteland. Amy wished she were in warm, dry desert, even with a dry-gulching owlhoot behind every cactus. Green-yellow tendrils veiled lit-up advertisements for Bovril, Gordon’s Gin and Schweppes Ginger Ale. The Guinness Clock – above the dubious slogan ‘Guinness is Good for You’ – reminded her how late it was. Nearly ten to one.
Five hours till the Finish.
H’Alfie skittered across Piccadilly Circus like a giant stick insect.
If he noticed the girls lagging, he’d stop a moment and shift his crutch to his other armpit – left for moving, right for leaning, Amy had noticed – blowing on his hands for warmth while they huffed to catch up.
Amy had to keep watch on Larry. The Third frequently stopped for ‘rests’ where she made her pained stitch face and told Amy she was perfectly all right. Larry was no longer venting supernatural chinaware, but Amy was concerned about how long she could contain three important – if comparatively small – objects in her pocket.
Gravity worked on a different principle in the Purple. The weight of a thing came not from mass or density but intangible value. Larry told the Moth Club she’d worked this out experimenting with her mother’s jewel box and a cast-iron basin left for the scrap-iron man. Putting the cracked basin away was a trial. She had to open her pocket wider than she was, stretching the seams with her fingertips, then she bent over the unwieldy item and enveloped it. Touched by the Purple, the basin lost shape as if turned to jelly and vanished with a pop! Larry kept the basin in so long and with so little discomfort she forgot it was there. A single emerald earring was easily posted, but couldn’t be held for more than a minute without Larry doubling over in agony. She held the matching earring for half a day before the barest tickle prompted her to bring it back.
It wasn’t monetary value – the ‘hot’ earring had a minute flaw that made it the lesser of the pair. When Larry asked her mother and father about that particular piece, they went pink in the face and wouldn’t explain why but exchanged funny smiles and fond pinches she found irritating, though she was given candied almonds for being extra sweet that day. It wasn’t strictly about value, but meaning. That earring meant something to Larry’s parents.
The tobies wouldn’t fetch ninepence in any knick-knack emporium, but their worth in the Great Game was incalculable.
Larry sat on the wet steps under Eros and pulled out the front of her pinafore. Violet light flashed and the three jugs rolled into her lap.
The Third let out a gasp of relief.
‘Larry…’ said Amy, impatient.
The House of Reform knew about the last prize. They might be at the Villa DeVille already.
‘Just a mo,’ Larry said.
H’Alfie capered back to them.
‘What’s the ’old-up?’
‘She needs a breather,’ explained Amy.
H’Alfie saw the tobies. He picked one up by the handle. His beaky profile rather resembled the jug’s.
‘Cor but that’s an ’ideous fing. ’Is ’ead’s been cut orff wiv a rusty rizer.’
The lower rim was uneven and splashed with red glaze. It wasn’t one of the jolly, tubby jugs Uncle Bracegirdle – a brewer who made lethally potent ale, while insisting on strict temperance in his own household – collected and proudly displayed on his mantelpiece.
‘I wouldn’t fancy drinkin’ aht o’ this gruesome h’object. Not even if yer flask ’ad Neapolitan Brandy in it.’
Amy saw his point.
‘Right now, if there was hot tea to be had, I’d drink it out of a rat-catcher’s boot.’
H’Alfie laughed at that.
It was funny, but Amy did mean it.
‘I’d not say no ter a cuppa neither,’ he said.
All the tea stalls in the circus were closed.
‘I’ve got peppermints,’ said Larry, shyly producing a paper bag from the ordinary pinny pocket it was easy to forget she had. ‘They have fluff on them. Sorry.’
She offered the bag to H’Alfie with a tiny hesitance.
Larry was tentative around Frecks too. Infinitesimal rebuffs pricked like the bite of an adder. A half-smile or offhand pat was like a kiss from a handsome officer or a medal from the King. Candied almonds were rarely bestowed on Venetia Laurence, Amy gathered. At home, she had to surrender a brutal tithe of any gifts to her coddled little bully of a brother Cecil. Amy felt sorry fo
r the Third… but was ever so slightly irritated with her most of the time.
She still hadn’t been thanked for saving Larry from that potentially fatal fall. Not to mention the triad of Draycott’s girls. To Larry, Amy was as invisible as her mentacles. She didn’t remember Larry calling her by name – by any of her names – even once before tonight. She’d only shouted ‘Thomsett’ when it seemed likely she would fall and break her bonce on the pavement. Even as she bounced in Amy’s rescue net, she switched back to wishing Frecks were there with outstretched arms and braced legs to catch her.
H’Alfie took a peppermint ball and tossed it into his mouth.
He went wide-eyed and Larry laughed.
She sucked on a sweet too. She didn’t offer Amy a mint and Amy was too tired of the pettiness to ask.
‘Feelin’ better, Veneetsier?’
Larry nodded, almost beaming now.
‘Put these fings away, eh? In yer whatchamacallit oojamaflip?’
‘Pocket,’ she said.
H’Alfie gave the jug back, exaggeratedly shivering. She popped it into her pocket. The other two tumbled after it. Amy saw that jelly effect Larry mentioned. As they were put away, the jugs became less solid – infused with the violet light – and shimmered, then were gone. There was a tiny pop!, air rushing in to fill the vacuum where the tobies had been.
‘Don’t fink I’d ever get used ter that,’ he said.
‘You’d be surprised what you can get used to,’ said Amy.
‘That I don’t dispute, Miss Glory.’
Larry tugged H’Alfie’s sleeve.
‘I’m ready to go on,’ she said. ‘I’m rested.’
‘Good fer you, button,’ he responded, taking her hand.
Larry fairly glowed with delight. Though, of the two of them, H’Alfie was more likely than Amy to give her an infectious disease.
The moon peeped through a gap in the fog. Eros’ winged shadow fell on them.
Piccadilly stretched off to the West. And the last toby jug.
What else waited at Number 347?
X: Boldness and Mistrust
PAST THE GAUDY lights of Piccadilly Circus, they came to a parade of more dignified shops. Advertisements were smaller, price tags higher. Windows framed illuminated tableaux. Ripping at the Beach! Everyone for Tennis! Cocktails on an Airship! Slender mannequins modelled cloche hats, sack dresses and ropes of pearls. Amy had an urge to twist a faceless flapper’s head as if she noticed friends walking by her window. H’Alfie and Larry would jump out of their skins. She stifled the impulse like a giggle in chapel. That might have been funny earlier. This side of midnight, it was no joke at all.
Beyond the fashion shops was Green Park, an ocean of fog lapping a seafront of big hotels. Even commissionaires who usually stood guard outside revolving doors retreated to warmer lobbies. Amy saw pale faces through glass, watching for guests returning from evenings in the West End. Most liveried staff were veterans of the Great War – the Great Game played across continents by boys who should have known better. The fog probably reminded them of watered-down mustard gas.
Like too many girls she knew, Amy had lost her father in the War.
Lost her father to the War.
The circumstance didn’t earn much sympathy. Drearcliff Grange tended, as Frecks put it, ‘to orphans or semi-orphans’. Lord and Lady Walmergrave were spies, captured in Belgium. They refused to name the conscience-stricken German officer who passed them documents outlining a plan to spread terror and despair in England by launching air raids against boarding schools and children’s hospitals. The firing squad was ironically supervised by that same honourable traitor. After the volley at dawn, the officer drew his revolver to administer the coup de grâce and blew his own brains out, rather defeating the point of the sacrifice. The Kaiser grumpily cancelled the raids, so Drearcliff Grange owed Frecks’ parents for not being blown off the map by a long-range Gotha bomber.
Amy’s father was killed – along with some thousands of other men – in the Second Battle of Ypres. ‘Killed, with distinction,’ Mother said bitterly, as she tore up the telegram from the War Office and tossed the pieces at the motorcycle messenger.
Nearly ten years on, she wasn’t sure how well she really remembered Father. Mother only put the framed photographs on display when Amy was between uncles.
Many school staff wore tokens of dead or missing fiancés. Miss Tasker’s lad Eric, who lived with her in a cosy cottage outside school grounds, was a poignant keepsake of the Classics teacher’s lost lover, a pilot brought down by ungallant ground fire. A contemplative little boy, Eric had a portwine birthmark across half his face. A mask of blood.
Beyond the hotels were impressive residences – not all in good repair. They had walked off the map into limbo. Amy looked for house numbers. She couldn’t think of a number without mentally adding ‘green bottles hanging on the wall’. She hummed to herself. Fatigue and nerves made her light-headed, prone to lurches between whimsy and melancholy.
She tried humming something more serious: ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’. Instead of ending each verse with ‘to be a pilgrim’, she thought ‘to be a paladin’. It wasn’t quite what she wanted for Kentish Glory’s musical leitmotif. Light Fingers had suggested ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’. A good theme was essential. Dr Shade played Wagner selections through gramophone horns built into his autogiro to let crooks he was swooping down on know they were really in for it now.
H’Alfie strode ahead, putting his good foot forward, then confidently swinging the lame one after. He knew where they were going but not that they’d likely find trouble there. His bruises couldn’t have healed, but he wasn’t wary.
Amy didn’t want to preach caution like a nervous nelly. Or, worse, a malingering minnie.
Miss Gossage coached the team in boldness.
Dr Swan, however, advised mistrust.
It was a conundrum. Amy was required to heed her tutor and the Headmistress, but how exactly did a person go about boldly mistrusting?
Something else niggled. She’d been exultant when the answer to the final puzzle fell into her lap. Boldness. Now she was thinking again. Mistrust. A saw about gift horses came to mind.
Miss Gossage set stock by such folk wisdom. A tweedy country sort, the Sausage was expert in making muckles of mickles. She swathed herself in clouts until well into June. A gift horse could have Ivor Novello’s telephone number tattooed on its tonsils and Clemency Gossage would be none the wiser.
Dr Swan had a different policy.
If someone gave Headmistress a thoroughbred, she’d wrench its jaws open, shine a dark lantern down its throat, and take a long, lingering look. If someone left a magnificent wooden horse outside school gates, Dr Swan would light a bonfire under its tummy and tell the girls to listen carefully for stamping, jostling and Greek swear words.
H’Alfie had overheard Stephen Swift and her teammates discuss ‘the Vanilla Devil’ while they were kicking him to fish paste against a lamp post. They mentioned the address – Number 347, Piccadilly – clearly enough for him to remember it. They talked about a toby jug.
Who has such conversations while committing an assault?
Their priority should have been nabbing Larry. From her time at Drearcliff Grange, Queenie Quell had the gen on Miss Gossage’s team. Draycott’s must know about Larry’s pocket and the tobies therein. If they brought her in, the Game was won.
So why were they rabbiting on about Number 347, Piccadilly?
Amy halted in her tracks.
‘What’s up, Miss Glory?’ H’Alfie asked.
‘You’re sure you heard correctly,’ she said. ‘The girls who hurt you said the address out loud?’
He rubbed his side. ‘Not likely ter ferget. Me kidneys is still ichin’. Most pertickuler they was. Piccadilly. Number 347. Big ’ahse, wiv big gites. Big trees in the front garden.’
That sounded more like an estate agent’s brochure than a casual chat.
‘It’s a trap,’ Amy said
. ‘They wanted you to hear and tell me. It’s all a trap.’
H’Alfie was concerned.
‘We shouldn’t go there?’
‘No,’ said Amy. ‘We must. The Drearcliff Grange motto is “a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi…”’
‘“A precipice in front…”,’ translated Larry, tapping her breast-pocket badge.
H’Alfie’s eyes narrowed, annoyed at an assumption.
‘“…an’ wolves behind!” I ain’t fick, yer knows!’
Actually, his Latin was a surprise. Sunday schools gave out hot dinners, Amy supposed.
‘We are forewarned,’ she said. ‘So neither the precipice nor the wolves should deter us. Besides, it’s not a trap for me. It’s for Larry.’
The Third drew close to H’Alfie and gripped his hand.
‘It’s about being too clever by half,’ Amy said. ‘If I’d not come along, they might have got Larry down from the lamp post and made her give up the tobies – she had to bring them out under Eros, remember – but then they’d have to keep hold of them till dawn. None of them has a pocket, so far as I know. We’d have hours to rescue her and get the prizes back. So the sly dogs planted a seed – made us believe they’d been careless. We do their job for them, guarding Larry all night and bringing her straight to a stronghold. They’ll be well set up at Villa DeVille. She-spiders waiting in their webby parlour for the unwary moth.’
‘What a diabolical liberty!’ exclaimed H’Alfie.
Amy shrugged. It was devious, but reasonably fair play in the Game. Letting rivals solve the riddles, then sneak in to snatch the tobies.
Had Draycott’s even tried to get the jugs themselves? Only Clever Dick’s team put up a showing at the Troy Club. Quell, the captain, wasn’t with Stephen Swift’s raiding triad.
They started walking again, cautiously.
H’Alfie kept twisting his head like an owl, expecting attack from all corners.
Amy counted the numbers.
They came to a street lamp. More rococo than the one in Fitzrovia. Its thin light fell on a brass plate fixed to high, spike-topped railings. Grime had recently been rubbed off so the address could be read.