Secrets in Scarlet

by Erica Monroe

  The presence of the Moseleys, a British family, in such a place was peculiar in itself.

  Their room was located in the back half of the building. He knocked at the door, hat in his hands, contriteness splashed across his face like the rouge of one of Dorset’s many prostitutes. At first, a scraping sound was the sole indication that his knock had been heard. Then, two minutes later, the door opened wide enough for half the face of a woman matching Ems Moseley’s description.

  Mrs. Moseley scowled. “Oy, Peeler, don’t be botherin’ us.”

  “Mrs. Moseley, I’m Sergeant Knight. I’m looking into your daughter’s death.” He reached forward, grabbing the door before she could slam it shut.

  Distrust guttered in her eyes. She didn’t open the door to admit him. “I told ye, take yer leave. We don’t admit yer kind here, do ye ’ear me?”

  “Please, Mrs. Moseley,” he pleaded. “I’m the one who found Anna outside the factory. When I go to sleep, I see her face. When I wake up, I hear her last breath in her ears. I can’t eat without wondering if I was a minute earlier, if she’d still be alive to take nuncheon with you.”

  With every sentence, Mrs. Moseley’s hand tightened on the doorframe. Her knuckles were alabaster white.

  “It won’t take more than a quarter of an hour, I swear,” he said.

  “You ’ave ’alf that.” One finger at a time, she released her hold on the door. The cheap wood swung open without her grip, moved by the slightest wind.

  He followed her inside, shutting the door behind him. The Moseleys rented one room for the seven—now six—of them. Three straw mattresses were strewn about the right corner, threadbare blankets heaped on top. A table with a gash dug into the wood sat opposite the mats, several mismatched chairs pulled up around it. A wire rack fixed into the ceiling held the sparse wardrobes of the family. Two tots played by the fireplace, clothed in breeches two sizes too large, held up by twine.

  “Go out, ye bleeders,” Mrs. Moseley bid the children, her tone as sharp as the knives pinned to the thin walls.

  The children took one look at her, immediately collected the bobble they’d been playing with, and scampered outside.

  Mrs. Moseley caught him inspecting the place, her scowl deepening. “Wot ye lookin’ at?”

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing,” he said quickly. “Is your husband at home?”

  She let out a hollow laugh. “Does it look ’e is?”

  “Ah.” He remembered now why this was his least favorite part of the job.

  “Anna.” She barked out her daughter’s name like an insult, yet he saw a stab of pain in her eyes. “Ye say ye were with ’er when she passed?”

  He nodded.

  “Did she...” Ems Moseley stopped, wiping her hand across her brow. “Did she say anythin’? Did she...did she know wot ’ad ’appened?”

  He seized the ends of his scarf between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing his thumb over the silk in hopes it’d make this all go faster. Scrutinized the straw mats because that was easier than meeting the gaze of a grieving woman, so hardened by this life that she couldn’t express her pain in anything but acerbities. “She wouldn’t tell me who had hurt her. When I inquired, she said her assailants had far more power than I could imagine.”

  Mrs. Moseley clutched at her apron, wringing the fabric. Already, rends had begun to appear where her fingernails had sunk in.

  “I’m coming to you because I can’t prove—yet—who killed her, but I think that I have an idea. Her fingers kept tracing an ‘L.’ Does this mean anything to you?”

  “Fuck.” The color drained from Mrs. Moseley’s ruddy face. “Tis the Larkers.”

  She laid her head down on the table, her dirty brown locks falling about around her in a scraggly mop. He should go to her, comfort her, but all he could process was that she’d confirmed his suspicions.

  He was right.

  Thaddeus’s heart rattled against his chest. He couldn’t stand still. He wore a line into the dirt floor with his pacing, back and forth, hands in his pockets. He was so close. A few more tidbits and he’d have what he needed. If Mrs. Moseley had seen the Larkers involved in nefarious activities, he could go to Whiting.

  “Are you quite certain that’s who it could be?” Eagerness peppered his tone.

  Mrs. Moseley’s head snapped up. “As certain I am that my girl didn’t deserve none of this. I knew it, I knew it it’d be them; I knew it.” With each declaration, her almost-black eyes narrowed on him and he felt the weight of her words as if she’d pelted him with her fists. “I said to Monk, I did, when she got moved upstairs. ‘They’re gonna kill ’er, don’t ye see?’ But ’e didn’t care, so long as she brought in blunt.”

  Thaddeus stopped pacing, coming to stand directly in front of her. “Mrs. Moseley, why exactly did you suspect the Larkers? Please, the more specific you can be, the more it’ll help me.”

  “People like them, they’re vultures,” Mrs. Moseley spat. “They take what they can get and what they can’t, they steal. Don’t matter who they ’urt, so as they come out on top.”

  He remembered the bruises that had riddled the girl’s body, the blood streaming down from her head. “Did Anna ever say she was being mistreated?”

  “She worked at that factory since she was six,” Mrs. Moseley said. “Nothing ever ’appened to her before, nothing but the normal aches and creaks from the ’ours. Two months after these Larkers come, she’s home with a bruise on her temple. Won’t tell me why at first, but I keep askin’. She says it ’appened at work, as punishment for bein’ careless.”

  His stomach lurched. “And you think Boz Larker was responsible?”

  “It’s ’im or one of ’is men,” Mrs. Moseley avowed. “I didn’t wanna send ’er back, but I got four other children. ’Ow am I supposed to feed ’em all without that money? And Monk was determined. No place in this family for someone who won’t work.” Mrs. Moseley rubbed her palm against the back of her neck feverishly, fingertips digging into her flesh. “Anna promised she’d be more careful. She promised.”

  A day had passed since Poppy had gone to Thaddeus Knight’s townhouse. One full day in which she’d worked at the factory, gone to visit Jane at the Three Boars, and returned home in time to put Moira to bed. That was all quite ordinary. So why didn’t she feel ordinary? Everything appeared anew, from the burnished metal of her loom to the cast iron floors, scattered with fibers and dusty with footprints. Even her royal blue dress, bought from a rag and bone shop and taken in to fit her petite frame, suddenly seemed special.

  Poppy pressed the long wooden plank that served as the foot pedal. The shuttle moved, advancing the punch card forward. Another row of threads, called picks, was ready to weave. The clack as the silk moved in a predetermined rhythm was deafening, yet to Poppy it was comforting. To her it meant that there was order in a chaotic universe if she followed the pattern.

  Jacquard had created a machine that both sped up production and allowed the weaver to be autonomous. Poppy, and Poppy alone, controlled the mechanism that would shift all the warp threads into the proper position for each continuing pick.

  Somewhere between the sixth hour and the eighth, she’d contemplate whether all of this was worth it. If she should take Atlas’s offer and run jobs with him. It’d be simple at first, serving as a distraction while he filched. Helping him categorize his various stolen goods.

  But she hadn’t come this far, told so many damn lies, to be a criminal.

  Poppy squinted at the silk threads she’d already woven, held in place on the cloth beam. Tightly compacted, sweet roses. This might become a counterpane upon some rich aristocrat’s bed. Or it’d be part of a beautiful bodice for a debutante, one who hadn’t wasted her virtue on a blackguard intent on winning a bet.

  The silk had infinite possibilities to become something new. She, on the other hand, was a woman who knew her place.

  And it was definitely not on the arm of one charming police sergeant.

  “Poppy!�
� Abigail’s urgent voice was barely audible over the noise of the looms at work.

  Poppy tilted her head to the right, where Abigail’s loom was set up. They were fortunate in the Larker factory to possess twenty Jacquard looms, when the majority of the new machines were located instead in the great mills in Lancashire. Hand looms and draw looms were still operated by the Huguenot weavers who resented the imposition of automation.

  “She’s coming,” Abigail hissed, jerking to the right. Her blue eyes were trained on the loom, reminding Poppy of a cat watching a mouse.

  Hurriedly, Poppy straightened her posture. She moved the bar at the top of the loom, the next card in the chain shifting with it, pressing the needles into the perforated holes in the card. Wherever there was a hole, the warp thread would move against the wire, or the heedle, to create the specified pattern.

  But she was not swift enough in producing an appearance of diligence. Effie Larker strode across the factory floor, the clink of her duo-toned half boots devoured by the din of overeager machinery. While most of the factory workers wore the cheapest cotton, Effie was appareled as if she expected to ride a peer’s phaeton down Rotten Row that evening. She wore an expertly tailored purple gown, tucked in to display her narrow waist. Coal-black gloves reached up to her elbows, and an ebony feather bobbed with each toss of her blond hair, whipped up in an elaborate coiffure. Her high cheekbones were splashed with rouge, and her oval, catlike eyes blackened with kohl.

  The knot that formed in Poppy’s stomach each time Effie appeared tightened. From her first day onward, the woman had taken a strong dislike to Poppy.

  “You bunch of wastrels! All of you,” Effie spat, each word clearly enunciated.

  The factory workers didn’t respond. Instead, they continued their tasks, not daring to be the one who attracted Effie’s attention. While Boz Larker was the official boss of them, Effie’s harsh tongue and baton made her feared.

  It was whispered between the workers that Boz had found Effie in a Wapping brothel. She made pains to sound as high class as possible, though her natural speech patterns remained, like a Billingsgate fish market woman on laudanum.

  Effie rounded the corner. “Mrs. Corrigan,” she remonstrated, making the title sound worse than any of the vulgar names she called “her girls.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Larker?”

  “We don’t pay you to socialize,” Effie snarled. One hand was planted firmly on her hip; the other clasped a long, thin switch with leather tassels.

  Poppy watched the switch warily. Effie smacked the rod against her leg, wrinkling her violet dress. She tilted her chin upwards imperiously, her icy blue eyes fastened on Poppy.

  Effie’s hand shot out, her fingers digging into Poppy’s shoulder. Poppy winced, but experience had taught her not to move her head away.

  Effie dropped her chin to whisper in Poppy’s ear. “Don’t think for a minute, girl, that I won’t dismiss you. There’s many more where you came from.”

  A cold chill raced down Poppy’s spine, like the drips of a snowdrift, diminished by the harsh rays of the sun until was nothing left but memories.

  Protest died in Poppy’s throat. She couldn’t move. She stayed transfixed, eyes forward, seeing not the picks and picks of woven silk stretched out across the loom.

  Moira’s face appeared before her, green eyes overflowing with tears, her tiny nose red and raw. She gnawed on her fist, sucking on the flesh with all her might because it was the one thing that would stop her whimpers. Mama! Mama! Mama!

  Poppy’s head swam. Her hand faltered on the loom. Her foot never hit the pedal.

  She’d never be truly free.

  Moira would never be safe.

  Effie stood back from her, releasing her hold on Poppy’s shoulder. “I knew you’d see it my way. You’re a smart girl.” She tapped her foot against the ground, looking at Poppy expectantly.

  Woodenly, Poppy nodded. She pulled the top bar. The loom clunked back to life.

  Effie rapped the switch against her right hand once, the crack echoing. Her lips pulled back in a slickly malevolent smile as she surveyed the factory floor. Satisfied that the workers had been properly motivated, she turned on her heel, entering her husband’s office.

  The door remained open. Out of the corner of her eye, Poppy watched Effie. She reached a hand up to pat at her pinwheel curls, her long fingernails stroking at her amethyst earrings. Boz had made her a rich woman off the backs of the workers.

  When Effie turned around, leaning over the desk Boz sat behind, Abigail stood up from her loom. She loped toward Poppy, right foot dragged behind her left. “What was that about?”

  “Effie believed I wasn’t working fast enough,” Poppy replied.

  Abigail’s forehead crinkled. “She’s a right dragon, isn’t she?”

  “Don’t let her hear you say that.” Poppy returned to work; the process so familiar to her that she could do it in her sleep. Weaving was comfortable. An old friend that had stayed with her through it all, the silk knew her darkest sins and accepted them. It was beautiful, what she could make from this, from the basest threads into an intricate pattern.

  “The Larkers don’t scare me,” Abigail declared, though her soft tone belied her fearless words. “Effie Larker is no better than the rest of us, you understand? We do what she says now because she has the power. But she’s the same as the foreman before her, and the one that’ll come after her too when the Larkers bore of the factory business.”

  Poppy sighed. “I know.”

  Abigail shrugged. “I’ve been in this factory since I could walk, Poppy, and I’ve seen four different owners. This is how it works. Eventually, people like the Larkers want a quicker profit. You wait and see. The Larkers might have invested in new machines, but they’ll tire of us.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Poppy murmured.

  If only she could last until Abigail’s predication came true. A benevolent manager could buy out the factory. One who did not delight in subjugation, as Effie Larker did.

  Poppy’s gaze flicked to Abigail. Her friend had gone back to her loom, settling in on her high stool, her skirt ballooning around her. With her feet spread wide, Abigail wove with precision but no feeling. She’d been raised on the draw looms, and to her, that was how Spitalfields should have continued.

  Abigail caught her eye, a wide smile breaking on her lips. Poppy’s heart tugged. She wanted to be honest with Abigail. Wanted to have one friend outside of her brother’s circle that knew her secret and accepted her.

  But Abigail was precisely who she said she was. No falsities. Her mother had died when she was young, and she filled that surrogate role for her younger sister Bess. Their father was a drunk, gambling away what blunt he had at the hells. Abigail had confided in Poppy that she gave him a fourth of her wages, claiming that the Larkers had cut back on pay since taking over. The rest she used to take care of herself and Bess.

  That was how to survive in the rookeries: lies and subterfuges.

  It was no wonder Poppy fit in here.

  7

  Five days into his allotted two weeks of investigation, Thaddeus finally had a breakthrough. As he stepped onto the corner between Wheeler and White Lion Street, he mused over the contents of Dagobert Gottlieb’s letter. Assuming Gottlieb was correct—and Gottlieb was rarely incorrect—he now had enough information to warrant a visit to the Larker factory.

  He’d decided to go mid-day, when Boz Larker would least expect him. That element of surprise should work in his favor, especially when he requested access to the locked room upstairs.

  Coining, Gottlieb had said. They buy factory to hide shan. At end, they be round the tower with it. Thaddeus’s knowledge of cant terms wasn’t as all-encompassing as he would have liked, but he’d picked up enough along the way to know that Gottlieb had found out the Larkers were using their factory to pass their counterfeit currency into circulation.

  It was an ingenious plan. Since Henry Fauntleroy’s execution eight years ago, peop
le had debated the righteousness of capital punishment for forgery. The Reform Act had passed a month prior, and forgery was no longer an offense worthy of death.

  While Larker Factory was located on White Lion Street, the entrance to the building was on a side street. Thaddeus turned down that alley. Larker Factory loomed above the surrounding tenement houses and shops. Though it was only two stories, the ceilings were lofty to accommodate the massive looms. The original building was small and squat, but an addition gave the factory an elongated, disproportionate look. Seven windows lined the front, but the three in the side addition were boarded over, the wood rotted and swollen from London’s frequent rain.

  He glanced up at the top floor. One small diamond-shaped window provided sunlight for the second story, but that window faced the alley, not White Lion. Whatever the Larkers were doing, they didn’t want anyone in the busy main street to see it.

  He pulled open the doors to the factory. Immediately, two guards in dirt-streaked, rumpled brown uniforms surrounded him. The older of the two guards was a mass of brawn and bulk, with a wide forehead deep-set with wrinkles, gray hair combed straight back, and a gristly beard. His chin was sharp, his sea eyes sharper.

  Thaddeus tipped his hat to them both, attempting to dart around them.

  The bigger of the two guards planted a firm hand on Thaddeus’s chest to keep him from moving forward. Thaddeus glared at the man, but still the guard didn’t remove his hand.

  “Fine then,” Thaddeus muttered, stepping back. The man’s hand remained in the air a second later, gripping nothing.

  The younger guard smirked and mouthed something that sounded vaguely like “state yer business.” Thaddeus couldn’t be certain, for the cacophony of the busy work floor devoured all other sounds.

  “I need access to the top room,” Thaddeus shouted, struggling to be heard over the din. “I’m with the Metropolitan Police.”

  The two guards exchanged glances. Neither one spoke. After a moment, they seemed to come to an agreement. The older guard gestured for Thaddeus to follow them toward the back office.