The gist was that she had been traded by her queen for something valuable – Foxglove didn’t know what – to a strange man. The trade took place near the sea and definitely not in London. There’d been a group of them and at least two had been separated from the group immediately. Then they’d been put in a box on wheels drawn by horses – a carriage or a cart – and taken somewhere underground.
‘Where we are now?’ I asked.
Foxglove shook her head.
It got confused after that, but I think decades went by while Foxglove and her sisters worked in some capacity for their ‘owner’. I still haven’t discovered what work they were doing, but I think during that time Foxglove was taught to paint and draw. But not, I noticed, to read or write.
There was a break while Foxglove fetched supper, one of those incredibly greasy almost-but-not-quite KFC fried chicken buckets, which we divided up on paper plates and ate together sitting on the landing mat. Foxglove ate her chicken bones and all, happily crunching up the denuded drumsticks as if they were breadsticks. I offered her mine, which seemed to please her.
Afterwards we stayed on the mat drinking generic lemonade while Foxglove continued with her sad, sad story.
After some years they were put in a metal box, possibly a van this time, and taken to another place where they were put to work cleaning – I recognised some serious mop action in the mime show – and doing a weird strut while holding something aloft with one hand. When Foxglove mimed handing out drinks I realised she was waitressing. And when she demonstrated a smile of fake enticement I knew, with a sick feeling, which club she was waitressing in.
Albert Woodville-Gentle, Faceless Man the first, had owned a club in Soho in the 1960s and ’70s. Within its gilt and red velvet embrace he’d offered his exclusive clientele the exotic delights of people altered by magic to conform to their fantasies. There were real cat-girls and cat-boys, and other things that Nightingale has made a point of keeping from me. The place became known as the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau until Stephanopoulos threatened dire consequences if we didn’t drop the term.
Albert Woodville-Gentle was crippled in a magical duel in 1979 and finally died just after Christmas 2012 – a lucky escape for him. since I’m almost certain Nightingale had plans.
Which left the question of what had become of Foxglove and her ‘sisters’, of which two were left, after Woodville-Gentle was gone. The answer is: somebody put them in a pit, not unlike the one I was in, and left them in it for, I estimate, about fifteen years. They survived by luring rats and insects into the hole for food and licking moisture off the walls.
Foxglove was shocked by my reaction and so, frankly, was I. Us police are supposed to be tough, but there are limits. I hid my eyes with my hand and we both spent a long time staring at the ground.
We stayed that way as the light faded and we both climbed into our respective beds.
One day, I thought, I will find whoever it was put you in that pit.
And then what will I do?
Prosecute them for false imprisonment and/or attempted murder?
Make sure they were branded as sex offenders, that was for certain.
Having started her tale, Foxglove couldn’t wait to continue, even as I was having my breakfast the next morning. I was less ready. I had an inkling about what was coming next.
Then the darkness lifted and they were rescued.
‘Who by?’ I asked.
Foxglove made a gesture as if elegantly placing a mask upon her face. The same gesture she’d used to describe Albert Woodville-Gentle. This would be the Faceless Man mark two – Martin Chorley. He was their new master, and a much kinder master he proved. There were soft beds and good food and clean clothes and, best of all, he not only let Foxglove paint but encouraged her to do so.
She disappeared after lunch and returned with a plastic bucket stuffed with art supplies. Then she proudly showed me her museum-quality oils and acrylics and a truly astonishing range of brushes kept in a series of baked beans tins, round-tipped and pointed, sable or bristle haired depending on style.
More than that, she went on to tell me, on some nights Chorley would lead her out of the club and to big houses where rows and rows of paintings hung.
Foxglove fetched some of the copies she’d made, all stored in a genuine brown leather A1 sized art case that was probably older then my dad and definitely better maintained.
Most of her pictures were portraits and mythological scenes, of the diaphanous dress and cherub school of slipping one past a disapproving censor. My limited art knowledge pegged the majority as post-Renaissance to Victorian. One I did recognise was of a white woman in a blue dress drawing a magic circle around herself while a brazier belches a column of white smoke into the sky. The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse, which I’d stumbled across while researching Martin Chorley’s taste in art. It stuck in my mind because of the subject’s flagrant health and safety violation. As any competent practitioner will tell you, you always complete your protective circle before you start your workings.
The steel blue of the sorceress’s dress was brighter than I remembered from the original and the belt sash a deeper, richer burgundy. The crows that watched her were the same midnight black as her hair.
Perhaps, I thought, this is what the painting looked like when Waterhouse turned it out in the 1880s – before the years dimmed its canvas.
Now, my brushes with fine art have mostly involved magic pots and guilt-ridden Old Soldiers, but I seriously doubted that Martin Chorley had been encouraging Foxglove’s hobby out of the goodness of his heart.
I reckoned that when I got out there were going to prove to be some serious gaps in some famous collections.
If I got out.
I told Foxglove, truthfully, that her painting was beautiful and she beamed.
Then her head cocked to one side – as if she were listening.
‘Who is it?’ I asked.
Foxglove snatched her work from my hands and, springing over to her bed, stuffed them and the art case under her mattress. She turned to glare at me and put her hand across her mouth.
‘Not a word,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
‘Foxglove,’ called a voice from above – Chorley. ‘Where are you?’ He sounded like an adult trying to restrain their impatience with a child. ‘Chop-chop. All hands on deck.’
Foxglove jumped up. And for the first time I got a sense of how she was doing it – the ripple in the fabric of the bubble that propelled her upwards as if it were coughing her up.
‘Don’t get too comfortable with him,’ I heard Chorley say. ‘He eats your kind for breakfast.’
I heard footsteps moving away and waited in silence – listening.
There was the occasional echo of a door slamming in the distance, Somebody, I think it might have been Lesley, very clearly shouted – ‘Fuck shit bugger!’
Followed by a metallic crash and a deep resonant chime whose harmonics actually caused the fairy bubble to resonate around me.
It was the bell. Something was happening, and it was happening soon.
Or maybe not, because Foxglove was on time with supper, which was a set of disappointing ham sandwiches of the type you bought from garage shops. I ate them wistfully, thinking of Molly and daydreaming of coffee while Foxglove hopped impatiently from foot to foot. She was obviously dying to show me something but wanted my full attention.
I forwent the final sandwich – it wasn’t much of a sacrifice.
From her art case Foxglove drew an A4 sized ring-bound sketchpad. It had seen some use – one of the corners had been blunted by a hard impact, and the cover was smudged with fingerprints where Foxglove had handled it while drawing.