Dead Rick gritted his teeth. The bastard had a point. However little the skriker liked it. “Not until my signal.”
Venemously, the stranger said, “Just don’t take too long.”
Then silence. Dead Rick waited, utterly still, every sense alive; but there was nothing.
He let out his breath slowly, and realized his heart was beating at twice its normal pace. “Bloody shit-sack,” he muttered, and shifted to dog form before circling the whole space, sniffing every last corner. Nothing but cold stone and his own scent, so finally he sank into a wary posture on his pile of blankets, from which he could watch the entrance.
He couldn’t trust a bit of it. But Dead Rick was just desperate enough to agree anyway. And whoever this stranger was, he knew it.
Well, no point wasting time. Turning himself into a man once more, Dead Rick began the hunt for Rewdan.
Cromwell Road, South Kensington: March 24, 1884
The mere sight of No. 35 Cromwell Road was almost enough to make Eliza give up.
She felt uncomfortable simply walking around South Kensington. This was the area where the Great Exhibitions of ’51 and ’62 had been held, before Eliza was born; afterward, some rich gents had decided to build grand museums in the area, and the people who lived around them were grand enough to match.
But even by the standards of the area, the houses along that stretch of Cromwell Road were intimidating. Their fronts stretched five windows wide—twice as much as an ordinary house—and rose a full four stories, plus attics, all of it brilliantly white, even in London’s dirty fogs. The columned entrances looked like a row of maws, all waiting to devour her.
If she’d had to go in one of those doors, her nerve might have broken entirely. But those were never for servants. Instead she went to the western end of the row, where No. 35 stood in detached glory, and found the staircase leading down to the area. Before she could question the wisdom of her plan, Eliza hurried down the steps and rapped on the basement door.
It opened almost immediately, revealing a skinny girl of perhaps twelve. Her hands, red with hot water and harsh soap, marked her as the scullery maid. “If you please,” Eliza said, “I’m here to apply for a job.”
The girl waved her in silently. Eliza stepped through into a narrow entryway, then followed the girl through a dimly lit basement larger than some people’s entire houses. All around her, Eliza could hear people working. How many staff must a house like this employ?
Entering a room dominated by a heavy trestle table, the girl curtsied and spoke for the first time. “Mrs. Fowler, there’s someone here to speak to you.”
A woman sat at one end of the table, counting through a stack of fine linen napkins. Like the table, she was heavily built, with a face like soft dough and eyes like bits of granite. Hoping her nervousness did not show, Eliza echoed the scullery maid’s curtsy and said, “Good afternoon, ma’am. My name is Elizabeth White, and I heard you had a position open for a housemaid.”
Getting that information hadn’t been difficult, not once she found where the Kittering family lived. Servants gossiped here as much as they did in Whitechapel; more, even, because there were so many of them. Eliza had thought it a stroke of unimaginable luck—at first. She soon discovered that open positions were a common thing in the Kittering household.
Mrs. Fowler, the Kitterings’ housekeeper, said nothing at first, but kept counting napkins. Only when she had finished did she stand and say, “Follow me, Miss White.”
The housekeeper led her elsewhere in the basement, to the room that apparently served her as bedroom and office both. It had its own little coal grate, and gas lamps Mrs. Fowler cranked up to a brighter state—luxury that made Eliza’s eyes pop. The room itself was comfortably furnished, with a modern brass bed stand and pictures on the walls. The chair she was gestured into, however, was hard and straight backed: no comfort there.
Mrs. Fowler held out one hand, and after a blank moment Eliza realized what the woman wanted. Trying to appear confident, she gave the housekeeper a paper from her pocket.
She carefully did not hold her breath as the woman read it over with a frown. Getting that paper, and the tidy dress she wore, had taken everything she had: every spare penny, and every favor she could call due from friends back in Whitechapel. Applying for a maid’s position in Mrs. DiGiuseppe’s household had been a simple enough matter; nobody who relied on a single maid-of-all-work could afford to be deeply fussy about the quality of servant she attracted.
But that was the East End of London, well supplied with Italians and lascars and Jews, much less so with respectability. This was the West End, and it might as well have been another city entirely.
A city of privilege, rank, and above all, wealth.
From what she had learned, gossiping with other servants, the previous Mr. Kittering had made a small fortune in a railway speculation, and his son had, through clever investments, transformed it into a very large one. He then married the daughter of a man who imported exotic goods from Japan, and that had made their wealth secure. They were exactly the sort of upstarts that attracted gossip—both of the envious sort, from those who craved money, and of the disdainful sort, from those who insisted that no amount of it could replace good breeding.
It wasn’t hard to guess why Miss Kittering—youngest of six children, and the only one still unmarried—had to go in secret to meetings of the London Fairy Society. Wealth, her mother had; good breeding, she could not buy; that left respectability as the final component of an ideal life, and Mrs. Kittering pursued respectability with everything in her power.
Which posed certain difficulties for Eliza. The easiest way to keep watch over Miss Kittering would be to join the household as a maid. To do that, however, she needed a character from her previous employer. Mrs. DiGiuseppe had been a decent enough sort, but her recommendation would not help Eliza here; the word of an East End Italian would more likely see her kicked out on the spot.
Fortunately for her, the Kittering household could not keep maids for love or money. Mrs. Kittering, it seemed, was the problem; she was a dreadful mistress, eternally sacking maids for trivial shortcomings, and those she didn’t sack soon quit to seek a position elsewhere. Had Eliza been looking for employment on ordinary terms, she would never have applied here. But she only needed to spend a little while in the Kittering household, and the rapid change of staff made the housekeeper more desperate in her hiring choices than she might otherwise be.
Or so Eliza hoped. The character in Mrs. Fowler’s hands was falsified; if she was the sort of sensible housekeeper who visited the previous employer to inquire in person, she would soon discover the lie. But surely she cannot spare such time, not when she’s so often hiring.
Mrs. Fowler sniffed and turned the paper over, as if expecting there should be more to say about a good maid’s morals, honesty, cleanliness, capability, temper, and health. “Elizabeth White,” she said. When Eliza nodded, she shook her head. “Not here, you won’t be. The missus is still mourning Hannah—the only good maid she ever had—and doesn’t see why she should learn a new maid’s name. If you work here, you’ll be Hannah. How often do you go to church?”
Eliza hadn’t attended Mass since last October, but she suspected “never” would be a more welcome word out of her mouth than “Mass.” Mrs. Fowler, according to rumor, was a stout evangelical. “Whenever I can,” she said, “work permitting. I study my Bible at nights, if I cannot go to church.” Why did I just say that? I’ll never be able to afford a Bible.