Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders Read Online Free PDF

didn’t want her Danny to find out. He’s a decent lad, but he’s got a temper on him too and if he knew what Fitzy had done to his girl he wouldn’t think twice about taking him on, and that wouldn’t have done anyone any good. Even though Fitzy was twice Dan’s age and looked like a badly stuffed couch, he could still throw a punch that would floor a Dutchman. I’d seen him deal with parties of great tall Hollanders, fresh off the barges and ripe on the gin – and if I was to lay a bet on the outcome of one of those encounters I know where I’d put my money.
    I suppose it’s the way of things that once you’ve learned to handle yourself on the streets the moves are grained into your head like the choreography of a chorus dance, or like my routine up in the cage. You don’t have to think about it, your muscles just know what to do. Of occasion when I watched Fitzy laying one on a soused shipmate I’d get a glimpse of what he must have been. Tell truth, under all that flesh he might even have been Peggy’s type – once.
    But now she had big Danny Tewson and she was forever telling me that one day soon the pair of them would be packing their things and getting out of Paradise. It was hard to see how that was going to happen. I liked Danny, he was good for Peggy and he was one of the best of the hands in the halls, but Lucca said that if you wrote his gambling debts on separate pages and laid them out in a row you could walk on them from the front steps of The Gaudy down to Kidney Stairs on the river – and then have a good long think about throwing yourself in.
    I never mentioned it to Peggy. We was respectful of each other’s secrets. It was none of my business what her man got up to, and if she was worried, she never talked about it to me. She was more concerned about keeping Danny in the dark about Fitzy’s attentions and I can’t say I blamed her.
    One time it happened when Peggy was down to do a ‘Sylvan Interlude’ with two other girls. Not having been further than Lambeth, I can’t say as I’ve seen many woodland nymphs disported with joy, but I’m sure they wear a lot more than the flimsy bits of stuff that passed for a costume. Anyway, she couldn’t go on that evening because there was a purple mark the shape of a man’s hand – fingers and all – around her throat. I pinned a bit of cloth about her shoulders up to her ears and made her go home. Then I told Dan she’d caught a bad chill and couldn’t speak, which was half true.
    Don’t run away with the wrong idea about Peggy. She wasn’t a hard one like Jenny Pierce. Quite the opposite, in fact. Peggy was all warm and comforting, and she fussed over little Alice like a mother. Thinking about it, that’s probably what old Fitzy particularly liked about her. My guess is she reminded him of Mrs Conway in her better days – when the two of them was both young and the future was all moonlight and roses. And that made him angry too.
    No, Peggy was my friend and the way things had been going in the halls since word had got out about my new act, I was glad of her more than ever. I hadn’t told her why Fitzpatrick had selected me to be his cagebird, but Peg was no fool. She knew there was something going on and she was waiting for me to tell her in my own good time.
    ‘Hard as you like. Pull again, I’m ready.’ I braced myself against the chair and took another deep breath.
    Jenny sniffed. She was still leaning against the door. ‘Wants you to look fragile, does he? Like something that might smash itself into little tiny pieces if it plummets to the ground?’ Her eyes glinted with malice and a nasty smile twitched the corners of her mouth.
    Peggy stood up again; she still had the bodice ribbons tight in her hands and I jerked up and away from the chair as she moved.
    ‘You’ve always been a piece of work, Jenny, but this beats all. Would you really want to swap places with Kitty tonight? Would you want to hang up there in that