Splendors and Glooms (8 page)

Lizzie Rose frowned at him. “Hush. Her brothers are dead. She can’t know what boys like.”

For the first time, Parsefall spoke to the constable. “Did she run away?”

The constable said shortly, “May have done. Housemaid went into her room early this morning to tend the fires. The young lady was gone. We’ve checked the houses around the square. No one’s seen her. We wondered if she might have come here.” He looked around the room as if he expected to find Clara crouching behind an armchair. “The servant girl said she was very interested in the puppets. Stagestruck, she said.”

Parsefall lifted his chin. “She liked my skeleton act.” His voice was shaky, but his lips curled in a smirk. “Laughed herself into fits she did. She wasn’t much like a young lady then.”

Lizzie Rose shook her head so hard that her plaits swung back and forth. “All the same, she wouldn’t have run off without telling anyone,” she said firmly. “It would be a cruel thing to do, after her poor mother lost the others. Miss Wintermute would understand that. She wasn’t silly, and she wasn’t a baby. She was twelve.”

“Her mother’s distraught, that’s for certain,” the sergeant observed, “and her father’s no better.” He turned from the constable back to Lizzie Rose. “Are you sure she said nothing that might provide a clue?”

“No, sir. Could she — could she have been kidnapped?”

The two men exchanged glances again. It seemed to Lizzie Rose that they must have asked each other the same question. But the constable answered, “It don’t seem likely. No one broke into the house. The front door was unbolted from the inside. Windows were all secure — and nothing’s missing, though there’s plenty of value in the house.”

Parsefall raised his head. “If you ask me,” he said, “she didn’t like livin’ with deaders.”

“Debtors?” repeated the constable, at sea.

“Deaders,”
Parsefall said staunchly. “All them dead people. She was tired of ’em.”

Lizzie Rose squeezed his hand warningly. “He means her brothers and sisters,” she explained.

“They was all over the ’ouse.” Parsefall dug his thumbnail into Lizzie Rose’s palm. “Dead pictures and dead-masks. They smear plaster on the deader’s face to make the masks — did you know that? ’Orrible, I call it.”

“Parsefall —” began Lizzie Rose.

“All I’m sayin’ is, I wouldn’t want to be wiv ’em all the time,” Parsefall persisted. “I don’t blame ’er for runnin’ away.”

“She didn’t run away,” Lizzie Rose snapped.

Constable Hawkins turned to his superior. “All the same, I’d like to take a look through the rooms.”

“She isn’t here,” Lizzie Rose said. “She wouldn’t have run away, but if she’d come here, we’d know it.”

“There was fog this morning,” the sergeant said in a low voice. “She might’ve started out somewhere and lost herself in the fog.”

“Very likely,” agreed the constable. “Still —” He turned from the chaos of the room to Lizzie Rose. “If you’ll let me look behind that curtain, miss —”

“I sleep in there,” Lizzie Rose said, flushing. “I’m afraid it’s untidy.” She wished she had made her bed.

The constable waved her apology aside and ducked under the sequined curtain. Sergeant Croft scrutinized the room, gazing from one corner to the next. He opened a large trunk that contained puppets in their calico bags, and took apart a stack of wicker baskets to make sure there was no child hiding in the largest one. The constable came out of Lizzie Rose’s little room and headed for Grisini’s bedroom.

“It’s
broken
!” screamed the parrot from downstairs.

The sergeant turned back to the children. “Listen to me, both of you.” He sounded stern. “You’re to keep an eye out for that young lady. If she comes here — or you think of anywhere she might be — you run straight down the King’s Road to the police station, you hear me? There might be a reward for you.”

“’Ow much?” demanded Parsefall coolly.

“Half a crown,” answered the sergeant.

Parsefall, to whom half a crown was riches, shrugged. His fingers were still clammy. Lizzie Rose marveled that he could be so frightened and yet so disagreeable. She rubbed her fingers against the back of his hand, trying to tell him that everything was all right.

The constable came out from Grisini’s bedroom. “There’s no place anyone can hide in there,” he told the sergeant. “I’ve looked in the wardrobe and under the bed. We can search the rest of the house, but my guess is we won’t find her. She’s out in the streets, lost in the fog.”

Lizzie Rose turned her eye toward the window. The fog was congealing; the buildings on the other side of the street had vanished into thick air.

A
fter the policemen left Grisini’s lodgings, they separated. Constable Hawkins set off to search the attics and question Mr. Vogelsang, the trumpeter on the top floor. Sergeant Croft went downstairs to continue his interview with Grisini and Mrs. Pinchbeck. From time to time, Lizzie Rose heard a stifled shriek. Evidently Mrs. Pinchbeck had resumed her Spasm.

The children waited, straining to hear what was happening below. Parsefall built up the fire and crouched down beside it. Lizzie Rose replaited her hair and made a halfhearted attempt to subdue the clutter in the parlor. When the front door banged shut, they flew to the window.

The two policemen emerged from the house, followed by Grisini. He bowed to them, turned on his heel, and headed down the street. The policemen set off in the opposite direction, their heads close together.

“They don’t like Grisini,” Parsefall concluded. “They think he’s flimflammin’ ’em.”

Lizzie Rose’s thoughts were elsewhere. “I hope they find Clara,” she said. “It seems heartless to just go on with the day.”

“It don’t seem ’eartless to me,” answered Parsefall. “I’m ’ungry.”

Lizzie Rose wrinkled her nose at him, but she was hungry, too. She reached into her pocket. “Here’s thruppence,” she said. “You could get us each a penny loaf and some milk. And take the dogs.”

“Why do I ’ave to take ’em?” protested Parsefall, as he did every morning.

“Because if they don’t go out and they make a mess, you’ll have to clean it up. I cleaned up yesterday,” Lizzie Rose pointed out. “And I’m the one Mrs. Pinchbeck will want to talk to after her Spasm.”

Parsefall was out-argued, and he knew it. He was not skillful with Mrs. Pinchbeck’s complaints, and Lizzie Rose was. He went to get his jacket. Ruby began to frisk around his feet.

“And carry Ruby on the stairs,” Lizzie Rose commanded. “Her toenails slip out from under her and it frightens her, poor darling.”

Parsefall made a wordless grumbling noise but scooped up the dog. Lizzie Rose returned to her makeshift bedroom. She made her bed and put on the rest of her petticoats. Then she went downstairs to tend to Mrs. Pinchbeck.

The staircase of the lodging house was dark and steep. The late Mr. Pinchbeck had provided a handrail in the form of a rope screwed into the wall. Since Mr. Pinchbeck had been dead nine years and the plaster was crumbling, Lizzie Rose had little faith in this contrivance. She descended cautiously, bringing her feet together on every tread. At last she knocked on the door of Mrs. Pinchbeck’s parlor.

“Come in, dearie!”

Mrs. Pinchbeck lay on the sofa, scanning a newspaper. She wore a poppy-colored wrapper and a soiled cap adorned with green ribbons. She had evidently found the gin bottle and was looking more cheerful than Lizzie Rose had expected. Lizzie Rose eyed her warily. Mrs. Pinchbeck with a little gin inside her was rakish and lively, but Mrs. Pinchbeck with too much gin was inclined to dwell on the day when Titus Pinchbeck, the only man she had truly loved, had been struck down by an omnibus.

Mrs. Pinchbeck tossed aside the newspaper and clutched her heart. “Oh, child!”

That was all Mrs. Pinchbeck said, but it was enough for Lizzie Rose, who had spent her life in the theatre. From the deep, foghorn-y sound of Mrs. Pinchbeck’s voice, it was clear that a play was under way, a play in which Mrs. Pinchbeck was the heroine. With light, dainty steps, Lizzie Rose crossed the threadbare carpet and flung herself onto her knees beside the sofa.

Mrs. Pinchbeck stretched out her hand to Lizzie Rose. Lizzie Rose caught it and held it against her cheek. Both females turned their bodies away from the back of the sofa, offering three-quarter profiles to the far end of the room.

“Dear Mrs. Pinchbeck,” Lizzie Rose said breathlessly, “are you quite well?”

“Alas, poor child,” Mrs. Pinchbeck replied, “I wonder if I shall e’er be well again. Coppers — first thing in the morning!” She dropped her voice half an octave. “And oh, child, the way they spoke to me!”

Lizzie Rose clasped her hands. “How dare they, ma’am?” she cried, her voice throbbing with indignation.

“I don’t know how they dared,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said darkly, “but it was something ’orrible — as if I was
common.
” She collapsed back on the sofa. Then a thought struck her, and she raised herself on one elbow. “Dearest child! Did those fiends lay their wicked hands on you?”

“No, not at all,” Lizzie Rose answered. She almost said that the policemen had been very kind to her, but remembered just in time that this was not that sort of play.

“All over the ’ouse, they went,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said. “I couldn’t stop ’em. That sergeant wanted to see everything — kitchen and larder and coal cellar and all!” She lowered her voice. “By the by, dearie, something’s gone bad in the larder. I don’t know what it is, but the smell is very high.” She waved her handkerchief under her nose. “P’raps you could help Luce sort it out.”

Lizzie Rose’s heart sank. Mrs. Pinchbeck’s larder was a torture chamber for anyone with a sensitive nose, and her maid-of-all-work, Luce, was the most dismal woman in London. Lizzie Rose made up her mind that cleaning the larder would be Parsefall’s job.

Mrs. Pinchbeck returned to the drama she was enacting. “I couldn’t bear those strange men lookin’ at my boudoir,” she said with a shudder of feminine disgust. “I’ve always been very delicate and modest in my ways. ‘You keep out of there!’ I said, and I stood in the doorway. ‘Move aside!’ the copper says to me! And I said to him, ‘You may cast me aside, you may dash me to the ground as a frail, weak woman, but never’”— Mrs. Pinchbeck’s voice sank impressively —“‘
never
shall you cause me to tremble before you!’”

It was a superb moment. Mrs. Pinchbeck thrust out her bosom and flung back her head. Lizzie Rose knelt upright. Together they struck attitudes to create what was called (in the theatre) a Picture.

They held the Picture for a few seconds, so that the imaginary audience at the far end of the room could applaud.

“Dear Mrs. Pinchbeck,” breathed Lizzie Rose, “how brave you were! How pure!”

“He felt it,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said with simple pride. “I could tell ’e felt it. But that didn’t stop ’im.” Her face darkened. “’E was too set on ransacking the house.”

Lizzie Rose’s brow puckered. She forgot the scene they were enacting. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If Miss Wintermute ran away from home, she’d come to see Parsefall and me. She wouldn’t hide in your boudoir or creep down to the larder.”

“They think she was kidnapped,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said sagely. “They think Grisini kidnapped her and ’id her in the ’ouse.” She took the gin bottle from under the sofa and poured a tablespoon into her glass. “It don’t matter,” she concluded, and drank. “They won’t find anything, any more than they did the last time.”

“The last time?” Lizzie Rose echoed.

Mrs. Pinchbeck eyed the level of gin in the bottle, sighed, and pushed it under the sofa again. “Must have been eleven, twelve years ago. It was just before I met Mr. Pinchbeck and settled down. I was in Brighton, at the Theatre Royal — I was Angela in
The Castle Spectre
— and Grisini was playing at the Dome. We was staying in the same boarding’ouse. And this little boy went missing. He’d come to the Dome to see the
fantoccini,
and afterward his nurse brought ’im backstage, because he wanted to see up close. And then — the next day it was — he went missing. Everyone thought Grisini ’ad something to do with it, because ’e was a foreigner. So the coppers come to the boarding’ouse. They was all over, poking and prying and asking their questions. But they couldn’t prove anything, because Grisini never done it.”

The front door slammed shut. Lizzie Rose heard the sound of barking. Parsefall had returned with breakfast. The parrot, excited by the cries of the dogs, shouted, “Ruination!” The canary burst into song, beginning with a series of earsplitting chirps and ending with a trill.

Lizzie Rose leaned toward Mrs. Pinchbeck, not wanting to lose the thread of the story. “But did they ever find him?” she said imploringly. “Did they ever find the little boy?”

“He came back ’ome,” Mrs. Pinchbeck said, “but ’e was never the same after that. Next to an idiot, ’e was. That’s what I ’eard. But it had nothing to do with Grisini, and soon afterward, I met Mr. Pinchbeck.” Her voice warmed as she began the familiar story. “I ’ad on a white muslin gown with pink flowers, and a parasol to match, and my ’air was in natural ringlets, as took two hours to put up in papers —”

The door opened. Parsefall came in, oppressed by dogs. Pomeroy, the bulldog, had attached himself to the boy’s trousers and hung there, drooling. Punch, the rat terrier, leaped up and down like a hammer on a nail. Puck, the beagle, snarled at Parson, the pug dog, and Ruby was at the rear. The spaniel had caught the leash between her hind legs and was circling with one paw lifted, hopelessly tangled.