The Penny Green series Box Set Page 5

  Somehow Eliza caught sight of my button-up boots under the desk and picked up the one with the hole in. “Goodness gracious, Penelope, you’re poorer than a church mouse, aren’t you? Are you finding any work at all?”

  She reminded me of our mother as her eyes bored into me enquiringly. Eliza and I were similar in appearance: we were both blonde-haired and brown-eyed, but she had always been the larger, stronger and louder one, even though she was two years my junior. Her features were sharper than mine, her nose was longer, and she had often told me she wished for a softer face like mine.

  “I never understand why I am the married sister and Penelope is not,” was something she frequently said. She claimed I was prettier than her, which I disputed.

  “I have some work.”

  “And how does it pay?”

  “Not quite enough.”

  “Then let me give you something.” She picked up her handbag and opened it.

  “No, Ellie, please. It’s not necessary.”

  But my protest was weak and Eliza piled some coins onto my desk.

  “That’s all I have for now. I will bring more when I visit later this week.”

  “No, please don’t. That is more than enough. I shall collect payment for my latest article this afternoon. I will be able to pay you back this evening.”

  “You may have the loan for longer than that. You need it. Buy yourself a new pair of boots. You look thin, as well. You must come and eat a proper meal with us. Do you have any hope of salaried work on the horizon?”

  “I could apply to newspapers, I suppose, but it might be difficult to persuade them to take me on after I lost my job at one of the most prestigious publications.”

  “That editor, William Sherman, has much to answer for.” Eliza tutted and took a sip from her tin cup. I had broken all my china and was unable to afford replacements. “You know what Mother thinks, don’t you?”

  “That if I had a husband I shouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “That is what exactly what she thinks, and she has no idea how poor you are. You’re in a fine pickle. You need to ask her for some money. She won’t expect you to repay it.”

  “I know, but in return she will expect to set me up with the village curate.”

  Many years previously, my mother had decided that Reverend Briggs would make me an excellent husband.

  “He is still a bachelor, you know.”

  “And there is a very good reason for that. I can manage quite comfortably when I have a salary.”

  “But a salary can’t give you happiness and children, can it?”

  “I am happy without children.” I could feel my jaw tightening. These conversations with my sister always included a comment about my age, followed by a despairing look.

  “Penelope, you are almost thirty-five...”

  “I know,” I interrupted.

  “Cousin Agatha has just announced her engagement to a commander in the Royal Navy. Did you hear? I always knew Agatha would find a husband quickly. She has a pretty nose and a well-turned ankle. She is the last of our cousins to marry. To think that all twenty-seven of us are spoken for!” Eliza glanced at me awkwardly. “Except for...”

  “Have you heard the news about Lizzie Dixie?”

  “Yes!” Eliza’s eyes opened wide with fascination. “Terribly surprising, isn’t it? You knew her, didn’t you? What happened?”

  I told her what I had learned so far, I knew I could talk to Eliza freely, without fear of her spreading any gossip. Although she often laughed at me for being a working woman and shunning family life, she had always taken a keen interest in what I did and I sensed that she sometimes dreamed of having a job like mine.

  Eliza was clever and a good writer and could have had a paid job, but instead she devoted her time to her family and her cause: the West London Women’s Society. Her husband, George Billington-Grieg, was a lawyer and took pleasure in maintaining a large household of children and servants. He would not hear of Eliza working for money; to do so would have implied that he was unable to earn a sufficient wage to support his family.

  “It is a true mystery,” said Eliza.

  “And to think that Mr Taylor didn’t know that his own wife was still alive. It is no wonder he was so grumpy with me when I spoke to him.”

  “You spoke to him? Was that wise?”

  “I wanted to pass on my condolences.”

  “You didn’t visit him out of sheer nosiness?”

  “No!” I replied, affronted.

  But there was some truth in her question. My sister knew me well.

  “I wish I could speak to Lizzie’s daughter, Annie,” I continued. “I wonder if she knew that her mother was still alive. Lizzie may have been able to hide from her husband, but surely not her own daughter? She must have made contact with her in one way or another.”

  “It is hard to imagine that she wouldn’t have, isn’t it?”

  “I need to talk to Annie, but I have no idea how to do so.”

  “Why do you need to speak to her? You’re not working on the story, are you?”

  “No, I am just curious.”

  “Let Scotland Yard solve it.”

  “But don’t you wonder how it all came about? Why she pretended she had drowned and was found murdered five years later?”

  “Of course I wonder. I think all of us like to consider ourselves detectives when one of these cases presents itself. It is rather easy to develop an obsession with a murder, isn’t it? Mother still has that ornament of the Red Barn on the mantelpiece in her dining room; the barn where William Corder murdered Maria Marten. I remember her telling me that story time and time again, and it used to chill me to the bone. That and the Ratcliffe Highway murders.” Eliza shuddered. “Not to mention Constance Kent.”

  “My interest is not an obsession with murder,” I replied. “I knew Lizzie. I worry about what her life must have been like over the past five years for it to have ended this way. And why did she decide to hide? Had her life become so very difficult? I remember the poor reviews she received for her last ever performance as Cleopatra in The Course of the Nile and I wonder if she struggled to cope with the criticism.”

  “I suppose we shall never know now, shall we?”

  “I should like to find out.”

  “I shall always remember Lizzie Dixie for her role in raising funds for the expedition to find Father. She put a substantial amount of her own money into it. And that reminds me! I have heard from the curator at the British Museum about Father’s paintings and the orchid specimens. They are going to be moved to the new Natural History building at Albertopolis in the coming weeks.”

  “I must ensure that I see them again before they are moved.”

  “And I am sure they will make an interesting display in the new natural history department. Some of his paintings would never have been found if the second expedition hadn’t returned to Amazonia. Lizzie Dixie was a kind lady, even though she had a bit of reputation for loose morals. Did you mention the name Sebastian Colehill earlier?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have only just realised that I met his wife, Mary Colehill, last week. She told me her husband was the proprietor of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. She has recently joined the West London Women’s Society and seems a most pleasant lady.”

  We were interrupted by a knock at the door and then Mrs Garnett called my name.

  “My bicycle can’t have been outside the privy for an hour already, can it?” asked Eliza.

  I got up and answered the door.

  “A messenger boy just called with this,” said my landlady, handing me a neat, white envelope with my name and address scrawled across it in black ink. I guessed it must be Sebastian Colehill’s dinner invitation. Thanking Mrs Garnett, I closed the door.

  “I hope you don’t mind me opening this now,” I said to Eliza, ripping open the envelope. “It is not often that I receive letters.”

  I unfolded the piece of paper and saw that it wasn’t from
Sebastian at all. Printed lettering at the top said: Morning Express, est. 1837.

  I scanned the sloping writing quickly. “It’s from William Sherman at the Morning Express,” I said. “He has requested to see me at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon at his office.”

  “Is that good news or bad news?”

  I felt a flicker of excitement in my chest.

  Perhaps Inspector Blakely had managed to have me reinstated in my job.

  “I feel certain it is good.”

  Chapter 8

  My new boots chafed my heels as I hailed the horse-drawn omnibus at Finsbury Circus. The downstairs seats were full, so a kind man offered me his place and went up to the roof while I sat down and felt relieved to rest my feet. I had hurriedly bought the boots that morning and my feet much preferred my old, worn pair.

  The windows were so begrimed that I was unable to see much outside; instead, I read an advertisement for Jeyes Fluid before a newspaper headline caught my eye. ‘Murdered Actress Shot Four Times. Killer Still on the Loose’, declared the leader on The Daily Mail being read by the person sitting opposite me. I shivered and leant forward in my seat in an attempt to read the story, but the print was too small.

  I found it hard to believe that Lizzie had suffered such a brutal end. I had been so accustomed to the belief that she had drowned that this subsequent news of her death was difficult to accept. My heart ached for Annie and I wondered how she was truly feeling. Her demeanour had seemed so cold and sombre when I had seen her after the show.

  “Annie should have a proper, loving family home,” Lizzie had told me during a fundraising reception for the expedition to find my father. “Joseph does his best with her, but she is not his daughter and she has reached the age at which she is resentful of him telling her what to do. I have told her she must listen to him because he is her stepfather, but she is headstrong and refuses to accept him for who he is. I married him because he is extremely successful and I feel sure that he can help me feel better about myself. He loves me and I have a deep affection for him. I sometimes wonder if that is as much love as I am capable of giving. Most of my heart is reserved for Annie. I worry about her.”

  I gave up trying to read the story on the paper in front of me. I hoped Mr Taylor was looking after Annie, but I couldn’t imagine him having much tenderness for her in his heart.

  Perhaps I would soon have an opportunity to find out what had really happened to Lizzie. I felt sure that Mr Sherman was to offer me my job again.

  Why else should he ask me to meet with him?

  Inspector Blakely had almost certainly spoken to Commissioner Dickson, who must have had a word with his cousin. It only seemed fair, given that my article about the Doughty Street case had been correct all along.

  I hugged the handbag on my lap and felt encouraged that my fortunes were changing. I thought about the work I could do on Lizzie’s story and how I could help Inspector Blakely uncover what had happened to her. The desperate need for a salary and my curiosity about the last few years of Lizzie’s life made me want to work on this story more than anything else. I pictured myself in Mr Sherman’s office being welcomed back as a paid member of staff. I was looking forward to seeing my former colleagues again, and perhaps Mr Sherman would invite the compositors and printers up to greet me. Maybe even the messenger boys.

  The omnibus slowed to a halt and I guessed we had reached the slow-moving traffic at Bank. I got up, paid the conductor my fare and hopped off into the busy street. The sky was darkening and the flagpoles of the Bank of England were already disappearing into a foggy mist, which had a greenish tinge to it. Specks of soot floated on the air as if the fog had prevented the chimney smoke from rising upwards. Trying not to limp from the soreness of my heels, I walked a short distance up Cheapside and hailed another omnibus, which would take me along Ludgate Hill and through to Fleet Street.

  Once again, it was difficult to see out of the window, but I was able to register a brief patch of darkness as we passed beneath Ludgate Viaduct. I got off the omnibus at the top of Fleet Street and was greeted by the familiar sight of the spire of St Bride’s, the very top of which was lost in the descending fog. A train whistled as it passed over the viaduct behind me and pulled into the station.

  My heart lifted as I walked along the crowded pavements of Fleet Street. This place had felt like my second home for more than ten years. During that time, increasing numbers of newspapers and periodicals had established themselves here, and there were now so many telegraph wires criss-crossing overhead that they could have served as a web for a giant spider.

  Large lettering across the building fronts spelled out the names of the respective newspapers. I passed the Daily News, The Daily Telegraph, the Morning Advertiser, the Standard and the News of the World. The coffee houses and public houses along this stretch were always filled with hacks, who retired here to relax after meeting their deadlines and to share news and gossip. Mingling with the writers on the street were printers in their ink-stained clothing, bookbinders in their aprons and, occasionally, a wealthy-looking proprietor with a silk top hat and fashionably striped trousers. Messenger boys weaved through the crowd, running with pages of copy to meet deadlines.

  There were more women now in Fleet Street than when I had first begun working here. A number worked as secretaries and there was a growing acceptance of lady reporters in the news rooms, so long as we took our work as seriously as the men did. My view was that we took it more seriously: spending more time working and less time drinking in Fleet Street’s taverns than our male counterparts.

  Many lady journalists worked on the fashion and society journals, few worked as news reporters for a daily newspaper. I had never been put off by the thought that I was an unusual case and had learnt to shrug off disparaging comments from my male colleagues.

  I had always been drawn to the centre of the nation’s news reporting, and from the moment I decided to become a journalist I had wanted to work on Fleet Street. My father had encouraged me in my profession, but I think he assumed I would be happy working in a quiet, provincial town in Derbyshire. He had been surprised when I told him I wanted to live and work in London. He had not been keen on the idea of his daughter being alone in the city, but he hadn’t realised up to that point that I had inherited his sense of adventure.

  Mr Sherman’s office was on the first floor of the Morning Express building. I was greeted by the roar of the printing presses in the basement as I stepped into the main entrance and climbed the narrow, wooden staircase. At the top of the stairs, one door led towards the editor’s office and another towards the news room.

  I knocked nervously at the door that led into the reception area of Mr Sherman’s office and waited for an answer. It swung open and a compositor bustled out with a bundle of proofs in his hand, scrawled all over with Mr Sherman’s corrections. If I hadn’t skipped promptly out of the way, he would have bumped into me. He thundered down the stairs and I caught the door just before it closed again. I stepped into the reception area and saw Miss Welton standing there.

  “Miss Green, he is ready for you now.”

  I had expected a warmer welcome from the editor’s secretary, but I surmised that Mr Sherman was in an agitated mood, which had, in turn, dulled Miss Welton’s demeanour. She was older than me by a number of years and wore a dark, woollen dress, which was buttoned up to the neck. Her grey hair was pinned neatly on top of her head and a pair of pince-nez was clipped to the end of her nose.

  “Thank you, Miss Welton, it is a pleasure to see you again.”

  She smiled thinly in reply and gestured for me to walk through to Mr Sherman’s personal office, to which the door stood open.

  The editor sat at his desk, scribbling furiously onto a proof. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and he wore a blue serge waistcoat. His black hair was oiled and parted to one side, and a pipe stuck out from beneath his thick black moustache. Another compositor stood next to him, biting his lip.

  “Ah, Mis
s Green,” said Mr Sherman without looking up. “Please take a seat.”

  I moved a pile of papers from the only available chair and sat down. The editor’s office had greasy, yellowing walls and smelled of pipe smoke. The far corners of the room were grimy and gloomy, and piles of books and papers were stacked on the desk and all over the floor. A gas lamp hung down from a long chain over the editor’s desk and a fire burned brightly in the small grate. Mr Sherman had worked in this room, at the helm of the Morning Express, for almost ten years.

  The editor paused to examine his edits and then thrust the proof in the direction of the compositor.

  “You have half an hour to get these changes made. And shut the door behind you. Don’t leave it hanging open as the previous oaf did!”

  The man left and Mr Sherman sat back in his chair. He took the pipe out of his mouth and regarded me closely. His eyes were pale blue and his brow was permanently creased. His bushy eyebrows almost met at the top of his nose.

  “Miss Green,” he began solemnly. The glum tone of his voice did nothing to suggest that he was about to offer me a job. One of the speaking tubes next to his desk whistled.

  “Excuse me one moment.” He leant over and spoke brusquely into the mouthpiece. “Yes?”

  The person at the other end told him there was no space for the article about the Fenian dynamite conspirators arrested in Nova Scotia.

  “There has to be!” he barked. “It may be a long distance away from us, but after the bombs earlier this year I tell you that the Irish Republican Brotherhood is a threat we need to be reporting on! Cut it down to two hundred words and make sure it goes in!”

  There was more conversation while Mr Sherman leafed through the papers on his desk and tossed a small card in my direction. It landed on a piece of paper covered in his familiar inky scribble.

  As he traded sharp words through the tube, I leaned forward and picked up the card. It had my name on it. I realised, with a shudder of dread, that it was the card I had left for Mr Taylor. The same corner was bent as it had been on the one I had left with the front-of-house woman at Astley’s Amphitheatre. My heart began to pound.