Laura Schlitz - Splendors and Glooms

Parsefall’s hand moved rapidly, but for once Lizzie Rose was quicker. She snatched the object from him and held it close to the firelight. It was a photograph in a silver frame. “Parse, where did you —?” Then she knew. “You stole this!”

“Did not,” Parsefall said automatically.

“You did. You stole it from the Wintermute house. Oh!” Lizzie Rose recalled the frantic haste with which Parsefall had tidied away the blankets that morning. “That’s why you were so afraid of the coppers!”

Parsefall said, “Woz not,” but without much force.

“You’re a thief !” Lizzie Rose cuffed him. “Oh, Parsefall, for shame!”

Parsefall switched tactics. “They’re rich enough,” he said defensively.

“Rich enough!” Lizzie Rose hissed scornfully. “All their children dead, and you say they’re rich enough! Have you no pity?”

“One of ’em’s living’,” Parsefall said weakly.

Lizzie Rose cuffed him again. “Yes — poor Clara!” she said again. “If she isn’t kidnapped and she comes back home. Oh, Parsefall, how could you? Don’t you know right from wrong?”

Parsefall opened his mouth and shut it again, as if realizing that this was a dangerous question.

“What are we to do?” Lizzie Rose turned the photograph in her hands, reading the writing on the back. “ Charles Augustus Wintermute — he was Clara’s twin.” She brought the photograph closer to her eyes. “Oh, Parsefall!” she wailed. “He’s in his coffin!”

“No, is ’e?” Parsefall took the photograph and peered at it narrowly. “I didn’t look that close. I thought ’e was sleepin’. He’s a real little swell, ain’t he?”

Lizzie Rose frowned at him. “You shouldn’t call him a swell now he’s dead.”

“It ain’t my fault ’e’s dead,” Parsefall said, stung. “They’re all dead in that family.”

Lizzie Rose cuffed him a third time. Parsefall slapped back. He did not hit hard, but the blow served to discourage Lizzie Rose. She hugged her knees to her chest and let her head fall forward. “Oh, Parse! What are we going to do?”

Parsefall shrugged. Then a look of naked fear crossed his face. “Are you going to tell the coppers?”

Lizzie Rose shook her head. “No. I don’t know if they’d hang you, but they might. Or they’d put you in prison; I don’t know which. I suppose”— she considered —“we might send the photograph through the post. That way poor Mrs. Wintermute —” She stopped. “Oh, no, how horrid!”

“What’s ’orrid?”

“Don’t you see? If you were Mrs. Wintermute — and Clara’s still missing! — imagine how dreadful to open a parcel and find a picture of your son in his coffin!”

Parsefall said tentatively, “There’s the pawnshop.”

“There isn’t,” Lizzie Rose snapped back. “If you think I’m letting you get a single farthing from this photograph, you’re mistaken. You’ve been wicked — not just naughty, but wicked — and you ought to be punished. You ought to be whipped.”

“You can’t whip me,” Parsefall said coolly. It was true. Lizzie Rose was taller than he was, but she wasn’t strong enough to immobilize him and strike him at the same time.

“No, I can’t,” Lizzie Rose admitted mournfully. “Oh, Parsefall! What’s to become of you? You can’t read and you don’t go to church, and you steal things, and you smell so bad. How are you to grow up to be respectable?”

“You ain’t going to tell Grisini, are you?”

Lizzie Rose looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “Of course I won’t. I’m not a telltale. Anyway, Grisini would whip you too hard.” Her eyes flashed; for a brief moment she envisioned herself defending him from a furious Grisini. On the heels of that thought came another. “Parse —”

“Wot?”

“Today — I was talking to Mrs. Pinchbeck and she said there was a child that was kidnapped years ago. It was in Brighton. She said the coppers came after Grisini then, too.”

Parsefall put one finger over her lips. He shook his head emphatically and pointed in the direction of Grisini’s bedroom.

Both children listened. Grisini’s snores were regular and even. “He’s asleep,” whispered Lizzie Rose.

Parsefall’s answer was almost inaudible. “What if he ain’t?”

“Parsefall, do you know —?”

“Shhh.” Parsefall was gathering up the blankets. He layered one over the other, making a tent over their heads. Ruby, who was not the sort of dog who tolerated being shut out, clawed at the tent and made piteous noises. Parsefall muttered, “Bloody ’orrible dog,” raised one corner of the blanket, and let her in.

“Grisini don’t like it talked about. It wozn’t Brighton; it woz Leeds.” He counted on his fingers. “Four years ago.”

Lizzie Rose protested, “Mrs. Pinchbeck said it was eleven years —”

“No. I remember it. It was winter, and there was snow. We woz in Leeds, but we couldn’t do the shows, ’cos it woz too cold and we woz ’ard up. Then that girl went missin’. She was a rich man’s daughter. The coppers came and questioned Grisini. There was talk of locking ’im up. But then the little girl come ’ome safe and sound. After that, Grisini ’ad money again, so we come to London and lived with Mrs. Pinchbeck.”

“But that’s two children,” Lizzie Rose whispered. “A boy in Brighton, eleven or twelve years ago, and the little girl in Leeds. Parsefall, what does it mean?”

His breath was hot and sour inside the tent. “Dunno. Only Grisini don’t like it talked about.”

Lizzie Rose leaned closer to whisper directly into his ear. “We ought to tell the coppers.”

Parsefall grabbed her wrist and squeezed it warningly. “We can’t tell the coppers,” he hissed. “There ain’t nuffink to tell. We don’t know nuffink.”

“We know that Grisini knew two other children who disappeared. It must mean something, ” hissed Lizzie Rose. “Perhaps the coppers could find out what it is. It might help them find Clara!”

“Grisini would kill us,” Parsefall said desperately. He dug his fingernails into her hand. “If we peached on him, he’d kill us. You don’t know ’im the way I do.” He heard his voice rise and lowered it again. “Promise me you won’t go to the coppers.”

Lizzie Rose gave a little shiver. She wasn’t promising anything.

Five nights after Clara’s disappearance, Constable Hawkins left the police station and headed home.

He walked rapidly but remained alert. The night was misty, and he knew how many people lost their way in the city’s fogs; he had seen the bodies of men struck down by carriages and trampled by horses; he had examined the corpses of drowned Londoners who had fallen into the Thames. He made his way from streetlamp to streetlamp, keeping count of the cross streets as carefully as if he were blind.

The fog curdled and thinned. A nearby church tolled quarter past ten. A dog barked shrilly. All the sounds of the night — the clop of hooves, the grinding of iron-shod wheels on stone — were distorted by the moisture in the air. For a moment he thought he heard someone call his name.

A hand reached through the fog. “Sir —”

The constable halted, pressing his arms to his sides to protect himself from pickpockets. He felt a surge of impatience. His wife was keeping supper for him, and he was hungry. He said gruffly, “What is it?”

The fog receded, and he caught sight of the person who had touched his sleeve. A tall child with red hair, surrounded by innumerable dogs.