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Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
204 Seiten
Englisch
Faber & Fabererschienen am30.06.2015Main
March 1880, Limehouse. Kitty Peck, a spirited but vulnerable seventeen-year-old, is the reluctant heiress to Paradise, the criminal empire previously overseen by the formidable Lady Ginger. Far from the colour and camaraderie of the music hall where Kitty had been working, this newfound power brings with it isolation and uncertainty. Desperate to reconnect with Joey, her estranged brother, Kitty travels to Paris. Reunited at last, she is unable to refuse his request to take a child back to London. Within days of her return it's clear that someone has followed them... and this someone is determined to kill the child... and anyone who stands in their way. Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune is a fast-paced historical mystery with breath-taking twists and turns that takes us from the decadent, bohemian world of late 19th-Century Paris to a deadly secret at the heart of the British empire.

Kate Griffin's first book Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders won the Faber/Stylist crime competition and was shortlisted for a CWA dagger. This is her third novel featuring Kitty Peck. Kate works for The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and lives just outside London., Kate Griffin was born within the sound of Bow bells, making her a true-born cockney. She has worked as an assistant to an antiques dealer, a journalist for local newspapers and most recently for The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, Kate's first book, won the Stylist / Faber crime writing competition. Kate's maternal family lived in Victorian Limehouse. One of the inspirations for the series came from tales of life round the London docks told by her grandmother. Kate lives in St Albans.mehr
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TaschenbuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR10,50
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
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Produkt

KlappentextMarch 1880, Limehouse. Kitty Peck, a spirited but vulnerable seventeen-year-old, is the reluctant heiress to Paradise, the criminal empire previously overseen by the formidable Lady Ginger. Far from the colour and camaraderie of the music hall where Kitty had been working, this newfound power brings with it isolation and uncertainty. Desperate to reconnect with Joey, her estranged brother, Kitty travels to Paris. Reunited at last, she is unable to refuse his request to take a child back to London. Within days of her return it's clear that someone has followed them... and this someone is determined to kill the child... and anyone who stands in their way. Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune is a fast-paced historical mystery with breath-taking twists and turns that takes us from the decadent, bohemian world of late 19th-Century Paris to a deadly secret at the heart of the British empire.

Kate Griffin's first book Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders won the Faber/Stylist crime competition and was shortlisted for a CWA dagger. This is her third novel featuring Kitty Peck. Kate works for The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and lives just outside London., Kate Griffin was born within the sound of Bow bells, making her a true-born cockney. She has worked as an assistant to an antiques dealer, a journalist for local newspapers and most recently for The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, Kate's first book, won the Stylist / Faber crime writing competition. Kate's maternal family lived in Victorian Limehouse. One of the inspirations for the series came from tales of life round the London docks told by her grandmother. Kate lives in St Albans.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780571310869
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2015
Erscheinungsdatum30.06.2015
AuflageMain
Seiten204 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse951 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.11907048
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe




Chapter One


The Beetle didn´t answer. Sunlight pooled in the cups of his half-moon spectacles as he sniffed and shifted his head so I couldn´t see direct into his eyes.

I repeated the question. I think I´ve got a right to know, Mr Telferman, don´t you?´ He looked down and started to leaf through some papers piled up on the desk. He licked his thumb and drew out a sheet from the centre of the stack.

I need you to sign this, Miss Peck.´ He stared at me now. You are quite sure you wish to retain that name?´

I nodded as he pushed the page across the desk. It is a matter of some urgency. You will find a pen in the drawer to your left.´ He sniffed again, hunched his narrow shoulders and drummed his dirty nails on the wood.

The Beetle was a good name for Marcus Telferman - he was a man of dust and shadows. The first time I´d come across him was at Ma´s funeral when me and Joey had thought he was at the wrong graveside. In his shiny black coat and tall hat with the trailing ends of a crêpe band flapping about his head he´d put my brother in mind of an insect.

I´d met him five times now, and the more I saw the more I was inclined to agree. Every time I thought I could slip away from Paradise there came another summons to Pearl Street and more urgent business - documents, transfers, contracts - waiting on his desk for my name. I swear it was like he lived with the mice in the skirting at The Palace. When his little twitching horns caught the faintest rustle of me packing a bag he´d find something for me to do.

The clock on the stone mantlepiece behind the desk made a sharp clicking noise before it gathered itself together and chimed the hour. The Beetle fished into the top pocket of his waistcoat and drew out a fob watch. He flicked open the golden case and brought the dial close to his eyes, then he placed it on the desk to his right.

Three already. Come, Miss Peck, I have other appointments. Your signature, please.´

He didn´t talk London natural. His clipped accent and the stiffness of his speech marked him out as an incomer - like the half of us in Limehouse. Lucca said he was almost definitely a son of Abraham´ and I reckoned he was right on that score. He didn´t look like a man who enjoyed a pork chop with his greens. Then again, he didn´t look like a man who enjoyed anything much.

Like I said, Mr Telferman,´ I started up again, I think I´ve got a right to know where she is. She´s my own grandmother, she told me that herself. It´s all very well her handing Paradise and everything in it over to me, but I need to know more. Not about the legal stuff - I want to know about her and about my mother. Then there´s our father - surely Lady Ginger can tell me something about him. She must know who he was. I want to know about . . .´

About me and Joey and who we really are, I thought, though I didn´t say it. So many questions I still needed answers to.

The Beetle removed his specs. He placed them carefully on top of the papers and leaned forward, steepling his long bony fingers. An oily lick of thin grey hair fell across his face and he pushed it back and upward so that it rose above his head and sat there in a greasy roll. It was distracting the way it stayed put. As he spoke I kept looking at it.

Lady Ginger was most specific, we both know this to be correct, do we not? I am bound by her wishes. I can tell you nothing more than she wishes to divulge. If she wants to contact you it will be through me and only through me. By the same token, if you need to . . . consult her, then I am to be your conduit.´

My what? That some fancy legal term?´

He shook his head and pursed his lips. The greasy roll stayed exactly where it was. When he spoke he sounded disappointed, like he was talking to a child in a schoolroom who couldn´t do a simple sum. I am your means of communication. Your go-between. I am not at liberty to discuss the issue further. Now the paper, if you please.´

I leaned back in the chair and folded my arms. And what if I don´t sign it?´

This is most tiresome. You are not a child any more, Katharine.´ I noted he used the name she´d given me. People depend on you now. You have responsibilities - as I explained so very carefully that first day.´

That was nearly three weeks ago. When me and Lucca came out of Lady Ginger´s empty room at The Palace and went downstairs, Marcus Telferman, face long and grey as an old man´s nightshirt, had been waiting in the hallway, just as she´d written. I caught the smallest twitch of his lips as he took me in. There was a pile of boxes at his feet and a sheaf of papers under his arm. He nodded, but he didn´t say a word as he held out a page covered in handwritten lines packed so close together the sheet looked black. I noted there was a space at the bottom for my signature.

What will you do?´ Lucca repeated the question he´d asked upstairs when I read my grandmother´s letter. I stared at the paper in the lawyer´s hand and ran her message through my mind.

Telferman knows my wishes and will be ready to act for you should you decide to accept my terms. The document of transfer must be signed within the day or this offer will be rescinded.

The paper in front me was the document of transfer´. If I signed, The Palace and everything, everything, of my grandmother´s would become mine.

Of an instant the hallway went dark. The room blurred to a shadow except that narrow white space at the foot of the page. Just for a moment back then I thought of running to the door and out into the light.

Now I stared out of the Beetle´s grimy window. The sunshine showed up the cloudy smears on the panes. He lived in a grand house - Lady Ginger must have paid him well - but he didn´t go much on cleaning so far as I could tell. Four storeys high it was, every room filled with books and papers, statues, bits of stone (I couldn´t for the life of me think why you´d want to display a lump of old brown rock on your mantle) and creatures - most of them dead. There was a fox in a glass case in front of the window giving me the eye.

Over the street a ragged woman with a baby on her hip stopped a passer-by. Mumping him for pennies, I supposed. I watched her spit at his back after he shook his head and moved on.

Was that how they all felt about me, I wondered? All the men and women in Paradise who looked to me for their bread and bacon. The people who worked for me now - the ones who knew it, leastways - did they spit at my back when I left a room? The woman pulled her shawl around the baby and pushed on. She limped badly. God knows what would become of them both eventually. For most of them on the streets it was hard enough just feeding yourself without bumping a child about too.

Perhaps I could find her a place in one of my establishments? At least she and the kid would have a roof over their heads.

My establishments.

I caught myself thinking it and shuddered. See, it wasn´t just the music halls that Lady Ginger ran. No, her world ran deeper than me and Lucca had ever imagined - and we´d imagined quite a lot. The Gaudy, The Comet and The Carnival were what you might call front of house. The rest of it . . . well, tell truth, I still wasn´t entirely sure how much more there was to know. The Beetle enjoyed ladling out his little bits of information like a clergy at a soup stand.

When the pair of us had gone through the boxes of papers that first day I couldn´t keep track of it all. Not just here in Limehouse, mind, but across the City. You name it, however low you want to go, and she was in it right up to them blood-clot rubies hanging off her ears. Flesh houses catering to every appetite, opium pits, gambling rings, dog fights, cock fights, even rat fights in the meanest quarters.

From the books she appeared to have a dozen customs men tied to every finger. And there was respectable stuff, too - ships, warehouses, stocks, bonds, even a bit of a bank.

Miss Peck!´ The Beetle´s clipped voice was sharp. Time is money. Your signature.´

I stared at the paper on the desk.

What´s this when it´s at home?´ I turned it over and scanned to the end where there was evidently a place for my name. I looked up. I´m not signing nothing I can´t read. I might be new to this malarkey, but I´m not that green - and you know it.´

It was true. From the first I wouldn´t put my name to anything I hadn´t read and understood, right to the smallest line. If it was Latin - and of occasion it was - I got Lucca to help out. I trusted the Beetle, but I didn´t much like him, and if I was going to be running Paradise I needed to know exactly what was in it.

What language is this?´ Tell truth, I thought I knew, but I wanted the confirmation.

The Beetle picked up his fob watch and snapped the case shut. Then he reached for his specs and balanced them on the end of his long nose. He stared at me across the desk.

Well?´ I asked.

He didn´t blink, just kept staring at me, that roll of hair still perched on his head like a starched napkin in a cookshop.

French.´

I felt a little ball of excitement tumble in the pit of my stomach. I thought I knew where this was going. Under my bodice I became suddenly aware of Joey´s ring and his Christopher. When I´d thought he was lost, I´d hung them on a chain about my neck and clung to them for luck every time I went up in the cage. I didn´t want to give the Beetle the satisfaction of knowing how much the thought of seeing my brother again meant...


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Autor

Kate Griffin was born within the sound of Bow bells, making her a true-born cockney.Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, Kate's first book, won theStylist/Faber crime writing competition and was shortlisted for the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger. Kate's maternal family lived in Victorian Limehouse and her grandmother told her many stories of life around the docks. Kate lives in St Albans.