herself – a young lady making her first appearances in society. She was gazing around open-mouthed, as if she could hardly believe her eyes. But her amazement was not really so very unusual; after all, Sinclair’s was the most extraordinary store in London, with its lofty ceilings painted with clouds and cherubs, the fountains in its magnificent marble entrance hall, its beautiful golden clock. But it wasn’t just the celebrated decor of Sinclair’s that made it so special. Nor was it the magnificent entertainments that Mr Sinclair always seemed to be staging – one week an elegant thé dansant, the next an exhibition of some remarkable new invention. There was quite simply something magical about the place, from the way that the very air seemed always to be scented with rose and violet and caramel and melting chocolate, to the famous blue-and-gold Sinclair’s boxes, inside which any kind of delightful dreams might be discovered nestling amongst snowy folds of tissue paper and tied with a satin bow.
Even Sophie Taylor, who had been working as a salesgirl at Sinclair’s ever since the store first opened, still sometimes found herself gazing around the store, enchanted by the beauty of her surroundings. Not, of course, that there was a great deal of time for standing around on such a busy morning as this one.
‘Deliveries for the Millinery Department, Miss Taylor!’ called a porter, whizzing by with a trolley stacked high with hat-boxes.
‘To the storeroom please, Alf,’ she replied, as she deftly whisked a hat decorated with bluebirds from the very top of an elaborate display and placed it into the eager hands of a waiting customer.
It was strange to think that today was her fifteenth birthday. A year ago, she would never have believed she would be spending it working as a salesgirl at Sinclair’s department store. As she hurried into the storeroom to fetch more hats for a group of debutantes, she found herself marvelling at how much her life had changed since her last birthday. Papa had been home on leave, she remembered, full of tales about the recent adventures of his regiment. There had been a trip to the theatre and a special tea on the lawn at Orchard House. Cook had made a birthday cake decorated with strawberries, and they had drunk her health in ginger beer. Papa’s present had been a lovely new frock – her first grown-up evening dress – and her dear old governess, Miss Pennyfeather, had given her a pretty silk sash to match. She remembered Papa smiling at her as they had all sung ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ around the tea table . . .
For a dangerous moment her eyes began to feel hot and prickly, but she shook the sensation away at once. This was not the time for blubbing – she was a professional young woman now. Being a shop girl was hard work, and sometimes rather boring – each day the same round of taking deliveries, tidying the storeroom, recording sales in the ledgers – but she did it well, and she was proud of it. As she swept back out of the storeroom with the stack of hat-boxes, she held her head high. Papa might be gone now, but it was a comfort to know that he would have been proud of her too.
Just a few months ago, the idea of working for a living had been daunting. Life as a shop girl had seemed so difficult – and she had felt so awfully alone. But then she had fallen headlong into a peculiar adventure, and together with three new friends, had saved Sinclair’s department store from disaster. She still felt a little shy of putting it that way, even to herself – after all, ‘saving Sinclair’s’ sounded rather grand and conceited. But it was the truth, just the same. Together, the four of them had prevented Sinclair’s from being destroyed by an infernal machine – an explosive device planted by the mysterious and sinister criminal who called himself ‘the Baron’. In the process they had also helped to recover Mr Sinclair’s priceless clockwork sparrow, which had been stolen from the store.
It had been a strange and rather frightening experience – but there was no doubt that it had changed her life for the better. She had been able to use some of the reward money that they had been given for finding Mr Sinclair’s stolen jewels to move out of her horrid old lodgings and into a far nicer room. Mrs Milton in the Millinery Department had been delighted to have her back to work at the store, and the other shop girls, who had not always been especially agreeable to her in the past, had become much more pleasant. Indeed, the youngest girls had become rather awestruck in her presence, treating her quite as if she were a heroine from a story in a twopenny paper. Even Edith, her old adversary, was carefully courteous; and as for the great Mr Sinclair himself, he always had a smile or a nod for her on the occasions he passed through the Millinery Department.
Best of all, though, she no longer felt so lonely. Papa and Orchard House were gone forever, but now she at least had her friends: Lil, Billy and Joe. Like Sophie herself, they all worked at Sinclair’s. Lil was one of the glamorous ‘Captain’s Girls’ – mannequins, whose job it was to display the latest gowns, hats and shoes to the most important customers in the daily dress shows. She combined being a mannequin with performing as a chorus girl at the Fortune Theatre, and always seemed to be rushing between dress parades and rehearsals and performances.
Meanwhile, Billy had been promoted from his old position as an apprentice porter to that of office boy in Mr Sinclair’s own office. Far from loitering around as he used to do, Sophie now regularly saw him hurrying busily through the shop on urgent business for Mr Sinclair’s private secretary, Miss Atwood. He always grinned at Sophie when he saw her, but rarely seemed to have time to stop and speak. He had grown taller since the spring, and stood much straighter now: already he seemed quite different from the nervous boy who had always been getting himself into scrapes and who had needed Sophie’s help.
Joe worked in the stable-yard. Sophie saw him most mornings on her way into the store, brushing down one of the horses with his sleeves rolled up, cheerfully whistling a music-hall tune. Joe had once been part of a gang working for the Baron, and when Sophie had first met him he had been injured and penniless, begging outside Sinclair’s. He looked quite different now – well-fed and happy. She knew that having a proper job and a place to live meant a very great deal to him. She could understand how he felt: she too had known what it was like to be alone, without any way to support herself. She knew they both felt very fortunate now.
But, she acknowledged, not everything about their adventure had changed things for the better. For one thing, it had brought a new sense of danger into her life. She could not forget that she alone had caught a glimpse of the Baron. He was renowned for the prodigious care he took to keep his identity a secret: no one but his closest associates knew what he looked like, but Sophie had seen him, and because of that, she knew she was in jeopardy. Indeed, in the first few weeks after their adventure, Mr McDermott – the private detective who worked for Mr Sinclair – had instructed a policeman to escort her to and from the store, to ensure her safety. Even once that had ceased, Mr McDermott himself had called in several times to check that all was well. She had welcomed his visits: in those first days she had found herself jumping at unexpected noises, starting at the sound of footfall behind her, and lying awake at night, staring into the dark, unable to help picturing the Baron’s face looming at her out of the shadows.
But as spring had stretched into summer, there had been not even the smallest sign of the Baron, nor the Baron’s Boys – the gang of East End ruffians who worked for him.
‘Do you suppose that perhaps he didn’t realise I had seen him, after all?’ Sophie had found herself asking Mr McDermott.
Mr McDermott had frowned. ‘Who can say?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The Baron is a hard man to second-guess.’ Then he gave Sophie a rare smile. ‘Either way, Miss Taylor, it looks as though he has forgotten about you – and I must say that I’m very relieved about that.’
Well, the Baron might have forgotten her, but she doubted she would ever forget about him. Perhaps, she thought now, as she unwrapped the hats, it was simply that he believed a mere shop girl could not possibly pose a threat to him. And in a way, he was right – he was one of the most powerful men in London, with the whole of the East End in his thrall, and she was here, spending her fifteenth birthday selling hats.
‘Here
