Lil looked intrigued. ‘Let’s find out,’ she said, tearing it open at once.
But once she had taken out the letter and put it on the table in front of them between the teacups and the sandwiches, they were as perplexed as ever. On what was clearly expensive writing paper, there were a few short lines:
‘Well, what does it say?’ asked Joe, looking at the others expectantly. Growing up on the streets of the East End, he had never learned to read.
‘She wants to hire us!’ exclaimed Lil excitedly. ‘As detectives !’
Billy reached across the table and took hold of the note for a closer look. ‘But why would she want to do that?’ he demanded, frowning.
‘It says right there, in black and white,’ said Lil. ‘She heard about how we found the clockwork sparrow!’
‘Well I’ll be blowed,’ said Joe. ‘That’s a turn-up for the books!’
‘But why just you and Sophie?’ asked Billy. ‘I mean, you’re –’ and here he broke off suddenly, his cheeks turning rather pink.
‘Girls? ’ demanded Lil, at once. ‘Girls can be detectives just as well as boys can,’ she burst out indignantly. ‘Girls are just as brave and clever as boys, you know! I realise they aren’t in those silly detective stories of yours – all the girls in those are perfect idiots who do nothing but swoon all over the place – but that’s a lot of old rot.’
Billy looked rather indignant, and opened his mouth as if he was about to argue, but Joe was frowning. ‘It’s a bit of a rum do, though, isn’t it? I mean, why not go to a professional – a private detective? Or the coppers, come to that?’
Sophie frowned. After what had happened in the spring, the last thing she wanted to do was get in any more trouble with the police. ‘Do you think there’s something fishy about it? Perhaps we oughtn’t to meet her?’
‘Of course we should meet her,’ exclaimed Lil. ‘Goodness, don’t be such a lot of stick-in-the-muds. Here I am, at a loose end and desperate to earn a bit of money – and then along comes this letter! It’s absolutely perfect.’
‘But we have no idea what she wants us to do,’ said Sophie. ‘And we aren’t really detectives. How do we know we’ll even be able to help?’
‘We managed to find Mr Sinclair’s missing jewels, didn’t we?’ replied Lil at once. ‘Have you forgotten what Mr McDermott said to us?’
Sophie had not forgotten. The truth was that she had thought of his words very often during the duller moments in the Millinery Department. ‘You have first-rate instincts, Miss Taylor – and with Miss Rose here to help you act on them, I suspect you would make rather a formidable team. If you ever find yourselves tired of Sinclair’s, come and find me. I think there could be quite a different sort of career out there for a couple of young ladies like you. ’ Remembering them now gave her a sudden prickle of pride.
‘Anyway, the absolute worst that could happen is that we go along and aren’t too keen on what she has to say. Then we can just say no to this job – or what does she call it? – commission,’ went on Lil stoutly.
‘Well . . . I suppose there couldn’t be any harm in at least going to talk to her,’ said Sophie. In spite of her caution, she felt a pleasing buzz of excitement.
Across the table, Billy’s face was screwed into a peculiar mixture of eagerness and indignation. Sophie realised that he was just as enthusiastic as Lil, but still rather resentful that he had not been included in the invitation. Joe was watching with a look of quiet amusement on his face, and now he grinned at Sophie as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
‘Of course, we’ll need both of you to help too,’ said Sophie.
A look of relief crossed Billy’s face. ‘Well, it’s a bit busy at the moment,’ he said in a deliberately casual tone. ‘You know, working for the Captain and the evening classes, and practising for the boat race and everything. But I expect I’ll probably be able to help out.’
Lil looked eagerly at Joe. ‘Course I’ll help, if I can,’ he said, with a smile and a shrug.
‘Hurrah!’ said Lil. ‘That’s settled then!’
‘Lil and I will go and see this Miss Whiteley tomorrow,’ said Sophie with a decisive nod. ‘Then let’s meet again after the store closes, and we can tell you all about it.’
Song was angry. ‘What on earth were you thinking?’ he demanded.
‘That’s no way to talk to your father!’ snapped out Mum. ‘I’ll thank you to take a more civil tone!’
‘But they might have killed you!’
Dad gave a little snort. ‘It would take more than that gang of brainless thugs to finish me off,’ he muttered.
Mei stared at him anxiously across the table. She hated to see him so white and tired-looking. The bruises on his face were a constant reminder of the moment she had found him, crumpled on the ground – she had been quite sure that he was dead.
Song looked at their father for a long moment, then sighed and sat back in his chair, his hands bunched into fists in front of him. ‘All I’m saying is that you can’t just refuse to pay the Baron’s Boys,’ he said in his usual quiet voice. ‘That isn’t how things work.’
‘It’s a matter of principle,’ said Mum, rather stiffly. ‘People round here look to us to set an example, Song, you know that. We all work hard. We’ve all got precious little as it is. We can’t let them turn up here and demand our money. It’s nothing more than bullying. If we all stand up to them, maybe we can put a stop to it.’
Song made a noise of frustration in the back of his throat. ‘But you can’t stand up to them, Mum. That would be like . . . one mouse against a hundred cats! Besides, no one else is going to put themselves in danger, especially when they see what happened to Dad. People are afraid .’
There was a long pause. Then Dad spoke. ‘Song is right . . .’ he said slowly. His voice was heavy. ‘We can’t stand against the Baron, Lou. He runs the East End. Everyone knows that. We should be grateful it’s taken him this long to reach into China Town.’
Mei felt a slow chill creep over her. She knew about the Baron, of course: everyone in Limehouse did. He was the villain of every whispered tale – the monster who was ‘coming to get you’ in all the children’s games. No one had ever seen him, but almost everyone claimed to know someone who’d caught a glimpse, just once, and come to a bad end. To see the Baron himself would be the worst of all bad omens – worse than a black cat crossing your path, worse than breaking a looking glass. There were dozens of stories about him. Some people said that he was a bloodthirsty murderer who had left a trail of horribly dismembered victims all across the East End. Others said he had once been an ordinary man, until he had sold his soul to the devil. Either way, everyone was afraid of him. To Mei, he was the dark shadows underneath the bed, the creaking
