Both of us were meant to be in bed, but I’d been worrying about my ill mum and wandering the silent house to calm my nerves. I’d heard a noise in the sitting room and had peeped inside.
My initial thought had been worry that the faultless Hannah would seemein this upstairs room where I had no business being. Then I’d noticed Hannah pocketing several valuable trinkets before she turned around and spied me.
She’d tried to call my bluff, asking haughtily what I thought I was doing above stairs, but I called hers. We’d had a whispered argument about who was more in the wrong, until I threatened to call the butler—a petty and cruel man—to make her turn out her pockets.
Hannah then broke down with a sobbing story of having tosteal to feed her old dad and seven brothers and sisters, which was as much a fabrication as her references to obtain this post in the Montagu Square mansion.
Once we’d come to an agreement that we wouldn’t peach on each other—as long as Hannah put back what she’d taken—we went down to the kitchen and had a cup of tea and a long natter.
After that, we became fast friends. That is, until she’d vanished one morning, along with some of the best silver spoons. The master had summoned the police, but as Hannah had told no one but me her real name and had forged all her letters of reference, they searched for her in vain.
I’d caught up with her a few years after my husband’s death, when I’d ducked out of the rain into a pub in Maiden Lane. Hannah had been a barmaid there, and we’d had another intense chat. She was one of the few who knew of my ignominious sort-of marriage and the existence of my daughter.
Hannah had been gone when I’d returned to the pub a few months later, and the landlord told me she was bunking in with a man who had a stall on the Portobello Road. I’d lost track of her after that.
I saw no sign of the man today, but the stall was here and so was Hannah.
“Are you still in the business?” I asked her. The confidence game business, I meant, and she knew it. “Or are you walking the straight and narrow?”
Hannah lifted her chin. “I’m an honest trader now, love. Was going about with the man who ran this stall, butIrun it now. I bought him out.” She laced her fingers behind her head and regarded me beatifically.
“I see.” I touched a pocket watch that was finely made but I could tell was not expensive. Something else churned out infactories by the dozen. “I was hoping you hadn’t forgotten all your old tricks.”
“Oh, yes? Well, if you came here to ask me to rob the house you cook in, no thank you. I’m out ofthatbusiness. I never stole those spoons, by the way. It must have been old Lady Mortimer, who was staying in the house at the time. She was constantly sliding little trinkets into her pockets, which her lady’s maid would quietly return. Lady Mortimer was right off her nut, though I heard she’s gone now, poor soul. Blaming me for them spoons was to save her from humiliation.”
I believed her. At the time, I’d reasoned Hannah would never do anything so obvious. However, no one had been interested in the opinion of an under-cook, and they’d ignored me when I’d spoken up for her.
“No robberies necessary,” I said. “But I would like it if you could become a maid again, a proper one, in a house in Belgrave Square.”
“You are intriguing me now.” Hannah swung her legs down and surged to her feet, snatching up a cloth to drape over her wares. “Come around behind here, Katie, me friend. I’ll fetch us a pint from across the road and you can tell me all about it.”
* * *
I refused the pint, as I did not really like ale, but I accepted a cup of tea from another vendor. The tea was weak, the leaves reused too often, but I did not complain.
We sat together behind Hannah’s table, me on a rickety folding chair. Hannah sipped her dark ale, her feet up once more, as I told her what I wished her to do.
I was as cryptic as I could be, keeping in mind the danger to Daniel and the secrecy of his mission. Though I trusted Hannah more than almost anyone else I knew, I told her onlythat my friend Daniel had gone to work in this house and might be in peril from its inhabitants.
Hannah realized I was leaving much out, but she listened patiently, nodding as I explained.
“Be a new adventure for me,” she said when I finished. “Not used to being a spy.”
“It’s much the same as being a confidence trickster,” I told her. “Learning things, watching, and noting, while pretending to be someone you are not.”
Her laughter rang out. “I always liked you, Katie, even when you bristle when I say your name wrong. You’re easy to tease, love.” Her eyes sparkled. “You have my interest. I’ll do it.”
“Please be careful,” I admonished. “As I say, it could be quite dangerous, for both of you.”
“Me first husband was more a danger to me than any toff in a big house ever could be, even if they are villains.” Hannah winked at me. “They’ll never know I’m anything but a prim and proper maid with her nose in the air. How d’ya want me to report to you?”
“You’ll have a day out, like any other maid. Mine is Monday afternoon and all of Thursday, but if they do not let you match that, have no fear. We can meet at a market or chance upon each other in a tea shop. Two domestics having a chat. Nothing wrong in that.”
“Someone might try to follow me,” Hannah pointed out. “To make sure I’m what I say I am.”
I’d thought of that. “Hopefully they will not believe they need to. But if so, I am confident you can give them the slip. Or perhaps you can let them watch you do whatever a maid would do on her day out. Peek in at a music hall, go to chapel.”
“Chapel.” Hannah’s smile flashed. “Well, I suppose they’dthink me blameless if I sat in a pew for evening prayer.” She patted my knee. “Don’t you worry none. I’ll get to you, with no one the wiser.”
