When Gods Die

Chapter 57

Kat’s gowns were made by London’s most fashionable modistes, her slippers of the finest silk and kid, her chemises trimmed with delicate Belgian lace. But there had been a time when she had been intimately familiar with London’s booming secondhand clothing trade. She’d known who would fence a silk handkerchief, just as she’d known who would give the best price for a stolen watch.

Not all the goods in the secondhand clothing trade were stolen. Men and women fallen on hard times with nothing left to sell could still sell their own clothes, their appearance becoming ever more ragged as they spiraled down into the gutter. Yet such a huge traffic in used items also created a ready market for thieves. Having once been a thief, Kat knew exactly where to go when she decided to track down the dealer who had sold Lady Addison Peebles’s green satin ball gown to Guinevere Anglessey’s killer.

Many of the secondhand clothing dealers had stalls in the Rag Fair in Rosemary Lane, while others sold their goods from barrows in Whitechapel, with the occasional purloined round of cheese or bacon hidden away beneath the tattered petticoats and breeches. But the finest quality goods could be found in a little shop kept by Mother Keyes in Long Acre.

There, in her elegantly bowed front window, Mother Keyes displayed delicate silk handkerchiefs and nightdresses of linen and lace, snowy white kid gloves and ball gowns fit for a queen. All looked new, although they were not. Some had been sold by their owners or the servants to whom they had been given. Others had come into the shop by more nefarious channels, with any initials or marks carefully removed before the items were put on display.

The bell on the front door jangled pleasantly as Kat entered the shop, bringing with her the warm scents of sun and morning breeze. Mother Keyes looked up from behind her counter, her sharp hazel eyes narrowing as they traveled up the length of Kat’s fringed and embroidered poult-de-soie walking gown, assessed the package she carried, and came to rest on her face.

It had been nearly ten years now since a much younger Kat had slipped through Mother Keyes’s door, and she hadn’t been wearing soft kid gloves or a chip hat with a delicately curled ostrich feather that cost enough to feed a family for months. But Kat knew the woman recognized her. Remembering faces and reading the subtle, telltale signs of character writ there had kept Mother Keyes out of Newgate for sixty years or more.

Holding the old woman’s gaze, Kat spread the green satin gown on the polished counter between them and said, “If I were abigail to a duke’s daughter-in-law and my lady gave me a gown such as this that she no longer wanted, I think I’d bring it to you to sell.”

Mother Keyes glanced down at the gown, her eyes narrowing, although her face gave nothing away. She was a tiny woman, her frame delicate, the features in her wrinkled face small and even. She looked back up at Kat. “Think me a flat, do you?”

Kat laughed. “I know very well you are not. And this maid I’m talking about—the one who sold you this dress? She spoke the truth. Lady Addison Peebles did give her the gown. Her mother-in-law said the color made her look like a sick frog.”

Mother Keyes blinked. “You have the dress, and you know who sold it. So why are you here?”

Kat laid a guinea on the expanse of shimmering satin. “I want to know who bought it.”

Mother Keyes hesitated a moment, then picked up the coin with quick, nimble fingers. “I don’t know their names, but I do remember them.”

It didn’t surprise Kat. People were Mother Keyes’s hobby. She amused herself by watching them, studying them, analyzing them. “They were a queer pair,” she said. “No doubt about it.” She paused expectantly.

Kat placed a second coin on the counter. “There were two of them?”

“That’s right. One of them was from the Colonies. The Southern Colonies, from the sound of him.” She leaned in close and dropped her voice. “An African, no less. Mind you, ’e was as pale skinned as a Portuguese, but ’e ’ad the features, if you know what I mean. That flat nose, and them full lips. Big, ’e was, too. And bald as a plucked goose.”

Kat dutifully deposited another coin. “And the other one? What was he like?”

“Not a man. A girl. A London girl. Young, she was. No more’n fifteen or sixteen, I’d say. Maybe less. Yellow-headed and tall, but otherwise ordinary lookin’. I don’t remember much else about her, ’cept for her eyes.”

“Her eyes?”

“They were so pale. Reminded me of rainwater on a cloudy day. Nothin’ there but a reflection.”

“You wouldn’t happen to remember anything they said, would you?”

Mother Keyes gazed out the shop’s window at the troop of soldiers marching past, her lips pursing with studied thought. “Well, let me see….”

Kat placed another coin on the table.

The coin disappeared beneath Mother Keyes’s tiny hand. “They argued a bit about the size of the dress. The girl, she kept insistin’ they needed something bigger, but the African, he said no, it’d do just fine. And then he said the queerest thing.”

The old woman paused expectantly. Suppressing a sigh of impatience, Kat produced another coin.

Mother Keyes drew back her lips in a smile that displayed a mouthful of unexpectedly sound teeth. “He said that dress, it was just the thing for a lady to wear to the Brighton Pavilion.”