A Dreadful Splendor (5)

Her glassy eyes, ringed with heavy black liner, stared back at me. “Miss Crane said you’d get caught for good this time.” She slurred her words. I couldn’t quite tell if it was the result of too much opium or simple exhaustion.

“She didn’t give me much choice,” I replied. “She raised the rent again.”

Drusilla sighed. “After everything that happened with yer mum, I wonder why she let you stay in the house at all.” She touched a finger to my chin, angling my face up toward her. “But I can see why she’d want to keep a pretty thing like you around. You’d be good wages, at least the first while.”

My stomach twisted at the thought. I stayed quiet, knowing my mother and Miss Crane had made an arrangement some time ago. The men who frequented Miss Crane’s were hardly a parade of suitable beaus. And even if they were slightly handsome, the hunger in their eyes as they sized up the girls was enough to relieve them of any human decency. But when Maman died, her agreement with Miss Crane died with her. Now my séances included a little robbery on the side if the family had anything worth stealing. So far, I’d earned enough to keep my bed to myself, and save a bit too.

Miss Crane wouldn’t let me rot in a jail cell for long. Yet I felt a flutter of panic in my heart. I only trusted that woman when I could see her, like a snake charmer with its cobra. “She’ll come and get me,” I said more to myself than Drusilla. “She always does.”

Someone clanged on the bars. A gruff officer unlocked the cell door and motioned to Drusilla. “Get up, you sordid thing.”

I rolled my eyes. I had, in fact, seen this very officer come to Miss Crane’s on various occasions. If he paid to be with “sordid” women, what did that make him?

Then I heard the sharp clicks of Miss Crane’s heels on the stone floor. My eyes searched for the source of the sound until she appeared from around the corner. If her large bosom and red lipstick didn’t catch your eye, her choice of attire would. Her large hat was the most flamboyant shade of violet I’d ever seen. The coat with the fur trim was new as well.

Still, no amount of money would restrain respectable women from crossing the street to avoid sharing the same space as her, no matter how fashionable her shoes.

She took Drusilla in her arms and pulled her close, nearly suffocating her in the ample cleavage. Even if Miss Crane considered us property, the gesture was maternal enough to evoke a thankful sigh from Drusilla. A strange heaviness settled around my heart.

I started to follow, but the officer shut the bars in my face.

“No, Jenny,” Miss Crane said. “Not this time.”

I scowled at her pet name for me. Surely, she was teasing me. Did she want me to beg or cry?

“Drusilla and the others can’t pick up your slack in the rent any longer,” she said. “I gave you as many chances as I could afford. I can’t keep you safe anymore. Do you know how many people in the city would turn you in just for the reward money?”

I watched her red-stained mouth as the harsh understanding swept over me. No small wonder where the money for the new hat and coat had come from. “You set me up?” My throat went dry. “How could you?”

“Don’t play me for a fool.” She smiled, but her tone was knife sharp. “I know what you’ve been hiding from me. I found your secret purse hidden in the mattress.”

No, no, no, my mind screamed. I gripped the bars so I wouldn’t collapse. My eyes stung.

“You made a costly mistake. And hiding money from me is the last one you’ll make.” A wickedness played across her lips. “Oh, now, don’t give me them dark pools of fake tears. You’d sooner cheat a dying man than give him a drink of water.”

Then she and Drusilla turned away, the echoes of their footfalls growing softer until they disappeared around the corner. The copper tapped his billy club on the bars, making me jump back. As monstrous as she was, Miss Crane had been my best chance at escaping this cell. Then I realized that the money I had saved was now in her hands. I listened intently for the click of her heels, hoping that she might still come back and tell me the scare was on purpose.

My heart was racing. This couldn’t be it. I had to catch that train! I fell to my knees and scoured the floor for anything, a dropped hairpin I could make use of, but that only proved entertaining for the officer. Hopelessness began to take hold of me, sapping what little energy I had left.

I started to make a braid, trying to recall what Maman’s hands felt like in my hair. “Remember, ma petite chérie,” she’d tell me in her thick accent. “The only one you can count on is yourself.”

“But we have each other,” I’d said, turning around to look at her.

“Not forever.” Then she’d add, “Think of all those tortured people who ask us to speak to the dead. That’s what loving someone else gets you—deep, unending grief. If you never want to feel that pain, protect your heart.”

I fell asleep curled up against the stone wall of the cell, dreaming of a fireplace and a key blackened with soot.



“Timmons!” It was the officer’s brusque voice that woke me. “Your lawyer’s here.”

“Lawyer?” I rubbed at my eyes, feeling the grit of a fretful sleep.

The officer made no motion to unlock the door, but I saw that he was holding my bag. I stood at once, fighting the urge to grab it from his hands.