Page 3 of A Silence in Belgrave Square (Below Stairs #8)

Portobello Road lay in Kensington, north of the palace there, and led up a hill that ultimately ended in a burial ground and the prison of Wormwood Scrubs.

A market for fruits and vegetables and other goods often set up in Portobello Road, including a few stalls for trinkets and sundries—nothing valuable but nice to have.

It was one of these bric-a-brac stalls that I made for as the afternoon merged into a long, late-spring twilight.

I walked slowly along the road, pausing often, as though I browsed for curios.

I did spy a lovely comb and brush set on one table that I contemplated purchasing for Grace, if I decided it was worth the thruppence asked for it.

But I was not here to buy things. I halted for a time in front of the stall I’d sought, without letting on why I was there.

The stall’s table was strewn with bits and bobs of all sorts—thin chains with lockets, colorful little boxes, finger rings, pen and ink trays with inkpots missing their lids, mirrors and brushes, empty perfume bottles, and cracked and faded cups celebrating Queen Victoria’s coronation more than forty years ago.

Lounging in a chair behind the pile of trinkets was a lady with a black jacket buttoned to her chin, her long legs stretched out under a bright blue skirt.

She had very dark hair, its color due more to artifice than nature, and a pair of lively blue eyes under a worn feathered hat five years out of fashion.

Those eyes focused on me, at first shrewdly—a seller deciding how to entice a customer—then with a jolt of recognition. She sprang to her feet with a swing of skirts and gaped at me over the table.

“Well, if it ain’t Katie bloomin’ ’Olloway, come to slum in the Portobello Road,” she screeched to all and sundry.

“Kat,” I corrected her, though she knew exactly what my name was. “How are you, Hannah?”

“Keeping. I’m keeping.” Hannah Dunnett grinned at me, showing clean but crooked teeth.

“Nothing on this table’s nicked, if that’s what you’ve come up this ’ill to twit me about.

Leastways, not by me. I pick things up here and there, so who knows?

How about you, me dear old darling? Widowed now, ain’t ya, poor thing, with a little girl to bring up on your own. ”

“I am doing well, thank you for asking.” I hadn’t spoken to Hannah in years, but her infectious friendliness made me wonder why I’d waited so long. When one struggled, I supposed, one felt that one had to do it alone. “My daughter is growing tall and so beautiful.”

For a moment, I forgot everything difficult in my life. Grace had told me today she did not want to be a young lady, but she already was one. She was almost as tall as I was, with her brown hair sleek and curling, her face holding the adult beauty she would soon achieve.

“Aw,” Hannah said as she studied my expression. “I’m glad for ya. I’d love to see her.”

“An excellent idea. I’ll bring her along one day.”

“No, ya won’t.” Hannah bellowed a laugh. “You’ve forgotten all about your friends, haven’t ya? Dragging yourself from hoity-toity Mayfair, where you’re queen of cooks. I’ve heard all about you, Katie H., in your bloomin’ mansion.”

“Cease with your bloomin’ this and bloomin’ that,” I admonished her. “You sound ridiculous.”

“That’s the way us Cockneys are supposed to talk. Innit?” Hannah laughed again, her warmth of character I remembered so well filling the space.

“You can sound like anyone you wish,” I told her. “I’ve heard you do it.”

“That’s true. I can talk like a toff if I want.” Hannah drew herself up and took on the stuffy tones of a lady of breeding. “How do you do, madam? May I tempt you with a fine piece of jewelry for your charming daughter?”

“I have few coins to spare.” I turned over one of the little boxes, which held a painting of a girl with golden curls on it.

The girl reminded me of Grace when she was younger, though her hair was a different shade.

The box was the least worn of those on the table, and the tiny hinges and catch still worked. “But I might have this.”

“A penny for it.” Hannah relaxed into her own voice, which hailed from the same part of London as mine. “I know that’s dear for such a trinket, but I have it on authority it used to belong to a duchess.”

“It never did, and you know it.” I reached into my coin purse and extracted a copper penny. “These are turned out in a factory somewhere in the north. But it’s pretty enough.”

Hannah chortled as she snatched up the coin and tucked it into her pocket. “You were always sharp, weren’t ya? Now, I know you didn’t make your way to me ’umble little stall to pass the time of day and buy a present for your girl. What’cha want, Katie?”

“Do you do domestic work any longer?” I asked, as though idly curious. “Or are you a merchant only now?”

“Ah, me.” Hannah collapsed into her chair and heaved her cracked leather boots onto an upturned crate. “I never took to life in service. I only got myself into that house as upstairs maid so I could pinch things, and you know it.”

Hannah had been working in a large house where I’d been hired as a kitchen assistant before my marriage.

Her name had not been Hannah at the time—she’d given our mistress a false one.

I’d never suspected her as anything other than a prim and rather disdainful upstairs maid in her starched cap and pinafore, until the night I’d walked into the second-floor sitting room and found her calmly robbing the mistress’s desk.

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 see me in 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 to steal 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, but I run 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 in factories 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 of that business.

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 only that 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.”