The Campbell Road Girls

‘Made arrangements to take me mum out, too.’

‘Where does your mum live? Far is it?’

Lucy stabbed a look at him and nibbled her lower lip. From the age of about eight years old, when she’d first done a bit of doorstep scrubbing for coppers at weekends, she’d had it drummed into her by her mum and older sisters that you never disclosed to an employer – or for that matter any stranger – that you were out of the Bunk. Campbell Road had a notorious reputation as being the worst street in north London and those who lived there were discriminated against as being the dregs of society. She certainly didn’t know Rory Jackson well enough to confide in him anything as important as where she’d been reared, and where, despite it all, she still considered her real home to be.

‘She lives in north London; not that far.’ It was a brusque reply and Lucy made to open the kitchen door to go to find her tea.

‘Big place, north London. Hampstead way, is she?’ Rory stabbed a guess.

Lucy snorted a laugh. ‘Bit too rich for us.’ She could see he was keen to know so she said airily, ‘Finsbury Park way, if you must know.’ Before he could probe further she’d pushed open the door.

‘You don’t want to hide yourself away.’ Rory put a hand out to bar her way into the kitchen. ‘If you chicken out teatime there’ll be some who’ll think you’re feeling guilty. Turn up, sit down and eat your grub.’ He grinned down at her. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to you if nobody else will.’

‘Yeah, thanks a lot.’ It was drily said but Lucy couldn’t prevent a small smile curving her mouth. ‘That’s how I got in trouble in the first place, Rory Jackson, you talking to me, and making Audrey jealous.’

‘Told you,I ain’t taken no notice of her, and I’ve given her no reason to think I ever will.’ He tilted his face to watch Lucy’s evasive expression. ‘I don’t tell lies.’

‘That right? Why you being so nice to me then? Anybody’d think you fancied me. Yet you’ve just said you don’t.’

A look of mock thoughtfulness put a furrow in his brow but he appeared unabashed by her accusation. ‘All right, I’ll own up. Once in a while I tell a little fib.’ He sauntered off towards the butler’s office. ‘Got to see Mr Collins about some pay I’m due. See you in the dining hall later. Keep your chin up.’

Chapter Five (#ulink_fc60856b-948e-5a70-abae-416467b8aa1e)

‘I’ve had enough, I tell you! I won’t never have a chance to get near her ladyship’s jewels now this new girl’s got taken on. Fucking Lucy Keiver is watching me like an ’awk.’ Ada Stone flung herself back against brickwork and took a long drag on a cigarette while staring sulkily into the night. ‘Shame Susan quit. She were a pushover, that one. But it ain’t easy now slipping in and out of the bedrooms.’

Ada was stationed in an alleyway beneath the weak flicker of a gas lamp. A few feet away a tall, muscular man was silhouetted against the same wall. A fashionable homburg was pushed back on his head and he was dressed in a loose-fitting check suit. The dusk hid the fact that the cloth was garish, if of fine quality. Next to him, Ada appeared like a small dark drab in her voluminous servant’s cape.

It was close to one o’clock in the morning and Ada had slipped out of Mortimer House just over an hour ago to meet Bill Black on the sly. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it. She knew that there were only so many times she could use a pretence of having raging bellyache and desperately needing the outside privy, rather than settling for the little po under the bed, before her bunk mates started getting suspicious. She wouldn’t put it past Keiver to follow her, the inquisitive bitch.

But Ada Stone – or Audrey Stubbs, as her colleagues and employers at Mortimer House knew her – no longer cared about getting sacked. In fact she’d been tempted to be purposely insolent just so the prissy housekeeper might finally lose patience with her. The only reason she hadn’t was because she feared the full force of this man’s wrath if she got booted out of Mortimer House before she’d got him what he wanted. She longed to be away from the drudgery of working in service and back to excitement and easy pickings: hoisting expensive clothes around the West End with her light-fingered friends.

Ada was twenty and had been sent to work in service in Kent at the age of fourteen. But she’d got bored and left after a year, travelling here and there taking on jobs in shops or laundries. On returning to south London, she had been introduced to Bill by her brother, who ran a market stall. She’d jumped at the chance of working for him, and had been recruited to his gang despite her age. That suited Bill Black. He could always find a use for a fresh face unknown to store detectives and the local coppers and magistrates. And Ada had proved her worth from the off.

Bill was prepared to turn his hand to any form of criminal activity. He came from the same area of Elephant and Castle as Ada Stone and her family and was five years older than she was. Her brother Derek was a seasoned member of his team and was presently doing six months’ hard labour following a heist that had gone sour. The driver of the lorry he and his accomplices had hijacked had done a very silly thing. Instead of playing dead after a crack on the head he’d fought back and got stabbed for his pains. Derek hadn’t wielded the blade but it was more than his life was worth to say who had, so he’d been resigned to doing time along with the culprit while the unlucky hero recovered in hospital.

‘I’m handing in me notice, Bill, so don’t go trying to persuade me otherwise.’ Ada flicked ash with jittery fingers, avoiding his inscrutable gaze. ‘It’s been a bleedin’ waste of time ’n’ I told you it would be from the start. But you wouldn’t listen to me, would yer?’

A tense minute passed in silence and Ada realised Bill had no intention of answering her. ‘Nearly a soddin’ month I been stuck in that house and what we got? Nuthin’.’ Again she turned to him for a response but he kept staring ahead and smoking. She knew he was ignoring her on purpose, as a punishment, because he didn’t like what he was hearing.

‘Tell you what, I’ll lift a few bits of silver to make it worthwhile, eh, Bill?’ Ada hissed a reconciliatory offer into the dark. ‘Old Collins, the butler, ain’t doing the inventory till the end of the month. He won’t even notice it’s missing till then and I could be long gone ...’ She tailed off, squinting through the gloom at Bill’s immobile profile.

Finally, she sighed, realising he was not going to be swayed by any of her suggestions. ‘Should never have gone in the poxy place,’ she said peevishly. ‘Could’ve made a good few quid fer meself by now round the West End instead of being stuck workin’ me fingers to the bone as a bleedin’ skivvy.’

His withdrawal was beginning to unnerve her. She dragged desperately on her cigarette while pacing to and fro. Tears of frustration started prickling her eyes; she’d be going back; he’d make her. He wouldn’t let her give up until he’d got what he wanted. She might be there till Christmas before the safe was opened and out came the jewellery box for her to rummage in. Ada reckoned she could handle Mrs Boyd, no trouble. It wouldn’t occur to that stuffy old cow that a little nobody would dare rob her precious employers.

Ada had overheard Venner and Boyd talking about her just that afternoon. They’d called her flighty, and thought she might encourage too many followers – as they named the housemaids’ boyfriends. Ada had stuffed a fist to her mouth to stifle her raucous guffaw on hearing that. She’d not wanted to give the game away that she was eavesdropping on them. Ada liked the boys right enough, a lot more than those two dried-up old biddies could ever imagine, but that wasn’t the half of it. If they only knew what she was really about they’d both have a blue fit!

Keiver was a different kettle of fish. Ada had immediately got her measure, just as Lucy Keiver had recognised her sort straight away. Ever since their tussle they’d been circling each other, waiting for the inevitable to happen. And it would; and despite Ada believing she was a bit of a rough handful, she wasn’t completely confident she’d come off best in a bust-up with the under-lady’s maid.

‘Listen, Bill, I’m gonna get sacked soon anyhow if I don’t jack it in.’ Ada sounded coarse and angry. ‘I’m just about riled up enough to give someone a thump.’ She dropped her cigarette butt to the ground, stamped on it, and immediately put out a hand for another.

Bill fished a packet of Weights out of his pocket and having lit one he took it from his lips and gave it to her.

‘Come on now ...’ He finally broke his silence and soothed her with a touch of his manicured fingers on her mousy hair. ‘Don’t go gettin’ all het up. You did just dandy in that other place, didn’t you?’ His hand continued stroking. ‘Got the stuff out sweet as a nut and nobody knew who you was and no comebacks, ’cos you acted like a real pro, didn’t you, Annie Smith.’ Playfully he chucked her under the chin as he used Ada’s previous alias. ‘This time, Miss Audrey Stubbs, you’re gonna be even better at doing me a good job—’

‘That other time were different,’ Ada interrupted. But she preened beneath his praise and his touch. ‘That silly tart was always out of her mind on drugs ’n’ booze. Could’ve walked out of that gaff with a fuckin’ crystal chandelier under me arm and she wouldn’t have noticed.’

Bill chuckled. ‘P’raps you should try a different angle.’ He cocked his head and looked down at her. ‘How about you pretend you want to be this new gel’s pal? Instead of goin’ at it hammer ’n’ tongs, Ada, you could be a bit subtle. Then this Lucy might think you’re hangin’ around her ladyship’s bedroom to be friends with her instead of clocking when the jewellery box gets an airing.’

‘She ain’t that stupid! She knows I hate her and she don’t like me neither. She’s too cute by half.’

‘Well, you’re gonna have to be that bit cuter then, ain’t you, Ada?’ Bill returned with sinister softness.

Ada darted a narrowed glance at him. She knew he could switch from friend to enemy in seconds. She’d been caressed and clumped by him in her time, and from bitter experience knew that sometimes just seconds separated the two.

Although they’d only been talking for fifteen minutes or so Ada knew he was already impatient to be gone back to the gin palace on the corner. She, on the other hand, would stay with him all night, given half a chance. She needed to get out of that house, not just because she was bored rigid, missing her shoplifting jaunts and the luxuries they brought in, but because she was a woman with basic needs. And neither of those needs was being met in Mortimer House. Every night she was desperate for a stiff drink, and a horny man.

‘Got a flask with you, Bill?’ she asked.

Bill produced a pewter bottle from a pocket and courteously unscrewed the top for her. After she’d taken a long swig he helped himself before the flask disappeared whence it came.

‘Let’s have another,’ Ada complained immediately, having noticed the whisky disappear.

‘Don’t want to go back stinkin’ of booze, do you, gel? Give the game away, that will. I reckon it’s time you was on yer way. It’s getting late.’ He made a show of checking his wristwatch beneath the milky lamplight.

Ada huffed sulkily, eyeing his crotch from beneath lowered lashes. ‘Got anything else for me before I go?’ she whispered crudely. She felt no humiliation in having to ask for what she wanted.

She knew that if Betty Pickering, one of her girl gang comrades, hadn’t last week been taken into custody on a charge of shoplifting sables from Selfridges, Bill would doubtless have been with her tonight. Ada was resigned to being second best while Betty was available. But at present Ada had Bill more or less to herself. If Betty got a stretch inside – and Ada privately hoped she would – then Bill might start treating her as his number-one girl. Of course, Ada knew he had different little scrubbers he saw on and off but they didn’t bother her; neither had they seemed to bother Betty too much. Bill was a big attractive hunk of a man who always seemed to have plenty of cash to flash around because he was a successful criminal with a crafty streak. So far, he’d avoided imprisonment, unlike many of the Elephant and Castle boys, by managing to implicate others and fabricate watertight alibis.

‘Come on, get goin’, Ada.’ Bill sounded harsh and impatient, apparently deaf to her suggestiveness. ‘Ain’t took all the trouble to get yer set up with false references to come out wi’ nuthin’ ’cos you’ve blown yer cover.’

‘Don’t have ter come out with nuthin’. I can get us some silver, like I said, and—’

‘I’ve told you that silver ain’t what I’m after,’ Bill snarled. ‘I’m after first prize, not consolation prize.’ He made an effort to calm down and smiled at her. ‘I can get any of Betty’s crew to lift me some nice shiny silver out of Gamages. But none o’ the others has got the class to fetch me out a special bit of jewellery. That’s your speciality, sweet’eart.’

He prowled away a few steps, his dark head down so she had no glimpse of his expression and had no idea what he was thinking. A moment later he’d whipped back in front of her. ‘It’s emeralds me client’s after, see. He’s a rich gent, upper crust, and his little ladybird’s got a yen for a big green stone, and she’s seen the one she wants round her ladyship’s neck. Giving him gyp, she is, over having it. Now I’m getting gyp off him ’cos I’ve said I’ve got a sure way of nabbing it for him. Boasted to him I’ve got the best hoister in the whole of London on to it. Now you don’t want to make me look like I’m a chancer, Ada, do you? Can’t have that, can I?’ Bill tilted his face close to hers.

‘What if her ladyship ain’t got that big green stone in her box in the safe? If it’s good as that it might be held in the bank vault. I heard Mrs Boyd saying some of her heirlooms are kept there.’

‘According to my source she had it on recently so I reckon it’s still at the house. Any case, we ain’t gonna know, are we, ’less you get to work and take a gander.’

‘I dunno ...’ Ada whined.

‘Never mind dunno,’ Bill growled. ‘You just get the bleedin’ necklace and we’ll be in the money.’ He stuffed his hands impatiently in his pockets. He regretted having said so much. Ada was his workhorse, not his partner or confidante. This was a delicate situation and involved people in high places. He would have thought twice before disclosing to Betty what was going on. He put his lips against Ada’s cheek, taking her pointed chin in a stinging grip that made her squirm. ‘You goin’ against me?’

Ada carefully shook her head.

‘Good gel. Course you ain’t. I know you could bring a fuckin’ crystal chandelier out that house with you if you really put yer mind to it, Ada.’ Suddenly he laughed and swooped his lips to hers. He kissed her hard on the mouth, grabbing a breast through the cloth of her heavy cloak.