Page 31

Neither woman looked at Lucy as she set the tea tray between them. Bile was rising in her throat. She retreated to the chair in the corner.

Condemned! And their only hope James Purcell! Since he’d been appointed vestry clerk, his cronies had become the parish rate collectors and sanitary inspectors. He’d improved only the streets that ran past his furniture workshops, and he’d been accused—by an irate surveyor—of taking cuts of the paving contracts to boot.

“James Purcell. We’d be fools to trust in James Purcell.”

Her aunt sounded old, older than Lucy had ever heard her sound before. She was old. She wouldn’t survive the loss of the shop. The enormity struck her like a slap. She bit back a cry, and her aunt gave a small start and glanced in her direction.

“But surely there’s something to be done.” Lucy stood, bumping the little table. She put a protective hand on the bottled fern as it wobbled.

Another knock. Megan Cosgrave at last. She hesitated on the doorstep, thin and stooped, clutching her sewing bag. Her eyes were huge. She, too, had seen the notices.

“Oh, Miss Stirling, it isn’t fair! Your beautiful shop!”

“It’s not gone yet, Meg,” said Mrs. Cantrell, rising. She looked at Aunt Marian. “James Purcell can’t be trusted, true, but he can’t be condemning buildings willy-nilly either.”

“He can’t, that’s right,” said Aunt Marian, quietly. “Not alone.”

“Don’t stand where you’ll catch your death of cold.” Mrs. Cantrell turned back to Megan Cosgrave. “If you’re here to sew, you’d best be sewing.”

“And you, too, Mrs. Cantrell, I’m so sorry!” Megan’s lips were trembling. “They haven’t any right.”

“What of your building?” asked Lucy. The Cosgraves lived in a sagging tenement overloaded with perilous wooden galleries, one of dozens built around a tiny court. The privies stood over cesspools. People had to fight to take their water from a common standpipe.

Under recent acts of Parliament, the vestries under the vestry boards, the district boards, and the Metropolitan Board of Works had been tasked with improving public health through housing reform. They sought out landlords whose diseased, overcrowded buildings were on the point of collapse and compensated them handsomely for the seizure of their properties. The tenants were sent scurrying like rats. New roads crisscrossed the old sites. Model dwellings went up, with fewer rooms and higher rents.

Slum clearance in one place resulted in more congestion elsewhere. No one on the boards seemed to care so long as the evictions rolled out and the money rolled in.

The inspector of nuisances had visited the Cosgraves’ tenement the previous month. Mrs. Cosgrave had told Aunt Marian the news with resignation.

They’ll have to knock it down around our ears. We’ve nowhere else to go.

Megan shook her head and came farther into the shop, lowering her worn bag. “The only notices went up here.”

Aunt Marian laughed. She laughed so hard tears streamed down her cheeks. Lucy watched, stunned and helpless.

“Miss Stirling.” Mrs. Cantrell hesitated, then approached Aunt Marian’s chair, laying a gentle hand on her arm.

Aunt Marian hated fussing, but she didn’t swat Mrs. Cantrell away. She choked off her laughter with a short sob.

“Villains,” she said. “Perfect villains. I wish I could dress them for the part. Scarlet pantaloons and waistcoats. Everyone would know them for what they are.”

“That’d be a sight, James Purcell in scarlet pantaloons.” Mrs. Cantrell patted Aunt Marian and stepped away.

“It’d be a sea of scarlet pantaloons.” Aunt Marian swiped at her eyes angrily.

“Your landlord,” she said to Megan. “He’s making a fortune, packing more and more people into his buildings like maggots in a nut. More than enough to pay off Purcell and the inspector of nuisances. He’ll keep extracting rents until the floors are caving in; then he’ll let the city take his properties at market rate.”

“But here?” Lucy burst out. “No inspector of nuisance came here.”

Not that she knew of, anyway. Heat mantled her cheeks as three pairs of eyes fixed on her. Weren’t most of her days spent on the other side of the city? Maybe it wasn’t her place to speak. Even as the thought formed, she rejected it.

This is my home.

“We’re the nuisance.” Aunt Marian sounded old again, old and sad. “Someone wants to lease this block for his own purposes. Someone who can bribe, or influence, Purcell, his inspectors, and the medical officer himself.”

Lucy’s face grew hotter.

“If he were wearing his red pantaloons, I’d go right up to him and scratch his eyes out.”