Chapter 18
Beneath the glass and iron roof, train-side platforms and concourses flowing with exuberant crowds, from the moment Eve stepped from the coach she thought Brighton looked like any other British town, comparing her initial impression with the same glass roofs and excitable crowds of the only other two British rail stations she'd ever visited, Fenchurch and Victoria; in her estimation therefore typical of all rail stations and carried through to equally corresponding similarities between the only two cites she'd ever seen. But when she and Kate walked by stands selling colorful stick candies, some with minuature writing hidden inside; and passed under outlines of fish ornately formed within the ceiling's metal posts and bracing; when Eve noticed most if not seemingly all the passengers were dressed in holiday clothing with jaunty hats and striped vests and although the temperature here was a bit warmer than it had been in London it was still cool enough to wear a jacket; and as they exited onto a broad, brick courtyard looking down upon the city, although the ocean was more than half-a-mile away she could almost taste the salt-filled air; Eve realised this wasn't the same, at all.
"Is that the sea, Officer Kate?" Eve asked, standing on her toes, peering over rooftops and around corners of the buildings stair-stepping down the hill. There's so...much of it."
"Yes, that's one of the things it's known for. You'll have a better look from our hotel. Now," she continued, deciding between the two streets leading from the station and the port cochere passing in front, "we need to find the trolley stop, and continue to our hotel. Once settled, we'll grab a bite to eat and set out to that church you told me about. I doubt Talbot's there at this time of day, but seeing it will give me a better idea what he may be up to."
"Our hotel's near the sea!? Eve cheered. "What's it called? Can we see the beach? Let's walk, Officer Kate. It can't be that far - and it's all downhill!"
"I've reserved a room at the 'Old Ship', off Kings Road. I remember it's directly across the groyne from the beach; if we finish our work in time, we can actually visit the beach, Eve."
"We're staying in a ship!?" Eve questioned. "I don't even know how to swim, not much. And what's a groyne? Sounds like something you'd see a doctor about."
"Not an actual ship; that's the name of the hotel, on dry land; or so I hope. The waves can come close, I understand. It's a wall that separates the shore from the land."
"A wall, Officer Kate?" Eve mumbled, distracted by a barrow filled with salted smelt. "Here're those little fish Miss Etta told me about."
"We'll need a more substantial supper than that, if we're to track down and confront Talbot; remember, Eve, this isn't a holiday but serious work. You can carry your case?"
" 'A course; there's not much to it." She lifted her small hold-all aloft, the latches polished and leather stiff as it was at the shop the day before. "Don't worry about Percy, Officer Kate. I'll do just what we talked about, he'll think I've come back to beg for my old job and I'll make it like I'm desperate and he knows I can do the work so he'll explain what I gotta do in this new act whatever he's doin' and before you know it he'll tell us all he knows and you can come out and tell him we're on to him and then we can go to the beach."
The building, off Mighell Street and less than a twenty-minute walk from the hotel, had clearly been intended and at one time served as a small, but legitimate church. The steeple; and double entrance doors just past an inviting set of of steps; and even the sign fronting the street were still in place; but rather than stating denomination and name of minister and worship schedules, the board announced:
Redemption Spiritualist Centre
Rev. Dr. P. Talbot, Divine Adorator
meetings each Monday, Thursday and Friday 7:30 pm;
Saturday 7 and 10 pm;
or by arrangement
- All who Seek are Welcome -
Kate hadn't expected to find Talbot to be fronting such a polished presentation; nor that, even during the winter months when his potential audience was at their lowest he'd stick to his posted schedule; but the Metropolitan Police had only granted her two days to fulfill this duty and as far as she was concerned, confronting Talbot tonight was as good a night as any. Before they left that evening she insisted Eve dress in the costume they'd decided upon; 'just in case'; and, she wasn't certain Eve's bravery would bear through both one more day and temptations of the sea-coast.
"What do you think, Eve?" Kate asked as they hovered in the doorway of a building cross-ways from the 'church'. "The set-ups a bit different than his usual act, but do you see anything that would make you think he's working with a partner, or cause us to change our plans?"
"Hard to say, Officer Kate. I know he can't be running the same routine, ya' gotta stand right next to the mark; I mean, whoever Talbot's 'reading'; so they think it's all part a the act... Inside a church, not enough room to get close enough, between those benches they got. He never told me nothing about another partner, in fact he said workin' with anyone else is just halfin' the take."
"It's nearly six" Kate confirmed, looking at the wrist-watch she hadn't yet become accustomed to, a time-piece pinned to one's blouse seeming far more practical and less breakable. "Only an hour or so before the audience arrives. You remember what to do; you're not quite as frightened as you were?"
"No, Officer Kate" Eve replied. "I'm not scared at all"; wishing she wasn't.
The two walked past the somber yet flowery front entrance to a set of inconspicuous, plain doors around the corner, opposite a small empty lot and adjacent to an alleyway. Eve tentatively tugged at the handle of the door to her right, which opened easily but caught its twin, pulling it partially open with a haunting screech followed by a disarming groan as the door fell back into place. Eve started though the doorway, making certain the tap-tap of her shoes couldn't be ignored, and looked back at Kate who remained a few steps behind and in the shadows. Before the door closed, Kate swept in, keeping silent and close to the wall.
"How do?" Eve questioned into the space, illuminated brown and grey by a minimum of electric lamps consisting of bare bulbs in wire cages. "Anyone here?" Other than the typical back-stage paraphernalia she'd become accustomed to finding at at the rear of every theatre: ladders; ropes coiled and taught; flats and mis-matched chairs and trunks and sand buckets and fire bottles; there were also two large, ornate wardrobes; a large collection of gauzy-sheets hanging from wires; random vases, pictures in frames, and various musical instruments laid out on a table; and what must be, she thought, a magic lantern machine sitting on a tripod stand, surrounded on five sides by mirrors reaching from the floor to above a man's head. "Talbot? er, Doctor Talbot? It's Eve."
"No need to insist upon honorifics among old friends, my dear. Besides, I'm at a loss as to how I should address you; Eve? Miss Brown? Terri? Traitor?!" The Great Talbot; now identified as the Reverend Doctor Talbot, Divine Adorator ; hair uncombed, dressed only in work-pants, a heavy, collarless cotton shirt under a striped vest, and shoes turned in at the heels, emerged from behind a curtain, his hand pulling at a wire that ran over a pulley and disappeared into the shadows.
"I aren't no traitor" Eve stated. "I gave to the war-fund like everybody else and I wrote letters to soldiers I didn't know to make 'em feel like they was appreciated and I even knitted a scarf but the lady at the Red Cross told me maybe my talents was elsewhere. I aren't no traitor."
"Not a traitor to Britain; a traitor to your employer, who took you from the gutter; entrusted you with his dearest secrets; formed you into an invaluable assistant and placed you on stage before hundreds; nay; thousands in theaters from Epsom to Harlow?"
"You mean you teaching me how to run the grift?"
"If you wish to refer to my avocation in its most vulgar manner. But by any phrase, the moment the constabulary appeared and questions were asked, you scampered away like a frightened mouse. Not only was I personally, and deeply hurt; professionally, you left me severely handicapped. I should have known better; first your sister disappears, then you. Is the youth of today completely without principles?!" He dramatically raised his hand to his brow, but forgot he was holding the wire, resulting in a rattling crash somewhere beyond.
"Well I aren't seen Lila neither" Eve began, recalling the notes she and Kate had made. "So you can say she run out on me, too. And the only reason I left was because I was scared; scared the police might take me, if they'd known what I did."
"Did?" Talbot rallied. "Is there something you've kept from me?"
Chapter 19
Eve took four indefinite steps toward her previous associate, noticeably looking from side to side; above into the flies and bridges; and behind scenery as if she feared being overheard. "You remember before I worked for you, I was at Silvertown, packing shells?" she said secretly.
"Of course, dreadful incident, that was. You're not going to tell me you caused that disaster, are you?" Talbot tensely quipped. "And there's no need to be so wary; unless you want to include the mice, there's no one else here."
"No, I weren't workin' the day of the explosion. Some friends 'a mine were though...and that was an accident. What I did, I did on purpose."
"I'm at the edge of my chair," he replied, taking a seat on a nearby chest. "Please; continue."
"Well, they had a lunch room where all the girls could eat, long tables set off from the men with cloths and flowers on the table and all that. A tray with at least three different types a food and two pieces a bread and a glass a milk, and cost only two-bob. And sitting right there waiting to be taken, is bottles of vinegar and pickles and pots of mustard, and others of jam."
"Sounds delightful."
"An' since there was so much of it; these bottles were set out so every table had a dozen of 'em; I..." Eve hesitated and dropped her voice; not from guilt but for effect; "...every day I took three or four of those pots a' jams and hid 'em under my apron. Then, when the shift was over and we changed back into our regular clothes, I'd stuff 'em under my jacket or tie 'em from a string hanging around my neck and tucked into my dress when I walked out. When I got back to our building I'd sell 'em for five shillings each. But people were startin' to talk, and that's why I had to leave; not because of the work, or the accident. I thought they'd find out and send me to prison." She sighed deeply as if the burden of a heavy weight had been lifted; but in reality, to signal Kate the first part of the plan had been completed.
Talbot sat for a few moments silently and in thought, then suddenly burst out into a spasm of laughter.
"Little Eve Brown, a war profiteer?" he chuckled. "And all those nights you feigned regret at lifting the contents of a man's wallet, or easing the brooch from a ladies blouse, while you feared arrest for filching a few pots of jam. 'Oh, how suspicion doth haunt the guilty mind.' I must apologize," he ridiculed; "I never knew you were such a fine actress."
"That was takin' things from people who didn't have much; and they coming to see a show only to be robbed. The factory had plenty, it weren't like they was going to miss it. And no one particularly liked it, anyway, every day the same apple n' plum. And I was selling to people who didn't have none - I was helping 'em."
"Ah, 'Robbing the rich to give to the poor' ; the cry of justification from time immemorial."
"So yah, I run away but now I'm back. Maybe all I'm good for is taking advantage a others." Eve pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt and raised both hands to her eyes; she wished she could cry on cue, but for now she had to pretend. "I only run because I was panicked, and could feel the prison bars closing in on me" her voice trembled. "I had no where to go and don't know nobody and don't know how to do nothing but running the grift on people that don't know better." She blew her nose and rubbed her eyes for dramatic impact and to briefly chafe them red. "Maybe they deserved it, believing in mind readin' and all that."
"Wherever you've been, you seem to have done well for yourself" Talbot countered. "Your clothing wouldn't be mistaken for the heights of fashion, but you are in a far better condition than I would have expected, having left behind your few belongings a young woman must believe indispensable."
"I had to find something", Eve raised her arms in a gesture of desperation. "These are all things I got from Ladies Aid. When I walked in the door, wearin' only that short silk dress and stockings you had me wear for the show, they thought I was a fallen woman who'd seen the light. They gave me these..." she indicated her frayed, but clean cotton blouse; corduroy skirt from which much of the cording had worn away; plain woolen jacket at least one size too large, with patches at the hem that almost matched the original fabric; out-dated velvet hat and pair of button-up boots most women hadn't worn since before the war. "They told me no girl should live in scholar and debravities, 'n they let me sleep there for a week. Now, that week's over."
"And you expect me to take you back, as if nothing's happened. How did you even find me; for that matter, how did you afford a railway ticket?"
"People talk, and I remembered you saying we was going to Brighton. Those woman at the Aid...I told 'em I had a maiden Aunt living in Worthing, got to live near the sea 'cause of her health, and she said I could go help take of her if I had a train ticket. Wrote a letter and forged some name on it I made up."
"How the crimes do multiply."
"So, what're we running here, the same old mind-reading act?" Eve knitted into the conversation, implying the two were already, again, working together.
"Oh no, far more sophisticated. Soothsaying is of another age; palm-and-tea readings that can be called upon ad-infinitum to any dupe passing by, nothing but variations of the same message as easily forgotten by the mark as it is difficult to result in business repeated. What the modern audience demands is the individual touch; the illusion that no matter how the world changes, there remains a thread of connection between what was, and what is."
Eve drew her face into squints and furrows. "I don't see how that's much different than mind-reading. You working with that partner Lila didn't like?"
"No, no, my dear girl. Allow me to explain."
Kate had hoped; and Eve knew; once Talbot began to boast of his plans, by pride or ego or inspiration little could keep him from exulting in his self-absorbed cleverness.