The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis (8 page)

Until this humiliation, everything had gone to plan. Yesterday I told Papa I wanted to go shopping in London's fashionable Regent Street. Distracted with mummy troubles he was glad to agree. He is always delighted when I take an interest in anything feminine. He had generously given me three whole guineas and we had agreed that Aunt Hilda would put us up for a few days at her house in Bloomsbury. However, instead of the glittering West End, the hansom carriage had deposited us in Petticoat Lane, in the darkest East. This, I guessed, was the center of the tailoring district.

We were in the midst of a riot of foul and greasy tatters. Dress coats, frock coats, livery, plaids, knee breeches. Gentlemen's garments in every faded shade of black, brown and blue. The ladies' dresses: drab plum and violet, dingy maroon and green. Spilling into the sewage-gushing gutters were thousands of boots and shoes, shining and newly blacked. Look closer and you could see the split heels and worn soles. The rent and repaired leather. Tumbled over the boots were dribs and drabs of handkerchiefs and lace under-things; so washed and worn they would never be white again.

“I would never wear such rags.” I muttered.

Rachel looked at me reproachfully. “Many people have no choice, Kit. They must either wear ‘such rags' or freeze to death.”

Instantly I felt ashamed. Why is Rachel always so right? She acts as if she has a personal telegraph line to the god of good hearts.

The lane seethed with a mass of ragged people. Now that Rachel had pointed it out, I could see that many, if not most, were dressed in the clothes for sale all around us. The women were tired and hollow-eyed, some with mewling babies perched on their hips or hanging by a strip of cloth from their shoulders. The men were lean, scarred with disease and fighting. Half-naked children played in the gutters. The stench of sewage, sweat, fried food and dirt seemed to swirl in foggy green air. I had never thought dirt had a smell before. It was so overpoweringly disgusting I wanted to put my handkerchief in front of my nose. For a moment I thought I might swoon, as if I was a feeble namby-pamby like the Minchin.

“This not London,” Ahmed said, looking around with a dazed expression. “Where is?”

“Yes it is,” I replied. “This is the East End of London.”

“London rich. Biggest city of Empire. Richest city of world.”

What Ahmed was saying was true. Of course London is the biggest and best city in the world. Right then and there I resolved to take him somewhere grand, Pall Mall or Regent's Park.

“This is more like bad place in Cairo. Very bad place.”

“We have poor people too,” Rachel explained.

I could see Ahmed wasn't really convinced. He must have been told stories about London, he probably thought the streets would be paved with guineas. In truth I shared a little of his shock. Never had I been so grateful for my cozy home in North Oxford. The golden spires, green fields and fresh air.

“Isaac! Isaac!” Suddenly Rachel was yelling. “Isaac! Where are you?”

The boy had vanished. All around us were dirty bonnets, greasy toppers and foul bowler hats, without a sign of Isaac's brown curls. I felt out of my depth. Still, I had to be strong. I had dragged everyone here. This was my responsibility.

“He may be in the hands of those Skinners,” Rachel moaned. “Oh Kit, this is
your
fault.”

We had heard the stories. “Skinners” would lure children into alleyways with sweets and then strip them naked and make off with their clothes. Gangs of muscular “garroters” overpowered their victims in broad daylight!

Ahmed was pulling at my hand.

“Not now, Ahmed. We have to find Isaac.” I said, shortly.

“Please, you look, Kit—
see Isaac
.”

Ahmed was pointing down an alley even fouler than Petticoat Lane. A grubby signpost said Raven Row. A quarter of the way down was a beige and brown blur. I stared and it focused into Isaac, pausing without a care, on the edge of an excited crowd.

For a instant I hesitated, then taking a deep breath I took the plunge. All remnants of light and air were cut off in this foul lane. The soot-blackened houses lurched crazily inwards, as if they were drunk and about to fall down to the ground in a stupor. Through steamy gratings in the pavement I glimpsed the hovels below. Nine, ten, eleven men and women huddled together, stitching away as if their lives depended on it.

“What are you playing at!” Rachel scolded once we'd caught up with her little brother. “It's dangerous round here. We must stick together.”

Isaac didn't trouble to answer. He pointed to the scene in front of him. A swarthy man with a knife scar down one side of his face had a white rat on his bare arm and a carrot in his mouth. As we watched, the rat ran up the arm, somersaulted, righted itself and then took the carrot out of its owner's mouth. The crowd cheered and a few coppers pattered into his hat.

“I wonder if I could make an invention of that,” he said excitedly. “A mechanical rat, that plays tricks.”

“Come on, Isaac,” I said firmly, pulling him by the arm away from the crowd. “We have detecting to do.”

Something had caught my eye further down the alley, a glint of a sign. “ZWINGLER'S,” it said in large letters.

The others followed me, past numerous sweatshops and small tailors, till we came to the shop in question. The entrance was crowded with military clothes, a welcome splash of scarlet in these drab surroundings. In smaller letters under the large wooden sign were the words: “Moses Zwingler's, clothier and tailor to the Gentry. All garments stitched to highest standards.”

The shop was empty save for a thin girl of about nineteen years of age, with sallow skin, red-rimmed eyes and surprisingly abundant brown curls. Lovely curls, if they were brushed and cleaned. Indeed a little like Rachel's glorious ringlets.

The five of us picked over the clothes, looking for markings until Waldo called me over with a whistle.

“I found your clue for you, Miss Detective,” he said.

He had it! Inside a top hat was a tailor's mark, the first letters of which were identical to the scrap I had found in the mummy. For a moment it seemed as if Waldo would not let go of the hat. I wrested it from him and strode up to the shop girl, with the top hat in my hand.

“Where is your master?” I asked.

She stared at me blankly.

“We have a question for Moses Zwingler.”

Still those hollow brown eyes showed scarcely a flicker of intelligence. It was Ahmed who came to the rescue. Tugging at me he whispered: “She no speak English.”

Of course, she must be foreign. From Russia, maybe, if the strange lettering on many of the garments was a clue.

“What shall we do?” I wondered. Unexpectedly, Rachel took over. Leaning forward she began muttering in some strange language, clearly surprising the shop girl. Rachel went on, leaning forward on the dirty shop counter and talking soft and low. After a few moments of this the girl answered a question. Then she began to chatter, very quickly.

“What are they talking about?” I asked Isaac.

“My sister is very good at Hebrew. Me, I'm useless. I hate synagogue.”

Of course, these shopkeepers must be Jewish.

“What's going on, Rachel?” I hissed. My friend and the shop girl were deep in conversation and seemed to have forgotten the rest of us altogether.

Rachel turned around. “This is Sara Zwingler,” she explained. “She is Mr. Zwingler's niece. She remembers
all about making the mummy. She asks us to follow her. Quick, her uncle will return soon.”

Sara padded over to the front and swiftly closed the shutters, then she beckoned us and we followed her through a narrow passage that smelled strongly of fish.

“Be quiet, for heaven's sake,” Rachel said, looking particularly hard at me. “Sara's uncle will kill her if he finds out about this.”

We emerged into a poky room lit by three gas jets. Some twelve or thirteen men were sitting cross-legged on the floor, stitching “slops”—the kind of clothes you buy ready-made. Around them were piles of cloth in every color and fabric, not to mention pots, pans and personal things as well. The men were like living skeletons, you could see the patterns of their bones making a jigsaw under their skin. The lack of air, the hiss of gas, the bright lights made my nose block and eyes swell.

Sara muttered something to Rachel and my friend translated for us: “These are ‘Greeners'—Jews fresh off the boat from Russia. They speak little or no English and have few skills. Sara says her uncle is kind. Better than many ‘sweaters.' He makes his men work only sixteen hours a day—from six in the morning till ten in the night.”

Kind, I thought disbelievingly.

Meanwhile Sara was speaking to one of the men
whom she called Baruch: his hand froze, needle suspended in mid-air. He looked at me, Rachel, Waldo, Ahmed and Isaac and then back at Sara. It was as if he was taking account of us all. This man was younger than many of the others. He was handsome, with a long thin face, dark, sad eyes and a generous mouth. It was the face of a poet or a musician. “I remember mummy,” Baruch said, finally, speaking slowly in accented English.

“You do?”

“Yes, we make wiz trimmings.” He pointed to a mound of linen in the corner of the room. “It vas somesing different so I remember.”

“Was it difficult?”

Baruch shrugged: “Jabber Jukes bought sticks. And we make mummy. Put cloth round and round like this.” With fluent hands, Baruch sketched the shape of a mummy in the air. “It vas not easy get right shape.”

“What kind of name is Jabber Jukes?” I asked.

As soon as the name was out of my mouth the atmosphere in the tiny room changed. I could feel the tension crackling around me, several of the men paused in their stitching to watch us. Baruch was about to answer my question, then he looked at Sara and stopped.

“Jabber Jukes,” I persisted. “Who is Jabber Jukes?”

I saw Rachel's gaze, fixing in fright on something behind me. I turned around. A new person was in the
room, a spindly little fellow. Hairless as a hard-boiled egg on top, yet with a bushy beard dangling from his chin. He was the sort of being who moves as stealthily as smoke and shadow. I do not know how long he had been in the room, how much of our conversation he had heard. Though the man was as skinny as the other workers, his decent suit marked him out as a man of relative wealth. I knew at once this was Moses Zwingler, Sara's uncle and the owner of the sweatshop.

He muttered something quickly to Sara, then turned on Waldo.

“Permit me to inquire, good sir, what you are doing in my factory while my shop is shut?” Though his voice was silky, there was no mistaking the anger hidden underneath.

We stood there gawking at him. I'm usually quick at thinking of excuses. Not today. My brain had chosen this moment to shut down.

Luckily Baruch, the greener, rescued us:

“De lady wants blouse, Mr. Zwingler,” he said, holding up a garment, a shirt of the most revolting mauve.

Instantly I took the way out he had offered: “I had a fancy for a blouse in this color, Mr. Zwingler. Your niece was kind enough to say she had one in the workshop. I'm afraid I bullied her into bringing me in here to see for myself.”

“We have plenty of blouses in the shop.”

“Not in exactly this shade of mauve.”

“It was not necessary to have come here, my niece would have fetched it,” Mr. Zwingler said, but he took the blouse from Baruch. “I vill let you 'ave it for four shillings. A bargain, young lady, the cloth is of the finest calico.”

Sheer robbery. However, we had little choice if we didn't want to get Mr. Zwingler's niece into further trouble. I produced a sovereign from my purse and held it out to Mr. Zwingler. The coin lay in my palm, glinting gold. Men stopped working, mesmerized, watching the ordinary coin, as if it were one of the wonders of the world.

“A lady of means,” Zwingler chuckled, delighted. “Come through. I will fetch your change.”

I reddened as I followed Zwingler, aware that I had been silly to have produced such a large amount of money.

Once we were outside the shop Waldo and Isaac burst into hoots of laughter, while Ahmed looked puzzled. I took the shirt out of the packet Mr. Zwingler had wrapped it in and held it up, staring at it in disgust. It was horrible, trimmed with dozens of frills and furbelows, sleeves as puffed as hot-air balloons, a row of fussy bows down the front.

“You'd almost pass for a
girl
in that,” Waldo smirked.

“The
color
,” Rachel said, with a slight shudder. I had to agree it was an absolutely horrible shade of mauve.

“I don't know, Rachel,” Waldo smirked at my friend. “Kit would look almost pretty in it. Provided it was at night, of course, and she was at the other end of a dark alley.”

I flashed Waldo a look to let him know how feeble I thought his attempt at wit. “I will never, ever wear this horrid thing,” I said. “I know, I'll give it to the Minchin. It is just her sort of thing.” A fit of giggles overtook me at the thought of our governess in the awful blouse.

Rachel made an annoyed noise, sobering us up. “What are we going to do now? I'm tired, Kit; I want to go to your aunt's house.”

“No.” Waldo shook his head. “We have detecting to do.”

For once, I agreed with him. “That's right. We need to find out about this mystery man, Jabber Jukes. Zwingler's men made the mummy but it was Jabber who paid for it.”

“Jabber Jukes,” said Waldo. “Sounds like a hoodlum.”

“I think,” Ahmed began and stopped. We all looked at him, surprised he'd ventured an opinion without being asked. There was something taller and more confident about him here, in these slums. It was amazing, too,
how quickly his English was improving.

“Yes?” Rachel encouraged.

“They were scared,” Ahmed said. “Very scared.”