Free Walking in Pimlico by Ann Featherstone

her apron again and then around her feet.
    ‘I am sure I saw – yes, I did. I must have missed it.’ She stooped down and picked up what did indeed appear to be a penny. And then she exclaimed, ‘Oh, sir, it’s not a penny, though it has a lady’s head on it.’
    She offered me the penny, and I saw that it wasn’t a coin at all. I was about to say it wasn’t mine and that someone must have dropped it, when I realized what it was.
    It was that hard object in Lucy’s packet.
    The girl left, disappointed, I suppose, that I was speaking the truth, for I had not got a penny on me. And what I had in my hand was no penny but – well, I shall describe it. It was the size and shape of a penny, and appeared to be of the same dull metal. But on one side, where you might expect to find the face of our good Queen Victoria, there was a tiny portrait of a lady, set against a blue background. Here was an angel, surely, with tumbling curls about a facewhich wore a sweet expression, and was painted so very much ‘to the life’ as it were, that I felt I should know her immediately if I saw her. Her blue eyes smiled, her lips (the faintest pink) were parted, and there was good humour and sweetness there. It was a regular lady’s face. And it was clear to me that the owner treasured this likeness, for it was covered with a piece of glass, cleverly held in place by tiny grips.
    When I turned the coin over, the metal (gold probably) had been inscribed, though I had to peer hard at it to make out the words:
    For my dearest Brother on his birthday.
John Shovelton
From his affectionate Sister Helen
     
    It amazed me how so much writing could be inscribed upon so small an area, but more how someone might want to destroy what had been taken so much care over. For the writing had been scratched at with something sharp, and on purpose, as if a person wanted to score it out. It was ferociously done, and dug deep into the metal. I turned it around in my hand, and while the fire crackled and the clock ticked, and Mr Flynn’s good ale stood warm in the glass, it occurred to me that perhaps I had in my hand something material in whatever had caused Lucy to flee and hide. And perhaps something material to the other business also.
    I had restored the other bits and pieces to my pocket what the girl had tipped out, so it was but the work of a moment to rediscover them, and there, now wrapped roughly around by the piece of oilcloth, were the papers that Lucy had entrusted to me. When I unwrapped them, I could see clearly where the coin had lain all these months, and its impression, which was quite dirty owing to the metal rubbing off on the paper. So I got them all out, all the bits that Lucy had put together and pushed across the table to me in Mr Tidyman’s back room, me drinking my coffee and reading the
Era.
    There on Mr Flynn’s table was everything in Lucy’s packet. Two pieces of newspaper from the
Gazette
about the murder, and another with Gov’s physog a-staring out like some gargoyle.
    And there was another. Folded up very small, and yellow, not having been written on good paper to begin with. When I opened it up, the letters swum around before my eyes like tadpoles in a pond, so small and black were they. But, when Mr Flynn brung in a lamp and I was able to cast a good light upon it – well, things looked different. Everything looked different from what it did before, and I was obliged to sit still awhile and consider what I had read.
    It was strange to see it all laid out before me. Words that I had only thought of, or that me and Lucy had spoke, were set out here, in Lucy’s writing (like me, she is no scholar). But not just words, of course, but words that told about that night and the things that happened in it, which made me understand it all better because everything was now gathered up in one place, rather than in different people’s mouths. Gov had talked about Bessie’s murder (hadn’t he just!), and Sergeant Bliss and I