Free Pickpocket's Apprentice by Sheri Cobb South Page A

his presence for the first time, the woman gave a guilty start and glanced over her shoulder, giving Pickett the briefest impression of a pale oval face behind the layers of fine black netting before she turned back to the pawnbroker.
    “Very well, then, twelve guineas. I suppose beggars can’t be choosers,” she added with a sigh of resignation, leaving Pickett to marvel at a world in which twelve gold coins constituted beggary.
    Two more weeks passed without incident, unless one counted the disturbing rumors communicated to Pickett over dinner at the servants’ table: Mrs. Granger had already been in consultation with one of London’s most fashionable dressmakers concerning a new wardrobe for Miss Sophy upon her return; a flurry of letters had gone back and forth between Mrs. Granger and her sister, who had married a knight and set herself up as a lady of fashion in Tunbridge Wells; Mr. Granger had met with his banker, and was prepared to dower his daughter with the exorbitant sum of forty thousand pounds. Pickett, listening to these reports in stoic silence, remembered Sophy’s passionate kisses and told himself that she would never agree to so mercenary a match, no matter how well-born the suitors for her hand.
    Still, he could not deny that it would be a relief to see her again, and to hear these reassurances from her own lips. In the meantime, there was nothing he could do but continue to work for her father in an effort to prove himself so indispensable to the prosperous merchant that from apprentice to son-in-law would seem but a logical step.
    Finally, the day of her return was at hand, and with it the longest day of Pickett’s life. The heavy sacks of coal seemed to hold twice as much, for surely it had never taken so long to empty them down the chutes before. Every customer, too, seemed to drag his heels in handing over bank drafts or counting out coins. Even the Bow Street Public Office, which was usually Pickett’s favourite stop along the now familiar route, disappointed him on this occasion.
    “The clerk is home sick in bed today,” he was informed by a fellow whose blue coat and red waistcoat identified him as a member of the Bow Street foot patrol. “The magistrate can write you out a bank draft, but he’s hearing a case at the moment, so I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”
    It was all of a piece with the rest of this interminable day. Stifling a sigh, Pickett looked up at the magistrate’s bench. Mr. Colquhoun lifted bushy eyebrows just long enough to acknowledge him with an infinitesimal nod before scowling back down at the blowsy woman shrilly pleading her case before him.
    “You can sit down, if you like,” the man in the red waistcoat said, jerking his thumb in the direction of a wooden straight chair positioned against the wall.
    Pickett stuck his head out the door just long enough to offer a brief explanation to Tom for the delay, then walked over to the chair, picked up the broadsheet that someone had left lying in its seat, and settled down to wait. He glanced down at the paper in his hand. Hue and Cry , read the words printed in bold block letters across the top. He scanned the page, and found it contained descriptions of several cases the Bow Street force had not yet solved. Suddenly his eye was caught by the account of one Mrs. Albert Cranston-Parks, whose emerald necklace had been stolen. The lady’s abigail was being questioned as a person of interest, but no arrest had been made, and the emeralds themselves had not been recovered.
    “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, John,” Mr. Colquhoun said, striding toward him while the blowsy female was led away screeching curses in her wake. He was rather surprised to see the boy examining the latest copy of the Hue and Cry , for he had not known that John Pickett could read; he realized with some consternation that he had never asked. “It’s been quite a morning, and half the staff out with the ague. Give me a moment, and