“Wot you ‘ere for?” she asked suspiciously. “You never come round ‘ere t’buy togs, not the likes of you, wiv yer fancy city suiting.”
Malcolm doffed his hat. “Good morning, miss. No, indeed, you’re very sharp. We’re hoping you might be able to help us. We’re looking for someone.”
“I ain’t like to grass on nobody, I ain’t,” she muttered.
Malcolm produced a shining shilling and said casually, “The gentlemen we’re looking for are foreigners, miss, foreign swindlers and thieves. They have cheated this young lady of a substantial sum of money by passing counterfeit banknotes and they have robbed me of quite a sum the same way, passing their filthy money at a game of cards last week.”
Margo spoke up in a voice Skeeter scarcely recognized. “Give me a fiver, ‘e did, miss, said ‘e ‘adn’t got nuffink smaller, an’ I give ‘im near four quid change for it, when it weren’t worth the paper the cheeky blagger printed it on ‘is own self.”
The girl’s eyes widened, her suspicion dwindling under the twin onslaughts of Margo’s East-End voice and alarmingly serious complaint. Skeeter stepped forward with one of Goldie’s sample banknotes. “My name is Jackson, ma’am, from America. I’ve trailed these criminals all the way from New York, where they were counterfeiting dollars. This is one of their forgeries.” He handed over the banknote and let her peer curiously at it, then produced the photographs. “Have you seen any of these men?”
The shopgirl took the heavy cardstock photos and gazed at them carefully, shuffling through them. “No,” she said slowly, “never clapped me minces on any blokes wot stood for these ‘ere likenesses. But I’ll look sharp, so I will. Some tea leaf passed me a bad fiver, I’d just about as well shut me doors an’ walk the streets or starve.” She handed the photos and the fake banknote back with a grim, angry look in her eyes. “Mark me, I’ll keep a sharp butcher’s out, so I will.”