It’s October, 1872, and sixteen-year-old Sally Lockhart, whose father died in late summer, has just gotten a letter from Singapore. Singapore is where her father was last, but the note’s not in his handwriting, and she’s got no idea what it means: it says to beware of the Seven Blessings, and it says that someone named Marchbanks will help her. But Sally doesn’t know anyone named Marchbanks, and she’s never heard of the Seven Blessings, either. She heads to her father’s old office—he was a partner in a firm of shipping agents—to see if anyone there can shed any light on the situation for her. But from there, things get more mysterious, not less, and Sally soon realizes she might be dealing with two mysteries: her father’s death/the Seven Blessings, plus something about a very famous ruby that went missing in the Siege of Lucknow, when Sally’s father was serving there in the army.
In the course of trying to figure things out, Sally makes herself some enemies—including a nasty old lady named Mrs. Holland, of whom more later—but luckily makes herself some friends, too. First, at the shipping firm’s office, Sally befriends the office boy, Jim Taylor, who’s funny and clever and a fan of penny dreadfuls, and who’s described, when we first encounter him, like this: “The porter rang a bell, and a young boy appeared, like a sudden solidification of all the grime in the city air. His jacket was torn in three places, his collar had come adrift from the shirt, and his hair looked as if it had been used for an experiment with the powers of electricity” (4). Then there’s the Garland household: Frederick Garland, a young photographer, helps Sally when she’s in a pinch; she later meets his actress sister and their shop assistant, Trembler, a failed pickpocket who’s too nervous and gentle for a life of crime.
The supporting characters, heroes and villains alike, are one of the best things about this book: the Garland household welcomes Sally when she most needs a refuge, and the Garland siblings themselves are excellent, with their comfortably shabby house and their friendly bickering and their willingness to help anyone who needs helping. And Mrs. Holland, who runs a lodging house and keeps criminal company, is entirely nasty but also pretty hilarious: pushy and bossy and good with the insults. She has one hired thug who’s a big violent guy who isn’t, alas, too bright, and she keeps losing her patience with him, resulting in gems like this:
“You bloody great codfish,” said Mrs. Holland, and then she treated him to an analysis of his character, a list of his ancestors, and a prognostication of his future. (172)
And oh, London, a character in itself, narrow alleys and warmly lit pubs and the river in the middle of it all. I liked reading about places I’ve actually seen: Mrs. Holland’s lodging house is in Wapping, and the Garlands live near the British Museum. And I liked reading about the docks and the shipyards: I’ve done a fair bit of walking along the Thames path, on both sides of the river, and it’s pleasing to try to imagine St. Katharine’s Docks or Shadwell or Wapping in 1872, gaslit and grimy, like this:
Beyond the Tower of London, between St. Katharine’s Docks and Shadwell New Basin, lies the area known as Wapping: a district of docks and warehouses, of crumbling tenements and rat-haunted alleys, of narrow streets where the only doors are at second-floor level, surmounted by crude projecting beams and ropes and pulleys. The blind brick walls at pavement level and the brutal-looking apparatus above give the place the air of some hideous dungeon from a nightmare, while the light, filtered and dulled by the grime in the air, seems to come from a long way off—as if through a high window set with bars. (20)
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