The Forgotten Children

by Anita Davison

  ‘Maybe being in a group helped.’ A wry smile curved Alice’s lips. ‘Children are pretty resilient.’

  Flora manoeuvred a small boy through the hatch. ‘Is the coast still clear?’

  ‘So far.’ Lydia hauled the child through and onto the deck. ‘But hurry, they could be back any moment.’

  ‘Don’t wait for us, take them to the Horselydown Stairs.’ Alice handed a girl into Lydia’s waiting arms. ‘We’ll follow as soon we can.’

  Lydia’s footsteps sounded across the roof of the cabin, followed by a crushing silence.

  ‘I’ll go next.’ Alice climbed out onto the deck, followed by the taller of the boys, then lifted the girl Flora handed up to her. ‘Follow me as soon as you can.’

  Flora left the steps and kneeled on the bench, pulled aside the shutter on the window and peered out to where Lydia and the children were no more than a show heading into the fog that engulfed the curved quay wall.

  Alice descended the ladder and dropped onto the sand, the girl on one hip as she waited for the boy to follow. Taking his hand, they hurried across the strip of still exposed beach, the boy leaping puddles at her side.

  The little rowing boat was almost afloat as the river encroached further up the beach.

  With no more time to lose, Flora gathered the two remaining boys together with Isobel at the bottom of the steps, just as a shadow loomed above the hatch, shutting out the remaining foggy daylight.

  Flora’s heart jumped in her chest and she gasped, grabbing Isobel, who released a short, high-pitched shriek. The two boys gave frightened yells and scrambled back into the cabin.

  Chapter 28

  ‘Lydia! You scared me.’ Flora released her held breath in a rush as her friend appeared at the hatch above her. ‘I thought you’d gone.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’ Lydia bent closer. ‘Alice has taken the children to the stairs, so I imagined you could do with some help with these three. Send them up one at a time, but hurry, there’s a launch coming this way.’

  ‘How do you know it’s them?’ Flora asked, alarmed.

  ‘I don’t, but I prefer not to take the chance. It’s moving faster than a barge and will be here any minute.’

  The smaller of the boys was clumsy and uncoordinated, taking each step with agonising slowness. At the top, he tripped on the edge of the hatch, the ensuing bang and distressed wail indicating he had fallen on the deck.

  ‘Is he all right?’ Flora asked and tried not to snap. These children had been captive in a dark tunnel for days, so were bound to be unnerved.

  ‘He’s fine, it was only a little bump. Quickly, send up the next one.’

  ‘Come on Isobel, you’re next.’ Flora prised the child’s clinging hand from her skirt and eased her forward. ‘It’s all right, I’ll be coming straight after you. Albert’s coming too.’

  ‘Hurry, Flora. That boat is definitely coming this way.’ Lydia’s fierce whisper sounded from the hatch.

  ‘Could it be the police?’ Hope flared as Isobel’s scuffed boots disappeared through the hatch.

  ‘I don’t think so. I can’t see any helmets.’

  ‘Come on, Albert.’ Flora waved him forward, but he hung back at the bow end, darting furtive gazes at the door beside the pot-bellied stove. ‘It’s time to go!’

  ‘But – what about Sal?’

  ‘What did you say?’ Flora swung around on the steps so fast, she almost missed her footing.

  ‘Sally. Ain’t she coming wiv us?’

  ‘Where is she?’ Her stomach knotted, conscious of Lydia waiting on deck with the two children, exposed to whoever was aboard that launch.

  ‘In there.’ Albert nodded at the door, which Flora had assumed was a storage space.

  ‘Come on, Flora.’ Lydia beckoned frantically from the hatch where she had just received Isobel. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘I’m sending Albert up.’ Flora grabbed the boy and gave him a shove that propelled him toward the steps. ‘Go with Lydia, I’ll follow as soon as I can.’

  ‘What do you mean follow? Aren’t you coming too?’ Lydia said.

  ‘Sally’s down here. I can’t leave her.’

  ‘What?’ Lydia cried, panicked. ‘Flora, there’s no time. That boat is coming straight for us.’

  ‘You have to. Once Albert is out, close the hatch and get the other children off this barge.’

  Giving Albert a final shove, she made her way to where the single lantern threw deep shadows into the corners. The pot-bellied stove clicked as it cooled, the metal warm to her touch as she passed it and grabbed the wooden handle. The door refused to budge, but after several sharp tugs it finally gave with a scrape of warped wood against the frame and swung outwards, revealing a space hardly large enough for the enclosed bunk it contained. A window covered by a square of canvas nailed to the frame sat high up, through which streaks of weak grey light leaked through the edges.

  Sally lay with one arm flung over her head, her cloud of wavy brown hair fanned out on a stained pillow, a rough grey blanket carelessly thrown over her. She wore the same clothes she had left Eaton Place in on the night of the concert, although her prized wool coat was missing. The same, sweet, decaying apple smell Flora had detected in the tunnel clung to her.

  ‘Sally, Sally can you hear me?’ Flora whispered, shaking her gently.

  She stirred, issued a groan and batted Flora’s hand away with an annoyed grunt before rolling onto her side.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Flora whispered, brushing her hair away from Sally’s face as guilt swamped her at having sent her into danger. Not that Sally would have wasted time attributing blame or feeling sorry for herself. She would have had them singing songs to banish the dark and told them stories at night.

  ‘She all right, Miss? They didn’t ’urt her did they?’

  Flora gasped and whipped around, her heart thumping. ‘Albert! You shouldn’t be here. I told you to go with Lydia. She isn’t still up there waiting, is she?’

  ‘Nah. I told her to go and I would follow, but I couldn’t leave Sal. She looked after us in the tunnel.’ He hunched on the floor beside the bunk and regarded Sally with scared eyes. ‘Why won’t she wake up?’

  ‘Because she’s been drugged, but not heavily. At least I don’t think so.

  The chug of an engine approached steadily, ground to a spluttering halt directly above, followed by a bump which made the barge shift beneath her with a creak. Heavy footsteps pounded across the deck making her heart thump uncomfortably, praying that Lydia had got the other children into the Horselydown Stairs unseen.

  ‘They’re back.’ Albert slid his hand into hers, his neck craned as he scrutinized the ceiling.

  There was no chance of getting Sally out now, not in her state and the tiny cabin could not accommodate all three of them. They would just have to brave it out and hope the police arrived soon.

  ‘Albert, she grasped his shoulders and brought her face close to his, ‘stay in here with Sally. Whatever you hear, don’t come out. Do you understand?’

  ‘But-’

  ‘Do as I say.’ Flora shut the door on him, just as the hatch slid open and a figure descended the steps.

  A man of about thirty wearing a dun-coloured coat that swayed round his ankles as he walked towards her. The shabby garment looked old, having taken on the shape of the wearer, a once white shirt visible above an open frayed collar. Tiny white lines in his deeply tanned skin radiated from his brown eyes, above a receding chin covered with gingery brown bristles that did not quite constitute a beard. Beneath a shapeless cloth cap, tufts of dirty brown hair poked out above the ragged ears of a fighter.

  Swifty Ellis.

  ‘Who the ’ell are you?’ He gave the cabin a swift, hard look. ‘Where are the kids?’

  Flora fought back a wave of nausea as Ruth Lazarus appeared behind him. She wore an old fashioned dark green dress that looked second-hand; a necklace of black jet encircled her thin throat, her hair pulled back in t
he severe bun which stretched her eyes into a cat-like slant.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ She slid her arm through Swifty’s in a slow, possessive gesture.

  She looked different out of uniform, younger somehow, though her outfit did nothing to detract from her lanky awkwardness, nor the permanent sneer that twisted her mouth.

  ‘’Ow should I know? But it won’t do her no good.’

  Flora’s fingers curled into fists at her sides, her rapid breaths pushing her corset to its limit until she thought she might faint. Vaguely, she speculated on the nature of their relationship. Lovers perhaps, or merely partners in crime? She didn’t have time to wonder for long as they split apart, making way for a third person to enter the cabin.

  ‘Madame ’Arreengton,’ Claude Martell’s shiny black eyes regarded her with the same gleam he used to tempt her to try his famous madeleines. ‘I ’ave to say I did not anticipate your presence ’ere.’

  She had always regarded him as an inoffensive, even harmless nonentity. His lack of height, a barrel chest and arrogant strut combined with sparse oily black hair he wore brushed straight back from a low brow and a thin moustache, which Flora always speculated he waxed into points. The shiny black eyes which regarded her held intelligent, if uncompromising coldness.

  As always, his immaculate black suit and highly polished shoes were in evidence, as was his scarlet embroidered waistcoat, his effeminate hand gestures and oily smile were absent.

  ‘And yet,’ Flora’s dry throat lifted her voice an octave. ‘I’ve been expecting you, Mr Martell. Or do you prefer, Lieutenant Brodie?’

  It had taken her a while to work it out, but who but a Frenchman would write a seven like a four?

  ‘I can see that no matter how well one plans, one always misses somezing.’ Martell regarded her with pained disgust, his hands spread in a Gallic gesture of resignation. ‘Where are the cheeldren, madame?’

  ‘Do you expect me to tell you, when I know you planned to sell them?’ Her voice came out high and scratchy, her fury overriding her good sense, but she couldn’t betray those children now, no matter the consequences.

  ‘You make it sound shameful, ma chėre.’ Martell’s lips curved into a sneer. ‘When I offer them a better life with people who appreciate them. What ‘ave they ‘ere but short lives and early deaths from lung rot and malnutrition in a Bermondsey slum?’ His leering smile beneath his caricature moustache that had so amused her in the past now repelled her. ‘Besides, I could not have persuaded their families to part with them so easily had they not been unwanted.’

  ‘Isobel Lomax was wanted,’ Flora insisted. ‘Is wanted.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ He clasped his unusually small hands beneath his chin, the index fingers pressed together at the tip. ‘Such a pretty child. I could not resist. She will be the easiest to place.’

  ‘Nothing you say will justify what you are doing.’ Flora’s fear turned to righteous anger as Isobel’s frightened eyes loomed into her head.

  ‘Don’t bother looking for them.’ Anger burned and she imagined smashing a fist into Martell’s sneering, arrogant face, the image strangely satisfying. ‘They’ll be miles away by now. You’ll never find them.’

  ‘Liar!’ Ruth jutted her chin, her face so close, the yeasty smell of ale on her breath made Flora wince. ‘We’ve only been gone from here a half hour. Tell us where they are!’

  ‘I apologize for my associate’s uncouth manners.’ Martell gestured Ruth aside, his tone gentle, almost reasonable. ‘I so dislike unpleasantness, but Ruth takes rather too much plaisir in such things.’ His gaze flicked to Swifty, who smirked as if they shared a private joke.

  ‘Buchanan must have talked.’ Swifty glowered. ‘S’pose the coppers are waiting for us at Tilbury docks?’

  ‘After the fiasco of the other day?’ Martell snorted. ‘They ‘ad twenty policeman crawling all over that ship and found nozing.’ Martell scratched the back of his neck in agitation. ‘I cannot reesk staying in the city another night, and if we don’t leave now, we’ll mees the tide. I have another lucrative cargo on that sheep, one which doesn’t need to be fed or kept quiet. Non, we shall have to cut our losses this time. Forget them.’ He took a step closer to Flora, his black eyes glittering with malice. ‘Your interference has cost me a great deal of money.’

  Flora braced herself for some sort of retribution, her teeth gritted so hard, her jaw ached, but nothing came.

  ‘Claude, you can’t!’ Ruth exchanged a panicked look with Swifty. ‘We need those other kids. That money would have set me and Swifty up.’

  ‘She’s right, Mr Martell, we have to—’ Swifty cut across her, though he had hardly got the words out before the Frenchman lashed out, delivering a vicious slap to the man’s face that echoed in the small space.

  ‘What do you suggest?’ Martell inhaled sharply, inflating his barrel chest, ‘wait ’ere for the police?’

  A tell-tale red mark appeared above the stubble on Swifty’s cheek. He clenched his fist, then relaxed as if he fought an impulse to retaliate.

  ‘We don’t know as she’s told anyone. She might be here on her own,’ Ruth said. ‘But I’ll wager Miss Finch had something to do with it, Claude.’ Ruth folded her arms across her diminutive chest. ‘You said their cosy little talks in your tea room looked suspicious.’

  ‘We cannot know who she has told. And I can always rely on you to piece things together, Ruth ma chère.’ He patted her cheek with one hand, though Ruth’s grimace indicated his touch was less than gentle. ‘I trust you ’ave taken care of the mouthy one who was unwise enough to follow me the other day?’

  ‘Don’t worry ’bout her.’ Swifty touched the peak of his cap, more in a gesture of pride in a job well done than respect. ‘I’ve got her stowed nice and safe.’

  Flora stiffened. He meant Sally.

  ‘What do you mean stowed?’ Martell’s eyes flashed fire. ‘I told you to get rid of that beetch two days ago. If she’s still breathing, zere will be consequences.’

  ‘I’ve got plans for ’er.’ Swifty tapped the side of his narrow nose and winked. ‘She’s crafty, that one. I can get a good price for her from a Hook Shop I know in Kentish Town.’ He aimed a gap-toothed grin at Flora. ‘And if I take this one far enough out of London, I could get even more for ’er. Seems only fair when we won’t get our cut for the kids.’

  Flora’s knees threatened to give way as the implications of his threat settled into her head. How had she got herself and poor Albert into this situation? Why had they wasted time at the Tower Subway? Had they come here first they might have got Sally and the children far away by now.

  ‘Don’t be stoopeed!’ Martell cuffed Swifty’s ear, another attack to which he barely responded. ‘This woman is not a nobody.’ He stroked his thumb and forefinger down either side of his moustache. ‘Non, you must dispose of her. Do it in the tunnel, then take her where no one would ever find her.’ Without sparing Flora another look, Martell mounted the steps and disappeared through the hatch.

  Flora swallowed at the thought of that dank tunnel and what might happen to her made her heart flutter, though hope remained that Bunny would arrive with the police while there was still time.

  ‘What do you intend to do with Sally? Flora demanded of Swifty, recalling Claude Martell had told him to dispose of her. ‘If you hurt her, I’ll—’

  ‘You’ll what?’ Ruth closed the space between them, her cat -like eyes narrowed.

  ‘Ruthie, love, don’t waste your time.’ Swifty handed her a black leather sap, the lascivious wink which accompanied it did not enhance his unprepossessing looks. ‘You stay here. Show this meddling bitch what we do to people who interfere in our business.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Ruth stared at the object in her hand, then back up at him, the plea in her eyes confirming Flora’s assumption about their relationship.

  ‘Sod Martell and his cargo. I’m going to see if I can find out where the nippers are hiding.

  ‘You won’t find t
hem!’ Flora shouted in a final burst of defiance.

  He turned back, leapt down the steps and shoving Ruth aside, pulled back his right arm and swung a clenched fist straight at Flora’s face.

  She jerked her head back, but not quick enough to avoid his knuckles connecting with the side of her jaw. Sharp agony reverberated through her teeth and down her neck, which sent her staggering backwards into the bench behind her. She bounced off it and landed on her rear end on the linoleum floor, catching her elbow on the edge on the way down.

  Tentatively, she eased her jaw, but halted as pain sliced through her, accompanied by the sound of the hatch slamming shut.

  Swifty had gone.

  ‘That was daft, goading him like that.’ Ruth perched on the bench, her skirt swishing as she moved it aside, tapping the ball end of the sap against her other palm. ‘Don’t you know he’s handy with his fists?’

  ‘Someone did mention it.’ Flora pushed herself into a sitting position, her jaw supported in one palm, her gaze fixed on the wicked-looking object in Ruth’s hand.

  ‘Is that what you used to kill Lizzie Prentice?’ Before the words left her lips, she regretted them. Though it occurred to her that she could hardly make the situation any worse.

  ‘Think you’re clever, don’t you?’ Ruth snorted. ‘I’m not admitting to that, even if she did ask for it.’

  ‘No one asks to be murdered, Ruth.’ Flora was beyond calling her Sister Lazarus. As far as Flora was concerned, Ruth was not deserving of such a title.

  She wasn’t convinced of the woman’s denial either. The day Lizzie was killed, Ruth had been a long time fetching the tea and returned to Alice’s office with her skirt and shoes wet from the rain. She had both a reason and the opportunity to do the deed. ‘From the way Miss Finch spoke about you, this isn’t like you at all,’ Flora said. ‘Consorting with child stealers, blackmail and impersonation. You might have been raised in a workhouse, but—’

  ‘Don’t pretend to know anything about me!’ Ruth’s eyes flashed, the sap clutched in one hand, and a finger of the other pointed at her chest. ‘This is who I am. It was having to bow and scrape to the likes of you and that witch, what with all her, yes Matron, no Matron. That was the sham.’