by Anne Perry
Monk said nothing. There was no anger in his face, no blame, although it would have been justified.
“I faced him last night,” Rathbone continued. “Obviously, he is one of Phillips's clients, and victims. He used the word addiction to describe his craving for the illicit thrills he gains from his pleasures. Perhaps it is. I never thought of pornography as anything but the grubby voyeurism of those who were incapable of a proper relationship. Perhaps it is more than that, a dependence of character, as with alcohol or opium. It seems with him it is the danger, the risk of being caught in an act that would unquestionably ruin him. I found him both pathetic and repellent.”
Monk was beginning to think. Rathbone saw the ideas race in his mind, the keenness of his eyes.
“I imagine he may be of use to you,” he suggested. “That was my purpose in unmasking him, at least to myself. But I advise you to handle him with care. He is erratic, both angry and frightened, possibly a little less than sane, as you or I would see sanity. He might very well rather put a bullet through his brain than face exposure.”
“Thank you,” Monk said, meeting his eyes.
Rathbone smiled. He knew in that moment that Monk understood how difficult it had been for him, in all its complexity of reasons. He said nothing, but words were far too clumsy, too inexact anyway.
ELEVEN
laudine Burroughs arrived early at the Portpool Lane Clinic. It was not that there was a particularly large amount to do, it was more that she wanted to tidy up linens, make certain of supplies, and put things in order. She had started working there because she needed something to occupy herself that left her feeling less empty than time spent with her acquaintances. She could not call any of them friends. She felt that hardship had a warmth to it, an implicit trust in kindness, even a common purpose or dream. She found none of these things in the visits, tea parties, dinners, and balls she attended. Even church had seemed more a matter of discipline than of hope, and of obedience rather than kindness.
She had chosen this particular charity because no one else she knew would ever involve themselves in anything so vulgar, or so practical. They wished to appear virtuous; they did not wish to put on old clothes, roll up their sleeves, and actually work, as Claudine was now doing, sorting out kitchen cupboards. Of course, at home she would not have dreamed of doing such a thing, nor even would her cook. Any respectable household had scullery maids for that kind of task.
Actually she found it rather satisfying, and while her hands were in the hot, soapy water, her mind was turning over the small signs of anxiety and unhappiness she had seen in Hester lately. She appeared to be avoiding Margaret Rathbone, who was also distant and on occasion a trifle sharp.
Claudine both liked and respected Margaret, but not with the same warmth she felt for Hester. Hester was more spontaneous, more vulnerable, and less proud. Therefore when Bessie came into the kitchen to say that Hester was here, and she was going to make her a pot of tea and take it to her, Claudine told Bessie to finish restocking the cupboards, and said that she herself would take the tea.
When she put the tray down on the table in the office she could see at a glance that Hester was still just as worried as before, if not more so. She poured the tea to give herself an excuse to stay. Right at this moment she wanted, more than anything else, to help, but she was not certain what was wrong, there were so many possibilities. The first was money, either personally or for the clinic. Or it might be a serious case of injury or health that they did not know how to treat. That had happened in the past, and no doubt would again. Or it could be quarrels with the staff, differences of opinion in management, or domestic trouble or unhappiness. But what she considered most likely was something to do with the criminal trial where Hester and her husband had given evidence. But she could not ask. It would be both clumsy and intrusive to do so.
“I think Mrs. Rathbone … I mean, Lady Rathbone … will not be in today,” she said carefully. She saw Hester stiffen, and then relax a little, and she went on. “But she looked at the finances yesterday, and we are really doing quite well.”
“Good.” Hester acknowledged it. “Thank you.”
That seemed to be the end of the conversation. However, Claudine would not give up so easily. “She looked concerned to me, Mrs. Monk. Do you think she may be not quite well?”
Hester looked up, giving it her full attention now. “Margaret? I hadn't noticed. I should have. I wonder if …” She stopped.
“She is with child?” Claudine finished for her. “Possibly, but I don't think so. To be honest, she looks anxious rather than sickly to me. I was being less than honest when I said ‘not well.’”
Hester did not bother to hide her smile. “Not like you, Claudine. Why don't you fetch another cup? There's enough tea here for two.”
Claudine did as she was asked and returned a few moments later. They sat opposite each other, and Hester spoke candidly. “This case of Jericho Phillips has divided us. Naturally, Margaret sides with her husband, as I suppose she should …”
Claudine interrupted. She was aware that it might be unseemly, but she could not hold her peace. “I do not believe that God requires any woman to follow her husband to hell, Mrs. Monk,” she said decisively. “I promised to obey, but I'm afraid that is a vow I could not keep, if it should go against my conscience. Maybe I will be damned for it, but I am not prepared to give my soul over into anyone else's keeping.”
“No, I don't think I am either,” Hester agreed thoughtfully. “But she is only recently married, and I think she loves Sir Oliver very much. Also, she may well believe that he is absolutely right. I have not troubled her with the investigation I have been making, or the horrors of the case that I have learned, because it would place her in a position where she might have to stand against him.”
Claudine made no reply but waited for Hester to explain.
Hester told her the barest outline of Phillips's business, and what she had since learned of the extent of his power to blackmail.
Claudine was disgusted but she was not greatly surprised. She had seen behind the masks of respectability for many years. Usually it was far pettier than this, but perhaps great sins start as simple weakness, and the consistent placing of self before others.
“I see,” she said quietly, pouring more tea for both of them. “What can we do about it? I refuse to accept that there is nothing.”
Hester smiled. “So do I, but I confess that I don't yet know what it is. My husband knows the name of at least one of the victims, but cutting them off is not much use. We need the head of it.”
“Jericho Phillips,” Claudine put in.
“He is central, certainly,” Hester agreed, sipping her tea. “But I have been thinking about it a lot recently, and I wonder if he is alone in his enterprise, or if perhaps he is only part of it.”
Now Claudine was surprised.
Hester leaned forward. “Why would one of Phillips's victims pay to have him defended and able to continue with his blackmail?”
“Because he also provides the pornography to which this wretched creature is addicted,” Claudine replied without hesitation.
“True,” Hester agreed. “But when Phillips was in custody, who went to this man and told him to pay for Phillips's defense? Phillips would hardly have sent for him, or the man's secret would be out, and he would have destroyed his power over him.”
“Oh!” Claudine was beginning to understand. “There is someone else with power who, for his own reasons, wishes Phillips to be safe and to continue to profit. One has to assume that if Phillips were found guilty, this man's loss would overall be greater than his gain.”
Hester winced. “Very direct. You've seized the point admirably. I am not sure how much we can succeed until we know who that person is. I am afraid that he may be someone we will not easily outwit. He has managed to protect Phillips very well up until now, in spite of everything either Durban or we could do.”
Claudine was chilled. “You surely don
't think Sir Oliver was black mailed, do you?” She felt guilty even for having the thought, let alone asking. She knew the heat burned her face, but it was too late to retreat.
“No,” Hester said without resentment. “But I wonder if he wasn't manipulated into defending Phillips, without realizing what it really meant. The trouble is, I don't know what I can do now to reach Phil lips. We're all so …”—she sighed—”so … vulnerable.”
Claudine's mind was racing. Perhaps she could do something. In her time here in the clinic she had learned about sides of life she had not previously even imagined in nightmare. She understood at least something of the people who came and went through these doors. In clothes and manners they were different from the Society women she knew, and in background and hopes for the future; in health, ability, and the things that made them laugh or lose their temper. But in some ways they were also heartbreakingly the same. Those were the things that twisted inside her with a warmth of pity, and all too often of helplessness.
She finished her tea and excused herself without saying anything more about it, and went to see Squeaky Robinson, a man with whom she had a most awkward relationship. That she spoke to him at all was a circumstance that had been forced upon her, at least to begin with. Now they had a kind of restless and extremely uneasy truce.
She knocked on his door; heaven only knew what she might find him doing if she went in without that precaution. When he answered she opened it, walked through, and closed it behind her.
“Good morning, Mr. Robinson,” she said a little stiffly. “When we have finished talking I will fetch you a cup of tea, if you would like it. First I need to speak with you.”
He looked up warily. He was wearing the same rumpled jacket as usual, and a shirt that had probably never felt an iron, and his hair was standing up at all angles from where he had obviously run his fingers through it in some degree of frenzy.
“Good,” he said immediately. “Say what yer ‘ave to. I'm thirsty.” He did not put his pen down but kept it poised above the inkwell. He wrote all his figures in ink. Apparently he did not make mistakes.
Her temper flared at his dismissiveness, but she kept it under control. She wanted his cooperation. A plan was beginning to take shape in her mind.
“I would like to have your attention, if you please, Mr. Robinson,” she said carefully. “All of it.”
He looked alarmed. “Wot's ‘appened?”
“I had thought you were as aware of it as I, but perhaps you are not.” She sat down uninvited. “I shall explain it to you. Jericho Phillips is a man who …”
“I know all about that!” he said tartly.
“Then you know what has happened,” she responded. “It is necessary that we conclude the matter, so that we can all get back to our own business without the distraction of his behavior. He is causing Mrs. Monk some distress. I would like to be of assistance.”
A look of total exasperation filled his face, raising his wispy eyebrows and pulling the corners of his mouth tight. “Yer got no more chance o’ catching Jericho Phillips than yer ‘ave o’ marryin’ the Prince o’ Wales!” he said with barely concealed impatience. “Get back ter yer kitchen an’ do wot yer good at.”
“Are you going to catch him?” she said frostily.
He looked uncomfortable. He had expected her to be deeply affronted and lose her composure, and she had not. That gave him a surprising and inexplicable satisfaction. It should have infuriated him.
“Well, are you?” she snapped.
“If I could, I wouldn't be sittin’ ‘ere,” he retorted. “Fer Gawd's sake, fetch the tea.”
She sat without moving. “He takes and keeps small boys to be photographed performing obscene acts, is that so?”
He blushed, annoyed with her for embarrassing him. She should have been the one embarrassed. “Yes. Yer shouldn't even be knowin’ about such things.” That was a definite accusation.
“A lot of use that's going to be,” she told him witheringly “I assume he does it for money? There could be no other reason. He sells these pictures, yes?”
“O’ course ‘e sells them!” he shouted at her.
“Where?”
“What?”
“Don't pretend to be stupid, Mr. Robinson. Where does he sell them? How much more plainly can I put it?”
“I dunno. On ‘is boat, in the post, ‘ow do I know?”
“Why not in shops as well?” she asked. “Wouldn't he use every place he could? If I had something I knew I could sell, I would offer it everywhere. Why wouldn't he?”
“All right, so ‘e would. Wot about it? That don't do us no good.”
With difficulty she forebore from correcting his grammar. She did not want to anger him any more than she had already.
“Is there not any law against such things, if it involves children, boys?”
“Yes, o’ course there is.” He looked at her wearily. “An’ ‘oo's goin’ ter force it, eh? Yer? Me? The cops? Nobody, that's ‘oo.”
“I am not quite certain that there is nobody,” she said softly. “You might be surprised what Society can do, and will, if it feels itself in danger, either financially or more important, in comfort and self-respect.”
He stared at her, surprise and the beginning of a new understanding dawning in his eyes.
She was not quite sure how much she wished to be understood. Perhaps she needed to change the subject rapidly, if she could do so and still learn from him what she needed to know. The wild idea that had begun in her mind was becoming stronger all the time.
“There is a law against it?” she repeated urgently.
“O’ course there's a law!” he snapped. “It don't make no difference. Can't yer understand that?”
“Yes, I can.” She wanted to crush him but could not afford to. She needed his help, or at the very least some co operation. “So it would have to be sold where the police would not see it.”
“O’ course it would,” he said in exasperation.
“Where?”
“Where? All over the place. In back alleys, in shops where it looks like decent books, financial books, ledgers, tracts on ‘ow ter mend sails or keep accounts, or anything yer like. I seen some as yer'd take fer Bibles, till yer looked close. Tobacconists sell ‘em, or bookshops, printers, all sorts.”
“I see. Yes, very difficult to trace. Thank you.” She stood up and turned to leave, then hesitated. “Down in the alleys by the riverside, I suppose?”
“Yeah. Or anywhere else. But only where folks go as knows wot they want. Yer won't find ‘em on the ‘Igh Street or any place as the likes o’ yer'd be going.”
She gave him a slight smile. “Good. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. Don't look so sour. I shall not forget your tea.”
Claudine was not happy to return home, but sooner or later it was inevitable; it always was.
“You are late,” her husband observed as soon as she entered the drawing room, having gone into the house through the kitchen rather than be seen at the front in her clinic clothes. Now she was washed and changed into the sort of late-afternoon gown she customarily wore. It was fashionable, well-cut, richly colored, and a trifle restricting because of the tightly laced corset beneath it. Her hair was also becomingly dressed, as that of a lady in her station should be.
“I'm sorry,” she apologized. There was no use explaining; he was not interested in reasons.
“If you were sorry, you would not keep doing it,” he said tartly. He was a large man, broad-bellied, heavy-jowled, a highly successful property developer. In spite of his years, his hair was still thick and barely touched with gray. She looked at his sneering expression and wondered how she could ever have found him physically attractive. Perhaps necessity was the mother of acceptance as well as of invention?
“You spend far too much time at that place,” he went on. “This is the third time in as many weeks that I have had to mention this to you. It will not do, Claudine. I have a right to expect certain duties of you, and you ar
e not behaving appropriately at all. As my wife, you have social obligations, of which you are not unaware. Richmond told me you were not at his wife's party last Monday.” He said it as a challenge.
“It was to raise money for charity in Africa,” she replied. “I was working for a charity here.”
He lost his temper. “Oh, don't be absurd! You insulted a lady of considerable consequence in order to go fetching and carrying for a bunch of whores off the street. Have you lost absolutely all sense of who you are? If you have, then let me remind you who I am.”
“I am perfectly aware of who you are, Wallace,” she said as calmly as she could. “I have spent years …” She nearly said “the best years of my life,” but they were not. Indeed, they had been the worst. “I have spent years of my life performing all the duties your career and your station required …”
“And your station, Claudine,” he interrupted. “I think too often you forget that.” That was definitely an accusation. His face was reddening, and he moved a step closer to her.
She did not move back. She would refuse to, no matter how close he came.
“That station, which you take so lightly,” he went on, “provides the roof over your head, the food in your mouth, and the clothes on your back.”
“Thank you, Wallace,” she said flatly. She felt no gratitude whatever. Would it have been so bad to have worked for it herself, and owned it without obligation? No, that was a fantasy. One then had to please whoever employed you. Everyone was bound to somebody else.
He did not hear the sarcasm, or chose not to. But then he had very little sense of irony or appreciation of the absurd. “You will oblige me by writing a letter to Mrs. Monk and telling her that you are no longer able to offer your assistance in her project. Tomorrow.” He took a deep, satisfied breath. “I am sure that after her unfortunate appearance in criminal court she will not be in the least surprised.”