by Anne Perry
“She was a witness!” Claudine protested, and instantly knew from his face that it was a technical error.
“Of course she was a witness,” he said with disgust. “The kind of life she leads, the people she associates with, she is bound to see all sorts of crimes. The only miracle is that she was for the prosecution, not for the defense. I have been extremely tolerant so far, Claudine, but you have now exceeded the limit of what is acceptable. You will do as I have instructed. That is all I have to say on the matter.”
Claudine could not remember ever having been so angry, or so desperate to fight back. He was taking from her everything that had brought her the most joy in her life. She realized that with a shock of amazement. It was absurd, but working in Portpool Lane gave her friendship, purpose, and a sense of belonging, of being valued, even a sense of mattering. She could not allow him to simply remove it because he thought he could.
“I am surprised,” she said, controlling her voice as well as she could, although she was aware that it trembled.
“I do not wish to discuss it further, Claudine,” he said coldly. He always addressed her by name when he was displeased. “I have no idea why you should be surprised, except that I have allowed it so long. It is totally unsuitable.”
“I am surprised that you find it so.” She was attacking now, and it was almost too late to draw back. She plunged in. “And I admit, it frightens me.”
His eyebrows rose high. “Frightens you? That is a foolish thing to say. You are becoming hysterical. I have simply said that you are no longer to associate yourself with a clinic for whores. Forgive me for using the word, but it is the correct one.”
“That is immaterial.” She brushed it aside with a wave of her hand. She was not a beautiful woman, but her hands were lovely. “What alarms me is that I have allied myself with people who have publicly stood up against a man who traffics in children, small boys, to be precise, for the use of men in their more revolting appetites. Since we are using correct words,” she mimicked his tone exactly, “I believe the term is sodomy. This abuse of children is practiced by all sorts of men,” she continued, “of a bestial and debased nature, but this man caters to those with money, that is, largely of our own social class.” She saw the blood rush to his face in a scarlet tide. “It frightens me,” she continued relentlessly, her voice now quivering with real fear, although not of what she was claiming, “that you do not wish, very publicly indeed, to show yourself to be in the battle against it.”
She drew in her breath and let it out slowly, trying to control the shaking of her body. “I do not suspect you of such an appetite, Wallace, but I am more than slightly worried that you forbid me to continue in my support for Mrs. Monk, and all those who fought at her side. What will people think? It is bound to become even more public than it is now. I am not sure that I can oblige you by retreating from the conflict.”
He stared at her as if she had grown horns and a tail.
She found herself gulping for air. She could never go back now, as long as she lived. She knew how Caesar must have felt when he crossed the Rubicon to declare war on Rome.
“Are you sure that is what you wish me to do?” she said softly.
“I don't know what has happened to you,” he said, looking at her with loathing. “You are a disgrace to your sex, and to all that your parents hoped of you. You are certainly not the woman I married.”
“I understand how that pains you,” she replied. She was well on the far bank of the Rubicon now. “You are the man I married, and that pains me, which perhaps now you also understand. There is little for us to do but make the best of it. I shall do what I believe to be right, which is to continue to help those in need, and fight with every ability I have to bring men like Jericho Phillips to justice before the law. I think you would find it in your best interests to pretend that you support me. You would be hard put to justify any other course to your friends, and I know you value their opinion. Whatever their private habits, they could not be seen to think differently.” And before he could reply, she left the room, and told her maid that she would take supper in her boudoir.
In the morning she left for the clinic very early indeed, before six. It was light at this time of the year, and when she arrived half an hour later, she found Ruby up and working in the kitchen. She had already decided that it was Ruby whose help she would ask.
“‘Mornin’, Mrs. Burroughs,” Ruby said with surprise. “Summink ‘appened? Yer look kind o’ upset, bit feverish. Like a cup o’ tea?”
“Good morning, Ruby,” Claudine replied, closing the back door behind her. “Yes, I would like a cup of tea. I have not had breakfast yet, and I imagine you haven't either. I brought some butter and a pot of marmalade.” She produced it and set it on the table. “And a loaf of fresh bread,” she added. “I wish for your advice, in confidence.”
Ruby looked at the excellent Dundee marmalade and the crusty bread, and knew that it must be serious. She was alarmed.
Claudine saw it. “There is no need to be concerned,” she said, going over to the stove and opening the door, ready to make toast. “I wish to do something that I hope will help Mrs. Monk. It will be uncomfortable, and possibly a little dangerous, so I imagine she would stop me if she knew, which is why I am speaking to you in confidence. Are you willing to help me?”
Ruby stared at her in wonder. She was very aware that Hester was in trouble; everyone knew it. “‘Course I am,” she said decisively. “Wot'd'yer want?”
“I want to sell matches,” Claudine replied. “I thought of bootlaces—that might also work—except people do not need to buy them very often. Flowers would be no use at all, nor would any kind of food.” She straightened up from the stove and began to slice the bread. The aroma of it filled the room.
Ruby pulled the kettle over onto the burner and reached for the tea caddy, her mind whirling. “Why d'yer wanter sell matches?” She was utterly lost. She knew it could not possibly be for money. Claudine was rich anyway.
“As an excuse for standing in the street outside the sort of shop where they would sell the photographs that Jericho Phillips takes of little boys,” Claudine replied. “We know the faces of some of his boys; perhaps I can find these photographs, or at least tell Commander Monk where they may be found. Then he will have another way in which to trap Phillips. Or he may trap some of the men who buy them …” The further she went in trying to explain her idea, the more desperate and foolish it sounded.
“Cor!” Ruby let out her breath in a sigh of amazement and admiration. Her eyes were wide and shining. “Then ‘e'd ‘ave the proof! ‘E could make ‘em split on Phillips, eh? It wouldn't be like ‘angin’ ‘im, but it'd make ‘im mad, for certain. An’ it'd make ‘is customers as mad as wasps in a fire, an’ all! I'll ‘elp yer, an’ I won't tell no one, I swear!”
“Thank you,” Claudine said with profound gratitude. “Now, shall we have breakfast? I trust you like marmalade?”
“Cor! Yeah, I do. Ta.” Ruby looked at the jar and she could almost taste it already. “Yer'll ‘ave ter ‘ave a blouse an’ skirt wot's right, an’ a shawl. I can get yer one. It'll smell, mind. But it should. Yer can't go lookin’ like that, or they'll con yer in a second. An’ yer'll ‘ave ter keep yer mouth shut as much as yer can. I'll tell yer wot ter say. Or better, pretend as yer deaf, an’ can't ‘ear nuffin’. An’ boots. I'll get yer some boots wot look like yer'd already walked ter Scotland an’ back in ‘em.”
“Thank you,” Claudine said quietly. She was beginning to wonder if she really had the courage to go through with this. It was an insane idea. She was totally incompetent to carry off such a thing. It would be humiliating. They would see through her disguise in an instant, and Wallace would have her committed as a lunatic. He would have no trouble at all. What other explanation could there be for such behavior?
Ruby shook her head. “Yer got some guts, Missus.” Her eyes shone with awe. “I reckon even Miss ‘Ester'd be proud o’ yer. ‘Course I won't tell �
��er!” she added hastily. “I won't never give yer away.”
That sealed the decision. There was no escape now. She could not possibly forfeit Ruby's faith in her, and that burning admiration. “Thank you,” Claudine said again. “You are a loyal and excellent ally.”
Ruby beamed with pleasure, but she was too thrilled to speak.
Naturally Claudine did not go until it was dusk, when she had far greater chance of being unrecognized. Even so, she walked with her head down, shuffling a little in unfamiliar and extremely uncomfortable boots. She must have looked dreadful. Her hair was greased with oil from the kitchen, the smell of which she found distasteful, like a stale pan. Her face was carefully smeared with grime, similarly her hands and as much of her neck as showed. She had an old shawl around her, and was glad to hold it tight, not for warmth, because the evening was mild, but to conceal as much of herself as she could. She carried a light tray that would be hung around her neck on a string, and a bag full of matchboxes to sell. She also had about one and sixpence worth of change, mostly in pennies and halfpennies. Ruby had told her that more would be suspicious.
She began on the dockside beyond Wapping and walked slowly until she found a corner between a good tobacconist and a public house, then stood there with the tray resting just below her bosom and felt as conspicuous as a squashed fly on a white wall, and about as useful.
She also felt afraid. As darkness settled she could see only the short stretches under the street lamps clearly, or wedges of broken pavement where light spilled out a window, or a suddenly opened door. There was noise all around. In the distance dogs were barking above the clatter of hooves from the traffic on the busy cross street seventy yards away. Closer to her people were shouting, and above it was the occasional burst of laughter.
She was ridiculously grateful when someone bought matches, and actually spoke to her. Just that they had seen her and acknowledged her as a human being broke the loneliness that had hardened around her like imprisoning glass. She smiled, and then with a shock of shame remembered that Ruby had also blackened two of her teeth. She said they were beautiful, far too even and white for the sort of woman she was pretending to be.
What was even stranger and more disconcerting was that the man did not even notice. He took her for exactly what she was pretending to be, a street woman too old and too plain to be a whore, but still needing to earn perhaps a shilling or two, standing alone in the night on a street corner selling matches, mild or freezing, wet or dry. She was relieved, but oddly “puzzled also. Was that really the only difference, clothes and a little dirt, the way she carried her head, whether she dared meet his eyes or not?
She could stand here all night, and those who were sorry for her might buy matches, but she would learn nothing. She needed to move closer to the shops that sold books and periodicals, tobacco, the sort of things a man would buy without arousing any interest or comment. Ruby had told her where they were, and what they were like. Maybe she should be closer to Jericho Phillips's boat? She wanted to catch his trade in particular. Maybe it was like most other trades; people had their own areas. One did not trespass. Certainly she was growing cold and stiff here, and achieving nothing except a little practice.
She began to walk back towards the river and the stretch half a mile or so to the south of Execution Dock. That was one of the places where Phillips had been known to moor his boat. Another was further south again, on the Limehouse Reach. There was another where the curve of the Isle of Dogs bends back to the Blackwall Reach, opposite the Bugsby Marshes. Too far for rich men to go for their pleasures, and certainly a less profitable place to sell books and pictures. Was she being intelligent? Or merely too stupid to know just how stupid she was? Wallace would have said the latter, if he were not too apoplectic with rage to say anything at all. She could not bear for him to be right; that would be almost as bad as letting Ruby down.
She kept walking. It was late and completely dark now. How long did shops stay open? Buying pornographic photographs of little boys was surely not a daytime occupation? At this time of the year maybe they stayed open all night? Perhaps people went to such places after the theater? The most obvious of all would be after visiting Jericho Phillips's boat.
That was her best chance, to go towards the river and the alleys leading off the waterfront.
But she paced up and down fruitlessly until after midnight. Then tired, cold, and dispirited, she went back to the clinic and Ruby let her in. It was then that she made the wild boast that she was not beaten, and would quite definitely return the following evening. She went into one of the empty bedrooms kept for patients with contagious diseases, and slept until she was woken in the morning by the sound of footsteps, and one of the maids cursing under her breath.
The next evening, Claudine found herself standing on the corner of the same street again in gusting wind and a fine summer rain, carrying a tray of matches, covered with oilskin, when a couple of well-dressed men passed by, apparently not even aware of her.
She turned, as if to cross the street, or possibly even to follow after them and beg them to buy a box of matches. But instead she passed by them, and took a quick, furtive glance at the photograph one of the men was looking at. She was too disappointed that it was an adult woman to be shocked at her total nakedness. All she felt was chagrin that it was not one of Phillips's boys. To her guilt, she was also relieved. They were pictures she did not actually wish to see; it was simply that she could hardly take any proof back to Hester if she could not swear what it was.
Then she realized that of course selling one kind of pornography does not exclude selling another kind. She stopped abruptly, as if she had forgotten something, then turned and went back again to take up her place a few yards from where she had been before. This time she was on the opposite side of the street, where she could watch whoever went into the shop from either direction.
She allowed several very ordinary-appearing customers to go in and come out again, but the next time a well-dressed man went in, she crossed over and went in after him. She stood in the corner as if waiting in the shadows for her turn, well out of the sound of his voice. At a glance one might have thought she was being discreet.
When he had agreed on the cards he wished for and paid his money to the shopkeeper, she moved forward, pretended to be dizzy, and swayed to one side. As though by accident, she knocked the cards out of his hand and they fluttered to the floor. Two lay facedown, three were faceup. They showed naked and frightened little boys in attitudes only grown men should adopt, and that in the strictest privacy. One of them had bloody weals on his flesh where any clothes at all would have concealed them.
Claudine closed her eyes and sank to the floor, not entirely having to pretend a feeling of nausea. The shopkeeper came around the counter and tried to assist her to her feet, while his customer scrabbled on the floor to pick up his treasures.
The next few moments passed in a daze. She staggered to her feet, now quite genuinely dizzy, and at the shopkeeper's insistence drank a small mouthful of brandy, probably all he could afford to offer. Then she told him her husband's tobacco would have to wait, she needed some air, and without accepting any further assistance she thanked him and blundered outside onto the dark street and the beginning of more rain. It was light, only a drifting mist blowing off the river, the mournful sound of foghorns echoing up from Limehouse Reach and the long stretch beyond.
She leaned against the wall of the tenement houses, a sickness in her stomach, the taste of bile in her mouth. She shuddered with cold, her back ached, and her feet were blistered. She was alone here in the dark and dripping street, but this was victory!
Three or four more men walked past. Two bought matches. She was going to earn enough for a loaf of bread. Actually she had no idea what a loaf of bread cost. A pint of beer was three pence, she had heard someone say that. Four pints for a shilling. Nine shillings a week was a fair rent, half a laborer's weekly wage.
They were well dressed, these
customers of the tobacconist. Their suits must have cost two pounds or more. That one's shirt looked like silk. How much were the photographs? Sixpence? A shilling?
Another man had stopped in front of her. She had not even noticed him approaching. It must be midnight. He was a big man, solid, holding cards facedown like the ones she'd seen in the shop.
“Yes, sir? Matches, sir?” she said through dry lips.
“I'll have a couple of boxes,” he replied, holding out two pennies.
She took them and he helped himself to two boxes off the tray. He looked up at her, and she glanced at his eyes to see if he was going to ask her for something more. Then she froze. Every shred of warmth vanished from her body. She must be as white as a winter sky. It was Arthur Ballinger. She had no doubt of it. She had met him at several social functions with Wallace. She remembered him because he was Margaret Rathbone's father. Did he remember her? Was that why he was staring at her? This was even worse than in the shop! He would tell Wallace, he would be bound to. There was no conceivable explanation she could give. What reason could a lady of Society have for dressing up like a pauper and selling matches on the street outside a shop that sold pornography of the most depraved kind?
No, it was far worse than that! Ballinger would understand the reason. He would know she was spying on him, and others like him. She must speak, say something to shatter his suspicion and make him certain she was just what she looked like, a peddler, a woman of grinding poverty.
“Thank you, sir,” she said hoarsely, trying to imitate the voices of the women who came to the clinic. “Gawd bless yer,” she added, and choked on the gasped air and the dryness of her throat, now so rasping it nearly strangled her.