She Be Damned

by M. J. Tjia

  I’m halfway down the short street when the carriage clumsily turns the corner, and a voice calls out to me from the left. I shy away from it, but a small yet strong hand darts from some bushes and pulls me in. Tripping on the hem of my skirt, I fall onto the hard ground behind a wrought iron fence.

  “Lie still.”

  I lie as flat as I can but my crinoline hoops pop up above my lower body like a shopfront awning. Possibly because it’s so dark, possibly because my dress blends in with the shadows of the bush, the carriage passes slowly by and disappears around the next corner.

  “Cor. You could fecking ‘ide under that thing.”

  I’m lying next to the young boy I’ve often seen scraping up litter on Frazier Street outside my temporary house. He’s staring with wonder at my billowing skirt.

  I stagger to my feet, grasping onto branches of the bush to steady myself. “Thank you for that,” I say, wiping the dirt from my gown.

  I scoop up some coins which have slipped from my reticule and offer them to the boy. The fragile, pink petals of the impatiens are quite squashed into the ground. I’d forgotten about my handgun and feel for its reassuring bulk. I should’ve drawn it on the carriage, but really, I would’ve felt foolish brandishing a gun like I was a cavalryman or something.

  “You lives in the ladybird’s house on the corner, doncha?” the boy asks.

  “What makes you think it’s a ladybird’s house?”

  He snorts. “It’s always been a ladybird’s house. Mind yous, you don’t look like a renter, I’ll vouch fer that.”

  I drop him a small curtsey. “Thank you, kind sir.”

  The boy accompanies me as I walk the rest of the way to the house. My legs are a little wobbly from the run and fright.

  “What’s your name?” I ask him.

  “Me da’ calls me Chat.”

  I open my front door, glancing over the street one last time for the carriage.

  “Thank you for your help, Chat,” I say, slipping into the house and closing the door against the darkness.

  LI LEEN

  It is always cold here, and it is not yet winter. Even though I have gweilo blood running through my body I have never, ever grown accustomed to the constant chill in the air. While she is away I sit by the fireside and the dry air and the heat that crackles from the flames withers me away. The skin on my arms and on my shins is becoming like a snake’s, but without the shine. It is never this cold from where I come, not even in the early morning when the malkohas first cuckoo and the geckos tut. Here I never feel moist perspiration settle like dew at my hairline or the refreshing trickle of sweat between my bosoms.

  My father left Makassar when the Dutch returned and expelled the British for good. He took my uncle with him on the ship, but left my mother and me behind. I was only an infant, so I do not remember him, but Mother told me that he was a very pale man, and that he had tiny, gingery freckles all over his body. I too have these spots scattered across my nose and cheeks and no amount of pork lard or menthol rub made them disappear.

  Not long after my father left us, Grandfather insisted my mother marry a local merchant. Grandfather said it was because he was of Chinese blood like we were, but I now wonder if we were sold off to pay his mahjong debt. Tiri, as I called him, was the wealthiest of the Chinese merchants in Makassar and he controlled all the illegal gaming houses and brothels. Everyone was wary of my stepfather. Even the Dutch governor and his staff did not interfere with Tiri.

  Being Tiri’s stepdaughter meant I had servants of my own – one to chaperone me to the temple and one to sweep my room and wash my clothes and even one to fan me whilst I slept. But that all changed when I was made to leave Makassar and voyage across the world so that I could work in my uncle’s noodle shop in Liverpool. No more the balmy warmth of home, just the unpleasant heat of the kitchen as I toiled over the boiling stock made from water and my sweat. And now this chill. Always this chill.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Mrs Chancey, there be a gentleman at the door for you,” Agnes calls from the hallway.

  When I pop my head around the bedroom doorway I’m surprised to see that it’s Sergeant Chapman.

  “Good morning. I’m just at my dressing table, I’ll be down in a moment. Please wait in the sitting room.”

  What on earth is the sergeant doing in my house? I drop Mordaunt’s notebook on the bed. The evening before I’d only glanced over it. Being shaken by the encounter with the carriage, I’d gulped down several small glasses of wine until my emotions had blurred enough to fall asleep. I’d woken four times during the night, heart racing, night dress drenched in sweat, but apart from flashes of memory – a bloom of poppy red, frayed white linen, dark words I couldn’t decipher – I don’t remember the nightmares.

  I feel a bit seedy and two of my fingernails are torn from when I fell over the night before. I’d gingerly bathed away the blood from my knees but my petticoats brush against the scrapes uncomfortably. I can’t help but frown at my reflection in the mirror. My shiny, charcoal grey dress is so boring. It’s really such a drab colour and my white petticoats could do with a wash. I have a sudden, pleasing thought and rifling through all my hatboxes I come across the headpiece for which I’m searching. It’s a black, velvet pork-pie hat of the very latest fashion with a pert plume of purple feathers, and it has yet to be worn. I attach it rakishly at an angle to my head and spray my décolletage and wrists liberally with Eau de Cologne Impériale.

  Sgt Chapman springs up from the sofa as soon as I enter the room. I urge him to sit.

  “But how did you find me?” I ask.

  A small smile hovers under his moustache. “I have my ways. I’m a detective, after all.”

  I grin back at him, but I still want to know how he’s tracked me down. “I don’t think that answer is good enough, sir.”

  “Actually, you left your directions with Mrs Dawkins. She supplied me with this address.”

  “Ah. And why did you feel the need to seek me out?”

  His face becomes serious. “Unfortunately I had cause to be at the mortuary again this morning, and happened across Mrs Dawkins there.”

  I can only gape at him for a moment, and my voice is deep with dread when it finally surfaces. “Tell me, what was it that made you return to the mortuary?”

  “Another body has turned up. Another woman.”

  “No,” I breathe. “No. That is terrible.”

  “Yes, yes it is.” Sgt Chapman watches me, grim. “I’m afraid it might be your cousin this time, Mrs Chancey.”

  I press my fingers against my mouth, mashing my lips until they sting. “How ghastly. Was she… Was she…?” I cannot form the words. “Like that poor woman at the morgue?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Sgt Chapman pauses to let the words sink in. “She has come to the same end as the other victims.”

  “Terrible.” I wring the tip of each finger on my right hand. They’re icy. “I suppose you need me to identify her?”

  “If you feel up to it, that would be helpful, Mrs Chancey,” he answers. “Her body has been removed to the police station. If you would accompany me there, the Inspector would be very thankful.”

  He allows me a little time to collect my reticule and a parasol for a light rain has set in, and he helps me climb into a police buggy which awaits us. It’s not too far to the police station, a Georgian three storey building which is situated directly next to the more ornate magistrates’ court. I follow him through the station’s arched doorway into its cool interior.

  The whitewashed walls of the entrance hall are a pale yellow. A tired looking woman clutching a toddler to her side is seated on a wooden bench next to a sleeping man who smells strongly of spirits. Behind a desk stands a policeman, tall and official in his dark blue tunic with its brass buttons and high neck. He greets Chapman with a nod, then turns back to his paperwork.

  A portly man in a black frock coat comes forward to meet us. “Is this the lady’s cousin, Sgt Chapman?” he ask
s, as he clasps my hand.

  “I am,” I answer, introducing myself. “Mrs Chancey.”

  “Inspector Kelley.” He ushers us through the station to the back, until we stand in its cobblestoned yard. “Horrible business to put a lady through, but it would be very useful if we could finally identify one of these women.” He places his plump hand on the door handle of what looks like a large outhouse. “Are you ready, my dear?”

  I find I can’t speak, but feeling Sgt Chapman’s hand on my elbow give a supportive squeeze, I nod my head.

  “Right,” says the inspector, as he flings open the door.

  The room is chilly and very bare, except for the shrouded figure which is laid out along a cot-bed. A constable carrying a lantern precedes us into the room to shed light on the body. I can see a stain on the lower half of the sheet, a blotch of rusty red. I doggedly keep my gaze on the inspector’s face. He’s standing opposite me on the other side of the body and I wonder at the daintiness of his fleshy fingers as he picks up the corners of the sheet and looks at me expectantly.

  “Ready?”

  I nod again, mouth dry, and force myself to gaze down upon the face of the latest victim. In death, the young woman’s skin is the colour of aged ivory and has lost its youthful rosiness. Her pink lips are swollen and bruised, and tinged with a deathly blue. The pretty, china doll-face shattered. From the corner of the woman’s eye, snaking its way down to her temple and through to her hair, is the dry trail of a tear.

  I’ve never fainted, not when my corset’s so tight I can barely breathe, nor when the stage becomes so hot with candlelight I feel I could suffocate. Not even back in those days when I couldn’t find food for days, and I wandered the lanes delirious with hunger. But I find the room whirls around my ears in a warm, nauseous rush as sweat pricks at my skin.

  “Is this your Miss Carter?” asks the inspector.

  I shake my head slowly. “No. It isn’t. But I know who she is.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “It was definitely that Dutch girl, Till,” I say, taking a sip of the sherry cobbler we’re sharing. We’re seated together again at the tall table in The Old Trout and the alcohol warms my chest and loosens the tension in my shoulders.

  “Bloody hell,” whispers Tilly. She takes a long pull of the sherry through her straw. “Bloody hell.”

  We smoke and drink in silence for a few moments. I shiver, and pull my shawl more securely about my shoulders, and wish that we could be seated nearer to the fireside, but women are banished to the far end of the room for fear that their layers of skirt and petticoat catch alight. I’ve seen several cases of women rolled upon the floor, while the smoke and flames are smacked from their gowns. The stench of singed hair, scorched skin mingled with burning fabric. Awful.

  “Poor Anneke,” says Tilly.

  “Was that her name? I didn’t know.”

  “The Charlies called her Annie. She used to always boast she was good with her quail pipe, which was lucky ‘cause half the time she had shocking shankers.” Her mouth lifts in a wry smile and she takes another sip of the sherry cobbler.

  “Did she see a doctor?”

  Tilly shrugs. “She saw that nice young doctor last year when she was poorly, but usually Henry helped her out.”

  “Henry?” I think of the barman at Silvestre’s. “Why Henry?”

  “He used to be a dispenser in a pharmacy or something,” Tilly answers. “He’s always giving us evil tasting draughts when we’re sick.” She pushes a pink strand of hair back from her forehead. “Where’d they find her?”

  “Down by the river next to Rooper’s fishmonger. Apparently she lay in the mud for quite a while because passers-by thought she was just another tail lushy from too much gin. A fruit vendor finally noticed the blood and summoned the police.”

  “Terrible,” she says. She looks at me, puzzled. “How do you know all this? Why did they send for you?”

  I explain how I’d met the sergeant at the mortuary, and that they had collected me in the hope of having the body identified. “They thought it might be Eleanor Carter.”

  “And you reckon Anneke died like the other girls?”

  “I do. Till, have you heard of women having their insides taken out – their wombs?”

  “Of course. When I lived with my aunt in Clerkenwell, the churchwarden’s wife had terrible pains in her middles and had her womb removed. She was so sickly and sad afterwards because she could never have children.”

  “Well, that’s what’s happening to these women. Other renters like us, Till. They’re not just getting a scrape. Their whole wombs are being sliced out too. And their other bits. Their quims.”

  She freezes over the straw. “So it’s true. The girls by the bridge are calling it the devil’s scrape, but I thought it was all talk. Just their pimps trying to scare them silly.”

  “Yeah, it’s happening. They bleed to death.” Something occurs to me. “Do you think Anneke was pregnant?”

  “I wouldn’t know. We weren’t that close,” she says. “But I did see her puking the other day. I’ve only been in the pudding club once but I was as bleak as a periwinkle’s arsehole. Dr Mordaunt took care of me.” She gives me a sharp look. “Dr Mordaunt wouldn’t do this, Hell.”

  I’m unconvinced. “But didn’t you say she was seeing another doctor?”

  “That’s right. Dr Blain. Sabine, that French girl, pointed him out to me one night when he was eating his supper at the Lion’s Inn.”

  “Is that so?”

  “The girls adore him, from what I heard. Luckily, I haven’t had any call to see a doctor for years so I haven’t been to him. You don’t think he could have hurt her, do you?”

  “I don’t know. But, just tell the girls to be careful.”

  “What? Keep their legs crossed?” Tilly guffaws. “Jesus, I never thought the day would come when it’d be preferable to have a bairn than have a scrape.” She rolls her eyes, smiling.

  “I agree. Who wants a bairn?” I say, the last of the sherry cobbler bubbling up the straw. I make sure she can’t see my eyes. “How do you avoid it?”

  “I have these French regulating pills.” She takes a brass trimmed pill box, hidden under the folds of her skirt, to show me. “Oh, they cramps up your middles something awful. Sometimes I have to take time off from the Charlies. What do you do?”

  “Not a thing,” I say, hopping down from my stool. “Just good luck I suppose.”

  As we round the corner onto Pearman Street, Henry brushes past us, smoking a cigar. He’s dressed in a green and white gingham gown, and his wig is a little askew.

  Tilly looks over her shoulder at his receding figure. “I wonder where he’s off to in such a hurry.”

  Just then Sergeant Chapman comes out through Silvestre’s gate. He lifts his hat to Tilly as she slips past him, and then bows in my direction. “Mrs Chancey.”

  “Sgt Chapman. Are you here to ask about the Dutch girl?”

  “That’s right. Inspector Kelley wanted me to find out what I can about her.”

  “And did you find out what you needed?”

  He smiles his crooked smile. “Unfortunately, Mme Silvestre and her girls were not disposed to talking to me. However, you seem quite friendly with that woman with the pink hair. Did she tell you anything of interest?”

  “I think she might have.”

  Sergeant Chapman offers me his elbow. “Well, I am famished. How would you like to join me for lunch and tell me all you have discovered?”

  Tucking my hand into the crook of his arm I allow him to lead the way. If he is to pump me for information, I can draw some from him too, after all. We come to The Pond and Swan hotel not quite two streets away. The large room is cosy and well-lit, and we’re seated at a small round table with a fresh, linen cloth. We each order the roast meat and vegetables.

  “And to drink?” asks the waiter.

  “I’ll have a glass of claret,” says Sgt Chapman.

  “And for madam?” asks the waite
r, still addressing the sergeant.

  Sgt Chapman raises his eyebrow at me.

  “A glass of claret would be lovely,” I reply.

  The waiter bows slightly and withdraws.

  “He must think you’re my little wife,” says Chapman.

  “Or he’s pretending I am, at any rate.”

  “In that case, why don’t you call me Bill from now on. After all, we seem to be becoming quite well acquainted.”

  He busies himself with the serviette, avoiding my eye. He’s becoming jolly friendly all of a sudden.

  The waiter places our glasses of wine before us.

  “Then you must call me Heloise.”

  “Your name is French?”

  I smile. “Almost certainly. I’m afraid all my maternal relatives are from the continent.” Another lie. He probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce my real name. And he certainly wouldn’t be sitting there, looking chuffed with himself, if he knew all about me. I know it’s wrong, but I always feel a thrill of mischief as the well-practiced lie slips easily from my mouth.

  Our meals arrive and, as I fight to keep the blanched, watery vegetables on my fork, I tell the sergeant what I learnt from Tilly.

  “So she may have been with child?” he asks.

  “Maybe. Tilly was not quite sure. And I’m afraid Anneke’s best friend in the house was the French girl, and I doubt very much if she’ll talk even to me.”

  “And she once went to see this Dr Blain?” He reaches into his waistcoat pocket, withdraws a small notebook and pencil and starts to take notes. “But sometimes the girls were treated by Henry…” he murmurs as he writes. He looks up. “Do you know his surname?”

  “No. I just know him as the barman at Silvestre’s.”

  He folds the notebook and places it back into his pocket.

  “These women… they’re bleeding to death?”

  Bill nods. “Yes, it seems that way.”