The Sin Eater

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘We’re only just over from Ireland,’ put in Declan, who did not want to admit this, but felt it was time he got into the conversation.

  ‘Oh, Ireland. Oh, fancy. Well, Romilly talked about a room in Canning Town,’ said Cerise, examining her nails with careful attention. ‘But I don’t know exactly where, I’m sure.’

  ‘Isn’t there anyone who would know? Any of the other girls?’

  ‘Catch them knowing anything,’ said Cerise, with a toss of her head. ‘You could try Mr Bullfinch.’

  ‘Who’s Mr Bullfinch?’

  ‘Gentleman who helps some of us out of trouble, from time to time.’ Cerise made the gesture of shrugging. ‘I gave Rom his address.’

  Within the shabby room, smelling of sex and cheap perfume, the attention of both the boys sharpened. Colm said, sharply, ‘My cousin was in trouble? What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Lor’ if you don’t know what kind of trouble us girls get into sometimes, you must be green,’ said Cerise, with a little trill of half-pitying laughter. ‘Usual kind of trouble, dear. Either you get a dose of glim – that’s the pox to you – or you find you’re up the duff. A kid. Rom was at least eight weeks gone when she left here. Said she’d prayed for a release from it – something about beads and the Holy Mother.’

  ‘The rosary,’ said Declan.

  ‘Whatever it was, it didn’t do no good. Well, I said to her, love, I said, you won’t find beads and praying will help you. You try the gin and hot bath, I said, and if that don’t work – which it didn’t – you go off to Mr Bullfinch. He’ll sort you out quick as a dose of castor oil, I said, and I gave her his address.’

  ‘Mr Bullfinch is an abortionist,’ said Declan, half-questioningly.

  ‘Don’t you go calling him that,’ said Cerise at once. ‘Or you’ll land in a different kind of trouble on your own account. He deals in pills for female irregularities, that’s all. And if the pills don’t work—’

  ‘There are other things he does,’ said Colm.

  ‘I never said so and nor will he. But if you want him, you’ll find him in Canning Town. Clock Street, down by the old river steps. You can’t miss it. I’d take you there myself if I wasn’t expecting one of my regulars in an hour.’

  ‘You know him, this Bullfinch?’

  ‘Blimey, dear, ’course I do. We all do,’ said Cerise, carelessly. ‘And he don’t half charge you, the old miser. Flossie’ll sometimes help with a bit of a loan if we need it, though.’

  ‘Did she help Romilly?’ Declan heard that this came out too eagerly, but he thought they were both hoping to hear Romilly had been given practical help – money certainly, perhaps assistance with finding somewhere to live. Even just friendship.

  But Cerise only said, ‘Flossie didn’t do nothing for Rom. I don’t think she liked Rom, much. She never said so, but I heard her tell somebody Rom should’ve known better’n to get knapped so soon and if she left, it was good riddance to bad rubbish. But Romilly’ll be all right. I sent her to Mr Bullfinch and he’ll see she’s all right.’

  As they went down the stairs, Colm stopped at a small half-landing and said quietly, ‘Declan, that girl referred to regulars.’

  ‘Regular men who come to the house? Would they have that?’

  ‘It sounded like it. Oh, we’re so bloody ignorant!’ said Colm angrily. ‘You’d think the monks might have taught us a bit about the bad old world and all the wicked evils lying in wait, instead of stuffing us to the gills with Latin and penitence and how not to commit simony or sneeze during Mass.’

  ‘Anyway, about regular men at the house?’ said Declan, because once Colm got on to the subject of what the monks had taught he would go on for hours and they could not stand here whispering on the stairs.

  ‘Let’s say Romilly did have regular men,’ said Colm. ‘I hate saying it, but she might. They’d have liked her, wouldn’t they? Maybe find her a bit unusual, and come back a second time and a third. If we could find one of those men, he might know where she went.’

  ‘Flossie Totteridge would know who the men were,’ said Declan.

  ‘She would, wouldn’t she? We’ll have to go back after all. Damn, I’d hoped we could vanish into the night like a couple of ghosts, but it’ll have to be faced. Do we toss a coin for it?’

  ‘We do not,’ said Declan firmly. ‘For one thing it’s clear you’re the one Mrs Totteridge wanted, and for another, any coins we’ve still got are going on tonight’s supper.’

  Mrs Totteridge appeared to be waiting for them anyway. She sat next to Colm, who said Cerise had been helpful, but had not known where his cousin was, either.

  ‘But my cousin would have had regular callers, would she?’

  ‘She might,’ said Flossie. ‘Yes, I do recall one or two gentlemen who asked for her, special like. One in particular. Looked like a little plucked fowl in a waistcoat, and tried to talk like a toff. Didn’t fool me, I can spot Cheapside a mile off.’

  ‘You’d remember his name, though, this little plucked fowl?’ said Colm, picking out the sole recognizable reference in this. ‘You’d know who comes and goes here, and how often.’

  ‘You’d maybe even keep notes,’ put in Declan, and received a cold stare.

  ‘No notes,’ said Flossie. ‘Never anything written down. Complete discretion, that’s what’s promised.’

  ‘But you know this little fowl’s name?’

  ‘Are you thinking you’ll talk to him?’

  ‘Yes. But we’d be discreet, as well,’ said Declan. ‘Could we go to his place of work?’

  ‘That might be acceptable,’ said Flossie. ‘But if it ever comes out I told you, you’d be the losers.’ Her eyes hardened. ‘I have friends as wouldn’t stand for me being rooked,’ she said.

  ‘We understand,’ said Colm. ‘We won’t give you away.’

  ‘Mrs Totteridge’s eyes flickered to where Declan sat and Colm instantly said, ‘You can just tell me, and I swear by all the saints I won’t breathe a word to anyone.’

  ‘Even him?’ said Flossie looking at Declan.

  ‘Specially not him, even though he’s as close as a clam. But he’s not staying,’ said Colm. ‘He has business to attend to just along the street.’

  His eyes held a look that Declan had seen a number of times in the shack when Colm was about to embark on a sexual adventure. It was not a look he had expected to see in a London brothel, with an ageing madam stroking Colm’s leg with unmistakable invitation. But he got up and said, ‘Colm, will I see you back at the lodgings? An hour, say?’

  ‘Make it two,’ said Flossie Totteridge, and her hand slid between Colm’s thighs. Over her head, Colm caught Declan’s eye and shrugged resignedly.

  ‘The little plucked fowl is called Mr Arnold Trumbull,’ said Colm. ‘He works in a printing firm at Islington, wherever that is. Tottery Floss thinks he’s the manager, although I practically had to swear on my immortal soul that I wouldn’t divulge that information to anyone.’

  ‘You’ve just divulged it to me.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re as close as a clam. So then she made it very clear she expected me to—’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ said Declan, hastily.

  ‘Good, because I don’t want to relive it. Will we go to Islington? I don’t know where it is, but we can get one of those omnibus carriages, apparently.’

  Mr Arnold Trumbull’s printing company was housed in a tall building squashed between other tall buildings. There was a smell of ink and paper. Mr Trumbull himself was a wispy gentleman, with a thin neck encased in a high wing collar, and rimless spectacles.

  ‘We’re here to get information about my cousin,’ said Colm abruptly. ‘We understand you knew her. Her name’s Romilly Rourke and she was one of the girls at Holly Lodge. And you,’ he said, in a tone full of contempt, ‘were one of the men who paid to go to bed with her.’

  Mr Trumbull, who had risen to his feet to greet them, now tottered back to his chair.

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to
say,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t slander. I’m a respectable businessman, a lay-preacher at St Botolph’s. And my sister is a pillar of the local community, known for her charitable works—’

  ‘Mr Trumbull,’ said Colm, perching on the edge of the desk, ‘we don’t care how many prostitutes you’ve had. We’re simply trying to find Romilly. Once we know where she is, we’ll leave you to your lay-preaching and your charitable works and all the rest of it. But it would be a pity,’ he said, ‘if it became known that such a respectable gentleman regularly visited a brothel. St Botolph’s, did you say? That’d be nearby, would it?’

  Colm’s veiled threat struck home. Speaking in a half-mumble, Arnold Trumbull admitted there had been an acquaintance with Miss Rourke – Romilly. But he supposed a man was allowed a bit of companionship of an evening – particularly when living with a sister who spent her days polishing furniture and her nights working for the relief of Superannuated Widows or Distressed Gentlewomen. And,’ said Mr Trumbull, in an injured tone, when the house smelled constantly of boiled cabbage and pig’s head. ‘Those being cheap and filling foods, on account of my sister donating most of the housekeeping to her charities.’

  ‘How often did you go to see Romilly?’ asked Declan, sidestepping these domesticities.

  Arnold Trumbull said huffily that being a man of regular habits he had gone to Holly Lodge on the first Tuesday of every month. ‘And I always paid my dues. And when Romilly had her trouble, I accepted responsibility like a gentleman. I gave her money. Ten guineas.’

  Declan and Colm stared at him. Colm said furiously, ‘So you were the one who got her pregnant. For pity’s sake, man, this is England, where you can walk into a shop and buy anti-conception aids for the asking!’

  Arnold Trumbull, crimson with embarrassment, said he had tried to do that, indeed he had. ‘I scoured the shops around St Stephen’s Road – a large population of merchant seamen there, so it seemed a likely place – and I found a shop where there were several boxes of the items. But I couldn’t face actually asking for a . . . So I fled the shop.’

  ‘Never mind what you did, where’s Romilly now?’ Colm leaned across the desk, and for a moment it seemed as if Arnold Trumbull’s pale eyes would manage to stare down Colm’s angry glare. But he was no match for Colm. He blinked and said, in a sulky mumble, that he believed Romilly had taken rooms in a house in the East End.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Bidder Lane, Canning Town.’

  FOURTEEN

  London, 1890s

  Canning Town, in the murky light of a fading afternoon, was drearier than Colm and Declan could have believed possible. The streets were narrow and rows of wizened houses huddled together as if for warmth or reassurance. There were narrow alleyways at intervals between the houses which might lead anywhere or nowhere. A solitary dog barked somewhere, and several times they heard angry voices or wailing babies from within the buildings. There were a few people about, mostly men, shabby and slightly furtive-looking, or shambling with the unsteady footsteps of the inebriated. The few women they saw had ragged shawls over their heads and bowed backs. They cast incurious glances at the two boys, and scuttled on.

  A faint mist lay everywhere, and Declan shivered and turned up his coat collar. ‘Romilly can’t be living here, can she?’

  ‘Little Trumbull said so.’ Colm paused at the intersection of two streets, and indicated a smoke-blackened sign.

  ‘Clock Street,’ said Declan. ‘The abortionist’s lair.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, myself, have put it so dramatically. But let’s take a look.’

  They had both been expecting Clock Street, where the unknown Mr Bullfinch plied his grisly trade, to be a sinister place, but there were only the same narrow houses, the same grey hopelessness. At the far end were warehouses with grimed bricks and blind, glassless windows.

  ‘We’re nearly at the quayside,’ said Declan. ‘Can you hear the river sounds?’

  ‘I don’t know about hearing the river; I can smell it,’ said Colm, disgustedly. ‘It’s like a wet coughing infection. If Romilly’s living here, she’ll be dead of typhoid within a month.’

  ‘There’s a flight of stone steps over there,’ said Declan. ‘That girl at Holly Lodge – Cerise – said Bullfinch lived near the river steps.’

  ‘He can’t make much money from what he does, or he’d have moved away long since,’ said Colm. ‘Are we going to confront Bullfinch? He’d probably be able to tell us where Bidder Lane is – even which house Romilly’s living in.’

  ‘Let’s see if we can find it for ourselves,’ said Declan, unwilling to march up to an abortionist’s house and demand to know the whereabouts of one of his clients.

  Bidder Lane, when they found it, was no better and no worse than the other streets.

  ‘But which house?’ said Colm, standing still and looking about him.

  ‘We’ll knock on all the doors until we find her. Somebody’ll know her,’ said Declan.

  In the event, the fourth house they tried provided the information. ‘Romilly Rourke,’ said the slatternly women. ‘Irish like you? Then it’s Number Forty, down there.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Not to say know. Can’t miss her, though, not with that hair.’

  When they knocked on the door of Number 40 it swung open. A smell of stale cooking and old damp gusted out and beyond the door was a narrow hall with a steep flight of stairs.

  Colm called out, but there was no response and they looked at one another, neither wanting to go inside, but aware that having got this close to Romilly they could not go back.

  The house did not look as if anyone had cared about it for years. Their footsteps rang out in the silence, and when Declan opened the doors of the two downstairs rooms the hinges screeched as if they were not accustomed to being used. There was a sour-smelling scullery at the back of the house with a cat-ridden square of garden beyond, and a grisly-looking wooden structure at the foot, which they supposed was an earth closet.

  ‘Shared with at least six other houses,’ said Declan, pointing. ‘I thought we were poor in Kilglenn, but it was a different kind of poverty. And there are hundreds of people living like this in London, probably thousands—’ He broke off and they both turned to the stair. From above them came a faint cry, followed by a weak tapping.

  Colm was halfway up the stairs before the sounds had died away, Declan hard on his heels. They opened two doors on to sad, empty rooms, then the third.

  The first thing to assault their senses was the stench. It was like bad meat, like something dead for a very long time. Colm recoiled and Declan clapped a hand over his mouth, and for a moment both had to fight a compulsion to run back down to the street.

  For a moment they thought that the figure sprawled on the bed was not Romilly after all. This was someone much older, someone husked dry of life and hope and delight . . . And yet the stringy hair had once been bright copper, and the waxen skin had been like porcelain . . .

  A thread-like voice said, ‘Hello, Colm. You took your time getting here . . .’

  She was lying amidst blood-soaked sheets, and on a marble washstand was a basin, covered with a stained cloth.

  Colm said, ‘Oh, Jesus, Rom, what happened to you?’ To Declan’s shame Colm was already seated on the edge of the bed, reaching for the thin hands, apparently heedless of the mess. He swallowed hard, then followed suit, sitting on the other side, reaching for Romilly’s other hand. Once it had been smooth and soft; now it felt like sandpaper and although he had expected it to be cold, it was not: it was as if the bones beneath were burning their way through what little flesh was left.

  ‘Bloody butcher,’ said Romilly, and even amidst the horror of the room, this was a small extra pinprick of shock because Romilly had never used bad language in Kilglenn.

  ‘We know you were . . . going to have a child,’ said Declan, awkwardly.

  ‘I was, but I didn’t intend to go through with it,’ said Romilly.
‘So I thought, I’ll get rid of it while it’s nothing more than a speck.’ Neither Colm nor Declan said anything, and Romilly said, angrily, ‘Listen, I know it’s a mortal sin and I’ll fry in hell . . . But can you see me with a kid? I’d hold it wrong way up half the time. And how was I supposed to feed it and clothe it when I’ve hardly been able to feed and clothe myself?’ She broke off, twisting in the bed as if trying to escape pain. ‘But wouldn’t you know I’d get even that wrong?’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you know that man would prod around too sharply and tear something?’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Bullfinch. Butcher Bullfinch, some of them call him,’ said Romilly, and the name came out on a gasp. ‘Only I didn’t know that until afterwards. They all said – Cerise and old Floss – both said he’d be all right.’

  ‘Bullfinch did this to you? Injured you?’

  ‘Yes.’ She moved restlessly in the bed again and Declan and Colm looked helplessly at each other. Neither had the least idea what to do

  Declan said, ‘Romilly, is there help we can get?’

  ‘The woman downstairs is doing that,’ said Romilly. ‘She’s gone to find Bullfinch.’

  ‘Bullfinch? Rom, we can’t let him near you again!’

  ‘She said he should put right what he did.’

  ‘But you need a real doctor—’

  ‘Declan, I can’t afford a real doctor!’ said Romilly. ‘This isn’t Kilglenn. Doctors here charge for what they do. And I haven’t a brass farthing in the world.’

  ‘I’ll get a doctor,’ said Colm, standing up. ‘We’ll find the money. Tell me where—’ He broke off as a door banged below, and footsteps came up the stairs.

  ‘’Oo are you?’ demanded a hard-faced female wearing a man’s cap.

  ‘Romilly’s cousins from Ireland,’ said Colm. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m ’er landlady, and if you’re her cousins, why din’t you come sooner like she wanted?’

  ‘We came as soon as we knew,’ said Declan. ‘Did you bring help?’

  ‘Bullfinch won’t come, the perishing old sinner. Says he can’t do nothing and it ain’t his fault. Frightened I’ll shop him to the rozzers, more like.’ She saw their look of bewilderment and said, ‘Tell the p’lice what he done. Don’t you have p’lice where you come from?’