by Alex Reeve
‘And then, one by one, we got new customers, proper gentlemen from the local area, who valued what we offered and were willing to pay for discretion. And so I built the place up to what it is today.’ She bloomed with pride. ‘And do you know what, Mr Stanhope? The Colonel, he was the first through the door. His wife had recently passed away and, well, you know how it is.’ She faltered a little, remembering who she was speaking to, and then recovered. ‘Those days are long gone for him now of course, poor dear.’
‘And what happened to Mrs O’Leary?’ I asked.
Mrs Brafton flexed her jaw as if she’d found some gristle between her teeth and was trying to prise it loose with her tongue. ‘She crawled off to Nancy Gainsford and begged to be reinstated. She told her what an evil woman I was, with my modern schemes and what she called snobbishness. But Nancy couldn’t persuade Mr Bentinck of course, so Mrs O’Leary had to go. She drank herself to death and was found in a gutter down by Stepney Way. A merry enough soul, but no ambition.’
We had finished our tea and it seemed like time to go. I nodded to Rosie, who shrugged and pursed her lips. She had wanted to appeal to whoever had killed Jack to leave her and her children alone, but she’d made no progress. Mrs Brafton had adroitly played the part of the grieving employer, and it was impossible to tell whether she knew more than she was saying.
I could only think of one more question, though I very much doubted she would answer it.
‘Mrs Brafton, does the name Augustus Thorpe mean anything to you?’
She folded her arms. ‘Discretion above all things is my golden rule here. I’m sure you appreciate that.’ She glanced briefly at the sideboard and then, more overtly, at the clock on the mantelpiece, lost among the candlesticks. ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you.’
As we stood up, my mind was turning fast. The last time I’d been in this room she had castigated me for missing the end of my appointment. It had been my last evening with Maria. I’d come here with those theatre tickets in my pocket and my heart in my mouth, and had walked away without even looking up at Maria’s window, fearful of seeing another man’s shadow against her curtain. How petty that seemed now. I’d assumed we’d have all the time in the world, and never dreamt that I wouldn’t be seeing her the following week.
The appointment book, I thought. The appointment book! It was Mrs Brafton’s lodestone, her way of keeping order in a chaotic world. That was why she’d been so annoyed with me that day. The appointment book maintained the pretence that this was some kind of gentlemen’s club, rather than a market-stall for the lusty, lonely and desperate. Lord knows, I was all three.
I had to think of a way of coaxing Mrs Brafton to leave the room.
‘Last time I was here I think I left a book behind. Barnaby Rudge. I’d love to have it back, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘A book? I’m sorry, everything of Maria’s … well, the girls divided up her clothes and things. I don’t remember any book.’
‘It has sentimental value.’
She smiled and indicated the door. ‘If it turns up I can let you know.’ It was obvious she wanted us to leave.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, not taking the hint. ‘But I’d dearly love to have it back now. It’s a bit tatty, and might be taken for rubbish. I would so hate to lose it.’
She sighed and scratched her head. ‘I could ask.’
When she’d gone, Rosie sat down again with a sigh. I put my finger to my lips, and opened the drawer of the sideboard. Blotters, pens, ink and loose sheets of paper covered in fast, flowing handwriting. I scanned them briefly, but none meant more to me than the daily minutiae of life: shopping lists (‘ham, cheese, small cabbage’) and reminders (‘sink leaking’).
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Rosie.
There was a locked wooden box with something inside that rustled and rattled like money. Underneath that was the black leather appointment book. I slipped it out and opened it up.
‘All the names are here,’ I whispered. ‘Every day going back months. Every girl and every customer, all in order. It’s even got the daily take at the bottom of each page. Three pounds, twelve and ten, yesterday.’
‘Put it back.’ She was glowering at me. ‘What if she finds out? She’ll know it was us. I came here to make peace. Put it back right now or I’ll shout the place down.’
Maria’s name was in the same place on every page, right at the top. Her days were always full. Every Wednesday at seven o’clock, what had meant everything to me was reduced to: ‘L. Stanhope, five shillings’.
On other days there were, of course, other names. I found Jack Flowers twice, the first with his full name and the next with just ‘Jack’, at four o’clock on a Monday afternoon, marked in capitals with the word ‘GRATIS’.
‘Look here.’ I showed Rosie. ‘She did know your husband. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Put it back this instant or I’ll start hollering, I swear I will.’
‘And he was gratis. It means free,’ I said. ‘He didn’t have to pay.’
‘That sounds like him, the skinflint. You have ten seconds.’
I could hear a sound from upstairs, heavy footsteps on the landing above us. I continued turning pages, going backwards in time. On the next page, on a Sunday afternoon, I found a name: A. Thorpe, walk in park.
‘My goodness! Augustus Thorpe! His name’s here. She booked him in!’
‘Eight.’
‘I wonder if he owns a boat.’
‘Why would he? Seven.’
I turned the page. On a Tuesday afternoon, Maria’s name was circled with an arrow down to another girl, Tilly. Written in capitals next to it was: ‘MR BENTINCK, HOUSE CALL, BURTON STREET, BELGRAVIA’.
‘See here,’ I whispered to Rosie. ‘Bentinck. He had the girls sent round to his house!’
‘Five,’ she said.
I turned over a few more pages, going back several weeks. There were more of the same names repeated, meaning nothing to me, until I came across one that I couldn’t believe. I had to read it twice just to check I wasn’t going mad. December 29th, at seven in the evening, for one hour with Maria. And again the Monday before and the one before that.
‘Two,’ said Rosie, standing up.
I could hear someone coming down the stairs. I shoved the appointment book back into the drawer, but it jammed. I yanked the drawer out and tried to push it home, but the book lodged against something and it wouldn’t completely close.
‘Quick!’ hissed Rosie.
I spun round as Hugo entered the room, and finally, with a bang that must have been heard all over the house, forced the drawer shut with my behind.
He looked from me to the drawer, and seemed about to say something when Mrs Brafton came in.
‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t find your book. You must’ve left it somewhere else. Thank you both so much for coming, and again, Mrs Flowers, my sincere condolences.’
We hurried out before anyone could stop us.
Rosie was prattling on as we walked up Long Acre, but my mind was spinning. I still couldn’t believe the last name I’d read.
She grabbed my arm. ‘Are you even listening to me? You’re a bloody fool. You could’ve cost me everything. You had no business searching through her private possessions.’
‘I know, but the book contained names and places. It might help me learn who killed Maria.’
I thought this would calm her down, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.
‘And my children and me count for nothing? You put us at risk, do you know that? You only care about yourself. You men are all the same, aren’t you?’
I considered the question, feeling light-headed. ‘I honestly wouldn’t say so.’
‘God, if women were in charge the world would be a better place, and it would smell sweeter and all.’
‘But Mrs Brafton accidentally gave us some interesting information,’ I explained. ‘She told us Bentinck knows people in Brussels. Royalty, if we can believe her. Maria was found
by the river, and Jack drowned, and you were held on a boat. I think the boat must belong to Bentinck. My guess is he’s involved in some kind of illegal trade in Belgium.’
‘The woman’s a fool, is what she is. She’s done everything and she’s giving this Bentinck fellow all the credit. She’s sweet on him is the truth. You could fill an ocean with women’s tears over men.’ Rosie folded her arms. ‘And she wasn’t friendly about that other woman, was she? Miss Gainsford, was it? Who’s she?’
‘She’s Bentinck’s bookkeeper.’
‘Pretty lady, I suppose?’
‘Oh yes, very.’
I thought back to my conversation with Nancy Gainsford after the funeral. There was certainly tension between the two women, Mrs Brafton believing the brothel was hers, and occupying her position rather as if she was the headmistress of an exclusive school, while Miss Gainsford treated her as little more than a housekeeper.
‘We have to go to the police,’ I said. ‘We need them to investigate the boat and look at Bentinck’s accounts for a connection to Belgium.’
She laughed, actually laughed, and wiped her eyes behind her spectacles. ‘Such faith! A gentleman with all his wealth and connections. They’ll spit in your face.’
‘We have to try.’
‘There’s no “we”.’
‘Please. It’ll mean more if we both go. They can’t ignore us both.’
‘They can and they will.’
I took a deep breath. Bentinck was a dangerous man, no doubt: beatings and stabbings, fires, even a drowning. And at the end, there was just James Bentinck. But I’d come this far, and I wouldn’t do what Thorpe had done. Despite all the lies she had told me, and the truths she had hidden from me, I wouldn’t abandon Maria.
‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘If you change your mind, meet me at the pharmacy at seven.’
I watched her walk away, quickly lost among the crowds. I was heading in a different direction, north-east, half-running past Lincoln’s Inn Fields just as the distant clocks struck the hour. It occurred to me that I’d completely forgotten to go to work, but it was too late now. I’d have to miss my shift. I knew I should care more about that, and some part of me did, but that voice was drowned out by a far bigger noise: a shout, a roar of rage.
The name in the book, who’d been with Maria every Monday for weeks – I couldn’t believe it was true, but it had been written there in black and white: Jacob Kleiner.
18
I had first met Jacob at the chess club. He was playing Durant, who was the sweetest fellow before a game, but became aggressive if he started losing, swearing and slamming his pieces down on the board. Their match was swinging to and fro, each having the upper hand for a while, until Jacob closed in on the win, and Durant bit his nails down to the quick.
‘You toyed with him,’ I said, when the game was finished and Durant had stormed off home.
Jacob puffed on his cigar in a manner with which I would become familiar, and indicated the seat opposite.
‘It’s educational,’ he said. ‘I’m teaching him not to lose his temper.’
‘By driving him mad?’
‘A little madness is no bad thing. Do you want to play?’ He held out his hand for me to shake. ‘Keep in mind it’s impolite to beat an old man first time out.’
The following Thursday we played again, and the one after that, and over the weeks and months he became something I’d never had before: a friend. When I was a child, I’d wanted to keep company with the boys, but they weren’t interested in a girl who would either ruin their game or show them up, and all my female friendships had been forced upon me or, later, laced with unrequited love and lust. I had been inseparable from pretty, blonde Sylvia before she got spoony on some boy. When I stopped calling on her, she said I was jealous, and she was right and wrong at the same time.
But Jacob accepted me as a man and liked me anyway. He invited me to dinner and so I met Lilya, and after drinking too much of the dangerously sweet spirit his brother brewed, I stayed one night in the room that had been spare since their son Michael had left home to make scientific instruments in Norwood. Jacob blundered in drunk, just as I was unwrapping my cilice, and he stood there with his mouth hanging open. I hadn’t realised this was the room he slept in whenever Lilya booted him out of their marital bed for snoring too loudly, and he was a creature of habit. The following morning I hoped the alcohol might have voided his memory along with his stomach, but he was gone before I awoke and I didn’t see him for three long weeks. I assumed he was lost to me, until one day he dropped into step alongside me on my way to work.
‘Ladies can’t play chess,’ he declared, and even though he was misguided, I didn’t argue. I ended up telling him everything about myself, and I suppose it made us closer friends, as only the very lonely can be.
But all of that was finished now. As the hansom cab dropped me outside Jacob’s shop, I was thinking: this will be my last ever visit.
I clenched my teeth and hammered on the door, sending their little dog into a frenzy of barking. I was relieved when Lilya’s face appeared at the window.
‘Who is it?’ she called.
‘It’s Leo.’
She rushed for the lock and fumbled with it, finally throwing open the door with a smile. I was always surprised how lovely she was, ten years younger than Jacob at the least, with a round, friendly face and a wise mouth.
‘It’s good to see you, Lilya.’
She reached out and put her hand on my shoulder, feeling the bones under my skin, and then up to my cheek.
‘You’re so thin,’ she said. ‘Always so thin. You must come around here more often and I will feed you sausages and pancakes until you are fat as a pig.’
She led me through the little room, feeling her way. Jacob’s shop was more of a workshop, no bigger than ten feet by twelve, with a bench covered in tools, and walls lined with boxes containing all manner of tiny cogs and links and springs. She knew every inch of it, but he was not a tidy worker and was apt to leave things lying around that she might tread on.
Lilya was almost blind. She could still see a hazy circle in the centre of her vision, but outside of that little tube of light, everything was shadow. She could tell night from day and people from horses, but was unable to read a book, although she loved Jacob to read to her, in German or Russian, depending on her mood. She could still play her gypsy guitar well enough, and sing folk songs that moved me terribly, though I didn’t understand a word of them. And she could still cook, moving around the stove with a musician’s fingers, measuring and slicing and mixing.
‘He’s upstairs,’ she said. ‘Napping. He’ll wake up when he smells the food. You’ll stay and eat with us, yes?’
Jacob’s place was laid out quite differently from Alfie’s. A narrow stair led up to the first floor, which was far larger, sprawling across his own shop and the ones on either side, and above that was another floor with bedrooms that seemed cut from a different template entirely, as if the architect had got drunk and drawn in walls haphazardly. I loved to curl up on the window seat there and gaze out over the roofs.
Lilya was cooking and singing while her little dog scurried between her feet, hoping she would drop some chicken.
‘You’re so quiet,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t know if you’re still there.’
‘Still here.’
When the smell became so strong that it was almost edible itself, Jacob stamped down the stairs barefoot, wearing baggy trousers and a shirt untucked around his braces. Seeing me sitting at their little table, his face lit up.
‘Leo!’ he said. ‘Where have you been? On Thursday I had to play some solicitor who was so useless I started giving him tips. And he was teetotal! Can you believe it? He lectured me on the evils of drink.’
He poured two small glasses of whisky and handed one to me. I pulled out my notebook and pencil from my pocket, and wrote down I KNOW YOU KNEW MARIA and turned it round so he could see it.
‘What
are you doing?’ He read it and blanched, pushing his fingers through his hair, what was left of it. He glanced at Lilya and whispered: ‘Leo …’ I gave him my pencil and he wrote briefly in the notebook: I’M SORRY.
Lilya noticed the silence and tapped on a saucepan with a spoon, clang, clang, clang. ‘No! You speak out loud so I can hear you. No whispering like little girls.’
‘Of course, Lilya,’ I said, and then, loudly, to Jacob: ‘I might be at chess next week.’
I wrote down: WHY?
‘Good,’ he said, scribbling on the paper: I WANTED TO KNOW HER. YOU TALKED ABOUT HER. I WAS WEAK.
‘And Lilya?’ I said, looking at Jacob.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘That smells simply delicious.’
She nodded with satisfaction. This was an old game. She always complained that her cantankerous husband never offered her any appreciation, so I overdid my praise to show him up, though I wasn’t lying.
Jacob turned the paper round again: I WILL ALWAYS BE HUSBAND TO LILYA. ALWAYS. MARIA WAS TEMPTATION. I AM OLD MAN.
‘And how is business?’ I said.
WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE HER? I wrote.
‘Never enough customers, and always they want cheap, cheap. No one values quality any more.’
He took the notebook and wrote for several seconds, slowly and precisely. A MONTH AGO. I’M SORRY. STOPPED FOR YOUR SAKE.