by Alex Reeve
‘Where’s Mrs Brafton?’
‘Weeping mostly. She was soft on Mr Bentinck, and she took the news badly. Miss Gainsford’s in charge now, and she says we can make more chink if we have more rooms and use them more often. She says men will pay for half an hour or even a quarter. Bloody toshers and mudlarks, just like the old days. These lads are turning the parlour into another bedroom and the same in the back and two more upstairs. It’ll be first come, first served, no more appointments.’
She indicated a roll-top bureau in the hallway, and I saw that the appointment book had been slung on some papers, along with a scattering of pencils, pens, an inkpot and a jet necklace I’d seen Mrs Brafton wear a couple of times. Next to it there was a bucket containing oddments from the parlour: candlesticks, ornaments and the willow-pattern bowl, broken in two.
‘Would you be kind enough to fetch her for me?’
She shook her head. ‘I could try, but she won’t come out. Even with all this going on, she hasn’t done a thing.’ She glanced at me, a sly little look, and I thought: you’re hoping Miss Gainsford will put you in charge of the place. Ambitious. ‘She moved into Maria’s old room. You can go up if you want.’
I stood shivering outside Maria’s door. Last time I’d been there, I’d hesitated, relishing that brief delay before she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. It would never happen again.
I knocked, rat-a-tat-tat. There was no answer, so I pushed it open and went inside.
All of Maria’s possessions were gone. The bed was unmade, with blankets scattered on the floor, and Mrs Brafton was sitting at the dressing table, which had two bottles on it, not perfume but gin. One was empty and one half-full.
She turned to look at me with a face like carved stone.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, perfectly clearly. There was no sign that she was drunk.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Brafton?’
‘Of course. It’s all just business. That’s what he always said, just business.’ She turned away from me, but continued talking. ‘He was a great man. He believed in something, a better world through commerce. And now he’s gone.’
‘I want to talk about Maria. It’ll only take a minute.’
Downstairs there were noises of men banging heavy furniture into the walls. I could imagine the plaster being gouged out by the corners of her precious sideboard, but Mrs Brafton didn’t flinch. She poured a small shot of gin into a tiny glass, like something you’d find in a doll’s house.
‘I don’t normally drink,’ she said. ‘But it’s what people do, isn’t it? Drown their sorrows. I don’t even like the taste, and it’s not working anyway. Do you drink? Does it help you forget you’re a woman?’
‘I don’t need to forget anything. And yes, I like a whisky occasionally.’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘That’s quite all right, thank you.’
‘What was your name, before, anyway? Elsie? Mildred? No, you’re an educated person, you have breeding. It would be Anne or Victoria, something like that. Victoria Stanhope sounds about right. How old are you?’
‘Why is that important?’
She downed the tiny glass and winced with disgust. ‘I just can’t comprehend why something like you is still alive, and a man like James Bentinck is dead.’
Her words didn’t matter. Once you’ve taken off your skin and laid it aside, there’s very little anyone can do to prick you. Still, I saw no reason not to tell her the truth.
‘He was a vile man, a coward, who cared nothing for you or anyone. He deserved to die. The world is a better place without him.’
‘Audrey!’ Mrs Brafton shouted, and I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Her head appeared around the door.
‘What is it?’ she asked, with minimal respect.
‘Go and fetch the police right now. Tell them we’ve got a criminal in the house.’
‘Police? What, here?’
‘Do as I say. And tell them she’s a grotesque, a woman pretending to be a man, who dresses like a man. And tell them she calls herself Leo Stanhope. Tell them everything! Go! What are you waiting for?’
Audrey scuttled away down the stairs. I thought of chasing after her, but what would I do if I caught her? I didn’t fancy my chances. She’d had years of practice at beating men with sticks.
Mrs Brafton turned back to the dressing table, as though nothing had happened, and poured herself another thimbleful of gin. ‘It was Nancy Gainsford, of course. She killed him.’
‘The police say Hugo did it.’
‘Nonsense, he would never hurt James. He’s been with him for years. And even if it is true, it’s because she put him up to it. Turned James’s own man against him. She always resented his success and hated how close we were. I could see it. The only way to usurp him was to kill him, and that’s what she’s done.’
‘She’s taken over the business.’
‘All the time I’ve put into this place, and James hadn’t even been dead a day before she swanned in, gloating and preening, with that ghastly little docker of hers, and told me to pack up my things and be out by tomorrow.’
Mrs Brafton was a strong woman, but I feared she might be about to break down. And there were things I needed to know.
‘Was Maria especially close to any of the girls?’
‘Don’t be jealous, Victoria, my dear. It’ll drive you mad.’
‘I’m trying to work out who murdered her. Was she close to any of the girls? Or a customer? Are any of them female?’
Mrs Brafton downed another gin and licked her lips. No wince this time, she was getting used to it. ‘Nancy Gainsford,’ she said. ‘She was besotted with Maria. They had a … you know. The usual silliness.’
‘Nancy Gainsford? You’re saying Miss Gainsford was in love with Maria?’
It seemed impossible, but I remembered how Miss Gainsford had confided in me at the funeral, talking of their great friendship and asking if Maria had ever mentioned her.
Mrs Brafton poured herself another glass of gin, with no sign of a tremble in her hand. ‘I used to send Maria over to James’s house, but it wasn’t really for him, it was Nancy she was with. The woman was forever giving her dresses and jewellery, and spending hours brushing her hair as if they were sisters. It was pathetic. Ludicrous.’
‘Why would I believe you? You obviously hate her.’
‘I don’t care what you believe. She was infatuated with Maria and she killed James. But she’s nothing without him, nothing.’
I went to the window where Maria used to stand and blow me kisses. Those kisses used to last me for days, seeping into my dreams. But perhaps she’d been thinking of someone else when she blew them.
‘Mrs Brafton,’ I said, despising myself for such civility. ‘Please would you tell me where she lives.’
‘Marylebone, but she’s not there.’
‘Oh? Where is she?’
‘They have some sort of boat. Importing and exporting. It’s down at Puddle Dock in Blackfriars. That’s where she’ll be.’
I ran. Straight down the stairs two at a time, almost tripping over at the bottom. Blessed, freezing air was blowing in from the yard. The back door was open for the workmen.
Audrey appeared and I almost shouted at her. ‘Did you fetch the police?’
‘No, I never,’ she replied, eyes wide. ‘I don’t do what Mrs Brafton says no more.’
I dashed out through the back door and across the wet grass where Hugo’s beehives stood like little castles, and through the gate.
I never saw him step out. I felt a hand on my shoulder spinning me round and I was staring into the weasel’s face. He stank of the river.
‘The lady’s waiting for you,’ he said.
There was a hard pain in my side as if I’d been punched. I put my hand there and it was wet, and I thought: someone’s thrown something at me, and it’s spilled over my shirt. I looked at the ground, but there was nothing there, just red dots. I opened up my palm, and it
was red too.
The weasel pulled back his fist.
28
I woke up with a jolt, sensing I was afloat. Above my head, a tarp was shading me from the sun, and I was sitting on the deck, propped against a metal rail.
My right side was agony, spreading around my waist and chest, sharp and dull at the same time. I was shivering, or perhaps that was the vibration of the engine, which was rumbling and belching out clouds of smoke that drifted back along the boat. I coughed and almost cried out, but at least the pain meant he’d missed my lungs.
My hands were tied together in front of me with coarse rope that bit into my wrists, and my jacket had been removed. I managed to hitch up my shirt. The wound was shallow, the size of a baby’s mouth, drooling blood. How much blood could a man lose before dying? Three pints? More?
A seagull was standing on the flagpole, and it flew off as someone came into view. And there she was: Nancy Gainsford, as calm as you like, dressed in a homely brown frock with a shawl over her shoulders. Even so, she caught the eye. She couldn’t help it.
She was examining something, bending over and testing the edges with her fingers. I realised what she was looking at.
It was a coffin.
There was another one beside me under the tarp, and two more at the stern, one laid on top of the other. They were made of a light wood, cheap and thin. I prodded it with my foot. There was something heavy inside and it wouldn’t move, so I tried pushing harder, and the pain speared through me.
A man came up from below and I recognised the weasel even from the back. He started fiddling with the engine in a proprietorial manner, adjusting something with a spanner to make it bark and splutter. He seemed satisfied, and gave a thumbs-up, and then pointed in my direction.
Nancy Gainsford looked up. She was quite at home afloat, her poise perfect as she strolled towards me. Her throat was slender and pale. Windpipes are surprisingly narrow, barely wider than a corn stalk. It doesn’t take much pressure to close them up. I could’ve taken it into the crook of my arm and eased the life out of her as easily as squeezing pips from a lemon, if only the weasel wasn’t so close. And if only I could stand up.
‘Finally, Mr Stanhope,’ she called out. ‘I was beginning to wonder if that idiot would ever get hold of you. I’d almost given up hope. Yet here you are. I admit I’m impressed.’
She was quite different from how she’d seemed before, much more offhand and confident.
‘Who’s in the coffins? More of your kidnap victims?’ I could hear the quiver in my voice.
‘We prefer to say purchases. Two sisters, very pretty, very young, and quite untouched. The daughters of a railway clerk in Surrey who couldn’t pay his debts. They’re mine now, and will fetch a healthy profit in Brussels. We dosed them with chloral, so they won’t wake up for hours. The coffins help us get through customs. No one wants to open a coffin, do they?’
‘What an evil way to make money.’
‘You’re a romantic, Mr Stanhope. All this for a girl who didn’t care a jot about you. Not a jot. Not for any of you.’
‘But Maria was in love with you, I suppose?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Men don’t understand such things. You think it’s so simple, that your manly organ is the only way to a woman’s heart.’
‘I’ve found it helps.’
I tried to push myself up, but my legs didn’t have the strength, and I slid back down on to my behind on the deck. She was right there, six feet away. I couldn’t believe that her wickedness didn’t show somehow. It ought to seep out of the pores of her skin, burning through the hull and hissing into the water beneath. It was a travesty that she was so self-contained while I was leaking all over the deck.
The weasel was sitting on the engine hatch smoking. She beckoned to him and then clicked her fingers.
He jumped up. ‘We’re ready to go, ma’am, rudder and engine. We could steer through a hurricane.’
‘Let’s hope we don’t have to,’ she muttered, and then louder, to him: ‘Go to that pie shop on Ludgate Hill and bring the Flowers woman down here. Be as quick as possible, but be discreet this time, for God’s sake.’ She turned back to me. ‘On the way to Tilbury, you and Mrs Flowers will have a terrible accident. You’ll drown together, lovers in a final embrace. It’ll be ravishing. You’ll make the front page of the Pall Mall Gazette. Women will be sobbing all over London.’
I could feel myself getting drowsy, and yet my heart was beating faster, pounding in my chest. My eyes were throbbing with it. There was something on the deck, a dark patch I thought I should recognise, staining the wooden planks. An image came to me: a trapezium of light shining across Madame Moreau’s table, and the grim stigma that marked it.
‘Perhaps I should thank you for killing James, by the way. I was fond of him, but it was time. He’d become distracted and self-indulgent, satisfying his own whims.’
I nodded towards the coffins. ‘Isn’t satisfying men’s whims your business?’
‘Yes, exactly; business. My business now.’
‘Why did you tell the police that Hugo killed Bentinck? You know it isn’t true.’
‘It had to be someone, Mr Stanhope. The police were asking questions, and I could hardly tell them the truth, could I? They’d want to know why you were up there and what we’d planned to do with you. Hugo was the obvious choice. Dumb as an ox, with chloral in his pocket and a history of savagery, babbling about you and Mrs Flowers.’
‘He was loyal to the two of you.’
‘Yes, like I said, dumb as an ox. And don’t feel too sorry for him. He did kill Jack Flowers after all.’
‘Because Bentinck told him to. Aren’t you worried he’ll inform the police about this business of yours?’
She shrugged. ‘He couldn’t tell them anything without making himself just as guilty. And they think he’s a chloral addict anyway.’
‘So you’ll just carry on kidnapping children.’
‘Who are you to judge me? You know nothing of a life like mine. Do you think I’ve always been as you see me now?’
‘Everyone used to be someone else.’
I thought she would strike me, but she brought herself under control, clenching her fingers together. ‘While you were sitting in a schoolroom, I was being made a whore. Nine years old. Does that shock you? Gainsford isn’t my real surname, I have no idea what that is. I was named by the Irish whores after the street I used to beg on.’
Irish whores. I put two and two together. ‘Mrs O’Leary. The woman you put in charge of the brothel before Mrs Brafton. The one who drank herself to death.’
‘Her name was Maggie, not that James would’ve remembered it. She used to give me food when I was hungry and even shared her mattress. She taught me to read and write, after a fashion, and count. Most of all, to count. I counted the money and learned how to make more of it. I did all the work and James got rich. You’ve seen one of his houses, and he has another in Berkshire, and what do I have? A basement in Marylebone. This is my chance now. James and Elizabeth never understood the common man. They treated the place as if they were king and queen. Not any more. It’s a whorehouse, not a gentlemen’s club. Men go for one thing and one thing only, and they’d bed a sheep if it was wearing a bonnet.’
She raised her chin, revealing a white scar along her jawline. Her eyes were alight, and I had a glimpse of her when she was someone else, before she became Nancy Gainsford and learned to speak like a lady.
‘You loved Maria, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘It must have hurt you to see her with all those men.’
She laughed, but it sounded empty. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She fooled you all. She was a little girl for one and a scolding mother for the next, and a panting harlot for the one after. She could turn it on and off like that.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘But she always came back to me.’
Another one, I thought. Another buffoon. We blunder about in the worlds we make for ourselves. Who can ever truly understand what’s going on in someone
else’s head?
‘But you knew she was with child.’
‘Oh, Mr Stanhope, you can’t think it was yours?’ She laughed again, throwing her head back, exposing her neck even more. ‘Is that why all this? My goodness, you men are so arrogant, believing your potency can overcome all others, and whatever happens to a woman must somehow be to do with you. There isn’t a better chance than one in fifty. One in a hundred!’
Less than that, I thought, if you only knew. ‘I think Maria was sick of her life. She didn’t want to be what she was any longer. Bentinck introduced her to Major Thorpe and she thought her chance had come. She even got herself pregnant and convinced him it was his. She thought she would marry him and become an officer’s wife.’
‘He’s such a fool,’ said Miss Gainsford, almost spitting the last word. Because only a drivelling lunatic would fall in love with a whore.
I put my bound hands up to my eyes, but my fingers were numb. I felt as if someone else was comforting me. ‘Didn’t you care that she was hoping to be married?’
‘You’ve been to the brothel often enough. Does it seem to you that marriage has made much difference to anything? But do please continue with your story.’
‘When the marriage was stopped, Maria despaired. She thought her chance of escape had gone. But she had a stroke of luck. Jack Flowers told her that he had discovered how to open Bentinck’s strongbox, although he didn’t tell her what the combination of letters was. It was Mercy, Bentinck’s wife’s name.’
‘Is that right?’ she said. ‘How sentimental. And I suppose Jack thought Maria would run away with him? She must’ve seemed so much sweeter than his shrew of a wife. Another fool. I sometimes wonder how you men function from day to day.’
‘Maria broke into the mortuary and found the combination for herself, and stole the money from Bentinck’s strongbox so she could start a new life. And you killed her for it. You bludgeoned her to death.’
Rain was falling again, and that dark stain on the deck was made even darker, and shinier. But it was just the parts. Not the real Maria, with her hair tickling my face as she slept, her chest rising and falling with each breath. It was just the parts. Just her blood.