‘Perhaps not,’ I said thoughtfully, chilled by the idea of such malice. ‘Perhaps I was the only one, after all. Sometimes I’ve imagined her collecting money from men and women all over Whitby. Women particularly.’ As always the idea made me feel sick. To combat it, I rose briskly from the table. ‘Anyway, I intend to find out.’
‘And I intend to come with you.’
I was about to refuse again when he checked his pocket-watch and turned to glance out of the window. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I have an idea. It will soon be dark, which could prove helpful, so why don’t we revise that plan of yours?’
Forty-eight
Wraiths of mist like widow’s weeds were gathering over the sea, and as Bram and I left the Royal Hotel the herring gulls were muttering and settling on their rooftop nests. Smoke spiralled upwards with scarce a disturbance in the frosty air, collecting in a lilac haze. Below, the glow of gaslights defined the harbour, while brighter beams from the lighthouses were attracting the fishing cobles like moths. With men at the oars they came speeding in, eager to escape the freezing clutches of the fog.
We paused for a moment to watch them coming in, each of us remembering other times. Caught by nostalgia, we made our way down the steps, leaning over the harbour rail to spy the silvery gleam of fish amongst the nets. Killing time, we even looked in the window of Jack Louvain’s old studio on St Ann’s Staith, but the place was a now a hardware shop and could not have been more different. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or sorry at the change, and nor, it seemed, did Bram.
He turned away with a sigh, and, without thinking, I squeezed his arm. But as he patted my hand I withdrew it, faintly alarmed by the ease with which we seemed to be slipping into partnership again, into those old, seductive, easy ways. Together, talking, I could feel whole chunks of the past beginning to slide away from me, and when I looked back they had sunk without trace. I had to remind myself to hold on, not to let go; I’d clung to them for years and without them I might drown.
Fog was rolling in now, great freezing billows of it, obscuring everything as we crossed the bridge. I was glad Whitby’s streets hadn’t changed too much in the time I’d been away, that I knew almost to the door where Isa’s shop must be.
It stood at the town end of Southgate, the harbourside street which serviced the east side’s docks and boatyards. The building looked drab but respectable enough, narrowly missing a clear view down Bridge Street to the harbour.
I judged it to be the ground-floor rooms of a house with one or perhaps two separate residences above, and wondered why Isa hadn’t chosen a better property with more potential. Surely, I thought, she could have afforded something closer to the Church Stairs, which would have been more attractive to holiday visitors. There was, however, a front window and small doorway to the shop, and, down a yard to the side, I noticed another door at ground level which probably led to her private quarters. Bram agreed to wait outside until I called him. I didn’t want Isa bolting when she clapped eyes on us, then escaping through the yard and up the bank.
I looked in at the shop window. Behind big glass jars of bull’s-eyes and aniseed balls I could see a gas light flickering but no customers, and no sign of Isa. The sound of the door would no doubt call her to duty: I could not imagine her employing anyone else.
On a deep breath I took the handle firmly and pushed open the door, startled by the sudden jangling of the bell. There was barely time to note a display of postcards and some jet ornaments, when suddenly, as though she’d been waiting, Isa appeared from behind a screen.
I was dumbstruck for a second, seeing the resemblance to Bella in her coffin. She was thin and grey. Grey hair, grey skin, grey gown – relieved by a black shawl and a widow’s pleated bonnet. She looked an old woman, yet we were the same age.
As Isa Firth recognized me, every muscle went slack. Her jaw gaped and eyes widened, fingers clutching at the counter for support. But then, like a gate closing, the muscles tightened and she was herself again, suspicion written in every narrow line.
‘What do you want?’
‘Well, Isa, I’m not after sweets, you can be sure of that.’ Very slowly, I peeled off my gloves. ‘A few postcards, souvenirs of Whitby, perhaps – or do I mean photographs?’
She had nerve, I’ll give her that. Brass-faced, she nodded towards the display. ‘That’s all there is for sale.’
‘What about the rest?’ I demanded. ‘The blackmail pictures?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘Well, that’s a pity,’ I said softly, watching her edge towards the screened recess behind the counter, ‘because I’ve come to make you an offer.’
She’d been about to bolt, but hesitated at that. ‘What kind of an offer?’
I took my time and reached out for one of the little jet ornaments, a lighthouse so smooth and perfect it was a delight to hold. I turned it this way and that, holding it up to the flickering light behind the counter, leaning across to see it better. And then grabbed her wrist and called out for Bram before she could wriggle free.
He came at once, squeezing behind the counter to move the screen aside. With his bulk blocking the doorway behind it, Isa stopped struggling. I let go of her and locked the shop door, turning the OPEN sign to CLOSED. Then we escorted her through to the back of the shop.
There were two rooms, a living kitchen with the usual offices, and a larger room behind, which revealed itself as a combined bedroom and store. An old oak cabinet looked familiar to me from my days at the studio, together with a set of shelves that were divided up like pigeonholes. Jack Louvain’s filing system, lettered like the alphabet, still containing photographs.
Reaching out I grabbed a handful and began to flip through them: mostly local views reprinted as postcards, a few fishermen mending crab-pots, some girls flither-picking on the Scaur. I recognised one of them as Lizzie, which made me pause, and then saw a fine picture of Bella with a long-line coiled and balanced on a skep on her head. She looked magnificent, proud, with her chin held high, shoulders back and full breasts pushed out, one hand up to hold the skep, the other balanced on her hip. The Bella I remembered. I had to bite my lip to regain control, to remember why I was there, and how little time was at my disposal.
Thrusting the picture into my covered basket, I turned to the cabinet. It was locked. ‘Keys,’ I snapped. ‘I want this thing open.’
Isa refused, said she would call the police, have us charged with robbery. None too gently I pushed past Bram and thrust my face up close to hers. ‘Don’t mention the police to me,’ I hissed. ‘Because I’ve got enough evidence in your handwriting to put you in gaol for the next ten years! Give me the keys!’
She looked alarmed; but as she reached under her apron for the chain that held them, her mouth twisted into a smirk. ‘And what’Il your husband say when he sees that fine picture of you, eh?’
As she glanced at Bram I realised she didn’t know him. She thought he was the man I’d married sixteen years before. I snatched at the bunch of keys. ‘He’ll be impressed,’ I said.
With the third key I felt the lock turn, and found myself facing an array of shallow drawers, with a series of vertical compartments below. My heart sank when I saw the dozens of glass plates stored there, each one of which would have to be examined before we could leave this place. And the drawers were locked
‘Well,’ I said heavily, ‘it seems we might have a long search. You’d better keep quiet, Isa, because I mean it about the police. Believe me, I’d be pleased to see them.’
Bram might have been embarrassed by their arrival, but I refused to worry about that. He’d volunteered for this outing, and had even modified the plan, so it was important to press on. First of all I tried the drawers, patiently finding the key to each one before I examined their contents. As expected, they contained a lot of old, unmounted prints, not all of them different; in many cases there seemed to be several copies of each. Some were from a series Jack had co
mpleted when I was working for him, and I flinched, thinking of the temptation his fees had presented in those days.
The vast majority were studio photographs. Almost all were what might be termed compromising: young women in various stages of undress, some almost naked in the poses of famous paintings, and a whole series which included men. The men were fully clothed as they attempted to portray the seduction of various young women, and it was these photographs which I found the most distasteful. The truly shocking part for me lay in the faces I recognised. Quite a few, and not all from the poorer parts of town.
As I wondered at the extent of Isa’s blackmailing operation, the one thing that comforted me was the posed nature of all of these pictures. One series had been taken outdoors, the subjects more or less clothed; but even those had a self-conscious quality, the models obviously aware and willing to be photographed. Only those taken of Bram and myself appeared to be stolen, and I found only three, all taken in the same place and on the same occasion.
I was so familiar with them, they barely registered. I was looking for something different, something that might yet illustrate my worst fear: that Jack Louvain had followed us around, stealing pictures every time Bram and I were together.
Finding nothing, I was so relieved I could barely stand.
Trembling, I pushed all the pictures together into one drawer and took it into the kitchen. Dropping it before the hearth, I considered Isa for a moment in anger and despair, before speechlessly feeding photographs into the fire. With a gesture I indicated that she should carry on with the task, and, ignoring Bram’s questioning glance, I returned to the other room, pulled out the first batch of glass negatives and deliberately dropped them to the floor.
At the crash they both leapt up, and it was hard to tell who was the more horrified.
‘I know,’ I snapped in answer to Bram’s protest, ‘but it’s the only way.’
‘Damaris, you’ll have people at the door, wondering what’s going on. Put them in the basket – I’ll carry them – we’ll dump them somewhere.’
‘There’s too many!’
‘Find a box, then – but do as I say.’
He turned to Isa, who was glaring malevolently at both of us, and brushed past her to begin burning the contents of the drawer. If she’d been capable of weeping, I think Isa might have wept then at the loss of her power, but she hated me far more. As it was she stood and watched, hands and face working horribly, while I tipped out the contents of a wooden box, piling in the glass plates from the cupboard.
‘You’ve no right,’ she spat out at last. ‘You’re thieving, d’you know that? They’re not all rubbish – some of them are Jack’s best work! I saved them when his family came and sold up.’
‘Oh, I see, I’m thieving, am I, while you were just saving things for posterity. And what about the blackmail, Isa? What about Jack’s models? The ones who posed for him, the ones I can recognise even now? Don’t tell me you didn’t drop them the occasional note too, when you were short of cash?’
‘I didn’t do it just for the money,’ she said on a bitter, plaintive note. ‘I had to show folks, hadn’t I? Show ‘em I was somebody to be reckoned with. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? You’ve always had everything, everything I ever wanted. Even Jack – even Jack,’ she repeated, spitting his name at me, ‘even Jack didn’t understand. Even he thought you were somebody.’
‘And I thought he was something special too,’ I retorted furiously, ‘until I saw these – these pictures of his – until I heard from you. Then I realised he was no better than a Peeping Tom.’
‘Don’t you call him that! You were just a whore!’ she hissed. ‘Just like our bloody Bella – going with anything, when I -’ She was stuttering with rage, spitting at me in her effort to get things out, ‘I always kept myself decent, I never let any man touch me – not even my own father, and the old bugger tried often enough. But our Bella took him on – oh, yes, she enjoyed it, and he – he thought she was wonderful, she was his favourite then, not me. She was his pretty little girl after that – he couldn’t keep his filthy hands off her!’
I smacked her face, hard, in a reflex action that shocked all three of us. ‘She’s dead, for God’s sake,’ I hissed at her, ‘we buried her today!’ I stood over her like an avenging angel, dry-mouthed, full of grief and hot, outraged protest. It took Bram, looming behind her, to find the words I longed to say.
‘I don’t think it was like that,’ he said quietly. ‘Whatever Bella did in those days – however wrong – it was done to protect the rest of you.’
‘What do you know?’ she sneered. ‘Who d’you think you are, anyway, coming in with her, thinking you’ve got the right to destroy my life – just because you married Damaris bloody Sterne, you think -’
‘I didn’t marry her,’ he cut in, ‘I was married already. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m the man she lived with that summer of ‘86 – I saw your father’s body brought ashore that morning in Robin Hood’s Bay...’ He paused, and I dreaded what he was going to say next. Don’t, I thought, please don’t bring that up now!
But all he said was: ‘I’m the man in the photograph’; and then, at her aghast expression, added: ‘Yes, I know, I’ve changed a lot since those days – but tell me,’ he went on in that relentlessly equable tone, ‘why didn’t you try blackmailing me? You must have known who I was – Jack must have mentioned me?’
‘Oh, aye – talked about you a lot, he did. I knew who you were,’ she said dismissively: ‘a fine figure in London, I dare say, but you’re nowt in Whitby, and even less to me.’
Bram shook his head at that and turned to me in appeal, but I could only nod in confirmation of what he’d suspected all along: that Isa Firth was interested in power, not money, in wielding Jack’s photographs like instruments of torture rather than as a useful source of income.
‘Who else did you blackmail, Isa? Folks in Whitby? Ones you hated as much as me? Who? Come on,’ I said irritably, ‘tell me who they are before I start searching for the addresses. I’m angry enough to start breaking things – and I don’t care who hears and who comes to investigate. I’ll have pleasure in telling them just what an upright citizen you really are. In fact I’ll go one better: if you don’t tell me who these people are, I’ll put an announcement in the Gazette, to the effect that the blackmail days are over.’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’ But for all her bravado she was twitching with nerves, and when Bram confirmed that I would carry out my threats, and without giving a damn for the consequences, she seemed on the verge of collapse. Pushing past me, boots crunching on broken glass, she went to the cabinet and reached into the back of one of the smaller drawers. With trembling fingers she handed over a small account book, complete with names and addresses. ‘There,’ she hissed, ‘take it and get out.’
I glanced through the book, then pocketed it. Later I would write a reassuring but anonymous letter to each one, saying that Isa Firth was no longer in business. Part of me would have liked to drag her through the courts, but her humiliation would also be mine – and that of too many other people. I would have to be satisfied with the dark joy of destruction.
Hastily I stacked the remainder of the glass plates, while Bram collected up photographs and pushed them into my basket. We lifted the box on to the table and he hoisted them into a reasonably manageable position. I checked the cabinet and had a last scout of the back room; I even checked the kitchen cupboards for anything suspicious, but found only the meagre stores of an ill-fed single woman. With a sense of having meted out a certain justice, I followed Bram through the shop and out of the door. I was shaking so much I thought my knees would give way before I went a dozen yards. Never in my life was I glad to see such dense and blanketing fog.
Forty-nine
The hotel was out of the question. Staggering along to the White Horse, where we’d supped that very first evening, we were both grateful for a chance to sit down and collect ourselves. Bram drank his whisky a
lmost in one and ordered another; I took my brandy more slowly, but was no less in need. Gradually, my shaking ceased, leaving exhaustion in its wake. With the box and my basket on the bench between us we gazed around rather than at each other. The place had been altered, its old bare style become more modern with polished wood and elaborate mirrors, yet we both regretted the change. It was easier, I think, to pass trivial comment than talk about what had just taken place.
Draining his glass, Bram took my hand under the table and squeezed it. ‘What trouble I’ve caused you,’ he whispered, indicating the box between us.
I nodded and gave a reluctant smile. ‘In one short space of time you changed my life entirely.’ Feeling suddenly emotional, I had to take a deep breath. ‘It’s been the repercussions, you see.’ I patted the box. ‘This was just one of them.’
His gaze was too earnest, the pressure of his hand on mine too sympathetic, for me to endure either in such a public place. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel,’ I urged, searching for a handkerchief. ‘There at least I can drink too much and give way to my feelings in private.’
With a soft, rumbling laugh, he went to order a cab.
In swirling fog the short journey seemed to take an age, but at least we didn’t have to carry the box. The problem remained of how to dispose of the contents. Suddenly, as we neared the hotel, I found myself remembering the tradesmen’s entrance at the back. There was a service area with a range of dustbins for ashes, rubbish, food waste. Broken up, I said, the glass plates could be tipped in with the rubbish, and no one would be any the wiser.
At once Bram directed the cabbie to the nearest side street, and moments later, shrouded by fog and thanking God for it, we were creeping through the back way and looking for the bins. I longed to drop the lot, but noise – and a very real fear that not all would break – had the two of us working more methodically. While Bram cracked them over his knee, I crunched others with the heel of my shoe.
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