AHMM, January-February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Dr. Driffill's mouth formed an O. Regaining his wits, he asked, “But could it not have been simple mischance?"

  "That being the case, then tell me, sir, why ever was her body being so unceremoniously dumped onto a cart by two richly dressed women, and in the dead of night? The cart, no doubt, was being driven by a sack-'em-up man; the body was surely destined for a surgical theatre. Her beauty, not to mention her identity, would not long survive her being anatomised, and that is a strongly suggestive fact, sir. They must have had strong reasons to rid themselves so completely of the corpse, and what stronger reason could there be than the occultation of a crime?"

  "But you said there were no signs of violence upon the body."

  "Not violence, no, but I never said there were no indicia of foul play. The pupils of her eyes were abnormally contracted, sir, even in the darkness of night. Why? Had she not, perhaps, been dosed with a surfeit of laudanum? Such a poisoning would well account for their unusual condition, sir. It would also explain the absence of any marks of force because, being in a state of morbose toxication, she couldn't possibly have put up any sort of resistance."

  Dr. Driffill covered his eyes with his right hand. When he spoke, it was in a low, disturbed voice. “What you are suggesting is truly monstrous."

  "Indeed, it is, sir,” she agreed. “And so I ask you, are we to suffer such an enormity in our own parish?"

  "No,” he said dully. “I should hope never. I suppose you deduced the bagnio from the scent of Turk tobacco rising from her hair."

  "That was the smallest piece of the puzzle. A dead beauty, her lifeless form carefully laved, and she without any apparent connexion. What else could she be but a strumpet? And where are we to find strumpets and baths in the same place but in a bagnio?"

  Dr. Driffill clenched his eyes shut. He was obviously struggling with himself. Finally, he opened them, a sad expression on his face, and he said, “I believe there is such a place, but I would not have you storm its hellish gates without succour. It is the particular dominion of a woman I believe to be one of the most vicious procuresses in London, whose delight in the most degrading species of sin marks her as a minion of Satan. No one I have ever spoken with has knowledge of her true name, but—I suppose you might call it her nom de guerre—is Mrs. Brimstone."

  "Such a name indicates that she is obvious in her loyalties, at least,” Mrs. Stavacre replied dryly. “As for succour, have no misdoubts that I shall be very careful of my safety, and believe that any escort to the premises would serve to hinder rather than help me in finding out the truth. Also, I fear the consequences of my suspicions being generally learnt and would not wish them to be shared unnecessarily, not with anyone. You understand what consequences I mean."

  Mr. Butters grunted.

  "I do, indeed, madam,” Dr. Driffill said, shaking his head. “But I do wish that you would reconsider the wisdom, and yes, the propriety, of visiting such a den of iniquity alone."

  "The vicar's right, there, marm,” mumbled Mr. Butters. “At the very least, I should go with ye, especially if there's been murder done."

  "Pish. I shall be perfectly all right."

  * * * *

  By the time Mrs. Stavacre at last stood before the door of Mrs. Brimstone's bagnio, dawn was not far off. The torches mounted on the walls of the buildings were burning low, and the sky in the east was perceptibly brightening. Vendors and mongers had already begun their day.

  Mrs. Stavacre was tired and annoyed. The back of the house abutted on the very alley where the dead girl had been found—one might have thought that Mr. Butters, at least, would have recognised the significance of such a fact, but no.

  She was also annoyed that the large, respectable-looking house before her was known to her, although it would have to be a rare edifice in the neighbourhood of which she could be utterly unaware. She had always thought it to be the home of a rich commercial citizen and had not heretofore detected any activity about it that might have suggested its secret, which, to be sure, she reminded herself, she had never looked for. That is, until now: A young redcoat officer, unshaven and drunk, casually altered his direction when he perceived her standing on the threshold of his destination.

  Her knock was answered by a liveried footman, who seemed not at all to be disturbed by the importunity of a woman in the dark at the entrance to a house of assignation. He was tall and broad shouldered, with large hands, but not rude looking.

  "My name is Mrs. Stavacre,” she said, trying not to sound nervous. “I have some business with Mrs. Brimstone."

  "Come in, marm. I will see if the lady of the house is receiving."

  She was shown into a spacious and elegant anteroom, appointed with Oriental luxuries, silk draperies, tall hookahs, gold brocaded pillows, but which contained, perhaps, too many places for visitors to sit. At the far end of the room, below a balustrade at the top of a double flying staircase, was a tall double door, which Mrs. Stavacre surmised must lead to the baths.

  The footman closed the front door behind him, bade Mrs. Stavacre sit on a fine chair, then bowed and departed, mounting the stairs to the left. After several minutes, he returned and said that Mrs. Brimstone would be pleased to receive Mrs. Stavacre in her boudoir, she (Mrs. Brimstone) being abed at such an hour but nevertheless awake.

  The footman led her up three flights of stairs and to a large door. He knocked gently and entered. She could hear the rumble of his voice through the door, and then he came back onto the landing, bowed again, and gestured to her that she should enter.

  The room was large and dominated by a huge canopied bed and tall, curtained windows. Candles, good wax candles, cast an amber light on its rich appointments. Mrs. Brimstone lay on the bed, propped up by several soft pillows large enough to have served as children's mattresses.

  Mrs. Stavacre's final consternation was that she recognised the woman. She had never known her name but had seen her several times and had always imagined she was a lady. She was not remotely the loud, coarse, and fat madam Mrs. Stavacre had expected.

  She was not much younger than Mrs. Stavacre herself, being certainly younger than fifty, and although her face lacked the resilience of youth, it was a fine face, one that must have shone with beauty in its prime. Wisps of hair protruded from her nightcap like tendrils of ivy, and in the candlelight, they appeared to be the colour of butter.

  "Mrs. Stavacre,” Mrs. Brimstone said, her voice a measured contralto, her eyes half shut with ennui, “if you have come to enquire as to your husband, let me assure you, I have not seen nor heard of him these three years."

  Stunned, Mrs. Stavacre recovered quickly and with a rush of pique.

  "I should hope not,” she replied icily, “as he has since found a more permanent place of repose than a trollop's bed. He is in the grave, Mrs. Brimstone, for all the pleasure it will now afford him. I have come not to enquire after him—I am as certain of his location now, as I was formerly uncertain of it—but have come to enquire after a quite different departed soul. You may be unaware that I have recently accepted appointment as the searcher for this parish."

  "Then you are in the wrong place, Mrs. Stavacre.” Mrs. Brimstone reached for the bell rope and gave it a languid pull. “There have been no deaths here. I treat my girls as if they were my own children and spare nothing in my care for them."

  "Of course you spare nothing, Mrs. Brimstone, least of all love, or what you may conceive as love. Love is your trade, is it not? Do you not depend on your girls and their trade in love for your every emolument?"

  "Not for every emolument, I assure you. But I find you tedious, Mrs. Stavacre, something I could never abide. I suffered your admission because your husband—forgive me, I mean, your late husband—was once a generous friend. Now I perceive we have nothing whatever to say to one another."

  "You mean, now that you have had your gloat, there is nothing left for you to say. You are wrong. I care not one whit about the unlamented Mr. Stavacre and his indiscretions. I only want to kn
ow who the girl was, Mrs. Brimstone, the dead flaxen-haired girl abandoned in the alley behind this very building and why it was she had to die."

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "I believe that you do. It is the duty of my office that I must learn the identity of the young woman who was poisoned and then drowned here."

  "You are ... fantastic, Mrs. Stavacre."

  Mrs. Stavacre curled her lip in contempt. “Is it fantastic to imagine that you mayhap discovered a lovely young girl just arrived in London, alone at a coaching inn, recently come from the country where she was greatly admired for her beauty by the local youth, but now, even finding herself friendless and alone, still overflowed with hope for the prospect of an exciting new life in the City? Can it be fantastic that you took the opportunity to befriend and then corrupt her, as you have so many before her? Is such a story fantasy? Isn't it instead the reality?"

  The door opened. The footman had answered his mistress's summons.

  "Mrs. Stavacre is leaving, Gudge. I regret that I will not be receiving her again at any time in the future,” said Mrs. Brimstone, her voice level.

  "This way, marm,” said Gudge, taking her by the elbow.

  "Remove your hand from me, you baboon,” Mrs. Stavacre said scathingly. “I am not to be manhandled by the likes of you."

  "Don’ make me get rough,” Gudge growled. He tweaked her elbow, and she nearly cried out in pain. But her anger was stronger.

  "Never,” said Mrs. Stavacre. “You have laudanum for that purpose, I don't misdoubt."

  Gudge dropped her arm. “I had nowt to do with any o’ that."

  Mrs. Stavacre sniffed. “What do you say now, Mrs. Brimstone?"

  "Gudge, do shut up,” Mrs. Brimstone said, her voice dripping with ennui. “She's only an old woman, angry and jealous, because her husband preferred my company to hers, as whose shouldn't? Take her away."

  "That is the second time in the last few days I have been called jealous,” Mrs. Stavacre said, her voice vibrating with anger. “Now, as then, such a grotesque charge is wholly in error. I do not see how I possibly could be—no, I simply cannot be jealous of a bawd—a lewd and avaricious bawd, not to mention a murderess."

  Mrs. Brimstone's jaws tightened as if she had been struck with tetanus. For the first time, she looked directly into Mrs. Stavacre's face. Her eyes were a cerulean blue. Mrs. Stavacre's breath stopped. She numbly realized how beautiful such eyes were in the countenance of one living.

  Gudge grabbed Mrs. Stavacre's arm again and forcibly withdrew her from the room. She was too wise to offer resistance to such a strong man. He dragged her down the stairs. As they reached the first floor landing, an insistent knock sounded upon the front door. Gudge hesitated.

  "That will be, as you might say, a gentleman, if I am not mistaken,” Mrs. Stavacre said. She smirked. “I wonder what he will think, seeing you attend me."

  "Righ',” Gudge said, and pulling her to one side, he opened the door closest to him. It was a massive door, oaken and unpainted, and fitted with a heavy iron lock. He pushed Mrs. Stavacre into the windowless room and growled, “Don’ worry. I'll be back for you soon's I see to the—gen'leman."

  He slammed the door shut, and Mrs. Stavacre heard the key turn in the lock. Her anger had been cooled by the trip downstairs, and now, for the first time, she felt afraid. Her first impulse was to pound heavily on the door and demand her release, but as she raised her fists, she thought of Gudge's size and grim demeanour, and her resolve failed her.

  She nearly panicked.

  Instead, she was shocked to her senses. It was a voice that did it. A young, scared, girlish voice. Mrs. Stavacre was not alone in the room.

  "Go away!” the voice entreated, and in it, Mrs. Stavacre heard every fear her own children had expressed many years before, in thunderstorm and in fever. It was the voice of a child, an innocent, a mere lamb. The timbre of it nearly broke her heart.

  "Hush,” Mrs. Stavacre said softly, turning to look at the girl in the dim light. “I shall never harm thee, so help me God."

  The girl was perhaps fourteen, possibly younger, doe-eyed, and as slender as an oboe, with long, thin brown hair. She had been stripped of all her clothing, and she held her bedsheets before her slim body, for all the meagre protection it could afford.

  Seething abhorrence for Mrs. Brimstone rose spontaneously in Mrs. Stavacre's gorge. She had heard of this perverse practice, this cruel translation of a young girl's very modesty into an instrument of her own captivity.

  The girl erupted into tears. “Who—who are you?"

  "A parish officer,” said Mrs. Stavacre, as soothingly as possible. “If ‘tis possible, I would deliver thee."

  The girl's reaction was predictable. She had been falsely reassured many times before now. “You lie! You are Mother Brimstone's compeer. You have bought me from her."

  "I do not. I am not. I have not. I am her prisoner, just as you are."

  "Then how can you deliver me?"

  "Do not worry on that account. We shall not long be prisoners,” Mrs. Stavacre said, but the words were braver than her feelings. She turned back to the door. Gudge should be returning for her at any moment.

  "Polly was not long a prisoner neither,” said the girl bitterly, “but she never escaped Mother Brimstone, did she?"

  "Polly?” Mrs. Stavacre's attention fixed itself on the girl again. “Is she, might she be, perchance, a young, golden-haired girl, that men might find fetching?"

  "Was, as you should say,” said the girl.

  "She has met her decease, then."

  The girl began to sob again.

  "But was not Polly—was she not Mrs. Brimstone's own daughter?” Mrs. Stavacre's voice almost caught in her throat. “Their eyes—they have the same eyes."

  "Mother Brimstone's own flesh and blood, they say, but she kilt her, didn’ she? Just because she was jealous that Mr. Davenport had lost interest in the dam, and preferred to dally with the daughter."

  "Mrs. Brimstone forced her own daughter into prostitution and was then jealous of her?” Such an unnatural betrayal seemed even more ghastly than murder. Mrs. Stavacre was uncomfortably reminded of Nan's accusation of jealousy. She thrust it from her thoughts. “What is your name, child?"

  The girl started to cry again. “Fanny, that is, Frances Jones, marm."

  "Do not give up hope, Fanny. Despair is a sin."

  She looked again at the door. Where was Gudge?

  An hour passed, and he did not come. Then another.

  Mrs. Stavacre had seated herself on the bed, her feet barely making contact with the floor, when she finally heard the click of the door being unlocked.

  Gudge stood behind Mrs. Brimstone herself. Mrs. Brimstone stood erect, tall and imperious as a queen.

  "You are an idiot, Gudge,” Mrs. Brimstone said acidly. “Of all the places to secrete our searcher, you choose the one room she should never have seen. Stupid, stupid."

  "But there was a gen'leman at the door."

  "Shut up.” Mrs. Brimstone shook her head, then sighed dramatically. “I do regret it, Mrs. Stavacre, but that which must be done, must be done. I cannot possibly allow you to leave my house now. Not whilst one of us lives."

  Fanny recoiled behind Mrs. Stavacre, clutching the sheet. “Fanny, leave the room. Go to the baths and wait."

  "Fanny is under my protection,” said Mrs. Stavacre, boldly. Mrs. Brimstone sneered. “And whose protection are you under, I wonder?"

  She reached into her reticule and withdrew a stiletto.

  "Marm, no!” whispered Gudge in horror.

  Mrs. Brimstone advanced into the room. Mrs. Stavacre looked desperately around for anything that might serve as a weapon. She could see nothing.

  But Fanny reached under the bed, her sheet falling to the floor as she did so, and she seized the chamber pot she found there. She wasted no time in flinging it at Mrs. Brimstone, effluvia splashing all over her splendid dress. Mrs. Brimstone succeeded in knocking the pot aside, and i
t shattered on the floor. She was drenched in stale urine.

  "You—cat!” Mrs. Brimstone hissed, lunging for the girl. Mrs. Stavacre seized Mrs. Brimstone's elbow, and the two women fell to the floor. Mrs. Brimstone slashed wildly, and cut the back of Mrs. Stavacre's right arm below the elbow with the knife. Blood poured out of the wound.

  "Gudge! Gudge!” Mrs. Brimstone called. But Gudge was not there. Sounds filtered up from the ground floor. A hard thump. A window being smashed. Angry male voices.

  "Get off me,” Mrs. Stavacre shouted and was surprised when Mrs. Brimstone obeyed her. Mrs. Brimstone ran to the door and halted.

  Ominously, Mrs. Stavacre heard the crackle of flame as she managed to sit up, followed by the even more ominous smell of smoke.

  "Dear Lord,” she said, managing to stand. “There's a riot."

  There were, after all, few amusements more amenable to a mob of apprentices in London than vandalising a bawdy house.

  Mrs. Brimstone dropped the stiletto and disappeared into the hallway.

  Mrs. Stavacre picked up the sheet from the floor, unaware that she was copiously bleeding all over it, and wrapped it around Fanny, so that she looked like some fair caryatid.

  "We must flee, Fanny. Make haste, make haste, or we're done for."

  They descended the stairs into the anteroom. The apprentices and several older men had already breached the door and were smashing everything in sight. Several of Mrs. Brimstone's English harlots, ridiculously clad as odalisques, attempted escape, only to be grabbed by their hair or limbs and slammed to the floor to be kicked and beaten by the men. Acrid smoke filled the air as fire climbed the silk hangings.

  A smirking young man wielding a club—a broken leg from one of Mrs. Brimstone's fine chairs—stood between them and the door to the street. With a look of savage elation, he brought back his cudgel, preparing to deliver a lethal blow to Mrs. Stavacre's head.

  It never arrived. A quarterstaff thumped him from behind, and he collapsed, squealing in pain. A step beyond him, looking haggard and terrified, stood the redoubtable Mr. Butters, former sergeant in the army of the Duke of Cumberland.