“Don’t this oath apply to you?”
“I’m asking your advice.”
“You’ll never make a card player.” She tilted her cap back. “Sounds like the typical newsman’s trick, don’t it? ‘You mustn’t tell; you must never tell.’ Bloody advertising done for them.” She spoke in her best posh voice. “‘Have you challenged the automaton? Oh, you simply must.’ Worst kept secret in London.”
It was true. As the American chess master Paul Morphy’s European tour loomed closer, the fervour over Brodie’s contraption grew ever greater.
Molly kept her eyes on her work. “As for your calculus of courtesans, we’ll be unable to help. You’re hampering their trades.”
“I’m not—”
“I shouldn’t like to be complicit.”
“I got your lot into that Phoenix Foundation party.”
“I like that. Our piggy puppets saved your bacon.”
“Darlington’s found you a job on Holywell Street.”
“Oh, yes? Filthy books, is it?”
“Lexicographical position, I believe. Slang dictionary. The only filth required will be your irrepressible Londoner’s tongue.”
“Hark at you, with your tongues and positions.” She drew a caricatured smile below the Siamese Siamese Twins, and an arrow to suggest they contact an Indian boy(s) with two bodies and one head. “Look, give us your lexical contact. Come back for the get-together in the New Year. That’s our omnium-gatherum.” She scribbled the date, signing it with a caricature of her own fizzog: mop of unruly hair, snub nose, cheeky grin. “They’re well connected, my cripple convention. They’re all scroungers, in need of sponsors, and it only takes pennies to make ’em voluble. What do you say?”
THE CASK OF HATE
A boy was found dead in a queer house on New Year’s Eve, just a stone’s throw from Kate Hamilton’s. A punter found him, and I was summoned. The case was handed over to Jeffcoat, for his expertise in missing persons.
Nobody had paid any mind when the boy vanished over Christmas. He might have been visiting relatives. He might have been, but he wasn’t. He was crumpled in the bottom of a closet beneath a heap of clothes, until his body’s decomposition defeated the winter’s cold and they smelt him out. It looked accidental, except the closet was locked. He was barely clothed. No bruises. Something blocking his windpipe. Misadventure, indeed.
How could such indignities come to pass in this day and age? Because most night houses, unlike Kate’s, were itinerant brothels. Nobody to count in or out, no thought to stave off disease, no one to save you from harm, nobody to care or call the doctor at the last. It was shameful.
What difference could I make to a boy like this? My census was a politic tactic, Sir Richard placating elements of society who cared nothing for such people: “Scandalous that such places should be allowed, and such people exist,” they would say, “and better for all if they die.” This netherworld little affected families like that, oh so fine and lovely; except that contagion spreads. A disease inadvertently caught, a pox visited upon a wife by a gentleman caller. How little it takes to persuade a good girl to step out: the hour is late; she accepts hospitality, a beverage, drugged. Shamed and ruined, she can never return to her respectable home; she is trapped in the penumbrous half-world of bordellos and workhouses. Boys too, shamed by wayward urges, lured into lives that would shock their families. Still, when did the state become responsible for nannying aristocratic boys and girls out of their naughty habits?
HOW STUBBORN OUR SINS
I followed the route, so familiar already, through the back alleys, skirting Leicester Square, until I spotted the entranceway. Kate Hamilton’s curtains hung crimson and lush, located between Appenbrodt’s Sausage Shop and Bennett’s Pies, where meat is dressed to your liking, lamb or mutton to taste, and nothing ever stales, with old beasts turned out to die of rots, bots and glanders.
“Watchman, my lover, business or pleasure?” Kate boomed.
“Commingle the two, may we, Kate?”
“Commingling’s what we does best.” Laughter rippled through her; her formidable bodice put me in mind of the buffalo in the Zoological Gardens. “Scotch for the Scotland Yard Scotchman. Cora, you minx, this official needs relieving, can’t you see? Working after midnight, I ask you, and holidays too. His commissioner ought to be ashamed, as Almighty God is sitting on his throne—though he don’t shame easily, that one.”
Kate was a wonderful monster. I intended to make desultory enquiries about the dead boy, but I held little hope of illumination. A game of chess was welcome solace from the frustration of these duties. Now that Darlington was reassigned, censoring the erotic book trade, and Jeffcoat occupied with his investigations, I was on my own.
Cora and I recommenced our companionable matchplay with few words. Girls never talked freely. Draped in diaphanous silks, Cora lay quite still, pieces laid out on her remarkable stomach, indifferent to her languid desirability, ever awaiting the summons to private rooms. The same antics occurred across the city, across the world, no doubt; but here there was a decorum, a sense of humour, that made it more tolerable. I had time for Kate Hamilton. They said she was once an art student, not so many years ago, with a talent for tableaux vivants: the winsomest girl in Mayfair. Now, mistress of madams, she dominated this most orderly of houses, sipping bubbly from midnight to daylight, alive to each tug at the far corners of her web. It was her pride that all felt safe here: gents never recognised, girls fearing no misuse.
“Hands off that bishop,” said Cora. “You’re in check.”
“Cora, Cora, no news for me, Cora?”
“Nobody knows nothing.” This was her reply whenever I asked for rumours. The boy being found so nearby had made them all unsettled, though; it showed in her muddled strategy tonight, and I hoped she might divulge the local whispers. As my gambit led to domination of her kingside, she resorted to more imaginative distractions. When her hands began to rove, I queried her move.
“Another Scotch, and quick.” Cora knew that I would accept no immoral favours. Many officers might have, not mentioning Darlington; it rarely led to the sack, but it was a quick route to the clap. Kate and I had an understanding. She thought I didn’t like girls, but never ceased offering, with new variations to tempt me. That made no difference to me. I did like women; I’m just an arrogant bugger who doesn’t like to be beholden to anyone. If she’d seen how I ogled Cora’s midriff, she would have seen through me.
A commotion up above: a man stormed onto the landing in a silk robe and white crown. His words were inaudible amid the drapes, but there was something familiar in his theatrical posture and hectoring tone.
“If you’ll calm down,” a girl cried, “I’ll fetch her for you, sir.” Appeased, he was drawn back into the shadows. This was a drama frequently re-enacted: all part of the service, if you find bedroom disputes arousing. The girl leaned over the balcony. She was a Negress, wearing a mitre of red chiffon. “Cora, come sharpish, won’t you?”
“Little chance of that, with him,” Cora said and rolled her eyes. With Kate’s eyes upon us, she swept the pieces from her stomach. It was the closest I would ever come to checkmating her, and she knew it. “You’ll have to excuse me, uncle.”
I sighed as she departed, watching her cinnamon curves, full posterior accentuated by shapely waist.
“Never fear, Watchman,” Kate tutted. “I’ll find you another. Never a shortage at Kate Hamilton’s.”
Oh, yes, Kate impressed me. Most houses were shambolic: a girl might never come home, and no one would notice; I heard tell that a ruffian might kill a girl, if he was prepared to pay. Bullies ought to protect their fillies, but they cared more for their wallets. The exceptional thing with the dead boy was that he was reported, investigated, and not just slung in the Thames to be hooked out by the boatmen.
Kate’s was different. A republic of the independent-minded. The women looking out for each other, making the most of their youth and beauty, under the protecti
on of this vast benefactress, who scared off undesirables and punished malfeasants. Kate herself was wild and irascible and kind in her madness—as sure as Almighty God is sitting on his throne—and I felt no unease over our agreement.
When I paid the promised visit to F Division, the superintendent railed indignant against my complaint of corruption: his officers were not at fault if the bullies’ code of signals meant that spirits and other illegalities were concealed the moment they inspected. I countered that two officers of Scotland Yard were ready to testify that said officers readily accepted bribes for such blindness. He compromised: if I would drop the charge, he would keep his “inspectors” away from Kate Hamilton’s.
For every once I visited Kate’s, I visited fifty other night spots. For every time I played with Cora—played chess, I mean—I interviewed a hundred girls. For each interview with Kate’s girls, I confronted the superintendent of H or Q or S Division regarding their own inspections of brothels, a police duty variously interpreted.
Commissioner John Crow of Southwark took this task as seriously as I. He had accounts filed and ready to hand over. His method of annotating maps with numbers, addresses and summaries I adopted: henceforth I was never without a Stanford map folded in my pocket to tot up doxies of the ’Dilly and courtesans of Kensington.
By contrast, Commissioner J.P. Blackward of Hampstead was so obstructive, he must either have been a dimwit or (more likely) personally profiting from each brothel on his patch. Such are the ways of outlying villages.
Some had excuses; some made no apology. The clerks of Clerkenwell smothered me with details:
—Comical Lil, Jewess doxy-thief: entices to bed, bully rifles pockets;
—Ada Diamond, alias Costello, widely known to officers: bug-hunter (i.e. robs drunks in street);
—Cranky Pol, aka Henrietta Hall: fraudulent tea pedlar.
Across the city, prostitutes stood in the dock, in rags or in finery, charged with stealing chisels, shovels, a pair of trousers, five pounds of bacon, a feather bed, towels, candlesticks, plaid dress, cauliflowers, oats, a cow, a parliamentary edict, and beans to the value of twopenny-halfpenny. Where was the sense in jailing these unfortunates? There was no consistency; there could be no improvement, much less a metropolitan solution. Whenever I was abused, or threatened, or worn down by evasions, I had to remind myself: whatever Payne’s motives, Felix asked me to do this. He asked me to do it for the good of the city, and for women, so that no more need end up dead in the gutter like that poor lost soul on the corner of Brodie’s street.
In exchange for my warding off pestilential inspections, Kate sent girls to tell me their tales. This was the favour I asked of her. In other houses, I received short shrift. Pose a question and they turn silent and suspicious. Girls assumed I was clergy or temperance; bullies divined I was police. Madams fobbed me off with understated numbers, girls gave imaginary ages and fanciful origins. Every night, I had to cajole the truth from them, cut through their bush-beating and persuade them: the census was for their own sakes; truth-telling would lead not to punishment but protection.
When Cora was summoned aloft, I found myself unsupervised. I rose, hoping to slip unnoticed after her up the dimly lit stairwell.
“Oi, oi, saveloy!” Kate spotted my empty seat. “Where’s our Scotchman?”
“Kate, Kate.” I feigned innocence. “Just a cursory inspection, for my records.”
“Inspect me any day, my lover,” she roared. “Tickle his innards, Sabine. He stands in need of something damp.”
An amply bosomed woman brought the next whisky. “This way.”
I took the dram, as always. It was one thing to refuse girls week in, week out; to be impervious to women and drink was hard to believe. Sabine led me up the stairs, parted the decorative curtains and pushed through into the interior, an expedition into uncharted lands. The premises were more extensive than I’d realised: manifold stairs and balconies gave off a hallway of faded grandeur. Once an ordinary house, or several knocked together, this had become a labyrinth of a thousand rooms, a fecund body laid out beneath the respectable surface of Leicester Square.
“Changed your mind about girls?” Sabine joshed, as she led me past the inner chambers. “Or are you a devil dodger?”
“A priest?” I laughed. “No fear.”
“You’re the sleuthhound, are you?” Her eyes flashed wide in the semi-dark and she squeezed my arm. Perhaps the boy found in the closet had scared them. But everyone was a fanatic of detection these days; the shilling shockers of my youth had become serials for adults. Detective novels were everywhere—Wilkie Collins was planning one, and Dickens too. She leaned close, her cologne mingled with sweat and odours of the night. “Glad to make your acquaintance, proper like. You’re called Watchman, ain’t you?”
I looked at her, face powder ill concealing her mockled cheeks. “No rumours for me? About the dead boy?”
“You’re the lilly law; ain’t you solved it yet?” Winding corridors. Stout doors. Glimpses of untenanted rooms: dishevelled sheets, redolent of perfume, as maids hurried to clear the latest sullyings. “Can’t Jimmy get to the bottom of it?”
“Darlington?” I followed, smiling. “Some chance.”
“Where’s Jimmy got to these days?” She gave me a sly look; unattractive, with her face, but she doubtless relied on her broader assets. “Likes to get to the bottom of things, he does.”
What would she make of Darlington’s job inspecting dirty bookshops? Jeffcoat’s glamorous secrets would impress her more. Was I jealous, as I traipsed through cold nights from bawd house to finish and back again? Not at all. “Busy.”
“Too busy to pay me a visit?” Sabine led me into a dim-lit chamber, stiflingly warm, and stood stroking her collarbone idly. She beckoned me over to the velvet curtains, putting her finger to her lips. She peered through where a glow of light showed through the curtains. She put her hand to her mouth, stifling a giggle, then bade me look. A peephole.
In the next room, pale white youths in scant costumes were arrayed across white-and-ebony tiles; facing them, dark-skinned girls in translucent red stood around the Negress, the mitre completing her meagre bishop’s outfit. Cora was arched back on dark pillows, her tiara squashed against the floor. A familiar-looking man kneeled at her splayed thighs, clasping her buttocks; the chess board tattoo quivered as this baby-faced king bumped against her derriere. His lips were pouting, his white crown nodding along to his rhythmical pants. Behind them knelt the red queen, in her crimson corset, smacking his backside with her sceptre; her dark luxuriant locks swayed as she moved back and forth astride a pale young knight, his face a picture of concentration beneath his horsehair plume.
I watched for a minute, drawn in, as if by a theatrical show. Could I imagine myself involved in such a scene? What made people indulge such fantasies? I barely noticed when Sabine fished my handkerchief out of my pocket. As she began groping at the buttons of my breeks I came to my senses, as if waking from a dream. I extracted her hand and retrieved the hanky.
“But you wanted to.” She pursed her lips. “How d’you expect a girl to earn an honest shilling?”
I hastened from the room and leaned against the corridor wall, discreetly adjusting myself. “Tell me your story. Then you’ll earn shillings, and my gratitude.”
She fluttered her lashes, which drew attention to her powdered cheeks. “Seduced milliner, ain’t I?”
“Oh, Sabine. Are you really?” Decided themes were emerging in these confessions. Mayhew’s researches made a grim catalogue. By contrast, Kate Hamilton’s girls rarely sparked my indignation: their origins were too uniform, too reasonable. I knew Kate was on my side, and I was grateful for her help, but I was beginning to suspect the line her girls fed me. “Is Sabine even your real name?”
She shrugged. “It’s Stephanie. But Sabine sounds more licentious.”
“What do you want from this life?”
She leaned close to me. “What do you want, Watchman?”<
br />
I held up a hand to stay her advances. “Forever fumbling at loose ends. Peeping at cabinet ministers abasing themselves.”
She scowled. “You don’t know nothing about me.”
“Because you won’t tell. I ask and ask, and none of you tell.”
“Men don’t give a fig. They only ask to salve their conscience before sating their appetite.”
“I’m asking.”
“I’ll leave this life soon enough. I’m saving up to start a coffee shop.” Sabine’s look dared me to contradict her. The disquieting sounds from next door increased in pitch. She squeezed my arm. “Be a good boy and wait here, Watchman. I’ll fetch you another whisky.”
She bustled away down the corridor, tapping at one particular door. I followed, at a distance, espying more passageways winding off in every direction. Behind each door, muscles straining, fluids pouring. Flesh pulsating. Groans and gurgles. Cries. Sighs. Each room more fecund than the last. An argument sprang up behind one door. A shout, a slap, a yelp, a slap; the door thrown open, and I hid in the shadows. A silhouette, a hand clutched to her face.
“God help us!” She slammed the door behind her.
I recognised that warm northern voice. I stepped into the half-light. “Skittles, is that you?”
“Bleeding heck.” She started. “Watchman?”
“Are you all right?”
She arranged her gown into a semblance of decorum, recovering her famed poise. “But can it be you, Sergeant, here?”
“Out of my natural element, of course. Merely working.”
“Cora told me about the queer lilly law who spends the odd evening at Kitty’s.” She pushed at my shoulder. “Chessifying mostly, I heard.”
I blushed in the darkness. “And you? What are you doing here?”
“Merely working, of course.” She rubbed at her posterior.
“But your apartments? I thought you had long since graduated from Kate’s.”
Lawless and the Flowers of Sin Page 9