* * *
Having inspected all corners of the building, Jeffcoat took to strolling around the quayside in docker’s garb. I preferred the sausage-seller’s, where I overheard local tales. Though we sent for Darlington, he remained absent. Just as well; he might have sold us out to the papers. We told no one else, though we discussed which officers we could trust, whom neither bribe nor threat would sway.
Molly’s best spies stood guard for us on the bridges, a thankless posting in those changeable morning fogs, though the days were finally growing warmer. When we wanted a carriage followed, Jeffcoat sent one of Molly’s lot after them; with London’s pollution and traffic, a sure-footed youth can chase down the most reckless driver.
We identified more threads than imagined:
– that various ladies came and went in costume, as if rehearsing plays;
– that most met gentlemen at the opera and the theatre, then returned;
– that a few were transferred to residences in Kensington Gore and Quartern Mews;
– that a very few gentlemen visited the premises, with briefcases and an academic gait; they spent the morning within, and left without any voluptuous air;
– that ageing spinsters attended to household purchases;
– that these same accompanied the ladies on their outings;
– that every few days, a number of younger girls arrived at the place, ragged and dirty, and were never seen to leave;
– that from one shabby doorway, on the back alley of my incident, small packages were every so often despatched, wrapped in old rags;
– that dressmakers made frequent deliveries.
I followed one as he left; his pockets full, he stopped in at The Pig and Whistle on the corner of Borough High Street.
“Oh, there are some right ones,” said he, “in the new batch.”
It was the easiest thing to stand at the bar and listen in.
“You want to make a selection, young Henry,” said the bartender.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied. “Destined for greater than me.”
I refrained from imprudent queries, lest I give the game away.
These comings and goings were highly regulated. Never was a door opened without lists crosschecked and names confirmed. We should not be able to stroll up and visit. There was nothing untoward about the house, not a trace of malfeasance. Nobody in the environs would comment on it; only we, knowing whither their products were destined, sniffed illegitimacy. Good Lord, even the people working there might believe it was a finishing school for ladies, or a kind of hotel.
Every couple of days, three men in dark suits paid a visit. Their timing was unpredictable, yet they were greeted with distinct servility. In the brief moments I saw them, I recognised one of the sinister heavies who had “made me an offer” to vanish away and forget these investigations.
A distressed woman arrived. Her clothes were fine but disarrayed, for she was heavily pregnant. She was received at the door after some altercation between the driver and the spinster on duty, whom she knew. Her weeping hushed, she was sent inside, with a harsh word to the driver. An hour later, a muffled cry. The mother left not long after, evidently delivered of her child.
A second unexpected call was paid by a more impressive chaise. This driver was altogether more welcomed. After a short visit, the spinster herself came out, with a bundle of swaddling, to accompany the driver. Jeffcoat was particularly impressed with Molly’s boy for following the carriage all the way to a Wapping orphanage, known for a quick trade in unwanted infants.
This inspired us to ask him to track those other packages from the shabby back door. These went in a cart up to Ice Wharf, and a house on the Caledonian Road, beside the Regent’s Canal.
* * *
How to see inside without being discovered? We could not stop by, could not break in. A feigned inspection could end the game in stalemate. Sir Richard would not condone force. I began to feel the whole neighbourhood was in the pay of the place to keep silent.
I took Molly along to Mrs Boulton’s, as storms brooded upriver. How wonderfully changed Steph was, quite liberated from her former trade; surely she might confirm my suspicions.
“There are things you cannot ask me about.” She knew the place; she had been there, I could feel it. She gave us tea and went about her work with downcast eyes, steadfastly refusing to say more.
“All right, I must find out myself, and I will.” I was frustrated. “There is this establishment. I don’t expect you to say more. Only help me think: how can I learn for myself what goes on there? Give me some sign, damn you.”
A rumble of thunder near at hand. The wind gusted down the chimney, and the ashes were scattered from the grate. Mrs Boulton, smiling, swept them deliberately into the pan, without a word.
Molly looked at me with a grin.
INTO THE DARK
“Tuppenny ha’penny per chimney,” said Molly, one hand belligerently on her hip, the other brandishing the broom. “Extra for disposal of ashes.”
The dried old spinster stood at the door, arms folded. Behind her, a plaque inscribed: BLUMENGARTEN SCHOOL FOR LADIES. She eyed me warily, as if I were an idiot boy to be working up chimneys at my age.
Molly patted my back. “Don’t go maligning my boy. May as he be silent, and may as he be dumb, but he’s a top hand at slanting up a flue. Little ones is banned, mind. You’d have the law down on you if I brung one in, don’t you know? My boy here’ll buff it if he has to. There’s many a littler one got stuck up a chimney, smothered for want of air and the fright. Many a one of ’em as lost their lives that way, but not he.”
They admitted us just as the rain set in. I was astonished they let us in at all. But every house stands always in need of a sweeping; sweeps come and go, as good as invisible, and nobody pays them a thought.
Our story, that we were sent as proxy for their customary sweeps, they took on trust. Thus we got to view every room in the place, unattended, unrestricted. Fortuitous timing: during the fogs, all the fires had been lit; now with this freshening rain, everyone longed to throw open the windows and sweep away the long winter.
I fretted, if we were caught, what would become of us. There must be guard dogs to protect these tender saplings from harm.
Molly set my mind at ease. There could be no bulldogs, no protection ring. That would give the game away. Misdirection, remember? How swiftly a bawd house reverts to propriety, to the astonishment of intemperate young men. We had seen no sign of solicitation this side of the river; unlikely we should see anything within that was actually illegal.
“Settle your nerves, Watchman,” said Molly. “A touch of play-acting is surely within even your capacities.”
With my face blacked and an hour’s coaching in assemblage of brushes, Molly and I got to work. I was covered in filth, forbidden to speak, and more than once thought I was jammed in a flue. But Molly was equal to it, chatting to whomsoever she could, giving me plenty of time to stick my nose in every corner, excusing my improprietous stares on the grounds of my imbecility.
Opulence. All around we saw luxury: velvet curtains; tables set with silver hardly used, like the set of a play; dining rooms, parlours and, at the heart of the warehouse, a great ballroom.
Voices recited behind a door. Molly knocked. The stern ma’am shooed us to the fireplace in the corner. She returned to exemplifying phrases to a roomful of guttersnipes from every corner of the kingdom, who squeezed their inflexible tonsils around her genteel vowels.
We walked through sewing class and singing lesson, table manners and quadrilles. Girls of all types and every shape, slouched and slovenly to elegant and elevated, gradated class by class. Some timid, others brimming with effrontery; some pert and artful, others cowering and sly.
I gazed at the coarse novices and the flowerlike sirens; even Molly stopped to watch the crème de la crème enter the ballroom, heads elegantly poised. Long eyelashes hinted at demure flirtation and suggestive submission.
This was a studied poise I had seen somewhere before: Felix’s lady, as she walked up Quartern Mews.
A school for courtesans, in the French style, or like the geishas. Rumours of such an academy of strumpetry had been aired before at the Yard. Skittles and Steph had hinted more; and every so often, a fallen woman let slip mention of her days at this nursery, brought south of the river for ruination, then trained into the life.
The nursery was not quite unguarded. A pair of complacent bullies squabbled over dice in the hallway. They must be on call for the whole establishment, but the place ran so much like clockwork, they were never needed. We were lucky. When the sinister trio turned up, it was the bullies’ negligence that saved us.
As we trooped through from the teaching area to the sleeping quarters, the men were waiting for us in their dark suits. It was the inspection, and the men in suits carried it out with sinister pleasure. My heart raced. Though caked in coal dust, I was convinced I might be recognised. I remembered their threat of a “proper warning”, like my friend Felix; and look how they had left him.
The bullies’ dice-playing irked them, thank God, and while they were told off, we scurried off to the dormitories.
To one side bunkhouses, to the other sumptuous bedrooms.
At one door, we heard noises. Bedroom lessons?
A maid spotted us just in time. “I wouldn’t go sweeping in there.” A smile cracked her dry features. “Sweeping of their own going on.”
Molly was so droll and full of stories, she could get anyone to talk. How did she do it? In the next room, a maid was making the bed: plumped pillows, hospital corners, perfectly effected. Molly stood behind her, making flirtatious comments, while pointing me to my work, as if I was her drudge. Salutary to be ordered around: I had a taste of what it was like for our constables at the Yard. I swallowed my anger, for it was an unparalleled disguise, and regretted my daily arrogances.
This maid liked the place well enough, though she envied her betters.
A second was unhappy with her lot. “We are all prisoners,” she whispered, “and the pretty ones worse off than me.”
We returned to the dining hall in time for their high tea. What a palaver, like a banquet in the Great Hall of King’s College. Row upon row of women, ladies, girls, served by menials in hessian gowns, primly feasting on a meal that would have been extravagant at the Grosvenor Hotel.
From the flue, I heard only patches of the ceremony, prizes doled out and punishments; but Molly took in every detail.
One menial was promoted to servant-orderly, one servant to lady aspirant, entitling her to fine clothes and elocution. One lady aspirant, her training complete, was to be delivered to her guardian on the morrow.
“To be his dead wife,” whispered the maid stood beside us.
“How does that work, then?” Molly asked her, bright as brass.
“Wife died; he wishes she hadn’t,” the girl answered unabashed. “He buys a new one.”
Molly nodded. “A pretty service.”
We were hushed into silence by the other maids.
Next came a certain Florence, returned in shame. She was beaten on the soles of her feet, to make an example of her failure. Trying vainly to smile, she accepted her sentence, consigned to menial duties. Finally, an elfin girl, not even accorded the dignity of a name, was to be taken off to Lansdowne Gardens.
“Extracurriculars,” whispered the naughty girl. “With the dustman.”
“Need I remind you,” said the spinster, brow black as the clouds outside, “that we allow no solicitation, not here, not nearby, not until you are far across the river? This shall be punctiliously obeyed, or punished.”
I expected the anonymous miscreant would be struck or shamed. But this banishment was shame enough. Nobody so much as looked at her as she walked out of the room and into the hands of Brodie’s men.
One final fireplace remained. Secluded behind classrooms and dormitories, one final exquisite apartment, the four-poster bed pristine and sumptuous, where I could not help imagining girls being delivered, pale and torpid, as if to be sacrificed to a monstrous mythic deity.
O Flowers of Sin, I little thought to find you here, in the dingy backstreets of the Borough, in a rain-soaked warehouse behind the grimy wharves. Just another investment, prolific and luxuriant, but an investment nonetheless. The nursery where seeds of beauty are sown and shoots nurtured, then their blossoms plucked and delivered across the city, lighting up the night-time city with vivacity and colour.
* * *
Brushes packed and minds awhirl, we made our way back to the door. The sooner I could tell Jeffcoat, the sooner we could unravel the threads and trace them back to the spindle.
“Slow enough, aren’t you?” The spinster had a disdainful manner, but impeccable vowels. “Aren’t you to do next door, then? Don’t touch, filthy fingers.”
Molly slapped my hand away from the door handle. “Where’s that, then?”
“Didn’t they tell you? Ooh, they can keep a secret, those ones.” The spinster pointed slyly down the street. “Shimmy up them irons on the corner, if you like.”
We peered out into the deluge. The antique stairwell looked as if it might rust away any second; at the thought of the precipitous rooftops, my breath ran short.
“In this weather?” Molly shook her head. “Enough of your larks, Mrs Snooks. We’ll take the low road, thank you very much.”
* * *
It is hard to write of what we saw next door. The spinster led us through a tunnel and two locked doors. It did not take long to clean the flues; there were only two fireplaces in this whole draughty dungeon.
First, the room of seamstresses I had glimpsed all those weeks ago. Beside it, a great kitchen of cooks dully chopping firewood for the ovens and vegetables for the pot. The laundry, industrious and perfumed. Next, a workshop. Some women bent over intricate jewellery. Some filling bottles, mixing perfumes and tinctures by the dim light; others copying letters.
Next, hoary draggletails repaired furnishings, boxes and lamps. They were not locked in, but I knew them to be slaves, the cast-offs of the flash life, devoid of hope, devoid of light. If they were able to speak, they did not dare; it had been beaten out of them. There were seats by the doors, where perhaps bullies once sat to cajole and threaten, but the bullies were long forgotten, the workforce trained into acquiescence.
No comfy bedrooms, like the main house; here, damp mattresses were rolled against the walls, piled into closets and storerooms, where stained blankets hinted of diseases that had run their full course on that threadbare matting.
Some women were of foreign extraction: Negresses and gypsies, Hindus and Arabs. Others were so plain or so bent with toil, I could see why they had been expelled from the palace next door.
Molly and I completed our work in silence. We passed back through the seamstresses and rang at the bell, as we had been shown, to ask for payment. At the hatch of the front office the ivory-faced dragon appeared, her eyes round as the moon. I shrank back, lest she recognise me. There was no sign of the girl I had run over, nor her scowling sister; perhaps they had been promoted to the main house, or run over in earnest, or sold.
The old dragon was so elevated on laudanum—the only way to survive that deathly place—she was more likely to think I was the Queen of Sheba. Molly nudged me into the office, delaying her with chatter, as she counted out our money, befuddled.
On the table lay a book of accounts. Even in my panic, I recognised the system at once, from the intricate ledger at the Phoenix Foundation. Each line of dense laborious writing bore a date, woman’s name (or two names), an address, two sums in pounds, shillings and pence, and finally a man’s name. Some entries were asterisked, some were scratched out. It took moments to flick back through the months. There I found it, at the year’s end, just a few weeks after the Foundation party at Quarterhouse:
30 December ’63
£5 & £5 Eveline/Angelina 5 Mill Lane, Wildernsea, N. Yorks.
£1,000 Felix Sonnabend
RIVER OF MUTE CRIMES
It was nearing the end of our days of grace. In a few days, I must deliver my statement to the Enquiry. I hoped we could explain these discoveries; I hoped that our testimony, with Kate Hamilton’s and the rest, would point an incontrovertible finger. I had discovered the secret I had so long guessed at. Now Jeffcoat sniffed a conclusion to his researches.
Molly’s boy led him to the house on Caledonian Road where he had seen the packages from the shabby back door of the warehouse deposited. Jeffcoat spent the day in whiskers and oilskins, fishing from the steps, keeping one eye on the house and one on the road. He stared into the canal, reflecting on our discoveries, as the rain churned up the filthy water.
Sure enough, come evening, the cart drove up again. Our old spinster Mrs Snooks dragged the packages into the house. The donkey watched reproachfully from the cart. Soon after dark, she emerged empty-handed. The tenant stepped out on his back porch, which overhung the towpath. The moon was low; the drizzle drummed on the waters.
Jeffcoat had stowed away his rod around dark, wrapping himself under the steps in the gloom, like a vagrant.
The man, thinking nobody was around, brought out the first package. He tested its weight in his arms, and hefted it into the canal. It bobbed for a moment, then sank from view. He stood, smoking a pipe.
Jeffcoat could do nothing without being seen. He was intrigued. But to enter those waters was a recipe for death.
Why bring a package so far to throw it away? A hidden exchange, too risky to keep at the warehouse? An illicit side deal, concealed from Brodie’s men: liquor, jewels or spices? Payne was away, but the Yard’s diver drank nearby. A grizzled old navvy, who used to dive for the navy, he was always trawling the Serpentine, the Hampstead Ponds, and the Thames; it was he who had dragged Cora from the waters beneath Waterloo Bridge. We found him in the King’s Street Tavern and promised him drink if he’d come in the morning.
We rose early that morning; the fewer who spied such work, the better. I stood guard on the towpath, Jeffcoat by the house, for the tenant would bolt if he suspected their cache discovered. The diver lowered himself into the water on the far side of the bridge.
Lawless and the Flowers of Sin Page 21