The Sugar Merchant’s Wife

by Erica Brown

  Just as he’d supposed, the judge was not amenable to the idea. ‘But surely, we are talking about the life of a gentleman and the death of scoundrel. And it all happened a long time ago. I mean, does it really matter now?’

  ‘It does to me.’

  Sir Stanley smiled affably and got to his feet, his drained port glass signalling that the meeting was at an end.

  ‘Your sense of public duty is most commendable, my dear Mr Cuthbert, but I really cannot see the point of raking over cold ashes.’ His plump hand landed on Stoke’s shoulder. ‘Let bygones be bygones. That’s what I say. What say you, my dear chap?’

  Stoke rose slowly to his feet. His expression left Moorditch in no doubt that he had no intention of doing that. ‘Are you still a collector, Sir Stanley?’

  The question took Moorditch off guard, just as Stoke had intended. The colour drained from his face.

  Stoke walked slowly around the room, his fingers trailing over the leather-bound volumes. Finally, he curled them over one particular book and jerked it from its place.

  ‘I…’ The blood rushed to the judge’s face. His eyes became black dots in a sea of obesity and redness.

  Stoke’s smile was thin and cold. With one swift movement the book fell from the shelf. What looked to be loose leaves fluttered out like broken wings and lay scattered over the floor.

  Stoke picked up a few and fanned them in his hand like playing cards. ‘I see you are a connoisseur of new inventions, Sir Stanley.’

  He waved three photographs before Moorditch’s frightened eyes.

  ‘The camera. A wonderful new invention. And these, Sir Stanley, are photographs taken by such a camera. Dirty photographs of little girls without their clothes on.’

  Moorditch’s tongue flicked nervously over his lips before he blurted. ‘They’re only pictures, just like paintings are only pictures.’

  Stoke’s laugh was as thin as his smile. ‘Yes, yes, of course they are. Number twenty-four, Cherry Tree Alley. An apt name, don’t you think for a “cherry house” where those with money can pluck the youngest fruit? Some of these poor little girls have been sold into the house by their kinfolk. Others come by way of the workhouse. Aren’t you a governor of one of the city’s workhouses, Sir Stanley?’

  Moorditch raised an arm and gave a small cry, as Stoke slapped his cheeks with the cards.

  ‘The likes of you bend the law to suit themselves. The circumstances of these girls don’t matter to you. They are there purely for your pleasure and you can afford such delicate, unblemished fruit. You can afford to buy anything you like.’

  The sweat that had broken out on the judge’s face now dripped off his chin.

  Sensing victory, Stoke patted Moorditch’s shoulder in the same condescending manner as Sir Stanley had patted his. ‘As a judge, do you not agree that the guilty should be brought to justice?’

  ‘Please. You won’t tell anyone…’

  ‘Do you not agree?’ Stoke repeated.

  Moorditch shook his head vehemently. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. It will take time, but it can be done.’

  Stoke flicked his finger over Sir Stanley’s plum-coloured nose. ‘I don’t mind you taking a little time, just enough for me to savour the triumph to come.’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to the chief constable.’

  Stoke raised his eyebrows. ‘And?’

  ‘A meeting will have to be arranged between the witness and the police.’

  Stoke smiled. ‘He’ll be there. Rest assured, Sir Stanley, he’ll be there.’

  * * *

  Septimus Monk almost bowed, as Horatia swept into the room dressed in a cream gown trimmed with coffee-coloured lace, the cuffs and collar fastened with pearl buttons. She wore an off-the-face hat with a lace veil at the front and coffee-coloured ribbons trailing at the back. Her earrings matched her outfit and were highlighted in gold. She looked feminine, but at the same time superbly efficient.

  Monk indicated his desk with a flourish of his hand. ‘I’ve spread it out ready for you.’

  Horatia barely acknowledged him but went straight to the desk. Bending slightly from her corseted waist, she studied the city map. Monk had weighted it down at each corner with two inkwells, a paperweight and a polished cannonball that he usually kept on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Have you the proposed route of the sewers?’

  ‘I have it here.’

  He placed a sheet of paper headed ‘Bristol Corporation’ beside her left hand. She studied it quickly, her eyes darting between the properties affected by the proposed sewer route and the map. Her fingers found the location of each street listed.

  ‘Have you traced the owners?’

  ‘I have indeed.’

  ‘And you have offered on my behalf?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There are sixteen properties here that interest me. How many are willing to sell?’

  ‘Ten.’

  Horatia straightened. ‘Only ten?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you offered enough?’

  Monk cleared his throat. ‘The money isn’t the problem. Two of the properties have only just recently changed hands to a landlord who already owns four properties of the six. I fear we have a competitor. Whoever this man is, he knows the route of the sewer and is out to make himself a fortune.’

  Horatia was most put out. ‘How terribly vulgar! What times we live in. It appears some people will do anything for money.’

  Monk thought he’d covered his smile but Horatia’s eyes were quick to see it.

  ‘Never mind smiling! I want you to purchase these ten properties forthwith. How much do you think you can get them for?’

  ‘Two thousand pounds?’

  ‘Two hundred pounds each.’ Horatia frowned before coming to a decision. ‘Buy them! Go to three if you have to, but buy them.’

  ‘I will indeed.’

  ‘And find out the name of our competitor. I’d like to know with whom I am competing.’

  ‘Very well, Miss Strong.’

  She paused by the door. ‘You don’t think this man is in sugar, do you?’

  He shook his head. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Horatia’s breasts heaved with her sigh. ‘He must be. Anyone who can afford that amount of money has either to be in sugar or crime. For peace of mind, I will presume the former.’

  * * *

  Blanche liked having breakfast with her children. Both she and Conrad saw as much of them as they could, unlike those households where the children were only seen at teatime.

  Conrad was talking about the new sewerage proposals and his part in them.

  ‘There will be difficulties with the owners of some of the properties immediately in the path of the sewers. You have to hear these people to believe them, my dear. Suddenly, properties bought for fifty pounds are worth five hundred. There are some people in this city who will make a lot of money from these sewers, mark my words.’

  Blanche had been a little distracted since meeting Tom at Little Paradise and was only half listening, which is why things started going wrong.

  ‘I didn’t want any more porridge,’ said Max, as Blanche pushed the dish she’d just filled for Lucy, in front of him.

  ‘Sorry, Max.’

  ‘And I don’t like salt!’ Lucy wailed, her tongue slapping around her lips as she tried to dislodge the porridge from her tongue.

  Exasperated, Blanche threw her arms in the air. ‘Lucy!’ she shouted.

  ‘Are you feeling alright, my dear?’ asked Conrad.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ Banishing thoughts of Tom Strong from her mind, she handed the bowl to Martha, Lucy’s nurse. ‘She wants sugar, Martha.’

  ‘I think we have plenty,’ said Conrad with a wry smile. ‘It would be a fine household indeed if a sugar refiner does not have any sugar, don’t you think?’

  It was a joke and Blanche laughed just as Conrad expected her to, though she had been laughing a lot more lately.

  Conrad spooned three spoonfuls in
to his milkless tea and eyed her quizzically. ‘Have you been listening to what I have been saying?’

  She sat bolt upright. ‘Yes. Of course. You were talking about the sewers.’

  She’d heard that much and no more. Her thoughts kept drifting to Tom.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Conrad looking remorseful. ‘They are not a fitting subject for the breakfast table. I do apologize.’

  ‘No need to.’

  His eyes did not leave her. ‘You seem to have something on your mind, my dear.’

  ‘Edith,’ Blanche blurted, grabbing the first excuse that popped into her head. ‘I keep thinking about Edith and her children living in that dreadful place. I do hope she got the things I left for her. She seems to have so little and the stench around that place!’

  ‘She should not be living there. Why does she not move?’

  ‘I don’t think she has any choice. Her husband’s away at sea. I doubt whether she gets much money from him even when he is home.’ Blanche shook her head and poked with her fork at the kipper on her plate. ‘I don’t know what else I can do for her. From what I remember she wouldn’t take charity unless she earned it. Edith was always proud like that. She used to make up tales about her family that made them sound more wonderful than they actually were.’ Blanche lowered her eyes. ‘Poor Edith.’

  Conrad got up from his chair and kissed the top of her head. ‘We will do our best. That is all we can do. Now I must go,’ he said, glancing at the silver watch he took from his waistcoat. ‘Magistrates must set a good example and arrive at court on time.’

  Conrad had been a magistrate for several years now, serving five days in every month and took great pride in doing so.

  ‘I trust those in the dock will appreciate your punctuality,’ said Blanche.

  Conrad patted each child on the head and laughed as he made for the door. ‘I think they would prefer that I did not come at all.’

  Chapter Ten

  Molly McBean came knocking at Edith’s door, blubbering like a baby, her eyes red and sore.

  ‘It’s me baby,’ she wailed as she sank to the ground, her bony knees poking through the rips in her skirt.

  Closing the door behind her to keep the smell out, Edith patted Molly’s skinny arm. ‘I know, me love! Poor little mite’s dead. She was dead three days ago, me love. Remember? I did tell you so, and there ain’t nothing you can do now but bury her.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she wailed, her mouth a red cavern of sore gums and blackened stumps. ‘There’s nowhere to bury her. There’s no room in the graveyards.’

  Exasperated, Edith threw back her head. ‘God above! I’ve heard of there being no room at the inn for a newborn baby, but never no room in the graveyard for a dead one!’

  ‘What shall I do?’ wailed Molly. ‘Poor little mite’s beginning to smell. I got to get the poor thing buried.’

  There was little time for sentimentality in Lewins Mead. Molly, who was a bit slow anyway, was too distraught to think straight.

  Edith noted the vacant eyes, the drooping mouth. It never failed to amaze her that men actually paid for Molly’s services, but thankfully they did. How else would the poor woman put bread on the table?

  Edith sighed. It was up to her to sort this out. ‘We’ll get her buried. You see if we don’t,’ she promised.

  During the long months of a hot summer, cholera had claimed the lives of thousands of people in the city. More had gone to typhoid and myriad other diseases common to a seaport, not to mention the deaths in childbirth and from gangrenous infections, starvation and old age (fifty and above). Summer always brought more disease and there were just as many bodies to bury as there would be after a freezing winter. Space was at a premium. Gravediggers had been ordered to open up old graves in order to bury the fresh bodies, which meant that as many as six bodies were being interred in one grave.

  ‘I’ve no money for burial,’ Molly wailed, her face puckered with crying and a stream of dribble hanging from her bottom lip.

  Edith eyed Molly’s poor clothes and the pasty white faces of what children she had left, their eyes sunk deep into their sockets and the sores of impending starvation circling their lips.

  Edith sighed and considered what she could do to help, though she had precious little in her own house. At last she said, ‘I’ve got a penny or two. We’ll try St James’ Barton. There’s bound to be space for a little ’un among all them great big graves.’

  Molly brightened, her square jaw returning to its usual jutting defiance, though God knows, it was a last-ditch stand. ‘We’ll show ’em all!’ she cried, punching the air with a bony fist, each knuckle crowned with a single wart.

  Edith searched for her last shilling left from those Jim Storm Cloud had given her and picked up a wooden shovel. Molly went to fetch the baby. When she came back, it was wrapped in what looked like an old shirt, stained yellow and smelling of piddle.

  ‘What happened to the newspaper you had her wrapped in?’

  ‘Needed it for the fire. Didn’t ’ave any kindling.’

  No surprise, thought Edith. Molly never had very much of anything.

  Rays from the setting sun made the cobbles shine like polished oranges. A solid block of sunlight fell between buildings at the end of the alley reminding Edith of a gate. And I shouldn’t be going out through it, she thought to herself, though couldn’t for the life of her explain why.

  It didn’t take long to get to the churchyard of St James’s Barton, which was large, encompassing as it did the site of an old abbey.

  The shadow of the square tower fell over them like a black cloak, stretching right across the road. A lantern, housed in a wrought-iron holder, hung above the entrance. Below it in the shadows, something moved.

  ‘There’s someone at the gate,’ Edith whispered to Molly.

  ‘Damn ’em to hell, the lot of ’em,’ Molly muttered under her breath. ‘I just knew we should ’ave waited till it was dark.’

  Edith eyed the two men standing close together. Beyond them the tombstones rolled away like sentinels, though some were lopsided and looked as if they were about to lie down with the dead.

  ‘So what we gonna do?’

  The question was as much for herself as for Molly, who only shrugged and looked perplexed.

  Typical, thought Edith. Plenty of boasting about what she would do, but no doing. She just wasn’t able to cope with the situation.

  ‘Let me ’ave that ’ere.’

  Molly passed her the rudely wrapped bundle. As she did so, a small, bare foot fell out. Edith shuddered and did her best to wrap it up again.

  ‘Didn’t you ’ave a better winding sheet that this, Moll?’

  Edith sighed. ‘Right,’ she muttered determinedly and purposely poked herself in the eye. By the time she got to the graveyard gate, her right eye was watering and a real tear was running down her cheek.

  The men looked up when they heard her coming.

  ‘My baby,’ she wailed, holding the bundle out in front of her. ‘She’s dead, poor mite. Dead, and all I’ve ever had to love in the world.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  Edith ignored the tart response. ‘You have to let me bury her.’

  ‘Go away. We’re full up.’

  Edith was not deterred. ‘She’s only two years old, and so small. She wouldn’t take up much room, honest she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Clear off,’ said the other man. Just to emphasize the point he ran a wooden stave along the bars. ‘You’ll get this if you come near ’ere.’

  Edith thrust the baby towards them at arm’s length. ‘But my baby? The cholera got her…’

  At the mention of the dreaded word, both men sprang back from the gate. This was exactly what Edith had hoped they would do. If they left the gate then they could climb over and get the child buried.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t go away. One of the men darted into a dark corner next to where a flying buttress was rooted into the ground and came out carrying something. ‘Now get out of
yur,’ he shouted, levelling an aged flintlock at her chest. ‘Go on! Go, or I’ll open fire.’

  Edith nudged Molly. ‘’Ere. You ’ave her now.’ She passed the baby back to Molly.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Molly, as they walked away, the baby tucked like a parcel beneath her arm.

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  Edith was adamant. The poor babe hadn’t had much of a start in life being born to a mother like Molly. She at least deserved a decent burial.

  Molly sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Well, they ain’t gonna let us in that gate, are they? P’raps I should just chuck ’er in the river!’

  Edith was appalled. ‘I didn’t get much religion when I was at home, but I do knows right from wrong,’ she said, and rolled up her sleeves. ‘There’s a tree up against that back wall behind the church. We could climb up it and—’

  Molly shook her head. ‘No! I don’t do climbing, Edie!’

  Edith eyed her accusingly. Hardly the ideal mother, she thought to herself, or wife for that matter. Molly looked grotesque. Her hair was fine, wispy and grey. Her eyes were bloodshot and those teeth that weren’t missing were black in places and yellow in others. Edith frowned. Molly’s man – she wasn’t sure whether they’d ever actually married – had been a big, bluff character when they’d first arrived in Cabot’s Yard. Now he was a mere shadow of his former self, though still managed to knock out a new baby every now and again, despite Molly’s dreary appearance. And every so often she had to go out and earn some money by the same method. There was half a chance that the baby might not even have been his.

  Dwelling on Molly, her husband and her morals would do nothing to help the situation. Edith forced herself to concentrate on the tree behind the church as the sun began to disappear into the darkness. It looked ideal for climbing. She could do it. She was pretty certain she could do it.

  Her glance settled on the sad little bundle Molly still carried beneath her arm.

  ‘I’ll climb over,’ she said. ‘But we’ll have to wait until the sun’s gone down.’

  Thank God that doctor came along, she thought. Lizzie was the only case of cholera in Lewins Mead to recover. She felt obliged to help Molly bury her dead little mite.