House of Bliss

by T T Thomas

  “Miss Blissdon’s father died,” she told Bel. “Several years ago, I gather. I haven’t yet discovered where his files are kept.”

  “Then, I must continue to work,” Bel said. “To pay the rent in this hovel. I don’t even—I don’t partake of the poppy. Not for months. It’s made me ill not having it, but the Chinaman said my credit is in arrears.”

  Felicity reached into her bag. She drew out a dark apothecary bottle. “I found this in her father’s library desk. It might help.”

  Bel reached for the bottle and joggled it. “About half full. Won’t she notice?”

  “There was a fuller bottle so I left that.”

  “Be careful, dear. It’s the only home we have for Sophia right now.” She set the bottle off to the side. “I am going to try not to take it. But it’s there if I must.”

  Felicity saw the drawn skin around her sister’s mouth, the dark circles under her eyes, the thin arms, and the gaunt cheeks. “Where do you go…when you work?”

  Bel shrugged. “Within a few blocks of here. The foot traffic is light but I’ve met some of the other girls, so I feel safer. I only go to work a couple times a week,” she said. “And no one comes back here with me.”

  Felicity shivered. She reached over to hold Bel’s hand. Bel was the older one, but today Felicity felt particularly young. “What’s to become of us, Bel?”

  Bel looked up. A half smile formed and a small glint in her eyes revealed something Felicity hadn’t seen in her sister’s eyes for months. Bel pulled her in for a hug and a kiss, then said, “I heard he was looking for me.”

  Felicity sat up with a start. “Oh, Bel.”

  Bel raised a finger to her lips to hush her sister. She sat up straighter and spoke in a clear voice.

  “Felicity, he has no idea you exist. He can’t know for certain about Sophia, though he may have heard rumors. I was off the market for quite a few months there. His old friend George Markham swore he’d never say a word.”

  “Do you believe Mr. Markham?”

  “I do,” Bel said. “He’s given me extra money this past few months. I’ve not seen him in weeks, but I don’t think he’d tell Hugh anything. He thinks Hugh is a cad.”

  “Does Mr. Markham know where you live?” Felicity asked.

  “No. We go to a hotel. He knows the general area, of course, but, no.”

  “How does he find you?” Felicity asked.

  Bel looked at her as if considering whether to answer. “I go to a specific corner on Wednesday. He only comes Wednesdays. I meet him out front of the Laurel Tree Pub.”

  Felicity gave her a blank stare. “The Laurel—where is that?”

  Bel shrugged. “A newish place, few years old now. Near Fournier Street and Brick Lane. A bit better lit than some corners.”

  “And what if Glyver finds you, Bel? What then?”

  Bel looked away, her eyes settling on some invisible, distant shore of opportunity. “If I can persuade Markham to put some pressure on Hugh, maybe he’ll re-start the payments.”

  Felicity shook her head. “Why on earth would he? It’s been nearly six months and not a ha’penny from him.”

  “Dreaming I suppose. Besides, I’m the only person who might convince him.”

  “And you’re to go nowhere near that awful man.”

  “No,” Bel said. “I won’t. Can’t. I fear for my life with him.”

  “Let me see how far I can get with Miss Blissdon,” Felicity said. “And I better get back. She went out but could return any time.”

  “And she’s good to you, Sabrina is? Kind to you?”

  Felicity wrapped the heavy coat around her and tied the belt. “Yes, she is. Did you meet her when Mr. Blissdon took on your divorce case?

  Bel shook her head and looked away. “I, yes. She was passing through the house on the way to her studio. But I met her again later. Socially. Got to know her better. Very kind. But you can’t let on.”

  Felicity nodded. “Yes, of course. I haven’t let on anything. I saw her studio. And the corsets. Like the ones you wear.”

  “Wore,” Bel said. “I’ve not worn one since last I met with Mr. Markham.”

  Felicity bent down to hug and kiss her sister. “Come lock the door behind me, Bel.”

  The two women held hands as they walked the short distance to the blue door. “When will you be back?”

  “Next week, I promise. I will try to get some money as well as some provisions for you. Don’t go out if you can help it.”

  “We’ll see,” Bel said, lowering her eyelids. They both sensed what neither would confirm: She’d go back to work before Felicity’s next visit.

  Felicity stood outside the blue door until she heard the latch click. She hurried up the stairs out of the darkness to McCarthy’s little store near the corner. She paid for a few items to be sent to Bel’s that afternoon. Mrs. McCarthy smiled at her but said nothing

  “Will you see the wood boy goes ‘round today, too?” Felicity asked. “She can buy a week’s supply, then I’ll be back.”

  Mrs. McCarthy addressed her. “I’ll be after advising the wood boy, I will for sure.”

  Felicity looked around after she left the store and made her way about six blocks to the busier part of the area. As she walked, she passed many people, but the ones that stood out were the streetwalkers, hovering together in twos inside deep doorsteps or at the end of small alleys.

  She saw the feigned looks of joviality that masked the quiet despair within their hearts. Too much makeup, too few clothes for the cold weather, and too thin to be healthy, the women tore at her heart as they reminded her of Bel. She wondered if others had taken the deep fall from grace that Bel had.

  Were they married once to wealthy men who mistreated them? Did they have children at home? Were they natural beauties once as Bel had been? When she heard them speak the crude cant and vernacular of the rough streets, she doubted many had fallen from on high. The wind picked up and the collective quavering all around drowned out her gasp of sorrow.

  Felicity waited at a roundabout for the omnibus. Everyone huddled best they could in their meager coats and looked at the thick, well-made wool coat Felicity wore. She felt their eyes. She knew what they were thinking. All the people waiting for the bus were cold. They seemed old and worn, the worry lines from constant frowning creasing faces too young to suspect how rundown they looked.

  She wondered what coat Bel wore. Whatever it was, she doubted it was as nice as some she’d seen in the guest-room closet where Cath stored Sabrina’s castoff clothing. Surely, the mistress of the house would not miss a coat she never wore.

  Chapter 8

  The color of dried blood was not red.

  It was a light rust on the first corset I examined, which I vaguely recognized as an exceptionally small garment made for…whom? The name was on the tip of my tongue. Tiny waist, pretty face, blonde and shy.

  The stain on the next corset I beheld, from the second murder, was a dark brown. It struck me as odd, though, that there was no blood and no knife slash on either of the embroidered B monograms on the lower side panel of the corsets. A small pinpoint drop here, a dot of a drip there, but largely free of blood. That area of the corset is also slightly thicker because of the monogram and perhaps harder to slice with a knife. Still, the unsoiled, uncut monograms gave me a chill, as they seemed almost a calling card of sorts, something the killer wanted us to notice. It was the only time I’d ever thought the B didn’t stand for Bliss.

  Excerpt, Sabrina Blissdon’s journal, Exhibit 4 Evidence Files Nos. 1,2

  Sabrina arrived at The Bethnal Green Police Station on Ainsley Street at the corner of Bethnal Green Road. She had expected Jeremy to meet her outside, but he was not there.

  She had been to the Whitechapel area markets several times with her father when she first opened her business and needed cheap piecemeal fabrics to experiment with designs. Scanning the area now, she could see it was even more degraded, rundown and treacherous than she remembere
d. Unsavory-looking men loitered at the edge of the walkway, rubbing their hands together at the cold. Young, unattended children huddled together against the walls. Her driver scanned the area warily and waited while she went inside.

  A young man with a large mustache and an officious smirk looked up as she approached the barred window. “Visiting hours is over, Miss.”

  “Dr. Jeremy Wintermere is expecting me,” she said.

  Wordlessly, he got up from his chair and went into another office adjacent to the reception area. To her surprise, he came out with Chief Inspector Mendicott.

  “Miss Blissdon,” Mendicott said.

  “Oh, hello. I’m here to see Dr. Wintermere. To show me the corsets?”

  The young man behind Mendicott suffered a silent facial tic of disapproval, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t look Sabrina in the eye.

  “Well, I’ll have to be the one showing you any evidence files,” Mendicott said, “but we’ll have Wintermere join us if that’s your preference.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Mendicott stepped to the side of the area and unlatched the lock on a door. “This way, then, Miss Blissdon.”

  She followed him into the anteroom, then down a long gray hallway. She heard the hum of voices, mostly male, and the clacking of the telegraph machine. Once they reached the end of the hall, Mendicott opened a door and entered another reception area. “This is the evidence room,” Mendicott said. He rang a small bell, and an elderly woman with spectacles perched halfway down her nose popped her head up from behind the counter.

  “Ah, Chief Inspector. Thought I heard the door, but when I’m down here on the floor trying to inventory these boxes, it’s the bell that does the trick. How can I help you, sir?” She didn’t so much as glance at Sabrina.

  “Good day, Maisie. We need to look at the Dark Striker evidence files numbers one and two.”

  “Dark Striker?” Sabrina whispered. “Dramatic.”

  “He strikes in the dark, and at that time, we had no suspects, no witnesses and no victims with a name. We gave both incidents the same moniker as we feel something connects them. It’s merely an internal designation.” His voice had more than a slight edge of defensiveness.

  Jeremy came in as Mendicott was signing for the evidence box. He nodded and followed Mendicott and Sabrina into a well-lit room with a long library table and several chairs. There were three empty easels at the front of the room.

  Mendicott handed his guests a pair of white cotton gloves, which they donned in silence. Then he placed two large pieces of brown butcher paper on the table and put a corset on each one. “This was the first murder,” he said, pointing to a small garment.

  Sabrina blinked. She didn’t have that many clients with such a small waist. She bent over the material. The garment smelled of human perspiration and talcum. “May I touch it to examine it?” she asked Mendicott.

  “If you feel that is important,” he said.

  She picked up the corset and winced at the amount of rust colored blood that stained the inside and outside of the piece. There were parts that appeared slashed by something sharp, leaving clean, straight cuts on the material. She looked it over front and back and then set it down on the paper. She reached toward the top hem of the bodice part and with her gloved finger lifted a flap of fabric that hid an interior pocket. She removed her finger and turned to Mendicott.

  “I need a pen to reach inside here,” she said.

  “Whatever for?” Mendicott asked.

  “Because there’s a pound note or maybe more in there,” she said. “I cannot reach inside wearing these gloves.”

  Mendicott and Jeremy bent over to see where and what in there meant. Mendicott handed her his pen, and in two seconds, she fished out a five-pound note.

  “I’ll be damned,” Jeremy said.

  “Lot of money for a prostitute,” Mendicott said.

  “It could well be her entire life’s saving,” Sabrina said. She wanted to say more but refrained. “There’s something else I have to do,” she said.

  Sabrina bent over the table and pulled the busk out from the same area. “As I had hoped.”

  “Is it one of your hand-painted ones?” Jeremy asked.

  “Yes.” She turned it over and squinted to read the small name hand-printed on the bottom of the busk.

  Mendicott was swaying back and forth with visible impatience. “I’m mightily perturbed that none of the investigators found this money. It’s a right crisp note, too.”

  Sabrina turned toward him. “It was hidden in a narrow pocket we sew inside the larger pocket that holds the busk,” she said. “Women know about it, but most men do not. I don’t know what you can find out from the five-pound note, but I can tell you who originally purchased this corset from me.”

  Mendicott looked at her. It wasn’t a kind look. “How, pray tell?”

  Sabrina handed him the piece of whalebone. “Turn it over,” she said, “and you’ll find the young lady’s name in tiny letters toward the bottom.”

  He held the busk close. “Angela—can’t quite make it out.”

  “Angela Raines,” Sabrina said. “Society debutante of note a couple years ago.”

  Jeremy leaned over Mendicott’s arm to get a closer look at the back of the busk. There were small floral designs painted above the name.

  “That’s our victim?” Mendicott asked. “Impossible. This woman was clearly a…she worked the streets, Miss Blissdon, not the social circuit. She’s been identified as Annie Johnson by several of her…coworkers.”

  Sabrina sat down in one of the wooden chairs and removed her cotton gloves. “Yes, I agree, it’s quite impossible, Chief Inspector. Miss Raines died in a terrible buggy accident in Kensington, about a year ago. Perhaps you should call on her mother. I hear she’s not been well, though, since the accident.”

  “And how do you know that, Miss Blissdon?”

  “Her mother is also a client of mine. I attended her daughter’s funeral.”

  Mendicott looked vaguely disappointed. “Let’s have a look at the second garment, shall we?”

  Sabrina pulled on her gloves again. Something other than a knife had ripped this corset unevenly in half lengthwise—it would have taken superhuman strength to tear through the tightly sewn seams without a sharp blade. It was also bloodier than the first one. She pulled out the busk but knew it was not one of hers without turning it over. “This is not the original busk,” she said. She poked at the empty pocket with the pen. “And no money in this one,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m of little help here, Inspector, except…” she paused as she held up the two pieces of fabric.

  “Yes, Miss Blissdon? Except what?”

  “This corset is over three years old and is one of the largest I’ve made. I can come up with a few names of women who would wear this size. I can see that this garment was worn often—the wear on the inside fabric seams tells me that. In fact, Mrs. Raines, Angela’s mother…well, she was a large woman. This could have been hers. My clients often gave their still serviceable but older garments to charity. And I assume you’ve noticed this corset must have been torn in half by human hands, not a knife. There are knife slashes, here and here,” she said, pointing to two areas of the corset, “but to rip it in half like this…”

  “Would that be so unlikely?” Mendicott asked.

  “Someone in a state of rage might be able to do it, perhaps, but I venture to say it would take a person of rare strength otherwise. All those seams are triple enforced.”

  Sabrina removed her gloves again.

  Mendicott frowned. “Well, I’m not prepared to try to figure out the state of mind of the attacker, at this point,” he said, “but thank you for your observations. Doesn’t tell me much about the second murder, but I suppose having identification on the first one is a mark of progress. Annie Johnson. Wearing a House of Bliss corset. Most extraordinary.”

  Sabrina stood up. “Yes, well, your ‘attacker’ was a murderer,” she said, “and I’m
sure that must involve a dear amount of anger, which became the raw strength of rage. One might wonder why.”

  Jeremy coughed. “Yes, thank you, Miss Blissdon,” Jeremy said with a bow. “Literally could not have done it without you.”

  Sabrina stood. “If you’re finished with me here, Chief Inspector, I’ll ask Dr. Wintermere to walk me to my rig.”

  Without a word, Mendicott nodded and looked away. He wrapped up the evidence and replaced it in the boxes.

  Once outside, Jeremy guided Sabrina by the elbow to her driver. “What a dour man he is,” Jeremy said.

  “Oh, he’s worse than dour,” she said. “I do not get a good feeling about this man at all, Jeremy. He could barely acknowledge my help.”

  “I know,” Jeremy said. “I wonder what’s got into him about you?”

  Sabrina stepped up into the carriage but leaned toward Jeremy before he closed the door. “I don’t know about him, but I can help you even more. Can you get me the second victim’s waist and bust measurements?”

  Jeremy tilted his head. “An unusual request, for sure, but of course I can. This evening then?”

  “Oh, come for dinner.”

  “I can’t, Sabrina. I’m going to be working here through dinner. I’ll come after, though, for a nightcap and bring you the information.”

  She gave him a conspiratorial smile. “Excellent. We’ll solve these murders before anyone.”

  “Oh, by the way, Sabrina…one last thought. I noticed that on both sides of the busk enclosure, there was a line of dark blue thread. Did that have a purpose?”

  Sabrina smiled. “You’d make a better detective than Mendicott!” she said. “Yes, it was originally meant as something to strengthen the busk enclosure but I unwittingly created another way to identify my corsets. That’s what I mean when I said I could spot one of my own creations from several feet away. We have the royal blue B monogram, of course, but the lady would have to be in an advanced state of undress for anyone see it.”