by Carol Hedges
Once she has dealt with the poverty rush, Maria Barklem is free to leave. The premises will be taken over by the baker himself and his assistants, who will work through the night in the back shed, mixing and kneading and feeding the hot ovens, so that the next batch of loaves is piping hot and ready for the morning.
Eventually, the local church bells strike the half hour and Maria takes off her pinafore and hangs it on a hook. She slides the bolt on the shop door, then picks up her basket (carefully covered with a cloth) and makes her way out of the back, murmuring a greeting to the young boy who has arrived to weigh out flour, get the fires going and grease the tins.
As she walks home, the first fallen leaves blowing around her feet, she reminds herself that what she has in her basket is not stealing. Jesus commanded his followers to feed His lambs, did he not? Her mind throws up the picture on the cover of the Sunday School prize book she won, age six, for reciting, by heart, five whole psalms.
The picture was of a kindly man in a flowing white robe. He had long fair hair, blue eyes and a beard. In the picture, he was carrying a small sheep under his arm, while at his feet clustered numerous children in very clean pinafores and tuckers. The message couldn’t have been plainer.
Besides, who knows which of her small class might be the ‘angel unawares’ that she is commanded, in scripture to entertain? Maria no longer believes in God, but He occasionally comes in useful to support her minor larcenies.
Reaching home, she lets herself in quietly. For a moment, she stands in the small kitchen, relishing the peace. Then she fills the kettle, sets it on the hob, and cuts some bread and butter. Her mother will be wanting her afternoon tea. She sets the invalid’s tray with an embroidered cloth, and the pretty pink china. Anything to tempt her to eat.
Having delivered the meal and spent some time plumping pillows and talking about her day, she goes back to the kitchen to prepare. This evening, Maria is holding a special class for her most promising student, who has missed the past two weeks’ lessons for reasons she suspects, but is far too discreet to ask about.
****
Meanwhile, over at Scotland Yard, Detective Sergeant Jack Cully is presenting his theories, based on observations made during the recent visit to Number 55, Russell Square. His two colleagues hear him out in silence. Then Detective Inspector Stride thumps the desk with his closed fist.
“Blackguards!” he exclaims. “How right I was to call them so! Is there any crime they are not guilty of committing? Theft, murder, luring an innocent girl away from her family, and now, seemingly, selling young women into prostitution?”
“I fear the last two are connected,” Cully says, pulling a face. “The maid told us Herbert Black was abroad. I am guessing he has gone to arrange the sale and delivery of these girls to some brothel on the continent. It may be that Rosa Feacham is one of them. I saw a young woman looking out of the first-floor window. She then left the house with the other two girls.”
Greig shakes his head. “How many times have we come across this sad story, gentlemen?”
“Too many times,” Cully says grimly. “But it never ceases to shock. Of course, we have no proof, but the young women I saw being delivered looked as if they had been given drugs, and the woman who brought them was clearly placing money into a bag as she left the house.”
“Can we track her down?” Stride asks.
“I gather many of these vile individuals hang about the big railway stations, hoping to get into conversation with some youngster fresh from the countryside. They pretend they have a room to rent or know of some domestic employment.”
Stride frowns. “Sadly, we don’t have the manpower to watch every station in the city. So we may have to pass this on to another force. Besides, our real investigation is theft and the murder of Mr James Flashley, not the trade in young women. And returning to Mr. Flashley ~ have you checked the list we got from that collector?”
Cully nods. “There is an ivory cat on the list. I am not sure if it is the one I saw in the actual house. I shall write to Mr. Daubney and ask him to come down to Scotland Yard, where I can question him more closely. If the cat is indeed one of the items stolen from his collection, then we have reason to return to Number 55 and insist on being seen by the occupants.”
“Meanwhile I will call in at the Mermaid’s Arms tonight and tell Miss Feacham, the barmaid, that we have discovered the address of the Black brothers. I shall also mention we saw the face of a young woman at an upstairs window and give her a description.” Greig says. “Carpe diem, as our surgeon Mr. Robertson always says.”
Stride gives him a hard stare. He may well say it, the stare says, but that does not mean you have to.
****
By the time that Izzy Harding’s boots are heard on the path, Maria has sorted the lesson, made some more tea, and placed a small fruit cake, purchased from a rival establishment, on a serving plate upon the Welsh dresser.
Izzy enters the warm homely kitchen, shaking the rain from her battered hat.
“We had to finish an order for one of the big shops,” she says, shucking off her thin coat and taking her usual seat.
Maria wrinkles her nose at the pungent aroma of varnish. “Never mind, you’re here now,” she says, placing a bun by Izzy’s slate.
Once the bun has been consumed, along with a mug of hot milk, the pair get down to the mysteries of nouns and adjectives, followed by a brisk foray into the bewildering world of the apostrophe. Izzy is a quick study, asking for clear explanations when she doesn’t understand. Maria is delighted with her progress, and the time passes all too quickly.
Eventually, glancing at the kitchen clock, she informs her young pupil that the lesson is ending, as she herself has to go out to attend a class, much to Izzy’s surprise.
“I fort you didn’t need to learn anything, Miss,” she says.
Maria tells her that a life spent not learning something is a life wasted and Izzy nods in agreement, though inwardly, she guesses that her own life-lessons are probably not what her teacher has in mind. She pushes her slate away and reaches for her coat.
Such a thin coat to be wearing on a chill Autumnal evening, Maria thinks sadly. She notices that one of the pockets has come adrift and is flapping uselessly.
“Here, Izzy ~ let me sew up that pocket for you before you go,” she says.
Maria fetches her workbasket, taking out her green velvet pincushion, some black thread and a pair of gold sewing scissors in the shape of a crane. Izzy is fascinated by the spiky pincushion. She picks it up and stares at it intently.
“So pretty,” she breathes.
Maria ladder-stitches the pocket, biting off the thread when she is done. Meanwhile, Izzy continues to marvel at the pincushion, turning it over and over, studying it from every angle, as if it were priceless treasure. Maria is amused. She holds out her hand, and after the little girl has returned the pincushion, she takes out the glass-headed pins and fine needles, then gives it back to her.
“Here, take it. A reward for a hard-working pupil.”
Izzy’s eyes light up with joy. She smiles. Maria catches her breath. The girl’s face is so pale and thin, the cheekbones even more prominent. On impulse, she rises, goes to the dresser and cuts a large slice of fruit cake. She holds it out, expecting Izzy to grab it and cram it into her mouth. But she does not. Instead, she takes it very slowly, and looks at it intently for some time. Surprised, Maria asks why she isn’t eating it.
“Coz I want to remember what it looks like when it’s gone,” Izzy replies simply.
She carries the cake to the kitchen door, where she eats it in very small bites. When she has finished, she picks up a few fallen currents from the floor and eats them one by one, before pulling her coat tighter around her thin body. Then without saying another word, she slips out of the door and disappears into the darkness.
Later, when she returns to the overcrowded lodging house, where she and her mother share a room with two other families, Izzy will secretly
add the pincushion to her other treasures: the shiny brass button, the length of bright scarlet ribbon, the sheet of gold leaf, the six farthings and the miniature dolls’ tea set.
****
An Autumn evening in Babylondon. Music blares out of various venues and halls. At almost every corner of the West End you may come across a magnificent public house, all shiny brass fittings, gilt and mirrors. Streets are lit by whispering gaslight. Pavements throng with every kind and class of person.
Stop awhile and watch.
Here are glistening expensive clothes brushing shoulders with semi-rags. Here are the young, the old, the fair, the wrinkled, the be-jewelled and the paint-begrimed. Here are modest young girls with sweet keepsake faces returning home after their labours, being jostled by street beggars and ruffians.
See a drunken tramp, shuffling along until he is almost pitched into the path of an oncoming cab by a gang of rich and titled youths, who are in turn overset by crowds of jovial clerks and spruce law students pouring out of the Haymarket Theatre in search of supper.
In Babylondon, if you are very rich, you may dine on pheasant and partridge stuffed with truffles at the Café de l’Europe, all washed down with fine wines. If not, enter one of the many taverns or supper rooms, where chops, pork pies, sausage rolls and a glass of pale ale await your consumption.
Meanwhile, out in the noisome streets, the poor frequent the still-open chandler’s shops looking for dubious mutton pies, ounces of ham, heels of Dutch cheese, or bargain for bits of plaice or flounder at the fried-fish shops while their children fetch beer from a public house for ‘father’s supper’.
By two o’clock, the shops will long be shuttered, the halls darkened and the public houses unlit and unwelcome. The Strand is so silent that you may count the footsteps as they sound. The city now occupies that interval between the death of the day and the birth of the coming day. It is in an undead state.
Look more closely.
A man approaches. One of the night-walkers, inhabiting the city at night-time as they feel exiled from it during the day, though this individual is a recent convert. Since the robbery, Gerald Daubney has come to prefer the nights. Nights are when things seem clearer, cleaner. Nights are when he does not have to contemplate the shattered ruin of his life. Darkness and solitude are his friend, for since his great loss, he feels homeless at home.
And so here he is, walking the nocturnal streets. These are the witching hours, when he can chase the moon across the city’s skyline, spying it around chimneys or through the gaps between houses. Sometimes he passes building-sites shrouded in hoardings, where the old has been torn down to make way for some new city, rising like a Leviathan from its ancient ruins.
His night-time peregrinations take him past great churches, where he averts his face from the stone-eyed gaze of other people’s saints. Hidden in the shadows, packs of children watch him with glittering eyes, vanishing from view whenever he turns to look at them.
At night, there is almost no light between the flickering gas-lamps. Just enough from the moon to pull the street’s cobbles from the ink-dark. His footsteps seem to fall away. ‘Hell is a city much like London, populous and smoky’ ~ he learned these lines at school.
Recently, he has also learned that Hell lurks in the shadows at the edge of his mind. In blank walls and labyrinthine, claustrophobic streets. In hidden secrets. And in the sure and certain knowledge that there is no escape. No way back. Just a slow progression into more and deeper darkness.
****
It is a damp, windswept morning, and outside Number 55, Russell Square, the same servant-girl who shut the door upon the two Scotland Yard detectives is down on her hands and knees scrubbing the front step.
So preoccupied is she in her thankless task that she fails to hear the front gate open, and the sound of boots marching up the tiled path. The boots stop just short of her bucket of scummy water.
The girl looks at the boots, then lifts her eyes slowly to the wearer. A young woman with dark corkscrew curls and snappy black eyes is staring down at her. Her cheeks are red from the whippy wind and her mouth is set in a firm line of disapproval.
The girl sits back on her lean haunches and puts down the scrubbing brush. Her face assumes a mulish expression. “What you want?” she says sullenly.
Amy Feacham bends down and hauls the girl to her feet by the simple device of grasping the shoulder straps of her apron in one strong, pint-pulling, awkward-customer-ejecting movement.
“Well, well, and who do we have here? I heard you was trying to ‘better’ yerself, Ida-May. I heard what you’d gone Up West. Still ended up on yer hands and knees, though. Now then, before I allows you to get on, you can let me into the house, coz I got a bit of business I need to see to in there.”
The unfortunate Ida-May struggles to free herself, but Amy’s grip is like iron.
“They ain’t in,” she says sullenly.
“You never was a good liar, were you?” Amy says scornfully. She extends a leg and kicks over the bucket.
“Oh my! What a clumsy person I am, eh? Now you’ll have to go get some more water. Off you toddle, Ida-May; I’ll be right behind you.”
Muttering darkly, the maidservant picks up the empty bucket and carries it down the area steps, closely followed by the barmaid. Once inside the kitchen, Amy checks for the presence of any servants but finding the place deserted, she darts across the kitchen floor, heading for the baize-covered door on the far side that will take her up to the ground floor of the house. She wrenches open the door, then spins round to face Ida-May.
“Not a word. You get me: Not. A. Word. You ain’t seen me, you ain’t heard me and if you try any of your old tricks, Ida-May, you’ll be picking your teeth up from the floor.”
With this parting threat, Amy Feacham closes the kitchen door behind her, and mounts the unswept and uncarpeted steps that will take her into the hallway of Number 55. Once she has gained the hallway, Amy begins her search. She opens doors, goes into rooms richly furnished with antiques and paintings in gold frames, searching everywhere and calling Rosa’s name.
On the first floor, she opens wardrobe doors, because as children, they’d play hide and seek in the tiny rented terrace and it was always surprising where her sister could hide. But if she is hiding in this empty house full of strange ghosts, Amy cannot find her this time.
Slowly it dawns on her that there is actually no evidence of Rosa’s presence anywhere in the place. No clothes in wardrobes, no familiar bits and bobs on any dressing table, no indication whatsoever that her sister has ever lived here or is living here now.
Puzzled, Amy goes out to the first-floor landing, where she stands still, listening to what is not there. “Rosa,” she whispers, “it’s me, Amy. Come out.”
But there is no reply. No laughing sister emerges from her hiding place with the accusation that she was there all the time but Amy didn’t look hard enough. And then, just to complicate matters further, she hears footsteps coming up the path, a key turning in the lock. She looks through the bannister rails and sees the front door open. A man enters. From her vantage point Amy observes the top of his expensive beaver hat, the set of his powerful shoulders, and she recognises Munro Black.
“Amy Feacham ~ I know you are somewhere in the house. Come out, come out wherever you are,” he calls in a sneering singsong voice.
Ida-May must’ve told him, she thinks. Little traitorous snitch that she is. Amy descends the stairs, her hands automatically bunching into fists, as they always used to do whenever in the presence of this man or his brother.
Black watches her in silence. He is a handsome man, his stocky brutal body resembling that of a fairground strongman (which was his former career). He wears an expensive handmade suit and very shiny leather boots. His whole demeanour bespeaks a man always used to getting his own way, violently if necessary.
“Where’s Rosa? I know she was here,” Amy inquires, reaching the bottom step and deciding to stay there.
/> Black cocks his head on one side and pretends to think.
“Rosa? Rosa? Do I know a Rosa? More to the point, did I invite you into my home? Because if I did not – and I think I did not, I might have to call the police and have you arrested for breaking in.”
Amy ignores the threat. “Where’s your brother Herbert then? Coz he’s the one who lured my innocent little sister away from her home and her family. What’s he done with her?”
Black folds his arms. “My brother isn’t here. And where he is, is none of your business, Amy Feacham. And as for your sister, she knew quite well what she was signing up for. Not quite the innocent little lamb you think she was. She isn’t here either and I can tell you for sure she isn’t ever coming back. Now, as we have nothing further to say to each other, I’d like you to leave my house. Or I shall have to throw you out into the street, where sluts like you and her belong.”
Amy feels a hot molten lava of anger rise up. Something seems to snap inside her. Without even thinking of the consequences, she marches directly to the mantelpiece, picks up the china shepherdess and hurls it at him. It falls to the ground and shatters into pieces. Instantly, Black’s face turns from sneering contempt to a mask of fury.
“What the hell, Amy! That was a Meissen! Worth a fortune!”
“And now it ain’t.”
He comes towards her. Something in his expression tells her she has only two options: fight or flight. Her hand reaches out and comes to rest on the ivory cat. She picks it up. It sits snugly in her palm, its back seeming to mould itself to the shape of her skin, as if it had always been there.
Black grabs her left arm. Amy raises her right hand and smashes the cat straight into his face with the full force of her barmaid’s strength. He screams, staggers back, blood pouring from his nose and mouth as he spits out a tooth. Amy seizes her chance. She races to the front door, wrenches it open and escapes out into the street.