Daughters of Night

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Mr James Adams, resident of Camberwell

  Sir Andrew Bagnall, resident of Chiswick

  Mr Joshua Blacker, resident of Wanstead

  Mr Humphrey Sillerton, resident of Clapham

  Mr Matthew Henley, resident of Merton

  They thanked the clerk, and descended the stairs to the street.

  ‘It is not so very many places to visit.’ Mrs Corsham sighed. ‘Though it will take us at least two days, perhaps three. Do you think Kitty was ever sincere about wanting to reform?’

  ‘Lucy must have thought so, or why else would she go looking for her at the Magdalen Hospital? Mrs Rainwood, the matron there, said change for these girls was hard. She said many who tried were tempted back to their old ways.’ He stopped, frowning, making a new connection.

  ‘Mr Child?’

  ‘Hector said Kitty had been going to church, over at St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, near Blackfriars. That’s not her local church. It’s quite some distance from Soho.’

  ‘I don’t see how that helps us.’

  ‘Hear me out. Mrs Rainwood told me that St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe is renowned for its evangelical preacher. Did you know that they say sinners can be born again? If Kitty was sincere about reform, intending to start anew, then maybe she moved away from London and its temptations? In which case, might she have chosen to live somewhere with an evangelical church?’

  Mrs Corsham turned back to their list. ‘You’re thinking of Clapham?’

  ‘Known for nothing more than its evangelical merchants and the church they built. This Humphrey Sillerton might even be one of them. He wouldn’t be the first religious hypocrite. Perhaps Kitty’s money ran out? Or he made her an offer she couldn’t refuse?’

  ‘It’s a leap of logic,’ Mrs Corsham said. ‘But one I rather like. Let Clapham be our first port of call.’

  *

  Once they were over London Bridge, the traffic thinned, and Mrs Corsham’s coachman whipped the horses to a trot. Beyond the Elephant and Castle tavern on the outskirts of London, the houses grew intermittent and they picked up speed. Great swathes of lavender fields flanked the road to the north. In the distance, Child glimpsed the little fishing village of Battersea on the river.

  ‘Do you think Sillerton is keeping Kitty in Clapham?’ Mrs Corsham asked.

  ‘It’s possible, but he’s probably married and Clapham’s a small place. He’s unlikely to want her on his doorstep. Perhaps she’s in one of the nearby villages? Brixton or Balham?’

  ‘Given the evangelical nature of Clapham, he’s hardly likely to be open with us about his peccadilloes. Surely he’ll deny ever meeting Kitty?’

  ‘The nature of Clapham is precisely the reason he’ll talk to us. Like I said, he’s probably married.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘You mean blackmail?’

  ‘You want to find Kitty, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Some minutes later, they drove into Clapham, a village of handsome brick houses and respectable-looking taverns. They rattled past a rectory, a grammar school, and the remnants of an old church. A new church stood on the edge of the common, a handsome construction with a portico of Doric columns and a bell tower. The common was ringed by large villas, built by the same evangelical merchants who had built the church.

  Salvation and sin. Had Kitty sought one and found the other here in Clapham? Child hoped fervently that he was right.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  HUMPHREY SILLERTON’S ORCHARDS and estate lay about a quarter-mile beyond the Clapham common. Waved through the gates by the porter, they turned onto a long drive flanked by acres of peach, pear, plum and apple trees. On the gravel forecourt in front of the red-brick manor house, a groom was preparing a carriage, the vehicle lacquered in red, blue and white diamonds. Child raised his eyebrows at Mrs Corsham, who smiled. This was their man.

  A footman emerged from the house to greet them, and Mrs Corsham asked to see Mr Sillerton. Evidently taking her for a wealthy customer, the footman explained that his master was taking tea with his wife in one of his hothouses, and that he would happily escort them there. They followed him through a parterre and a walled garden, where labourers were pruning, watering and raking the paths.

  The hothouses were magnificent glass-and-iron constructions. Through the glass panes, Child glimpsed figs and oranges, lemons and pomegranates. The pinery was the most magnificent of all: tall as a church, with a stone portico over the entrance in the shape of a pineapple. Inside, it was as humid as a bathhouse. Gravel paths ran between large earthen beds laid with bark. In the centre of each bed was a large, spiny-leafed plant, with a pineapple growing at its centre.

  The footman led them along the central aisle to a circular space at the centre of the pinery. Here, at a marble-topped table, a gentleman and a lady were taking tea. The gentleman rose to greet them, and the footman explained that Mrs Corsham wished to see him on a matter of business.

  ‘Then you are most welcome, madam.’ Humphrey Sillerton shook her hand.

  A bluff, hearty-looking man, Sillerton was sober in dress, with a round, amiable countenance that conveyed no great cleverness or guile. In Child’s experience, such faces belonged to two types of men: those who set great store upon personal honour and trust, and those who lacked these attributes entirely. Given the circumstances that had brought them here and the presence of Sillerton’s wife, Child presumed that Sillerton fell into the latter camp.

  Mrs Corsham introduced Child as her man of business and Sillerton eyed his bruises curiously.

  ‘A fall from a horse,’ Child said.

  Sillerton murmured a few words of consolation, then introduced his wife. Pretty, considerably younger than her husband, she wore a cream-and-yellow striped gown and a chaste white bonnet. Child noted a large diamond ring on her finger. Humphrey Sillerton was evidently doing well for himself, spending his money freely on both his wife and his whores.

  Mrs Corsham apologized for her lack of appointment. ‘This journey was undertaken on something of a whim. I wish to source a supplier of pineapples for my table.’

  ‘Then you have come to the right place, madam,’ Sillerton said. ‘If you and your man will accompany me, I will give you a tour of the pinery.’

  To Child’s dismay, the wife accompanied them too. Her presence was going to make their task all the trickier.

  ‘Ananas Comosus,’ Sillerton declared, drawing their attention to the fruits in the beds. Some were a greenish-yellow in colour, others darkened to amber-gold. ‘I grow two varieties here: the Jamaican Queen, and the Black Prince. They are laid in beds of tanner’s bark, the heating provided by furnaces. Do you see those Grecian urns? They disguise the chimneys.’

  Child glanced at Mrs Corsham. She gave him a look that said patience.

  ‘Each fruit costs eighty pounds. Quite a sum, I know, but imagine a pineapple on a silver platter, the centrepiece of your table. A signal to your guests that you are a woman of exquisite taste and affluent means.’

  Mrs Corsham smiled. ‘I confess all mention of money matters makes my head spin. In the absence of my husband, I prefer to leave such discussions to Mr Child. Perhaps your wife could show me some more of your pineapples, whilst you gentlemen talk?’

  ‘But of course, Mrs Corsham.’ Glancing at his wife, Sillerton smiled fondly. ‘That is, if you have no objection, my dear?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Mrs Sillerton smiled at Caro. ‘Do come this way, Mrs Corsham.’

  Sillerton watched the women walk away, giving every appearance of a man besotted with his wife. Fleetingly, Child entertained the thought that he might have been wrong. Yet the carriage matched the description, and Sillerton wouldn’t be the first man in love with his wife to bed a whore when the opportunity arose. Indeed, his evident feelings for his wife might make it easier to secure his cooperation.

  ‘If eighty pounds is too steep a price,’ Sillerton said, ‘I also rent pineapples for a guinea a day, though naturally I require a deposit. Mrs Corsham’s guests need ne
ver know that the pineapple is not her own, though they would, of course, miss out on its glorious flavour. And if a guinea is still too much, I also recommend a man who can carve pineapples out of wood. In the right light, nobody would know that they were not the real thing. But Mrs Corsham, I’m sure, deserves only the best.’

  ‘Mr Sillerton, we did not come here to talk to you about pineapples.’

  Confusion reigned on the man’s face. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I am a thief-taker in the employ of Mrs Corsham. We wish to talk to you about a young woman of your acquaintance: Kitty Carefree, a harlot, formerly of Soho, London.’

  Sillerton stared at him. ‘A prostitute? I have never consorted knowingly with such a person.’

  ‘Come, sir. She was seen riding in your carriage. The pair of you were observed kissing.’ He lowered his voice, a little surprised that Sillerton had not done the same. ‘If you talk to me in confidence, then there is no need for your wife to learn what you’ve been up to.’

  Sillerton’s face had turned the colour of one of his plums. ‘How dare you, sir? To come to my house, alleging such a thing?’

  The women were walking back towards them now. Child gazed at them in alarm. What was Mrs Corsham thinking? He’d barely begun to put the squeeze on Sillerton.

  ‘Mr Child,’ Mrs Corsham cried brightly, as they drew nearer. ‘Having examined the pineapples more closely, I believe they would clash with the wallpaper in my dining room. I have dragged you far on a flight of fancy, but I fear I have made a mistake.’ She looked at him meaningfully.

  Child didn’t understand. Mrs Corsham evidently believed that they were wrong. And yet she too had seen the carriage in the drive.

  Humphrey Sillerton trembled with the force of his anger. ‘You have made a mistake indeed, sir.’

  Mrs Sillerton gazed anxiously at her husband. Mrs Corsham held out her hand, and reluctantly Sillerton shook it. The women curtseyed to one another, and Child bowed, though Sillerton stood stock still. With a snap of his fingers, he summoned his footman, who escorted them out.

  ‘What the devil?’ Child said, once they were outside.

  ‘Hush,’ Mrs Corsham said. ‘It wasn’t what we thought.’

  ‘How can you be sure? The carriage looked right to me.’

  ‘Oh, I think it was Humphrey Sillerton that the girl from the Whores’ Club saw going into the Devil tavern – and Kitty Carefree whom he was seen kissing on the Strand. I just don’t think he knows he was consorting with a prostitute.’

  ‘What do you mean he didn’t know? She wasn’t kissing him for a tour of the sights.’

  ‘Look at the wife,’ Mrs Corsham said, and Child turned.

  Through the glass he could see Mrs Sillerton talking solicitously to her husband. A curl of red hair had escaped her bonnet.

  ‘That’s her,’ Mrs Corsham said. ‘Kitty Carefree.’

  PAMELA

  26 February 1782

  Pamela’s plan had come to her fully formed, perfect in conception, brilliant in design, like a rose-cut diamond beneath a jeweller’s glass. Secrets. They were a currency, Lucy had said. One that Mr Stone was rumoured to deal in himself. It held a pleasing symmetry, Pamela thought.

  She longed to put her plan into execution right away, but the constant presence of her watcher complicated matters. She’d hoped that after the auction she’d be the mistress of her own destiny, able to come and go as she pleased. But Mr Stone’s odd reticence in wanting to take her virginity meant she was still cooped up in the tableaux house, chafing at the delay.

  Later that morning, Lucy came to the tableaux house to see her. She sailed into Pamela’s bedroom in a wide-hooped gown of turquoise silk, closing the door on Cecily’s curious face. She looked tired and drawn.

  ‘Poor Theresa lost the baby. She almost died.’

  Pamela stared at her, aghast. She’d never intended that. ‘Is she out of danger?’

  ‘The doctor says she’ll live.’ Lucy bit her lip. ‘But she is jaundiced and shivering and . . .’ She put her face in her hands.

  Consumed by guilt, Pamela put her arm around her while she cried.

  ‘Forgive me, Seymour,’ Lucy said. ‘I have been up half the night. Mr Agnetti asked me to tell you not to come today.’

  ‘Is he very sad?’

  ‘He cries,’ Lucy said shortly, always lacking sympathy when it came to gentlemen.

  Pamela consoled herself with the thought that they’d all be happier eventually. When the lieutenant threw Mrs Agnetti over. When Mrs Agnetti could give her husband the love he deserved.

  ‘Listen,’ Lucy said, ‘I heard about your auction. I need to talk to you.’

  They sat upon her bed, side by side, and Lucy took her hands. ‘Kitty told me that you were bought by Mr Stone. There will be a masquerade, she says. She doesn’t know why they want a virgin. It isn’t normal. I don’t think you should go.’

  Not go? Her hundred and twenty-five guineas depended on it. And she would owe Mrs Havilland a princely sum for her board and lodging if she did not. She could end up rotting in the Fleet Prison.

  ‘Kitty thinks they are up to something. I don’t like it.’

  Pamela frowned. ‘Who is up to something?’

  ‘Mr Stone. The lieutenant. Their friends.’

  ‘Something involving me?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  Her frown deepened. ‘Kitty says Mr Stone treats his harlots well.’

  ‘Kitty is wrong about a lot of things. Especially men.’

  Pamela spoke a little heatedly, not liking the way Lucy was talking. ‘Then maybe she’s wrong about them being up to something.’

  ‘Listen to me, please.’ Lucy’s eyes pleaded with hers. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  THE CHURCH OF Holy Trinity was cool and bright, light streaming through the arched windows. Child sat next to Mrs Corsham in one of the pews near the organ. The place was empty, apart from an old woman sweeping one of the wooden galleries above, humming ‘Soldiers of Christ, Arise’. The church door creaked and they turned. Mrs Sillerton, formerly known as Kitty Carefree, walked slowly down the aisle.

  She sat in the pew behind them, drawing back her hood, her face pale, luminescent in its beauty, her red curls neatly pinned. ‘I was married in this church not eight weeks ago,’ she said. ‘I met Mr Sillerton only six weeks before that. He was widowed last year, three children grown and married themselves. I think he was as lonely and lost as I was myself. He says I am a gift from God. I took it as a sign that I was forgiven. And yet, if it was a part of His plan, then why does he torment me so?’

  ‘Because a girl is missing and a woman is dead.’ Child didn’t need to utter any threats. Kitty’s presence here was a sign that she understood it. In Clapham a man might believe that a prostitute could be born again, cleansed of sin – but approving of reform wasn’t the same as marrying it.

  ‘I take it you heard about Lucy,’ Mrs Corsham said.

  Kitty dabbed a square of lace to her eyes. ‘I read about it in the newspapers. My poor dear friend. I wish she’d listened to me, but she would not.’

  ‘Lucy came here to see you in Clapham?’

  Kitty nodded. ‘Twice in two days. The last time I saw her was on the very same day she was killed. I didn’t want her here. I wished her to go away, but now I would do anything to bring her back.’

  ‘We need to know everything you told her,’ Child said.

  She drew a breath. ‘I was here in church with Mr Sillerton, and suddenly there she was, sitting across the aisle, staring right at me. At St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, the preacher told me I was absolved of my past sins, received into God’s grace. I had even started to believe it – believe that I really was Katherine Sillerton. But there was Lucy, come to find me, the only part of my old life that I ever missed.’ Her tears were flowing more freely now, and she continued to dab at her eyes ineffectually with the scrap of lace.

  ‘After the service, I saw he
r again in the churchyard. I made an excuse to Mr Sillerton and he returned to the house alone. “Your husband looks happy,” Lucy said, as we walked amongst the graves. “Is he kind to you?” I said he was the best gentleman who ever lived, and she said she was glad of it.’

  ‘How had she found you?’

  ‘I made a terrible mistake.’ Her voice rose, still angry at herself. ‘After my marriage, in early August, I wrote a letter to my former governess in Hampshire. I had broken off all communication with her after I moved to London, because I was ashamed of my sinful life. But she was the dearest woman I ever met, and I knew she would have worried about me over the years. Now, at last, I had some honourable news to impart. Even so, I took precautions. I gave her no address, providing her with only a few scant details about my new life. Somehow Lucy tracked her down and talked her into letting her read my letter. Those details proved enough for her to find me. She told me I might have been absolved by God, but I had not been absolved by Lucy Loveless. She said she’d come to hear my confession.’

  ‘We need to hear it too,’ Mrs Corsham said gently. ‘We need to hear about Pamela.’

  Kitty twisted the handkerchief in her hands as she spoke. ‘She was just another of Agnetti’s sitters, a little younger than most, but already bold. Lucy and I took to her. We gave her advice – all the things I wished someone had told me when I was starting out on the town. Mr Stone bought her virginity at auction, and it was all going to happen at one of his masquerades. Pamela was pleased that I was going to be there too. I thought it a little strange – that Mr Stone wanted a virgin. He’s not the sort who likes to lord it over a meek, passive girl – he prefers harlots who know tricks, who know their way around. Well, Lucy didn’t like the sound of it either. She had a real affection for Pamela – I think she saw in her the daughter she’d lost. We should have listened to her – but the girl would have been a fool to walk away from so much money. Everyone has to lose it sometime – I wish I hadn’t told Pamela that, but I did. I said Mr Stone looks after his harlots. And up until then, he always had—’ She broke off, weeping again.