A Breach of Promise (36 page)

Monk had already been given his. It did not look very strong, but it was fresh and piping hot. He thanked her for it and looked again at Connor.

“What happened to them?”

“Bleedin’ from the stomach, it was.” Connor sighed. “It
happens. Seen it before. Good man, he was, always a pleasant word. Jackson loved those two little girls more, maybe, than if they’d been perfect.” Again he shook his head, his eyes welling over with sadness.

Behind him, Mrs. Heggerty’s face was pinched with sorrow too, and she dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron.

“But always anxious,” Connor went on. “I suppose he knew what kind of life lay ahead for them and he was trying to think what to do for the best. Anyway, it never came to that, poor soul. Dead, he was, and them no more’n three and a year old, or thereabouts.”

Mrs. Heggerty sniffed.

“What did their mother do?” Monk asked.

“She couldn’t care for ’em, now could she, poor creature?” Connor shook his head. “No husband, no money anymore. Had to place ’em and go and earn her own way. Don’t know what she did.” He cradled his mug in his hands and sipped at it slowly. “Clever enough, and certainly pretty enough for anything, but there aren’t a lot for a respectable widow to do. No people of her own, an’ none of his to be seen.” He stopped, staring unhappily at Monk. “You’ll not find them little mites now, you know?”

Mrs. Heggerty was listening to them, her work forgotten, her face full of pity.

“Yes, I do know,” Monk agreed. “But I said I would try.” He sipped his tea as well. It had more flavor than he had expected.

“Well, you could try Buxton House, down the far end of the High Street,” Mrs. Heggerty suggested. “She must have been at her wit’s end, poor woman. I can’t think of anything worse to happen to a soul than to have to give up your children, and them not right, so you’d never even be able to comfort yourself they’d be cared for by some other person as you would have done.” She stood stiffly, her arms folded across her bosom as if holding some essence of her own children closer, and Monk remembered the rows of small clothes on the airing rack and the doll propped up on the stairs. Presumably the children were at lessons at this hour of the morning.

He rose to his feet. “Thank you, I will.” The tea was half finished. Leaving it required some explanation. “I know it’s futile. I want to get it over with as soon as possible. Thank you, Mrs. Heggerty, Mr. Connor.”

“Sure you’re welcome, sir,” she said, moving to take him back to the door.

A couple of enquiries took him to Buxton House, a large, gaunt building which in earlier days had been a family home but now boasted nothing whatever beyond the strictly functional. A thin, angular-boned woman with her hair screwed back off her face was scrubbing the step, her arms sweeping back and forth rhythmically, her dreams elsewhere.

When he rang the bell it was answered by another woman, so fat the fabric strained at the seams of her gray dress. Her florid face was already angry even before she saw him.

“We’re full up!” she said bluntly. “Try the orphanage over the river at Parsons Green.” She made as if to close the door.

Looking into her bleak, blue eyes Monk had a sudden very ugly idea, born of knowledge and experience.

“I will, if you can’t help me,” he replied tersely. “I’m looking for girls about ten or eleven, old enough to start work and easy to train into good ways. I’m setting up house a few miles from here. I’d sooner have girls without family, so they’re not always wanting days off to go home. I could try city girls, but I’ve no connections.” He could easily have been stocking a brothel or selling girls abroad for the white slave trade, and she must know that as well as he did.

Her face altered like sunshine from a cloud. In an instant the line of her mouth softened and the ice in her eyes melted.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said smoothly. “I’m fair mithered to pieces to take poor children I ’aven’t the means ter care for, though God knows I’m willin’ enough. But you can’t feed ‘ungry mouths if you in’t got no food.” She straightened her skirt absentmindedly. “It’d be a fair blessin’ if yer could take two or three girls, sir. Make room for two or three more wot’s infants an’ can’t do a thing for theirselves. I’ve got several as is both willin’ an able ter please, an’ comely enough. Jus’ coming
inter young ladies, like.” She smiled widely and knowingly at Monk. Perhaps in her youth she had been buxom enough; now she was grotesque. His knowledge of her trade made her repellent to him.

He forced himself to look interested. It was difficult to keep the disgust from his face.

“Best young,” she went on. “Teach ’em your ways before they get taught wrong by someone else. Come into the parlor Mr….?”

For some reason he did not want to give his own name. He did not want any part of his true self connected with this business.

“Meachem,” he answered, giving her the first surname that came into his head. “Horace Meachem.” He must make sure he remembered it! “Thank you.”

She opened the door wide enough to allow him in. The thin woman who had been scrubbing the step shot him a look of withering contempt. He wished he could have told her the truth, but it was a luxury beyond him.

The hallway was bare and painted gray. A stitched sampler with several mistakes proclaimed: “The eye of God is upon you.” He hoped it was. Maybe there would be more justice in eternity than there was here.

He was led to a parlor decorated in red and a world away from the hall in comfort. She invited him to sit down and sat decorously opposite him, rearranging her bombazine skirts with fat, wrinkled hands. Then she reached for the bell and pulled it sharply.

“I’ll have several girls brought for you,” she said cheerfully. “You can take your pick. Very glad of a place, they’ll be, and the price’ll go towards carin’ for more abandoned waifs, so we can give ’em a start in life … that’s no more than a Christian duty.”

He loathed what he was about to do. The words would barely come off his tongue.

“I’d like nice-looking girls. At least one will be a parlormaid, in time.”

“O’ course you would, sir,” she agreed. “An’ nice-lookin’ is wot I’ll provide. We don’ send ’omely girls for that sort o’ position. They goes for scullery maids an’ the like, or ter wash pots or such.”

“I heard you even took in disfigured girls,” he said relentlessly. He wished he could take the girls she would bring. God knows what would happen to them. Perhaps the uglier ones would be better off … eventually.

“Oh … well …” She prevaricated, her sharp, cold eyes weighing how much he might know. He was a customer, and he looked from his clothes as if he might have money. She did not want to offend him. “I don’t know ’oo told you that.”

He met her gaze squarely, allowing a slightly supercilious curl to his mouth. “I made my enquiries. I don’t come blind.”

“Well, it’s only charitable,” she excused herself. “Got ter take ’em all in. Don’t keep ’em, mind. If they’re bad enough, put ’em in ter work in the mills or someplace like that, w’ere they won’t be seen.”

He looked skeptical. “Really?”

“ ’Course. Wot else can I do wif ’em? Can’t carry no passengers ’ere.”

The bell was answered by a child of about ten, and the woman sent her off to fetch three girls she named.

“Now, Mr. Meacham,” she resumed. “Let’s talk money. This place don’t run on fresh air. An’ like you said, I gotta feed the useless ones as well as the ones wot’ll find places.”

“Let’s see them first,” he argued. He could not bear to think of the wretched children who would be paraded in front of him, like farm animals for him to bid on; he knew he could take none of them. “How long have you been here?”

“Thirty years. I know me job, Mr. Meacham, never you fear.”

“That’s what I heard. But I want to be sure what I’m getting. I don’t want any unpleasant surprises … when it’s too late to bring them back.”

“You won’t!” she said sharply, narrowing her eyes. “Wot you ’eard, then? Someone blackenin’ me name?”

“I heard you took in some pretty badly deformed girls in the past … real freaks.” He hated using the word.

“When was that, then?” she demanded. “ ’Oo said that?”

“Long time ago … more than twenty years,” he replied.

“So I did, then,” she agreed reluctantly. “But it was their faces wot was twisted up. See it as quick as look at ’em, yer did. Didn’t fool nobody fer an instant.”

“Why did you take them?” he pressed, although he knew the answer.

“ ’Cos I were paid!” she snapped. “Wot jer think? But it were all legal! An’ I don’t cheat no one. No one can say as I did. Sold ’em for exactly wot they was—ugly and stupid—both. I were quite plain about it.”

“No one has said you weren’t,” he replied coldly. “So far as I am aware. I should still like to know what happened to the Jackson girls. I am acquainted with their only living relative, who might be … obliged … if they were located.” He rubbed his fingers together suggestively at the word
obliged.

“Ah …” She was obviously considering her possible advantage in the matter. She glanced at his polished boots, his beautiful jacket, and lastly at his face with its keen, hard lines, and judged him to be a man with a sharp eye to money and a much less discriminating one to principle—like herself. “When they was old enough ter work, I sent ’em ter the kitchens at the pub.”

“Coopers Arms?” he said hopefully.

“Yeah. But they din’t keep ’em. Too ugly even fer ’im. I dunno wot e’ did wi’ them, but you could ask ’im.”

“How long ago is that? Ten years?”

“Ten years?” she said scornfully. “Yer think I’m made o’ money? Fifteen years, an’ I waited even then. They was six an’ eight. That’s plenty old ter fetch fer yerself. I’d ’a sent ’em sooner if they ’adn’t bin so daft. Thought they might grow out of it an’ ’ave a better chance.” She prided herself on her charity.

“Thank you.” He stood up, straightening his coat.

Her face fell. “Wot abaht them girls? Yer’ll not find better anyw’ere, nor at a better price!”

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said with an icy smile. “I’ve decided I’d like plain girls after all. Thank you for your time.”

She swore at him with a string of language he had not heard since his last visit to the slums of the Devil’s Acre. He walked out of the door with a positive swagger, until he saw the girls lined up in the passage, scrubbed clean, their hair tied back, their thin faces alight with hope. Then instead he felt sick.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “You’re fine. I’ve just changed my mind.” And he hurried away before he could think of it anymore.

It was close enough to noon that he could comfortably walk up to the Coopers Arms and order luncheon and casually make enquiries about the Jackson girls. Could it, after all, be so ridiculously easy that they were still in the immediate neighborhood? It was foolish to hope, and he was not even sure if he wanted to. It might easily bring Martha Jackson more distress. But it was not his job to foresee that and make decisions for her.

Was it?

He had knowledge she could not have. In telling her or not telling her, he was in effect making the decision.

He walked briskly in the bright sunlight up Putney High Street. It was full of people, mostly going about their business of buying or selling, haggling over prices, shouting their wares. Some were begging, as always. Some were standing and gossiping, women with heavy baskets, trailing children, men with barrows spilling out vegetables or bales of cloth, sacks of sticks or coal, bags of flour. The flower girl stood on a street corner with bunches of violets, another with matches. A one-legged soldier offered bootlaces. Two small boys swept the crossings clean of horse droppings. The wail of a rag and bone man drifted across, calling his wares. A brewer’s dray lumbered by.

Newspaper boys called out the headlines. A running patterer found himself a spot, and a gathering audience, and
launched into a bawdy version of Killian Melville’s double life as a perverted woman who dressed as a man to deceive the world. It made Monk so angry he wanted to seize the man by the lapels and shout at him that he was a vicious, ignorant little swine who made his living on other people’s misery and that he had no idea what he was talking about. And if he did not keep his mouth shut in the affair, Monk would personally shut it for him.

He strode by with his fists clenched and his jaw so tight his teeth ached. Every muscle in him was knotted with rage at the injustice. Melville was dead. That was more tragedy than enough. This was monstrous.

Why was he walking past?

He stopped abruptly, swung around, and marched back to the patterer. He did seize him by the lapels, to his amazement, and said exactly what he had wished to, which gathered twice the previous audience and much ribald laughter. He left the man breathless with indignation and astonishment, and resumed his way feeling relieved of much immediate tension.

The Coopers Arms was a very ordinary public house, and at this time of the day, crowded with people. The smells of sawdust, ale and human sweat and dirt were pungent, and the babble of voices assailed him the moment he pushed open the doors. The barman was busy, and he had to wait several minutes before purchasing a mug of stout and ordering pork pie, pickles and boiled red cabbage.

He found himself a seat at one of the tables, deliberately joining with other people. He chose a group who looked like local small tradesmen, neat, comfortable, slightly shabby, tucking into their food with relish. They looked at him guardedly but not in an unfriendly manner. He was a stranger and might prove a diversion from their day-to-day affairs. And Monk wanted to talk.

“Good day, gentlemen,” he said with a smile, taking his seat. “Thank you for your hospitality.” He was referring to the fact that they had moved up to make room for him.

“Not from ‘round ’ere,” one of them observed.

“Other side of the river,” Monk replied. “Bloomsbury way.”

“Wot brings you down ’ere, then?” another asked, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and picking up a thick roll of bread stuffed with ham. “Sellin’, are yer? Or buyin’?”

“Neither,” Monk answered, sipping his stout. His meal had not yet come. Looking at the food already on the table, he was remarkably hungry. It seemed like a long day already. “Probably on a pointless errand. Did any of you know a Samuel Jackson, lived here about twenty years ago?”