Where Serpents Sleep (5 page)
Read Where Serpents Sleep Online
Authors: C. S. Harris
“Get away from that body!”
Sebastian looked up to find a tall, bearlike gentleman in an exaggerated top hat and red-and-white-striped silk waistcoat descending upon them from a lumbering dray. Sir William Hadley, one of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, came puffing up to them, his jaw jutting forward like a man ready for a fight. “What do you think you’re doing? Didn’t you hear what I said? Get away from that body.”
Gibson pushed slowly to his feet. “I’m a surgeon.”
“A surgeon! Who gave you permission to examine these bodies? I’ve ordered no postmortem. And don’t try to tell me one of the families requested it, because I won’t believe it. Whores don’t have families . . . leastways, none that’ll acknowledge them.”
The Irishman’s dark brows drew together in a frown. “Nevertheless, a postmortem is called for, Sir William. These women were murdered.”
“Murdered?” The Bow Street magistrate let out a harsh laugh. “What are you talking about? This wasn’t murder. These women died in a fire. Someone left a candle too close to a curtain or let a hot ember fall from the hearth.”
“And how do you explain the stab wounds?”
“Stab wounds? What stab wounds?”
“At least two of these women were stabbed, while one had her throat—”
Sir William swiped his massive arm through the air in a dismissive gesture. “Enough of this. I will not have my office’s resources diverted to investigate the death of a bunch of strumpets. You think the good citizens of this city care if there are a half dozen or so fewer trollops walking the streets?”
Sebastian nodded toward the body of the fair-headed girl lying at the end of the row. “I think her mother might care.”
“If she had a mother who cared, she wouldn’t have become cash on the hoof.” Sir William paused a moment, his eyes narrowing as he studied Sebastian. “I know you. You’re Lord Hendon’s son.”
“That’s right.”
Hot color flooded the magistrate’s big, fleshy face. “This is none of your affair—you hear me? I don’t care if your father is Chancellor of the Exchequer. I won’t have you meddling in this investigation.”
Sebastian said, “I didn’t realize there was an investigation for me to meddle in.”
Sir William’s face was so dark now it looked purple. He thrust a meaty finger inches from Sebastian’s nose. “I’m warning you, my lord. Keep out of this or I’ll have you arrested—peer’s son or not.”
The magistrate stomped away to go bark orders at the men searching the ruins. Gibson stared after him. But Sebastian was more interested in the elegant town carriage drawing up at the corner, its liveried footman hastening to open the carriage door.
“Who’s that?” said Gibson, following his friend’s gaze.
A tall gentlewoman in a smart pelisse had appeared in the open doorway, the ostrich plume in her hat waving in the cool breeze as she waited for the footman to let down the steps.
“That,” said Sebastian, “is Miss Hero Jarvis.”
“Lord Jarvis’s daughter? Why is she here?”
“She’s the woman who survived the fire.”
“
Miss Jarvis?
What in God’s name was she doing at the Magdalene House?”
Miss Jarvis?
What in God’s name was she doing at the Magdalene House?”
“Research,” said Sebastian, and went to hand the lady down from her carriage.
Chapter 6
“I expected I might find you here,” said Miss Jarvis. She accepted Sebastian’s assistance down, then released his hand immediately and took a step back. Within the shadowy interior of her carriage, he could see a maid waiting primly with hands clasped before her.
“That is Paul Gibson, is it not?” said Miss Jarvis, gazing beyond him to where Gibson stood beside the curricle talking to a glowering Tom. “The surgeon?”
“You know him?”
“I attended several of his lectures at St. Thomas’s—on the circulatory system, and on human musculature.”
It was the last thing Sebastian would have expected her to have done, but he kept the thought to himself.
“Frankly,” she said, “I’m surprised to see him here. I didn’t think Sir William planned to order autopsies.”
“He hasn’t. Gibson’s here because he’s a friend of mine.”
She glanced up at him. “And has he discovered anything?”
“He says the women were murdered. Most were stabbed, although he thinks at least one was shot.”
She opened her parasol and raised it against the feeble sun. “You doubted me, did you?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, as if she had expected as much. In the street before the house, Sir William was now busy supervising the loading of that sad row of charred bodies into the back of the dray. She watched him for a moment, then said, “Has Dr. Gibson’s opinion prompted Sir William to order the women autopsied?”
“No. I suspect we can thank your father for that.”
She shook her head. “I doubt it would have happened, even without my father’s interference. Sir William’s attitude toward prostitutes is well-known. Last month, a costermonger came before the magistrates for beating a woman to death in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Sir William let the man go with only a warning.”
Sebastian studied her clear-skinned face. “Why are you here, Miss Jarvis?”
The breeze fluttered her hair across her face, but she pushed it back without a hint of artifice. “I’ve been talking to the Society of Friends. It seems a gentleman by the name of Joshua Walden was at the Magdalene House the night Rose first sought refuge with them. He lives in Hans Town. I thought he might be able to tell us more about her.”
“ ‘Us’?” Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and rocked back on his heels. “I was under the impression this was your investigation, Miss Jarvis. That my role was that of an adviser only and was rapidly coming to a conclusion.”
She tilted her head back, one hand coming up to hold her hat as she stared up at the crumbling, smoke-darkened walls of the Magdalene House. Something quivered across her face, a breath of painful emotion that was there and then gone. “That was mere subterfuge and you know it. I want to find out who killed these women, Lord Devlin, and why, and I am not too vain to acknowledge that you are far more experienced in such matters than I. I was hoping that if you looked into the incident, even briefly, it would catch your interest.”
When he made no response, she said, “Do you believe in justice?”
“As an abstract concept, yes. Although I fear there is little true justice in this world.”
She nodded toward the blackened ruins of the Magdalene House. “In life, our society failed Rose—failed all these women. I don’t want to fail them, in death.”
“You are not responsible for society.”
“Yes, I am. We all are, each in our own small way.” She turned to fix him with a direct gaze. “Will you come with me to Hans Town?”
He started to say no. But as he looked into her fierce gray eyes, he realized that a part of her actually wanted him to say no, because it would give her an excuse to walk away from all of this, away from the fear and the horror that was that night.
Turning, he watched the workmen swing the body of the young fair-headed girl into the back of the dray. And in that moment, he wasn’t thinking about Lord Jarvis, or Hero Jarvis. He was thinking about the life that child would never live, and the men who had taken it from her.
And so he surprised both himself and Hero Jarvis by saying, “Yes.”
Chapter 7
Joshua Walden’s home in Hans Town proved to be a modest house of red brick, with neatly painted white shutters, a shiny black door, and window boxes filled with well-tended masses of dianthus and saxifrage.
A tall, almost cadaverously thin man in his late forties or early fifties with a thick head of graying brown hair, he received them in a plainly furnished parlor. “I am honored by this visit, Hero Jarvis,” he said, inviting them to sit. “Honored. I read thine article on the high rate of mortality amongst children sold by the parish as climbing boys to chimney sweeps. Fascinating work.”
“Why, thank you,” said Miss Jarvis, giving the Quaker a smile so wide it made Sebastian blink. “Although I must confess the methodology used was not my own.”
From his seat beside the empty hearth, Sebastian listened, bemused, while Miss Jarvis worked, deliberately and adroitly, to insinuate herself in their host’s good graces. The two crusaders rattled on at length about everything from laying-in hospitals to poor laws. Only gradually did she bring the conversation around, artfully, to the reason for their visit.
“I understand you were at the Magdalene House the night Rose Jones sought refuge there,” she said.
“Yes. It was the third night.”
“The third night?” said Sebastian.
Walden smiled. “What thou would call Wednesday. I remember it because the weather was dreadful—the rain was coming down in sheets, and it was quite cold. We haven’t been having much of a spring, have we? The poor women were soaked through and dangerously chilled.”
Sebastian sat forward. “Women?”
“Yes. There were two of them. I don’t recall the other one’s name. Helen, or Hannah . . . something like that. She didn’t stay long, I’m afraid. Our rules are not harsh but they are firm. We’ve discovered that some of the women who come to us don’t really wish to leave the life. I’m afraid Helen, or Hannah, or whoever she was, fell into that category. She was frightened the night she came, but that soon wore off. She left after only a day or two.”
Miss Jarvis nodded, neither embarrassed nor shocked by the nature of the conversation. “You say she was frightened?”
“Oh, yes. They both were. It’s not unusual. Many of the women who come to us are fleeing dreadful situations—virtual slavery, you know. The brutes who keep them have either forced them to sign papers the poor simpletons believe are binding, or have contrived to reduce them to a state of hopeless indebtedness, even renting them the very clothes on their backs so that by fleeing they open themselves up to charges of theft.”
“Did she give you any idea what kind of situation she’d fled?” Sebastian asked.
“We generally don’t inquire too closely into such details. But from one or two things Hannah—yes, that was the other girl’s name. Hannah, not Helen. At any rate, from one or two things she let slip, Margaret Crowley received the impression the women had been at a residential brothel.” He paused, his thin chest rising on a sigh. “Margaret Crowley was the matron at the Magdalene House, you know.”
Miss Jarvis leaned forward to pat his hand, where it lay on the chair’s arm. “Yes. I’m so sorry.”
“Any idea where the brothel may have been located?” Sebastian asked.
Walden cleared his throat. “The one girl—Hannah—was very talkative. I believe she mentioned Portman Square.”
Sebastian nodded. Closed, stay-in brothels were rare in London. More common were lodging-house brothels, where the girls were—nominally, at least—independent. Picking up their customers from the pleasure gardens or the theater or even the streets of the city, they then brought them back to the lodging house where they kept a room. Other girls took their men to “accommodation houses” where they didn’t actually live; they simply hired one of its rooms for the requisite number of hours—or minutes. Others made use of the numerous chop houses, cigar rooms, and coffeehouses that also had bedrooms available for use—their exclusively male clientele making them good hunting grounds, as well.
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