A Broken Vessel (16 page)

“There was at first. But now things is settling down.”

“This your room, too?”

“No. I’m in the second floor front—and I do hate stairs so! But there you are, this ain’t no place to go if you wants to live easy.”

“What did you come here for?” asked Sally curiously.

“What makes a gal go anywhere?” Florrie laughed. “Either she wants to get
to
a man or
away
from one. I was getting away.”

“Was he your fancy-man?”

“Not him! Men!—if you don’t let ’em poke you, they’re nothing but trouble, and if you do let ’em, they’re worse!”

“Did he rumble you?” Sally asked, thinking of Blinkers.

“Oh, men can be trouble enough without that! Don’t tease me about him no more—I’m sick of the very thought of him. Oh! there’s the bell. That’s dinner.”

She led Sally downstairs to the ground floor. “The dining room’s in the other house—the ‘office house,’ we calls it, ’coz Mr. Harcourt has his office there. The chapel’s there, too, and the kitchens, and the room where the matron on duty sleeps. There’s nothing in this house but our bedrooms, and the laundry in the basement. See that door there? It’s the only way to get back and forth ’twixt the two houses. At night they locks it, so we’re penned up here. If you has to visit Sir Harry, you goes out the back door to the boghouse in the garden.”

She stopped suddenly, putting a finger to her lips. “Come here,” she whispered, “and I’ll show you something afore we go to dinner.”

She opened a narrow door opposite the stairway, between the front and back rooms. Sally peered inside, screwing up her eyes to see in the dim light. It was a cubby-hole of a room, about ten feet square, with a small bedstead stripped of its covers, a wooden chest, and a night-table with a porcelain basin on it. There were no windows and no fireplace. Damp oozed down the walls.

“The Black Hole!” Sally whispered.

Florrie nodded solemnly. “This is where Mary slept—and where she was found, that morning. Nobody’s used it since.”

Sally had been looking forward to inspecting Mary’s room, but now that she saw it, she could not imagine what she would find that could be any use. The room was so small and scrubbed and bare—not even a hole in the wall or a crack in the floor to hide anything in. Fancy putting a gently bred girl in a dark, dank hole like this—not because she had done anything wrong, but just to break her spirit, and make her tell you who she was!

Well, the tables were turned on Harcourt now, Sally thought. He was the one being spied on. She had come here like a ferret down a rabbit hole, hunting secrets—hunting a murderer, perhaps. So have a care, Wax-face! she thought. I just might find out some’ut as’ll knock you off that high horse of yours!

Sally soon learned the routine of the refuge. Housework, needlework, prayers, a meal—then it all began again. Miss Nettleton flitted about, making sure that every inmate had her task, and that when it was done, she was given another. Fanlights were cleaned, rugs beaten, doorknobs polished, banisters bees-waxed. Bits of stair-carpet were taken up to be mended, then tacked down again. Occasionally half a dozen inmates went out to the back garden of the office house and trudged around the gravel paths for a quarter of an hour. This was called recreation.

It was only at meals and prayers that all two dozen inmates gathered together. Sally watched the serving of meals closely. Miss Nettleton and Wideawake Peg circled the room with large platters, doling out black bread, vegetables, and a little cheese to each inmate. It would have been hard, Sally thought, to slip anything into Mary’s food on the night she died. How could you be sure that she and nobody else would eat the poisoned slab of bread, or dollop of cheese? Unless of course the same person who hocussed the food was the one who served it. Sally gathered that it was always Peg and the matron on duty who served the meals. So that meant Peg and Mrs. Fiske were handing out food on the night Mary died.

But how important was that, really? Mr. Kestrel had said that if Mary had been given a fatal dose of opium at supper, she would have shown signs of it by the time she went to bed an hour or two later. So if Mary was poisoned by some hand other than her own, the poison was almost certainly in that cordial she took at bedtime. No wonder one of the principal tasks Mr. Kestrel had given Sally was to find out where that cordial was kept, and who had access to it.

The inmates around her were complaining in hushed tones about the food. Nothing but vegetables—never a morsel of beef, or even mutton. Beef broth, or a watery, floury stew, was the closest to meat they ever got. Mr Harcourt said vegetables were healthier for them—but he had a nice chop sent up to his office whenever he dined at the refuge.

“Why do we get so many greens?” Sally wanted to know.

“’Coz Mrs. Jessop’s husband’s a greengrocer,” whispered Florrie. “She’s one of the matrons, and she sees to it that Mr. Harcourt gets all the greens he wants, dirt cheap.”

“That’s how he gets everything,” rasped Bess, an older inmate with a voice like carriage wheels on gravel. “Cogs it out of the matrons, or them other women as dotes on him.”

“Cogs it out of their husbands, you mean,” said a florid girl known as Red Jane, to distinguish her from another Jane who was dark. “Or their brothers. Miss Nettleton’s brother’s a mason, and Mr. Harcourt’s al’ays after him to do repairs about the place. And Mrs. Fiske’s husband’s an apothecary, so we gets all our physic from him, and whenever a gal is took sick, he’s the one as treats her.”

“I wonder he wasn’t called in when that gal Mary cocked up her toes,” said Sally.

“But he was,” they all said in a chorus.

“Bender! He’d have been at the inquest—” Sally broke off, chagrined. How would she explain how she knew who was at the inquest, and who wasn’t?

Luckily no one thought to ask. “He’s took ill,” Florrie explained. “Around the time Mary died, a couple of the gals here had fever, and Mr. Fiske come every day to see how they was. When Mary was found dead, he was called in double-quick, and it was plain as a pikestaff he was took with the fever himself. Mortal bad he was—very shaky, and green about the gills. He had a look at Mary, and he did cut up—he was fond of her, and it give him a turn, her dropping off the perch like that. Mr. Harcourt sent him home—said he wasn’t well, and he’d best keep to his bed. Now he’s fair raving with fever, and Mrs. Fiske don’t know if he’ll live or die.”

“And don’t care, neither,” said Bess.

“Poor Mr. Fiske,” said Florrie. “If ever a man lived under the cat’s foot, it’s him. And he ain’t a bad sort.”

“He’s a good soul,” Red Jane declared, “and I won’t hear nobody say different. Got a soft spot for us gals, if you ask me. It makes his old hag of a missis cut up savage! She’d as lief not let him near us, only Mr. Harcourt won’t fork out for physic—not when he can get it so cheap from Mr. Fiske.”

“He was fond of Mary, you say?” Sally mused.

“Oh, yes,” nodded Florrie. “I don’t mean he fancied her, he was old enough to be her father—”

“That don’t stop ’em,” ground out Bess.

“I know, but that wasn’t how Mr. Fiske was with Mary. She was a pretty thing, and down in the mouth, and he was sorry for her. He’s got a kind heart. He was called in to physic her when she first come, because she was a bit weak and howish. He said she was to take that cordial, and after that he looked in on her whenever he come here, to see if she was mending.”

“Did she cotton to him?” Sally asked.

“She did, a bit. ’Course, it was hard to tell with Mary. She didn’t say much. But if she talked to anybody, I expect it was to him. She seemed to trust him more nor anybody else.”

“You think she told him who she was?” asked Sally eagerly.

“Who knows?” shrugged Red Jane. “Nobody told me about it if she did.”

Nobody told the coroner, either, thought Sally. Mr. Fiske’s name had never come up at the inquest—even though he had treated Mary while she was at the refuge, and it was he who had prescribed the cordial for her. More important, he had been the first medical man to examine her body. That would explain the three-hour delay between the discovery of Mary’s death and the Great Doctor’s examination of her body. It would also explain where Mrs. Fiske had gone in such a hurry, directly Mary’s death was discovered. Harcourt must have sent her to fetch her husband—then changed his mind, bundled Fiske off, and summoned the Great Doctor in his place.

It was nothing short of a conspiracy. Harcourt, Mrs. Fiske, and the Great Doctor had suppressed Fiske’s role completely. Was that just because Fiske was too ill to attend the inquest, and Harcourt did not want it delayed? Or did Fiske know something that Harcourt was anxious to keep dark?

She must see Fiske, talk to him, find out what he knew. When he was well, surely he would come back to the refuge? There was always some inmate or other in need of physic. But suppose Harcourt no longer wanted him here? Or worse—suppose Fiske did not get well, but died and took his secrets with him?

CHAPTER
12

A
t noon on Saturday, Sally contrived to be cleaning a front window of the refuge. She could see Dipper down the street, peering into the window of the stationer’s shop. When no one was watching her, she held up the white cloth she was cleaning with and waved it back and forth. He did not appear to glance toward the refuge, but she knew he had seen her signal, because he thrust his hands in his pockets and walked jauntily away.

Sunday marked a change in the routine of the refuge. “No work to be done,” said Red Jane, one of the three inmates who shared Sally’s room. “’Cept cooking and tidying up after meals.”

“What do we do all day?” asked Sally.

“Listen to Mr. Harcourt preachify, mostly,” said a ginger-haired girl, who was known as Spots on account of her freckles.

“At least it’s warm in the chapel,” said Red Jane. “Mr. Harcourt always sees to it there’s a good fire wherever
he
is.”

“That’s a wicked thing to say,” chided a young girl named Nancy, who was taking her reformation seriously.

“All I knows is, it’s cold and damp as the grave in here,” Red Jane retorted. “And it ain’t never cold where Mr. Harcourt is.”

The others nodded, shivering. They were washing and dressing by the grey dawn light, and the cold made their fingers stiffen and their shoulders hunch. They moved like rheumatic old women.

“I expect there ain’t a coal merchant’s wife in the Reclamation Society,” said Sally.

“You’re a knowing ’un,” Red Jane nodded approvingly.

Sally got them talking about Harcourt’s patrons. “I heard one of the trustees was a reg’lar swell, with a handle to his name.”

“That’s Lord Carbury,” said Spots.

“Oh, him. I knows who he is,” said Sally. “I seen his son once—Mr. Charles Avondale. Cor, he’s a dimber cove! Hair like gold, and eyes as’d put blue violets to shame. He ever come here?”

“No such luck!” laughed Red Jane.

“Lord Carbury’s been here, though,” said Spots. “I seen him. A few of us was brought in to curtsey to the trustees, and I stood as close to him as I am to you. He smiled at me particular.”

“He probably thought you was a monkey brought in to dance for him,” said Red Jane.

“Go and be hanged!” cried Spots.

“You go to the devil, and say I sent you!”

They made a dash at each other. Sally and Nancy tried to pull them apart.

“What’s all this rumpus?” Wideawake Peg put her head in at the door. “Draw in your horns, you scabby sluts, or you’ll be late to chapel, and isn’t it me that’s supposed to see we’re all there on time? If Himself takes me to task, I’ll be quick to put the blame where it belongs. So look sharp, and come along!”

Red Jane and Spots glared at each other, but they drew apart and finished dressing. It was not the first time Sally had seen Peg bring unruly inmates to heel. Everyone knew she would tell Harcourt of any misconduct by an inmate—or, at all events, any misconduct he might find out about some other way.

Having Harcourt’s ear gave her a good deal of power. Inmates who crossed her seldom stayed long at the refuge. But she could also use her influence in an inmate’s favour, to lessen her punishment or save her from expulsion. That was why the inmates submitted to her tyranny, and never dreamed of exposing her double-dealing to Harcourt and the matrons. They needed her. She made herself useful in myriad ways. She had all sorts of dodges for getting hold of things forbidden to the inmates. Her task of waiting at table gave her access to the larder, and she was ingenious at trimming off bits of cold meat left over from the matron’s dinner, or hollowing out the bottom of a pudding without disturbing the top.