A Broken Vessel (41 page)

“He was anything but glad to see me—we’d agreed we’d never meet there—but he didn’t seem too disturbed to hear you were taking an interest in the letter. I can understand why now. I was the only one in trouble; there was nothing to implicate him in what we’d done. But while we were talking, there was a knock at the door, and a note was pushed under it. It was another note just like the one I’d received, but addressed to him. He was very shocked to find you knew who he was. He ran out to look for you, but you’d disappeared.”

Sally nodded. It all made sense. She remembered how, when she had gone to Rawdon’s office to deliver her note, Annie had told her he had another man up there with him. She was not surprised Fiske had arrived before her: he had been in a hurry to see his son, while she had been reluctant to go at all.

Fiske wet his dry lips. He was so weary, he had to lean on the railing of the dock for support. “He made a plan. He said we’d go to the Cockerel that night. He’d wait in the back alleyway, while I went in and persuaded you to come upstairs. Then I was to leave you and come down and unbar the back door, to let him in. We’d both go up and talk you into selling us the letter. Of course he never meant to talk to you at all—he meant to kill you. And I suppose he meant to leave me to take the blame. I was the one who’d been seen to come upstairs with you. That was how he always arranged things. He was never seen or heard from—I took all the risks.” He did not sound angry, only sad. “You must believe me, I didn’t know what he was going to do. He said we were only going to buy you off.”

Sally believed him. But she also thought that if Rawdon had told him the truth, it might not have made much difference. Was there anything Fiske would not have done for his son?

Sir Richard ordered him committed to Newgate till the next Old Bailey sessions, when he would be sentenced. Fiske actually smiled. Sir Richard bridled. “Is it a light thing to you to have the full majesty of the law brought to bear on crimes like yours?”

“No, sir. But, you see, I’m an apothecary. I know about the progress of disease. That fever I had a few weeks ago hasn’t left me—it’s burrowed deep in my body, to eat away at me from inside. I don’t believe I’ll live long enough to face a judgement. Not in this world.”

Sir Richard sent word of the proceedings to Lord Braxton, who posted to London in a fury. It was all a mistake, he declared— this terrible business had nothing to do with his daughter. She was safe in France with her captain—that twopenny-ha’penny hero she had run away to marry. Blustering to hide his panic, he demanded facts, witnesses, proofs. But the evidence was all too clear. He himself identified the handwriting of “Mary’s” letter as his daughter’s. And when Peter Vance went to Boulogne to see Captain Hartwell, he learned that the captain had expected Lady Lucinda, but when she did not arrive, he had concluded she must have thought better of their elopement. He had not returned to England to seek her out, because his creditors would have clapped him in prison the moment he set foot on English soil.

Lord Braxton could no longer blink away the truth, and his grief and rage were terrible. Julian, who was summoned to meet with him, recognized that guilt lay at the root of his feelings. If he had not opposed the marriage so strongly—if he had gone to look for Lady Lucinda when she ran away, instead of shutting himself up in his northern castle—

But he was not a man to blame himself long when others could be made to share the guilt. He came down on the trepanners like an avenging angel, hiring the Bow Street Runners to hunt them down, blanketing London with advertisements offering rewards for evidence against them, inducing the government to grant pardons to accomplices willing to turn informer. They were not wanting. To save themselves from being drawn into the net, Rawdon’s minions readily revealed how the trepanning operation worked. It rounded up potential prostitutes—willing or unwilling—and sold them to brothels or wealthy individuals. Smith and Company particularly catered to men with exacting or unusual tastes. It owned, through an obscure chain of title, houses like the one in Windmill Street where Julian had met Emily. Rawdon kept the books and records, hired bullies to deal with troublesome clients, and arranged bribes for any watchmen who got too curious.

One of Rawdon’s accomplices explained the company’s ledgers. The various entries referred to women and children who had been tempted or trapped into prostitution. “Tea-pots” were women, “tea-chests” were little girls, and “tea-urns” were boys. “Coffee” items came from France, which was Smith and Company’s other principal hunting-ground. Rawdon had kept a record of each person’s description and whereabouts, in case Smith and Company later had a client looking for that particular type. “Porcelain” signified that the woman or child was fair; “japan-work” meant a dark complexion. “Gilded” translated to blond, and “painted” to red-haired. “Fancy,” as opposed to “plain,” meant a person of relatively genteel background. The letters in the margins identified the brothel that had purchased each item; the numbers recorded the price. Parentheses in pencil around an entry meant that the prostitute was pregnant or otherwise indisposed, while parentheses in ink signified a permanent condition, such as age or disfigurement. If an item was crossed out altogether, it was wholly unavailable, which usually meant dead.

The trepanners were so ready to betray one another that there was no need to drag Emily back from her village and force her to relive her ordeal at Mme. Leclerc’s hands. That lady was apprehended at Dover, where she was on the point of embarking for France. Hidden in her baggage was a store of banknotes she had stolen from Smith and Company’s office. Rawdon, it turned out, had left them there in readiness for his own planned flight to the Continent, after he had disposed of Sally.

As the news of Rawdon’s crimes spread, a reformist furore swept London. The shocking demand for prostitutes, and the atrocities committed to slake it, were on everyone’s lips. Julian, to his horror, found himself lionized as a moralist. His role in solving the Bellegarde murder had been kept fairly quiet, but the publicity attending Lady Lucinda’s death made it impossible for him to duck celebrity. That he was already widely known as a man of fashion made his foray into hunting down murderers and procurers all the more remarkable. Newspapers wanted to interview him, friends wrote him amused or incredulous letters from their country retreats, the Society for the Suppression of Vice tried to sponsor him in a lecture. A persistent clergyman asked him what should be done about the evils of excessive drinking. Julian recommended soda water and a cold, damp cloth around the head, and began making plans to leave London as soon as Rawdon’s trial was over.

CHAPTER
30

I
n a climate of such frenzied reformist spirit, the Reverend Mr. Harcourt would have flourished, if his Reformation Society had not been tainted with the scandal of Lady Lucinda’s death. Lord Braxton at first threatened to prosecute Harcourt for manslaughter, claiming that his neglect and heartlessness had helped bring about Lady Lucinda’s murder. In the end, he contented himself with savaging Harcourt’s reputation, and bullying his patrons into abandoning him, if they had not done so already. A fortnight after Rawdon and Fiske were arrested, the refuge closed its doors forever. Sally went to have a last look at the place and see what had become of her old acquaintances Florrie and Wideawake Peg.

She found the front door propped open, and a pair of burly men carrying furniture and boxes outside. They loaded their burdens onto a large cart in the street, then went back inside for more. The door remained open, so she walked in after them.

The hall was dingy and deserted. No matron swooped on her to demand her business. She found two inmates in the front
parlour—that sanctum once reserved for Harcourt’s patrons—and asked them where Florrie was. They directed her to the kitchen.

In the kitchen doorway, she stopped and stared. Florrie was sitting by the fire, eating toasted cheese. Beside her was a young man with long straggly hair, who jumped to his feet when he saw Sally. “
And, behold,
” he stammered, “
there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart. He went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night
—”

“Stop that, now!” Florrie gave him a good-natured shake. “You said you wouldn’t do that no more.”

“I’m sorry. But—but it’s
her
!” he said in a loud stage whisper. “The one I told you about.”

“You been a lot of trouble,” Sally told him severely. “Why couldn’t you tell me slap off you wasn’t Caleb?”

“I was afraid! You said, ‘Can I call you Caleb?’ and I thought if I said no, you’d make a noise, and someone would come and catch me.
Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips—
”

“Nathan!” Florrie rounded on him, hands on hips.

“I’m sorry.” He subsided into his chair.

Florrie shook her head in exasperation. “There’s no doing noshing with him. Here, you gooseberry.” She prodded him with her foot. “Get along now. I want to have a gossip with Sally.”

He rose obediently and put on his cap. “Can I come again tomorrow?”

“You would anyhow,” Florrie sighed.

She saw him upstairs, then returned to Sally. “He’s a curse. There’s no getting shut of him.”

“He’s the cove you come here to get away from!” Sally realized.

Florrie nodded. “Mind, he’s a good boy, really. There ain’t nothing wrong with him, ’cept his being off at the side.” She tapped her head.

“His name’s Nathan?”

“Nathan Winters. I met him—oh, few months ago. I was out one night, and he saw me and followed me, and at first I was
afeard, on account of his being so queer. He trailed after me all night, till he found out where I lived, and after that he was always coming round to my lodging, jabbering things out of the Bible, and looking at me like a little lost calf. I knowed what he wanted, poor boy, even if he didn’t. And I thought, why not? —if I give him a turn in the stubble, happen he’ll go away.

“But he only got worse! He was brung up religious, you see. His pa was one of them Dissenting preachers. So he was always ranting at himself for a sinner, and saying we was both doomed to hellfire if we didn’t mend our ways. I said, if I’m so wicked, why don’t you leave me be? And he tried, but he was so took with me, he couldn’t keep away. So I says, well, if you won’t shirry off, I will.

“I’d heard about this place, and I knew Nathan couldn’t follow me here, ’coz they don’t let men visitors in. So I come here. But one night I looked out of the window and saw Nathan creeping about in the street! It turned out some of my friends had told him where I was, just for a lark.

“I didn’t tell nobody. Because you know Mr. Harcourt—he might have had him took up by a watchman, maybe even put in a madhouse. And he don’t deserve that. He’s a good boy. He works for his living—a carpenter took him on, ’coz he’s clever with his hands, though his mind’s a bit tituppy. Anyhow, I hoped he’d give up and go away. But he didn’t, and now that the refuge is all to pieces, he comes round all the time, and I cosset him a bit, ’coz he’s been so lonesome without me.”

Sally grinned. “You won’t never get shut of him, at that rate.”

“I won’t never get shut of him, nohow,” said Florrie fatalistically.

“And I thought I was such a downy one!” mourned Sally. “I asked him if he come here looking for a blond gal, and when he let on he had, I thought it was Mary. And all the time it was you!”

Florrie patted her flaxen curls. She still wore the uniform of the refuge, but now she kept her cap pushed back to show off her hair. “Sit down and have a bit of nuncheon. I want to hear all about how you found out Mr. Fiske had killed poor Mary—Lady Lucinda, I mean. We couldn’t hardly believe it when we heard.”

Sally basked in her celebrity. Florrie gave her a toasting-fork, with a well-buttered slab of bread and a piece of cheese, and she sat munching and talking, while Florrie gaped at her, and exclaimed, “My eyes!” and “I never did!” at all the right moments.

When her story had been thoroughly told and marvelled over, it was her turn to question Florrie. “What’ll you do, now the refuge is gone to pot?”

“I been found a post as maidservant at an inn. I’ll try it for a bit and see how I like it. The pay ain’t much, but it’s regular, and the innkeeper seems like a good sort. It’ll be hard work, but maybe not so hard as tail-trading. You know, I don’t miss that a bit—walking out every night in scanty clothes, dodging the watchmen. So happen I’ll be better off on the square.”