Bloody Relations (18 page)

However, she was only a “working girl” for a month or so, for the “silly fool” got herself pregnant. When Madame was considerate enough to arrange for the routine (“but ruinously expensive!”) abortion, Sarah balked, for which transgression she was once again tossed out on her ear. This time she was undeniably a harlot.

“We heard from the grapevine that she went back home, but her father closed the door in her face and disowned her. She was on her way back here, we was told, when one of that bitch Burgess's scouts picked her up and took her to Renée's. They pampered her there fer the whole winter, till she popped the poor dead babe a few weeks ago.”

Charlotte sat back, hitched up her breasts, and said scornfully, “So there's yer star attraction at Madam Snooty's cunny-crib. A common tart!”

Ideas were bouncing around Cobb's head with alarming speed. Sarah McConkey had worked in this hellhole for over a month before she was dismissed and ended up a few days later at Madame Renée's. Everyone in Irishtown would have been aware of her stint at Madame Charlotte's. Why, then, had Mrs. Burgess and all three of her girls lied to him and Marc? They had made it sound as if Sarah had come straight to them from her job in the city. Well, Cobb would soon find out why. And where there was one lie, surely there were others.

“But I still don't see what any of this has got to do with us,” Charlotte said.

“Nothin', likely, but you been helpful just the same.” Cobb suddenly realized that Sarah may not have gone home when she left here. She may have gone straight to Mrs. Burgess. Which meant what? That the enmity between the two women may have
had something to do with business after all. Sarah had been young and pretty, perhaps a rare find for Charlotte, with potential for expanding her horizons and hopes, only to have them dashed when Sarah was lured away to the competition. Maybe he should ride out to Streetsville and find out. Cobb's heart began to pound and the tip of his nose throbbed: this detection game was exhilarating, and he was getting good at it.

“Ya sure ya don't wanta stay a bit and divulge yerself?” Marybelle was saying. She let her legs sag apart. “That's a mighty truncheon ya got stickin' up outta yer belt.”

Cobb looked furiously away and jumped up.

“Won't ya stay fer a cup o' tea?” Madame Charlotte inquired sweetly, as if she were superintending an at-home.

“And a bit o' crumpet?”

His proboscis aflame, Cobb stumbled to the door, regained his balance and some of his dignity, and was almost outside when he thought of a critical question. With his entire face now throbbing like a boil, he turned around and said sharply, “What was the name of the preacher Sarah worked for?”

Charlotte looked at Marybelle for confirmation. “Some fire-and-brimstone howler with a crazy name—Finley . . . Findlay . . . somethin' like that.”

“Finney?” Cobb prompted, as his heart skipped a beat.

“Yeah, that's it. The Reverend Temperance Finney.”

Marybelle howled with intemperate laughter.

•  •  •

WAS IT POSSIBLE THAT A RESPECTABLE
Methodist minister had got himself entangled with his housemaid? And if so, had he decided to disentangle himself for good? Could he be the direct connection between the whist players and Madame Renée's? This was all too much for Cobb. He began to wish the Major were
here. Still, he had caught Mrs. Burgess in a lie. That was a tangible fact—unless of course Charlotte was lying. My God, this investigating game was taxing on the brain!

Cobb just managed to sidestep a heap of fresh, festering garbage, but in doing so he bumped into one of the local urchins.

“Watch where you're goin', fatso!”

Cobb had the miscreant by the scruff and dangling helplessly before he could blink twice. “Why you little fart, for tuppence I'd wring yer neck and toss ya to the rats.”

“Lemme go!”

Cobb dropped the lad, a sturdy fellow of thirteen or fourteen, but kept a grip on his tattered jersey. “Say, ain't you Peter, one of them trackers?”

“Donald,” the boy whined. “And I ain't done nothin'!”

“I doubt that, but what I want you to tell me is this: do you work fer both the madams?”

“What's in it fer me?” Donald said, avarice nudging out fear.

“A broken arse if ya don't answer and a penny if ya do.”

Donald pretended to mull the offer over before saying, “I useta work fer them both, but Miz Burgess pays me better not to.”

“Did you bring sailors to Sarah when she worked fer Madame Charlotte?” Cobb was secretly pleased with this bit of misdirection.

“ 'Course I did. But that was a whiles back.”

“Last fall perhaps?”

“Before the snow come.”

“Here's yer penny, don't spend it—”

But Donald didn't tarry long enough to hear Cobb's fatherly advice.

Well, well, Cobb thought. So here was a tangible fact indeed. Sarah McConkey had worked for Charlotte before moving to
fancier quarters. If he could confront Mrs. Burgess and her girls with their dishonesty, who knew what else might then spill out?

As he was plotting an approach to such a confrontation—a peremptory pounding on the scarlet door or a discreet rap—he noticed out of the corner of his eye something pink and fluttery behind Madame Renée's place. He marched around behind the house and almost hanged himself on a clothesline.

“Jesus! Where'd this come from?” he cried, pulling something sheer and silky and illicit from his face.

“Don't throw them knickers on the ground! I just washed them!”

Mrs. Burgess stood a few feet away beside a basket of freshly laundered underclothes so multicoloured and exotic that Cobb could not have put a name to one of them. A clothesline had been strung up from a nail on the wall to a pole that had been inserted into the ground since Cobb's visit half an hour ago.

“Put them in this!” she commanded, pointing to the basket.

The slithery underpants stuck to Cobb's fingers like taffy, but he finally shook them free and watched them float onto their companion frillies.

This was not how Cobb had planned the confrontation.

“Can't you people leave us alone,” Mrs. Burgess said. “We need time to mourn little Sarah and prepare for her funeral tomorrow.”

From inside the house came the sounds of furious scrubbing: the girls trying to expunge bloodstains, perhaps?

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” Cobb mumbled, but it was not clear whether he was referring to the abused panties or his thoughtless entrance. “Fer yer loss,” he added, noting the dark patches under her swollen eyes. She had aged ten years in a day.

“Thank you.” For a moment she seemed to have forgotten her
laundry and just stood still, waiting for Cobb to say something or merely drift away.

“I need to ask you one more important question, ma'am. And I'm sorry but it can't really wait.”

Mrs. Burgess braced herself, but she seemed more resigned than anxious.

“Why did you and yer girls not tell us that Sarah McConkey worked fer Madame Charlotte before comin' to your place?” The question was as direct and blunt as Cobb could make it in these circumstances and ought to have rocked even a tough old bird like Madame Renée back on her heels.

“Oh, that,” she said, unperturbed. “I didn't see how it could've mattered. I told you when and how Sarah come to us. She was found wandering and delirious on Lot Street, pregnant and alone. We took her in. And all this happened last fall.”

Cobb blinked and tried to regain the high ground. “But we asked you to tell us all about Sarah so we could decide what facts were important and what facts weren't. You and yer girls knew she'd lived and worked at Charlotte's place. You deliberately chose not to tell us. I wanta know why.”

“Then I'll tell you, Constable, and then you can leave me to my laundry.” She looked him boldly in the eye. “There were two reasons. First, when Sarah lost her baby and begged to join the business, we didn't want our gentlemen callers to know that she'd spent a frightful and torturous month in Charlotte's sinkhole. Sarah was young and free from disease and very attractive to our kind of visitor.”

Cobb's distaste for such detail must have shown on his face, for Mrs. Burgess smiled grimly and said, “I apologize for my frank language, but you asked for the truth.”

“You ain't embarrassin' me,” Cobb said, but his nose belied the disclaimer.

“The girls and I made a pact never to speak of Sarah's former employment.”

“But lots of folks knew about it. I can't believe you people don't gossip.”

“We use no last names in our business. You and Mr. Edwards alone know the surnames of my girls. I have tried to be wholly truthful with you, except for Sarah's working up there.”

“You said ya had two reasons fer lyin'.”

“For omitting part of the truth,” she corrected. “The second reason was that Sarah herself asked us to keep it a secret. You see, she was saving her money and planning someday to move back into respectable society, probably in another town. She was a very independent young woman—as her papa discovered when he tried to force her into a marriage she found repugnant.”

“And you didn't object to her talkin' about runnin' off? It's hard ta believe you'd actually help her leave yer business.”

Mrs. Burgess sighed, looked almost wistful. “She wasn't the first girl to have a dream like that.”

“So you figured it would all peter out?”

“It always does.”

Cobb suddenly thought of something neither he nor Marc had thought to ask yesterday, and he silently congratulated himself even as he said, “Was her money stolen after she was killed?”

Mrs. Burgess took umbrage at this veiled accusation. “I keep a tally of what my girls earn each week, I'll have you know, and every Friday I walk them up to the bank on Church Street. I stand at the door while they go in and deposit their earnings. I have no way of touching that money.”

“And you went there last Friday?”

“We did. You can ask them at the bank. We're usually noticed.”

“I will do that.” Afraid that he was being bested in this exchange, he looked stern and said sharply, “So you're tellin' me yer girls are all gettin' rich?”

“I am not telling you any such thing. Before we go to the bank, we promenade along King Street.”

“And visit the shops.”

“Yes. Whatever's left goes in the bank. And some of that gets mailed home.”

“So Sarah really didn't have a lot of savin's?”

“Sarah was not like the other girls—yet. Almost all of her earnings went into the bank. But she'd only been working for two months.”

Cobb felt deflated. Mrs. Burgess's explanation seemed not only plausible but downright convincing. Still, he could relay all he'd discovered to the Major: perhaps he had overlooked some telling detail that Marc would tease out.

“I'll let ya get back to yer washin',” he said, then added, “Where're ya plannin' to hold the service?”

“In the old Mechanics' Institute hall on John Street at ten o'clock. We've found a minister who hasn't forgotten who Christ was.”

Chastened, Cobb made his way back to Lot Street and his rendezvous with Marc Edwards.

O
ver lunch and a flagon of ale at the Cock and Bull, Marc and Cobb exchanged detailed accounts of their morning's work. Marc was obviously pleased and impressed with Cobb's efforts at the two brothels.

“What d'ya make of this business of Sarah bein' at Madame Charlotte's?” Cobb said, between bites.

“I agree with your initial assessment, Cobb. But I think I'll refrain from further speculation on the matter until I've had a chance to talk with the girl's parents. Then I believe we'll have the full story of Sarah's sad odyssey.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Now, what do
you
make of the whist players?”

Cobb, at a loss to see any import in the self-interested complaints of the whist players up at Government House, said so.

“I didn't expect to learn anything directly incriminating,” Marc said, brushing pie crumbs off his lower lip. “But both Lord Durham and I wanted to get acquainted with them personally—His Lordship is a keen judge of character—and develop a sense of whether their opposition to his mission here is serious enough, and similar enough in kind, to allow them to be considered co-conspirators.”

Cobb washed down a helping of oysters with a satisfying swig of ale. “And what do you figure after all that palaver?”

“In terms of their disagreement with Durham's known position on key issues, yes, they might, despite being radically different characters, decide to band together to sidetrack the mission. It's hard to see such diverse personalities getting together merely to play whist.”

“Might, you say?”