‘I sure would like you two little fire crackers in my bed every night at home,’ he said, putting his arms around them both and squeezing them hard. ‘I reckon I’ll be taking my cock in hand every night and thinking of you both.’
After they’d let the man out and closed the door, Belle came out from behind the screen. Polly started to giggle. ‘How was that, sugar? You like it?’
Anna-Maria was sitting on the edge of the bed, struggling to put her chemise back on. She looked a bit stunned.
‘That sounded as though you really liked it,’ Belle said to her.
‘I did,’ she said in her faint French accent, and she giggled and blushed. ‘That ees the first time that ever happened to me, I really did come.’
Belle had heard that expression many times since arriving at Martha’s. She understood it in the male sense, but she hadn’t until now known it could happen for women too. However, it obviously struck a chord with Polly as she went off into a fit of giggles. ‘Imagine him cock in hand thinking of us,’ she chortled.
Belle went off up to her room to let the other two girls get washed and dressed again. She sat on her bed and realized she was confused. Not about what she’d just seen, but all the things life had thrown at her, for surely there had to be some plan behind it, if she could just work it out.
She’d grown up in a brothel but hadn’t known what that meant. She’d seen a girl murdered and her mother had lied about who did it. Then there was her abduction and the horrible events in Paris. But then she met Etienne, by whom she’d been terrified at first, only to get to like him, maybe even love him a little. She ought to have been horrified at being brought here to be a whore, yet she wasn’t. She ought to be appalled by New Orleans, yet she liked it. She didn’t feel even the slightest resentment that Martha was going to push her into the work she’d bought her for.
Was this because she was born to be a whore? Was it possible you could inherit the disposition for such a job in the same way you inherited your mother’s nose or colouring?
Part of her believed that it was bad for any woman to sell her body, yet the other part denied it. She’d seen the delight on that man’s face tonight, the girls had made him happy, so how could it really be bad?
But there were other things which puzzled her too. She missed Mog, and would always have a special place for her in her heart, but she felt more at home here with Martha and her girls than she had back in London. Why was that? Didn’t that make her disloyal?
If Etienne had tried to have his way with her she suspected she wouldn’t have resisted him. That was surely further proof of a loose nature. In fact it seemed to her that she couldn’t define what was good or bad any more, for everything had become mixed up and blurred around the edges.
A soft rap on her door startled Belle, and she was even more surprised when Martha put her head around it.
‘Can I come in, honey?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ Belle said, feeling awkward at being caught out. ‘I was just going to come downstairs again. I’m sorry.’
‘Pay no mind to that,’ Martha said, sitting herself down on the narrow bed. ‘You needed to gather yourself, I understand.’
Belle had noticed the older woman seemed to understand almost everything people did. She hadn’t heard her raise her voice in anger once.
‘I dare say what you saw tonight was a little surprising?’ Martha went on.
Belle would’ve expected her to use the word shocking rather than surprising, yet in fact her word was exactly how it was.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Belle whispered, dropping her eyes.
‘You didn’t expect the girls to have so much fun, or the gentleman to be so pleased?’
Belle nodded.
Martha sighed deeply. ‘Respectable, church-going folks don’t tend to see that we were made to enjoy sex. It ain’t just about gettin’ babies, honey. Lovin’ one another in the physical way is good for all of us, it’s the glue that can hold a marriage together and make it a happy one. If the wives of the men we service here were to let themselves go and learn to love fuckin’, there’d be no need for places like mine.’
Belle blushed. Martha and all her girls used that word a great deal, and she found it disconcerting.
Martha tilted up Belle’s chin with one finger. ‘Look at you blushing! That’s what it is, honey chile, might as well learn to say the word and be done with being bashful. Once you knows how good it can feel to be loved by a man, you’ll see things clearer. I reckon I ought to have suggested that Etienne stayed the first night with you here. He’s the kind to awaken any woman.’
‘He was married,’ Belle said indignantly.
Martha laughed. ‘Now, honey, do you think I worry about married men coming in this house?’
Belle smirked, for she guessed that more than half the men who came here were married. ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Etienne had, how shall I say?’ Martha paused to choose the right word. ‘Charisma! I doubt he’s ever paid for a woman.’
‘He was very proper with me,’ Belle retorted.
‘And that makes a woman even more inclined to be improper,’ Martha chuckled. ‘But honey, I think it’s time I got you awakened.’
Belle had the most vivid, disturbing dream that night. She was naked, lying on a big bed surrounded by men who were all reaching out to touch her. They weren’t grabbing at her roughly, just gentle strokes that made her feel like she was on fire. She woke from it to find she was dripping with sweat, her nightdress up around her armpits, and she was fairly certain she had been stroking her private parts in just the way she’d seen Anna-Maria do earlier in the evening.
Chapter Seventeen
Jimmy dodged behind a pile of flower boxes in the market as the man stopped to speak to someone. He waited a second, then peeped out round the edge of the boxes to see what they were doing.
He was absolutely certain the man was Kent. He’d spent hours over the last few weeks watching his office building, at all different times of the day, gradually eliminating the men who worked in the printer’s on the ground and first floor as they went in or out. There was never a light up in Kent’s office, and Jimmy had begun to think he’d given up using the place, when suddenly today he appeared.
There was something about the way the well-dressed man walked up Long Acre, purposeful, self-assured, which made Jimmy stiffen even before the man got close enough for him to see that he had the prominent nose, the thick, military-style moustache, and the wide, muscular shoulders which fitted the description he’d been given of Kent.
When he went into the building, this confirmed it was him, but it also put Jimmy in a quandary. It was just after ten in the morning, he’d already been out for over an hour, and he knew he must get back to the pub. But his need to know more about this man was greater than his fear of his uncle. He decided to wait for another hour and see if he came out again and where he went. To his delight, Kent reappeared after only ten minutes.
Jimmy followed him down through the flower market towards the Strand, but before he got there, Kent turned right into Maiden Lane. Jimmy kept well back, only too aware that his red hair, even though it was covered by a cap, was memorable. Like most of the old lanes in the area, Maiden Lane was narrow and squalid, with old buildings like rabbit warrens on both sides. There were also the back doors of two theatres in the Strand, and when Kent suddenly disappeared, Jimmy thought at first that he’d slipped into the Vaudeville. But as he reached the theatre door he found it was locked. The door next to it was slightly ajar though, and it seemed very likely that was where he’d gone.
Jimmy hesitated. Above the door was a hand-painted sign of a woman’s face half concealed by a fan. There was no name, nothing to say what the business inside was, but he was fairly sure it was some kind of drinking club, probably with dancing girls. Maybe Belle had been brought here if Kent owned the place.
His heart was hammering with nerves, but he pushed the door open a little further and went in. Aware that if he was caught prowling he’d be in big trouble, he decided the only way to behave was as if he had real business there. So he walked boldly down the narrow corridor and up the bare wooden stairs as all the doors on the ground floor had padlocks on them.
At the top of the flight of stairs was another door with a small pane of glass in it. He peeped through and saw the room inside was more or less as he’d expected, large, dingy and windowless and furnished with tables and chairs. The floor was just rough boards. The bar was on the right-hand side, a small stage and a piano on the left. It would have been in total darkness but for an open door at the far end, and Jimmy could hear men talking in there.
He opened the door a crack and the smell hit him like being slapped round the face with a stinking floor cloth. It was a gut-wrenching mixture of stale beer, tobacco, dirt and mildew. He asked himself then whether he was really brave enough to go in, for if he was stopped he couldn’t claim to have a valid reason for being there. But scared as he was, he felt compelled to hear what the men were talking about and see what the room they were in was like.
With a hammering heart, he crept round the edge of the room, staying close to the wall and ready to duck down under a table if anyone came out. All the time his ears were straining to hear what was being said.
‘They said they want two more, but I can’t get the kind they want,’ one of the men said. He was well spoken, so Jimmy thought it was probably Kent.
‘Surely Sly can come up with a couple?’ a man with a rougher London voice answered.
‘No. He’s gone yellow-bellied on me since that other one. There’s a cove over in Bermondsey who I hear can do it, but I don’t know if I can trust him.’
Jimmy crept closer, right up to the door, and peeped through the crack on the hinges side. It was an office, with a big window which looked out on to the Savoy Hotel in the Strand. Kent was standing facing the window, and the other man was sitting in a chair behind a desk. He looked very like the pictures of King Edward, big, bald, with a bushy beard, but he had a vicious-looking scar on his cheek, and he wore a red waistcoat under his jacket and a gold watch chain.
‘We don’t have to fret over whether we trust him,’ the bald man said with a mirthless chuckle. ‘Once he comes up with the girls we can dispose of him.’
Jimmy knew he’d heard enough to be torn limb from limb if he was caught, so he sidled away from the door and crept back round the room on tiptoe. When he reached the outer door he was through it and down the stairs in the blink of an eye, nervous sweat dripping from him.
*
‘You damn fool! What on earth did you think you were doing?’ Garth roared at Jimmy.
He had been annoyed when he got up at nine and found his nephew had gone out, for he had an errand he wanted him to run. But when Jimmy still wasn’t back at eleven he became angry. A delivery of beer was expected, the fireplace in the bar needed clearing and the fire lit, plus dozens of other jobs. When Jimmy came running into the bar, red-faced and out of breath, Garth had jumped to the conclusion that the lad had been up to some mischief and had fled from whoever was chasing him. But when he questioned him and found that he’d been spying on Kent, fright made him even angrier.
Despite all his bragging, Garth had failed to find the man Sly, and indeed to get any further information about Kent. Noah had drawn a blank as well, and it said reams about Kent’s reputation that no one dared talk about him. With the police showing absolutely no interest in apprehending anyone for the crime, it was over three months now since young Belle went missing, which almost certainly meant she was dead too. Garth had mentally given up, even though he wouldn’t admit that to Mog.
To discover his nephew was still trying to do something both shamed him and made him feel inadequate. And it was his way to strike out when he felt like that.
‘I have to find out more about the man,’ Jimmy said defiantly. ‘And from what I heard today, I’d say they were snatching other girls and taking them away somewhere. I’m going to break into that office and see what else I can discover.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Garth roared. ‘You get caught by anyone involved with that club and you’ll be killed and thrown into the river.’
‘I won’t get caught, I know how I’m going to do it,’ Jimmy said stubbornly.
‘You won’t go near that place again,’ Garth bellowed at him.
Jimmy was scared when his uncle yelled like that, but he stood his ground and looked up defiantly at the older man. ‘We’ve found nothing new for ages now, Uncle. Mog is grieving, Annie’s gone away because she can’t bear to think about the fire taking all she held dear, and I want to see that bastard hang for killing Millie, and get Belle back.’
‘She’ll be dead by now,’ Garth shouted in exasperation. ‘Surely you realize that!’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘I feel she’s alive, and so does Mog. But even if we’re wrong and she
is
dead, I still want to nail Kent.’
Garth was pulled up short by his nephew’s courage and determination. It made him feel ashamed of himself. ‘You be very careful then,’ he said. ‘The last thing Mog and I want is to have you disappear too. And next time you want to play detective, for God’s sake tell us where you’re going.’
Jimmy scuttled off then to do his chores, but he was grinning. He’d half expected his uncle to give him a thrashing; he certainly hadn’t expected to find concern.
Garth slumped down on to a chair after Jimmy had gone, confused by his feelings and by the way his life had changed since his sister died and he took Jimmy in. In fact he didn’t remember having much feeling about anything, he was too busy taking care of the Ram’s Head, and he supposed the past had made him bitter.
He and Flora had not been close as children. He’d only been six and his sister fourteen when she was apprenticed to a fashion house and went to live in there. Flora finished her apprenticeship and stayed in that same fashion house as a seamstress until she married an Irish artist, Darragh Reilly, when she was twenty-five.
Garth was seventeen at the time of the wedding and he could remember his father saying Flora had picked a broken reed. It soon became evident that his father was right, because Darragh believed himself to be far too talented an artist to soil his hands doing any other kind of work to bring in some money. Soon after Jimmy was born he disappeared, never to return, and Flora had to become the sole breadwinner.
Garth did what he could to help her in the early days of her abandonment, but Flora was such a good seamstress that she soon began to make a living for herself. Garth always admired her for that, but he often fell out with her about how she was with Jimmy. He felt she was too soft with him, and that the lad would end up being a waster like his father.
He had to concede now that he’d been wrong there. Jimmy was a hard worker, honest and loyal and a credit to his mother. He could do well in life if he just put this thing about Belle aside. But with Mog around he wasn’t likely to do that, she kept the flame burning.
Annie had moved out six weeks earlier. She’d rented a house up in King’s Cross and was intending to take in boarders. While she’d been here she’d been idle, acted superior and walked about like she had a bad smell under her nose, so Garth was glad when she left. Mog might be grieving for Belle still but she kept it to herself and was a superb housekeeper. He really liked her, and he knew Jimmy did too.
Mog came into the bar just as Garth was pouring himself a small whisky.
‘You’re starting early today!’ she said sharply. She glanced round at the fire which hadn’t been cleared from the night before. ‘It’s another cold day, it should be lit before customers come in.’
‘I’m the landlord here,’ Garth pointed out. ‘I do know what needs doing, and that’s Jimmy’s job.’
‘He’s doing his work in the cellar and trying to keep out of your way,’ Mog said, ‘so I’ll do the fire. He does so many jobs for me during the day, it’s the least I can do.’
‘You’re a kind woman,’ he said, his voice husky, for she had dropped to her knees by the hearth to rake out the cinders and for some reason the sight of that made him feel chastened. ‘I really don’t know how we got along before you came. Now we’ve got laundered shirts, good food and a clean house.’
Mog sat up, dropping back to sit on her heels. She wore her grey apron over her dark dress; the apron would be changed to a snowy-white one once she’d finished all the morning’s dirty work. ‘I’m just doing my job,’ she said. ‘But mostly it don’t seem like a job, not as your Jimmy is such a lovely lad. I know you’re vexed because he won’t give up on Belle, and maybe you even think that’s my influence, but I can’t take any credit for his determination, he’s like a young bulldog with a bone.’
Garth couldn’t help but smile for he remembered his mother saying that about him when he was a young lad. ‘I worry he’ll get himself beaten up,’ he admitted.
‘You should smile more,’ Mog said boldly. ‘It makes you handsome.’
Garth laughed then. It occurred to him that he had become inclined to smile and laugh a great deal more since Mog had come to live here – she had a way with her.
‘If I should smile to make me more handsome, I think you should wear something prettier than a black dress day after day,’ he said teasingly.
‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,’ she said, looking right at him with those steady grey eyes. ‘And if I started dressing up, folk would say I’d set my cap at you.’
‘Since when did you care what folk say?’ he asked, amused by her response.
‘I knew exactly who I was when I worked for Annie,’ Mog said thoughtfully. ‘I was her maid, housekeeper, mostly mother to her child too. I might have known all the comings and goings in her place, learned stuff about our gentlemen that would curl your hair, but everyone round here knew I wasn’t a whore. I was proud of that, it gave me dignity.’
‘You still have that dignity,’ Garth said. ‘Nothing’s changed.’
‘Folk are waiting for me to slip up,’ she said. ‘Few people around here really liked Annie, she was too cold and haughty. They thought the same of me too, without ever knowing me. Now Annie’s moved on, they want to gossip about me. Believing I was warming your bed to keep a roof over my head would give them plenty to chew on.’
It was a surprise to find Mog was so astute. Garth already valued her for her homemaking skills, but he had been guilty of assuming she was a simple soul. In a flash of intuition he realized she was sharper than he was, and that she’d only stayed working for Annie because she loved Belle.
‘I would never give anyone the idea you were warming my bed,’ he said, surprised at himself for caring what his customers and neighbours thought about Mog.
‘But I’ll keep wearing the black dresses and aprons to spare you the embarrassment of them thinking you are,’ she retorted, and got back to clearing the fireplace.
Garth busied himself straightening up bottles behind the bar but all the time he was watching her busily shovelling up the ash into a tin box. It was clear she believed herself to be unattractive, and no doubt Annie had reinforced that view for her own ends. But Garth was attracted to her curvy little body, and he saw a sweetness in her face that came from within. As a younger man he’d always gone for the kind of saucy, pretty women who use their feminine wiles to get what they want. But he knew to his cost that their kind were mostly insincere. They turned into treacherous harpies if the presents, attention and drink didn’t flow their way fast enough. Maud, his last woman and the one that set his heart on fire, had been a fine example. He’d vowed when she skipped off with another man, taking his savings with her, that he’d never let another woman into his life.