‘No, please!’ Millie pleaded, and there was a sound of thrashing around as if she was trying to get away from him. But gradually the sound abated, and as Belle could hear heavy breathing above it she thought her fears had been groundless because he was kissing Millie again.
‘That’s better,’ he said softly as finally the struggling stopped. ‘Just give in to me. That’s how I like it.’
In her fear Belle had retreated to the centre of the bed, so she could no longer see them in the mirror. But the way the man spoke suggested that the nastiness was completely over and he was about to start fucking Millie again. Belle thought she would wait for the thumping, slapping sound to begin again and then she would creep out and make a run for the door.
But some little time passed and there was no thumping, just the heavy breathing, so she wriggled to the side of the bed so she could see their reflections in the mirror. What she saw was so shocking that she almost cried out.
The man was kneeling up on the bed, completely naked now and rubbing his cock while holding it to Millie’s face. Her chin was jutting upwards, exposing her white neck, but she wasn’t reacting to what he was doing. Her eyes seemed to be almost popping out of her head and she looked as though she was screaming, only there was no sound coming out of her open mouth.
Belle forgot her own terror in her fear for Millie. Silently she turned beneath the bed until she was facing the door, crawled down to the end of the bed, then gathered herself while still out of his line of vision for the last dash to the door.
In one swift movement she leapt to her feet and to the door to pull back the bolt. She heard the man roar out something, but by then she had the door open and she raced down the two flights of stairs two at a time.
‘A man is hurting Millie! Save her!’ she shouted as she got to the last landing and saw Annie coming out of her office.
For just the briefest second her mother’s expression was so fierce Belle thought she would strike her. But without saying a word she moved swiftly towards the parlour.
‘Jacob!’ she called out. ‘Come with me to check on Millie.’
The bald, burly man was a newcomer to the house, Belle had seen him just once about a fortnight earlier when he was putting a new washer on the tap in the scullery. Mog had said he’d been hired to do odd jobs, but also to make sure there was no rowdiness upstairs during the evenings. He looked smart tonight in a dark green jacket, and he responded swiftly to Annie’s order, racing up the stairs.
Annie followed, but she paused, looking down at Belle and pointing to the door to the basement. ‘Down there, and stay there. I’ll deal with you later,’ she barked.
Belle sat at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, wishing that Mog would come down because she knew she could explain how this had all come about much more easily to her.
The kitchen clock said it was ten past ten. Clearly she’d been asleep in Millie’s room for much longer than she’d imagined. But she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t been woken up by the girls getting ready for the evening, or why Mog hadn’t come upstairs to find her when she didn’t return from cleaning the room. Mog was like a mother hen; she normally got frantic if Belle was missing for just an hour, and they always had tea together around six, before Mog had to go upstairs to prepare for the evening ahead.
The evenings were normally very tedious to Belle because she had to spend them alone. She would wash up the tea things, then read a newspaper if one of the gentlemen had left one upstairs on the previous evening. If there was no paper to read, she sewed or knitted. But she was usually in bed by half past eight because she couldn’t stand her own company any longer. Tonight, however, she wasn’t just lonely, she was terrified. Not for herself, though she was scared of what Annie would do to her, but for Millie. She could see her face so clearly in her mind’s eye, that silent scream, the way her head was tipped back and her eyes bulging. Had the man killed her?
There was no sound coming from the parlour upstairs, so maybe there had been no one but Jacob in there as she came down the stairs. That was understandable considering the snow, but she wondered where the girls and Mog were. Aside from Millie there were seven other girls, but even if they were all in their rooms, with or without a gentleman, surely some of them would have looked out when Annie and Jacob went running up the stairs?
Yet over and above her fear for Millie, and the possible repercussions of tonight’s events, were the shock and disgust she felt about what had been going on nightly above her head. How could she have been so stupid as not to know what was going on in the house she lived in?
How was she ever going to be able to hold her head up out on the streets now? How could she be friends with Jimmy without wondering if he’d want to do the same thing to her? No wonder Mog had said he wasn’t to take any liberties with her!
Belle heard a loud yell from out the back, quickly followed by banging and clattering, as if someone had knocked over the dustbins, then even more shouting from several different people. She ran into the scullery and towards the back door. She didn’t unlock it and go out, for she knew she was in enough trouble already, but she looked out of the window next to it.
There was nothing to see, just the snow covering all the old crates and boxes out there, and it was still coming down hard, the wind blowing it into drifts.
‘Belle!’
Belle wheeled round at her mother’s voice. She had come into the kitchen and was standing by the table, one hand on her hip.
‘I’m sorry, Ma, I fell asleep in Millie’s room. I didn’t mean to be up there.’
Annie always wore black in the evenings. But this long-sleeved silk dress had a wide swathe of ornate silver embroidery from her shoulders right around the low neckline. She had her hair fixed up with silver combs, and with diamond bobs in her ears she looked regal.
‘Come with me. I want you to quickly tell me exactly what you saw,’ she said hurriedly.
Belle thought it very strange when instead of shouting at her or accusing her of wrongdoing, Annie took her hand and led her into Belle’s tiny bedroom. She ruffled up the bed and indicated that Belle was to undress, put on her nightdress and get into it. She even helped Belle with the buttons on the back of her dress and slipped her nightdress over her head. It was only once she’d got her daughter beneath the covers that she sat down on the bed beside her.
‘Now tell me,’ she demanded.
Belle explained how it had come about that she was there when Millie came in with the man, and that in panic she’d hidden under the bed. She didn’t know how to tell Annie what the couple were doing, so she referred to it as kissing and cuddling. Annie waved her hand impatiently and asked that she move on to what the man had been saying to Millie.
Belle repeated everything she could remember and how he had struck Millie, then how it all went quiet and she looked out from under the bed. ‘He had his …’ Belle broke off to point at her belly. ‘It was in his hand, by her face. She wasn’t moving, and that’s when I ran for it. Is Millie all right?’
‘She’s dead,’ Annie said curtly. ‘It looks as if he strangled her.’
Belle stared at her mother in horror. She might have already wondered if the man had killed Millie, but it was something very different to have it confirmed. She felt her head might explode with the shock, for this was the worst kind of nightmare.
‘No! She can’t be dead.’ Belle’s voice was just a whisper. ‘He hurt her, but surely that wouldn’t kill her?’
‘Belle, you know me better than that, I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,’ Annie said reproachfully. ‘But we haven’t got much time. The police will be here soon, I sent Jacob for them. You have to forget that you were in that room, Belle!’
Belle didn’t understand and could only stare at her mother blankly.
‘Look, I’m going to tell ’em that I found Millie. I’ll say I went up to her room because I heard a noise of someone climbing out the window,’ Annie explained. ‘You see, I don’t want them to question you. So I’m going to say you were in bed down here. So if they do ask to speak to you, that’s what you must say. You got into bed here at half past eight and you only woke up a little while ago because of a noise outside. Can you do that?’
Belle nodded. It was such a rare thing for her mother to speak to her in a kind and gentle fashion that she was prepared to say anything she asked. Of course she didn’t understand why she couldn’t tell the truth, but she supposed there had to be a good reason.
‘Good girl.’ Annie put her arm around Belle’s shoulders and squeezed them. ‘I know you’ve had a shock, you’ve seen things I never wanted you to see. But if you were to tell the police you were in that room and saw what happened it would turn into the worst nightmare you can imagine. You’d have to be a witness at the man’s trial and be interrogated. They would say all kind of vile things to you. You would be in the newspapers. And you could be in real danger from the man who did this to Millie. I couldn’t put you through all that.’
Having expected to be punished severely, only to find instead that her mother wanted to protect her from further harm, made Belle feel a little better.
‘Where’s Mog?’ she asked.
‘I let her go and see her friend in Endell Street as I knew it’d be quiet because of the snow,’ Annie said, pursing her lips. ‘A good thing, as it turned out. But she’ll be home soon. Now, just you mind you stick to the same story to her too.’
Belle nodded. ‘But when the police catch the man he might say I was in the room,’ she whispered.
‘They won’t catch him because I shall say I didn’t know him,’ Annie said. ‘But you mustn’t concern yourself with anything about this business. Only Jacob and I know you were up there, and Jacob won’t tell.’
‘But if the police don’t catch the man he won’t be punished for killing Millie,’ Belle said.
‘Oh, he’ll be punished, make no mistake about that,’ Annie said fiercely.
Chapter Three
Belle was still wide awake when she heard Mog’s distinctive step on the stairs. She had a stiff knee and came down slowly.
‘Mog!’ Belle used a stage whisper because she wasn’t sure whether the police were still upstairs. She’d heard them clonking around earlier and had braced herself for them coming down to her at any minute. ‘Will you come and see me?’
‘Oh ducks, what a to-do!’ Mog exclaimed as she came into the room. There was no gaslight in Belle’s room so she struck a match and lit the candle. ‘Yer ma told me what happened tonight. The police had just gone when I got back. Fancy Millie being murdered! All the girls are scared now, I dare say some of ’em will scarper tomorrow. But I told ’em this place is safer than anywheres else, lightning don’t strike twice in the same place.’
Mog’s lack of hysteria was predictable; she never got really worked up about anything. ‘Poor Millie,’ she went on, her eyes glinting with unshed tears. ‘She were a sweet, good soul, it ain’t never right she were took.’
She perched on the edge of Belle’s bed then and smoothed back her hair from her face. ‘You all right, my lovely? Must ’ave shaken you up sommat chronic.’
‘I didn’t know nothing about it until Ma came down here with the policeman,’ Belle lied.
Mog looked at her sharply. ‘Never! You with ears like a bat! You didn’t even hear the geezer shinning down the drainpipe into the back yard?’
‘Well, I did hear sommat,’ Belle admitted. ‘But I just thought it were a cat getting scraps from the bins.’
Mog sat on the bed silently for a moment or two, her face looking younger and softer in the candlelight. ‘You was still up in Millie’s room when I left. What time did you come down?’ she asked eventually.
Belle shook her head. ‘Don’t rightly know, I didn’t look at the clock. It wasn’t late, the house was quiet.’
‘Annie let the girls go to the music hall, ’cos of the snow. She only kept Millie and Dolly back. I was still here then and the girls made enough noise to wake the dead when they was leaving, all excited and that. Funny you never heard that and come on down!’
Belle felt very uncomfortable now. Mog knew she was lying, just as she always did.
‘You fell asleep up there, didn’t you?’ Mog said worriedly. ‘I was going to come up and find you, but I thought yer ma might larrup you if she saw you up there. Reckoned you’d slink down later when it was all quiet.’
Belle could feel tears welling up. She could never be sure her mother had any real feelings for her, but she had always felt Mog’s love thick and strong just by the way she spoke and looked at her. It was hard to lie to her, even though Annie must have had good reason to insist she should.
Suddenly Mog’s eyes widened in horror. ‘You saw what happened!’ she exclaimed, clamping her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus! And your ma told you to say nothin’?’
‘Don’t,’ Belle said weakly. She so much wanted to blurt it all out, to cry and let Mog cuddle her till the fright went away. But when Annie gave an order, everyone had to obey. ‘Just accept I was here asleep.’
Mog caught hold of Belle’s two hands and her small, normally twinkly eyes were cold and serious. ‘No good will come of lying about a killing,’ she insisted. ‘I shall tell Annie that tomorrow and I don’t care how much of a fuss she makes. Aside from it being wicked to let a murderer get away with his crime, any woman should know a young girl needs to talk about something like this, or it will give her nightmares. But I understand you made your ma a promise and I won’t force you to break it tonight.’
Belle took that to mean she was going to give up questioning her for now and she felt both relief and disappointment in equal measures. The relief was because she knew if Mog was to keep on asking her things she would buckle and tell her the whole story, and Annie would be furious with her. But at the same time she was disappointed Mog wouldn’t go against Annie’s wishes because she so much wanted to talk about what she’d seen.
‘Go to sleep now.’ Mog nudged her back on to the bed and pulled the covers up to her ears, tucking them in so tightly Belle could barely move. ‘Tomorrow things may look different for everyone.’
The snow lay even thicker the next morning as there had been a fresh fall during the night, concealing any tracks made by the killer. Millie’s body was collected by the mortuary van early in the morning, and the first lot of policemen arrived soon afterwards to search her room thoroughly.
Annie ordered Belle to stay in the kitchen. She didn’t even want her upstairs to clean, lay the fires or empty chamberpots. She was grim-faced and sharp-tongued, though Mog pointed out that this was partly because she’d been forced to get up and get dressed at what she considered an unearthly hour.
Mog remained upstairs, whether this was because she was asked to do so by the police or because she chose to keep a close eye on the girls, Belle didn’t know. She heard the girls being called into the parlour for questioning, one after another, and when Ruby, one of the youngest, came down to the kitchen to get a cup of tea, she said the police were asking about the men who especially liked Millie.
‘I told ’em they all liked Millie,’ Ruby said with just a touch of bitterness. She wasn’t very pretty, her skin was bad and her brown hair dull. ‘I’m buggered if I know why they chose someone as old as her. And she were soft in the head!’
‘She were nice though,’ Belle said. ‘Kind and smiley.’
Ruby grimaced. ‘Smiling shows she were soft in the head, there ain’t a lot to smile about in this place, I can tell you! The bluebottles had Dolly in there for ages just because she didn’t come with the rest of us last night. She said she went to bed ’cos she had one of her bad heads and never heard nothin’.’
It was unusual for Belle to get this long talking to any of the girls; Annie discouraged it. Now that Belle had a chance to talk to Ruby she was determined to find out more about the activities upstairs.
‘Funny she didn’t hear anything,’ Belle said.
‘Well, she likes her la-la medicine, don’t she! A coach and horses could come galloping through the house when she’s on that and she wouldn’t wake up.’
‘La-la medicine?’ Belle asked.
‘Laudanum,’ said Ruby, looking quizzically at Belle as if surprised she had to ask what it was. ‘The brown stuff what makes the day a bit smoother.’
Belle had heard of laudanum, but she thought doctors only gave it to people when they were in pain. ‘Does it hurt a great deal when you do the thing with the gentlemen then?’ she asked.
Ruby tittered. ‘Ain’t you done it with nobody yet?’
Belle was about to retort that of course she hadn’t when Annie appeared at the top of the stairs and ordered Ruby upstairs again.
‘I just wanted a cup of tea,’ Ruby replied.
‘You’ll have one when I say you can have one,’ Annie snapped. ‘So come on up. Belle, you can iron that pile of bed linen.’
Belle put the flat iron on the stove and laid the thick blanket over the table ready to start ironing. But on hearing a policeman call Annie into the parlour, she crept up the stairs and opened the door into the hall just a crack so she could listen to what was being said.
The policeman asked several general questions, about who lived in the house, what Annie knew about each of them, and how long they’d worked there. After that he moved on to ask her about the gentlemen callers and whether they picked out the girl they liked best, or if she selected a girl for each man.
‘When it’s the man’s first visit he’s often shy, so I usually pick someone for him,’ Annie replied. ‘But by the second or third visit they mostly like to come in here and have a drink and a chat with the girls. If I’ve got a pianist they dance too. Then they pick who they want out of the ones that are free.’
‘And Millie, did she get chosen often?’ A different, gruff-voiced policeman asked this question; until then Belle had thought there was only one policeman with her mother.
‘Oh yes, she was my most popular girl,’ Annie said without any hesitation. ‘I’d say nearly all of my gentlemen have asked for her at some time. But I told you last night she wasn’t killed by any of my regulars, the man that done it had never been here before.’
‘Will you describe him for me?’ the gruff policeman asked. ‘And try and think about it a little harder than you did last night,’ he added sarcastically.
‘I already told you it wouldn’t do to study a man too closely on his first visit or he’d never come again,’ Annie said sharply. ‘He weren’t no more than twenty-five, I’d say. Slender, well-dressed, with brown hair and clean-shaven. Looked like he worked in an office – he wore a bowler hat and a wing collar.’
Belle frowned in puzzlement at her mother’s description of the man as it was about as far from the truth as she could possibly get. She sort of understood why her mother didn’t want her to tell the police about what she’d seen, but now she seemed to be sending them off on a wild goose chase looking for a man who was nothing like the real killer.
Mog came stomping down the main stairs at that point, so Belle had to close the door and rush back to her ironing. Strangely, Mog hadn’t said anything more to Belle yet, no questions, no warnings, nothing. Whether that was because Annie had warned her against it, or because she didn’t want to say anything while the police were in the house, Belle didn’t know.
Another strange thing was that Jacob was nowhere to be seen, and although Belle couldn’t be certain, she didn’t remember him being there last night when the police arrived. It seemed to her that Annie must’ve told him to call the police, then clear off and not come back until this blew over.
It struck Belle that in the last twenty-four hours her whole life had changed. Yesterday morning she hadn’t even understood the nature of what went on upstairs. She understood that now and it disgusted and shamed her. She’d also witnessed a murder which had terrified her. But now she was hearing her mother lie through her teeth and that didn’t make any sense at all to her.
The police tramped in and out of the house until after four in the afternoon, and Mog grumbled bitterly about the snow they kept bringing in with them.
‘Up and down the stairs, in and out the parlour, not a thought to what they’re doing to our carpets. Why can’t they come in and stay in? Men! Useless articles! I wouldn’t give them house room!’
Belle sensed that Mog wasn’t worried so much by the mess as about everyone she felt responsible for. Belle had found herself jumping at sudden noises, feeling weepy and scared. She’d gone over what she’d seen again and again, and still it didn’t make sense that the man would kill Millie just because she didn’t want to go and live with him. She really needed to talk about it, to rid herself of the ugly pictures in her head, and the one person who should be there to listen, to comfort and to explain things, was her mother.
Anger was building up inside Belle minute by minute. She felt let down and bitter that Annie appeared to care more about ‘her girls’ than her own daughter, and that Belle was expected to act as if nothing had happened and get on with normal chores.
‘Ma wouldn’t have much of a business without men,’ she sniped, half hoping that would provoke Mog into continuing what she’d started last night.
Mog didn’t rise to it and continued stirring the chicken stew she was making for supper, but her pale, strained face showed that she was every bit as troubled as Belle.
‘Good girl,’ Mog said appreciatively when she looked round to see Belle was folding up the ironing blanket having finished the huge pile of laundry. ‘We’ll have a sit down and a cup of tea now, I think we’ve earned it.’
Throughout her short life Belle had observed that Mog’s way of dealing with any problem was to make a pot of tea. If the girls upstairs fought, if it rained on washday, the kettle went on. She never spoke out about the problem until she’d gone calmly through the ritual of laying out the cups and saucers, the milk jug and sugar basin, and filled the teapot. It was only once the people involved were sitting down at the table and she was pouring the tea that she felt ready to air her views.
But she wasn’t calm this time, for as she took the cups from the cupboard they rattled because her hands were shaking; even her walk across the kitchen was slightly unsteady. When she opened the drawer under the table to take out the teaspoons, she dropped one on the floor. Belle guessed that she was struggling to control her emotions, and that she was every bit as confused, afraid and perplexed as she herself was.
Mog was just putting the red knitted tea cosy over the filled teapot when they heard Annie come through the door at the top of the basement stairs. They both jumped as if they had been caught red-handed in some wrongdoing.
‘It’s all right, I’m not going to bite,’ Annie said. She sounded bone-weary. ‘A cup of tea is just what I need, I’m all in.’
Belle hurried to get another cup and saucer from the cupboard.
‘Are we open tonight?’ Mog asked cautiously.
Annie sat down, looking thoughtful for a second or two. ‘No, I think we’ll stay closed. Out of respect. Millie was a good girl and we’re all going to miss her.’
‘What about her folks?’ Mog asked. ‘I know she had a family. Who’s going to tell ’em?’
Belle noted the sharp tone to Mog’s voice and sensed she had things she wished to say to Annie, so she took the tea poured for her and went over to sit in the easy chair by the stove to let the two women talk.
‘Not me, I suppose the police will,’ Annie replied, and for once she sounded very unsure of herself. ‘Will they have to tell the truth about how and why she died? That’s a terrible thing for a mother to hear.’
‘It certainly is,’ Mog agreed.
Now that Belle understood what Millie was, and that her mother made a business out of girls like her, she found it somewhat surprising that Annie cared about what Millie’s family would be told.
‘Maybe you could write a few words to them?’ Annie asked Mog.
‘Even if I knew where they lived, what could I say that would make it any better for them?’ Mog asked plaintively, and Belle saw that a tear was rolling down her cheek. ‘I did write a letter for Millie once when she first come here making out she were my housemaid and that she was a good girl. Millie begged me to do it as her mother would worry about her and she couldn’t write herself. But her ma never wrote back and although Millie was always saying she was going to go home when she’d saved some money, she always spent it.’