‘I was thinking you could say she took a fever, or was knocked down by a cab,’ Annie suggested. ‘But if you don’t remember where her folks lived you can’t do that anyway.’
‘This is the kind of gory story that gets slapped on the front page of all the newspapers,’ Mog reminded her in a sharp tone. ‘They’ll find out the truth anyway!’
‘Don’t be like that, Mog,’ Annie said reprovingly. ‘I feel bad enough about this without you sniping at me.’
‘That’s right, you feel so bad about it that you won’t let your daughter tell the police what she saw, and told them a pack of lies about what that killer was like too.’
Belle was astounded that Mog could be so bold and brave. She looked ready for a real fight, sticking her chin out defiantly. Luckily Annie just looked crumpled, as though she hadn’t got the energy to make a scene.
‘I didn’t say a word to Mog,’ Belle blurted out, afraid her mother would blame her for telling tales. ‘Mog guessed.’
‘That’s right, I did. As soon as I saw Belle I knew – she can’t lie convincingly like you can.’
‘Watch what you’re saying,’ Annie warned.
‘What are you gonna do? Throw me out? I could go to the police and tell them what I know, and you’d be for the high jump then. Just tell me why you are shielding this man. I take it he is the one the girls call Bruiser?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it in front of Belle,’ Annie hissed.
‘She’s already found out in the worst possible way what goes on in this house,’ Mog said fiercely, holding a clenched fist up at Annie. ‘I begged you to send her away to school, I told you again and again that it were only a matter of time before she found out. But you knew best! You thought if you kept her down here she’d never know. God knows it never crossed my mind she’d find out in such a terrible way, but even someone with half a brain would see that a girl as smart as Belle would figure it out for herself any day.’
‘You’re taking liberties, Mog,’ Annie warned, but the usual starch in her voice was missing.
‘I dare take liberties because I love you and Belle.’ Mog’s voice rose. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, it were me what talked the Countess into not throwing you out when you found you were up the duff. I helped Belle into this world, washed and fed her, loved her like she was me own to leave you free to soft-soap the Countess. I’ve been with you both every step of the way, worked for you, lied for you, cried for you, and supported you when things were blackest. You might be the mistress of this house, Annie Cooper, but I’m the glue that’s held your life together.’
Belle had never heard quiet, gentle Mog stand up to anyone before. It made her feel braver too.
She moved until she was standing right in front of her mother. ‘Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t tell the police what that man really looked like and that I saw everything,’ she asked, looking her mother in the eye.
Annie dropped her eyes first. ‘Because he’s a very dangerous, well-connected man. Even if the police were to catch him tonight and lock him away, he’d find a way of hurting us. I can’t take that risk.’
A cold chill ran down Belle’s spine. That wasn’t what she had expected to hear.
‘Why didn’t you refuse to let him in after the first time he was rough with one of the girls?’ Mog asked, but her voice had lost its hard edge as if she already felt defeated.
‘I tried, but he threatened me,’ Annie replied, eyes still cast down and winding her fingers together on her lap. ‘He’d found out something about me. When he kept asking for Millie and she didn’t seem to mind his roughness I thought he’d get bored in time and move on to another house.’
‘I think he loved her,’ Belle volunteered. ‘He said he wanted her to go and live with him.’
‘Men like him don’t love anyone,’ Annie exclaimed contemptuously. ‘A pretty, dumb girl like Millie would be used and then discarded once he’d grown tired of her. She’s better off dead than in a life with him.’
Belle couldn’t help feeling her mother was talking with the voice of experience.
‘What’s his name?’ Mog asked.
‘He called himself Mr Kent, but I happen to know the name he’s known by in other circles is “the Falcon”. But enough of this. The girls have been cooped up in their rooms all day with nothing to eat. It’s time they came down for supper. Not a word to any of them about this, either of you. I shall speak to the police sergeant tomorrow and ask whether they know where Millie came from. If they don’t, I’ll arrange a funeral for her. That’s the best I can do for her.’
Chapter Four
It was four days after the night of Millie’s murder before Belle got a chance to leave the house again. The police had kept calling round at different times to ask more questions and Annie was a bag of nerves. Her fright was not merely about the police, but also that a newspaper man was said to be sniffing around Seven Dials asking questions. She was afraid he might try to get into her place undercover and print a sordid story about it, so she hadn’t opened up for business again.
Rose and May had left two days after the murder. They said they were afraid and were going home to their mothers but Mog was convinced they’d just gone to another brothel to work. As for the other girls, with too much time on their hands they veered from saying they were afraid to be alone with any man to complaining because they weren’t earning any money. Every hour or so there was a heated argument or squabble for Mog to sort out. She said they were behaving like children.
Belle felt she’d held herself quite well in the immediate aftermath of the murder. She hadn’t become hysterical or blurted out anything she shouldn’t. She hadn’t even felt afraid either, despite everyone else in the house being convinced they were all in mortal danger. But it seemed as if the shock had just been delayed, for on the third day she woke before it was light from a nightmare of Millie’s death. It had been as if it was in slow motion, every little detail magnified and stretched out, making it a thousand times more terrifying. All that day she’d found herself dwelling on it further, not just the murder but the nature of the house she lived in.
The word ‘fucking’ kept running through her mind, just a swear word she had heard daily since she was a tiny child, but now she knew that was what men came to the house for, it had a sinister ring to it. Some of the girls were only a few years older than she was, and she couldn’t help but wonder if her mother intended her to become a whore as well.
Before Millie’s death she scarcely ever gave a thought to her mother’s business. Maybe that was just because she’d grown up with it, the same as children of a butcher or a public house landlord. Yet now that business was on her mind constantly. She found herself looking at the girls differently, wanting to ask them how they felt about it and why they chose to do it.
It seemed to Belle that her mother must have been a whore too, and in all probability her father was one of her customers. That sickened her, yet it could be the explanation as to why Annie was always so chilly with her. Young and inexperienced as she was, Belle realized that a baby had to be the last thing any whore wanted; it would just make their life twice as hard.
Before all this had happened Belle had felt secure and even a little superior to her neighbours. Her home was clean and tidy, she could read and write well, she was well dressed and healthy and everyone remarked on how pretty she was. Her dream of having a little hat shop had always seemed attainable, for she’d filled a whole pad with sketches of hats she designed. She’d intended to go into the milliner’s in the Strand one day and beg them to take her on as an apprentice so she could learn how to make hats.
But her confidence was gone now. She felt as low and worthless as any of the street urchins who slept underneath the railway arches in Villiers Street or in the abandoned boxes around Covent Garden market.
As if the hat shop owner would take on the daughter of a brothel keeper!
It struck Belle too that all this time she’d been acting a bit superior, many of the shopkeepers in Seven Dials must have found it hilarious that a brothel keeper’s daughter had the cheek to put on such airs and graces. She blushed to think of what they were saying about her; maybe they were even laying bets on how long it would be before she was selling herself.
She tried to talk to Mog about this, but Mog was quite short with her. ‘Don’t take that attitude about your mother, Belle, you’ve got no idea how hard it is for a woman to make a living,’ she said tartly. ‘Cleaning, dressmaking, serving in a shop, they all pay so little and the hours are so long. I don’t always approve of what your mother does, but I won’t have you turning your nose up at her running this place. She did what she had to do, to get by. I hope you never find yourself in a position like that.’
The walls of the house seemed to be closing in on Belle; however hard she tried to banish it, the image of Millie’s eyes popping out of her head, and that dreadful man holding his cock against her cheek, wouldn’t leave her. She desperately needed fresh air, the sound of something other than the girls squabbling upstairs, or the sight of Annie’s haunted expression.
Above all she wanted to see Jimmy. For some reason she couldn’t attempt to rationalize, she felt he would understand what she was going through.
She put on her old grey, fur-trimmed cloak and her stoutest boots, and slipped out of the back door. No more snow had fallen in the last three days, but it was still too cold for the snow and ice to melt. It was no longer a beautiful sight; the snow on the roads and pavements was now black with filth, strewn with horse droppings and furrowed by wagon and cab wheels. Many of the shopkeepers had sprinkled sand and salt outside their establishments for safety, and that added to the ugliness.
Belle picked her way carefully along Monmouth Street, lifting her skirts up a little away from the filth. It was just on nine in the morning, another grey, very cold day, and it seemed to her that the sun hadn’t shone for weeks.
‘Belle, wait on!’
At the sound of Jimmy’s voice from behind, her heart quickened and she turned to see him racing recklessly along the street towards her, then going into a slide on an icy section of hard-packed snow.
He was wearing a shabby blue jumper that looked a couple of sizes too small for him, and his grey trousers were a little too short. He had a checked muffler round his neck but no coat. Belle suspected he didn’t own one.
‘How are you?’ he panted out as he reached her. ‘It’s a terrible thing about the girl being murdered, everyone is talking about it. But someone said you’d been sent away. I would’ve been glad for you if it made you feel better, but I didn’t like that I might never see you again.’
Belle’s eyes filled with tears involuntarily for he was the first person to sound concerned about her. Even Mog had avoided all reference to her ordeal, and she knew just how much Belle had seen.
‘Yes, it was terrible,’ she admitted. ‘I liked Millie and it’s all been such a huge shock.’
‘Don’t cry,’ he said, stepping closer to her and taking one of her gloved hands in his. ‘Wanna talk about it? Or shall I try and distract you?’
His tawny eyes were full of concern for her yet he gave an impish grin which showed a dimple in his chin.
‘Distract me,’ she said.
‘Then let’s go down to the Embankment,’ he suggested. ‘The snow’s still pretty there in the gardens.’
Holding her hand tightly, he made her run and slide with him down through Covent Garden, past porters carrying boxes of fruit on their heads and others wheeling trolleys laden with sacks of vegetables. He took her into the flower section of the market and the banks of brilliant colour along with the perfume immediately lifted her spirits.
‘Where do they get flowers in the middle of winter?’ she asked. He had picked up a pink rosebud from the floor and was sniffing it.
‘Hot countries maybe,’ he replied, coming closer to her and pushing the flower through the fastener of her cloak. ‘Or perhaps they grow them in hothouses. I dunno really. But I love to come here and see ’em an’ smell ’em. It makes me forget all the ugliness around me.’
‘At your uncle’s?’
He nodded and looked thoughtful. ‘Yeah. The men who drink away the money they ought to take home for their wives and children. The ones who boast of hitting their wives to keep them in line. The thieves, pimps, liars and thugs. I’m beginning to think there isn’t an honest, good-hearted man in Seven Dials. I don’t even know that Uncle Garth is one.’
‘He can’t be all bad. He took you in and paid for your mother’s funeral,’ Belle reminded him. ‘My mother isn’t what you’d call a good woman either, but perhaps neither of them had any choice in it.’
‘You might be right. I suppose it is pretty hard to claw your way up to get a business of your own. Don’t suppose many people could do it and remain whiter than white,’ Jimmy said with resignation.
As they walked across the Strand and then down to the Thames Embankment Jimmy told her how in the Ram’s Head they’d got news of the murder the same night it happened. ‘We didn’t know what girl it was then, but someone said they hoped it wasn’t Millie because she was a good girl. If I hadn’t met you I wouldn’t have thought anyone from a brothel could be good. I kept thinking about you that night, wondering if you were safe, how it would be for you and your mother.’
The little garden on the Embankment looked very pretty. The snow on the paths was trampled but it was thick, crisp and white on the trees, bushes, grass and iron railings. It was a reminder for Belle that just a few short days ago she’d been as innocent as a fresh snowfall, but that evil man had trampled on that purity of mind and shown her harsh reality.
She needed to try to make Jimmy understand how it was for her, but it was so hard to put into words.
‘I really didn’t know what went on in the house,’ she said hesitantly, blushing furiously. ‘I mean, not until that night. I just thought it was a kind of private party that men paid to come in to.’
Jimmy nodded in understanding. ‘I told my uncle I’d met you, and he said you’d been kept well away from it. He said it was credit to your ma that she brought you up so well. But maybe she should have explained a bit about it. It must have been an awful shock to find out the truth?’
‘It was, and worse still because it was Millie. She was the only one of the girls I felt I really knew,’ Belle said, her voice shaking.
Jimmy swept snow off a bench and suggested they sat down as Belle launched into the story that she’d been told to give. Jimmy was very attentive and it was so good to be out in the fresh air, but the prettiness of the gardens, even a little robin who kept hopping about in front of them, made her feel she would choke on her lies about being in bed when it happened. She stopped mid-sentence, tears welling up in her eyes.
‘Don’t cry,’ Jimmy said, putting his arm around her shoulder comfortingly. ‘It must have been so shocking to have all that going on over your head. But don’t say any more if it’s upsetting.’
She leaned her face into his chest. ‘It’s telling lies I find upsetting,’ she said in little more than a whisper. ‘If I tell you the truth, will you promise not to repeat it to a living soul?’
He put his finger under her chin and lifted her face so he could see it better. ‘I would never tell anyone anything you told me in confidence,’ he said. ‘My ma was real hot on keeping promises and telling the truth. So fire away, it might make you feel better.’
Belle blurted out the true story then. It was disjointed at times; she couldn’t find the right words and was embarrassed by what the man had been doing with Millie before he killed her. Finally she explained that it was her mother who insisted she must say she was asleep in bed through it all.
Jimmy looked both shocked and dismayed.
‘I didn’t even know what the girls did with men until that night,’ she whispered, putting her hands over her face to hide her shame.
She began to sob then, shedding the bitter tears which should have come soon after it happened. Jimmy seemed to sense this, for he put his arms around her, held her tightly to his shoulder and let her cry.
Finally she managed to stop and she wriggled away from him and found her handkerchief to blow her nose. ‘Whatever must you think of me?’ she said, blushing with embarrassment.
‘I think you’re lovely,’ he said, taking the handkerchief from her to wipe her eyes. ‘I’ve thought of nothing but you since we met. I just wish I could do or say something to make you feel better about all this.’
Belle peeped at him through her lashes and saw the sincerity in his eyes. ‘I’ve wanted so much to see you since it happened,’ she said softly. ‘It’s been so horrible, and no one at home will let me talk about it. I felt you would understand, but then that seemed a silly thing to think when I hardly know you.’
‘I don’t think how long you’ve known someone is important. I’ve known my uncle all my life, but I couldn’t confide in him. Yet I’d only talked to you a few minutes and I was telling you things about my mother,’ he replied.
He put his icy-cold finger under her chin and lifted her face up to look at him. ‘My opinion is that your ma is wrong not to tell the police who it was and that you saw it. Yet I can understand why she doesn’t want to, because she’s scared of what might happen to you. So that proves she cares about you.’
‘What made you think she didn’t?’ Belle asked.
‘Just the way you spoke about her,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Sort of like you’re scared of her.’
‘Everyone’s a bit scared of her.’ Belle gave a watery smile. ‘She’s not an easy person to be with. Not like Mog. I often wish she was my mother.’
Belle talked generally about how it was to grow up in a house of women. ‘If I didn’t read books and newspapers I don’t suppose I’d even know what it would be like to have a father,’ she ended up.
‘It was a bit like that for me too,’ Jimmy said thoughtfully, moving his arm to put it round her shoulders. ‘It was always just me and Ma, and the visits from the ladies she sewed for. Uncle Garth came round every few months, and he used to say she was making me soft. I didn’t know then what he thought men ought to be like, and now that I see them in his bar, I don’t want to be like that. You wouldn’t want a father who was like the men who come in your ma’s place, would you?’
Belle half smiled. ‘I expect he was one of them. But I’ve never seen any of the men, except the murderer, and they can’t all be like him.’
‘Do you know what the man’s name was?’
‘He called himself Mr Kent, but I heard Ma say he was known as the Falcon. You wouldn’t get a name like that unless you were dangerous.’