A Broken Vessel (18 page)

She went to bed docilely enough, but she did not stay there. As soon as Red Jane, Spots, and Nancy were asleep, she stole out from under the covers. The house was colder and damper than ever. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering, put on her shoes, and wrapped herself in a large brown woolen shawl. It was one of the dull but serviceable garments Mrs. Mabbitt had made her buy. She was grateful to her now as she burrowed inside its big, thick folds.

She lit one of her meagre supply of candles and tiptoed out, cupping her hand round the flame. There was no lamp in the hallway—only a wisp of fog-choked moonlight, filtering down from a skylight over the stairs. She moved as silently as she could, but the floors were not carpeted like the ones in the office house, and her lightest footfall made a sharp crack on the bare, uneven boards.

Luckily it did not matter much if anyone caught her outside her room. She could simply say she was on her way to the boghouse in the back garden. In milder weather, the inmates often used this as an excuse to go outdoors at night. Of course, on a chill, clammy evening like this, only the hardiest girl would leave her bed if she did not have to. This meant that Sally stood a good chance of conducting her explorations undisturbed. It helped that the matron on duty tonight was Mrs. Jessop. Sally had heard she was a heavy sleeper, and the least likely of the matrons to come inspecting the inmates’ house at night.

Sally wanted to see how an accomplice to the murder might have sneaked into the inmates’ house. She remembered Harcourt’s testifying at the inquest that no windows or doors at the refuge had been forced. That was probably true—he was too clever to tell a lie that could be so readily disproved. Tampering with doors and windows left unmistakable signs—Sally was a burglar’s daughter, and she knew. So, since the inmates’ house was always kept locked, an intruder would have needed a key. And he could not have gotten one from any of the inmates. They did not have keys: the locks were as much to keep them in as to keep intruders out.

Who did have keys? No one but Harcourt and the matrons, as far as Sally knew. Mrs. Fiske’s husband might have a key, since he often came to the refuge to physic the inmates. Even if he did not, he probably had access to his wife’s. It intrigued Sally that Fiske was an apothecary: he must know more about poisons than anyone else connected with the refuge. But everyone said he had been fond of Mary. Why would he have killed her?

Sally shook her head. Useless to speculate about Fiske when she knew so little about him. She forced her attention back to the problem at hand.

If someone wanted to get into the inmates’ house on the sly, how would he do it? The front door was out of the question: it was boarded up, since the formal entrance to the refuge was through the office house. There was a connecting door between the two houses, but no sane person would try to sneak into the inmates’ house that way. He would first need to get inside the office house, which he could not do in the daytime without being seen. Even at night, he might be caught by the matron on duty; moreover, he would need a second key, since the connecting door between the two houses was locked after bedtime. The whole thing was too complicated, and too risky. No: an intruder would enter the inmates’ house directly, through either the front basement door in the area or the back door from the garden.

Sally tiptoed down to the basement. It was even more damp and dismal here. A film like cold sweat clung to the walls and the rough stone floor. She went into the front room, which was the wet laundry. It had large and small washtubs, washboards, soap, and a copper for boiling clothes. There was a grated window looking into the area and a locked door that was used for deliveries of coal, or to bring water in from the cistern.

This door would be a good way to get in on the sly. An intruder could come along late at night, when the street was quiet, and climb over the area railings. A narrow flight of stairs led down to the door. There, below street level, he could slip in without much risk of being seen, assuming he had a key. If he were very quiet and cautious, he could then make his way unnoticed up the stairs to the ground floor.

And that would put him right outside the Black Hole. Easy enough to steal into Mary’s room, knowing he would find her drugged, or already dead, and plant the laudanum bottle on her night-table, and the traces of laudanum and water in her glass. That would explain how he had made her death look like suicide, but not how he had committed the murder itself. To poison Mary’s cordial—or anything else she ate or drank—he would have needed an ally inside the refuge. But if he had such an ally, why sneak in at all? Why not leave everything to his confederate—someone who knew the place, and was already inside?

She was making it all too complicated, she decided. Much simpler if Mrs. Fiske had killed Mary: she had the best opportunity to poison her cordial, and she was a nasty old cat, whom Sally would not be sorry to see nabbed for murder. The trouble was, there was not a shred of real proof against her.

She decided to move on, if only to keep warm. She crossed to the back basement room, which was the dry laundry, and threaded her way among ironing tables and drying racks to the window. It was heavily grated, like all the others in the inmates’ house. No means of access here.

On her way out, she stubbed her toe on the mangle, and while she was hopping about, swearing under her breath, a draught blew out her candle. “Pox on it!” she whispered. “I ain’t giving up! I won’t go back to bed—not as long as there’s a hint of a glim to see me way!”

She felt her way upstairs in the near darkness. Hearing no one about, she crept down the hall to the back door and groped for the latch. At last she found it and stepped outside clutching her shawl around her and lifting her nightdress to keep it out of the mud. The rain had stopped, but there was a heavy mist, milky with moonlight. She could just make out where the brick wall round the garden met the sky.

An intruder could get into the inmates’ house through the back door, too, but it would be harder. The door was not locked, but the gate in the garden wall was secured by a thick padlock. There was no way to get through, short of breaking it open. And the wall was high, though an agile man could probably scale it, in spite of those nasty spikes along the top. Once in the back garden, he could bide his time till he was sure there was no one going to or from the boghouse, then tiptoe up to the back door. Or he could simply leave something in the garden for an accomplice to find—a note, perhaps, or the laudanum bottle.

She began to explore the garden—she hardly knew why, since without a candle, she could barely see six feet in front of her through the mist. But she could orient herself by the boghouse, which was in the rear left-hand corner. Its stench permeated the garden, fanning out on the thick, moist air.

All at once she stopped and sniffed incredulously. Mingled with the privy smell was another odour—impossible, surely, but unmistakeable. Tobacco smoke.

It was coming from the direction of the boghouse. She moved toward the squat brick building, her feet sliding on the muddy ground. The tobacco smell was strongest at the back, where the boghouse met the garden wall. Through the mist she made out a human shape, and a pin-prick of reddish light.

“Good evening to you!” Wideawake Peg said softly. Sally jumped.

Peg laughed. She was seated on a tree stump, her back against the garden wall, smoking a rough-cut pipe. Its faint, ruddy glow played over her long eyes and high, pronounced cheekbones, making her look more than ever like a fox. “Now, why should you be after coming out here on a night like this?”

“Maybe I come to use the privy.”

“Why don’t you, then?” Peg mocked.

A smart retort sprang to Sally’s lips, but she bit it back. There was better use to be made of this meeting than kicking up a row. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said easily, “so I come out for a tramp. I ain’t used to being cooped up. Then I smelled your ’bacca, and come over here to see who was fogging. Where do you get it, and how do you keep it hid from the matrons?”

Peg blew out a leisurely puff of smoke and did not answer.

“Strikes me comical, what you gets away with!” said Sally admiringly. “There ain’t nobody else here could put the fun upon Wax-face and the matrons like you does.” Seeing Peg preen, she went on coaxingly, “I’d give a yellow George to know how you done it.”

“Faith, it’s as easy as shelling peas. These walls round the garden are all new-built. But since Himself is too much of a pinchfist to spend a farthing more than he can help, they’re none too thick, and the brick and plaster work none too secure. There’s plenty of chinks and crannies where I can leave a little something in payment, and me pals on the outside can take it and leave tobacco in its place—or anything else me heart desires.”

“Ain’t you the downy one!”

“I know a trick or two. Where do you suppose I keep me tobacco, now?”

“I dunno. Where?”

“In the Greek urn in Himself’s own office!”

“In Wax-face’s office? Won’t he spring it?”

“And why should he? He’s got no call to be looking inside an urn that’s only there for ornament. No, me tobacco’s safe enough, and I can get at it whenever I like. Isn’t it meself that cleans his office every day?” She stretched complacently. “Oh, yes, there’s ways of living as high as you like, even in here. I can get you whatever you want from outside, if you’ve the means to pay for it.”

“S’pose I wanted laudanum. Could you get me that?”

Peg’s eyes narrowed. “Now, what might you be meaning?”

“I dunno. I just thought, seeing as how nobody knows how that gal Mary got the laudanum—” Her voice trailed off suggestively.

“It wasn’t me that got it for her, at all at all.” Peg’s eyes were amused and unreadable. “Even if I did, you wouldn’t expect me to own up to it, now, would you? It must be a crime of some sort, giving a person the means to put hands on herself like that.”

“All the same, you must know more nor anybody here about how Mary died. There ain’t nothing goes on here you don’t drop down to.”

“I might know something.”

“Tell me! I’m that curious!”

“Faith, and why should I?”

“Come on, be a trump! I won’t blow the gab.”

Peg puffed meditatively on her pipe. “I’ll think on it.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t mean to jump down your throat,” said Sally kindly. “It ain’t your fault if you don’t know no more nor anybody else.”

“It’s none of your sympathy I’m needing! There’s plenty I know—though I wasn’t so deaf to me own best interests as to cackle about it after Mary died. We had a little talk, Mary and me, a few days before she popped off. She wanted a favour, and gave me her silk stockings in exchange for it.”

“What favour?”

“She wanted to send a letter, and she didn’t want anyone to know about it. So next time I went to clean Himself’s office, I fetched her two sheets of paper and a pencil.”

“When was that?”

“The Saturday before she died.”

And her letter had been dated Saturday evening. It fit perfectly. The letter had taken up only one sheet, but Mary had mentioned an “outer sheet” bearing the recipient’s address. Which was odd, now Sally came to think of it. She had never had much to do with posting letters herself, but she knew most people simply wrote on one sheet, folded it, addressed it, and closed it with a seal. Extra sheets meant extra postage. Of course, Mary did not have a seal, so she probably wanted the outer sheet for added security. What a shame the two sheets had been separated! If only Mr. Kestrel and she knew for whom the letter was meant, they might be able to guess who Mary was.

“What happened then?” she asked.

“Next morning she gave me back the pencil, and I put it back in Himself’s office. But she never gave me the letter.” She added airily, “Perhaps she never wrote it.”

“Why should she give it to you?”

“To post it, of course.”

“How?”

“Faith, is it culver-headed you are? The post-bag’s kept in Himself’s office. I can slip in an extra letter, and no one the wiser. Mary and I agreed I’d post it for her, but she never gave it to me. I can’t post a letter that’s never put in me hands, now, can I?”

Sally thought back on Mary’s letter. It had been read to her so many times that she knew most of it by heart.
Thank heaven, there’s someone I think I can trust to post it for me secretly.
Had she meant Peg? To give Peg credit, she was a skillful and effective ally, when she had something to gain. But she was not the kind of person Sally would have expected to win Mary’s trust.

“Didn’t she never say no more about it?”

“Not to me.” Peg stood up, knocked her pipe against the wall to empty it, and slipped it into a fold of her shawl. “We’d best be going in.”

Sally could not resist asking, “Ain’t you ever afraid Wax-face’ll drop down to you one of these days?”

“Himself’ll drop down to me in the week of four Fridays! Isn’t it me that’s his model inmate, his great success? And it’s making the most of it I’ll be. Tail-trading’s well enough for them that haven’t the wit to earn their bread any other way. As for me, I’m done with it. There’s more blunt to be got, and less trouble and danger, in morality than immorality. I was born and bred a Papist, but there’s no future for an enterprising woman in that. She can’t rise to anything but sainthood, and that’s no good to her till after she’s dead. Now, in the Church of England, a woman can make herself a fine life as a reformer. Just look at that Hannah More. Himself is setting me on that road, little though he knows it. Every time he trots me out to show off to his patrons, he’s helping to make me reputation. A Magdalene, that’s me—come to lead me sisters into the light!”