Bluegate Fields (32 page)

She absorbed the news in silence. Abigail Winters had gone, and now Albie was murdered. Very soon, if they did not manage to find something new and radical enough to justify an appeal, Jerome would hang.

And Athelstan had closed the murder of Albie as insoluble—and irrelevant.

“Do you want some soup?” she asked without looking at him.

“What?”

“Do you want some soup? It’s hot.”

He glanced down at his hands. He had not even realized how cold he was. She noticed the gesture and turned back to the stove to ladle out a bowlful without waiting. She handed it to him and he took it in silence.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, dishing out her own soup and sitting down opposite him. She was afraid—afraid he would defy Athelstan and go ahead with an inquiry on his own, and perhaps be demoted, or even dismissed. They would have no money coming in. She had never been poor in her life, not really poor. After Cater Street and her parents’ home, this was almost poverty—or so it had seemed the first year. Now she was used to it, and only thought about it as different when she visited Emily, and had to borrow clothes to go calling in. She had no idea what they would do if Pitt were to lose his job.

But she was equally afraid that he would not fight Athelstan, that he would accept Albie’s death and disregard his own conscience because of her and the children, knowing their security depended on him. And Jerome would hang, and Eugenie would be alone. They would never know whether he had killed Arthur Waybourne, or if he had been telling the truth all the time and the murderer was someone else, someone still alive and still abusing young boys.

And that too would lie between them like a cold ghost, a deceit, because they had been afraid to risk the price of uncovering the truth. Would he hold back from doing what he believed right because he would not ask her to pay the price—and ever afterward feel in his heart that she had robbed him of integrity?

She kept her head down as she ate the soup so he could not read her thoughts in her eyes and base any judgment on them. She would be no part of this; he must do it alone.

The soup was too hot; she put it aside and went back to the stove. Absentmindedly she stirred the potatoes and salted them for the third time.

“Damn!” she said under her breath, and poured the water off quickly down the sink, filled up the pan again, and replaced it on the stove. Fortunately, she thought he was too preoccupied to ask her what on earth she was doing.

“I’ll tell Deptford they can keep him,” he said at last. “I’ll say we don’t need him after all. But I’ll also tell them all I know about him, and hope they treat it as murder. After all, he lived in Bluegate Fields, but there’s nothing to say he was killed there. He could still have been in Deptford. What on earth are you doing with the potatoes, Charlotte?”

“I’m boiling them!” she said tartly, keeping her back to him to hide the rush of warmth inside her, the pride—probably stupid. He was not going to let it go, and thank heaven, he was not going to defy Athelstan, at least not openly. “What did you think I was doing?”

“Well, what did you pour all the water off for?” he asked.

She swung around and held out the oven cloth and the pan lid.

“Do you want to do it, then?” she demanded.

He smiled slowly and slid farther down in the chair.

“No, thank you—I couldn’t—I’ve no idea what you’re making!”

She threw the cloth at him.

But she was a good deal less light about it when she faced Emily across the porcelain-spread breakfast table the following morning.

“Murdered!” she said sharply, taking the strawberry preserve from Emily’s hand. “Strangled and then put in the river. He could have gone all the way out to sea and nobody would ever have found him.”

Emily took the preserve back.

“You won’t like that—it’s too sweet for you. Have some marmalade. What are you going to do about it?”

“You haven’t been listening!” Charlotte exploded, snatching the marmalade. “There isn’t anything we can do! Athelstan says prostitutes are murdered all the time, and it just has to be accepted! He says it as if it were a cold in the head or something.”

Emily looked at her closely, her face sharp with interest.

“You’re really angry about it, aren’t you?” she observed.

Charlotte was ready to hit her; all the frustration and pity and hopelessness boiled up inside her. But the table was too wide to reach her, and she had the marmalade in her hand. She had to be content with a blistering look.

Emily was quite unscathed. She bit into her toast and spoke with her mouth full.

“We shall have to find out as much about it as we can,” she said in a businesslike manner.

“I beg your pardon?” Charlotte was icy. She wanted to sting Emily into hurting as much as she did herself. “If you would care to swallow your food before attempting to speak, I might know what it is you are saying.”

Emily looked at her impatiently.

“The facts!” she enunciated clearly. “We must find out all the facts—then we can present them to the right people.”

“What right people? The police don’t care who killed Albie! He is only one prostitute more or less, and what does that matter? And anyway we can’t get the facts. Even Thomas can’t get them. Use your head, Emily. Bluegate Fields is a slum, there are hundreds of thousands of slum people, and none of them will tell the police the truth about anything unless they have to.”

“Not who killed Albie, stupid!” Emily was beginning to lose patience. “But how he died. That’s what matters! How old he was, what happened to him. He was strangled, you said, and dropped into the river like rubbish, then washed up at Deptford? And the police aren’t the people who matter, you told me that yourself.” She leaned forward eagerly, toast in the air. “But how about Callantha Swynford? How about Lady Waybourne? Don’t you see? If we can make them envision all that in their minds’ eye, all the obscenity and pathos, then we may draw them into our battle. Albie dead may be no use to Thomas, but he’s excellently useful to us. If you want to appeal to people’s emotions, the story of one person is far more effective than a catalogue of numbers. A thousand people suffering is much too hard to think of, but one is very easy.”

At last Charlotte understood. Of course Emily was right; she had been stupid, allowing herself to wallow in emotion. She should have thought of it herself. She had allowed her feelings to blot out sense, and that was the ultimate uselessness. She must not let it happen again!

“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “You are quite right. That is definitely the right thing to do. I shall have to find out the details from Thomas. He didn’t really tell the a lot yesterday. I suppose he thought it would upset me.”

Emily looked at her through her eyelashes. “I can’t imagine why,” she said sarcastically.

Charlotte ignored the remark, and stood up. “Well, what are we going to do today? What is Aunt Vespasia planning to do?” she said, tweaking her skirt to make it fall properly.

Emily stood up, too, patted her lips with her napkin, and replaced it on the plate. She reached for the bell to summon the maid.

“We are going to visit Mr. Carlisle, whom I find I like—you didn’t tell me how nice he was! From him I hope we shall learn some more facts—about rates of pay in sweatshops and things—so we know why young women cannot live on them and so take to the streets. Did you know that people who make matches get a disease that rots away their bones till half their faces are destroyed?”

“Yes, I did. Thomas told me about it a long time ago. What about Aunt Vespasia?”

“She is taking luncheon with an old friend, the Duchess of somewhere or other, but someone everybody listens to—I don’t think they dare ignore her! Apparently, she knows absolutely everyone, even the Queen, and hardly anybody knows the Queen these days, since Prince Albert died.”

The maid came in, and Emily told her to order the carriage to be ready in half an hour; then she was to clear the table. No one would be home until late afternoon.

“We shall take luncheon at Deptford,” Emily said, answering Charlotte’s look of surprise. “Or else we shall go without.” She surveyed Charlotte’s figure with a mixture of envy and distaste. “A little self-denial will not harm us in the least. And we shall inquire of the Deptford policemen as to the state of the body of Albie Frobisher. Perhaps we may even be permitted to see it.”

“Emily! You can’t! Whatever reason could we give for such a bizarre thing? Ladies do not go to view the corpses of prostitutes pulled out of the river! They wouldn’t allow us.”

“You will tell them who you are,” Emily replied, crossing the hall and beginning up the stairs so they could prepare their appearance for the day. “And I shall tell them who I am, and what my purpose is. I am collecting information on social conditions because it is desired that there should be reform.”

“Is it?” Charlotte was not put off; it was merely a remark. “I thought it wasn’t. That is why we must excite people’s sympathy—and anger.”

“It is desired by me,” Emily replied with literal truth. “That is sufficient for a policeman in Deptford!”

Somerset Carlisle received them without surprise. Apparently, Emily had had the forethought to warn him of their coming, and he was at home with the fire piled high and hot chocolate prepared. The study was littered with papers, and in the best chair a long, lean black cat with topaz eyes lay stretched, blinking unconcernedly. It seemed to have no intention of moving even when Emily nearly sat on it. It simply allowed her to push it to one side, then rearranged itself across her knee. Carlisle was so accustomed to the creature he did not even notice.

Charlotte sat in the chair near the fire, determined that Emily should not dictate this conversation.

“Albie Frobisher has been murdered,” she said before Emily had time to approach the subject with any delicacy.” He was strangled and put in the river. Now we shall never be able to question him again to see if he changes his testimony at all. But Emily has pointed out”—she must be fair, or she would make a fool of herself—“that his death will be an excellent tool to engage the sympathy of the people whose influence we wish for.”

Carlisle’s face showed his disgust at the event, and an unusually personal anger.

“Not much use to Jerome!” he said harshly. “Unfortunately, people like Albie are murdered for too many reasons, and most of them perfectly obvious, to assume it related to any particular incident.”

“The girl prostitute has gone, too,” Charlotte continued. “Abigail Winters. She’s disappeared, so we can’t ask her either. But Thomas did say that he thinks neither Jerome nor Arthur Waybourne ever went there, to her rooms, because there is an old woman at the door who watches everyone like a rat, and she makes them all pay her to pass. She never saw them, and neither did any of the other girls.”

Emily’s mouth curled in revulsion as her imagination conjured up the place for her. She put out her hand and stroked the black cat.

“There would be a procuress,” Carlisle said, “and no doubt a few strong men around to deal with anyone who caused trouble. It’s all part of the mutual arrangement. It would be a very sly girl indeed who managed to smuggle in private customers—and a brave one. Or else a fool!”

“We need more facts.” Emily would not allow herself to be excluded from the conversation any longer. “Can you tell us how a girl who begins as respectable ends up on the streets in places like these? If we are to move people, we must tell them about the ones they can feel sorry for, not just the ones born in Bluegate Fields and St. Giles, whom they imagine never desire anything else.”

“Of course.” He turned to his desk and shuffled through piles of papers and loose sheets, coming up at last with the ones he wanted. “These are rates of pay in match factories and furniture shops, and pictures of necrosis of the jaw caused by handling phosphorus. Here are the piecework rates for stitching shirts and ragpicking. These are conditions for entry into a workhouse, and what they are like inside. And this is the poor law with regard to children. Don’t forget a lot of women who are on the streets are there because they have children to support, and not necessarily illegitimate by any means. Some are widows, and the husbands of some have just left, either for another woman or simply because they couldn’t stand the responsibility.”

Emily took the papers and Charlotte moved beside her to read over her shoulder. The black cat stretched luxuriously, kneading its claws in the arm of the chair, pulling the threads, then curled up in a ball again and went back to sleep with a small sigh.

“May we keep these?” Emily asked. “I want to learn them by heart.”

“Of course,” he said. He poured the chocolate and passed it to them, his wry face showing he was not unaware of the irony of the situation: sitting by the blazing fire in this infinitely comfortable room, with its superb Dutch scene on the wall and hot chocolate in their hands, while they talked about horrendous squalor.

As if reading Charlotte’s thoughts, Carlisle turned to her.

“You must use your chance to convince as many other people as possible. The only way we’ll change anything is to alter the social climate till child prostitution becomes so abhorred that it withers of itself. Of course we’ll never get rid of it altogether, any more than any other vice, but we might reduce it massively.”

“We will!” Emily said with a deeper anger than Charlotte had heard in her before. “I’ll see that every society woman in London is so sickened by it she’ll make it impossible for any man with ambition to practice it. We may not have a vote or pass any laws in Parliament, but we can certainly make the laws of society and freeze to death anyone who wants to flout them for long, I promise you!”

Carlisle smiled. “I’m sure,” he said. “I never underestimated the power of public disapproval, informed or uninformed.”

Emily stood up, carefully depositing the cat in the round hollow she had left. It barely stirred to rearrange itself.

“I intend to inform the public.” She folded the papers and slipped them into her embroidered reticule. “Now we shall go to Deptford and look at this corpse. Are you ready, Charlotte? Thank you so much, Mr. Carlisle.”