Death of a Stranger (3 page)

He stared at the distance, the potbellied stove halfway along the wall, his eyes unseeing, his voice still too quiet to carry beyond the table where they sat. “ ’E’d been in a fight. Scratch marks on ’is face that never came from any fall. Look like a woman’s fingernails. An’ he were dead after ’e hit the ground, all them broken bones an’ a bash on the head. Wouldn’t ’ave moved after that. An’ there’s blood on ’is ’ands, but they wasn’t injured. It weren’t no accident, Mrs. Monk. At least not entirely.”

“I see.”

He sighed. “It’s going to cause a terrible row. The family’s going to raise ’ell! They’ll ’ave us all out patrolling the streets and ’arassing any women we see. They’re going to ’ate it… an’ then customers is going to ’ate it even more. An’ the pimps’ll ’ate it worst of all. Everybody’ll be in a filthy temper until we find whoever did it, an’ probably ’ang the poor little cow.” He was too wretched to be aware of having used a disparaging term in front of her, or to think of apologizing.

“I can’t help you,” Hester said softly, remembering the women who had come to the house the previous night, all of them injured more or less. “Five women came, but they all went again and I have no idea where to. I don’t ask.”

“Their names?” he said without expectation.

“I don’t ask that either, only something to call them by.”

“That’ll do, for a start.” He put down his mug and fished in his pocket for his notebook and pencil.

“A Nell, a Lizzie and a Kitty,” she answered. “Later a Mariah and a Gertie.”

He thought for a moment, then put the pencil away again. “ ’Ardly worth it,” he said dismally. “Everybody’s a Mary, a Lizzie, or a Kate. God knows what they were christened-if they were, poor souls.”

She looked at him in the sharp morning light. There was a dark shadow of stubble on his cheeks and his eyes were pink-rimmed. He had far more pity for the women of the streets than he had for their clients. She thought he did not particularly want to catch whoever had pushed the man down the stairs. The murderer would no doubt be hanged for something which could have been at least in part an accident. The death may not have been intentional, but who would believe that when the woman in the dock was a prostitute and the dead man was rich and respected? What judge or juror could afford to accept that such a man could be at least in part responsible for his own death?

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t help.”

He sighed. “An’ you wouldn’t if you could… I know that.” He rose to his feet slowly, shifting his weight a little as if his boots pinched. “Just’ad ter ask.”

It was nearly ten o’clock in the morning when the hansom pulled up at her house in Fitzroy Street.

Monk was sitting in the front room he used to receive those who came to seek his services as a private agent of enquiry. He had papers spread in front of him and was reading them.

She was surprised to see him and filled with a sudden upsurge of pleasure. She had known him for nearly seven years, but had been married to him for less than three, and the joy of it was still sharp. She found herself smiling for no other reason.

He put the papers aside and stood up, his face softening in response.

There was a question in his eyes. “You’re late,” he said, not in criticism but in sympathy. “Have you eaten anything?”

“Toast,” she replied with a little shrug. She was untidy and she knew she smelled of vinegar and carbolic, but she wanted him to kiss her anyway. She stood in front of him, hoping she was not obvious. She was sufficiently in love that it would have embarrassed her to be too easily read.

He undid her bonnet and tossed it casually onto the chair, then he put his arms around her and kissed her rather more warmly than she had expected. She responded with a whole heart, then, remembering the lonely and rejected women she had treated during the night, she kept her arms around him and held him more closely.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice demanding, knowing the difference in her.

“Just the women,” she replied. “There was a murder last night. That’s why I’m late. The police came to the house this morning.”

“Why? What would you know about it?” He was puzzled.

She knew what he was imagining: a prostitute beaten and bleeding coming to the house, then returning to her brothel and being beaten again, this time to death. “No. At least not the way you mean,” she answered. “It was a man who was killed, a client, if you can call him that. They think he fought with one of the women and somehow or other she pushed him downstairs. They wanted to know about women who came in cut and bruised as if they had been in a struggle.”

“And you had seen some?” he said.

“Of course. Every night! It’s mostly that and disease. I couldn’t help because I don’t know how they got hurt, or where to find them again.”

He pushed her back a little, looking more closely at her face. “And would you help the police if you could?”

“I don’t think so,” she admitted. “I don’t know…”

He smiled very slightly, but his eyes read her perfectly.

“All right…” she agreed. “I’m glad I can’t help. It relieves me of having to decide if I would or not. Apparently he was, in Constable Hart’s words, ’a toff,’ so the police are going to make everyone suffer, because the family will make sure they do.” She grimaced with disgust. “They’ll probably tell us he was a philanthropist walking the back streets and alleys trying to save the souls of fallen women!”

He lifted his head and very gently pushed back the hair that had fallen across her brow. “Unlikely… but I suppose it’s possible. We believe what we need to… at least for as long as we can.”

She rested her head against his chin. “I know. But I can’t excuse persecuting a lot of women who are wretched enough anyway, or the pimps who will only take it out on them. It won’t change anything.”

“Someone killed him,” he said reasonably. “They can’t ignore that.”

“I know!” She took a deep breath. “I know.”

Hester had foreseen that the area around Coldbath Square would suffer an added diligence from police harrying women who were either prostitutes or who could not prove their legitimate occupations, but when it happened she was still taken aback by the reality. The very next evening in the house she saw immediate evidence of it. Margaret was not in; she was mixing with her more natural society, endeavoring to elicit further donations of money toward the rent of the house and the cost of bandages and medicines necessary to treat those who came to it. There were also other expenses to be met, such as fuel for the stove, and carbolic and vinegar for cleaning, and, of course, food.

The first woman to come to the house was not injured but ill. She had an intermittent fever which Hester judged to be a symptom of venereal disease, but there was little she could do for her beyond offering comfort and an infusion of herbs to lower her temperature and give her some sense of relief.

“Are you hungry?” Hester asked, passing her the steaming mug. “I have bread and a little cheese, if you like.”

The woman shook her head. “No, ta. I’ll just ’ave the medicine.”

Hester looked at her wan face and hunched shoulders. She was probably not more than twenty-five or twenty-six, but she was weary, and sleeplessness, poor food, and disease had robbed her of all energy.

“Would you like to stay here for the night?” Hester offered. It was not really what the house was for, but in the absence of those in greater need, why should this woman not use one of the beds?

A spark flared for a moment in the woman’s eyes. “Wot’ll it cost?” she said suspiciously.

“Nothing.”

“Can I go in the morning, then?”

“You can go any time you wish, but morning would be good.”

“Yeah, ta. That’d be fine.” She still did not quite believe it. Her mouth pulled tight. “In’t no point out there,” she said grimly. “No trade. Rozzers all over the bleedin’ place-like flies on a dead rat, they are. In’t nothin’ fer no one, even them wot’s still clean.” She meant free from disease, not like herself.

There was nothing for Hester to say. The truth would be a condescension this woman did not need. It would not give hope, only separate her from any sense of being understood.

“It’s that bleedin’ toff wot was snuffed last night,” the woman went on miserably. “Stupid cow! W’y anyone’d want ter go an’ do a thing like that fer, I dunno!” She took a sip of the herbs and twisted her mouth at the bitter taste.

“Sugar’ll probably make it worse,” Hester said. “But you can have some if you’d like.”

“Nah, ta.” She shook her head. “I’ll get used ter it.”

“Maybe they’ll find out who it was, and things will get back to normal,” Hester suggested. “What are you called?” It was not quite the same thing as asking her name. A name was a matter of identity; this was merely something to use in making her personal.

“Betty,” was the reply, after a longer draft of the herbal infusion.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a piece of bread and cheese? Or toast?”

“Yeah… toast’d be good. Ta.”

Hester made two pieces and put them on a plate with cheese. Betty waited while Hester took one piece herself, then she took the other. Her hand closed around it with satisfaction, almost urgency.

“Reckon ’is family’s real put out,” she went on after a moment or two. “ ’Em rozzers is buzzin’ around like the devil’s arter ’em. Poor bastards. They in’t bad, most o’ the time. Knows we gotter make a livin’, an’ the men wot comes ’ere does it ’cos they wanter. In’t nobody else’s business, really.” She ate over half the toast before speaking again. “S’pose they come arter summink wot their wives don’ give ’em. Never could work that out, but thank God fer it, I say.”

Hester stood up and made more toast, skewering the bread on a fork and holding it to the open door of the stove till the heat of the coals scorched it crisp and brown. She returned with another good slice of cheese and gave it to Betty, who took it in wordless gratitude.

Hester was half curious. She had been involved in too many cases with Monk not to try reasoning as second nature, but she was also concerned for the disruption to the neighborhood. “Why would any woman kill a client?” she asked. “Surely she would realize it had to end like this?”

Betty shrugged. “ ’Oo knows? Even soused out of ’er mind, yer’d think she’d ’ave’ad more sense, wouldn’t yer?” She bit into the toast and cheese and spoke with her mouth full. “Bring the wrath o’ God down on all of us, stupid bitch.” But there was more resignation in her voice than anger, and she turned her full attention to the food and said no more.

Hester did not raise the subject again until close to morning. She had slept in one of the beds herself, and was roused by Constable Hart knocking on the door.

She got up and let him in. He looked mithered and unhappy. He glanced around the room and saw only the one bed occupied.

“Quiet?” he said without surprise. Perhaps involuntarily his eyes went to the stove and the kettle.

“I’m going to have a cup of tea,” Hester remarked. “Would you like one?”

He smiled at her tact, and accepted.

When the tea and toast were made and they were sitting at either side of the table, he began to talk. It was light in the street outside but there was hardly any traffic yet. The huge mass of the Coldbath prison stood silent and forbidding to the north, the sun softening its walls only slightly, the cobbles of the road still damp in the crevices. Light glinted on a pile of refuse in the gutter.

“So I don’t suppose you’ve ’eard anything?” he said hopefully.

“Only that there are police all over the streets, and none of the women are doing much trade,” she replied, sipping her tea. “I imagine that’ll go for a lot of other occupations as well.”

He laughed without humor. “Oh, yeah! Burglaries are down-and robberies! It’s so bleedin’ safe to walk around now you could wear a gold Albert in your waistcoat an’ go from Coldbath to Pentonville, an’ still find it there! The reg’lars like us almost as much as a dose o’ the pox.”

“Then maybe they’ll help,” she suggested. “Get things back to normal. Do you know who he was yet?”

He looked up at her, his eyes solemn and troubled. “Yeah. ’Is son got worried ’cos ’e were supposed to be at a big business meeting, an’ ’e never come ’ome that night. Seems ’e weren’t the kind o’ man to miss something like that, so everyone got upset. Asked the local station about accidents an’ so on.” He spread black currant jam liberally on his toast. “He lived up Royal Square, opposite St. Peter’s Church, but the station put the word about, an’ we was askin’ around too, knowin’ as ’e wasn’t from our patch. Son came over and looked at’im in the morgue last evening.” He bit into the toast. “Knew’im, right enough,” he said with his mouth full. “ ’Ell of a stink ’e kicked up. Streets not safe for decent men, what’s the world coming to, and all that. ’E’ll write to his Member of Parliament, ’e said.” He shook his head wonderingly.

“I think for his family’s sake he would be wiser to say as little as possible, at least for the moment,” she replied. “If my father were found dead in Abel Smith’s place, I would tell as few people as I could. Or found alive either, for that matter,” she added.

He smiled at her for an instant, then was grave again. “ ’E were called Nolan Baltimore,” he told her. “Rich man, ’ead of a company in railways. It was ’is son Jarvis Baltimore who came to the morgue. ’E’s ’ead o’ the company now, an’ going to make sure ’e raises Cain if we don’t find who killed ’is father an’ see ’em ’anged.”

Hester could imagine the reaction of shock, pain, outrage, but she thought young Mr. Jarvis Baltimore would live to regret his actions today. Whatever his father had been doing in Leather Lane, it was extremely unlikely to be anything his family would wish their friends to know about. Because it was murder, the police would have to do all they could to establish the facts, and if possible bring someone to court, but it might have been better for the Baltimore family if it could simply have remained a mystery, a disappearance tragic and unexplained.

But that choice was no longer open to them. It was only a passing thought, a moment’s pity for the disillusion and then the public humiliation, the laughter suddenly hushed when they entered a room, the whispered words, the invitations that stopped, the friends who were unaccountably too busy to receive, or to call. All the money in the world would not buy back what they might be about to lose.

“What if it were nothing to do with any of the women in Abel Smith’s place?” she suggested. “Maybe someone followed him to Leather Lane and took a good opportunity when they saw it?”

He stared at her, hope and incredulity struggling in his face. “God ’elp us if that’s true!” he said in a whisper. “Then we’ll never find’im. Could be anyone!”

Hester could see that she had not necessarily been helpful. “Have you any witnesses at all?”

He shrugged very slightly. “Dunno who to believe. ’Is son says ’e was an upright, decent man in a big way o’ business, respected in the community an’ got a lot o’ powerful friends who’ll want to see justice done, an’ the streets o’ London cleaned up so ’onest folk can walk in ’em.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “He can hardly say anything else. He has to, to protect his mother.”

“An’ ’is sister,” Hart added. “Who in’t married yet, ’cos she’s a Miss Baltimore. ’Ardly do ’er chances any good if ’er father was known to frequent places like Leather Lane for their usual trade.” He frowned. “Curious that, in’t it? I mean, a man that’ll go to places like that ’isself, turning down a young woman ’cos ’er father does the same thing. I can’t work folk out… not gentry, leastways.”

“It won’t be his father, Constable, it’ll be his mother,” she explained.

“Oh?” He put his empty mug down on the table. “Yeah, o’ course. I see. Still, it don’t help us. Don’t really know where to begin, ’cept with Abel Smith, an’ ’e swears blind Baltimore weren’t killed in ’is place.”

“What does the police surgeon say?”

“Dunno yet. Died o’ broken bones an’ bleedin’ inside, but dunno whether ’e died at the bottom of Abel’s stairs or somewhere else altogether. Could’a bin anyone as pushed’im, if it were the stairs.”

“Or maybe he was drunk and just fell?” she said hopefully.

“Give me three wishes, an’ right now all of ’em’d be that,” he said with intense feeling. “The whole place is like a wasps’ nest all the way from Coldbath up to Pentonville, an’ down as far as Smithfield. An’ it’ll get worse! We just got the women an’ the pimps on our backs now.” He sighed. “Give it a day or two an’ we’ll have ever so discreet bellyachin’ from the toffs whose pleasure it is to come ’ere an’ have a bit o’ fun, ’cos now they can’t do it without falling over the police at every street corner. There’s goin’ to be a lot o’ red faces around if they do! An’ a lot o’ short tempers if they don’t. We can’t win, whatever.”

She sympathized with him silently, getting him more tea, and then fresh toast with black currant jam, which he ate with relish before thanking her and going disconsolately out into the ever-broadening daylight and resuming his thankless task.

The following day the newspapers carried headlines on the shocking death of well-respected railway owner Nolan Baltimore, found in extraordinary circumstances in Leather Lane, off the Farringdon Road. His family was desolated with grief, and all society was outraged that a decent man of spotless reputation should be attacked in the street and left to die in such circumstances. It was a national scandal, and his son, Jarvis Baltimore, had sworn that it would be his crusade to clear away the crime and prostitution that stained the capital city’s honor and made such foul murders possible. The metropolitan police had failed in their duty to the citizens of the nation, and it was every caring man’s responsibility to make sure that it was not allowed to remain so.

Of far more concern to Hester was the fact that the night after Constable Hart’s second visit to her, a young woman was brought into the house by her friends so seriously beaten that she had to be carried. The three frightened and angry women waited huddled in the corner, staring.

The injured woman lay on the table curled over, holding her abdomen, her body shaking, blood oozing between her fingers.

White-faced, Margaret looked at Hester.

“Yes,” Hester agreed quietly. “Send one of the women for Mr. Lockhart. Tell him to come as quickly as he may.”

Margaret nodded and turned away. She gave directions to one of the waiting women where to start looking for the doctor, and not to stop until she had found him. Then she went over to the stove for water, vinegar, brandy, and clean cloths. She worked blindly, reaching for things because she was too shaken and too horrified to see clearly what she was doing.

Hester must staunch the bleeding and overcome her horror at such a wound, telling herself to remember the battlefields, the shattered men she had helped lift off the wagons after the charge of the Light Brigade at Sebastopol, or after the Battle of the Alma, blood-soaked, dead and dying, limbs torn, hacked by swords or splintered by shot.

She had been able to help them. Why was this woman any different? Hester was there to do a job, not indulge her own emotions, however deep or compassionate. The woman needed help, not pity.

“Let go of it,” she said very gently. “I’ll stop the bleeding.” Please God she could. She took the woman’s hands in hers, feeling the clenched muscles, the fear transmitting itself as if for a moment she were part of the same flesh. She was aware of the sweat breaking out on her skin and running cold over her body.

“Can you ’elp ’er?” one of the women asked from behind. She had come over silently, unable to keep away in spite of her fear.

“I think so,” Hester replied. “What is her name?”

“Fanny,” the woman said hoarsely.

Hester bent over the woman. “Fanny, let me look at it,” she said firmly. “Let me see.” With more strength she pulled the woman’s hands away and saw the scarlet-soaked cloth of her dress. She prayed they would find Lockhart and he would come quickly. She needed help with this.

Margaret handed her scissors and she took them, cutting the fabric to expose the flesh. “Bandages,” she said without looking up. “Rolled,” she added. She lifted the dress away from the wound and saw raw flesh still running blood but not pumping. Relief washed over her, breaking out in prickling sweat again. It might be only a surface wound after all. It was not the gushing, arterial blood she had dreaded. But still she could not afford to wait and see if Lockhart turned up. Choking for a moment on her words, she asked for cloths, brandy and a needle threaded with gut.