Let's Talk of Murder (8 page)

“Perfect!” he purred. She didn’t smile as she usually did when he approved her ensemble.

She just gave an impatient tsk and said, “Let us go.”

Corinne felt like Judas when she waved to Luten, who was watching their departure from his saloon window. He blew her a kiss, which was not a Luten-ish thing to do. Coffen was already in the carriage.

When Prance directed his driver to St. James’s Street, Coffen said, “That ain’t where the home is. It’s across the river. Westminster Bridge will be a tad shorter than Blackfriars. It’s half-way between, on the south side.”

“We’re picking up someone,” Prance said.

“Who?”

“Lord Byron.”

Coffen applied his finger to his ear. “Eh? Byron! What the devil for?”

“He was with Prinney the night the shot was fired, you recall.”

“What’s that to do with anything? I don’t recall he’s been in on it since then.”

“His presence will guarantee us access into the home. No one would dare refuse him the entree.”

Coffen turned a sharp blue orb on Corinne. “Are you in on this, Corrie?”

A pretty flush colored her cheek. “Good gracious, you make it sound like some nefarious plot. Yes, I knew he was coming.”

“Does Luten know?”

“I didn’t bother mentioning it to him, in case he would worry,” she said vaguely, disliking the insinuation that he mistrusted her.

“In case he wouldn’t let you come, you mean. That’s pretty underhanded. I smell the fine hand of Prance in this setup.” Coffen’s blue eyes could take on an amazingly hostile air when he was riled, as he was now. The eye he turned on Prance had such an air. “Trying to stir up mischief. ‘Pon my word, I’m ashamed of you, Prance.” Prance and Corinne exchanged a guilty look. “Using Corinne as bait: to catch Byron, just so you can swan around town with him. That ain’t going to make your demmed
Rondeaux
any better, my lad. When did you set this scheme up?”

“It’s hardly a scheme! We ran into him last night. In fact, he invited himself along.”

“What was a high flyer like him doing at that antique place? I don’t believe a word of it.”

“We met him at Lady Melbourne’s rout, actually,” Prance admitted, with an air of bravado. “We arrived too late for the concert and decided to pop in at Melbourne’s. Byron happened to be there.”

“Where else would he be? He lives in Lady Melbourne’s pocket. You might have known a fellow like him would be itching to get into a house full of girls of that sort. He probably put half of them there if the truth was known. How did you come to tell him about this visit? It’s supposed to be a secret.”

“He doesn’t know why we’re going. And you mustn’t tell him. As far as he knows, we’re merely touring the facility with a thought to helping the unfortunate girls. Corinne is going to talk to Fanny Rowan while we tour the place.”

“Don’t try to drag me into your scheme! I came along to talk to Fanny, and talk to her I will. You’re treading on thin water, my lad.” Prance frowned, his usual reaction to Coffen’s mangled metaphors. “Byron!” Coffen muttered into his collar.

“If you could forget your prejudices, I think you might like him,” Prance said.

“Like him? What would I have in common with a prancing poet? Saint George and the dragon had more in common. And you know which one is the dragon!”

“Setting up as a saint, are you?” Prance replied airily.

“At least I ain’t a sinner, like you,” he shot back without thinking.

But when Byron came limping out to the rig, Coffen’s quick sympathy recalled that the man was a cripple after all, and he was polite to him. He soon sensed that Byron might even prove useful. The poet’s first words after the greetings and introduction were, “Did you know this home is run by Morgate? You folks aren’t members of Morgate’s cult, are you? I believe I’ve seen you at the Chapel Royal, Lady deCoventry.” At least the pagan went to the right church.

Corinne denied any connection except that of performing charity. Coffen, who always kept an eye on the main point, was more interested to discover how Byron knew of the Morgate connection. “You’re familiar with the place, then?” he asked.

“Not with this place, but with Morgate. I met him through Will Cobbet, the journalist. A fascinating fellow, full of prejudices and misinformation he expounds so reasonably he makes you half believe him. I have a high opinion of Morgate. He’s a fanatic, as most of the Dissenters are, but a man of sound morals. I visited a few of his orphan schools. They’re run on more humane grounds than most of them. I daresay this place will be, too.”

He turned to Corinne and continued, “Do you have a special reason for visiting the home, Lady deCoventry? Are you planning to hire a girl?”

“I’m thinking about it,” she prevaricated. Perhaps she could find a place for some of the girls who had already given birth.

“I doubt Fanny Rowan would make a suitable servant,” Coffen said, and received a sharp glare from Prance, which he ignored. He stared at Byron with an unblinking, blue gaze. “She was called a lady the last I heard.”

“Shocking!” Byron said angrily, apparently taking no note of the name. “How can a father toss his daughter out of the house when she’s in such trouble! And then throw up his hands in horror when she ends up on the street, saying he always knew she was no better than she should be. What does he think is going to happen to her? And these men call themselves Christians! They don’t know the meaning of the word. Do they never read the Bible? Have they never heard of Mary Magdalene?”

This tirade caused Coffen to look at the heathen with something like approval. Corinne was also impressed. Even Prance was surprised at the vehemence of his outburst.

“Who is this Fanny Rowan you mentioned?” Byron asked Coffen.

“Just a lady I happen to know,” he said vaguely.

Byron did not undertake any strenuous flirtation with two other gentlemen in the carriage. Harmony prevailed when they were deposited at the doorway of an extremely plain, new brown brick building on a short street in Lambeth. It held no air of gothic horror or decay. It might have been a school house. It was well built, but no money had been spent on garnishing the exterior. No columns, pediments, statuary or other ornaments interfered with its plain lines. It rose four floors, each punctuated with windows that gleamed in the autumn sunlight. A small swath of grass and a pair of ancient fir trees whose size and age suggested they predated the building, one on either side of the walk leading to the door, lent an austere note of welcome.

They entered into a wood floored lobby that smelled of turpentine and beeswax and carbolic soap. The place was almost unnaturally clean. Not even a dust mote floated in the shafts of sunlight that shone through the windows. The plaster walls were innocent of pictures, but held a framed sheet of printing in heavy script. A closer look revealed that it was the ten commandments, with some printing below that outlined the tenets of the Morgate Sect.

In an alcove to their left, a female of middle years dressed all in black with a white cap and collar sat bent over a desk, writing. Her outfit suggested she might be a nun. Her grim expression told Corinne she would not want to be under the woman’s care. But perhaps it was just her beetling black eyebrows and incipient moustache that made her look so intimidating.

She rose, revealing a broad-shouldered figure nearly six feet in height. “I am Mrs. Bruton, the manageress of the home,” she said in a deep voice. Mrs. — she was neither nun nor nurse, then. “Can I help you?” Corinne had the feeling her sharp gray eyes saw all there was to see of the visitors.

Prance stepped forward to make the request. He handed her his card. “Sir Reginald Prance, and these are my friends, Lady deCoventry, Lord Byron, and Mr. Pattle. We hoped we might be allowed to have a look at the facilities.” Mrs. Bruton offered her well-muscled hand to them each in turn for a crippling shake. Corinne noticed that despite the Mrs., she wore no wedding band. Many unmarried female servants of the higher orders gave themselves an honorary Mrs., however, so this was not unusual.

“Do you have permission from Doctor Harper?” she asked. “He is the Director of the home.” After a mere flickering glance at the others, the gray eyes were drawn, like needles to a magnet, to Lord Byron. As she was looking at him, he undertook to reply.

“I have not had the pleasure yet of meeting Doctor Harper, but I’m an admirer of Reverend Morgate. We thought there might be some way in which we could help with this marvelous work he’s doing.”

This suggested to Mrs. Bruton that a donation might be forthcoming. The visitors all looked well-to-do. The handsome one was certainly Lord Byron. She had seen dozens of cartoons of him in the journals and shop windows. He really did have a club foot, too. The sole of one boot was built up higher than the other, it wouldn’t do for him to be writing up one of his nasty poems about the Morgate Home. Best oblige him.

“We usually have advance notice of a tour, but we have nothing to hide. I’m sure you are welcome. Of course you appreciate there are portions of the building we use as birthing facilities. A certain degree of privacy is necessary there.”

“I assure you we’re not voyeurs, Mrs. Bruton,” Byron said, with a twinkling eye that actually brought a smile to her harsh visage.

While the dame was smiling, Corinne put in her request to speak to Fanny Rowan. Mrs. Bruton’s eyebrows rose half an inch, but in the end, she agreed without argument. “I’ll get her.” Corinne thought she would ring a bell to summon a servant for this errand but she went herself. It popped into Corinne’s head that the girl was to receive some instructions, or warning.

When Mrs. Bruton returned, visibly panting from the exertion, she said, “Fanny will be down in a moment. You can speak with her in the visitors’ room.” She indicated an austere room behind her own alcove. It was furnished with two hard sofas, a sofa table and two hard chairs. The only access to it was through her office. Like the virgin’s bedroom in old homes, Corinne thought, located behind the mistress’s bed chamber to protect the maiden from harm. Coffen and Corinne waited and Mrs. Bruton led the others away.

As she walked them along at a brisk pace, she spoke of the home, with many sideways compliments to Doctor Harper, herself and Reverend Morgate. “We can handle twenty-four girls at a time,” she said. “We’re usually filled up, with a waiting list. We can’t undertake to raise the children. We put them up for adoption right away. The girls know that when they come to us. Well, how could they raise a poor child, when they can’t keep out of trouble themselves?

“In payment for their keep, they do the work about the home. Cleaning, laundry, gardening, cooking, and so on, while they’re able. Toward the end of their nine months, they’re allowed to rest and read worthwhile books, take little walks about the garden at the back, and of course attend chapel. We have Bible readings at each meal and before retiring. Doctor Harper comes for services and a sermon as often as he’s available.”

Young girls, some obviously pregnant, some just beginning to show, worked about the place, pushing floor polishers, dusting, carrying trays. They all wore the same costume, a simple gray gown, immaculate white apron and cap. Mrs. Bruton described the meals—three meals a day of good, simple food—and took them to the kitchen to show the meals in preparation, again with the girls doing the work, supervised by a couple of older women. They were shown the laundry and the garden at the back where the girls walked. Prance and Byron made suitable compliments and asked a few not too hard questions.

As they were returning below, Prance stopped on the second landing. Two girls in the gray uniform were rushing down a corridor. Their hasty pace suggested they were not yet far along in their pregnancy. When they reached the end, one of them drew out a key and unlocked the door. “I don’t believe we were down that corridor, were we?” Prance asked.

“That is the birthing facility,” she said. “It’s set off from the bedrooms so the girls won’t be frightened by the screams. They’ll find out the wages of sin for themselves soon enough.”

“Why is the door kept locked?” he asked.

“There are some drugs stored there, when the facility is not in use, it’s kept locked. Those girls are in charge of cleaning the place and preparing it for the midwife’s work.”

As she led them back to the lobby, Byron said, “Are they allowed visits from family and friends?”

“Not as a rule,” she said firmly. “Nor do we very often get such a request. If their families and friends cared for them, they wouldn’t be here. We hope to detach them from the evil influences of their past. Of course if parents change their minds and want to take a daughter back home, we oblige them. We make an effort to place the girls in a good position. Doctor Morgate has many friends who help along that line.

“Speaking of help, in what way did you feel you might be able to help us, gentlemen?” Her steely eye suggested it was time to repay her kindness. “I have a check book in my office, if you don’t happen to have yours with you,” she added, to make her meaning perfectly clear. She ushered them back to her alcove.

While Coffen and Corinne waited for Fanny, Coffen had a snoop around Mrs. Bruton’s desk for clues, but without discovering anything significant except a taste for lurid fiction. A copy of Lewis’s
The Monk
was open face-down in her top drawer. At the sound of flying footsteps, he darted back to his chair, moving with amazing agility for an ungainly man. Corinne gave a silent groan at the moonish smile that settled on his face when he first clamped his eyes on Fanny Rowan.

The girl was pretty, no more than that, yet even another woman could see she was a walking temptation to a man like Coffen, who preferred a woman’s charms to hit him in the face. “A buxom, provincial miss,” Prance would have called her. She had healthy pink cheeks and lustrous eyes. A few wanton blonde curls escaped around the edges of her white cap. In her hand she carried a large black book which turned out to be a shiny new Bible
.
Her swinging hips endowed even the regulation gray uniform and white apron with a touch of seduction. Perhaps it was her small waist, accentuated by a lavish swell of breasts above and flare of hips below, that did it. She was well rounded all over, not yet noticeably more so below the waist than above.