I lifted my chin defiantly. ‘There’s no harm in trying,’ I said briskly, eyeing him with as much contempt as I could muster. How dare he make me feel small and useless. How dare he judge me because of things that I couldn’t help and without making the slightest attempt to get to know me. I’d show him. I turned my attention to the small figure that lay crumpled on the threadbare blue velvet sofa, which at first I took to be a child but then realised was actually a girl not much younger than myself with saffron bleached blonde hair, enormous grey eyes set in a pale thin face and dressed in a gown of flounced pink cotton that had long since seen better days.
‘This is Emma,’ Miss Lawler said kindly, giving the girl a reassuring smile that she timidly returned. ‘Like I said, she came to us early this morning. It’s fortunate that I was unable to sleep and already downstairs making myself a cup of cocoa or I might not have heard her knocking on the front door.’
Emma spoke then in a slightly nasal accent that sounded more rustic than the Cockney I was speedily getting used to. ‘I’m ever so sorry, Miss,’ she said, wringing the thin fabric of her skirt between her fingers. ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
Miss Lawler sat beside her on the sofa and took her hands in hers. ‘It’s quite alright, Emma,’ she said with a smile. ‘I have told you often enough that the doors here are always open to you should you need help.’ She looked quickly at Mr Mercier but he gave a shake of his head. ‘I should like to know what it was that brought you to us though.’ Her voice became gentle. ‘I am sure you have heard by now that there was a murder in Hanbury Street last night. Was it perhaps connected to that? Did you know the woman who was killed?’
Emma drew back then and pulled her hands away. ‘I don’t want to talk about her,’ she said in a low voice, looking utterly terrified. ‘Begging your pardon, Miss, as you’ve always been so kind to me but please don’t make me tell you about it.’
Miss Lawler sighed then reluctantly nodded her head. ‘Then I shall say no more,’ she said. ‘For now.’ She beckoned me over and Emma shot me a quick curious look. ‘Have you met our latest assistant, Miss Redmayne?’ she said.
If Emma looked terrified before, she was petrified now and actually recoiled away from me with a look of abject horror and something else that may well have been guilt. ‘Redmayne?’ she said, her voice hoarse. ‘Did you say Redmayne?’
I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring way. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said, not a little alarmed by her reaction to my name and desperately trying to think of what might have caused it. ‘Perhaps you have heard of my father?’
‘I’ve never heard of no Redmayne,’ she said abruptly before dragging herself off the sofa and hurrying to the door, roughly shouldering away Miss Lawler’s attempt to catch her in her arms. ‘I have to be off now, Miss,’ she said, yanking the door open. ‘I can’t hang about here drinking tea with you stuck up lot when I need to make some money for my doss.’
I immediately felt in my reticule for a sixpence which I held out to her, almost apologetically. ‘Here, have this,’ I said.
The girl paused for a moment in the doorway and stared first at the coin in my hand then, more searchingly as if looking for a resemblance to someone, at my face, the skin between her eyebrows creasing into a frown. ‘I can’t take your money, Miss,’ she said at last, almost angrily before whirling around and running as fast as she could down the stairs.
I remained frozen to the spot and only felt able to turn back to the others when we heard the front door slam shut behind the fleeing girl. ‘I have no idea what just happened,’ I said, feeling a bit frightened and also more than a little mortified to realise that my cheeks were red and hot with embarrassment as they both stared at me.
‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Lawler with a nervous laugh, not quite meeting my eyes. ‘I do hope that isn’t the last that we see of her.’
Mr Mercier was more forthright though and immediately strode out of the room and went to the top of the stairs as if deliberating going after Emma, before giving a tiny shrug and coming back again. ‘She obviously recognised your name from somewhere,’ he said to me, almost accusingly.
‘Perhaps she has seen a print of one of Miss Redmayne’s father’s paintings?’ Miss Lawler intervened brightly. ‘They’re quite popular, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, alas,’ I said with a sigh. Much to my despair, prints of his more mawkish history paintings proliferated on the heavily patterned walls of middle class London so that I was forced to admire them wherever I went. This was a source of much annoyance to me as my own tastes tended more towards the Impressionists or, more recently, the works of Mr Whistler.
Mr Mercier gave an impatient grunt. ‘Bad art though they may be, that doesn’t explain why Emma ran out of here in apparent terror at the mere mention of Miss Redmayne’s name.’ He folded his arms and looked at me challengingly. ‘Can you not think why that might be?’ he said.
I shook my head, swallowing down my irritation that he should describe my father’s paintings as ‘bad art’. It was one thing for me to not admire his work but quite another for some jumped up and entirely obnoxious little lawyer to do so. ‘I have no idea,’ I said, my brain finally waking up from the shock and beginning to whirl with possibilities. ‘I can only assume that it is a case of mistaken identity.’ Or that she had heard my name from someone else. My heart gave a sudden leap of excitement. Could this be the link that I had been waiting for? I’d hardly dared to question any of the girls at the Mission house about Beatrice’s whereabouts, thinking it best to build their trust first before I started asking about her.
‘That must be it,’ Miss Lawler said in her brisk way. ‘She was already so rattled that she must have got you mixed up with someone else.’ She gave a frown and went to the window, which overlooked the street. ‘I do hope that she comes back. The poor child could do so much better for herself than she does.’
‘Couldn’t they all?’ said Mr Mercier wryly, settling himself back down behind his desk.
She sighed and gave a little shrug. ‘That is true but I see a potential for something in Emma. I do wish that she would let us help her.’ She gave a nod to Mr Mercier and shepherded me from the room. ‘I wouldn’t take it personally,’ she said to me with a concerned look. ‘She’s obviously had a huge shock this morning and I think that it must have overset her a little. If anyone is to blame it is me for having taken a stranger in to speak to her.’ She gave me a quick hug. ‘Come, let me make you a cup of tea. You look like you could do with it.’
I managed to make myself smile. ‘It is really of no matter,’ I said, following her downstairs to the hall. ‘I am sure it can’t have been anything to do with me.’ I thought of the girl’s panicked expression, the fear in her eyes, the way she had looked at me when I offered her money and became more convinced than ever that this Emma knew something about my sister’s whereabouts and that furthermore, whatever she knew wasn’t very good. ‘Where does she usually live?’ I asked as casually as I could as we crossed the hall to the kitchen stairs. ‘Does she live on the streets?’
Miss Lawler shook her head. ‘No, she lives in a common lodging house on Thrawl Street, I believe. She told me this morning that she used to share a room with one of the women who was murdered last month, Polly Nichols, I think her name was. Poor child.’ She settled me at the large scrubbed wooden table in the centre of the kitchen then busied herself with a large black iron kettle. ‘That’s why I thought she might have known last night’s victim as well. These women all tend to know each other, you see. It keeps them safe, I suppose, if they all know each other’s business.’ She laid out two mismatched china cups. ‘No saucers, I’m afraid,’ she said with a laugh. ‘They don’t last very long here for some reason.’
‘Obviously not safe enough,’ I said a little dourly, remembering Charlie’s gleeful ‘some tart got her puddings cut out’.
Miss Lawler gave me a look. ‘Obviously,’ she agreed before turning away to wrench open a large blue and white striped tin bi
scuit barrel. ‘The girls baked these yesterday and they’re very good.’ She put some thin ginger biscuits on a chipped jade green plate and put it in front of me. ‘It breaks my heart to see bright young women like Emma living the way they do, sleeping rough and never knowing where their next meal is going to come from. It’s so unnecessary.’ She sighed and sat down opposite me. ‘So cruel.’
‘Is she a…’ I thought of my father’s disapproval of what I was trying to say and blushed, unable to go on.
‘A prostitute?’ Miss Lawler grinned at me then put her head to one side in a curiously bird like gesture. ‘Yes, I think she was, once upon a time but not any more. Nowadays she lives by her wits as you and I might call it.’
‘You mean that she is a thief?’ I said with a smile, taking a biscuit.
Miss Lawler laughed, a great rich sound that echoed in the corners of the kitchen. ‘Yes, that is precisely what I mean.’ She sighed and got up again as the kettle began to boil on the stove. ‘We really must stop speaking in euphemisms when it comes to the women of Whitechapel. There’s no shame really in what any of them do to survive.’
I bit into my biscuit, which was delicious just as she had said. ‘I’m sure that Mrs Lightfoot wouldn’t agree with that,’ I said mischievously.
‘Not one little bit,’ Miss Lawler agreed cheerfully, toasting me with the kettle.
Chapter Thirteen
I spent the rest of the morning helping Miss Lawler with the lessons in the school room, hiding my impatience to set out in pursuit of the mysterious Emma beneath my usual patient smile as I listened to the girls reading aloud from improving books and corrected their handwriting. I had formed my plan while demurely sipping tea in the kitchen and listening to Miss Lawler talk about her plans to buy the adjoining house and expand the Whitechapel Women’s Mission into an actual school and if I initially quailed at the thought of taking to the streets of Whitechapel on a doubtless hopeless hunt for a lapsed prostitute and known thief, I hastily suppressed such qualms by reminding myself why it was exactly that I had come there in the first place.
Beatrice. I thought of her now as I watched a trio of girls bend their heads over their books, their tongues sticking out of the corners of their mouths as they laboriously copied out a poem by Christina Rossetti. ‘In a far foreign land, upon the wave edged sand, some friends gaze wistfully across the glittering sea. ‘If we could clasp our sister,’ three say, ‘now we have missed her!’ ‘If we could kiss our daughter!’ Two sigh across the water.’ Oh Bea.
I waited until they had trooped noisily downstairs for their midday meal before telling Mrs Lightfoot that I wanted to go for a short walk and would be back soon. Luckily she was too busy frowning over a pile of tradesman’s bills to pay much attention to me and merely waved me away with a vague smile. If she’d been less busy then my leaving the premises would perhaps have been more fraught with difficulty - she had, after all, promised my Aunt Minerva to look after me and Whitechapel, even if the Mission was an oasis of well bred calm in the midst of chaos, was hardly the sort of area where young ladies were encouraged to walk out alone. However, the deed was done and, terrified that she would realise her error and call me back, I snatched up my bonnet and shawl and hastened out into the bright sunshine.
I closed the green door behind me and stood for a moment at the top of the steps, shielding my eyes with my hand as I gathered my bearings and, almost breathless with mingled excitement and trepidation, decided where to go first. To my left there lay the dark and intimidating warren of streets around Spital Square while on my right there was the noise and bustle of Commercial Street with Christ Church looming white and angular over the rooftops. Wishing with a great deal of regret that I had had the foresight to ask someone where Thrawl Street actually was, I took a deep breath and stepped down onto the pavement then walked quickly away.
I’d hoped that Charlie or one of his small acolytes might be hanging about and able to guide me for the price of a few pence to Emma’s lodging house but they’d all vanished, probably in search of food and odd jobs in Spitalfields Market, which seethed with small children running about and getting under the feet of the stallholders, who stood hands on hips, confident and loud in front of their wares. They should all have been in school really and as I risked my neck wending my way between the thick Commercial Street traffic, I wondered how much it would cost to send them to one of the local board schools. If they would even go, which was dubious as like the women Mrs Lawler had described to me, plenty of the children here were equally resistant to giving up their free and easy life on the streets for a more respectable existence. I had a feeling that Charlie might be different though, especially if I enticed him with the prospect of being able to work with his beloved horses one day if he would only learn his letters.
Still lost in thought I looked up to see that I was standing at the top of Hanbury Street, the scene of last night’s murder and where even now a large crowd was gathered outside one of the drab nondescript houses that lined the left hand of the street. The body would have been taken away many hours before, especially on such a warm day, but a few unhappy looking young policemen remained outside the battered front door, occasionally shoving back the crowd as it threatened to swamp them and storm inside in search of gory trophies.
‘We want to see the body!’ someone, a woman, called and there was much laughter. I smiled myself even though the sight of them all straining against the policemen and buzzing with excitement at the merest scent of death made me feel a bit sick.
I turned away and carried on down Commercial Street, attracting a few curious looks but mostly left alone as I went past the Ten Bells on the corner of Church Street and then loitered, suddenly indecisive, for a moment outside Christ Church, which looked depressingly grubby and ill tended and not nearly so impressively majestic close up. I really had no idea which way to go now and again shielded my eyes with my hand as I looked back up Commercial Street towards Lamb Street, wondering if perhaps I should give up and try again some other day when I was better prepared.
‘Can I help you, Miss?’ I looked round to see a grubby faced woman who could have been aged anywhere between twenty and forty hopping from foot to foot as she tried to get my attention. She had long greasy dark hair that she hadn’t even attempted to pin up but instead allowed to trail over her shoulders and down her back and her feet beneath her tattered grey green cotton dress were bare and caked with mud from the streets.
I hesitated then gave a nod, after all what had I to lose? ‘I’m looking for Thrawl Street,’ I said. ‘There’s a girl there called Emma that I must speak to at once.’
She grinned, revealing huge gaps in her teeth. ‘I know Emma,’ she said in a strong Welsh accent, holding out a grimy hand. ‘You give me fourpence and I’ll take you straight there so I will.’ Seeing my hesitation, she leaned in close, so close that I could smell the dank aroma of stale beer, sweat and urine that rose from her dress and added: ‘You can trust me. I know it ain’t safe round here for the likes of you, but you stay close to me and I’ll see you there in one piece.’
I gave a nervous nod. ‘Very well then,’ I said, thinking that I was making a big mistake but not knowing what else to do. ‘I will give you the money once you have taken me to Emma’s lodgings.’
She grinned again, that awful toothless leer. ‘Fair enough, Miss.’ She turned and led me down a street that branched off from Commercial Street, beckoning for me to follow. ‘She’s dossing down here. I just seen her.’ When I didn’t immediately go after her, she gave an impatient snort and spat on to the pavement. ‘Come on then! What you waiting for?’
I sighed and followed her down the road, which was short and lined with grey miserable looking houses with broken window panes and straggling rags hanging in the place of curtains on most of them. A few grim faced women stood with folded arms on the worn down doorsteps, their grimy faces set in furious glares as they yelled at the dozen or so ragged children playing with a ball and a couple of
wildly barking and slathering dogs in the middle of the road. Some of them flicked contemptuous looks over at me as I went past and nudged each other but no one tried to approach me, much to my relief. It reminded me a little of some books I had read long ago about an explorer who had travelled down the Nile and encountered several African tribes in the process. He too had described the way the native people kept their distance, according him just the odd glance but never deigning to actually attempt to communicate with him. He had also written at length about how unspeakably lonely and out of place he had felt, as if he had been transported to a different world where he, who had considered himself so civilised when he first began his journey, had rapidly begun to feel himself the alien in their midst, the one set apart from his fellow man, the outcast.
‘It’s a bit rough down here,’ my companion said with a sly smile, breaking into my thoughts. ‘I wouldn’t come down here at night, if I were you. There’s all sorts out on these streets.’
‘Like whoever killed that woman on Hanbury Street,’ I said, keen to show my knowledge, however sparse, of local events.
She gave an indifferent shrug. ‘Oh, her,’ she said dismissively, leading me off the street and down another that was equally as dreary. ‘She was a miserable old bitch.’
We silently turned off the street and onto another, just as horrible as the last two, only this one was almost completely deserted but for a couple of men, who sat on their doorsteps with their legs stretched out in front of them, both carving or whittling pieces of wood into pegs, which they slung into tatty baskets beside them when they were finished. We stopped beside the entrance to a dark alleyway. ‘She’s down there,’ the woman said, holding her hand out for the money. ‘I did as you asked now pay up.’
I stared at her, not really wanting to go down the alleyway. ‘Aren’t you going with me?’ I said. ‘I said I would pay you when you took me to Emma.’
From Whitechapel Page 14
