Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  But not one of them moved. There were big, able-bodied men among them, yet they stood there like so many sheep staring up at the house and pointing out that flames were already licking out of the parlour window which was right next to Annie’s window.

  Terrified Annie would burn to death, Mog tossed aside her blanket, leapt on to a dustbin, and scrabbled up on to the yard wall. In bare feet she ran along it and on reaching the house wall tried to stretch out to reach the window sill of Annie’s room. But it was at least three feet too far away.

  ‘Let me through!’ a loud male voice suddenly rang out, and Mog turned to see to her surprise and relief that it was Garth Franklin carrying a ladder, assisted by young Jimmy.

  ‘Annie’s in there!’ Mog pointed to the window and came back along the wall to get down again. ‘I think she must be overcome by the smoke.’

  Garth moved at great speed. He practically threw the ladder against the window sill of the room and charged up it. He took something from his pocket and bashed it against the glass, then banged it several more times around the edge to knock out the remainder. Then he climbed in. Jimmy shinned up behind his uncle and leapt inside equally quickly, then all at once Garth was out on the ladder again while Jimmy helped hoist the unconscious woman over the older man’s shoulder.

  As Garth came down the ladder with Annie, the sounds of popping glass from within were as loud as fire crackers. Mog held her breath because Jimmy had disappeared from view. But just as Garth reached the ground, and Mog was twisting her hands in agitation because she feared Jimmy was overcome too, he climbed out of the window carrying the cashbox and Annie’s fur coat.

  At that very moment the clanging bell of the fire engine rang out. The crowd cheered and moved back as the four horses pulling the fire engine behind them galloped into the Court at breakneck speed.

  But Mog could only think about Annie, and took her from Garth, wrapped her in a blanket and laid her down on the ground, kneeling beside her.

  She had no idea what you did for people who were overcome by smoke, but all at once Annie began to cough of her own accord and opened her eyes.

  ‘Oh, my sweet Jesus!’ Mog exclaimed breathlessly, clutching her friend in her arms. ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I thought I was going to die too when I couldn’t get the window open,’ Annie wheezed out before another coughing fit overcame her.

  Mog sat Annie up, patting her back to help her cough out the smoke, and wrapped the blanket round her more securely. Mog was freezing too in only her nightdress but her sole concern was for her friend.

  ‘Has the whole place gone?’ Annie managed to croak out a few minutes later.

  Until then Mog hadn’t even considered what the loss of the house meant; to her it was the people who lived in it that mattered. But as she turned her head to look at it, her eyes filled with tears. Every window had flames coming out of it. She remembered how excited she and Annie had been when they went to buy the chandelier and the Persian rug for the parlour. She had loved polishing the piano and arranging fresh flowers on the hall table. Almost everything, bedding, china, pictures and just about everything else in the house, had some little tale attached to it.

  Even the basement, which was her domain, was well alight now. All those little treasures, her sewing basket, a photograph of Belle in a tortoiseshell frame, the silver-backed hairbrush that Annie had given her one Christmas, a china cat and other little bits and pieces she’d collected over the years that made her room her home, had been burned.

  Mog supposed most people would think it shameful to work as a maid in a brothel, but she never had – in fact she’d taken a pride in keeping it clean and comfortable. Annie and the girls were like her family; the brothel had become her life, and now it was gone.

  ‘Yes, it’s all gone.’ Mog struggled not to break down. ‘But let’s just be glad no one died in there. Someone was trying to kill us all.’

  Garth came over and put a blanket around Mog’s shoulders as she knelt beside Annie. ‘You two had best come back with me,’ he said gruffly.

  Mog looked up at the big, bearded, red-headed man in surprise. She had always heard that he was hard and mean-spirited. ‘That is so kind, Mr Franklin,’ she replied. ‘But you’ve done more than enough for us tonight. We couldn’t possibly impose on you. We’ll go to a rooming house.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he said firmly. ‘Someone tried to kill you tonight, and there’s no prizes for guessing who that could be. You need to be somewhere safe, and you will be safe with me.’

  People were drifting away now, for the firemen had the blaze under control and it was too cold to hang around. Mog saw that all the girls had gone – she supposed neighbours had kindly offered them a bed for the night. But she did think they might have come and asked how she and Annie were.

  ‘Come on, you’ll catch your death out here,’ Garth said impatiently, and picking Annie up in his arms as if she weighed no more than a small child, he began to walk towards the Ram’s Head.

  ‘Come on, Miss Davis.’ Jimmy smiled at Mog, putting the cashbox down on the ground and holding out Annie’s fur for her to slip into. ‘Home with us? Your feet must be frozen!’ He picked up the cashbox again and offered her his arm. Mog was glad to take it, for after the shock and exertions of the night it felt good to be able to leave decision-making to someone else, even if he was only a young lad.

  Three days after the fire, Mog stood at the side of the bed, looking down at Annie in despair. She had steadfastly refused to have a bath, so she still stank of smoke and her hair fell in greasy rat’s tails on the shoulders of her soiled nightdress. Apart from getting up to use the chamberpot occasionally, she hadn’t left the bed since the night Garth put her in it.

  ‘I’m ruined,’ she sobbed. ‘What’s going to become of me?’

  Mog automatically put a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder, but she was finding it hard to feel much sympathy, for physically there was nothing wrong with Annie. She ate everything put in front of her, and she’d stopped coughing. Mog had lost her home and livelihood too, but she wasn’t lying around crying and wailing, in fact she was trying to make the best of a bad situation by making herself useful around the Ram’s Head.

  The room they were sharing was grim, very small, dingy, and until Mog got to grips with it, very dirty. But even if it didn’t have the comfort and style they’d been used to, it was very kind of Garth to take them in.

  In return, Mog had turned to cooking and cleaning from the first morning in the Ram’s Head. And although Garth was a man of few words, and not given to praise, she sensed he was enjoying the home-cooked meals, and having cleaner living quarters. Jimmy had confided in her that his uncle had been much easier on him since they’d arrived and Mog had made it feel like a real home.

  Mog liked being there. Jimmy was such a nice lad, and it was good to live without all the petty squabbles she’d been used to with the girls. But with Annie refusing to pull herself together and not even making a decision about her future, it was very likely Garth would soon feel he was being used, and would ask them to leave.

  ‘What do you mean, “What’s going to become of you?” ’ Mog retorted. ‘You’ve got your life. You will also get something from the insurance company. And there’s the cashbox!’

  Mog had no idea exactly what the box contained, but it was heavy, and she knew Annie well enough to be sure she wouldn’t have risked her life to go back for it unless there was a considerable sum in it.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand, you’ve never had to furnish a house or take responsibility for the running of a business.’

  ‘I don’t recall you furnishing it either. Aside from the chandelier and the Persian rug, mostly everything else was left from the Countess,’ Mog snapped back. ‘As for me not running it, I’ve been there night and day, organizing the food, the laundry, cleaning the rooms, making the girls toe the line and looking after you and Belle. If it hadn’t been for me you would all have p
erished in your beds. So how can you suggest I know nothing of running a business?’

  ‘You’ve only ever been a maid.’

  Mog looked hard at Annie. She had never been a beauty. She had been attractive, with a good figure, but her skin was sallow and her brown hair dull. What she had was presence. She had only to walk into a room and people turned to her; she was cool and poised, with a hint of something exotic about her. Back in the days when she was one of the girls, this presence made men feel they were getting something extra special, and as men asked for her over and over again, perhaps she did really have it.

  Then, once the house was left to her, she made the transition from whore to madam seamlessly. Her natural dignity and poise commanded respect. She used just the right amount of frost with men who had once been her customers to make them know she was now off limits, yet they were still welcome in the house.

  But now she was wallowing in self-pity her dignity was all gone. She looked and smelled as rancid as some crone in the workhouse. The sad truth of the matter was that women on the wrong side of thirty weren’t likely to get many new opportunities, and even though there was sympathy for Annie now because of Belle’s disappearance and the fire, that would soon wither and die if she didn’t get up and start fighting back.

  ‘Only a maid!’ Mog said with a deep sigh. ‘Thank you for that, Annie. It’s nice to know I’m valued. I have dealt with the police for you since the fire, I’ve emptied your chamberpots, brought you meals, got you clothes, and all the while I’ve been grieving about your daughter too, as if she were my own. Yet I haven’t heard you say one word about her!

  ‘Only a maid, you say! Well, I sure as hell don’t know any other maid who has done all I’ve done for you. So maybe it’s time I looked out for myself, and stopped fretting about you and yours.’

  ‘Oh, you know I didn’t mean it like that,’ Annie said with a toss of her head. ‘I’m down, what do you expect?’

  ‘I hoped you might be glad we’ve still got one another,’ Mog retorted. ‘I expected that you’d start to think about what we can do to that bastard who took Belle and burned us down. Young Jimmy, Garth and Noah are all on your side, but it’s time you got yourself up and looking good again, and fought back.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Annie whimpered. ‘I’ve got no fight left in me. I wish you’d left me to die in the fire.’

  ‘There’s far worse things than losing a house,’ Mog said in bewilderment. ‘Having Belle snatched by a murderer was one. But you didn’t fall apart with that – surely the house don’t mean more to you than her?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Annie looked up at Mog with tear-filled eyes. ‘Owning that house compensated for all the other horrible things that were done to me. When the Countess left it to me it healed my wounds. I could stop dwelling on the men who raped me, and all the men I had to pretend to want because they were paying me. Now it’s gone, all those memories have come back. I’m nothing now.’

  ‘You are nothing if you can’t fight for your Belle,’ Mog retorted, tempted to slap some sense into Annie. ‘You should be down at Bow Street now making a fuss about the fire, not lying here festering. Demand to see the most senior man there, insist he investigates the fire and Belle’s disappearance. Why not use some of that money in the cashbox to offer a reward for information? There’s bound to be some little weasel around here who knows something – money always brings them out of the woodwork.’

  ‘The Falcon will just do something else to me,’ Annie said weakly.

  Mog rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘What else can he do? He’s already done the two worst things I can think of, there is nothing else to do.’

  ‘He could kill me.’

  ‘Well, you said you wished I’d left you to die in the fire, so that won’t be so bad,’ Mog said tartly. ‘Now, I’m going to fill up a bath for you down in the scullery. If you don’t get up to have it then I’m afraid you and I will have to part company.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Mog leaned across the counter and aggressively stuck her face up close to the police sergeant’s.

  ‘Why haven’t you been to Kent’s house or office and questioned him?’ she demanded to know. ‘He’s murdered a young woman, abducted a child and burned our house down. What more does he have to do before you act?’

  It was two days since Mog took Annie to task for not fighting back, and finally this morning Annie had agreed to come down to Bow Street to stir the police into action. But as she wasn’t being anywhere near assertive enough, Mog felt she had to take over.

  ‘We have already called at both Mr Kent’s home and office. He’s out of the country, so he couldn’t have set the fire.’ The fat, red-faced sergeant smirked as he relayed this information, clearly thinking that would make Mog back down.

  ‘Oh really!’ she sneered. ‘As if I’d believe that!’

  The policeman’s face darkened. ‘You should believe it because we have evidence he was a passenger on a boat leaving Dover on the fourteenth of January.’

  ‘That’s the day after Belle was snatched,’ Annie exclaimed. ‘So he took her out of the country! Where to?’

  ‘He was travelling to France with another man, no child with them,’ the sergeant said airily.

  Mog gasped. ‘Then he must have killed her,’ she said.

  ‘There is absolutely no evidence that he abducted the girl, killed her or set the fire.’ The sergeant rolled his eyes and looked wearily at the ceiling. ‘Mr Kent’s rent collector confirmed he is still out of the country. Now, be off with you, I’ve got work to do.’

  Annie turned away, but Mog wasn’t going to give up that easily. ‘Have you got a heart?’ she asked. ‘How would you feel if your daughter was stolen and your house burned down? It is a fact that Millie was murdered by this man Kent, an act witnessed by our Belle. So don’t you try to tell us he didn’t take her, or that he didn’t burn our house down to try and scare us into silence. And what is even more frightening is that you are taking the word of a man who owns some of the worst slum properties in London. He’s hardly likely to be reliable!’

  ‘Whores are even less so,’ the sergeant snapped back at her. ‘Now, get out before I think up something to charge you both with.’

  If Annie hadn’t grabbed Mog’s arm and pulled her out of the police station, Mog would have tried to slap the policeman’s face.

  ‘Did you hear what he said?’ she spat out as they reached the street. Her face was purple with fury.

  ‘Yes, I heard it, and I didn’t like it any more than you did,’ Annie said, taking hold of both Mog’s arms and shaking her gently to try to get her to snap out of it. ‘But he was spoiling to lock us up for something, and that wouldn’t help anyone. Noah will be round later, let’s talk to him and see what we can do next.’

  Mog slumped against Annie. She knew she was beaten for now and getting herself arrested would serve no purpose.

  It was another very cold day and the icy wind whipped even more colour into Mog’s cheeks as they walked back towards the Ram’s Head. Annie glanced sideways at Mog and saw by the way her mouth was set in a straight line that she was still angry, and that some of that anger was directed at her.

  Annie knew that Mog didn’t think she felt as deeply as she did about all the recent events, but she was wrong. It was just that Annie found it impossible to talk about her feelings. She wished she could be different, she would have liked to be able to spill out her anger and fear, but she couldn’t. Instead, Millie’s murder and Belle’s abduction were locked inside her head, going round and round, paralysing her so she felt unable to do anything. That was the reason why she stayed in bed for so long following the fire.

  If everyone thought she was suffering from shock at being trapped by the fire, she was glad of that, for she certainly didn’t want to admit how guilty she felt that she’d failed to protect her own daughter. Not once, but twice. She’d failed to check where Belle was on the night of the murder, and then failed to foresee tha
t Kent might try to silence her permanently because she’d seen it.

  Why on earth did she try and hush it all up instead of reporting who killed Millie immediately and sending Belle away to a place of safety?

  There was no real answer to that question. She’d behaved like an ostrich, hiding her head in the sand, imagining it would all blow over, and she would always feel ashamed of that. But she wished too that she was able to tell Mog that she loved her like a sister. She was always so constant, kind, honest and loyal, which was astounding when Annie was so often nasty to her. But then, she could always justify her nastiness by telling herself that Mog had a charmed life. She’d never been forced to sell herself, she’d always had a secure home and job where she was valued, with no real responsibility. Furthermore, Belle had always loved her too, far more than she did her own mother.

  But deep down Annie knew Mog had earned that love, and she had to concede that Mog was also right to lay into her for staying in bed feeling sorry for herself. So she had made herself get up, take a bath, wash her hair and put on the clothes that Mog had so thoughtfully been out and bought for her. And as soon as she saw herself in the mirror looking much the same as she had before all her troubles began, she felt more like her old self too.

  She was very grateful to Jimmy for rescuing her beautiful red fox coat along with the cashbox. An admirer had bought the coat for her five years ago, and now that her future looked so uncertain she couldn’t help but wish she’d taken him up on his offer of marriage too. But that was all water under the bridge, and she was determined to pull herself out of this abyss she’d sunk into. Yesterday she’d spent a whole pound on a little russet velvet hat which went perfectly with her coat. Mog probably saw that as an entirely frivolous purchase, and would claim that she could have got a second-hand one for less than sixpence, but then Mog didn’t have a reputation for elegance herself, and she certainly wouldn’t understand Annie’s desire not to lose hers.