Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Do you think the two men really went alone to France?’ Mog asked, suddenly breaking the silence.

  ‘I’m sure that was what the policeman was told,’ Annie said. ‘But then Kent could’ve bribed someone to say it. They might even have smuggled Belle on to the ship. I’d be interested to know who the other man was.’

  ‘How can we find out?’ Mog asked.

  ‘I could ask Noah to take the train down to Dover and ask in the shipping office,’ Annie said. ‘He seems to be a resourceful young man, I’m sure he’d be glad to go.’

  Mog seemed a little cheered at this and it was some time before she spoke again. ‘What are we going to do for ourselves, Annie?’ she asked. ‘I mean about making a living, and a new home. We can’t stay with Garth much longer.’

  Annie had been asking herself similar questions earlier that morning. It would be some time before she could expect any insurance money, and she doubted she’d get enough to rebuild the house or buy another. But putting that aside, she didn’t feel able to make any decisions about the future yet. She needed time on her own to consider all her options.

  ‘Maybe you should just make plans for yourself,’ she replied. ‘I’m not going to be able to keep a maid, at least not in the immediate future.’

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, Annie realized she had implied that Mog wasn’t first and foremost a trusted friend, but just an employee.

  ‘If that’s how you feel,’ Mog replied, her tone revealing how hurt she was.

  Annie tried to rephrase what she’d said, but she could see from Mog’s expression that it made no difference.

  Mog didn’t speak to Annie again that morning. Each time Annie tried to start a conversation she pretended she had something to do in another room. But at noon, when Noah arrived at the Ram’s Head, Mog appeared to forget her grievances.

  Noah had called the day after the fire to offer his sympathy and to ask if there was anything he could do for them, but this time he’d come laden with a bag of clothes, bed linen and towels from his landlady.

  ‘How very kind!’ Mog exclaimed, asking him to come through from the bar into the small parlour behind and offering him refreshments.

  ‘Mrs Dumas is a very kind lady,’ Noah said. ‘She felt very sorry for you and hoped these things might prove useful. She also wished she could offer you both a room in her house, but sadly they are all taken.’

  Annie asked him to thank Mrs Dumas for both herself and Mog, then launched into telling him what had been said at Bow Street. ‘I don’t think the police sergeant would lie about Kent going to France, do you?’ she asked, frowning deeply. ‘But there might be more information to add to that, like the name of his companion, how they arrived at Dover and so forth.’

  ‘I think the police must be convinced he’s gone to France, but I agree there is probably more we could find out.’

  ‘I think you could, Noah, after all, you are an investigator,’ Annie said, and went on to offer him a daily rate of pay plus his expenses.

  Noah beamed. ‘I can go to Dover and come back in one day,’ he said.

  ‘Could I go with you, Noah?’ Jimmy piped up from the doorway. ‘We could call at Kent’s house in Charing afterwards, it’s on the way back. I could climb in a window and look around for you!’

  Noah smiled. ‘I’d love your company, Jimmy, that’s if your uncle can spare you for a day. But I don’t think we’ll break in anywhere.’

  Jimmy looked a bit disappointed at that. The fire had brought it home to all of them that Kent was extraordinarily vicious and capable of killing anyone who tried to cross him. Jimmy was desperately worried about Belle; deep in his heart he felt she was alive, but in a way that was worse for he kept dwelling on what Kent might be doing to her. Having gone as far as searching his office, now he was ready to do whatever else was necessary to find Belle.

  Annie and Noah carried on chatting and Mog, still feeling bruised by Annie, went into the bar to see if she could help Garth. There were only a couple of men sitting in by the fire over a drink, and Garth asked her to mind the bar while he nipped down to the cellar.

  Another two men came in while he was gone and Mog served them with a pint of beer each. Garth came back just as she was giving them their change.

  ‘You’re good to have around,’ he said appreciatively. ‘I’m going to miss you when Annie decides to move on.’

  Mog was really surprised by the warmth of his remark. The previous day he’d praised her cooking and he’d thanked her for sewing buttons on his shirts, but she hadn’t imagined he was capable of missing anyone.

  ‘I won’t be moving on with her,’ Mog said sadly. ‘She wants to be on her own.’

  ‘Well, there’s a surprise,’ he said. ‘What’s she planning to do?’

  Mog shook her head glumly. ‘I don’t think she knows yet.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  Mog shrugged. ‘I’d make a good housekeeper, but who would want me when I’ve only worked in a brothel?’

  ‘I would,’ he replied.

  Mog half smiled, thinking he was joking, only so far she hadn’t found him to be one for jokes. ‘Go on with you!’ she said.

  ‘I mean it. You’ve made it more homely here in the short time you’ve been staying. I like that, and I know Jimmy likes you being here.’

  ‘He misses his mother,’ Mog said.

  ‘Yes, he does. I thought he’d spent too much time with her in the past, and said as much, but he’s not namby pamby, he’s a good lad.’

  Mog hadn’t expected to ever hear the big, red-headed man compliment anyone, let alone Jimmy, as he was the kind who acted as though he thought compliments were softness.

  ‘So are you saying you’ll take me on as your housekeeper? I mean, and pay me?’

  ‘Well, I can’t manage much. Will three shillings a week all found suit you?’

  Mog was used to five shillings, and she knew a housekeeper in a big house would get far more, but after what Annie had said this morning, she was just glad to be wanted by someone.

  ‘It will suit very well, Garth,’ she said with a smile. ‘So as housekeeper you won’t mind if I do some serious organizing and spring-cleaning around here?’

  He smiled then, and it was such an unusual sight it was like the sun coming out. ‘You can organize as much as you like back in the house,’ he said. ‘But the bar stays the way it is, I like it well enough.’

  ‘I’m really glad Uncle Garth asked Mog to be our housekeeper,’ Jimmy said to Noah as they walked down to Charing Cross station the next morning to catch a train to Dover. ‘I like Mog a lot and I didn’t want her to leave.’

  ‘What about Annie?’ Noah asked. He’d already been told she intended to go her own way.

  ‘Annie’s not so easy to like,’ Jimmy said thoughtfully. ‘Do you think she’ll get another brothel?’

  Noah gulped. He didn’t feel comfortable talking about such things to such a young lad. ‘I’ve no idea. But I think she’d do better to get some other kind of business so that if she gets Belle back she won’t be drawn into that.’

  ‘She might’ve already been forced into it.’

  Noah looked round at Jimmy and saw his eyes were filling with tears. ‘Let’s hope not,’ he said, squeezing the lad’s bony shoulder. ‘You’ve got the advantage over me, Jimmy – you see, I didn’t get to meet Belle. Tell me what she’s like.’

  ‘She’s real pretty with dark, curly hair, shiny as wet tar, and deep blue eyes. Her skin’s got a kind of peachy glow too, not like most of the girls around here. She smells good as well, clean and fresh, and her teeth are small and white.’

  Noah smiled. That detailed description showed just how badly Jimmy was smitten with her.

  ‘But it ain’t so much what she looks like as the way she is,’ Jimmy added for good measure.

  ‘And how is she?’

  ‘Bouncy, bright, she’s got a mind of her own. I met her the first time on the morning of the day Millie was kille
d. I asked if she was a whore ’cos she lived in a brothel.’

  ‘What did she say to that?’

  Jimmy smiled. ‘She was very indignant. She said you could live in a palace and still not be a queen. But it turned out she didn’t really know what a whore was then. She only found that out when she saw Millie get killed.’

  Noah blushed, for he had a sudden recollection of Millie standing in front of him in just her chemise and taking his hand to put it on her breast. His memories of Millie were all sweet and he didn’t like to hear her called a whore, or think what that word meant.

  ‘Girls like Millie don’t get much choice in what they end up doing for a living,’ Noah said. ‘Annie was the same, she was forced into it. So speak gently about such women, it is men just like us that turn them into what they are.’

  ‘I know that,’ Jimmy said with indignation. ‘Anyway, the next time I saw Belle was when we went down to the Embankment Gardens and she told me what she’d seen, blurted it all out, and cried about it. I reckon that’s a real bad way for a girl to find it all out.’

  ‘Were those the only times you met Belle?’

  Jimmy nodded glumly. ‘She made a big impression on me, I was so happy she wanted to be my friend. Then she was snatched before I could get to know her better.’

  They were approaching the station now and Noah stopped to buy a paper as he wanted to look at a couple of short pieces he’d written which were supposed to be in there today.

  ‘Have you been on a train before?’ he asked, glad to change the subject for something lighter as he could see Jimmy had become upset by talking about Belle.

  ‘Just once. Mother took me to Cambridge when she had to do a fitting for a lady she made clothes for. I thought it was marvellous, but it was a very, very long way.’

  ‘I don’t think Cambridge is much farther than Dover, that’s about sixty-five miles, but when you’re very young, just sitting for an hour can seen interminable.’

  ‘I’ve never seen the sea before. Will we be able to see it at Dover?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Noah laughed at the boy’s enthusiasm. ‘Shame it will be too cold to paddle.’

  It did seem an incredibly long way to Dover and it was very cold in the carriage too. By the time they got there Jimmy’s nose was as red as his hair.

  ‘You need a warm coat,’ Noah said. Jimmy was only wearing a threadbare tweed jacket and a grey muffler round his neck.

  ‘I don’t like to ask my uncle,’ Jimmy said. ‘Mog said she was going to broach the subject, and ask for some new boots too – mine have got holes in them – but I guess she’s forgotten.’

  ‘I’ve got a coat back at my place that’s too small for me,’ Noah said. ‘I’ll bring it round when we get back. But I wear my boots till they fall apart.’

  ‘You’re a real dandy dresser,’ Jimmy remarked, looking with admiration at Noah’s dark, knee-length coat, his bowler hat and stiff-winged shirt collar.

  ‘I have to be in my line of work,’ Noah explained. ‘You couldn’t expect the people I have to question about insurance claims to take me seriously if I looked like a costermonger. My mother is always saying “Clothes maketh the man”.’

  ‘My mother used to say that too,’ Jimmy said as they walked down the road towards the harbour. ‘I was always very well dressed until she got sick. Then we had to spend the money on the important things like her medicine and food. I used to wish I would stop growing so I didn’t need new things.’

  Noah put one hand on the lad’s shoulder. ‘She’d be really proud of you,’ he said. ‘I suspect you’ve even got your grumpy uncle to like you!’

  Jimmy chuckled. ‘He’s not so bad once you get used to him. His bark’s worse than his bite. My mother told me that he only became the way he is when his woman ran off with another man. I think now Mog is going to stay with us he might even get jolly because he really likes her!’

  Jimmy fell silent when he saw the sea. The wind had whipped up huge waves that were crashing on to the shingle beach with immense force.

  ‘It’s very different on a summer’s day,’ Noah explained, realizing Jimmy felt a little frightened by the sight. ‘It takes its colour from the sky, that’s why it’s dark grey now, but on a sunny day it would be a lovely clear blue and the waves really gentle. Maybe we can come again later in the year for you to see it.’

  ‘It’s so big,’ Jimmy said in an awed voice. ‘It just goes on and on for ever.’

  ‘Yet this is the closest bit to France, it’s only twenty-one miles away. People have swum it!’

  ‘Not on a day like today,’ Jimmy laughed. ‘You can see how cold it is just looking at it.’

  Jimmy was very impressed by the way Noah charmed the clerk in the ticket office. He was a thin-faced, rather miserable-looking man who had started out belligerently saying he couldn’t give out any information about passengers. But Noah said that he was an investigator for an insurance company and that he had police approval to continue his investigations, which made the clerk open a ledger and look back on the passenger list for the day in question.

  ‘Mr Kent and Mr Braithwaite,’ he said. ‘I remember them now because they wanted a cabin.’

  ‘Did they have a young girl with them?’

  ‘Oh no! It was just the two of them.’

  ‘Can you remember what Braithwaite looked like?’ Noah asked.

  The clerk frowned. ‘He had curly hair and he was more pleasant than the other man, but that’s all, it was dark, the light in here isn’t too good.’

  ‘Is there any way they could have smuggled a girl on to the ship without anyone noticing?’

  ‘No. Passengers’ tickets get checked again as they go up the gangway to the ship. We’re all vigilant for that.’

  ‘How did the men arrive at the ferry, do you know?’

  ‘I can’t see from here, but I imagine it was in a cab or a carriage as they had a trunk with them.’

  ‘A trunk!’ Noah exclaimed. ‘How big was it?’

  ‘I don’t know, they didn’t bring it in here. I just heard one of the porters ask if they wanted help with it.’

  ‘So that was it, they had her in a trunk,’ Noah said as they left the ticket office.

  ‘You can’t be sure of that,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘I am,’ Noah insisted. ‘Men don’t take a trunk unless they are emigrating, they’re more for women’s things and household linens. A man would just take a suitcase or bag.’

  ‘Would she be alive in the trunk?’ Jimmy asked fearfully.

  Noah sucked in his cheeks as he thought. ‘I’d say so,’ he said eventually. ‘Would anyone take the risk of being caught leaving the country with a body? That wouldn’t make any sense. But if that is how they got her out, then they must have drugged her to keep her quiet.’

  ‘That means they had something special lined up for her,’ Jimmy said with a tremor in his voice. ‘What could that be?’

  Noah didn’t need to give a reason, he could see that Jimmy already knew the answer. He reached out and squeezed the lad’s shoulder, wishing he could think of a less horrifying alternative. ‘You said Belle has guts and spirit, so she might very well outwit her captors,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to Kent’s house and see if we can find any clues there to where he’s taken her.’

  ‘You mean break in?’ Jimmy asked, his eyes lighting up.

  ‘I guess so,’ Noah smiled.

  At just after eleven that same night, Noah and Jimmy got back to the Ram’s Head. Garth was chasing out the last few drinkers from the bar and he told Jimmy to go through to the back and get Annie and Mog to join them in the bar.

  The two women came rushing out, their faces bright with expectation. Noah wished he had more to tell them.

  He went through what they’d discovered at Dover and then moved on to how they took the train back to Charing and broke into Kent’s house.

  ‘But it revealed nothing unusual but a brace and bit left in the hall,’ Noah said gloomily.

  �
�It wasn’t the kind of house we expected though, was it?’ Jimmy said, looking at Noah. ‘It was all nice and perfect, not the kind of place you’d expect for a man that owns slums.’

  Noah smirked at Annie. ‘He’s right, it made me think of a doll’s house. Every bit of furniture, every ornament, rug and cushion looked as though it had been picked and put in place with great care. Jimmy’s a good little burglar, he prised a small window open round the back and wriggled in like an eel. But when he came and opened the back door for me, I was almost afraid to go in, it was so neat.’

  ‘Funny though, it looked more like a woman’s house,’ Jimmy said. ‘I used to deliver clothes Ma had made to two women in Islington. Their place was like that, like no man had ever walked in there. It gave me the creeps. We checked upstairs but there was no women’s stuff anywhere.’

  ‘What’s a brace and bit?’ Annie asked.

  Noah demonstrated with his hands that it was a tool for making screw holes, mostly used by carpenters. ‘All his other tools were in the shed in the garden, placed neatly in a strap with leather loops to hold them. I think he used the brace and bit to drill breathing holes in the trunk. But we didn’t find anything else. So I think he may have taken Belle there just to collect the trunk and put her in it, then went on to Dover.’

  ‘Did you look through his papers?’ Annie said.

  ‘Yes, but there wasn’t much, only tradesmen’s bills for that place, all in the name of Mr Waldegrave, and I looked at every last one,’ Jimmy said earnestly. ‘You know you said Belle heard Kent asking Millie to go away with him? Well, do you reckon he did that place up for her? ’Cos that’s what it looked like.’

  Annie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Who knows? You can’t imagine a man who strangles a woman for saying the wrong thing caring enough about her to make his home nice for her. Maybe he never intended to keep her living with him. He might have been planning to ship her out somewhere else too.’

  Noah looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe that’s why he keeps his house like that. A good place to take girls to so they think they’re going to be on easy street, then he sells them on.’