Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘We don’t have to fret over whether we trust him,’ the bald man said with a mirthless chuckle. ‘Once he comes up with the girls we can dispose of him.’

  Jimmy knew he’d heard enough to be torn limb from limb if he was caught, so he sidled away from the door and crept back round the room on tiptoe. When he reached the outer door he was through it and down the stairs in the blink of an eye, nervous sweat dripping from him.

  *

  ‘You damn fool! What on earth did you think you were doing?’ Garth roared at Jimmy.

  He had been annoyed when he got up at nine and found his nephew had gone out, for he had an errand he wanted him to run. But when Jimmy still wasn’t back at eleven he became angry. A delivery of beer was expected, the fireplace in the bar needed clearing and the fire lit, plus dozens of other jobs. When Jimmy came running into the bar, red-faced and out of breath, Garth had jumped to the conclusion that the lad had been up to some mischief and had fled from whoever was chasing him. But when he questioned him and found that he’d been spying on Kent, fright made him even angrier.

  Despite all his bragging, Garth had failed to find the man Sly, and indeed to get any further information about Kent. Noah had drawn a blank as well, and it said reams about Kent’s reputation that no one dared talk about him. With the police showing absolutely no interest in apprehending anyone for the crime, it was over three months now since young Belle went missing, which almost certainly meant she was dead too. Garth had mentally given up, even though he wouldn’t admit that to Mog.

  To discover his nephew was still trying to do something both shamed him and made him feel inadequate. And it was his way to strike out when he felt like that.

  ‘I have to find out more about the man,’ Jimmy said defiantly. ‘And from what I heard today, I’d say they were snatching other girls and taking them away somewhere. I’m going to break into that office and see what else I can discover.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Garth roared. ‘You get caught by anyone involved with that club and you’ll be killed and thrown into the river.’

  ‘I won’t get caught, I know how I’m going to do it,’ Jimmy said stubbornly.

  ‘You won’t go near that place again,’ Garth bellowed at him.

  Jimmy was scared when his uncle yelled like that, but he stood his ground and looked up defiantly at the older man. ‘We’ve found nothing new for ages now, Uncle. Mog is grieving, Annie’s gone away because she can’t bear to think about the fire taking all she held dear, and I want to see that bastard hang for killing Millie, and get Belle back.’

  ‘She’ll be dead by now,’ Garth shouted in exasperation. ‘Surely you realize that!’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘I feel she’s alive, and so does Mog. But even if we’re wrong and she is dead, I still want to nail Kent.’

  Garth was pulled up short by his nephew’s courage and determination. It made him feel ashamed of himself. ‘You be very careful then,’ he said. ‘The last thing Mog and I want is to have you disappear too. And next time you want to play detective, for God’s sake tell us where you’re going.’

  Jimmy scuttled off then to do his chores, but he was grinning. He’d half expected his uncle to give him a thrashing; he certainly hadn’t expected to find concern.

  Garth slumped down on to a chair after Jimmy had gone, confused by his feelings and by the way his life had changed since his sister died and he took Jimmy in. In fact he didn’t remember having much feeling about anything, he was too busy taking care of the Ram’s Head, and he supposed the past had made him bitter.

  He and Flora had not been close as children. He’d only been six and his sister fourteen when she was apprenticed to a fashion house and went to live in there. Flora finished her apprenticeship and stayed in that same fashion house as a seamstress until she married an Irish artist, Darragh Reilly, when she was twenty-five.

  Garth was seventeen at the time of the wedding and he could remember his father saying Flora had picked a broken reed. It soon became evident that his father was right, because Darragh believed himself to be far too talented an artist to soil his hands doing any other kind of work to bring in some money. Soon after Jimmy was born he disappeared, never to return, and Flora had to become the sole breadwinner.

  Garth did what he could to help her in the early days of her abandonment, but Flora was such a good seamstress that she soon began to make a living for herself. Garth always admired her for that, but he often fell out with her about how she was with Jimmy. He felt she was too soft with him, and that the lad would end up being a waster like his father.

  He had to concede now that he’d been wrong there. Jimmy was a hard worker, honest and loyal and a credit to his mother. He could do well in life if he just put this thing about Belle aside. But with Mog around he wasn’t likely to do that, she kept the flame burning.

  Annie had moved out six weeks earlier. She’d rented a house up in King’s Cross and was intending to take in boarders. While she’d been here she’d been idle, acted superior and walked about like she had a bad smell under her nose, so Garth was glad when she left. Mog might be grieving for Belle still but she kept it to herself and was a superb housekeeper. He really liked her, and he knew Jimmy did too.

  Mog came into the bar just as Garth was pouring himself a small whisky.

  ‘You’re starting early today!’ she said sharply. She glanced round at the fire which hadn’t been cleared from the night before. ‘It’s another cold day, it should be lit before customers come in.’

  ‘I’m the landlord here,’ Garth pointed out. ‘I do know what needs doing, and that’s Jimmy’s job.’

  ‘He’s doing his work in the cellar and trying to keep out of your way,’ Mog said, ‘so I’ll do the fire. He does so many jobs for me during the day, it’s the least I can do.’

  ‘You’re a kind woman,’ he said, his voice husky, for she had dropped to her knees by the hearth to rake out the cinders and for some reason the sight of that made him feel chastened. ‘I really don’t know how we got along before you came. Now we’ve got laundered shirts, good food and a clean house.’

  Mog sat up, dropping back to sit on her heels. She wore her grey apron over her dark dress; the apron would be changed to a snowy-white one once she’d finished all the morning’s dirty work. ‘I’m just doing my job,’ she said. ‘But mostly it don’t seem like a job, not as your Jimmy is such a lovely lad. I know you’re vexed because he won’t give up on Belle, and maybe you even think that’s my influence, but I can’t take any credit for his determination, he’s like a young bulldog with a bone.’

  Garth couldn’t help but smile for he remembered his mother saying that about him when he was a young lad. ‘I worry he’ll get himself beaten up,’ he admitted.

  ‘You should smile more,’ Mog said boldly. ‘It makes you handsome.’

  Garth laughed then. It occurred to him that he had become inclined to smile and laugh a great deal more since Mog had come to live here – she had a way with her.

  ‘If I should smile to make me more handsome, I think you should wear something prettier than a black dress day after day,’ he said teasingly.

  ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,’ she said, looking right at him with those steady grey eyes. ‘And if I started dressing up, folk would say I’d set my cap at you.’

  ‘Since when did you care what folk say?’ he asked, amused by her response.

  ‘I knew exactly who I was when I worked for Annie,’ Mog said thoughtfully. ‘I was her maid, housekeeper, mostly mother to her child too. I might have known all the comings and goings in her place, learned stuff about our gentlemen that would curl your hair, but everyone round here knew I wasn’t a whore. I was proud of that, it gave me dignity.’

  ‘You still have that dignity,’ Garth said. ‘Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘Folk are waiting for me to slip up,’ she said. ‘Few people around here really liked Annie, she was too cold and haughty. They thought the same
of me too, without ever knowing me. Now Annie’s moved on, they want to gossip about me. Believing I was warming your bed to keep a roof over my head would give them plenty to chew on.’

  It was a surprise to find Mog was so astute. Garth already valued her for her homemaking skills, but he had been guilty of assuming she was a simple soul. In a flash of intuition he realized she was sharper than he was, and that she’d only stayed working for Annie because she loved Belle.

  ‘I would never give anyone the idea you were warming my bed,’ he said, surprised at himself for caring what his customers and neighbours thought about Mog.

  ‘But I’ll keep wearing the black dresses and aprons to spare you the embarrassment of them thinking you are,’ she retorted, and got back to clearing the fireplace.

  Garth busied himself straightening up bottles behind the bar but all the time he was watching her busily shovelling up the ash into a tin box. It was clear she believed herself to be unattractive, and no doubt Annie had reinforced that view for her own ends. But Garth was attracted to her curvy little body, and he saw a sweetness in her face that came from within. As a younger man he’d always gone for the kind of saucy, pretty women who use their feminine wiles to get what they want. But he knew to his cost that their kind were mostly insincere. They turned into treacherous harpies if the presents, attention and drink didn’t flow their way fast enough. Maud, his last woman and the one that set his heart on fire, had been a fine example. He’d vowed when she skipped off with another man, taking his savings with her, that he’d never let another woman into his life.

  Two days later at four in the morning, with the sounds of his uncle’s snoring reverberating through the Ram’s Head, Jimmy slipped out through the back door into the dark streets. He ran all the way down to the market, only slowing down to side-step the porters pushing heavily laden carts of fruit, flowers and vegetables.

  He went to Maiden Lane first, but as he expected the club door was padlocked. He then went round to the Strand, crossed over the road by the Savoy Hotel and looked up at the windows on the opposite side. Most of the windows above the rank of shops were part of the shop or storeroom beneath; in some cases the owners lived there. The office Jimmy wanted to reach was very obvious because the windows hadn’t been cleaned in years, and furthermore the smallest pane of glass on the end had been broken sometime and a piece of wood put over it, something he’d noticed when he was peering through the crack in the door.

  There was a stout-looking drainpipe running from the top of the building right down to the street, and it was only a foot or so from the first-floor window sill. Even from across the street in darkness, Jimmy could see that the sill was a wide one. Stuffed into his coat pocket he had a bunch of keys, a couple of candles and a few tools for picking locks and prising doors open. He also had a length of stout rope wound round his chest beneath his coat. But he thought he could get into the office without using any of these things.

  Checking first to see there was no one about, he crossed over, jumped to get a grip on the drainpipe and then began shinning up it. He had always been good at climbing; his mother had said he was like a cat.

  Once up on the window sill, he examined the broken window and found to his delight that the wood was only tapped tightly on to the frame, to keep the rain and cold out rather than burglars. A little prise and a yank and it was off, but before leaving the window sill Jimmy took the rope from his chest and secured it tightly around the drainpipe in case he had to make a hasty exit.

  Inside the office Jimmy lit his candle, then pulled the curtains across the window. They were very old, stiff with dirt and smelled bad, but at least they were thick and would stop anyone noticing the light from the street. Once they were pulled he lit the overhead gaslight, for he could be quicker if he could see well.

  It was an untidy, jumbled office, and very dirty, with ashtrays piled high with cigar stubs, used glasses, cups and plates everywhere. The waste bin was overflowing with paper and there was cigar ash all over the floor. It didn’t look as if the place had been cleaned for months.

  The drawers in the desk revealed nothing of interest, only some account books which appeared to be the club’s. In an unlocked cashbox there was close on fifty pounds, perhaps a few days’ takings. But he closed that up and put it back where he’d found it, for he wasn’t there to steal.

  Next he opened the filing cabinet, but there was no organization there, just piles of papers shoved in on top of one another. Clearly the man who owned the place didn’t understand the concept of filing.

  Jimmy lifted out a pile of papers and put them on the desk to go through. There was a variety of reasons for the correspondence. Some of the letters were about this building; it seemed Mr J. Colm was renting the property in Maiden Lane from a company in Victoria. They were writing to him to warn him they’d had complaints from other tenants about noise, drunks leaving the building and violence spilling out into Maiden Lane. Some of the letters threatened him with eviction, but Jimmy saw such threats went back over four or five years, so it seemed Mr Colm was either ignoring them, or paying his landlords something to keep them sweet.

  The other correspondence was mainly from suppliers of drink. There was also a list of women’s names and addresses who Jimmy thought might be dancers or waitresses. He put that in his pocket.

  He trawled right through the contents of the cabinet, but there was nothing that proved a link or partnership between him and Kent, or indeed anything other than stuff directly to do with running the club. He pulled the curtain back a little and guessed by a faint light in the sky that it was getting on for six, and he must leave before the Strand became busy with people.

  He was just going to open the curtain before turning off the gas when he saw an address tacked on to the wall by the window. It was one in Paris, and he probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but the name was Madame Sondheim, and to an eighteen-year-old boy with imagination, that sounded like a brothel keeper’s. So, just in case, he snatched it down and stuffed it in his pocket, then opened the curtains and turned out the light.

  Once out on the window sill Jimmy saw several people walking along the Strand. But it was raining and dark and they had their heads down, and delaying his descent to the street would do him no good as more and more people would soon be about.

  He let the rope drop down over the sill, then nimbly went down it hand over hand. A man coming towards him looked shocked and surprised, and called out for him to stop. But Jimmy took off at speed, belting round the corner, then doubling back along Maiden Lane to Southampton Street. The man must have decided against giving chase, for there was no hue and cry or pounding feet following him, and by the time he reached the market, Jimmy slowed down to a mere stroll.

  ‘Where have you been, Jimmy?’ Mog asked as he walked in the back door. She had a wrap over her nightdress and her hair was loose on her shoulders. ‘You’re soaking wet! What time of day is this to go out?’

  ‘A good time if you want to get some information,’ Jimmy said with a grin.

  ‘You haven’t been getting into that man’s office again?’ she asked in alarm.

  ‘Not the one you mean,’ Jimmy said. ‘Why are you up so early anyway?’

  ‘I heard you slip out,’ she said reproachfully, and wagged her forefinger at him. ‘I was that worried I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I came down to make a cup of tea in the end.’

  For just a brief second Mog had an expression on her face that was so like his mother’s it made a lump come up in Jimmy’s throat. ‘Don’t look like that,’ he whispered.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like my mother used to.’

  Mog came closer to him, took off his cap and ruffled his hair. ‘Looks like I’ve got to take her place,’ she said. ‘We’ll have a cuppa and you tell me what you found.’

  Some half an hour later over a second cup of tea Jimmy had told Mog everything.

  ‘This Madame Whatsit might not be anything to do with Belle,�
� Mog said sadly, but she continued to stare at the piece of paper as if willing it to answer her questions. ‘As for the list of girls or women, it’s far more likely they are girls that work for him.’

  ‘But I did hear him talking about getting girls, and he said someone had turned yellow-bellied on him. Garth said the man called Braithwaite was known as Sly, and we know Braithwaite went to France with Kent, so maybe it was him who turned yellow-bellied. If we could just talk to him!’

  ‘A man like that wouldn’t admit anything he’d done, not even after he was sorry he’d done it,’ Mog said sadly. ‘He’d probably cut your tongue out to shut you up if you got anywhere close to him. But this Madame Whatsit, she might be worth following up. Noah might be game for going there and finding out about it.’

  ‘Shall I run round to his place and leave a message for him?’ Jimmy asked.

  Mog sighed. ‘I think we’d better talk it over with your uncle first. But let’s have another look at that list of girls. Some of them live close by here – I could make a few enquiries about them myself.’

  Later that morning, with her chores completed and a steak and kidney pudding simmering in a pan on the stove, Mog went round to Endell Street to the first address on the list.

  Endell Street was a mixed area. Some of the buildings and houses were in a bad state and poor people lived in them in overcrowded and insanitary conditions, but the rest of the houses were neat and tidy, homes to decent, hard-working people – cab drivers, carpenters and the like. Mog was very surprised to find that number eighty was one of the tidy ones, with snowy-white lace curtains at the window and a well-scrubbed doorstep.