A Breach of Promise

by Anne Perry

  “Oh, yeah?” the man said with more bravado than assurance. “You got something nasty in mind, then, ’ave yer?”

  “Very,” Monk answered between his teeth. He had the perfect excuse. He knew all the details. He had helped pull the body out of the river before he had quarreled with his superior and left the police force. “Do you remember Big Jake Hillyard?”

  The man stiffened. He swallowed with a jerk of his throat.

  Monk smiled, showing his teeth. “Do you remember what happened to him?”

  “Anybody could say they done that!” the man protested. “They never got the bloke who done it.”

  “I know they didn’t,” Monk agreed. “But would anybody else be able to tell you exactly what they did to him? I can. Would you like to learn? Would you like to hear about his eyes?”

  “ ’E ’ad no eyes … w’en they found ’im!” the man squeaked.

  “I know that!” Monk snapped. “I know precisely what he had … and what he hadn’t! Where in St. Giles did you send those two little girls? I am asking you very nicely, because I should like to know. Do you understand me … clearly understand me?”

  The man’s face was white, sweating a little across the lips.

  “Yeah! Yeah, I do. It were ter Jimmy Struther, in Coots Alley, be’ind the brickyard.”

  Monk grinned at him. “Thank you. For the sake of your eyesight, that had better be the truth.”

  “It is! It is!”

  Monk had no doubt from the man’s expression that indeed it was. He let the man go, then turned on his heel and left.

  St. Giles turned out to be only another stop along the way. According to the woman he questioned there, the girls had remained for several years. She was not certain how many, seven or eight at least. Many of the patrons were too drunk or too desperate to care what a serving girl looked like, and the work was simple and repetitive. Little was asked of them, but then little indeed was given. Such affection or companionship as they ever received was from each other. And apparently each was quick to defend the other, even at the cost of a beating. The elder had once had her nose and two ribs broken in a brawl to protect her younger sister from the temper of one of the yard men.

  Monk listened to the stories, and a picture emerged of two girls growing up totally untutored and unhelped, learning what little they did by trial and error—sometimes acutely painful error—able to speak only poorly, words muffled by crooked lips, heard by partially deaf ears. They were sometimes mocked for their afflictions, feared for their appearance, as if the disfigurement might be contagious, like a pox.

  One woman said that she had heard them laugh, and on two or three occasions seen them play games with one another. They had a pet dog for a while. She had no idea what had become of it.

  “Where did they go from here?” Monk asked, fearing this would be the end of his pursuit. No one would know. They were too weary, too sodden in drink to remember anything, or to care. The next bottle was all that mattered.

  One woman shrugged and spat.

  A second laughed at him.

  The third swore, then mentioned the name of a whorehouse in the Devil’s Acre, the teeming slum almost under the shadow of St. Paul’s.

  That was all he could get from them and he knew it. He had already lost their attention. He rose and left.

  It took him two days of bribery, questioning, trickery and threats, and several abortive attempts, before he traced the girls to a brothel off a smith’s yard in the Devil’s Acre. It was a filthy place awash from overflowing drains and piles of refuse. Rats scuttled along the curbs above the gutters and people, almost undistinguishable from the heaps of rags, lay huddled in doorways.

  Monk had been there before, but it still made him sick every time. He was hunched up with a cold that seemed to reach through his flesh to the bones. It knotted his stomach and made him shake till he clenched his teeth together to keep them from rattling. It was partly the wind turning and whistling through the alleys and cracks between the walls, partly the damp which rotted and seeped everywhere. Only when it froze did the incessant sound of dripping stop. And partly it was the smell. It gagged in the throat and churned the stomach.

  He was too late. They had been there, scrubbing floors, carrying water from the standpipes four streets away, emptying slops in the midden and bringing back the buckets. They had gone the day before.

  Gone…! Where? Why?

  One answer to that leaped out at him: because he had been pursuing them. He had asked questions, threatened. He had made his intense interest only too apparent. Someone was frightened, with or without reason. Before he began to look for them they were simply two unwanted girls shunted from one place to another, tolerated as long as some use could be made of them. His persistence and ruthlessness had made them important. He had driven someone to try to get rid of them.

  Where do you get rid of people you don’t want to be found? Kill them—if you dare. If you are sure you can dispose of the bodies. The thought almost suffocated him. His heart seemed to rise in his throat and drive the breath out of him. He grasped the man by the front of his clothes and jerked him off his feet.

  “If you’ve killed them, I shall personally deliver you to the hangman! Do you understand me? If you don’t believe me, then I had better see to it myself. You will have a hideous accident! A fatal one—precisely as fatal as whatever you did to those girls.”

  “That in’t fair!” the man squawked, his eyes rolling.

  “Of course it isn’t!” Monk agreed, not loosening his grip in spite of the man’s gasping and struggling. “There are two of them—and there’s only one of you!” He grinned at the man savagely, as if a suddenly brilliant idea had occurred to him. “I’ve got it! I’ll string you up, and then when you’re nearly gone—when your lungs are bursting and your face is blue and you’re almost on fire—I’ll cut you down, throw a bucket of water over you, give you a glass of brandy, wait till you’re all right … then do it again! Once for each girl. Is that fairer?”

  “I din’t do nuffink!” The man saw death in Monk’s face and was nearly sick with fright. “They’re fine! They’re alive and well, I swear ter Gawd!”

  “Don’t swear. Show me!”

  “They in’t ’ere! I sold ’em … passed ’em on like. I give ’em a chance ter better theirselves. Get out o’ Lunnon and go somewhere better for their ’ealth.”

  “Where, precisely?” Monk snarled.

  “East! Across the water. Honest ter Gawd!”

  Monk jerked him up again harshly, hearing his teeth clatter. “Where?”

  “France! They’re gorn ter France!”

  Monk knew what that would be for. From there they would be shipped to God knows where: the white slave trade.

  “When?” He slammed the man back against the wall. He regretted it instantly. He could have knocked him senseless, even broken his neck; but then he would be able to tell him nothing. “When did they leave?”

  “Yest’y! They went down to the docks … Surrey Docks … yest’y night.” He thought he was staring death in the face. “They’ll go out on the afternoon tide terday.”

  “Ship?” Monk demanded. “What ship? Tell me you don’t know and I’ll send your teeth out through the back of your neck!”

  “The S-Summer Rose,” the man stammered. “So ’elp me Gawd!”

  Monk dropped him and he slid to the floor, lying there sobbing for breath. Monk turned and ran from the room, out across the dripping yard and along the alley overhung with creaking boards and sagging half roofs onto the wider, crooked street. He had about an hour and a half before the tide. He would like to have gone home and changed into respectable clothes and collected some more money, but there was no time.

  He stopped on the narrow pavement. It was beginning to rain. Should he go right or left? Where was the nearest thoroughfare where he might find a hansom? Would he even get one in the rain? He had very little money left. Not enough to bribe anyone. It was a good three miles to the doc
ks, even as the crow flies, farther on foot with all the twists and bends of streets. He had not time to go on foot, even if he ran, not and still search the docks for one ship, and that ship for two frightened girls, possibly kept below decks and bound.

  He turned towards the river and ran down the next alley and into another broader street. There were drays and carts in it, and one closed carriage. No hansoms.

  He started to swear, then saved his breath for running.

  Perhaps along Upper Thames Street, the closest one to the water, there would be cabs. It was too far! He needed to hurry. They would have to make a detour around the Tower of London.

  He stood on the curb waving and shouting. No one stopped. They all splashed by in the harder and harder rain, going complacently on their way. He started to run eastwards. Queenhithe Dock was a little ahead of him. Stew Lane Stairs were to the right.

  A long string of barges was pushing downriver, making slow way. The tide had not turned yet, but it would be slack water soon.

  Barges! On the river!

  He charged across the street, colliding with a costermonger’s cart, extricating himself with difficulty amid an array of curses from several passersby. He yelled an apology over his shoulder and sprinted down Dowgate Hill and along the narrow cut down to the stairs just as the last barge drew level. He yelled, waving both his arms, signaling the barge to slow down.

  The bargee must have thought it was some kind of warning. He eased a little, dropping back all the weight that his ships would allow. It was enough for Monk to run and leap. He barely made it. Without the bargee’s frantic help he would have fallen back into the icy water. As it was, he was soaked from the waist down and had to be hauled sodden and shaking onto the deck.

  “Wot the ’ell’s the matter?” the bargee demanded.

  “Got to get to the S-Surrey D-Dock!” Monk stuttered, shaking with cold. “Before the tide …”

  “Missed yer ship, ’ave yer?” the bargee said with a laugh. “Yer’ll be lucky if they ’ave yer. W’ere yer bin? Some ’ore’ouse up Devil’s Acre? Gaw’ lummy, yer look like ’ell! Wot ship d’yer want, mate?”

  “S-Summer R-Rose!” Monk found he could not control the shaking.

  “That ol’ bucket! Yer’d be better missin’ it, believe me.” The bargee bent his back and pushed harder on his heavy pole, steering with almost absentminded skill.

  Monk debated for a few moments whether to tell the man the truth or not. He might help … he might not give a damn. He might even make his own extra money in the trade.

  They were passing under London Bridge.

  He was weary of lying. He hated being tired and cold and filthy, and pretending he was something he was not.

  “They’ve taken two girls to sell in France, or wherever they send them after that.”

  The bargee looked at him curiously, trying to read his face.

  “Oh, yeah? What are they ter you, those two girls, then?”

  “Their father died and their mother discarded them. They are disfigured, and deaf. Their father’s sister is a friend of mine. She’s been looking for them for years.” It was a slight bending of the truth—in fact, but not in essence.

  “Left it a bit late, ’aven’t yer?” The bargee looked sympathetic, almost believing.

  “They’re shipping them out because they know I’m after them,” Monk explained. “It’s my fault!” he added bitterly.

  The bargee regarded the comment critically. “Yer’d be better on something a bit faster’n me,” he said with feeling.

  “I know that!” Monk retorted. “But you’re all I’ve got.”

  The bargee grinned and turned to look upstream. He stayed balanced for several moments while they drifted gradually past the bridge and towards the looming mass of the Tower of London, gray turreted against the sky.

  Monk was so tense with the passion of frustration he could have screamed, punched something with all his strength as they seemed to move even more and more slowly.

  A small, light fishing boat was corning up behind them, skimming rapidly almost over the surface of the water.

  The bargee put his fingers to his lips and let out a piercing whistle.

  A figure on the fishing boat cocked his head.

  The bargee whistled again, waving his arms in what seemed to be some signal language.

  The fishing boat changed course to come closer, then closer again.

  “Go on!” the bargee shouted at Monk. “Tell ’em wot yer tol’ me—an’ good luck to yer!”

  “Thank you!” Monk said with profound sincerity, and took a flying leap for the fishing boat.

  It was farther than he thought, and again he barely made it, being caught by strong hands and amid a good deal of ribald laughter. He told the men on the small boat his need, and they were willing enough to help, even eager. They put up more sail and tacked and veered dangerously through the current and across the bows of other ships, and were at the Surrey Docks half an hour before slack water and the turn of the tide.

  They even helped him look for the Summer Rose.

  It turned out to be a filthy two-masted schooner, low in the water but seaworthy enough to cross the Channel—as long as the weather was easy. He would not have backed her across the Bay of Biscay.

  Two of the fishermen came with him, armed with boat hooks and spikes.

  Monk led them, facing the captain squarely as they were challenged on deck. He stood arms akimbo, a boat hook held crossways in front of him like a staff.

  “You’ve got two girls on board. I want them. They’re taken illegally. Ten guineas reward for you if you give them up … a spike in your gut if you don’t.”

  The captain resented the force, but he looked at Monk’s eyes, and the size and weight of the men behind him, and decided ten guineas was sufficient to save his honor.

  “I’ll bring ’em up, no need to be nasty about it. Ten guineas, yer said?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Before I sail? I’m goin’ on the tide.”

  “After. You’ll be back.”

  “How do I know you’ll be back, eh?”

  “I’ll pledge it to the harbormaster. I’ll leave it with him.” Monk lifted the staff a little, and behind him one of the fishermen fingered his spike.

  The captain shrugged. He would not have got much for the girls anyway; they were as ugly as sin, and stupider than cows.

  He came back less than four minutes later half struggling with two girls of about twenty years of age or a little more. They were matted with filth, clothed in little more than rags, and obviously terrified. They both had mouths with twisted lips drawn back from their teeth in something close to a snarl or a sneer, but their eyes were wide and, even through the filth, clear and lovely. Above the twisted mouths their bones were delicate, with winged brows and soft, exquisite hairlines.

  Monk stared at them in shattering, overwhelming disbelief. He was almost choked by it, his heart beating in his throat. He was looking at faces which were caricatures of Delphine Lambert’s. Robbed of speech, almost of coherent thought, he simply held out his hands and let the staff fall.

  “Come …” he croaked. “I’ve come to take you home … Leda … Phemie!”

  12

  MONK THANKED THE FISHERMEN, unnecessarily for them. In their eyes the act had been its own reward. One of them had a sister who was blind. His imagination told him all too clearly how such a fate could have happened to her. They even helped Monk find a hansom and get the two terrified girls into it and made sure Monk had sufficient money for the fare to Tavistock Square.

  It was late afternoon and still raining hard. They were all filthy and shivering with cold. Perhaps it would have been more reasonable to go around to the back door, but Monk was so fired with triumph he did not even consider it. He paid the driver and helped the girls down onto the curb. He had actually given little thought as to what Martha would do with them, or what Gabriel Sheldon’s reaction would be to these two ragged and all but u
ncivilized creatures brought unannounced to his home. But surely he, of all people, would at least accept their deformities without mockery or revulsion.

  All the journey from the Surrey Docks, as he had sought to comfort and reassure the girls, his mind had been filled with the shattering realization that Delphine Lambert must be the same person as Dolly Jackson. The turmoil of emotions in her heart he could barely guess at! Now he set all thought of her aside and knocked on the door, then stood, holding the girls on either side of him, his arms around their shoulders. They were thin, undernourished, nothing like Zillah Lambert. But then Zillah was no blood relative, as he knew.

  The door was opened by Martha Jackson. At first she did not recognize Monk, let alone the two young women with him. Her face showed weariness and impatience, not unmixed with pity.

  “If you go to the kitchen door Cook will give you a hot cup of soup,” she offered with a shake of her head.

  “Miss Jackson,” Monk said clearly, grinning at her in spite of himself. He had meant to retain some dignity and detachment. “These are your nieces, Leda and Phemie.” He kept his arms around them. “They’ve had a bad experience, and they are cold and hungry and frightened, but I told them they were coming home and that you would be very pleased to see them.”

  Martha stared at him, unable to grasp or believe. She looked at the two girls in front of her, their faces wide with wonder, not daring to hope that Monk’s words were true. They were dazed with exhaustion and the speed with which things had happened. And they only heard part of what was said. They needed to see a face, read an expression. They had to have words said slowly and with clear enunciation.

  Martha searched their expressions, their features beneath the dirt, and slowly her eyes widened and filled with tears. She took a gulp of air and with a mighty effort controlled herself.

  “Phemie?” she whispered, swallowing again. “Leda?”

  They nodded, still clinging to Monk.