‘I shall endeavour to do so.’ Adam was taken aback by the sudden vehemence of the man’s words.
But Pennethorne had not finished. ‘And what about the girls?’ he asked. ‘You think we force ’em to shed their petticoats? Better than goin’ on the streets, ain’t it? Girl bares her body – where’s the harm in that? Like as not, this Dolly bint enjoyed it.’
‘Perhaps she did, Mr Pennethorne,’ Adam said, taking a step backwards, ‘perhaps she did. But it would have been all one and the same to you and Mr Walter Patch had she not done so, would it not?’ And, politely doffing his hat, Adam turned and left the shop.
* * * * *
‘So, Quint, Dolly was supplementing her income by exposing her charms to Pennethorne’s photographer.’ The two men were standing opposite the entrance to the Prince Albert and watching the people who went in and out of the theatre.
‘Bit of a come-down, ain’t it? Dancing for the gentry one night and waggling her chest and bedding at a camera the next.’
‘That’s true. Facilis descensus Averno.’
‘If you says so.’ Quint looked wary at the sound of Latin, as if the words of the ancient language might be some malign spell purposely directed against his well-being.
‘“Easy is the descent into hell,” Quint. Virgil, Aeneid, Book Six. One minute Dolly’s tripping the light fantastic in one of London’s best-known theatres; the next she’s working in a penny gaff out east – although we never did find out which one. And the next she’s so desperate for cash, she’s baring her body for a vendor of indecent pictures.’ Adam shook his head. ‘It doesn’t seem to make sense. Why did she need the money so very badly? We can surely assume that her admirer from the Foreign Office was generous enough with his gifts.’
‘Maybe summ’un was rooking ’er. And she didn’t want ’er friend to know.’
‘Perhaps she wanted to get away from her friend and needed the money to do so.’ Adam pondered the possibilities. Blackmail was not beyond the bounds of credibility, he supposed, although any blackmailer would have been more likely, surely, to direct his attention to Dolly’s paramour. And, if she wanted to escape from her liaison, there must have been methods of doing so that did not involve her taking off her clothes.
‘You goin’ to see this Patch cove in Bride Lane?’ Quint asked.
Adam nodded. ‘I shall do so. Although I am not sure how profitable such a visit will prove. In all likelihood, he will have no more to tell me than Mr Pennethorne.’
‘Who will ’ave tipped ’im the wink you’re on the way to see ’im.’
‘Indubitably. So he will be well prepared with lies and equivocations. Perhaps I should have visited him as soon as I left Pennethorne. But, as I say, I doubt he will have more to tell us than that gentleman. In the meantime, I think we need to speak to this young lady, Quint.’ Adam nodded in the direction of the tall, dark-haired chorus girl to whom he had spoken several days earlier. She had emerged from the theatre and was making her way towards New Oxford Street.
‘The one with the feather boa and the red hat?’
‘The very one.’
‘We could speak with ’er now.’
‘No.’ Adam shook his head decisively. ‘I am of the opinion that we should speak to her in her own home. She is more likely to tell us what we want to know. On the street or in the theatre, she will have the opportunity to evade our questioning.’
‘Where’s she live, then?’
‘That is what you are about to find out. Follow her.’
The two men were already walking in the woman’s wake as she strode purposefully along Drury Lane.
‘Me?’ Quint spoke indignantly. ‘Ain’t you following ’er as well?’
‘She has met me at the theatre. She will recognize me, but she has never seen you. Track the lady to her lair, Quint.’
‘What if she gets on a bus? Or a tram?’
‘She will hardly do the latter,’ Adam said, exasperated by his servant’s determination to place obstacles in the path of doing almost any task that was asked of him. ‘The nearest tramways are miles away. If she takes a bus, then so will you.’
‘That might be a bit of a poser,’ Quint said warily.
‘In God’s name, why?’
‘I ain’t exackly got a pocketful of jingles for the fare.’
‘What of the money I gave you last Friday?’
‘It’s gorn.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ Adam took several coins from his jacket pocket and thrust them into his manservant’s hands. ‘Here is more. Just keep the girl in sight.’
* * * * *
In the event, the young woman did not take a bus or a tram, as Quint had feared. She walked along New Oxford Street and then turned into Tottenham Court Road. With Quint grumbling in her wake, she took a turn to her left into Goodge Street. There she stopped to talk to a flower girl who was selling wilted blooms from a doorway. She obviously knew the girl and they chatted for what seemed to Quint, impatiently stamping his feet on the opposite side of the road, like hours. Eventually, with a wave, she left the flower girl and continued on her way. Goodge Street ran into Mortimer Street, and still the woman walked on.
‘Where the ’ell’s she going?’ Quint muttered as his quarry crossed the north side of Cavendish Square and then veered right into Wimpole Street. She was now heading towards the Marylebone Road. In this street of elegant houses from the previous century, the young woman with a tattered feather boa looked out of place; Quint himself was beginning to feel a little conspicuous. He watched from a distance as she approached the main door of one of the houses and rapped firmly on it. ‘What’s she about?’ he said to himself. ‘They’ll send her on her way faster than a dog’ll lick a dish.’
He was wrong. The door was opened by a maidservant and the dancer from the theatre was immediately admitted. It was a brief visit. With Quint still puzzling over the question of why she would be a welcome visitor at such an address, the young woman emerged. She was followed onto the pavement by a plump gentleman in a grey morning coat and darker trousers. They turned to face one another and the man began to speak. He continued to do so for some time, his hand reaching out to rest occasionally on the girl’s arm. She made several attempts to interrupt the man but he waved them away. Just as Quint was wondering whether or not to approach a little closer in the hopes of hearing what was being said, the girl shouted, ‘I ain’t ’aving it, I tell you!’ and turned away from the gentleman in the morning coat. With a flourish she threw her tatty boa over her shoulder and set off towards Regent’s Park.
The man watched her go and then, visibly annoyed, retreated into his house.
Shaking his head, Quint followed the girl. When she reached the Marylebone Road, she paused briefly before negotiating the traffic and crossing to the other side. She turned towards Baker Street. Quint nearly lost her amid the crowds. He reached the park side of the thoroughfare himself and then caught sight of her red hat bobbing along amongst less colourful headgear. He increased his pace as the hat disappeared in the direction of the Baker Street station.
The girl, it seemed, was intent on taking the new underground railway which ran between Paddington and Farringdon Street. In the eight years it had been running, Quint had been an irregular traveller on it. Out of curiosity he had used it a few times in its inaugural year, but he had been unimpressed. In his heart of hearts, he did not truly like trusting himself to any means of getting from A to B more sophisticated than his own two legs. And rattling along in an open truck beneath the city streets, as third-class passengers were obliged to do, had not appealed to him. However, now it seemed he had no choice.
The girl entered the station and bought a threepenny ticket. Quint did the same. Descending into the gloom of the underground station at Baker Street, he felt the chill in the a
ir increase. ‘Colder than the bleedin’ grave down ’ere,’ he muttered to himself, confirmed in his belief that this was an unnatural mode of transport. The smell of the steam from the railway engine drifted up the stairs and grew stronger as Quint approached the subterranean platform. The large numbers of people gathered on it and the swirling fog left by the train that had departed a few minutes before made it difficult for him to keep his eye on the girl, but he could still just see her. The bright red of her hat was a beacon which he could follow as she made her way along the platform until she was nearly at the point where the black maw of the tunnel gaped. Quint trailed in her wake, pushing unceremoniously past his fellow travellers. Several of them voiced their discontent as he shouldered them aside, but he ignored them all. He took up a position some dozen yards short of where the girl was standing, watching as she reached up and adjusted her hat.
When the next underground train pulled into the station, the young woman stepped into a second-class carriage. She found a seat and, carefully arranging her dress, settled into it. She took no notice of Quint who, together with a crowd of other passengers, had followed her onto the train. The train set off into the tunnel and Quint swayed from side to side, trying to maintain his balance. He stumbled, cursed and regained his footing. Why couldn’t the bleedin’ dollymop just walk home, he thought, as engine and carriages headed noisily through the dark towards Portland Road, the next station on the line. She’d walked everywhere else.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘She got off at King’s Cross, didn’t she?’
Quint was leading his master into the maze of streets behind the station. All of them looked alike to Adam: dismal terraces of grey brick. The only landmark he knew in this part of London, apart from the station itself, was the German Gymnasium, and that was some distance to the west. Quint, however, moved with confidence as if he knew the area of old. Not for the first time, the young man was impressed by his servant’s knowledge of the city.
They turned a corner into a street that, to Adam, was indistinguishable from a dozen others but which seemed familiar to Quint. Ahead of them an old woman in a battered bonnet and a coarse shawl was crossing the road. She was carrying a basket over one arm, and a grubby bundle tucked under the other. She passed a bill-sticker, halfway up his ladder, who was struggling to affix a large poster to a wall already entirely covered with them. ‘Every Disease of the Eye . . .’ said one that caught Adam’s attention with its huge lettering, ‘. . . Cured by Ede’s Patent American Eye Liquid.’ To the left of that, another was proclaiming the virtues of Crosby’s Balsamic Cough Elixir. Quack potions both, Adam thought.
Quint followed the old woman across the road, beckoning to his master to do the same. The two men walked fifty yards along the terraced street. The old woman, labouring under her load, turned into another street.
Quint came to a halt at one of the houses. ‘’Er rooms are there,’ he said, pointing downwards. ‘It’s a thousand quid to a bit of dirt that she knows where the Delaney girl is.’
Looking over the area railings, Adam could see a faint light shining in the basement. A short flight of stone steps, narrow and very steep, led down to a tiny square yard. ‘You stay here, Quint. She won’t wish to entertain two strangers appearing on her doorstep.’
‘Might not want to entertain one.’
‘True, but I am a presentable enough visitor. And she knows me from my visit to the theatre.’
Adam descended gingerly. Once in the yard, he was confronted by a red door, so low that anyone of his height would have to stoop to enter through it. He could hear the sound of someone playing a piano in the basement room. He tapped lightly on the door and the music stopped immediately. There was a pause, and then the door was abruptly pulled open. The girl from the chorus looked out and eyed him up and down.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. She didn’t sound surprised to see him. ‘I thought you might find me. You’d best come in.’ She stepped back to allow Adam to enter. ‘I don’t want no bleedin’ hanky-panky, mind. I’m not the girl you want for that. Not tonight, anyways.’
Adam held out his hands as if to reassure her that hanky-panky was similarly absent from his own plans for the evening. He ducked his head and walked into the basement flat the girl called home.
A cottage piano stood against the left-hand wall, looking oversized within the narrow confines of the room. On top of it, several slim volumes of sheet music rested. Glancing quickly at the illustrated covers, Adam saw one that was entitled Marriott’s Cremorne Quadrilles and another that appeared to be the piano accompaniment to a song called ‘The Belle of Belgravia’. Above the piano were two coloured and framed prints: one of the queen and the late Prince Albert, and the other of a flock of sheep grazing on some grassy meadow. Both queen and consort, Adam noted, looked cross-eyed, while the sheep were a shape no living sheep had ever been.
‘They ain’t mine,’ the girl said, noting the direction in which Adam’s eyes had strayed. ‘They come with the room. I ain’t got no taste for sheep.’
‘What about Her Majesty?’
‘I can take ’er or leave ’er.’
Adam smiled. ‘I do not think we were properly introduced,’ he said. ‘My name is Adam Carver.’ He bowed his head in a formal acknowledgement.
‘And mine’s Hetty. Hetty Gallant.’ The girl laughed. ‘Ain’t you the real gent?’
Adam bowed again. ‘I strive to be so,’ he replied.
‘And what’s a real gent like you wanting with a girl like me?’ Her voice was flirtatious. ‘Followed me all the way from the theatre, have you? I was half expecting to see you the other night. You’re the one who was looking for Dolly.’
‘I am still looking for Dolly.’
‘Well, I ain’t so sure as I can ’elp you.’
‘Can’t help me or won’t help me, Miss Gallant?’
The girl shrugged, reaching out her left hand and playing a swift trill of notes on the piano. ‘Bit of both, maybe,’ she said.
‘Your dancing master was of the opinion that Miss Delaney might have gone off with one of her admirers. Could that be true, do you think?’
‘You ain’t going to get much out of McIlwraith in the way of the truth. He’ll lie and look at you. And there you were’ – Hetty was scornful – ‘believing any old taradiddle he cared to tell you.’
‘I am too trusting, perhaps.’
‘Ain’t you just!’
‘Why would Mr McIlwraith “lie and look at me” about Miss Delaney?’
Hetty laughed again. ‘Cos he makes some extra readies by letting the likes of that octerpus Wyndham come backstage and make a bleeding nuisance of ’imself. He prob’ly thought you was after Dolly.’
‘So he exaggerates the extent of her interest in this man Wyndham.’ Adam was beginning to understand.
‘And he reckons you’ll be all worked up worrying about him. So you’ll pay Mac the Toad a bit more to see her.’
‘Privileged access, as it were.’
‘You’ve got it now.’ Hetty spoke like a schoolmaster recognizing that a particularly dim pupil had made a sudden intellectual breakthrough. ‘He’ll ’ave been disappointed you didn’t go back to ’im with your tongue ’anging out and ’arf a sov in your ’and.’
‘And is this Wyndham the paragon of male beauty that Mr McIlwraith claims?’ Adam knew from his own encounter with Adolphus Wyndham that he was a very undistinguished-looking gentleman, but he was curious to know what the girl might say.
‘If you mean, is ’e a looker, no, ’e ain’t. All right, I s’pose, if you like that kind.’
‘And what kind is he?’
‘Young,’ Hetty said, in a voice that suggested she had little time for those of tender years. ‘Bum-fluff on his cheeks. You could smear it with butter and get the cat to lick it off. But’
– now the young woman spoke in tones of disgust – ‘he’s just another one that’s up your petticoats before you’ve chance to tell ’im your name.’
‘So your friend had no particular interest in Mr Wyndham?’
‘As I said at the theatre, Dolly ain’t got no time for ’im. Whatever McIlwraith might say.’
‘So if Mr McIlwraith hasn’t told me the truth about Dolly, maybe you can. Do you know where she is?’
‘Why’re you after ’er?’ Hetty smoothed invisible creases from her dress before shooting a shrewd look in Adam’s direction. ‘Dolly’s been a good friend to me. I ain’t going to be the one to land ’er in ’ot water.’
‘I’m beginning to suspect that she may already be in hot water, Miss Gallant. She has disappeared from her home and from her place of employment. Before she did so, she was earning extra money by – what shall I say? – “unconventional means”.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’ Hetty’s hands were on her hips, her chin thrust aggressively forward. ‘’Ave you seen those pictures of ’er peeled to the buff—?’ She clearly had more to say but she was interrupted by a sudden noise from outside. ‘What the ’ell was that?’
Adam moved quickly to the window and looked up. Quint was silhouetted against the late afternoon sky. He was reaching towards the cobblestones in order to pick up something that he had dropped.
‘It’s only my man,’ Adam said. ‘He’s waiting for me in the street.’
‘Your man?’
‘My servant. His name is Quint.’
‘Might as well arsk ’im down, then,’ Hetty said sarcastically. ‘The more the merrier.’
Quint had now retrieved whatever it was he had dropped, so Adam beckoned to him through the window. The sounds of Quint descending the stairs were swiftly followed by his appearance in the doorway.
‘Bleedin’ thing jumped out of my hand,’ he remarked, holding up a length of iron bar.
Carver's Truth Page 8
