The Coven

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I protest!’ said John Bellflower. ‘I protest in the strongest possible terms! I shall advise him not to reply to you, no matter what questions you put.’

  Jonas Rook laid his hand on John Bellflower’s shoulder and leaned close to his ear. ‘Shut your bone box, Mr Bellflower,’ he said, so quietly that nobody else but Beatrice could hear him. John Bellflower let out an explosive pfff! with his lips, and flapped one hand dismissively, like a fat Covent Garden Molly, but it was clear that he didn’t dare to answer back.

  They went back into the factory, and the constable guarding the door of George Hazzard’s office stood aside while Jonas Rook knocked and then entered without waiting for George Hazzard to reply.

  George was standing behind his desk, smoking the stub of a cigar. His cheeks looked rougher and redder than usual and his eyes were bulging and Beatrice didn’t think she had ever seen a man look so comically furious. His accountant, Edward Veal, was sitting opposite him, blowing his nose noisily into his handkerchief.

  ‘What now?’ George demanded. ‘And what in the name of God is she doing here?’

  ‘Widow Scarlet has carried out the valuable service of identifying the deceased for us,’ said Jonas Rook. ‘Following her identification, Mr Hazzard, and on the basis of certain evidence that she has submitted to the justice office, I may require you to accompany me to Bow Street in a day or two for further questioning. It will depend on what the surgeon has to say about the way in which these unfortunate young women met their end.’

  ‘She has evidence? What tosh! The woman’s distracted!’

  ‘Well, sir, that will be for a judge and jury to decide, should the case go before the court.’

  George puffed the last quarter-inch of his cigar, and then angrily stubbed it out. He glared at Beatrice as if he were quite prepared to come stalking across his office and slap her, hard.

  Jonas Rook said, ‘Widow Scarlet has some questions she would like to put to you, if you have no objection, or even if you do.’

  ‘Questions? Questions? This is a woman who can’t even see men swinging a pig without sticking her inquisitive nose in!’

  Beatrice stepped up close to his desk. ‘George, please. It’s about those girls you last recruited from St Mary Magdalene’s. I’m simply curious to know where they are now. I was hoping I might be able to talk to them today, and offer them some consolation. All of them knew the deceased girls well, and two or three of them were very close. To see their friends’ bodies in such a condition must have distressed them dreadfully. Yet I haven’t seen a single one of them anywhere.’

  George narrowed his eyes, and then looked across at Edward Veal, who was still mopping his nose. Edward Veal shrugged, as if to suggest that he couldn’t help.

  ‘Actually, sir, I would be interested to hear your answer to that myself,’ said Jonas Rook.

  George was silent for a few moments, but then he suddenly barked out, ‘If it’s any of your business, which it manifestly isn’t, I suffered them all to take a day’s holiday. They haven’t even seen the bodies, and of course they won’t. By the time they return, you’ll have toted them all off to the mortuary, and thank the Lord for that.’

  ‘You gave them a day’s holiday?’ asked Beatrice. ‘Why? They haven’t even been working for you a full week yet. It’s not a public holiday today, is it?’

  ‘The reason is... listen... the reason is that we’d intended to carry out some routine maintenance work in the factory today. The fire pans and the chopping machines both require attention. That meant we didn’t need so many girls stripping leaves. It’s – it’s the last week of Southwark Fair, so I arranged for them to go down early and spend the day there. I even gave them a shilling each – didn’t I, Edward? – to spend however they wished. Am I to be under suspicion for being such a benevolent employer?’

  ‘You sent them down to Southwark Fair?’ asked Beatrice. ‘But only those five girls? Aren’t the rest of your employees a little disgruntled?’

  ‘Not at all, because they’ve already had treats enough aplenty,’ George snapped back. ‘I grant them a free day in September each year to go to the Bartlemy Fair, and I always reward them at least a penny an hour if they put in extra hours.’

  ‘But they’ll be coming back here this evening, those girls?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer that, Beatrice. You’re offending me deeply with all these vindictive questions. You can’t deny that I went to extraordinary lengths to mollify you after our earlier contretemps. Is this how you repay me?’

  ‘George,’ said Beatrice. Her bodice was beginning to feel tight now, and her voice sounded high and breathy. ‘How is it possible that those poor dead girls were buried in your garden, in full view of your office window, without you being aware of it?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer that, either,’ said George. ‘I’ve had more than enough of this now. I am innocent of any wrongdoing, and I take the gravest exception to your suggestion that I had anything whatsoever to do with the deaths of these young women. I took them in. I gave them employment, and accommodation, and what did they do in return? They defaced their dormitory wall with satanic symbols, and sacrificed my goat, and now they have falsely implicated me in their own apparent suicide.’

  ‘Suicide?’ said Beatrice. ‘How can you possibly say that they committed suicide?’

  George was about to snap back at her when Jonas Rook gently laid his hand on Beatrice’s shoulder. ‘These are questions for Mr Fielding and myself to ask Mr Hazzard at Bow Street, Widow Scarlet, and all in the fullness of time. Let us leave him for now. I don’t want him accusing us of harassment, or of obtaining any admissions under duress. As I said, there is little we can do until the surgeon has had the chance to carry out his post-mortems.’

  ‘You’ll get no admissions,’ George growled at him. ‘Damn your admissions, that’s what I say! Damn and double damn your admissions!’

  Jonas Rook led Beatrice out of George’s office and they walked together back through the empty factory.

  ‘Do you believe that he sent those girls off to Southwark Fair?’ asked Beatrice.

  ‘We’ll have to have patience,’ said Jonas Rook. ‘If they return here safely this evening, then we shall know that he was telling us the truth. But I shall ask the Hackney watch to come here tonight to make certain.’

  ‘I don’t think George Hazzard would know the truth if it seized him around the neck and hit his head against the wall of St Paul’s.’

  Jonas Rook led her across to her carriage, which was waiting for her in the factory yard. The crowd of workers was still hanging around, not knowing if they should stay or call it a day and go off to the tavern for a few pints of porter. She caught sight of the man with the leathery apron and the leathery face and he lifted his hand to acknowledge her.

  ‘I’ll send word to you later,’ said Jonas Rook, as he helped Beatrice to climb up into her seat. ‘I doubt if it will be for some days, but you can be assured that I will keep you apprised of every development.’

  Beatrice was beginning to like him. He had hawklike features, like a man who worked too hard and forgot to eat regular meals, but he was attractive in a lean and predatory way. She was impressed most of all by his threatening smoothness. She guessed that he could be quick to take dramatic legal action against anybody who crossed him, but mostly he chose to remain courteous and almost eerily calm. She was captivated by his eyes, too. They were silvery grey, and gleaming, like penny coins that the King’s head had worn off.

  She was reassured by his agreement that in testifying against George Hazzard she was doing what God wanted her to do. In spite of that, she couldn’t help feeling a sickly anxiety in the pit of her stomach as the hansom jolted its way back to Maidenhead Court. It began to thunder when they reached Moorfields, and the chestnut trees that lined the road started to thrash around as if they were panicking, and were trying to uproot themselves and run away. She couldn’t help taking that as an omen that her life was going to become eve
n more dangerous in the days ahead.

  40

  Although Ida had promised her that they would need to have a serious conversation about her future at St Mary Magdalene’s, she was closeted in her own bedroom when Beatrice returned from Hackney, and she remained there for the rest of the day. She failed to appear even for supper.

  ‘She’s says she’s got a monstrous pain in the noddle,’ said Hettie, when Beatrice asked her where she was. ‘Worse than bein’ ’it between the eyes with a ball-peen ’ammer, that’s what she told me. I ’ad to take ’er plain-work class for ’er, and I can ’ardly thread a blinkin’ needle, me.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear she’s not well,’ said Beatrice, although she felt more frustrated than sympathetic. She had been rehearsing all the way back how to tell Ida that she had identified the bodies of the seven dead girls, and that she had no doubt whatsoever that neither Satan nor any of his demons had played any part in killing them. Of course she didn’t yet know how they had died, but she was quite sure that they had been murdered by men – either by George Hazzard himself, or by others at George Hazzard’s behest.

  Late in the afternoon, as it grew dark outside, she took a candlelit reading class herself, with seventeen girls. She asked each of them in turn to recite a chapter from John: ‘Ye are of your father, the Devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.’

  The girls had no idea why Beatrice had chosen this particular quotation, and most of them didn’t understand what it meant, but it condemned not only murder but lying about murder, and it made her feel even more strongly that her action against George Hazzard was vindicated by the Bible.

  She ate an early supper with Florence in the kitchen – cold beef and mustard pickles, with an apple cream for dessert. She forced herself to finish her plateful, even though she kept visualizing the grey, puffed-up bodies that she had seen in the tobacco factory garden, and she found it hard to swallow. But if I allow myself to become weak and faint, I will be of little use to Florence, nor to Jonas Rook, nor to God.

  After she had tucked Florence into bed and sung her a lullaby, she stayed up and wrote in her diary. Then she sat watching the stars appear and disappear as the night wind blew the clouds over St Paul’s. She thought about Francis, and what he might have done if he had been faced with a man like George Hazzard. She could almost hear Francis’s voice. ‘God will forgive him, if he shows repentance. Man, of course, will not, and he will hang. But in each outcome, there is an equal measure of justice. Spiritual mercy, but temporal retribution.’

  Soon after eleven o’clock, she eased herself into bed. She was sure that she would spend another night awake, afraid to close her eyes in case she had nightmares. After only twenty minutes, though, she slid into an ink-dark sleep, and she slept deeply and dreamlessly until the clock in the hallway chimed six.

  It was then that she was woken up by a furious knocking at her sitting room door, and a voice shouting, ‘Beatrice! Beatrice! Are you awake? Beatrice!’

  *

  Tying the sash of her day gown around herself, she went through to the sitting room and unlocked the door. When she opened it, she found that James was standing outside on the landing, leaning over the banisters so that he could see all the way down the staircase.

  ‘James! I thought I recognized your voice. What on earth are you doing here? What time is it?’

  He came over and said, ‘I don’t think I’ve been followed. It’s only just gone six so you should have time to dress yourself and get out of here. You and Florrie can come and stay with me at my parents’ house in Henrietta Street.’

  ‘James, what are you talking about? Look – come inside and tell me what you’re doing here.’

  She went back into the sitting room and sat down in front of her toilet. James came in after her, although he took a long look back at the staircase before he eventually closed the door.

  ‘My deepest apologies if I’ve woken you up,’ he told her. ‘I was terrified I might be too late.’

  ‘Too late for what, James?’

  At that moment, Florence appeared in the bedroom doorway, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘It’s all right, Florrie,’ said Beatrice. ‘James has just come to tell me something. Why don’t you and Minnie start getting yourselves dressed? You can wear your flowery dress with the roses on today, if you like.’

  Florence nodded and went back into the bedroom. James leaned forward and spoke in a near-whisper, so that she wouldn’t be able to hear.

  ‘I tried to come around here late last night to warn you, but the gate was locked and the gatekeeper was asleep, and even though I threw stones at his window I couldn’t rouse him.’

  ‘Warn me about what?’

  ‘An old friend of mine from Balliol came around to see me yesterday evening, Barney Thomas, and we went to the Goose and Gridiron and had a few drams. It was nearly midnight by the time we left the tavern, but then it struck me that I’d left my bag in the classroom, with my father’s fob watch in it, which I’d collected for him from the jeweller’s. I said goodbye to Barney and walked back to the Foundery. But who do you think was there, at that hour?’

  ‘I don’t know, James. You’ve only just woken me up and I’m a little muzzy-headed. Tell me.’

  ‘Here’s a clue. There was a carriage waiting outside. A yellow carriage.’

  ‘George Hazzard’s carriage? What was he doing there?’

  ‘I let myself into the schoolroom and then I went along to the Reverend Parsons’s rooms to find out. I could hear the Reverend Parsons and George Hazzard talking together, very loudly, as if they’d been drinking, and I was about to knock when the door was flung open. I’m not sure why, but I ducked back and hid myself in the alcove. I suppose I didn’t want them to think that I’d been standing outside, eavesdropping on them.’

  Beatrice was growing impatient. ‘James,’ she said, ‘what exactly is it that you’ve come here to warn me about?’

  ‘That’s what I’m coming to. George Hazzard stepped out of the door, but then he stopped and turned around and said, “Have no fear, Reverend! By breakfast-time tomorrow, she won’t be able to testify to anybody, not any more. Not for ever and ever – amen!”’

  Beatrice felt a cold shiver down her spine. ‘Dear God. Do you think he meant me?’

  ‘I’m certain of it. Who else is going to give evidence against him?’

  Beatrice stood up. Now she felt ashamed that she had doubted James’s sincerity.

  ‘Florrie!’ she called out. ‘Get yourself dressed as quick as you can, darling! We have to go out in a minute!’

  Then, to James: ‘He didn’t see you there, did he, George Hazzard? I mean, he doesn’t know that you heard him say that?’

  James shook his head. ‘I stayed hidden in the alcove until he’d left and the Reverend Parsons had gone off to bed. Then I tiptoed out of the Foundery as quietly as I could.’

  ‘Thank you, James. I think I may owe you my life. If you don’t mind waiting here for a few minutes I’ll get myself dressed.’

  ‘Don’t worry about packing anything,’ said James. ‘I can always send our maid Bronwen over later to collect the rest of your possessions. Once you’re safely ensconced at my parents’ house, I’ll go to Bow Street and tell Constable Rook that I heard George Hazzard threaten to have you silenced. I’m prepared to swear to it in court, Beatrice.’

  ‘I can’t tie my bow, Mama!’ Florence called out.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Beatrice. ‘I’m coming in to help you now.’

  James sat down while Beatrice went into the bedroom to finish dressing Florence and hurriedly to dress herself. As she stepped into her petticoats and buttoned up her bodice, she felt almost as if she were still asleep, and dreaming this.

  ‘Aren’t you going to plait my hair, Mama?’ asked Florence.

/>   ‘No, Florrie. Not now. Later. We really have to go.’

  ‘What about No-noh?’

  ‘No-noh can come too. We can’t leave little No-noh behind, can we?’

  She pulled on Florence’s brocade slippers and then put on her own shoes.

  ‘Right, Florrie, are you ready?’ she said.

  ‘Minnie’s not dressed yet.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Minnie, we’ll dress her later.’

  ‘Are you ready, Beatrice?’ James called out.

  Almost as soon as he said that, Beatrice heard a loud bang, which sounded as if the sitting- room door had been kicked open. James let out a peculiar cry, and then there was scuffling and thumping and another bang, as a chair was knocked over.

  ‘You – graah – unh!’ James exclaimed.

  Beatrice said to Florence, ‘Stay back – don’t move!’ and then she pulled open the bedroom door. She was horrified to see James struggling with a figure in a black hood and long black cape. James was gripping the side of the figure’s hood and trying to wrench it off, and as the figure twisted his head away, she saw the silvery glint of its looking-glass mask. It was the same frightening man who had approached her at Ranelagh Gardens.

  ‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Get out before I call a constable!’

  Florence immediately started to cry, so Beatrice turned around and said, ‘Florrie, stay there!’

  As she turned back, she saw that the man in the black cape had drawn out a sword. She screamed again, ‘No! Get out! Go away! James! James, be careful!’

  James snatched at the man’s sleeve and attempted to seize his sword-wrist, but the man kicked him hard in the shin and he stumbled backwards against the fallen chair. He lost his balance and fell against Beatrice’s toilet, so that her candlestick and her tinder box and her mirror toppled off, and her writing paper was scattered across the floor.

  Without hesitation, the man stepped forward and with an audible crunch he thrust the point of his sword underneath James’s chin. He hesitated, and then he gripped James’s shoulder with his left hand and stuck the blade even further upward, until it was buried up to six inches into James’s throat. James gargled, and his eyes stared wide in shock. He tried to grip the blade and pull it out, but in an instant his fingers were sliced to the bone and his hands were smothered in blood.