Night's Child

by Maureen Jennings

  “Mr. Murdoch, I realize that what I have to ask you is quite unorthodox.” For the first time, she smiled. “But as you can see, I am not an especially orthodox person. I have come to you for help because you are a police officer, but I must beg for your absolute discretion.”

  She suddenly looked as if she were on the verge of losing her composure and he sensed this was not a state that she was particularly familiar with or enjoyed. She was also waiting for an answer.

  “Ma’am, I can make no promise until I know why you have come to see me. Of course I will be discreet as the circumstances warrant, but you must allow me to be the judge of that.”

  He thought for a moment that she might get up and leave. She studied his face, not hiding the fact that she was assessing him. He didn’t speak, allowing her to decide as she saw fit. Finally, she gave a sigh and her shoulders released.

  “Very well.” She reached down to the portmanteau, snapped open the catch, and took out something wrapped in a white handkerchief. She handed it to him. “Yesterday, I discovered this in the desk of one of my pupils.” This time, she didn’t watch his face but stared over his head. He was unprepared for what he saw.

  A girl, dressed in only a chemise, was sitting on a low chair, her legs spread. The caption underneath read, What Mr. Newlywed really wants.

  Miss Slade’s voice was shaky. “The girl in that picture is my pupil, Agnes Fisher.”

  Murdoch put the card to one side on the desk so it wasn’t directly between him and the young teacher.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. She, er, she is of course painted in such a way as to be almost unrecognizable, but there is no doubt.”

  “Does she know you discovered it?”

  “Yes, I fetched her in immediately and confronted her. She was unable to answer me. By that, Mr. Murdoch, I mean, literally, was unable. She went mute. She could not utter a word.” This time she met his eyes. “I should explain that what the photograph depicts is utterly out of character for this girl. She is normally a quiet, withdrawn child, and I fear is not well-treated at home. I cannot convey to you, sir, how distressed I am.”

  “I can quite understand that, Miss Slade. This is an extremely serious matter. Have you informed your headmaster?”

  She looked away and he could see her discomfiture.

  “No, I have not. I have become fond of Agnes. However, I do not know, I cannot possibly imagine, the explanation for this photograph, but I am sure Mr. Kippen would have her charged. She will be sent to the Mercer Reformatory. He is not, shall we say, a particularly kind or lenient man.”

  Murdoch had the feeling that in spite of her matter-of-fact tone, Miss Slade had been affected by the headmaster’s lack of kindness. Given her defiant adoption of Rational Dress, he guessed her relationship with the schoolboard would be a strained one.

  “And the child’s parents?”

  “She lives with her father, who is a widower and, frankly, a drunkard. I have not yet decided whether he should be informed. I would be afraid of his reaction.”

  “What do you want me to do, Miss Slade?”

  “Find out who has taken this picture. Agnes must have been coerced. There is no other explanation. The person concerned deserves to be prosecuted.”

  “You asked for discretion, but if I do uncover the perpetrator, the law will have to be followed. I cannot guarantee anonymity.”

  She sighed. “I am aware of that. I can only trust that you will be sensitive to the needs of my pupil. If this is made public, she will have no future whatsoever.”

  “Did she come to school today?”

  “No, she did not. I am most concerned about that. Perhaps I should have acted sooner but, frankly, I did not know the best course of action to take.”

  Murdoch took his notebook from his pocket.

  “Her name is Agnes Fisher?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She will be thirteen this birthday. She has a younger brother, Benjamin, who is also in my classroom. Agnes was held back a year, unfortunately, which is why they are in the same standard now. There is also an older sister who is in service. I don’t know where or what her name is.” She fished in the portmanteau again. “These photographs were also in Agnes’s desk.”

  He looked at the other three cards.

  “You will have to reverse the mourning card,” she said. “I warn you, it is quite repugnant.”

  It was, and he winced.

  “Is this the girl’s handwriting?”

  “I am sure it is.”

  “Why would she keep the cards in her desk where they could be easily found?”

  “I’m sure it is a far safer place than her home and they were tucked well into the back.” Miss Slade glanced down at her lap. “Unlike some teachers, Mr. Murdoch, I do not believe in inspecting my pupil’s desks. A little untidiness can be a result of a creative mind.”

  That’s not what the nuns at Murdoch’s school had drilled into him.

  Miss Slade handed him a folded sheet of paper. “I have written out Agnes’s address, on Sydenham Street. You can get in touch with me at the school when you need to.”

  “I will do everything I can, Miss Slade.” He got to his feet. “Let me see you out,”

  She too stood up. “No, no, I am quite capable of walking down a short hall. I won’t lose my way.”

  Murdoch waited until she had left to pick up the photographs. He reread what Agnes had written on the back of the mourning card. How could she know words like that? He hoped she was not also familiar with the sexual acts she described. He turned the card over. The photograph of the dead baby had a simple setting of rear draperies, tinted blue, as was the cradle. The infant was dressed in a white-edged lace gown with matching bonnet. His eyes were closed.

  The sweetness of that image was in direct contrast to all three of the other photographs. What Mr. Newly-wed really wants. Murdoch knew the so-called Newly-wed series was very popular, and that, typically, five cards told the story. In the first, a young servant girl and her employer, named only Mr. Newly-wed, are in a kitchen. The man, young and dapper, exclaims, By Jove, I didn’t know you were our new maid, or words to that effect. In the second photograph, he embraces her, but she leaves tell-tale floury hand-prints on his jacket, which are seen in the third image. Next picture, his wife sees this evidence of misbehaviour and orders the maid out of the house. Final picture is, Mrs. Newly-wed’s new maid. This servant was always an ugly woman or a coloured wench, presumably unattractive to the lustful Mr. Newly-wed.

  Murdoch examined the version, not commonly sold, that was in front of him. A doorway to the left offered a partial view of a dining room with flock wall covering and a patterned rug. A row of china plates sat on a shelf and above them a half-seen painting of two sporting dogs. To the right was a large clock, the hands standing at five minutes to five. The floor covering was a striped oil cloth.

  Murdoch picked up the second photograph, which was tinted. A naked youth was wearing only a gold turban with a pin in the front holding a spray of ostrich feathers. The pin itself was a silver circlet with brightly coloured red jewels around the edge. He could see that there had originally been five but two were missing. The boy’s lips had been reddened and his eyelids coloured violet. His body was slim and hairless and at first glance he seemed a mere child but Murdoch thought his face was too lined for that and his genitals were mature. He put him at about seventeen years of age or even older. A black border around the edge of the card had been carefully inked in.

  Lastly, Murdoch turned to the photograph of Agnes, which was also tinted. The girl’s cheeks and lips were rouged and her hair was loose about her shoulders, but she was unsmiling and expressionless. She was seated on a low chair and behind her was a painted backdrop, rather ill-drawn of a panelled room. To her right was an empty birdcage and a bedraggled-looking palm in a pot. To her left, a doorway revealed the end of a Turkish couch draped with a gauzy cloth. There was a leopa
rd-skin rug on the floor.

  Murdoch took a magnifying glass from his drawer and began to examine all the ink marks. The writing on the back of the mourning card was clotted with blots, typical of cheap school ink and worn pens. Then he held the glass to the scratches on the two faces in the Newly-wed picture. The gouges were deep, and when he moistened his handkerchief and tried to wipe away the ink, the marks remained. The black ink looked the same as that used on the back of the mourning card, so he assumed Agnes Fisher was the one who had obliterated the faces. Why? So the two people couldn’t be identified or because she hated them? The black border around the photograph of the naked youth seemed to also be the same ink.

  For the next half an hour, Murdoch went over every detail again of the four photographs, making notes as he did so. On previous occasions, he had been called on to bring charges against young women, always in the theatre, who were supposedly revealing too much leg or bosom. He had always been glad when the charges were dismissed or the young women received only a small fine. Even though they upset some respectable citizens, he saw no harm in what they did. They were of an age to be responsible for their own decisions and mostly, they catered to adult men who rarely got beyond the leer-and-cheer stage. He felt somewhat the same way about the second Newly-wed picture. If grown men and women wanted to take off their clothes and take up lewd poses, that was up to them. Presumably they were paid to do so. The photographs of the two young people were different. Even if the youth was of the age of consent, Agnes was not. He could understand why Miss Slade was so distressed. The way the girl had been painted and rouged like a tart, and worse, the pose she had been placed in, disgusted him and made him furious with whoever it was had exploited her.

  He opened his drawer to take out an envelope and saw the folder he’d placed there earlier and he suddenly felt intensely uncomfortable. Surely, the anonymous letters and Miss Slade’s photographs were unconnected. The thought they might not be was disturbing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The skin on the bunion, softened by the long soaking, flaked off easily as Ruby scraped at it with the knife. Mrs. Crofton flinched.

  “Beg pardon, ma’am, did that hurt?”

  “No, hardly at all. It’s just a little tender.”

  “We’re almost done and then you can have the nice part.”

  A minute later, Ruby put down the knife, poured a few drops of the oil of bergamot onto her fingers, and began to rub it on the poor deformed feet. The skin felt thin and fragile as paper but smooth and soft from the water.

  “Better now?”

  Mrs. Crofton leaned back against her pillow and closed her eyes.

  “It surely is.”

  Mrs. Crofton’s Irish lilt was always more pronounced when she was relaxed. She was seated in the armchair by the fire with Ruby on the footstool at her feet. Tending to her mistress’s corns and bunions had become one of the girl’s tasks and they went through this ritual once a week. The elderly woman’s toes were so deformed that the great one lay, almost at right angles, across the second one. The remaining toes were crowded together and curled under, making it painful for her to walk for long, even though she wore special, handmade shoes lined with soft fur. In damp weather, the bunions ached.

  It was Ruby who had suggested this remedy. She’d heard it from her mother, who one day, out of the blue, had talked about tending to her own grandmother’s bad feet. She so rarely spoke about her own childhood that when she did, Ruby paid attention.

  What did you do for her, Momma?

  I’d make her soak her feet in hot water that had sal-soda sprinkled in it. When the bunion and corns were soft, I’d scrape off the dead skin with a sharp skinning knife. Then I’d rub the entire foot and ankle with warm goose grease. It gave her a great relief.

  There had been a wistfulness in her mother’s voice, and Ruby had a brief glimpse of the girl she had once been, neglected by everybody except the old lady she took care of. She had rushed to comfort her. Shall I rub your feet, Momma? Her mother had grimaced. Not my feet but you can rub my back. She had been carrying yet another child. The two pregnancies after Benjamin had both ended in a miscarry, but this one was farther along. Then this child had caused both their deaths.

  Ruby poked bits of soft cotton wool between each toe, then slipped on the felt slippers.

  “Ah, my dear, you are as precious as your name.”

  Ruby was not her baptismal name. When she’d applied for the position of general servant, she had decided to change her name. First because she fancied Ruby sounded prettier, second so that she could not be traced. She’d been bold about her references, writing the letter with great care, dictated, she said, by her employee who was now blind and moving away to England. The housekeeper, Mrs. Buchanan, had looked skeptical but when she presented the girl to Miss Georgina and Mrs. Crofton, they had both been charmed.

  We’ll try her for a month, but in the meantime, give her some good meals, Mrs. Buchanan, she’s far too thin.

  Six months later, Ruby had more flesh on her bones, more colour in her cheeks, and was happier than she had ever been in her life. Mrs. Buchanan remained rather reserved, but Ruby had become the special pet of her employers, Miss Georgina in particular.

  “Shall I fetch your coffee now, ma’am?”

  Mrs. Crofton didn’t open her eyes.

  “Yes, thank you. Is Miss Georgina up yet?” she asked in a drowsy voice.

  “Yes, ma’am. She was up betimes, doing some finishing touches.”

  “Again! I thought she did that yesterday.”

  “She did, ma’am. I suppose there was still more to be done.”

  “How ridiculous, I…”

  She stopped as her daughter came into the room.

  “What is ridiculous, Mama?”

  Mrs. Crofton opened her eyes. “The fuss you make over your paintings. Surely even the Master himself declared something completed.”

  Georgina grinned, not the least perturbed. They’d had this argument many times before.

  “We don’t know whether he fussed or not. Perhaps the gallery owner wrested the canvas from his grasp and he ran after him with brush in hand. ‘No, wait, I have to add a little more cadmium in that corner.’”

  She ran across the floor, miming the painter with brush in outstretched hand and both her mother and Ruby laughed.

  When she had first met Georgina Crofton, Ruby thought she was the strangest-looking woman she had ever seen. She was wearing a plain holland, ankle-length smock daubed from top to bottom with smears of paint. Her greying hair was braided with a red-and-gold silk scarf and pinned in a halo around her head. Later Ruby learned that this was what Georgina wore when she was in her studio. She was, she declared immediately, an artist. Her speciality was portraiture, preferably that of the recently dear departed. Usually, she worked from a photograph, but whenever possible she used sketches she made at the deathbed before the corpse was sealed in the coffin. The bereaved family often wanted an embellished likeness that an actual photograph could not provide. Georgina made the beloved look “as they were in life, not the least bit dead.” She was successful in this career, accomplished, sympathetic, and discreet. Ruby knew all of this because, for the last four months, she had been Georgina’s assistant and companion.

  Georgina went over to the birdcage by the fire and clucked her tongue at the canary sitting on the perch. The bird tilted his head and chirruped.

  Georgina frowned. “What is wrong with him? For all that he cost, you would think he could sing something.”

  She went through this ritual every day, and the bird, Rembrandt, only ever cheeped back at her.

  “Whose portrait were you touching up today, dear?” asked Mrs. Crofton.

  “The baby I told you about who died last month. Not that he needed much improvement. He was as peaceful as if he were asleep. Wasn’t that so, Ruby?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He was a dear little thing.”

  “May I see it?”

  “It’s not d
ry enough. I’ll show it to you later. I promised the parents I’d take it over tonight. I’ve been too long as it is. By the way, have you done with Ruby? I had a message from a Mr. Guest over on Sherbourne Street. His wife has passed away and he would like me to see her now. It will be a good commission, he has large private grounds.”

  “Yes, I know the place. He was in trade for a long time. Your father and he were acquaintances. And yes, we’re finished I think, aren’t we, Ruby?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was a light knock on the door and Mrs. Buchanan came in. “Excuse me, Mrs. Crofton, but there’s a young lass at the back door. She says she’s inquiring after her sister, Martha Fisher by name. She seems to be under the impression she is in service here.”

  “That’s odd.” Mrs. Crofton looked over at Ruby, who had turned to wiping out her bowl.

  “You don’t know her, do you?”

  “No, ma’am. I can’t say that I do.”

  “How strange, why has she come here?”

  “You have to watch it,” burst out Ruby. “She’s probably spying out the place for a gang to come in and steal.”

  “Goodness gracious. Did you leave her in the kitchen, Hannah?”

  “Of course I didn’t. She’s standing outside the door.”

  “Send her away then.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Georgina called out to her. “Wait a moment. At least give the child a few pennies or a piece of bread and butter.”

  “Not if she’s a spy, ma’am. Why should I?”

  “Well perhaps our Ruby was being an alarmist.”

  “No, Miss Georgina,” said Hannah. “I’ve heard from Mrs. Smithers’s maid that there have been burglaries in the neighbourhood. Even poor Mrs. Collard, you know, the one who lost her husband just last month, says she’s missing her gold filigree earrings.”

  “Losing a husband and earrings, how careless.”

  “Georgina, shame on you,” exclaimed her mother, but she was smiling.