by Issy Brooke
“My lady,” Stanley said, his stammer bad in the stress of the London surroundings, “I fear he is handing her money.”
“As charity?” Cordelia said, suspicion immediately rising in her.
“Er…”
The blue-coated Peeler then took the shabby woman’s arm and led her away, whereupon they disappeared together into an alleyway.
“I should not be shocked,” Cordelia said. “Such lowly transactions occur by the minute in this city. And yet…”
“Quite so, my lady,” Stanley said. “Sin.”
It wasn’t the sin so much as the parties indulging in it, she thought. A policeman, who ought to be against all manner of vice, here in plain sight encouraging it. Grimly, she started forward for the steps up to the main door of the station house, and Stanley scampered alongside.
She was met as soon as she entered the dark lobby. A man with unruly dark whiskers and badly-shaved stubble about his chin loomed large in front of her, and spoke directly to Stanley.
“Your business here, boy?”
Stanley gurgled and coughed, and turned to Cordelia. “My mistress, ah, Lady Cornbrook…” was all he managed to say.
The policeman glanced at Cordelia. His tall top hat, dented at the crown where the iron ring that strengthened it had clearly taken a blow, remained on his head. In fact he made no move at all to acknowledge her status. “And your business?” he repeated.
Cordelia said, “We are here to see Florence Fry.”
The policeman shrugged. “As to that, I must say no. Good day to you.”
“You do not understand!” Cordelia insisted, stepping forward. “Look here. Her father is my butler, and there is great doubt as to the poor girl’s guilt. I am not here on a social call, nor am I one of those ghouls who like to visit the condemned. No, I am here in the name of justice. You cannot prevent me from seeing her.”
“I can,” the man said. He stared at her, making his boredom plain through his half-stifled yawn and slitted eyes.
What was Cordelia to do? She could hardly rush herself at the man, bodily throwing him aside. And she had no influence here, and no friends to call upon, nor even any threats she could make.
Infuriated and frustrated, she retreated with Stanley, almost trembling with impotent fury.
“How dare he!” she exploded as they drew themselves away from the busy thoroughfares and took shelter against the wall of a respectable-looking shop.
Stanley looked as angry as his long face would allow. He stared away for a moment, deep in thought. Then he surprised Cordelia by saying, “My lady, if I may … do you wait here in this draper’s shop and I shall be back as soon as I may.” He hardly stammered at all, distracted as he was by his plans.
Amazed by his order, she did as he bid her. She entered the well-lit shop while Stanley disappeared on his curious mission.
By the time that he returned she had already ordered a quantity of thin but warm woollen cloth to be made up into a cloak, with a wide shoulder cape and slits for the arms, in the latest style. Stanley poked his head into the shop and beckoned her out onto the street.
She opened her mouth to greet him, and promptly shut it again when she saw that they had company.
“Cordelia, Lady Cornbrook,” he said. “And this is the Reverend Albert Griffin. I met him yesterday when I was going round and about to find a place to worship.”
“How do you do,” they said to one another. He was a young man of the cloth, and had bulging eyes and a wide, likeable smile.
“So,” he said, in a strong local accent, “we are to gain access to the cells in the station house, are we? Tis a place very familiar to me, I must say. As our Lord and Saviour himself often…”
He burbled away happily, almost like a light and innocent child as he led them back to the station house. But his stride, Cordelia noticed, was in complete opposition to his frothy words. He walked like a man marching into battle, and he held his head like the general of an army.
He was not going to be turned away; not easily.
He surged into the lobby, still nattering about the good deeds of various saints, and accosted the same policeman that had turned Cordelia and Stanley away.
“Good day! How goes things today, Mr Lyons? A grand day for it, a grand day indeed. Inspector Hood is about, is he not? I fancy I did see him earlier. I will just say hello to him on my way to the cells.”
“Sir, I think that … I mean, these persons with you …”
“Yes, yes, I shall introduce them to the Inspector too, you may have no fear — aha! And there he is, the man himself, well how delightful to see you. Inspector! Here we have the esteemed Lady Cornbrook and her right-hand man, Mr Stanley Ashdown. We are on our way to save the soul, if we might, of one of your latest unfortunate residents, the poor Miss Fry. Which cell, if you please?”
Inspector Hood, who had eyes to match his surname, glowered at them all, but he was powerless against the man of the cloth, especially in such a public place. The lobby was full of people crowding up to the front desk, coming in and out of doors, and peering around corners. Hood waved them all towards a small door at the back of the room, which was wedged open with a broken chair.
Cordelia walked very tall as she swept past all the staring, angry eyes of the policemen. They would remember her, she was sure of it. Was that good or bad?
She did not really want to make enemies, especially of those in authority.
Inspector Hood hissed like a snake as she went by.
Chapter Eight
The reverend insisted on remaining with Cordelia and Stanley, and she could hardly turn him away. In truth, as she stepped along the corridor in the very bowels of the police station house, she was grateful for his comforting presence to her left shoulder. It was cold and dark and damp, exactly as she had imagined a prison to be. The corridor was narrow, and badly lit. Could they not afford lamps? She had expected it to smell bad, but imagination is one thing and the reality something quite other. In this case, the reality was much worse. The smell had the sharp tang of stale urine mixed with an earthiness which she supposed was from the floor and walls. There was a rankness of sweat, and it was tinged with the flavour of the sickroom. She tried not to breathe too deeply.
Above all else, though, she was surprised by the noise. The corridor had open-barred cells to either side, and each one housed a crowd of men — and women. In many cases the occupants were, to Cordelia’s mind, simply children. But children can be as corrupt as any adult, she reminded herself. She had read a study that suggested that more of their character was due to nurture, and their upbringing, than their innate nature and position of birth, but that would blame their families and society and such a conclusion would lead to some difficult questions. So she tried not to look at the large-eyed youngsters that reached out their bony sparrow hands to clutch at her clothing as she passed by. The reverend and Stanley kept to each side of her and preventing them from touching her.
They called and they booed, both adult and child alike; they whistled and they shouted and they catcalled. They grunted at one another and there was a perpetual clanging of metal on metal, dully echoing through the badly lit passageway.
“This is not even a true prison,” the reverend said, as he caught up to Cordelia’s side and saw her face. “They will be before the police magistrates soon enough, and sentenced, and moved on. This is a holding facility, in truth, and nothing more.”
“So there is no need for any comforts,” she replied.
“Nor is it any better in prison proper, nor on a transport ship,” the reverend said. “I work often in such places and …” But he tailed off, his former buoyancy quite dampened down by his surroundings. “Ah, here we are.”
The cells were smaller at this end, and more sparsely occupied. They came to one windowless cube that housed only one person, a tall woman all folded in on herself as she curled on a rough mattress on a low wooden bench. She looked up as the three of them stopped by the bars. Cordelia f
elt uncomfortable. Was there no privacy at all in such a place?
“Miss Fry?” Reverend Griffin said, his voice now low and kind.
“Who asks?” she retorted, oblivious to his black and sober clothing.
“I am Cordelia, Lady Cornbrook,” Cordelia said before Reverend Griffin could speak. “And your father has asked for our assistance in your present predicament. May we come in?”
“I cannot stop you,” the girl said diffidently.
Cordelia hesitated.
“Please,” Florence said, her tone softening. “I am sorry, my lady. Forgive me.” She struggled to her feet and smoothed her dress down. “I have been many nights in this place, and I’ve got some rougher edges from those around me. It’s like an infection, my lady. I’ve even got to talking a little rougher.”
Her accent was already of the streets, Cordelia noticed; she was a London girl, through and through, dropping the ‘h’ from some words and adding them on, quite superfluously, to others. The reverend waved at a policeman who was at the far end of the corridor, and he came to unlock the heavy door. “Watch her, all right?” the policeman said, and let them in.
Cordelia shook Florence’s thin hand. She had the high-chinned air of her father about her, but more rounded facial features. Even in the gloom of the cell, she was beautiful, though that impression came at least half from her youthfulness.
And she batted her eyelashes at both Stanley and the reverend, and turned only at the last to Cordelia. “My lady, I’d offer you a seat but as you can see…” She waved her arm around the room.
“I am well able to stand. Now, Florence, you must have no fear in speaking the plain truth to me, however unsavoury some elements of it might be. Tell me all about Louis Bonneville. And I do mean all.”
“Unsavoury?” Florence half-closed her eyes and smiled in a secret little way. “Oh, no, my lady, there is nothing at all unsavoury to tell you. We were in love, and everyone knows that love is the most beautiful and pure thing there is.” She then stifled a sob and pressed her hand to her mouth. “Of course, he is dead now, and I ought to be in mourning, but here I am…” She half turned away.
“Mourning?” Cordelia said sharply. “Why, had you and he … in secret, had you married?”
“Oh, no, my lady,” Florence said. “We would have, in time, I am sure of it. But we were two hearts wed together as surely as any married couple.”
Good heavens, are you thirteen? Cordelia thought. She kept that comment to herself and instead mustered some sympathy for the poor lost girl. “And who else knew of your love?” she asked.
Florence hung her head and sighed heavily. She folded her arms, then unfolded them, then rubbed at her face, and finally she answered. “We could meet only in secret,” she confessed. “No one else knew, due to his station and my own. And yet there are cases of high born men marrying their servants, aren’t there? I have read about it. We could be such. We could have been such.”
“And this was definitely love and not…” Cordelia said.
“And not business, no!” Florence threw her head back and her dark eyes were rimmed with tears, making them sparkle in the shadows of her face. “And anyone who says that is a lowly cur who deserves to die in a ditch!”
Those harsh words from the pretty woman shocked Stanley; Cordelia could feel his horror as he went rigid and held his breath. The reverend, as a man who worked with all people, did not murmur or make any surprised sound.
“Thank you for confirming that,” Cordelia said mildly, unimpressed by Florence’s display. “And now another question, if I may. You protest your innocence, of course?”
“Of course!”
“And so then we must ask, why is it that you are here?”
“I have been framed! Someone’s got it in for me, they have.” Her accent was rougher by the minute.
Cordelia knew her next question would provoke more anger. “And yet who would go to the effort of framing you?”
Florence clenched her fists.
And then she burst into tears. She wasn’t stifling her sobs any longer; she wailed and screamed like a toddler. Even the reverend was moved to reach out his hand and place it on her upper arm, but she wrenched it away, and said, “Yes, who would frame me? A nobody, a minnow, a meaningless waif. A fatherless wretch. Even my own mother said as much. I am nothing to nobody and so, then, why me? I don’t know! I don’t know! Why would I know?”
Cordelia waited. Reverend Griffin cleared his throat as if to speak but Cordelia put her hand out in a warning gesture, and he caught the meaning, and sealed his lips. He, too, must have used the technique of silence, allowing the other person the time to form their thoughts without pressure or hurry.
It worked, as it almost always did. Florence gathered her composure, shaky though it was, and eventually she could talk again. “I know why they think I’m a nobody,” she said. “I know why they can’t understand why anyone would even want to love me. They don’t believe that a good, strong man like Louis could fall for someone like me, so they don’t want to look for the truth, do they?”
“Someone like you…?” Cordelia prompted.
Florence let her arms rise and fall to her sides.
Cordelia changed tack. Something had been on her mind. “Florence, do you still work for Lord Brookfield?”
Florence blinked a few times, clearing her eyes of unshed tears. “Oh, no, my lady, I don’t. I left His Lordship’s service some time ago.”
“To do what?”
“Oh, I suppose that you think I went to become a kept woman of Louis, don’t you?” Florence said, her belligerence rising once more.
“I suppose nothing. I seek only the truth, without judgement,” she replied.
“Well, then, judge this,” Florence said bitterly. “I was passed from that Lord Brookfield to one Mr Albert Socks. And yes, as a kept woman.”
“And were you originally… kept … by Lord Brookfield?”
Florence was facing the wall by this point, presenting her back to them all as she stared up at nothing. “The Right Honourable Lord Brookfield was ever kind to me, and a good man, gentle and decent,” she said. “Old-fashioned.”
“And can you say the same for this Albert Socks?”
Florence shrugged. “He was a master like any other,” she commented.
“So the Lord Brookfield and Mr Socks are friends?”
“They are contemporaries in the political world. I don’t claim to understand a word of all that.”
“And were either man connected with Louis Bonneville?”
“Mr Socks and Louis, yes.”
“As friends? Will these men, the Lord Brookfield and Mr Socks, be in a state of distress at their colleague’s demise?”
“Perhaps. It’s the world of men and power. What do I know? I just gave Louis solace. It was a hard path that he walked. He had principles, my lady. True principles. We would meet and he would be so full of anger and stress but my job was always as helpmeet. I strove to ease the burden from his shoulders. I am sure your clergyman there can understand that.”
Cordelia listened intently and picked up on one thing in Florence’s words. “And where, exactly, did you habitually meet?”
“The room he was murdered in!” That provoked a few fresh sobs.
“And this was in a lodging house, was it?”
“Mrs Clancey’s,” Florence said. “It was he that got me the room and the key for it, though he would use it himself also. There were some times that I could not go…”
Reverend Griffin cleared his throat and moved in closer to Cordelia to whisper into her ear. “My lady, I hate to hurry you along in this vital work but my congregation will be awaiting me.”
Cordelia nodded. “What times could you not go?” she asked.
Florence shook her head. “Just a few times, when he asked me to stay at his house instead.”
“His house? You went to Bonneville’s house?”
“No, my lady, I have never been to my Louis’s ho
use. No, I mean that it was Mr Socks, Mr Albert Socks, who got me the key to the lodging house.”
“Why? Did he know about you and Mr Bonneville? You just said that it was a secret.”
“No, he had no idea about the extent of our love, or anything. He just knew I needed somewhere to go, that was all. Somewhere to be free.”
Somewhere to make money lying down, Cordelia thought. What did Socks mean by giving his own woman, his maidservant-with-extras, the key to a room elsewhere, when she lived at his house? She was aware of Reverend Griffin waiting for her to finish. She quickly ran through everything they had discussed. Was there anything else she had missed?
Her ruminations were interrupted by a shout from outside. It echoed down the corridor. “Your time is up, sir!” Inspector Hood could clearly contain himself no longer and he appeared at the barred gate. “I have bent to your will for as long as I am able, sir!”
“Thank you, and it is most appreciated.” Reverend Griffin bowed to Florence and then hustled Stanley and Cordelia from the cell. She barely had time to murmur her appreciation before he had taken his leave of them on the front steps of the station house, urging Stanley to take good care of Cordelia, and for Cordelia herself to take good care of her own soul.
“I should have asked her who she thought would kill Bonneville,” she remarked to Stanley as he began to look around for a cab to take them back to their rooms.
“I don’t think she would have known,” Stanley said. “It was a disagreeable place, and she…”
“Yes, I know. She was a disagreeable woman. And yet, in her position, would we not act the same?” Maybe it was more nurture and not nature, she thought, trying to picture herself as a poor woman with no means and no friends, falling in with a rich and powerful politician. What morals would I happily put to one side, if I thought there was love, or money, or safety, in it?
Chapter Nine
“Mr Neville Fry!” Cordelia called as she re-entered her rented rooms at the Inns of Court. Her tone was just one notch below “shouting” and a good few above what her tutors would have called “ladylike.”
