by Issy Brooke
They passed a man selling hot cakes and coffee but Gibbs refused to let her ask the driver to stop. “You will not sleep at all tonight,” he said, reprovingly. “Do not touch the stuff.”
In fact, once he had delivered her to the door, she didn’t sleep anyway. Instead, she crept into the lodgings quietly and sat herself at the table in the main room, still in her dancing slippers with her sheer shawl loose about her shoulders and her hair now frizzing and uncurling. By the light of a tall, thick candle with a mirror at its back, as the sky faded from black and orange to grey and paler grey, she read through her notes once more, and then sat back, trying to force her mind to move sideways just as Hugo had said it would.
She was drawing out connections on a large sheet of paper when Ruby appeared at the connecting door to their room. She had a brown woollen shawl pulled around her shoulders and was still in her long nightdress. She blinked blearily. “My lady? Are you well?”
“Ah, Ruby, will you see to a pot of tea please?”
Ruby came forward and snuffed out the half-burned candle. “Have you been up all night, my lady? If so, it’s not tea that you need, it’s your bed.”
Cordelia waved her hand in dismissal of that arrant good sense. “Of course, of course. But listen, Ruby, I have worked out what I need to do next.”
“As I said. You need to go to bed.”
“In good time. Oh, Stanley, good morning; do come in. Go through.”
The youth had to cross the sitting room to get from his sleeping area to the kitchen, due to the cramped layout of the rented rooms. No secret back stairs to hide the servants from the masters here. He dipped his head and scuttled around the edge of the room as Cordelia continued to speak. “No, I need to visit the lodging house where the man died. I must see for myself what manner of place it is, and I must gain entry to the room itself, and examine it.”
“What would you hope to discover there?” Ruby asked. Stanley paused by the kitchen door.
“I don’t know, which is why I must go. It was an odd place to meet. I am concerned that it was Socks who gave her the use of the room. That raises my suspicions. It is not an ordinary act.” Cordelia stretched and stood up. “Is my new cloak ready?”
“It is, my lady.”
“Perhaps I can go in disguise, then,” Cordelia said.
Ruby put her foot down, literally and figuratively. “Absolutely not, my lady. Every one of us would prevent such foolishness.” Stanley, still present, was frantically nodding though he didn’t dare to speak.
“But—”
“No, my lady. I know I speak out of turn. But you must see sense. You are not the heroine in a silly gothic novel.”
Cordelia sagged as all of a sudden, the sleepless night caught up with her. She put her hands on the back of the chair she’d just vacated and leaned her weight forward. “Oh, it all seems impossible. Many others have disguised themselves. Why, haven’t there been women who have run away to sea, or joined the army? Women who have had amazing adventures in spite of their sex?”
“About half a dozen of them, all told, my lady, out of millions and millions.”
“Those are the ones we know about. Maybe more of us have chanced it than we will ever know. There are ways to manage it. I could darken my top lip with soot, and speak in a gruffer tone…”
Ruby sighed so heavily that Cordelia stopped talking. She was just about to wend her way reluctantly to bed when Stanley finally spoke. With his customary stammer, and not looking directly at her, he said, “My lady, may I offer a potential solution?”
“Please do,” she said, feeling her tiredness ebb away a little.
“Well, it is this. The ladies in the local church which I have begun to attend often visit the deserving poor hereabouts as part of their mission. They can go to some very low places, for of course they are protected by righteousness.”
Cordelia glared at Ruby before she could snort in derision.
“Go on, Stanley.”
“So you could perhaps accompany them, my lady, on their tours of the slums and the like. You will still be in disguise, in a way.”
“Yes,” said Ruby, who could disguise her mirth no longer. “You will be disguised as a righteous lady!”
“Ruby! Hold your tongue. The boy’s suggestion is sound. It is of some regret to me that I cannot walk as freely as you…”
“I am protected by my poverty,” Ruby said.
“…nor, indeed, speak as freely as you,” Cordelia added in a warning tone. “Well. I am going to bed for a few hours. And Stanley, this is an excellent idea. Please see it done. I leave this in your capable hands.”
Chapter Eighteen
Her night of activity and the resultant sleep through the best hours of the morning, a time when she was usually active, had ruined the full day for her. She was reminded that she was no longer a young woman, and could not take such liberties with her body. She pampered herself, remaining in the rented rooms, eating simple food and lying on the couch.
But the following day, she was ready for action, and it was as well that she was, for Stanley had succeeded.
Somehow he had persuaded the Ladies of East Street Mission that the street which housed Clancey’s lodging house was in dire need of some spiritual enlightenment. Stanley took Cordelia to meet them. Cordelia was dressed very simply and plainly, as befitted a humble Christian woman, and before Stanley could introduce her with her real name, she stepped forward and told everyone that she was called Mabel Entwistle.
He could not stammer out a query in time. The four women, a mix of young, old, and exceedingly old, all accepted her immediately and drew her into their throng. Stanley faded away, to wait for her return at the church, while Cordelia found herself in the centre of the group of warm, righteous women as they surged through the streets, fired up from within by their task and their faith.
At first, Cordelia felt a little out of place. Indeed, with the genuine fervour of the ladies surrounding her, she began to experience a twinge of guilt. Cordelia had been raised in the Anglican Church, like almost everyone she knew, and followed the liturgical year with a clockwork monotony borne of habit and familiarity. Over-familiarity, perhaps. She did not have Stanley’s deep evangelical passion nor, at the opposite end of things, Geoffrey’s shocking atheism. She was occasionally curious about what might “lie beyond” but the day to day questions of people and everyday life occupied her thoughts far more than spiritual matters. And now she was here, pretending to be as moved by the Spirit as the women around her, and she knew she was a liar, and that felt wrong.
But soon she was distracted from her unease as the ladies set about their tasks. They entered a back street, a veritable rookery, and the women walked as confidently as if they had been moving about their own drawing rooms. The ground was filthy and just a mixture of earth, rubble and dark, steaming manure. She hoped it was mostly from horses. There was vegetable matter and rubbish, but not much of that; then she saw a boy with a basket, his bare feet sinking into the morass, as he hunted for that particular pearl beloved of the tanners: dog excrement, or as it was more euphemistically known, “pure.”
She turned her face away but one of the ladies, a young woman called Mrs Shirley, did not. She sprang forward with her gloved arms outstretched to entice the boy to her.
Cordelia watched for a while as the woman tried to examine the lad for sores, and persuade him to come to the mission that weekend so that he might be given some shoes. He danced away out of her grasp.
Not one of the women called him ungrateful; they sighed and continued on. They knocked on doors, and spoke to the occupants. They offered food, comfort, and prayers. The food was gladly taken though the rest was merely tolerated.
And finally they came to the street that Cordelia knew the lodging house to be on. Throughout all of this, no one had asked Cordelia any personal questions. Their talk was of their work, and their work only; she began to admire their single-minded purpose and their absolute clarity. When they r
eceived abuse, they bore it stoically. When someone threw a clod of earth and yelled the most vile things, they smiled and wandered on. Cordelia wanted to lag behind and throw a rotten apple back towards the assailant, but she did not. She was Mabel Entwistle, she reminded herself, and modelled her actions and responses on those being demonstrated by the ladies of the mission.
Now Cordelia began to feel tense. The ladies knocked on doors and tried to persuade the occupants to let them in, or at least minister to them on the street. They didn’t ask for names, and Cordelia realised she would have no way of knowing which of the lowly-looking buildings would house Mrs Clancey and her lodgers. The houses were in a terraced row, of sooty London brick, and though in many cases the front steps had been scrubbed and the windows cleaned, still there was a sad air of poverty about the place.
Mrs Shirley noticed Cordelia’s worried air and came to her side. “Dear Mrs Entwistle,” she said, “are you quite well?”
“I am, thank you,” Cordelia replied, “but sometimes I do find these streets oppressive.”
“Of course, as do we all, though do remember that none of us are alone, for our Saviour walks with us and guides the work that we do here.”
“Thank you, yes. I wonder if I might be allowed a moment or two of peaceful reflection?” Cordelia said.
“You must refill yourself from the wellspring of all life,” Mrs Shirley pronounced.
“Er, yes, that’s exactly it,” Cordelia said.
“We shall proceed to the end of the street and then turn around to come back along the other side,” Mrs Shirley said. “Let me procure you a chair and you might sit and pray on the Lord.”
“Thank you. That would be much appreciated.”
Within moments, Mrs Shirley had begged a hard wooden chair from a house, and installed Cordelia in a quiet spot at the entrance to a dead-end alley that ran between two of the houses, so that she was half-hidden and could meditate in relative privacy.
And then the ladies were away, knocking on the next door and the next. Cordelia leaned forward and peeped around the edge of the brickwork. When they had gone far enough that they were out of earshot, and appeared totally focussed on their work, she called for a boy who was loitering nearby. “Lad, would you like to earn a penny?”
“Mebbe,” he said. He had a most unattractive candle of mucus hanging from a nostril, but he dashed it away with a grubby hand, and his eyes were bright. “Penny first, though. What you want, then, missus?”
“I would like to know which house is Mrs Clancey’s lodging house.”
He shrugged. “Penny, then. Nah, tuppence.”
She pulled out a small coin. “One penny, and that is more than you deserve.” I should have started with a ha’penny and worked up, she thought. She waved the coin at him. “Tell me, and you shall have it.”
After a brief impasse, he indicated a house farther down the street, said, “It’s got a blue door and a smell,” grabbed the penny and ran away.
She looked down to the house with the blue door.
The ladies of the mission were between her and it.
She sat back and sighed. She would have to wait.
***
She planned what she was going to do as she waited for her chance. The ladies were five houses away from where she sat. The lodging house was seven houses away, on the same side of the street. After the lodging house, there were three more doors until the end of the street where the ladies would turn around and come back up the other side, and they’d have Cordelia in their view the whole time.
So she had a very small sliver of time to get from her hiding place to the house, and inside that house, before the ladies turned.
Her heart began to hammer. She prepared some speeches and explanations in her head as she peered around the corner, watching for her moment. She had to have a reason to give, to explain her presence, if she were caught. “Moved by the Spirit” seemed like the likeliest option but the one that she also found the most distasteful, as it felt somewhat insulting to lie about something that was the bedrock of the ladies’ most genuine beliefs.
But I am doing this for the right reasons, she thought, and if they knew, I am sure they’d understand.
Could I tell them my true purpose? I could have. It is a little late, now. And anyway, she reminded herself, they would simply tell me to leave it to the police, I am sure.
And then, before she could berate herself any longer, the moment arrived and she seized it. The mission ladies had moved on to the house just past the lodging house, after having had the door closed in their faces there. At the next house, the ladies huddled around, and seemed to be engaged in deep conversation with someone at the door there. One or two of them went into the house itself.
Cordelia walked briskly to the blue door of the lodgings. She hurried but did not run. When she reached it, she did note the smell but it was nothing unusual beyond a hint of cooked fish. She tapped, and then tried the handle, and it opened immediately.
She found herself in a very dark, long hallway. Footsteps sounded on a wooden floor up ahead, but no one came to see her and she realised she had knocked too quietly.
She surmised that the rented rooms would be upstairs. Often the landladies of these properties lived on the ground floor and she took the chance that it would be the same here. She crept up the stairs. There was a strip of thin carpet down the centre, and she kept to it, to minimise the sound of her tread.
But she knew that she would have to speak to someone, at some point, and so when she heard hammering as she reached the first floor, she went towards the noise, and found a workmen in rough overalls with a plank of wood across a sawhorse.
“Sorry, missus, am I in your way?” he said. “I’ll not be a minute. Hang on.”
“Er, no, it’s all right,” she said. “Please continue. What are you doing?”
He stared at her for a moment, as it was an odd question, but he must have decided that she was an odd woman, and so to be looked upon kindly. He spoke to her gently. “Well, missus, I’m a joiner, you see. That means I work in wood. Actually I should be in a workshop but they have me here as a carpenter because they are cheap and do not want to pay twice.”
She had no idea as to the difference, but she smiled and nodded. “And you are repairing the door frames,” she said.
“That’s right. I do all manner of jobs here, and along this street, from time to time.” He seemed to appreciate the break from his task because he stood upright and began to stuff a pipe with tobacco.
Perhaps it was a clue. She seized on it. “My friend often comes here,” she said, innocently. “Maybe you’ve seen her, a pretty young thing, you’ll have noticed her, name of Florence, well, Flo to us, of course.”
The man shook his head, concentrating on packing the bowl of his pipe. He pushed in firmly with a rough, calloused thumb. “No, missus, not really seen much of anyone if I’m honest. I get on with my work. Most people here come and go and have reason to not be seen, if you gets my meaning. Well, you understand, as you are here yourself. There are more respectable places a body can go.”
She quailed a little at the assumption he’d just made about her, then reminded herself that she was in disguise, and so his insinuation was actually a compliment. In a way. She said, “I understand completely. Actually I do not have a room here. Not yet. I was simply looking around. I was wondering about the privacy…”
He raised his eyebrows as he looked up from the pipe and stared at her anew. “Indeed? Well, as private as any other place.”
“And the doors lock from the inside?”
“With a key that only the occupant has, generally.”
“And different keys to each room?” she asked. “Or could someone in the room next door gain access?”
He laughed. “Different, obviously, otherwise everyone would be robbed and the landlady quite at fault. Sometimes there are multiple copies as some rooms might be let to more than one person for, well, various reasons.”
“Of course, that makes perfect sense,” she said. Socks would have kept a key and so would Florence; the joiner’s words did not contradict anything Florence had told them.
“Look, you seem nice,” the man said suddenly. “There is one thing you should know, if privacy and security are so important to you. All the rooms on one floor actually share the same key.”
“You said they were different!”
“Yeah, from floor to floor, but it’s easier for the landlady to have each floor the same, but everyone gets told they are different, otherwise they would worry, or steal. I know this to be true, because I have worked on the locks.”
“So others would know about it, also.”
“They shouldn’t. But they might. I wouldn’t risk it, here, missus. Not if you need privacy. Try another place for your … needs.”
She dropped her voice. They seemed to be establishing a rapport, now, so she sidled a little closer, and said, “There was a murder here, was there not?”
“Yeah, there was. Oh! Florence, you said. That’s the one as did it. Your friend, eh?” He looked at her a little more sternly. “Your friend in truth?”
“She is innocent,” Cordelia said. “But I wonder … can you tell me which room?”
“No, see, it really isn’t seemly for…”
He stopped arguing when she passed him a whole florin. His eyes nearly fell out of his head. Two shillings was a decent amount of money. He pocketed it, and pointed at a door at the end of the corridor.
“I assume no one has rented it yet?”
“No, it has not been touched.”
But when she pushed the door open, she saw that it had been touched — the place was clean of blood, and the narrow bed was bare, stripped even of its mattress. There was a long-legged table by the head of the bed, and a small square rag-rug on the floor. She could see through the wide woven slats of the bed base that an empty chamberpot nestled under there. There was a stub of a candle on the table, but apart from that, the room was vacant.
