by V. Penley
Mr. Styles looked all around, once in the face of the each of them. But as he made the circuit, his defiance abandoned him. “I sold him,” Mr. Styles said, flatly. His entire face collapsed—cheekbones, jowls, chin. “I sold him yesterday to a man who buys child labor to work in London.”
Mrs. Styles clutched at her throat, and Eugenie gathered her in her arms to keep her upright.
“To sell your son!” the Marchioness accused.
“I haven’t any money, mum,” he said. “You look the type that wouldn’t know what that means. So I should hope you would think before judging me.”
“I won’t judge you,” Phillip said. “But we would like some details. How did you sell your son?”
“It happens around here,” Mr. Styles said. “I don’t remember all the details. But I ain’t the first one. There was a man I worked with, on the rails. He sold his daughter soon after the strike. I asked him to contact whoever he sold her to. They sent everything through the post. No return address.”
“But you responded?” Phillip asked.
“Yes. They proposed thirty, but I held out for more. They came by once, about three months ago. Just to look Jimmie over, make sure he was healthy. Fit. I got ‘em up to 50 pounds after that. My son is in fine shape.” His face almost glowed with pride.
“And they came again to kidnap him?” Phillip was focused unlike the others on the details. Now that they knew what happened to Jimmie, he was determined to find him.
“Yup,” Mr. Styles said, nodding his head like a drunkard. “They did.
“They were supposed to get him before he even left to deliver papers,” he clarified. “Jimmie liked to go buy a cup of coffee from that McInerney woman, you know. The one who runs a kitchen out of her flat. I had plans to nab him on his way out, but the men from London didn’t come soon enough. They were late.” He looked around, as if others should share his annoyance. “When they come, Jimmie had already taken off on his bicycle. We had to chase him.”
Mr. Styles settled his sights on the far window, as if he were seeing the morning unfold again. “When we caught up to him, it was at the Todderham cottage. Still pretty dark, so we were able to sneak up, quiet like. The man held back on the road, in his cab, while I snuck up and clubbed Jimmie on the head, to knock him out.” He looked at Mrs. Styles and his eyes seemed suddenly afire. “I clubbed my own son!”
Now that the true horror had been revealed, Mrs. Styles had steeled herself. She stood up straighter and crossed her arms. Like a monument to patience and maternal understanding, she nodded to her husband, his wet eyes leaking tears, to continue.
“And then I carried him to the cab waiting in the street. And that’s when they handed me the money right then and there. So’s I watched them trot down the road until I couldn’t hear anything anymore, and I went right back to Bess Todderham’s and picked up the newspaper satchel Jimmie carried. I knew I had to deliver those papers, lest someone notice they hadn’t been delivered and contact the printers. I spent the morning walking up the road in the dark, throwing papers every which way with no concern for who should get one or not. When the papers run out, I walked back home as the sun rose.” Mr. Styles’ lips continued to move around, though no words came out. Then, with a sigh, he was still.
No one spoke for a minute. Mr. Styles himself patted around the trash and clothes for something. Finding it—a bottle—he put it to his lips but discovered it was empty. He let it drop to the floor.
“Could you identify this person if you saw him?” Phillip asked.
“Who?” Mr. Styles asked.
“The man who bought Jimmie.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Was a short man. Dark. Looked a little like my old boss, but less well-dressed.”
“Would he recognize you?”
“Doubtful.”
“And did you hold onto the letters?”
“I did,” Mr. Styles said.
Phillip gestured, as if to ask “Where?”
Mr. Styles answered him by looking around the trash that covered the room.
“Oh,” Phillip said.
“We’ll find that letter,” Mrs. Styles said, her voice firm. “And then we’ll find my son.”
Duke Phillip turned to Eugenie. “I think we shall contact Inspector Feagley now.”
Chapter Twelve: The Race to London
Phillip had ruled out riding the entire way to London by car, as he did not have the petrol to make it. The railway, Inspector Feagley said, would suit him quite well enough.
Contacting Inspector Feagley had been a necessity. Once they had concluded that Jimmie Styles had been sold into child labor, they had known that police assistance was unavoidable. For one thing, the written correspondence Mr. Styles had found did not yield up any clues. Apart from a London postmark, Phillip could find no other identifying information. Accordingly, it would have been impossible to rescue Jimmie on their own.
For another thing, finding Jimmie without police protection could endanger their lives—the newspapers were filled with stories of London violence, in particularly the violence of criminal syndicates that exploited child labor. Inspector Feagley was, therefore, the natural contact; he quickly sent a telegram to London to inform them of what had happened. Inspector Feagley informed Eugenie and Phillip that he planned to go to London in two days.
“Why not today?” Eugenie asked, as she and Phillip stood in his office. The Inspector’s small office was tucked onto the third floor of a nondescript building, papers spilling from bookcases and off the sides of his desk. Eugenie had glanced at his bookshelf but had not seen any Detective Malveaux. Instead, she had seen the standard guides to hunting and fishing.
Inspector Feagley shrugged. “You think that is necessary?”
“It might help,” Eugenie said. “The sooner we get there, the better. The mercenary could have sold Jimmie to France by now. They might have received a tip that we are on their tail. A criminal who believes he is suspect behaves in a particularly dangerous manner. They might even kill Jimmie, for all we know.”
Inspector Feagley sucked his teeth, nodding with his eyes shut, before he shouted to his secretary in the outside office. “We’ll need rail tickets for tomorrow, Mabel!”
A grumble came from the secretarial station.
“And perhaps,” Phillip said, “we should—I mean, you should—inform London when we will be arriving. I wouldn’t wish to surprise them.”
The Inspector thought on that as well, and then raised his eyebrows, coupled with a sigh. “Mabel!” he shouted. “Send a telegram that I will be arriving by rail tomorrow morning!”
“And we would like to come, as well,” Phillip said.
“Mrs. Todderham asked us to,” Eugenie quickly added, when it appeared that Inspector Feagley was on the verge of objection. He looked at them with his eyebrows nettled.
But before he could say anything, Phillip asked, “Have I told you about the hunting at my estate in Clowdon?”
*
They met at the railway station the next morning. Bertie Styles came, too, so that he could identify the man who had bought his son.
They all rode in the same rail cabin, seats facing each other, and they boarded early. Bertie Styles sat stiffly, with a look of terror frozen onto his face, which could only have come from several consecutive hours of sobriety. What he had done had finally penetrated his consciousness—and his conscience. He had wet and combed his hair and put on a freshly laundered suit, but he looked as if he were laid out for death. He sat, his lips fluttering every two seconds, as if counting the knocks of his heart.
Inspector Feagley took a window seat, and he had greeted them at the station with enthusiasm. “I always love a trip into the city,” he had said, “though I don’t get to go as much as I’d like.”
He had brought a boxed breakfast, which he started eating as soon as they were on board. He pulled out first a rasher of bacon, wrapped in brown paper, and chewed off pieces with loud, snapping teeth. Then he peeled
the lid from a small cup of baked beans, which he ate with his mouth open, before finally extracting from the box a stone cold English muffin, which he crumbled in his hand.
Eugenie and Phillip watched him eat—it was difficult not to. Once he had finished, he slid a thumbnail contentedly in between his teeth. Phillip returned to his newspaper. Eugenie humored herself by reading a small book she had brought in the pocket of her trench coat.
“Well, I hope we can find him,” Inspector Feagley said, after a load burp. “I wish we had some sort of a picture so as to help identify him, should we see him.”
“You have met the boy before?” Eugenie asked.
“Few times,” Inspector Feagley said, working on his teeth now with a toothpick.
“At least we have his father here,” Phillip said.
Bertie Styles made no response. Inspector Feagley shrugged and looked out the window. Then the last of the passengers boarded, the final whistle sounded, and the train pulled from the station.
Rather than look out the window, Eugenie stayed focused on her book, which was engrossing. She was so engrossed that she did not notice the curious glances Phillip continually cast in her direction, as if he were trying to decipher the title. When he finished reading his paper, he asked her, “A Miss Austen novel?”
“No,” Eugenie said, and handed it to him.
Phillip read out the title: “Morbidity and Malice in the Victorian Underworld.” He grimaced.
“I leave Miss Austen to you,” Eugenie said. “And to Miss Castlefork,” she said, unable to restrain herself.
Philip handed the book back, without an expression.
The ride was surprisingly short, because there were no stops on the way. Phillip had excused himself to find a smoking car, while Eugenie had briefly set the book on her stomach and closed her eyes for a nap. When she woke, they were pulling into the station and Phillip was chatting comfortably with an elderly woman sitting across from them, who was quite captivated by the smooth manners of her fellow conversant.
“Well, I guess we’re here,” Inspector Feagley said, looking out the window with his eyes wide. He might as well have been a child at Christmastime, looking through a shop window. “Perhaps we’ll have time for something to eat.”
*
Inspector McCloud from the Metropolitan Police met them at the station. He stood out among the porters and crowds like an oak tree in a wheat field. On his nose sat small glasses, which caught the glare and made him look imposing yet mysterious. He identified the group before they could identify him, and with a brief nod of the head he greeted them. Phillip, leading the four, shook the Inspector’s hand. The tall Inspector, confused, greeted Phillip: “Inspector Feagley, it’s good to meet you.”
“Actually,” Phillip said, “I am here in a private capacity.”
McCloud frowned at his error.
“You want Inspector Feagley,” Phillip said, and turned.
He had expected Barnardshire’s chief detective to be standing behind him. Instead, Inspector Feagley had dropped his notebook and was currently chasing, while half crouched down, for his pencil, which rolled away from him back toward the tracks. When he had gathered everything, he returned to the group, with perspiring face, and belched.
“Hello,” Inspector McCloud said, bending down.
“Hello,” Inspector Feagley said, dropping the pencil again to free up his hand to shake. Eugenie trapped the pencil with her foot.
Mr. Styles continued to look terrified. He stared at all the people milling about, rushing off the train and others rushing on. The whole noise and racket. Perhaps, Eugenie thought, he understood for the first time the consequences of what he had done. He had sold his son to come work in this large, bustling, impersonal city, where the boy was alone and undoubtedly afraid.
On their way to a cab, Phillip filled in Inspector McCloud on the details of the crime—what everyone currently knew. He handed the correspondence to McCloud, who read it absentmindedly. However, when they had arrived at the Metropolitan Police station, everyone was on the same page.
“Child labor is a terrible scourge,” McCloud said, leading them into his impressive office. The Metropolitan Police station was itself like a beehive, almost as busy as the railway station. Men bustled around, and loud voices cried out. McCloud led them all into his office and then shut the door. “Terrible. Daily, we receive tips of boys and girls sold into the city. A terrible scourge.”
“Yet legal,” Eugenie clarified.
“True,” he said, coming off his imaginary soapbox. He stood behind his giant oak desk. On the wall behind him hung an ink drawing of the city, as big as the wall. The map outlined all of London’s precincts in blue ink. “But not the selling of a child into it. That is patently against the laws of his majesty.”
From his desk, the Inspector glared with disapproval at Mr. Styles, who stood with his back to the door. He twisted his beaten hat in his hand. Since entering the station, he had asked continually for a drink, and had been given many glasses of water.
“Yes, right,” Phillip said, to get things back on track. “Do you have any suspects?” he asked McCloud. “I know it’s only been a day since we called. But sometimes you have people you keep under constant surveillance.”
“There are innumerable men who engage in this sort of thing,” the Inspector said. “We arrest them, but they always end up released back onto the street. There could be any number of men, in a city this large. It’s true, what you say, that we keep our eye on people. But there isn’t anyone we know of who left London on the day in question.”
Inspector Feagley had sat down in the chair in front of McCloud’s desk. Phillip walked up to the map for a closer look. Various pins had been stuck at points on the map; on the end of each pin was a small flag, of assorted colors.
“We shadow them regularly and keep notice of their strongholds.” Inspector McCloud motioned to the map. “We have nearly a half dozen men working continually to keep an eye on the most prominent.”
He looked toward the door.
“Is this the father?” Inspector McCloud asked.
Feagley turned around and looked at Styles. “Yes,” he said.
“Come to my desk, please, sir.”
Feagley rose and stepped around the side of the desk while Mr. Styles stayed at the door. McCloud looked with confusion at his shorter peer from the country, who was scanning the London Inspector’s desk.
“I believe he wants Mr. Styles,” Phillip said, ushering the man to the London Inspector’s desk.
“Oh,” Feagley said, resettling himself into the chair and folding his hands.
Inspector McCloud then brought out a book, which contained photographs of various men who ran the largest child labor shops. Eugenie stood behind Mr. Styles as Inspector McCloud flipped through the book. A series of men were shown, in tiny pictures. The first, of a man wearing a stout hat, looked at least ten years old and had been cut out of what Eugenie presumed was a much larger photograph, perhaps one including the man’s family.
Mr. Styles made no indication that he recognized the man. Inspector McCloud then flipped to a new photograph. This one seemed to have been taken when the man was in motion—the thin face was blurred, a background of assorted grays and blacks suggested that it had been taken outside somewhere, perhaps with the man not understanding that he was being photographed. The third picture was merely a drawing; the man could have been anyone: an anonymous face.
Well, Eugenie thought, this wasn’t helping.
At each picture, Mr. Styles shook his head abruptly: No.
Inspector McCloud had flipped through the entire book, about twenty pictures in all, without Mr. Styles having shown a flicker of recognition at even one. Eugenie was unsurprised. The only identifying mark the drunk man had remembered was that the man was short and dark. And all the men in the pictures wore hats.
“Well, then,” Inspector McCloud said, shutting the book. “That was not the start we had hoped for.”
>
“There must be more,” Eugenie said. “More than 20 men sell children in London, I’m certain.”
“Of course there is more,” Inspector McCloud responded. He looked Eugenie over in a condescending manner, focusing on the waistband of her skirt in particular. She understood the message instinctively: I don’t need advice from a woman.
Phillip, fortunately, stepped in. “Do you have pictures, I think the lady means.”
“No,” Inspector McCloud said. He reached for a glass on his desk and drank deeply from it, then patted down his lips with a napkin. “We have names of others, of course; people suspected. But we do not have photographs.”
“Thank you,” Eugenie said. He gave her a small smile, and she retreated to the corner of the room.
“So what do we do now?” Phillip asked. He gestured toward the map. “Do we go visiting?”
Inspector McCloud shrugged and then sat down behind his desk. He seemed to be rapidly losing interest in the case. He shuffled a few papers. He made a few notes in a notebook. Phillip saw that Eugenie was rapidly sketching something into the back of her crime book, so he drew out the Inspector into an extended conversation, peppering him with questions. Inspector McCloud answered listlessly before becoming annoyed. Abruptly, he brought the meeting to a close with a promise to be in contact “with Barnardshire.”
“Thank you,” Phillip said, shaking the man’s hand and smiling warmly. His face rarely betrayed pique.
Eugenie turned quickly, to hide her face, and tucked her book and pencil back into her trench coat.
*
“That didn’t go well,” Eugenie said. She spoke to Phillip, who grimaced, but Inspector Feagley responded.
“Rather makes it difficult to find a criminal, I should say. We come all this way to look at a few pictures.” He threw up his hands, scattering the pedestrians on the sidewalk.
It was very busy, and they were swarmed by people. Although it was still early afternoon, there was so much commerce in London now that the streets were jammed at nearly all daylight hours.
