by George Mann
“When did you come to realise Miss Barnett was missing?”
“Almost immediately. Or at least, I felt something was wrong as soon as I saw she was not outside with the rest of our group. I — I’d assumed she’d gone into the street to wait for me with the others. They’d assumed she’d stayed inside with me as a show of her support.”
“You’ve not seen her since?”
Her throat constricted and she found she couldn’t speak to answer. She shook her head and snatched at the handkerchief tucked into her cuff, mortified by her tears, angry that they were witness to it.
The gentlemen gave her a moment to compose herself. The doctor perhaps would have given her more than a moment, but Mr Holmes seemed to feel a moment was quite long enough, and he proceeded apace with a touch of impatience in his voice. “None of your associates recalls seeing her leave the premises. What of the police at the doors?”
“We asked, of course. The constables claimed not to have seen her go back inside either. We walked round the station, calling out to her, and even went as far as the hospital before returning. Miss Phelps convinced a few policemen to search for her inside.”
“But they didn’t find her,” Dr Watson said.
“Do you think I would be here if they had?”
“Mrs Despain.”
Her head snapped towards Mr Holmes, his voice and the calm, clipped manner in which he said her name cautioning her to civility. “Yes, well, they claimed they had searched for her, though I cannot be certain of it. They were not inclined to do us any favours, you understand. I then went to our rooms in Minerva Street—”
“The rooms you and Miss Barnett share?”
“Yes. The Pennyroyal Society keeps offices above a small jobs printer, and our rooms are there as well. But she hadn’t returned to them. I went back out, enquiring after her, asking if anyone had seen a young woman meeting her description, but if anyone had, they were not forthcoming. I stayed out well past it being entirely safe, and when I returned I discovered our rooms had been ransacked.”
“Was anything missing or stolen?”
“The culprits seemed more bent on wanton destruction.”
“Wanton destruction is often used to cover up a search. They were looking for something.”
“I—I don’t know what it could have been. They destroyed anything of value...”
Whatever he saw in her hesitation must have prompted his next question. “Why were you the only one bailed, do you suppose?”
She fixed her eyes on the handkerchief in her lap, twisting and untwisting the delicate linen. “I—I’m not sure —”
“You were the only one charged with an actual crime. All the other ladies were issued warnings or charged with civil infractions. Yet I was given to understand you were not the only person handing out the prohibited materials. Nor did you organise the demonstration.”
“I am the author of the information in the pamphlets.”
Dr Watson made a sound suspiciously like “harrumph”.
“I’ve seen the pamphlets.” Holmes pressed on. “There is no author’s name given for precisely that reason, so that no one person would have to bear the full burden of the law. Why would you confess?”
“I didn’t. Perhaps I was charged because Mrs White wasn’t there. She’d taken ill. I’m her... second-in-command.”
The doctor added a derisive snort.
“Watson,” Holmes warned, “enough. You’ve made your opinion quite clear.”
“I don’t think I have! Women with no medical training whatsoever are marching about the East End prescribing risky contraceptive concoctions and dangerous abortifacients. The poor would be better served — and safer, I might add — being schooled in the discipline of abstinence.” He’d clearly given up any eschewals of propriety and spoke now as if there were not a woman in the room.
This suited her fine.
“Oh, abstinence,” she replied. “Yes, quite right, because men of all stations in life are so very good at that. And who must bear the burden of this lack of restraint —”
“You cannot blame men alone for that lack of restraint, madam. Women of the lowest order are on offer twenty-four hours a day in some parts of this city —”
“I would challenge you to live on three shillings six pence a week doing intermittent slops work and still remain virtuous!”
A loud bang rattled cups and saucers and set the biscuits dancing on the plates. Startled to silence, both parties turned to the source of the sound, at which point Mr Holmes ceased pounding his fist on the table.
“We’ve gone off the rails. A bit,” he said, looking pointedly at each in turn. He righted a cup, flicked a glance at the doctor. “I am somewhat surprised at the frank nature of this discourse, Watson. You tend to be more circumspect in front of a lady. I do hope you’re not suggesting Mrs Despain is anything less than a lady?”
“Of course not!” Watson sputtered.
“Good, good. Her mission does not preclude her honour. I myself am wholly uninterested in reformist notions of social justice or the rights of the poor to practise family limitation. I am — and I hope you are with me in this, Mrs Despain — primarily interested in the disappearance of Millie Barnett.” He gave her a tight smile possibly meant to reassure her, though rather cool for it. “However, the subject matter does bring a point to bear upon your situation, and perhaps to the circumstances of Miss Barnett’s disappearance.”
“Pray enlighten me,” she told him, still seething.
“Is there a possibility you were singled out for harsher treatment because of your mother’s notoriety?”
Ah, and there was the trap sprung and her foot caught. Prevarication would avail her nothing with this man, and there was no use in pretending ignorance. “I will not discuss my mother with you, Mr Holmes.”
“Then I fail to see how I can be of assistance.”
“Why?” Watson asked. “Who is her mother?”
“My mother can have little to do with this, surely?”
“Miss Barnett had your belongings in hand when she disappeared. If someone believed her to be you, well, considering the cause you have taken up, so similar to your mother’s...”
“Who is her mother, then?”
“Must he be here during our entire consultation?”
Sherlock Holmes blinked, unmoved by plea or protest. “He has knowledge I lack.”
Watson eyed his associate warily. “Do I now?”
“You are both a doctor and a married man and therefore have practical experience and medical expertise I do not in regards to the, er, remedies the Pennyroyal Society advocates and distributes in the East End.”
It was Agnes’s turn to scoff. “My mother had more understanding of nature’s own remedies in her apron pocket than most doctors have in their entire heads.”
“Yet your mother is in prison. The remedies in her apron pocket led to a woman’s death.”
“Maryanne Sallow’s husband didn’t want another child and he didn’t want her. He gave her too much. He killed her. He should have gone to prison, not my mother!”
“So you claimed at her trial, though you could not provide proof of his intent, as I recall.”
“Dear Lord!” Watson interjected. “Are we talking about Louisa Gillespie? Mrs Gillespie? Mother Lou, the baby-killer?”
* * *
Agnes fled the sitting room of 221b Baker Street with scarcely any recollection of what was said after the damning appellation. She was nearly at Aldersgate before she realised how far she’d walked fuelled entirely by outrage. And still she could not let go of it.
Her mother was not a baby-killer! Her mother had delivered more living infants to the poor women of Whitechapel and Bethnal Green than any doctor on any ward in any charity hospital anywhere. And unlike those doctors, she told women how to keep from having more or how to relieve themselves of the burden of another. Charlie Sallow had killed his wife with pills intended to expel a dead foetus. Pills made by Louisa Gi
llespie for that purpose. Her poor mother, so disheartened by the death of Maryanne, had said and done little in her own defence. Serving a ten-year sentence at Holloway even now while Charlie and his new wife kept a little sweet shop off Tottenham Court Road.
Her righteous anger was not lessened any by finding a rough man waiting in her lodgings. After squealing like a frightened little girl, she quickly realised who it was and wanted only to punch the ugly smirk off his face. “How did you get in here? Who let you come up?”
“Keep your voice down,” he urged, though the sound of the printing press below would cover any noise they made. There was no one in the offices out front. He could murder her right now and her cries would not be heard above the din below, which he knew full well. “Anyway, no one saw me.”
“Are you responsible for this?” Her arm swept a tense and jerky arc encompassing the wreckage.
“Ah, no. Beaten to it.” His boots crunched the shards of broken glass, stirring up puffs of powdery chemicals and the scent of crushed herbs as he had a look around. He scratched at the back of his neck. “Blimey, someone has it in for you lady reformers, haven’t they?”
But the Society offices had not been touched. This seemed a much more personal attack. Pointed, direct. She picked up the broken microscope from beneath the workbench with two hands and an unladylike grunt, cradling the weight of it in her arms as if it were a sleepy baby. “I would have thought you’d be busy deciphering code by now, Mr Murphy.”
The grin was stuck to his face like a plaster but his jaw was working on an emotion altogether less cheery. She’d seen enough of the criminal element to know that, although he had the look down, he wasn’t one himself, strictly speaking. She didn’t know his real name, or his rank or title, and she didn’t care to.
He cocked his head, sizing her up. “Hard to do without the encryption key you promised, Mrs Despain. Where is it?”
“What do you mean? Don’t tell me you’ve lost it already?”
Mr Murphy sighed like a man who sorely missed the much simpler negotiations required of breaking heads with truncheons. “I’m only giving you this one warning, right? So if you have crossed us, it will not go well for you or your dear mother. She’ll stand no chance of a commuted sentence nor even parole, should it be considered. And do believe me when I tell you I shall most happily send you to the same hell, if it comes to it.”
“But—but I don’t understand. Your men searched the bag, didn’t they? At the station?”
“And they found nothing but those disgusting tracts you publish.”
“No, no, it was—there was a playbill, a playbill from Beecher’s Music Hall printed on that very press downstairs! The bag has a false bottom—”
His sudden intake of breath and the expression on his face told her everything. They’d missed the false bottom entirely.
Oh dear God. Millie!
“Millie still has it, my friend Millie, she has the bag!”
The man huffed out a sigh. “Well that’s a sorry piece of luck. Damned sorry! Pardon my language.”
“She’s gone missing. You have to find her! You must begin a search immediately. You must—”
He pried her fingers from their twisting grasp on his lapels and shoved her away, not hard, but enough so that she stumbled back, off-balance, only righting herself in time to keep from falling onto the dangerous debris that littered the floor. Panting, chin thrust out, Agnes tried to keep her voice sure and her lip from trembling. “You think the Fenians are the only ones that plant bombs? You’ll have more than just another riot on your hands if you don’t find her.”
“If they’ve not found her already,” he said. “Mayhap they took her thinking she was you.”
The words were a chilling echo of those uttered by Sherlock Holmes. “No,” she said, and then again, as if repeating it could make it true.
“Not as well in with Hyndman and his revolutionary lads as you led us to believe, are you, Mrs Despain? Or maybe they know your friend isn’t the mole in their midst, and they’re hoping to draw you out and us after. Let me tell you now, we won’t be doing that. I’m thinking we’ll find it necessary to shut this operation down. We’ve got other moles in holes.” The phrase amused him and he gave a little chuckle before pulling his cap low over his eyes and fastening up his jacket. Pushing past her, he headed towards the tiny bedroom under the eaves.
“You can’t just leave!” she cried, rushing after him. “What about my friend? She’s innocent, she knows nothing of this.”
“Well, I’d be more concerned about my own welfare, were I you.”
“You will offer me no protection, either?”
“We offered you what you asked for, if you succeeded, and you wanted only the one thing.”
Yes. Then she’d only wanted her mother’s freedom. Now...
“It’s hardly my fault your men are idiots!” She waded through feathers, straw, piles of cotton wadding, to grab his arm and make him stay, make him do something! He jerked out of her grasp. “I did everything asked of me,” she said, forcing the next word out between her teeth. “Please.”
He paused, one leg dangling out the window as he considered. “I suppose if you can recover that cipher-key you might save your friend and see your dear old mum back home. I hope you can. I hear the poor woman’s taken a turn for the worse.” He smiled. “We will, of course, disavow all knowledge of you, should you be caught.”
He touched the bill of his cap in farewell and then was gone. She heard the scrape of his boots on the ledge and a thud as he dropped to the narrow passage below.
* * *
Standing amidst the ruins of Millie’s little makeshift laboratory was a crushing reminder of all Agnes had lost in the past two days. Poor Millie had been building her lab long before Agnes met her, but once they had met and knew their interests and missions overlapped, much of their combined income had gone into acquiring those items necessary to Millie’s research. Whatever small profit was made from selling the herbals (and Millie never knew that the bulk of this profit came from women employed in certain houses in the Mile End Road and elsewhere) went to furnish the lab. They had a tincture press, distillation apparatus, two Bunsen burners, one naturalist’s microscope and one binocular microscope, beakers, retorts, measuring cylinders, crucibles, an autoclave, droppers, pipettes, spirit jars, bottles of solvents and packets of chemicals, as well as hundreds of apothecary jars filled with roots, bark, leaves and fungi.
All of it gone now, destroyed. This destruction, utter and absolute, shocked Agnes to her core. So vicious. So personal. Not only the lab equipment smashed but also the tea things and the kettle, the soup pot, and the chamber pot. There wasn’t a stitch of clothing left that hadn’t been ripped, slashed or ground into the broken glass with a large boot. The bed was ruined as well, the ticking violently shredded, wadding strewn about and, insult to injury, the culprits had soiled it with urine—their own, she suspected.
And now, though she’d fully intended to make a dent in the mess with a broom and dustpan, the heavy weight of her loss bore down upon her. The despair at her predicament, and her dread over the fate of her dearest, most stalwart friend conspired to deplete her and, finally, to defeat her. She had energy only enough to clear a bare place on the floor before lying down, her body curled around the broken microscope. Shattered and hopeless, she began to weep.
* * *
Sometime later, she awakened. It was pitch dark. The printing press on the main floor had shut down for the night and though it always groaned a bit as the machinery settled, the sounds that awakened her were the subtle, furtive movements of someone in the offices out front, quietly opening desk drawers and shuffling papers about. She sat up slowly, straining to listen, heart thundering beneath her breastbone. Her limbs screamed at her to run, run, for God’s sake, run! Her leg jerked unbidden, boot colliding with bits of glass.
The intruder stilled. She knew he was listening just as hard as she was, and she pressed both hands over h
er mouth to stifle the ragged sounds of her own breathing. The inner door to the office squeaked open and stealthy footfalls traversed the narrow passage towards her. A wavering, unsteady light showed beneath the door, creeping farther into the room with each creak of the floorboards. The door handle moved, dropping slowly.
Agnes flung herself against the door. Mad, crazed with terror, she screamed and raged and shouted, threatening murder and damnation, pounding her fists on the wood, kicking at it as if she could kick through it to the wicked man on the other side. Finally, breathless, panting, hands aching, scraped and bloodied, she turned her back to the door and let her body slide to the floor. “There’s nothing left, you cur,” she sobbed, her voice raw, “you’ve taken everything.”
A long pause, then —
“Mrs Despain?”
* * *
Sherlock Holmes fetched her brandy, barley water and a meat pie from the Black Penny Tavern. He lighted the lamp in the tiny offices and bade her refresh herself while he took his own lamp in to examine her rooms and search for evidence. Drained and numb, she had little enthusiasm for anything, let alone a greasy meat pie from the Black Penny. But the barley water soothed her throat and, after a few minutes, the brandy soothed her nerves. The ache in her hands and wrists from hitting the door dulled with each swallow.
