The man led the way, springing ahead. Ainsley glanced up the stairwell before stepping onto the first board. He felt a sudden shove from behind him, so strong he almost fell onto the stairs.
“Get on with you now!” the sergeant boomed.
“Keep your voice down,” Delaney hissed from above them. “The girls are sleeping.”
Ainsley walked, but only with the knowledge that he could not fight off both of them, especially with his hands tied. The second floor had more doors and was laid out similar to a hotel but Ainsley was only permitted a quick glance before he was urged up to the third floor. At the first door, a woman stood smiling as her body hugged a doorframe.
“Well hello,” she said.
Delaney pushed the woman back into the room. “Close the door,” he said with a pointed finger.
The door was closing as Ainsley passed. The woman snarled at him, revealing a severely chipped front tooth and an empty space beside it.
They passed an open door with no one inside. Ainsley saw a narrow metal bed, a bare mattress, and washstand.
A brothel.
Ainsley suddenly felt ill at the thought of being brought here to treat an unfortunate woman who had been injured, diseased, or worse. Ainsley had no interest in helping these men continue their illicit business venture, especially if it exposed him to the many diseases they were known to carry.
At the end of the hall, the man opened the door and gestured for Ainsley to get inside. At the door Ainsley closed his eyes and titled his head to the side, not believing what he was asked to do.
“See what you can do for him, doctor,” the man said.
Ainsley opened his eyes and was surprised to see a man, curled up on the bed. His clothes were wet with sweat and blood had caked into the fibers.
The doctor stepped into the room and turned to his captors, presenting his hands, which were fastened at the wrists. “And what do you expect me to do with my hands bound?” he asked.
Delaney reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife.
“No,” Sergeant Fisher said, grabbing the man’s wrist and nearly taking the knife from him. “He escaped once. Make him do it like that.”
Ainsley laughed. “Then there is nothing I can do,” he said with a shrug.
Delaney shook his hand from the sergeant’s grasp and cut the rope.
Rubbing his wrists, Ainsley turned to the man in the bed.
“You have a medical bag, I presume?” When neither of the men in the hall responded, Ainsley turned to them. “I’m not a miracle worker. I need the proper supplies.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Sergeant Fisher said. “You watch him.”
Delaney stayed at the door as Ainsley moved farther into the room, rolling up his sleeves as he looked over the injured man on the bed. He looked as if he’d been beaten in a similar manner that Ainsley had. Ainsley wondered why they were bothering to treat his injuries.
Ainsley leaned over to look at the man’s back, and rolled him gently as he touched his lower back. Then he knelt down at the side of the bed to look at the man’s face. A flash of recognition came to the man’s eyes, but he said nothing. The man’s cheek was swollen on the left side with a sizeable cut on his cheekbone that Ainsley could hardly see for all the blood that had caked onto the man’s face. He shuddered as Ainsley pulled down his lower lids. The right eye showed signs of damage, with broken blood vessels and a pool of blood blotting the white of his eye.
When Ainsley looked to the man’s hands he saw numerous scrapes and bruises, along with a few swollen fingers on his left hand. Ainsley tried to force them to flex but the man just recoiled from the pain.
A few seconds later, Sergeant Fisher appeared with a dusty medical bag Ainsley thought was better suited for a display case than actual use.
“This was from the other doctor,” Fisher said. He dropped it on the foot of the bed.
“What happened to him?” Ainsley dared to ask as he stood to look over his offered tools.
“Same thing that happens to all of them,” Fisher said with a smile.
The clasp nearly broke off the bag as Ainsley pulled on it. Inside he found a number of bottles, opium mainly, some laudanum and alcohol, but no carbolic acid or soap. “It appears your other doctor had an addiction,” Ainsley said. “Or he had a lot of female patients.”
“Never mind that. What does he need?” Delaney asked, jerking his chin to the man on the bed.
“He needs a hospital,” Ainsley said matter-of-factly. “Surgery, probably.”
He pulled out the leather tool case he found at the bottom of the bag and unwound the straps. He laid it out on the bed.
“Shit.”
The scissors, scalpels, pliers, tweezers and knives were rusted and corroded beyond repair. Most likely they had been neglected regular care, were hardly ever washed, and certainly not dried before being put away.
Any hope of him being able to help this man evaporated.
“He probably has a punctured lung,” Ainsley said without bothering to look up. “I can’t operate on him here.”
Delaney opened his mouth to say something, but a commotion outside in the courtyard drew his attention. He crossed the room to the window and peered outside. “Let’s go.”
Ainsley had no time to react before Delaney was closing the door from the hallway. The iron key gave a muted groan and clink and then the hallway went quiet.
Ainsley went to the window but couldn’t see what everyone was running toward.
“You’re the one Julia told me about,” the man in the bed said suddenly, wincing as he turned to face Ainsley. “The doctor she works for.”
“Robert Crandall?”
The broken man in the bed nodded and then closed his eyes. “They made me fight him.”
Ainsley circled the bed, his mind reeling with every possibility to make an escape but now he had an invalid to slow him down. He began to pull out everything from the doctor’s bag, searching for anything he could use to the break the lock.
“They told me to fall in the eighth round, or they’d kill Mary and Lucy.”
Ainsley felt his heart stop at the mention of Robert’s wife and the image that flooded his mind.
“That fighter did me in good,” he said, folding into his fetal position. “I didn’t think I’d make it out of this room.”
Ainsley pulled out a brown bottle and gave a quick sniff. Chloroform.
“Can you walk?” he asked, pulling at a rip in the bare mattress. He edged out a sizeable piece of cloth and put it in his pocket along with the chloroform.
Robert started to move, at first pushing himself from the bed and then swung his legs over the edge. He looked as if he could scream out in pain at any moment but didn’t. The man was to be commended for that.
Ainsley knelt down so that Robert could wrap his arm over his shoulders and use his body to stand. Once on his feet Ainsley guided him to the door.
The sound of numerous men and their thunderous boots marched the full height of the stairwell, passing the floor Ainsley and Robert were on. Then the noise reverberated through the length of the hall above, only now it was laced with the tiny, muffled screams of a female.
“They found her.” Robert covered his face and looked as if he could weep.
Ainsley tried to look out the keyhole but found the opening dark, which meant the key was still in the lock. He guided Robert to the metal footing of the bed and went to the doctor’s bag. He pulled tweezers from the pouch and tried to use it to turn the key. Slowly he positioned the tool to clasp the key but each time the tweezers touched the iron of the key hole and sound rung out.
He pulled the tweezers away at the sound of Sergeant Fisher and Delaney returning.
“I thought she was gone for good,” Delaney said. “Or at least she will be when Thaddeus finds out we caught up to her.”
Above them Ainsley could hear sobbing, as if someone were crying directly into the floorboards above them. He looked to Robert, who swa
llowed nervously. Ainsley strained to listen, wondering if there was anything in the woman’s voice that resembled Julia’s.
“When they open this door, I need you to rush at them,” Ainsley said quietly, pulling the cloths and chloroform from his pocket. He doused the fabric with a healthy amount of liquid before replacing the stopper and putting it back in his pocket. “Can you do it?”
Robert nodded but the look on his face betrayed his doubt. The pain must have been immense and any exertion was putting him at death’s door. Ainsley handed him one of the cloths and a pair of pointed scissors.
They waited a few more minutes before the sound of boot steps on the floorboards in the hall signaled that someone was coming. Ainsley stood poised with the rusty scalpel in one hand and a chloroform rag in the other. The men stared at each other as they listened. The footsteps stopped just outside the door and then there was nothing.
Ainsley leaned closer to the door, wanting desperately to hear what was happening on the other side. A floorboard creaked under his weight. He froze.
Come in, you bastard. Come in.
The lock turned and the door swung open. Together Ainsley and Robert lunged into the hall, attacking Sergeant Fisher. Ainsley was quick to press the cloth to his mouth as he pushed the officer back into the opposite wall. Defensively, he pulled at Sergeant Fisher’s hands and pressed the cloth to his mouth with such force Ainsley was sure he’d suffocate. Not that he didn’t deserve it.
Robert growled as he pushed his entire body against their opponent and collapsed on the floor when he realized Ainsley had the cloth over Fisher’s mouth.
The sergeant fainted rather quickly. The struggle was over as he slumped to the floor. Ainsley checked for a pulse. “We don’t have much time.”
He scooped Robert up and together they limped for the stairwell. They both went for the third floor.
The floor layout was different than the storeys below. Instead of a long hall with rooms at each side, just a single door greeted them at the top of the stairs.
Discouraged by the sight of their new obstacle, Robert fell and moved his body to sit at the highest step. “Go get Julia,” he said breathlessly. “I’ll wait here.”
Ainsley didn’t argue. The door was locked, and this time no key was left. Ainsley began ramming the door, placing all his weight in the iron knob and lock. A succession of female screams rose up from inside the room as Ainsley felt the frame crack. Then the door burst open, revealing a dark, attic room and a number of young women housed inside. Some stood on guard as if ready to defend themselves while others cowered, either behind the stronger ones or on mattress-like bedding arranged on the dirty, wooden floor.
“Not another step,” one of the women sneered, readying her fist.
“He’s not one of them,” another one said. “I haven’t seen him before.”
It’s not him. Not him.
“They brought a woman here, moments ago,” Ainsley said, raising his hands in front of him to show he intended no harm. “Where is she?”
The woman, twenty of them or so, stood and stared for a moment, exchanging glances and licking their lips as if unsure. Finally, one of them stepped aside, and then another. As the women moved apart they revealed a path into the attic that allowed Ainsley in. As he drew closer, he could hear a woman crying and then realized he was in the part of the attic that was directly above Robert’s room.
When the woman looked up Ainsley could see it wasn’t Julia at all, but rather a slight, black-haired young woman, who sniffled into the hem of her ripped dress. When she saw him her entire body began to shake.
“Please don’t kill me! Please!” she yelped. She held out her bruised and lacerated hands to keep him away.
“Who are you?” Ainsley asked.
“Nelly Macdonald,” she said, slowly taking her hands down.
“Avery Adams.”
“Jennifer Smith.”
“Maybel…”
“Victoria…”
The names grew into a chorus and came at him so quickly he wasn’t able to put a face to the voices. He closed his eyes as the list rolled on and then realized these were the voices that had been following him for days.
“I don’t understand. What are you doing here?” He turned back to the woman cowering in the heap of blankets and did a quick visual check of her injuries. She had been beaten, but the extent of her injuries couldn’t be seen in the dark room.
“Those men, they snatched me in Camden Town two weeks ago.” The woman raised her head, hope brightening her eyes as she stared at him. “I have a mother and a sister. I work at the market on Fridays—”
“They snatched us all and brought us here.”
“We don’t know what they plan to do with us.”
“Don’t be daft. We know bloody well what they intend to do with us!”
A quick glance to the door revealed Robert had come in, closed the door behind him and now sat on the floorboards with his back to the door. The expression on his face mirrored the disgust Ainsley felt.
“Why did they beat you just now?” Ainsley asked, looking at the woman on the floor.
“She escaped.”
“She was our last hope.”
“They are sending us away tomorrow.”
Nelly smiled through a fat lip and fattening cheek. “We made a secret passage through the attic. I almost made it,” she said. “But there were so many out in the neighbourhood. More than usual. I think they are looking for someone else.”
“They would have killed her, you know,” said a voice behind him. “They do it to all the other girls.”
“Shh! You don’t know that.”
“We don’t see them no more, do we?”
“They slit their throats and toss them in the river,” Robert said, straining his voice to be heard over the whispers amongst the women. “I saw it once. He made me watch.”
Nelly began to sob uncontrollably as if the realization dawned on her of how close she had come to the list of dead women pulled from the Thames. She raised a hand to her gaping mouth as the fear griped her, revealing knuckles that had been scraped nearly to the bone. The sound of her cries fell into the back of her throat, silencing the room for a moment before bursting forward with a gasp.
“Shh…it’s all right,” he said, trying to hush her.
She fell onto the bedding and covered her swollen face with her hands.
“Do you know if they found the woman they were looking for? A woman named Julia?” he asked. He looked to the group when no immediate answer came. No one said anything.
“They will be coming soon,” Robert said, pulling himself to his feet. “We have to go.”
“You can’t leave us.”
“You must take us with you.”
Ainsley and Robert’s eyes met, both aware that such a large group would not be able to move about the neighbourhood without being spotted.
“I have to get to Thaddeus’ office. He has something that belongs to me. I can’t leave it in his possession.” Ainsley paused. “And I think it will help us get out of here.”
Robert nodded, an understanding passing between them.
“There’s an opening,” one of the women said. “That’s how Nelly got out.”
“Show us.”
The room sprang into action. Two women guided Ainsley and Robert to the far side of the attic. The rafters were so low the men were forced to crouch to avoid hitting their heads. Almost at the wall, the leading woman stopped and ran her fingers along the mortar of a brick wall that would lead into the next building. When she pulled a loose brick away she revealed an empty space. Brick after brick was removed, perhaps ten in total, before the round opening was completely revealed.
“We worked on this for weeks,” she said.
Ainsley leaned in and looked into the adjoining attic space, which had no floorboards and even less light.
“There’s another opening on the far side,” the woman said, pointing. “And then that attic is the
one directly over the public house.”
“And Thaddeus’ office,” Robert said from behind them.
Ainsley nodded as his heart quickened. Everything inside him told him to run for the nearest door and get the hell out of there. He tried to convince himself that Julia was able to get far away from Southwark and possibly to Simms for help. He had to fight his urge to flee because he knew he couldn’t allow that pistol to remain in this man’s possession. The only way forward was getting that weapon back.
“Are you all right to come with me?” Ainsley asked Robert, who had slumped onto the floor in pain. The man gave a quick nod and moved to get closer to the opening.
“You can’t leave us,” one of the women said, pulling on Ainsley’s arm.
Ainsley grabbed her hand and held it as he looked her in the eye. “I have to get this man to a hospital. My friend with Scotland Yard will be here for you by nightfall,” he said slowly. “Keep that door closed. Be very quiet and they will have no reason to come up here.” He licked his lips. “I’m planning on having all attention on me anyway.”
Chapter 26
Margaret sat in a chair in the nursery with Lucy cradled in her arms. Prudence, pulled from her work in the kitchens, played on the floor with George and Hubert on the other side of the room.
Despite the presence of a stand-in nanny, Margaret dismissed all of Prudence’s reminders that she could see to Lucy. It calmed Margaret considerably to sit and hum. It provided enough of a change from her constant concern for her father.
“Did Violetta bring those nappies from the scullery I requested?” Margaret asked, mindful of her volume.
“No, my lady,” Prudence said. “Should I go gather them for you?”
“It’s all right,” Margaret said, slipping from the chair slowly. “I’ll go.” She went to the perambulator near the door and gently laid Lucy inside. “Can you mind Lucy?”
“Of course.”
Margaret made her way to the back stairs and went down to the kitchens where the scullery, pantry, and butler’s office was located. Mrs. Aster, the cook, raised her head as soon as Margaret entered.
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