by Death
‘I thought she had something important to tell me – a matter of life and death, wasn’t it?’
‘Can’t have been that urgent after all, then,’ said Bess, pulling a face.
‘Probably not.’
Neither of them was worried. I left them to their business and continued on my way home, telling myself that they were right and that Sallie wasn’t my problem. She would turn up eventually. Even so, as I passed the knife-grinding boy outside the White Horse, I decided to ask if he’d seen her. He was always there in the daylight hours. He had taken over the family business when his father had died a few months ago and was working hard, but knife-grinding is a dull occupation and I guessed he spent his time watching the comings and goings. I asked him whether he remembered Sallie, the girl I had brought to the tavern.
He nodded. I had guessed right.
‘Thin scrap. She had a pink dress and bonnet the other day. Looked worse for drink.’
‘That’s her. Did you see her yesterday?’
He shook his head. ‘Saw the other two she’s been walking with, but not her.’
Out of impulse, I pressed a shilling into his hand.
‘When you finish for the day, will you go and have a look for her? Can you go as far as the Strand? See if anyone’s seen her. She’s gone missing and I need to find her.’
He looked at the coin in his hand, and then nodded again.
‘All right.’
‘Come and find me if you hear anything or see anything. Or leave a message.’
‘I will.’ He went back to his grinding.
I hoped he was a boy of his word, otherwise I had just lost another shilling on Sallie.
I hadn’t found Sydney, either, for all my intentions.
Meg, still wearing a superior expression, waved me upstairs when I returned home – noting, as I dutifully ascended, that there was mud on the hem of my gown and suggesting that I might change it for the evening. She was very nearly as astute as Sydney; I might have known.
Chapter Twenty-six
I could not hear birds when I woke the next morning. It was their absence that made me think of home again.
When I was a child, I would wake with the birds and make every effort to be outside in the open air. My mother died when I was very small, but I had a governess who was almost a mother to me; happy to indulge me, seeing every blade of grass and every insect as an opportunity for learning. She taught me to look, to observe and to understand what I saw by research and by contemplation. The sky was above me, the fields spread before me and the whole world was mine to study and enjoy. Then, one day, she found a husband, and was gone, and my father took charge of my education.
My two older brothers taught me to ride, dragging me out on wild adventures that muddied my gowns and boots, and blew the wind through my hair. And then, becoming young men, they too had left, while I remained at home.
My father was the rector of a rich and pleasant living; there were many opportunities for enjoying social intercourse with local families. But my father, concerned at the streak of wilfulness that he discerned in me, counselled me to cultivate a quiet and godly demeanour. Wilfulness led to disobedience, wantonness, and ruin. He lectured me often on this. I had tried my best to curb the desire for adventure but had embroidered cushions and read improving sermons with increasing agitation.
I was beginning to feel the urge and swell of lust, but I hadn’t known, in those days, quite what it was. I was frustrated; constrained by home. My father should have encouraged me towards a sensible marriage. Instead he sent me, when I had just turned eighteen, to stay with my aunt. Aunt Anne, who did not enjoy good health, was in need of a companion. All was well – if excessively dull – until my uncle arrived home from London.
My father spoke of his older brother Francis as a libertine, a devil, but adored him nevertheless. Francis was equally full of devotion to my father. Despite this, and being the devil, my uncle decided that his niece was just to his taste and set out to relieve me of my burdensome innocence, knowing, with uncanny insight, just how much I wanted to discard it. I was fascinated by him, and foolishly imagined that I knew what I was doing – not recognising that I was dealing with such an experienced player of the game. Once I had given myself willingly to him, then, like the devil, he preyed on my growing shame and regret, threatening to tell my father every time he came to my bed, reminding me of how far I had transgressed, how I thrown myself at him like a cheap slut from the streets.
He taught me my trade; taught me every trick I know.
I had been forced to learn.
At least now the devils I deal with must pay me for their pleasure.
I closed my eyes. I lay still in my bed and tried again to listen for the birds. I couldn’t hear them, and a sensation of panic crept over me. Here, in London, I was as trapped as I had been at home. In this vast city swarming with people, expanding, so it seemed, on a daily basis, I was contained; suffocated. I had no prospect beyond what I could earn – and only a short time in which to earn enough to last beyond my youth. I was ill-equipped to be a servant; I didn’t want to be an oyster seller and I had no craft to speak of, save a little music and some small ability in drawing.
And I excelled in my trade.
I sighed, rolled out of bed and opened the shutters. The sky was grey, and a fine drizzle had wet the street. No wonder there were no birds. The weather matched my mood and I was tempted to climb back into bed and disappear under the covers until I was required. Instead I knelt in front of the bed, pulled up the corner of the rug and carefully lifted one of the floorboards. Under it, pushed almost an arm’s length to the side, was my box. Wooden, square and inlaid with silver, this was my most precious possession. The box itself I had brought with me, snatched up hastily with my clothes and belongings while my father had paced the floor of the hallway. The box was my past; its contents were my future.
My independence.
I sat on the floor, a shawl wrapped over my shoulders, and opened it slowly. Inside were the coins and notes that I had kept hidden from Ma and the others. There were small trinkets, offerings from grateful and indulgent men that I had failed to declare; jewellery I had taken from my home that would, one day, need to be pawned.
I counted it all again, and was, as always, happy that I had it, but frustrated at its meagreness. Here was my paradox: to leave this grotesque way of life I had to embrace it wholeheartedly. To make more money I had to earn more money. That was the reasoning I had employed since arriving in London. But I had nowhere near enough in the box yet.
I touched the scars on my left hand; the sight of my disfigured skin made me tremble even now. I pushed a memory back down into the darkness, returning the box to its secret location and covering the floor with the rug just as Meg knocked on the door and offered me water.
‘You’ve got visitors.’
I sighed. Of course I had.
‘It’s two little strumpets,’ she said. ‘Sydney wouldn’t have let them in the house, and neither would Ma, but he’s not here and she’s out. Old Sarah’s put them in the kitchen and told them not to touch anything.’
She could only mean Kitty and Bess. They were not so low that I would call them common strumpets, but they wouldn’t be the sort of girls Ma would want in her house, and Meg knew it. I would have to get rid of them as fast as I could.
As soon as I saw them I knew something bad had happened. They were in no fit state to pinch the food or the silverware. The two of them sat, damp from rain, white-faced and silent at the table. I knew before they told me.
‘It’s Sallie,’ Kitty said with a little sob in her voice. ‘She’s dead.’
Oh God.
‘She drank something bad, didn’t she?’ She had wandered off and died in a doorway, and I had let her go. I sat down; a lump rising in my throat. I had been so caught up in other excitements that I had not properly looked for her.
Bess’ hard little eyes were tear-stained.
‘It wasn’t the drink, Lizzie. S
he’s been pulled out of the river. We’ve just found out. That’s where we’re going now. We thought you’d want to know.’
‘What was she doing by the river?’
‘We don’t know why she was there. They pulled her out at Hungerford Stairs.’
Poor girl. She really had been trying her luck down on the Strand.
‘It was that knife-grinder from Compton Street that told us. He said you’d given him a coin to go and find her – and that we were to tell you immediately.’ Bess blew her nose on the corner of her cloak.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘Did the lad tell you anything more?’
‘He’s with us,’ said Kitty. ‘He’s outside in the street. Wouldn’t come in.’
I doubted that Old Sarah would have let in a knife-grinder, even if he had been keen. I picked up my cloak and hat and gathered up the two girls – with some hunks of bread and cheese for the journey – and we stepped out of the house. The mist was, finally, beginning to lift. We found the young lad sitting at the bottom of the steps, which certainly would not have pleased Mrs Farley either, had she seen it. I pressed another coin into his hand, thanking him for the information, even though it was bad news.
‘She went to meet a man, miss,’ he said as he turned the coin over in his hand. ‘I had it from the oyster girl on the corner of Wardour Street. She was boasting all that day about a handsome gentleman who wanted to take her for a night-time walk along the riverside.’
‘Did anyone see the handsome gentleman?’ I asked, knowing it was unlikely.
‘No. The girl wasn’t even sure if he really existed.’ He confirmed what I expected, and looked a little sad as he wandered away, as if he really had hoped to bring better news.
‘Come on,’ I linked my arms with Kitty and Bess and called on my own courage to make my voice as bright as I could. ‘We should go and take a look.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
We were mostly silent as we walked down to the river, to where the knife-grinder had directed us. There was something dreadful about the prospect of seeing her. She had latched herself to me like a leech and called me her sister, bleeding me of coins to spend on cheap clothes and nasty gin. But there had been something sweet about her; a vulnerability, perhaps, hidden under the cheeky smile. I realised, with a stab of guilt, that I had never asked her how she had ended up on the street.
We were sisters, of a kind. I had landed well, when I fell from grace. I had stepped from the coach at Charing Cross in the autumn and straight into the path of one Polly Young, who had scooped me up and brought me to Berwick Street. I had been lucky. A minute later and I would have found myself in London, with only a small trunk and my wits to keep me from the life that Sallie had led. A minute later, and it might have been me they had pulled from the Thames.
The river was as busy and stinking as ever, an expanse of noise, as much as water. On the water’s edge, avoided by every waterman, porter and trader who passed it, was a body, covered by a dirty length of cloth that might once have been white.
We could tell it was Sallie even before we reached her. Someone had tried to deal with her decently; possibly the person who had found her and pulled her out. Kitty gripped my arm tightly as we came near.
‘You have seen a dead person before?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ Kitty said, trying to sound brave.
‘Come on,’ I patted her hand, also pretending to be confident. ‘It might not be her after all.’
As we reached the body a man yelled to us from the alehouse by the bank. Tankard waving in his hand, he marched over.
‘Oi! Leave it alone!’
Wind-chapped cheeks and sun browned hands told me that he spent most of his life on the river – probably fishing bodies out of it. I guessed it was he who had found her.
‘We mean no disrespect, sir, but we think this is our friend. We heard that she had drowned here.’
He looked us over, as if mentally assessing whether we might be friends to a drowned whore. Clearly, we looked as though we were. He wandered off, still clutching his pot, leaving us to it. I crouched down and touched the grubby cloth at the head, hesitating to draw it back, and witness death. I looked up at Bess and Kitty clinging to one another, and then again at the body, slowly folding back the fabric. I swallowed hard as bile rose in my throat.
Her bonnet was hanging limply from a ribbon around her neck and thick weeds had wrapped themselves over her brow. Her face was bloated and grey. The pale pink gown was tattered and soiled. She didn’t look a rose bud anymore; just a trampled bloom discoloured with blood and covered with brown slime. Bess wailed loudly. Kitty whimpered like a dog.
‘Rest in peace, little sister,’ I whispered, touching the cold forehead.
A shadow crossed her white face. The boatman had returned with a man I recognised. I stood up.
The boatman had sent for a constable, probably some time ago. But dead girls pulled from the river were not a priority in Bow Street, so he had arrived only now. Davenport was surprised to see me.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s Sallie.’
‘You’ll need to be more careful, Miss Hardwicke, this is the second friend of yours to meet their death in a matter of days.’ Was that a warning, or was he attempting a joke?
The girls curtseyed half-heartedly, at once distrustful and curious.
Davenport nodded to them and then crouched by Sallie’s head.
‘What’s happened to you, then?’ he asked her, as if she might speak.
‘Just a drunken bunter who fell in the water. They drown more often than people imagine, you know.’ The boatman said, standing impassively – his tattered shirt flapping in the breeze.
Davenport tugged the cloth and exposed Sallie’s whole body. I could still smell the gin, along with rot. Maybe she had simply fallen in, as the man said.
Davenport began examining her carefully. I watched as he opened her lips and felt around her jaw, with the attention of someone who had done this sort of thing before. He tipped her gently on to her stomach and pushed her shoulders.
‘Well, she didn’t drown.’
I knelt beside him.
‘She was dead before she went into the river, you think?’
He didn’t look up. He was examining her hair, wiping slime away. ‘There’s no water in her, for a start, and look here at this…’
I looked at where he was pointing, although I really didn’t want to. There was a lot of blood in the matted strands.
‘She’s been hit hard.’ He was feeling around the wound. ‘The skull’s broken here.’
‘Is that what killed her?’
He rolled her gently over again on to her back, pulled the bonnet away from her neck and checked around it, not answering. There were no marks on her neck, as far as I could see.
He picked up her left hand, which was clenched into a fist, and then moved down her body lifting her skirts. Bess sobbed again but he carried on, ignoring her. The brown stockings were full of holes, but then, they always had been. There were no bruises on her legs. She had not been ill-used, which was a small comfort.
Davenport sat back on his heels, wiped his hands with the discarded cloth and groaned quietly.
‘What a life, eh?’
‘Will you find who did this to her, sir?’ Kitty’s eyes were wide and tearful.
He stood up with a heavy sigh.
‘I doubt it.’ He looked down at Sallie.
‘She knew something, I think.’ I said. ‘She had something to tell me about Mr Reed and about Paris. Surely, that means her death has something to do with his?’
He thought about it for a moment.
‘It’s possible that she may have seen or heard something, but more likely she thought she had. She probably just wanted to get money from you – you know that.’
‘Someone killed her, hit her on the head; can’t you do anything?’
‘I’ll do my best. I can ask around as I go, someone may have
seen something, or know something but, really, there’s not much I can do.’ Fielding’s men were busy hunting for Swann’s gang. Sallie was unimportant. No one would be asking questions. No one would miss her. No one would care.
He reached inside his coat and pulled out some coins.
‘I’m unlikely to find out who killed her, but,’ he dropped the coins into my hand, ‘perhaps this will help to bury her decently. And maybe you can buy these girls a drink with what’s left.’ He looked almost as upset as Bess. He put a hand out to her. ‘If you have to live as you do, try to stay nearer Soho. It’s hell down here.’
He turned to go. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. I think he meant it.
I stroked Sallie’s clenched hand. A dark blue thread hung between her fingers; it was attached to something in her fist. Her hand was already in the grip of death and prising open her fingers was not easy, but I tugged gently on the line and a button fell from her cold grasp. A button from a gentleman’s coat. It was gold and it shone well enough to suggest that it was new. There was a small bird embossed on the front of it; I’d not seen a button like it before.
Kitty squeaked and called him back. ‘There’s a button, here, look! Do you think this will help you find whoever killed her?’ Her face was almost radiant with hope.
He took it from me and examined it. Then he returned it to my hand.
‘It’s just a button.’
‘I think it’s quite distinctive,’ I said. ‘There’s some sort of a bird on it.’
‘Could you look, sir?’ Kitty pressed him now, excitedly believing that, somehow, this small clue pointed us to a murderer.
‘I haven’t got the time to check the closet of every gentleman in London. I wish that I had. Perhaps Miss Hardwicke can take it to any of the tailors she knows and make enquiries.’ It was his quiet way of letting her down gently.
‘I can do my best, Kitty,’ I said. There must be several hundred of places to buy buttons in London. His response was disappointing, but understandable.
Davenport tipped his hat to us and walked away. I watched him kick at the wheel of a cart as he went. The girls fussed about straightening Sallie’s bonnet and pulled the greying cloth back over her. The boatman was still standing nearby, watching us, tankard in hand.
