The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (46 page)

‘Not here, I’m afraid. I think—I hope—we cater for most tastes. We can be quite ... recherché.’

She pronounced it perfectly, and smiled tightly.

‘But we’re not a queer house.’ He felt he was being scrutinised. ‘Though you don’t look like a nancy. I can usually tell what a man would really like.’ Her face cleared. ‘Or perhaps you want to watch? A nice boy with one of our girls? Eugenia said you were enjoying our little divertissement? We can arrange that.’

He was already shaking his head. ‘I think he may be your brother.’

This time she looked genuinely taken aback.

‘Well, you won’t find him here. And he’s certainly not a nancy boy.’ She seemed to find the idea amusing.

‘Where might I track him down?’

‘Shanghai, I should think,’ she said. ‘Smuggling opium, for all I know.’

Relief and disappointment flooded through him. She had a brother, but she had no real idea where he was.

‘He was a seaman in the Great War,’ she said. ‘Got a taste for a life on the ocean wave or, more like, in foreign ports.’

This took him a moment to absorb. After what he had heard, Laurence had expected the man he sought to be in some motorised section in the army, but of course they had engines on ships.

She glanced at a clock above the bureau, her interest obviously seeping away. He knew he should move fast but carefully, as he took her back into the past.

‘Did he ever say anything about his time at Easton Deadall Hall?’

‘George?’ she said. This time she looked puzzled. ‘George was never in service.’

He registered that it was not the place that was unfamiliar, nor the occupation, but that the name was wrong. But before he could tie this together, she added, ‘You’re muddling him up with Robert and Robert’s been dead for years.’

It might have been his imagination but he thought that her expression changed minutely from tolerance to wariness.

‘Was he killed in the war?’

‘Killed, yes, but before the war. Stupid man. Working as a chauffeur. Crushed under his car—had it propped up on bricks. Fixing a fuel line, the coroner said. Whole lot came down. Neighbours heard screams but thought it was just trouble of some sort. Dead by morning.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She looked at him long and hard. ‘If you are, then you’re about the only one.’ She sighed. ‘He was a bad lot. Broke our mother’s heart. Well, we all did, I suppose.’

‘I had understood you were close?’

She was shaking her head slowly. ‘I don’t know who told you but close we weren’t. Not at the end. Earlier, mebbe. He could charm the hind legs off a donkey. Him and his schemes.’ She paused. ‘Or are you looking for him because you’re part of one of them that went wrong?’ When he didn’t answer she eyed the clock again. ‘No point looking at me for any money. And seeing as the brother you’re after is the one I haven’t got any more, and it’s going to get busy downstairs soon—’

‘The girls here are very young.’

He could see at once that he’d offended her. ‘They’re not children,’ she said, sharply. ‘And I take care of them.’

‘The girl downstairs, Eugenia, said you could provide a range of ... services.’

‘I’m not running a bloody Sally Army hostel. Most men just want a change—same things they get at home but with a different face; even the girls get bored—but some men want rarer amusement. I try and satisfy them, no matter how bally odd their ideas. Most of it’s acting. Some of my girls are failed actresses, like some of them are ruined housemaids that Robert foisted on me. But I stay on this side of the law. Mebbe only just, but I do. That’s how I’ve stayed open for nigh on twenty-five years.’

‘What if they want a girl? A very young girl...?’

‘I tell them where to go,’ she said with speed but before he could feel encouraged she added, ‘There are other places for specialities and, anyway, little girls are too much trouble.’

‘There was a little girl at Easton...’ he began, but she’d stood up.

‘You’ve had your time,’ she said. ‘I’m a city woman, I’ve got no interest in west country gentry unless they ring my bell wanting what I’m offering.’

‘Which they did.’

‘Possibly. Probably. I’m not choosy if they’ve got the money.’ ‘And you know where Easton is?’

‘Of course I do,’ she said, sweeping across the floor. ‘Robert worked there.’

‘And he brought his master and his brothers here?’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ she said, ‘I let you come up here on some wild bull’s chase out of the goodness of my heart and now you’re trying to hold me to account for Robert’s doings.’

‘What was the name of the ruined housemaid?’

‘It was years and years ago.’ Her voice was indignant, her cheeks flushed. ‘I don’t know. I don’t keep a school register. She was a looker but didn’t stay—was expecting a more domestic arrangement with some gentleman as I recall—and now I’d like you to go.’ He thought it might be Maggie’s mother but doubted he could ever find out.

There was a bell on her desk, presumably to summon the maid, but she had opened the door herself.

‘I don’t want to have to get my man up here.’

Laurence wasn’t keen on meeting some backstreet bruiser himself. Of course she’d need one for the odd obstreperous drunk or for a customer who didn’t treat the girls right or pay when asked.

‘There’s been a murder,’ he said as he went out of the door, grasping at straws. At Easton. A young woman.’

Mrs Le Fèvre put both hands up in mock protest. ‘Well, I’m not missing any of mine.’

‘The police are starting to look back into the disappearance of the child, Kitty Easton,’ he lied. ‘To see if there’s a connection. The connection they don’t know about yet is between you and Robert and the Easton brothers. But I imagine you’ll feel more obliged to help them than to help me. They’ll want to get to the bottom of the whole business, whereas I only want to find out what happened to a small child. I don’t care who took her. Her parents are both dead. But one of your brother’s ruined housemaids, who was involved in this particularly stupid, cruel scheme, has suffered all her life because of it. I don’t want the police involved any more than you do, I imagine. Especially as you’re the only one left to blame, but you don’t give me any choice.’

He turned and went down the steps, leaving her where she stood. As he reached the long corridor on the floor below, a girl came along it with one of the young men who had been in the oriental room. He was already pawing her.

Laurence suddenly felt a sense of relief at not finding out the truth, not having his fears confirmed that Kitty Easton had been brought here. On a hunch he had tried and failed to find out, and now he didn’t even know why he had felt he should come here in the first place. Lydia’s death, though sad, had freed them all. The stricken village of Easton where so many lives had been destroyed, including Kitty’s small one, had, finally, moved on without her.

He stood back to let the girl and her enthusiastic companion find her room, then moved towards the top of the stairs. As the door closed on them, Mrs Le Fèvre spoke from behind him. He turned to find she had followed him down from her office. He could not see her face; she was a dark shadow, her profile illuminated by the light behind her. The long cavern of the corridor stretched between them. Behind thick doors a girl giggled, somebody tripped over something and he heard a man’s laugh. He kept his eyes fixed on the woman and waited in the semi-darkness. The sound of music drifted upstairs.

‘All right. What I know you can have. I’ll deny everything if the police come round, but if you give me your word.’

She sounded doubtful that his word was worth much. For a few seconds he didn’t move, then slowly he walked back towards her.

‘Robert kidnapped this child. As you bally well know. Of course it’s not what he called it but that’s what it was. He had it her father was a cruel man despite his wealth and his position. But he always wanted money, did Robert. Two things he loved: money and motor cars. The first he never quite got hold of, the second killed him.’

‘You helped him? You fetched her from Wiltshire?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember.’

She said it so firmly that he knew she would never admit any active part in the business.

‘She ended up here. Not exactly a bright move. She was small, frightened—she was always crying and yet almost never talked at first. This is a business of nights and grown men’s desires. What the hell was I supposed to do with her? Robert said it was just for a bit and I was the only person he trusted.’

‘Was she all right?’ It was a lame question, he knew.

‘When she stopped crying, she was rather a sweet little thing. But she wouldn’t eat properly and I had to keep her upstairs.’ She gestured behind her. ‘Couldn’t let the girls see her or word might get out.’

‘And then?’

‘And then Robert’s killed. Leaving me with the problem and a life in prison if I was found with her.’ She sounded resentful but defensive.

‘She had this funny thing—I only noticed when I’d had her a while—six fingers: never seen the like. She had a bad arm, too, never quite straight even when it didn’t seem to hurt her. But the fingers meant she could be identified. She knew my name, talked of Robert, needed clothes: sooner or later she might need a doctor. And then...’

‘Then?’ He felt cold despite the airless warmth of the house. ‘One day I left the door unlocked. I used to give her a little brandy to settle her so that I could leave her alone up here, but one day she’d wandered down. One of my gentlemen found her.’ She stopped. ‘He should have been in one of the special houses. It turned out his tastes did run to very young girls.’

Laurence couldn’t trust himself to speak. She fiddled with some keys at her waist.

‘It was no place for a child and Robert knew that, but I’d grown quite fond of her. I had a little dog—she loved that dog. I bought her a dolly.’

He still couldn’t see her face but he felt her transforming in front of him to an older, more resigned woman.

‘One of the girls heard her screaming. The worst didn’t happen—the gentleman was too drunk, too excited—but I knew she had to go. Now I had to pay off the girl who’d pulled the gentleman off her—and I still thought she’d blab. They don’t half talk, these girls. Like a flock of geese, they are.’

‘What did you do with her?’ He tried to sound matter-of-fact.

‘Sold her.’ When she rightly took his silence for shock, she said, raising her voice, ‘I didn’t have much choice. She was a liability.’ When he still failed to respond, she added, ‘There’s some would of done a lot worse.’

‘Where? Where did she go?’

He wished he’d never known any of it. The image of the small child who cried a lot and said very little, brutally treated in different ways: first by her father, then by the chauffeur, then by a stranger in a brothel. And the thought of her innocent, childish pleasure in a small dog: together they created an image he knew he would never forget.

‘I had a washerwoman used to come in. Shared her with lots of other houses. She’d chat on if you gave her half a chance—another one who talked. She told me of this couple she knew. He was an ostler, she’d been in service before her marriage. She said they were a nice, respectable couple but they’d never been able to have kiddies. Broke their heart.

‘After a bit I asked if they wanted to take a child. Said she was Robert’s bastard landed on me.’ She gave him a sharp look. ‘And that’s what I’m saying still. Said her mother was dead not long past. She used to ask for her mama all the time, you see.

‘I hear back they’re interested. I say a hundred pounds for my expenses. They say they haven’t got it. Then he says twenty-five. They can do twenty-five.’

‘Twenty-five pounds?’ he said in wonder, thinking what Digby Easton might have given to have back his daughter, the heir to Easton.

‘I could have got a fortune for her if I’d sold her to a gentleman. That gentleman who’d already spent himself all over her—’ It was the first time a note of real disgust had entered her voice. ‘Or one of the other houses. She was a pretty girl once she settled a bit, sweet, and she had this funny, old-fashioned voice.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t.’

‘Well, like I say, I’d grown fond. Or gone soft.’

‘Do you know where she is now?’

‘God knows. I mean, she’d be grown up or near. It was a long time ago. The couple didn’t want to see me again. I mean, respectable didn’t begin to cover it. I’d given them their little one and they still didn’t want anything to do with the likes of me. Didn’t want their new daughter to know they’d bought her from a woman like me. Still, I handed her over at their house, just to make sure they were all right.’

‘You don’t know their name?’

‘Of course I do. I wasn’t letting her go off with a couple and it turn out they’d sold her on like I’d considered and they’d taken the profit on it.’

She sounded indignant at his assumption of professional carelessness, then turned abruptly to the stairs to her rooms.

‘I’ll give you the name. The parents might still be there. And then, frankly, you can bugger off.’

He followed her up the short flight, uncertain whether she meant him to. She turned up the lamp and, with her back to him, rifled through pigeon-holes in her bureau. Eventually she pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something.

‘Smith,’ she said. ‘Dennis and I think it was Elsie. Live out Camberwell way.’ She handed him a bit of paper. ‘She probably did all right there. Dull and decent, you know the sort?’ She looked disapproving. ‘Thrifty. No drink. Methodists,’ she added, as if that explained everything.

‘Thank you. For telling me.’

‘Go easy,’ she said. ‘It’ll be a shock to them. I went round a couple of times to look without them seeing—well, like I say, I wanted to check I hadn’t been had for a fool, but anyway I was missing her even though I was glad to be rid of her. That woman had her turned out nice. I saw her with her new dad on his allotment over the road one time. Last time I went over she was skipping outside their house. Didn’t recognise me.’

She rang the bell.

‘They call her Kath. Kathy.’

The maid appeared at the door. He hadn’t heard her footsteps.