A Broken Vessel (15 page)

“I will,” he said, without asking for explanations.

She winked at him and set off down Stark Street. He turned toward Tottenham Court Road. Neither of them looked back. They would see each other again—or, if they did not, they would face that when it came.

It was a fine, warm day for October. Real sunshine found its way through London’s perpetual haze of coal smoke. Dipper decided to save his master a few bob, and himself another jouncing in a hackney. He set off on foot down Tottenham Court Road, glancing at the men he passed to guess where they kept their pocketbooks—old habits died hard—and looking under the bonnets of all the girls. He crossed Oxford Street, then threaded his way through short, narrow lanes to the Haymarket.

He found the Cockerel and went inside. The taproom was quiet at this time of day. A shabby old woman sat in a corner, nursing a quartern of gin and peppermint, and muttering to herself. A draggle-tailed whore was slumped over a table, an empty glass beside her. Three middle-aged men with rakish neckcloths, dirty gloves, and the remains of good looks were putting on a show of ease and joviality. Out-of-work actors, was Dipper’s guess.

He went up to the bar. “Fine morning,” he greeted the thickset man behind it.

“It’ll do.”

“You Toby?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Me name’s Dipper. Sally Stokes is me sister.”

Toby leaned his big, meaty hands on the bar, his eyes hard and measuring. “Well?”

“I come to have a confab with you about what happened to her last time she was here.”

“That’s ain’t my look-out.”

“I knows that. I ain’t here to blow you up. What I wants is to find the cove as done her. You know, she was rumbled something mortal.”

“Happens sometimes.”

“It don’t happen to Sal—not without I serves out the sod as done it. But I dunno nothing about him. I was hoping you could put down to me who he is.”

Toby shook his head. “I remember the cove, but I don’t know him. He was never in here before. A bit respectable for the like of this place.”

“You can’t tell me nothing else?”

“No.” As Dipper still looked at him expectantly, he added, “I’ll tell you what: I likes Sally all right, but I ain’t getting mixed up in trouble—not for her nor anybody else.”

Dipper shrugged, took out a crown piece, and spun it on the bar, whistling to himself.

Toby eyed the coin. At last his hand shot out and scooped it up. “Right. There’s one thing I can tell you, for what it’s worth, but if there’s a dust kicked up, you has to keep me out of it.”

“I will, s’elp me Bob.”

“That night—Monday night, I think it was—Sally come in first with another cove. Pluckless sort, he looked. Respectable, not used to cribs like this, nor gals like Sally. I give ’em the second floor back. So then this cove you’re looking for—young, thin, specs on his nose—comes up to the bar. He must’ve been watching Sally and her flat, ’coz he says, ‘You give ’em a room?’ I says, ‘Maybe.’ So he has a bit of a think, then he asks how much I’d charge to let him go up after ’em. Well, I’ve had peepers before—they don’t do no harm, just listen a bit, have a look through the keyhole, and nobody the wiser, I has to make a living, don’t I?”

“’Course you do,” said Dipper encouragingly.

“I said it’d cost him a bob. So he pays it, and I tells him where they are, and he goes up. A while later he comes down, looking pleased as Punch. Then Sally comes down with her flat, and they morris off, and I thought your cove had gone, too, but he comes back to the bar and orders a pint, and sits down at a table. I wondered what he was staying for. Like I said, he seemed a cut above this place. Thought he might be wanting to peep at somebody else, but another gal come in and took a room, and your cove just stayed where he was.

“Then, maybe half an hour later, Sally come in again. Your cove stood her a drain of pale and took her upstairs. I had an idea he’d been waiting around for her, hoping she’d come back. Liked what he saw when he peeped at her, I expect. I didn’t think nothing of it. I won’t have him in again, though—not after what he done to her. His kind brings trouble—have the constables in, like as not.”

“You see him again after he tracked up the dancers with Sal?”

“He come down afore she did, but I didn’t take much notice. I expect he took himself off. I don’t know where, and I ain’t seen him since.”

He folded his lips and began methodically stacking pint pots behind the bar. He had earned his crown piece, and as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over.

Dipper thanked him and went out. He walked back along the Haymarket, deep in thought. This was all very rum. Sally had said she heard a peeper outside the door when she was with Bristles, but Mr. Kestrel and he had not attached much importance to that. They had had no idea who the peeper was, and no reason to think he had anything to do with the Mary mystery.

Now they knew the peeper was Blinkers, and he had apparently been interested enough in Sally to lie in wait for her at the Cockerel till she returned from her bout with Avondale. But what could they make of that? Only that he had taken a fancy to her, and singled her out for his cursed sport. Who knew what drew a man of his kind to a particular victim? And yet—

Dipper shook his head. He had a feeling it meant something—Blinkers’s peeping at Sally like that. If only he knew what that something was!

CHAPTER
11

M
r. Harcourt interviewed Sally in the bare back parlour of the refuge. With him was Miss Nettleton, the matron on duty today. She was a thin, faded woman, about forty years old, with mouse-brown hair crimped into corkscrews. Sally recognized her from the inquest: she was the matron Mrs. Fiske had sneered at for having hysterics on learning of Mary’s death.

Mr. Harcourt asked Sally her age, and whether she had any family. She said she was eighteen, and alone in the world. (It seemed best to keep Dipper out of this.) Mr. Harcourt then questioned her closely about how she fell from grace. She was hard put to answer. She could not remember a moment when she
fell
. She had been born about as low as a girl could get, and simply went on from there. But she knew he would not be satisfied with that. He made clear that, to show she was really repentant, she must make a full confession of her sins. Well, if that was what he wanted, it was easy enough. She spun a long, lurid tale of her transgressions, some real and some invented. Miss Nettleton blushed and shifted about in her chair, but Harcourt listened avidly. Sally felt just as if she were entertaining one of her flats, except that this man wanted nothing but talk. And of course he did not pay her anything—though he ought to have, she told herself, after all the enjoyment she gave him.

When she could think of nothing more to confess, it was Harcourt’s turn to talk. He lectured her for a long time about how wicked she had been, and how extraordinarily lucky she was that a lady like Miss Nettleton would condescend to be in the same room with her. That’s how he makes slaves of the Mrs. Fiskes and Miss Nettletons, Sally thought: feeds ’em soft sawder, and gives ’em gals like me they can lord it over.

If she wished to stay at the refuge, Harcourt said, she must obey its rules to the letter, be diligent, humble and pious, and show becoming gratitude to those who reached down to lift her out of the pit. If she failed in any of these duties, she would be turned out. But if she worked and prayed, and proved that evil was truly rooted out of her heart, then she would leave the refuge with his blessing, and honest work would be found for her as a servant, seamstress, or the like.

“Do you understand me, Sarah?” His pale, cold blue eyes fixed on her intently.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. I trust you’ll soon learn our routine. If you have questions, ask Margaret Muldoon. She’s been here longer than any other inmate. In fact, she has finished her formal rehabilitation, but she wished to stay on and help her erring sisters.”

Wideawake Peg—now there was someone Sally would like to know more about. It was no mean feat to put the fun upon Harcourt. Whatever else you could say about him, he was not a fool.

“The matron in charge will assign you particular duties each day, and each week,” he went on. “We have no servants here. The inmates are trained to take care of the cleaning, cooking, laundry, and other chores. It fosters habits of industry, and fits you for domestic service, which is the sphere that many of you will enter when you leave us.” He rose. “Miss Nettleton, I must go. May I entrust Sarah to your care?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Harcourt.”

“Thank you. I know I could not set her a better example of piety and devotion to duty. Goodbye, Sarah, I hope our efforts on your behalf will not be thrown away.”

He took his leave. Miss Nettleton fluttered about, showing Sally to her room and finding her everything she needed to begin her life at the refuge. She gave her a uniform, a Bible, a prayer book, a towel, and two small tallow candles. She must use the candles sparingly, Miss Nettleton warned—they were her week’s supply, and if they ran out, she would not get any more.

Miss Nettleton then opened Sally’s bundle, without so much as a by-your-leave, and spread out its contents on her bed. “I must see what you’ve brought,” she explained. “It wouldn’t do to let you keep anything unsuitable.”

“Do you look at all the gals’ things when they comes here, ma’am?”

“Mercy, yes. Not only when they arrive, but from time to time while they’re here, to make certain they haven’t got hold of something they shouldn’t. So I just can’t think how—oh, dear, I mustn’t think of that. It gives me such a turn.”

“Think of what, ma’am?” asked Sally innocently.

“It doesn’t do to talk of it. Least said, soonest mended. Indeed, yes. Oh, dear.” She looked at an old-fashioned watch pinned to her gown. “It’s nearly two o’clock. We dine at two, so I’d best leave you to change your clothes and put your things away. There’s water to wash with in the jug there. You’ll hear a bell five minutes before dinner. One of the girls will show you where the refectory is. Don’t be late, mind, or you won’t be allowed in, and you’ll have to go hungry till supper.”

After she had gone, Sally shook her head glumly. Cold Bath Fields Prison’s a palace next to this, she thought. She set about folding up her things, which Miss Nettleton had left spilled on her bed. She was glad she had brought few clothes, and none of the gaudy bonnets she loved. She could not have worn them here, and she would not have put it past wax-faced Harcourt and his matrons to take them away.

She took stock of her room. There were four beds, all with plain deal frames, coarse sheets, and woolen blankets. Beside each bed was a small night-table with a cupboard. The only other furnishings were a washstand and a few spindly chairs. There was a raw, almost painful cleanliness and order about the place.

She put her belongings away in the cupboard by her bed, then changed into her uniform: a gown of rough grey wool, a starched white apron, and a white cap. She shivered as she took off her clothes, for there was no fire, and the room was clammy and cold. When she was all hooked-and-eyed, and her hair tucked primly under her cap, she went to the window.

Her room was on the first floor of what was known as the “inmates’ house”: the house on the left-hand side of the refuge, where all the inmates slept. The window looked out on the back garden, which was surrounded by a high, brick, iron-spiked wall. There were no gravel walks or flower-beds here, as there were behind the right-hand house. A rough-cut path led to a small, squat, yellow-brick structure in the far left corner. No doubt Harcourt thought indoor water-closets too good for the inmates.

Like all the windows of the inmates’ house, this one was covered with a thick iron grating. Sally tugged at it experimentally. It was too finely fixed to be removed without leaving tell-tale damage. And the fretwork was too dense to pass a bottle of laudanum inside.

“Here you are!” said a voice.

Sally turned and recognized Florrie Ames. “Hullo!” she exclaimed, delighted to see anyone who seemed at all like a friend. “How’d you know I was here?”

“I saw Miss Nettleton bringing you up here, and thought I’d come on after her, to welcome you and all. I must say, I did wonder if you’d come back, after what happened to Mary.”

“That ain’t no bread and butter of mine,” said Sally carelessly. “There’s still a lot of palaver about it, I s’pose?”