A Broken Vessel (34 page)

Sally could not make anything of this. “I’ve got a note for him. I think I’ll just leave it outside his door, and cut and run before he twigs me. Nice to meet you!” She shook Annie’s hand warmly and turned away.

“Oh, Miss Stokes—your brother—how is he?”

Sally’s eyes danced. “He had to light out for daisyville with his master, sudden-like. He’ll be back tonight. I’ll tell him you was asking after him.”

“Oh—thank you.” Annie blushed again and went back into the shop.

Sally crept upstairs to the door of Smith and Company and poked the note into a gap between two floorboards, where Rawdon would be sure to see it. Summoning all her courage, she knocked loudly. Then she ran down the stairs and did not stop running till she reached the High Street.

She was gleeful. Everything had gone off perfectly. Now there was nothing to do but wait, and see which man answered her summons.

Mud squelched under Julian’s boots as he and Dipper set off down the road. A little pool of rain that had gathered in his hatbrim spilled over and ran down his back. He was already so wet, he hardly noticed. He lifted a corner of the short cape attached to his greatcoat, which he had flung over his head to keep off the rain, and looked into the distance. There was nothing to be seen but pelting rain, sodden hedgerows, and the empty road stretching to the horizon, where grey earth met a greyer sky.

The first half of the journey, from London to Emily’s village, had gone well. Thanks to the breathless speed and efficiency of posting, they reached Salisbury by mid-morning. There they breakfasted at an inn, and Julian shaved and changed his clothes, while Dipper arranged for Emily to wash and make herself presentable for her parents. They hired a gig to take them the short remaining distance to the village. Emily gazed with glowing eyes on every fence and tree, like a shipwreck victim finally sighting land.

Mrs. Wickham welcomed her daughter with joy and surprise, which turned to consternation when Julian took her aside and explained what had nearly befallen Emily. She sent for
her husband, who was working in the fields, and the two of them spent the next hour alternately heaping thanks on Julian, and abuse on Mme. Leclerc and her accomplices. Julian stayed long enough to be courteous, then said he must return to London if he was to put a stop to Smith and Company’s trade. The Wickhams sent him on his way with their blessing, and promised to bring Emily back to town if she was needed to make a statement to a magistrate. The last Julian saw of her, she was standing by her mother on the doorstep of their cottage, shyly waving a handkerchief at the gig as it rumbled away.

They hired a chaise in Salisbury, and that was when the trouble began. A rainstorm broke out, and the road to London became a hasty pudding. Their progress slowed to a walk. Then, just ahead of them, a great rattling stagecoach—the inaptly named
Reliant
—skidded and overturned into a ditch, sending the outside passengers flying into hedges, and showering the insides with broken glass. Julian stopped his chaise, and he and Dipper sprang out to help cut the horses free and assist the passengers. Two of the outsides were badly hurt, with broken limbs and bleeding faces. The coachman had been dragged off the box, and was limping about insisting it was not his fault, he never touched a drop when he was handling the ribbons. The horses were terrified; one had been lamed for life, and was no doubt destined for the knacker’s yard.

The stagecoach guard rode to the nearest town to hunt up a surgeon and another conveyance. Meanwhile, Julian, Dipper, and the least hurt of the passengers tended to the injured. All the passengers were shaken and bruised, and one young woman kept breaking into hysterics. Her husband, who looked like a minor solicitor or clerk, hovered over her helplessly.

Presently he came up to Julian, doffing his hat in spite of the rain. His wife was in an interesting condition, he confided. They had travelled all the way from Devon, she was exhausted, he was at his wits’ end—

There was only one course open to a gentleman. Julian begged they would be good enough to take his chaise and send
another back for him when they got to the next posting-house. The young roan thanked him profusely and handed his wife into the carriage. The other stagecoach passengers looked on enviously.

Julian turned to Dipper. “The post-boy said the next stage is six miles ahead. I don’t see that we can do any more good here, so why don’t we walk on and meet our new chaise on the road?”

They set off, Dipper swinging his master’s portmanteau in one hand and his own carpet-bag in the other. “I’ll take one of those,” said Julian.

“I’ve got ’em all right, sir.”

“It’s very evident Nature didn’t intend you for a packhorse. In fact, a packhorse could probably swallow you in a mouthful. Give me my portmanteau.”

“It don’t look right, sir. What if somebody you knows was to see you?”

“If any of the lady patronesses of Almacks should come tooling along in a pony phaeton, I’ll smear my face all over with mud and masquerade as a swineherd.” He took firm possession of the portmanteau. “You’re becoming deuced insubordinate. Remind me to beat you when we get home.”

They tramped on companionably, their heads bowed against the wind and rain. “It’s a mercy we haven’t any urgent business in London,” said Julian. “We’ll be lucky to reach Charing Cross by midnight. At least we finally have an opportunity to talk about the investigation. Between looking after Emily and catching the odd wink of sleep, we’ve been giving it rather short shrift. We know now what Smith and Company’s business is, and that suggests a whole new range of possibilities. We wondered how a girl of Mary’s breeding and education, with such a keen sense of shame and remorse, could have ended up in a refuge for prostitutes. Now I keep remembering what she wrote in her letter:
My ruin has not been all my fault... I never knew there was such evil in the world as I’ve known since I left you.
”

“You think she was trepanned, sir?”

“Trepanned?”

“That’s what it’s called, sir. Trepanners, they brings gals in from the country, or nabs ’em off the streets in town. Then they either sells ’em to knocking-houses or ships ’em across the water. It’s a bang-up trade, sir. There’s many as follows it.”

“It’s hard to believe there could be a demand for yet more prostitutes in London. It’s a devilish high price to pay for keeping our wives and sisters virtuous.—Damnation. Stop a moment, I’ve got a nail in my boot. What have we done with the case-bottle?”

“I’ve got it here, sir,”

“Is there any brandy left in it?”

“A bit, sir.” Dipper handed him the bottle.

“We’ll share it. Don’t make that face again. There’s no point in trying to martyr yourself in this weather—we should never find enough dry tinder to burn you with.” He took a few warming swallows of the brandy, then gave the bottle back to Dipper, who followed suit. “At all events,” he resumed, “it would be a worthy achievement to clean out this one rats’ nest, however many other rats may come to take their places. God knows how many girls like Emily vanish into that sink-hole, Smith and Company, leaving their relatives wondering what’s become of them, and losing hope as the months go by, and they never get any word. Mary could well have been one of them, even though she wasn’t so young as Emily. Those items in Rawdon’s ledgers— tea-chests, tea-pots, tea-urns—may mean different types of human inventory. Little girls, young women—”

“Boys,” said Dipper matter-of-factly.

Julian shuddered.

“The thing is, sir, trepanners ain’t easy to shop. They hardly ever gets took up by the law, on account of they greases the nabsmen.” He made a gesture eloquent of bribery. “And if they does get pulled in, oftentimes there ain’t much proof against ’em, so they gets acquitted, and they’re back on the streets again. Once in a way they fetches a lagging, but it ain’t for more than a month.”

“A month’s imprisonment? For making a slave and light-o’-love out of an eleven-year-old girl? Eleven years old—that’s the same age as Philippa Fontclair!”

Dipper nodded, remembering the precocious little girl who had been Mr. Kestrel’s friend and ally at the time of the Bellegarde murder. “But it don’t happen to her sort, sir—gentry-morts with plenty of blunt, and a father with a handle to his name. Them as gets trepanned is orphans, or comes of families like the Wickhams, as hasn’t the means nor the h’influence to buy ’emselves any justice.”

“That’s as formidable an indictment of our so-called English liberties as I’ve ever heard.” Julian pondered. “Suppose Mary was trepanned, but she escaped from her captors and hid at the refuge. Rawdon found out where she was, and got some ally in the refuge to kill her, to keep her from revealing what she knew about Smith and Company’s trade. Wideawake Peg would be an ideal candidate: she’s clever and venal, and has Harcourt’s trust. She knew Mary was writing a letter, so she could have intercepted it and passed it on to Rawdon. Though I still think her frankness to Sally about the letter suggests she had nothing to hide.”

“But sir, there must be heaps of folks as knows about Mr. Rawdon’s business. Supposing Mary was trepanned, and piked off to the refuge—well, she can’t be the first mort as ever tipped Mr. Rawdon the double.”

That was true, thought Julian. Victims must have escaped from Smith and Company before. What would be done with a girl like Emily, once some customer had paid fifty pounds to ruin her? Most likely she would be consigned to a brothel. There were probably women in houses all over Covent Garden and the Haymarket who owed their careers to Smith and Company. And some of them must surely drift away in time—some upward, into marriage or respectable work, some downward, to sell themselves for sixpence in the parks and the East End rookeries. It could not be that Rawdon set out to kill every girl who slipped through his fingers.

He suggested, “Perhaps Mary knew something out of the common about the trepanners. The identity of one of their customers, for instance—some eminent, outwardly respectable person. Or Rawdon might have a partner in high places who’s
anxious to preserve his anonymity. In that case, Rawdon may be only an instrument—there may be a powerful but unseen hand behind the murder.

“And then again—remember what you said a moment ago? You said a girl like Philippa Fontclair would never be trepanned, because Mr. Rawdon’s kind don’t prey on women with money and connexions. But suppose they made a mistake? Suppose they netted a person of consequence—one whose family has enough wealth and political influence to hunt them down, and bring the full might of the law to bear on them? In that case, the key question wouldn’t be what Mary knew, but who she was.”

“If she was a great gun, sir, why didn’t she say so?”

“Perhaps precisely because she was a great gun. She would have had a sense of pride and shame in proportion to her position. Her letter suggests she was anxious to hide her identity for her family’s sake, and the more exalted they were, the more she would feel the need to protect them from scandal. She was obviously a lady—the question is, was she merely some impoverished curate’s daughter, or was she a person of rank and importance? If we only knew to whom she wrote that letter, we’d have the answer. It’s maddening that the letter was preserved, but not the outer sheet with the address—Good God—”

He stopped walking. “How could I have overlooked anything so obvious?”

“Sir?”

Julian turned to him, his eyes alight. “Is that man still whitewashing the hallway at home?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Good. I have an idea.”