Ann Granger (17 page)
Authors: The Companion
‘What a nice gentleman,’ said Bessie approvingly, ‘he remembered who I was. Not many do that.’
A nice gentleman indeed and one whom Madeleine might well have met frequently in the square just as I had done, by chance – or by design.
I was interested to hear my employer had complained of her words being written down by Ross. I could see his purpose, but if he took to doing that a great deal, he’d find people a lot less willing to chat to him.
We walked on a little. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘did Miss Hexham go out very much of a morning, walking like this?’
‘I think so,’ Bessie said cautiously. ‘I saw her from the basement a few times, going past.’
‘You didn’t happen to see her on the day she disappeared? Leaving the house and walking past the basement, I mean.’
‘No!’ said Bessie a little too firmly.
There was also a note of relief in her voice. I realised that somehow I had phrased my question wrongly. Another way I might have got a different answer, I was sure of it. Bessie had seen something. I did not think she would willingly tell me an untruth, hence the relief in her voice that she was not put in a position to make the choice. She had not seen Madeleine walk past the house as on several previous occasions. Where then and in what circumstances had she seen her? Bessie herself never left the
basement of a morning except to buy the milk or, possibly, she might be sent on some other errand by Mrs Simms. When else would Bessie see Madeleine? Only in the early morning when she brought the hot water to her bedroom.
basement of a morning except to buy the milk or, possibly, she might be sent on some other errand by Mrs Simms. When else would Bessie see Madeleine? Only in the early morning when she brought the hot water to her bedroom.
‘Something wrong, miss?’ enquired Bessie.
I had stopped short, struck by a thought. I hastened to move on. ‘No, Bessie, I only stubbed my toe.’
‘You want to be careful,’ said Bessie. ‘Turn your ankle really easy on these stones.’
I murmured agreement but I was trying to think of a way of broaching the subject which had entered my mind with such force. A way was offered by the approach of one of the nursemaids Bessie had mentioned. A smartly-turned-out girl in a starched cap with lace ribbons, she was pushing a wicker bassinet containing a very small infant.
‘That is a nice baby,’ I said to Bessie, as the girl passed by with her charge.
‘I wouldn’t mind being a nursemaid,’ confided Bessie. ‘In the orphanage I used to mind the little ’uns. I fed them their gruel and kept them clean. I liked doing that. I always cried heaps when one of ‘em died.’
Her tone was philosophical; nonetheless I thought her affection for her small charges had been sincere.
‘Did many die, Bessie?’
She hunched her thin shoulders. ‘You’re going to lose a few, stands to reason. If one of them catches something, they all catch it. Although if a child was sickly, the orphanage wouldn’t take it in, for fear of the infection. Some of them was like me when I went there, just babies, and they didn’t stand much chance. Most was abandoned. Mother couldn’t keep ’em, not married most likely or already got more kids than she could feed. She’d leave it somewhere like my mother left me in a church. She took trouble, my mother. She put me somewhere dry and out of the weather and where she knew I’d be found. I’d got a little knitted coat and a bit of blanket
wrapped round me, so I was told, and a note pinned on me asking that I be looked after and not given to the parish. So the parson what found me, he gave me to the orphanage the church ran. Some of them just get left in the street. They’d often find one on the orphanage doorstep. Sometimes they was so new they wasn’t even properly tidied up, still got the cord attached to their bellies. The orphanage wouldn’t keep them when they come in like that and passed them on to the parish. The parish puts ‘em out to nurse if they’re not yet weaned and that’s pot luck, that is. Some of ’em is lucky and gets well cared for and some of ‘em don’t. I was about four months old when I was found in that church so my mother tried to keep me, I reckon, but couldn’t manage it.’
wrapped round me, so I was told, and a note pinned on me asking that I be looked after and not given to the parish. So the parson what found me, he gave me to the orphanage the church ran. Some of them just get left in the street. They’d often find one on the orphanage doorstep. Sometimes they was so new they wasn’t even properly tidied up, still got the cord attached to their bellies. The orphanage wouldn’t keep them when they come in like that and passed them on to the parish. The parish puts ‘em out to nurse if they’re not yet weaned and that’s pot luck, that is. Some of ’em is lucky and gets well cared for and some of ‘em don’t. I was about four months old when I was found in that church so my mother tried to keep me, I reckon, but couldn’t manage it.’
It had been a harsh introduction to life and death but I guessed Bessie was well aware of what were sometimes called ‘the facts of life’. I wondered about Bessie’s desperate mother, who had been literate enough to leave a note with her baby begging she be cared for, and aware enough of the shortcomings of the parish system to beg her child not be left to its Spartan regime. Perhaps she had been a girl of ‘good’ family who had been betrayed. Perhaps she had been a young woman in service who had been seduced. If so, perhaps she had paid someone to care for the infant for the first four months, but with her meagre wages had been unable to keep up the financial outlay.
‘Bessie,’ I said carefully, ‘in the weeks before she disappeared, when you took hot water up to Miss Hexham of a morning, was she ever ill?’
There was no reply. I glanced sideways at my companion. She was looking down at the cobbles and the bonnet hid her face.
‘Was she being sick or had she been sick? I don’t ask you this in order to tell Mrs Parry. I ask you because I want to know what happened to Miss Hexham. First I need to know the circumstances in which she left the house.’
‘Sometimes,’ Bessie mumbled so quietly I could barely catch the word.
‘Sometimes she had been sick?’
‘Yes, miss. I helped her clear it up. I managed to get it done without Mrs Simms knowing, or Wilkins or Ellis.’
‘You must have liked Miss Hexham, to have helped her so and to have kept her secret.’
‘I did like her!’ said Bessie with sudden energy. ‘She was a nice lady. I hoped that when she went off she was going to get married. I was that upset when I heard she was dead.’
‘Tell me,’ I invited. ‘Tell me about Miss Hexham leaving to get married.’
There was another mumble in which I only distinguished the word, ‘Can’t!’
‘Why not, Bessie? You wouldn’t be betraying her. She is dead now. You only betray her memory if you refuse to help catch the man who did that to her.’
Bessie looked up, her small face furious. ‘I hope they do catch him and they scrag him!’ She put her hands round her thin neck and made a movement of an upward and sideways jerk, afterwards letting her head loll sideways in a realistic mime of a man on the gallows. The bonnet fell to the back of her head and was held there at the nape of her neck by its ribbons.
‘Well, then,’ I encouraged her. ‘If you would see justice done by her, tell me what you know about that day when she disappeared.’
I thought Bessie wanted to tell me but there was still some matter troubling her. She pulled the bonnet back to its rightful position and said nothing.
I went on, ‘I am a doctor’s daughter, Bessie. I lived in a small town. I knew very well what went on. Miss Hexham was expecting a child, was she not?’
‘It was beginning to show,’ Bessie said abruptly. ‘Her dresses were getting tight round the waist and her face was a bit puffy. I’d go in her room – your room now, miss – and there she’d be with her head over the basin, brought up everything and was just retching with nothing more to lose, and crying. I was so sorry for
her. I tried to help by clearing it all away, like I told you. But I knew she would have to go to Mrs Parry soon. Besides, there were others. Wilkins and Ellis, they gossip terrible and are awful ones for knowing everyone’s business. And nothing, not nothing, gets past Mrs Simms!’
her. I tried to help by clearing it all away, like I told you. But I knew she would have to go to Mrs Parry soon. Besides, there were others. Wilkins and Ellis, they gossip terrible and are awful ones for knowing everyone’s business. And nothing, not nothing, gets past Mrs Simms!’
Bessie and I walked on a little. I said nothing. Bessie had decided to tell it all and would do so in her own way.
‘I was afraid what she was going to do,’ she said now very quietly. She cast a sly glance up at me from beneath the brim of her bonnet. ‘You being a doctor’s daughter and that, you know what I mean, most likely.’
‘I think I do,’ I said.
They did such foolish things, those poor girls, and then my father would be called in to save their lives. They drank all manner of liquids they believed would induce a miscarriage. Generally it did not. Sometimes they went to visit a ‘wise woman’, some old hag who either sold them herbal ‘cures’ or did far, far worse. Then the mother often did die from loss of blood or morbidity.
As for the families, they often disowned the girl, and yet they were sometimes also very quick and ingenious to hide the truth. Many a child grew up calling its natural mother ‘sister’ or ‘aunt’, and remained unaware of the real relationship until adult – and occasionally even not then. Mary Newling had informed me of such cases in our town, when I was grown up and we peeled vegetables together in our kitchen. She told me willingly, knowing that I observed the same confidentiality my father showed his patients. But I think it was her way of warning me by example and reminding me I had no female relatives to step forward to the rescue.
‘Why should they not pretend that the child belongs to a married sister or the grandmother, if the grandam is still young enough to be bearing children?’ Mary asked when I expressed my shock. ‘It seems natural. Older women sometimes have a late
baby. If it means the girl will not lose the chance of marrying a decent young fellow one day, where is the harm?’
baby. If it means the girl will not lose the chance of marrying a decent young fellow one day, where is the harm?’
She went on to observe, ‘This crinoline fashion, it leads to that sort of thing, if you ask me. Who is to see a natural bump under so much false swelling?’
It served to make me wonder just what went on behind the respectable facades of ‘decent’ homes. It certainly added to the worldly wisdom that I had begun to acquire as a child. Like me, Madeleine had no mother or sister to claim the child as her own and shield her reputation. So Bessie, with her own unchildlike awareness of life’s harsh ways, had feared the worst.
‘And that is why you hoped, when she left the house that day, that she was going to be married?’ I prompted.
‘Yes, miss!’ said Bessie eagerly. ‘And I do believe she was or she thought so, anyway! She was happy. It was the first time I’d seen her smile in weeks. She was waiting for me that morning, when I came with the water. She was all dressed and ready to go out and seemed really excited. “Bessie,” she says, “will you help me with a plan I have?” I told her I would, of course. “Well, then,” she says, “I want you to keep an eye open for an empty cab going past, if possible a growler. They go slowly because they’re hoping a fare will stop them. If you can, run up the basement stair and hail him. Ask him to wait round the corner and a lady will come directly. Only the lady does not wish to be seen.” So I did that. I heard a cab coming, really slow. I looked out quick and saw it was a growler. Mrs Simms was busy ordering Wilkins about, and Ellis was upstairs doing the beds. Mr Simms had gone out to the wine merchant. So I slipped up the basement stairwell and run out. Mind you, when I saw the cabbie, I near changed my mind!’
She gave a short bark of laughter and I asked, ‘Why was that?’
‘He had a face like someone had done a clog dance on it,’ said Bessie, ‘all squashed and twisted. It’d give anyone a fright, especially if you was to meet him on a dark night.’
I stopped on the spot and Bessie nearly fell over as I grasped her arm.
‘What’s wrong, miss?’ She peered up at me.
‘Nothing, nothing at all. I believe I may know the man, the cabbie. What did he say to you, when you told him what was wanted?’
‘I told him to wait round the corner for a lady, like Miss Hexham asked. Then the cabbie, he says, “Ho! Like that is it? And where am I to take this lady?” I said, that the lady would tell him herself. “How do I know,” he says, “that I won’t be getting into trouble?” How can you get into trouble, I asked him, just taking a fare? It’s not your business what the fare gets up to, is it? You’re just the cabbie. Anyway, I said to him, by the looks of you, you’ve had trouble enough yourself! I said that to let him know I wouldn’t stand any of his lip. He pointed at his squashed mug and he said, “I wear these scars as a badge of honour. I come by ’em fair and square in the prize ring.”’
Bessie snorted. ‘I never heard of anything being fair and square in the prize ring. But I wasn’t going to spend more time with him in case Mrs Simms came back. I made sure he’d do as I asked, and I ran inside to tell Miss Hexham. She came running with her bonnet and shawl and off down the street to where the cab was waiting and that was the last I saw of her.’
Her voice broke on the last words and she snuffled. I handed her my handkerchief. She said, ‘Thank you, miss,’ and blew her nose.
‘Come along!’ I said to her briskly. ‘We must put our best foot forward. We have not so much time. We can’t waste a moment.’
‘Where are we going?’ Bessie asked as we hastened along.
‘Why, to King’s Cross cabstand. I believe it is this way, or do you know a quicker? I know the cabman you spoke of. We must find him. I do hope he returns to the stand and he remembers Miss Hexham and where he took her!’
Bessie thought she did know a quicker way, if I would but trust
her and not take fright. She plunged ahead of me into a maze of narrow streets in which I had soon lost all sense of direction and my chief fear was that I would also lose my guide. Here houses crowded one upon another and small businesses of all kinds pressed their wares on passers-by from displays set out in the street itself. Rolls of cheap cloth gave way to woven baskets and racks of umbrellas, kitchen pots and pans and sacks of rice and tapioca. From the butchers’ shops issued the sickly odour of dried blood and dead flesh, and the buzzing of clouds of flies. Other shops traded in live animals, canaries in tiny cages and fancy mice, barely weaned puppies huddled in a pathetic tangle and goldfish in murky bowls of water. Three balls hanging from a metal arm above a door signified a pawnbroker who lurked, like a spider in the centre of its web, in the darkness behind. Here were shops which not only sold but bought: old clothes, jewellery, books and household goods so dented and battered and well used that it was a puzzle to know who would want them.
her and not take fright. She plunged ahead of me into a maze of narrow streets in which I had soon lost all sense of direction and my chief fear was that I would also lose my guide. Here houses crowded one upon another and small businesses of all kinds pressed their wares on passers-by from displays set out in the street itself. Rolls of cheap cloth gave way to woven baskets and racks of umbrellas, kitchen pots and pans and sacks of rice and tapioca. From the butchers’ shops issued the sickly odour of dried blood and dead flesh, and the buzzing of clouds of flies. Other shops traded in live animals, canaries in tiny cages and fancy mice, barely weaned puppies huddled in a pathetic tangle and goldfish in murky bowls of water. Three balls hanging from a metal arm above a door signified a pawnbroker who lurked, like a spider in the centre of its web, in the darkness behind. Here were shops which not only sold but bought: old clothes, jewellery, books and household goods so dented and battered and well used that it was a puzzle to know who would want them.
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