Ruby McBride (13 page)

‘In a moment, I’m going to go into that pawnbroker’s shop over there to speak to the shopkeeper. I shall ask to check the large notes in his till or cash box, on the grounds that they might be counterfeit. Then I’ll insist that he accompany me to the local police station where the money, which I will carry for safe keeping in a special bag, will be checked and examined by experts.’

Ruby was staring at him, bemused. ‘You don’t imagine for one moment that he’ll just hand it over, do you?’

‘Oh, yes, he’ll hand it over all right. I shall offer him a reward for carrying out his civic duty. It’s a ploy which has always worked in the past, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t work today, so long as you play your part well.’

‘Me? No, I’ve already told you. I’m doing nothing. . .’ He didn’t even wait for her to finish speaking but pushed her back against the wall, one hand pressing down hard on her shoulder as if giving a troublemaker a good telling off. Many people glanced in their direction as they passed by, but
everyone seemed perfectly satisfied that this was simply a police constable carrying out his duties.

‘When you see me come out with him and start to head off in that direction,’ he carefully pointed up the street with one finger, ‘you dash up, all in a state, and claim there’s a fracas going on in Whitworth Street, that somebody’s being attacked by rabble-rousers and a constable is needed right away. Do you understand? And do as I say?’

Ruby saw quite clearly now why he was called “ baron”. It was a fitting nickname for a clever and superior conman whose sole task in life was to separate people from their hard-earned money, no doubt with exemplary speed. Well, he wasn’t using her in his nasty little schemes. ‘Why would I?’

‘Because I insist upon it,’ he replied, giving his familiar, crooked smile. He could feel the skeletal thinness of the girl’s shoulder beneath his hand and even as he barked orders at her, Bart was mentally noting that she was in dire need of good food to put some flesh on her bones. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll not touch you. He’ll believe every word that falls from your sweet lips, because you’ll make sure that he does. Right?’

Ruby pressed her lips together in mute rebellion. ‘Do your worst, see if I care. You can’t hurt me any more than Sister Joseph did, or the flippin’ reformatory.’

‘Ah, so that’s the way of it, I see.’ He gripped her arm and gave her a little shake. ‘I should point out, Ruby McBride, that I have friends and contacts everywhere, even in reformatories. Your sister is still detained in one, I believe? And who knows what might happen to a young girl when she no longer has an older sister to protect her.’

Ruby felt all the blood and fury drain from her veins, leaving her weak with anguish. ‘You wouldn’t hurt our Pearl?’

He momentarily widened his eyes in a helpless sort of gesture. ‘You know, I’m very fond of young girls. Sugar and spice and all things nice. But my appetites are normal. I prefer my women to be willing and mature enough for loving. Some men’s tastes, however, are less orthodox. I’d hate to see any harm come to your Pearl, when she’ll soon be going out into the world. I wouldn’t recommend you do anything rash.’
 

He recognised naked fear in her lovely eyes and felt an inner loathing of himself that he must speak to her thus, yet she undoubtedly thrived on defiance, and he needed to be able to depend upon her complete obedience at all times or more lives would be in danger than one young girl’s. ‘Do we understand each other?’

Ruby longed to challenge his assumption that he could reach Pearl, wherever she might be, yet somehow didn’t quite dare. Even though he’d already shown himself to be an habitual liar, his tone had hardened, and she heard not a hint of compromise in it. In that moment she could only wish herself a thousand miles from this spot; that she could step on board one of the great vessels that came daily into the Ship Canal and disappear forever off the face of the earth, or at least from the clutches of Barthram Stobbs.

Perhaps it was this thought which put the idea in her head. Daring, risky, but one which might see her safely out of the country and on her way to finding Billy. It would be a laugh to play the baron at his own game but it would take careful planning, of that she was certain. Nothing could be done in a hurry as there was still Pearl to rescue from the reformatory. Ruby realised that she must learn to bite her tongue and do as he asked. For the moment at least. She must give the impression that all was well, that whatever he asked of her she was willing to go along with. ‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on. I’ll do it.’

His grip slackened and the chilly smile thawed slightly. ‘Good girl. All you have to do is hold your nerve, and carry out my instructions to the letter. Perfectly simple.’

It felt very far from simple so far as Ruby was concerned. Long before he’d entered the shop premises, she could feel her limbs
start to shake. How she would ever manage to walk, let alone run, she didn’t care to consider. The wait, while he was in the shop talking to the proprietor, seemed endless, as if it would go on for ever, and she had a sudden urge to visit the lavatory. But how could she? He might walk out of the door at any minute.
 

And then there he was, with the shopkeeper in tow, the pair of them chatting in a friendly enough fashion.

For a moment she felt frozen to the spot, but Ruby had believed him when he said he could hurt Pearl. Barthram Stobbs was clearly a clever operator, of that there was no doubt. He’d not only fooled Miss Crombie, and herself, but also the Board of Guardians by winning over the Chairman of the Governors and trapping her into matrimony that was anything but holy. She began to run.

‘
Help! Help
!
Police
!
Help
!’
Somehow a torrent of nonsense about gangs and fights came bubbling out, perhaps dredged out of the banks of her memory.

‘My dear, my dear.’ In her nervousness she barely heard his next words so that he had to repeat them, urging her to be calm and explain where, exactly, these rabble-rousers were.

Ruby hadn’t the faintest idea. Everything he’d told her had gone from her head and she simply stared up at him, her mind numb, completely blank. Barthram Stobbs rested a hand on her shoulder, as a proper police constable might, and patted it gently.

‘Take your time, my dear. You’ve had a shock. Now, which street were you in when you saw this attack?’

‘Whitworth Street!’ The answer came out on a gasp and she knew it was the right one because one of his eyes flickered briefly into a wink. No one but herself would have noticed since he had bent down towards her, his face inches from her own and a mask of concern. Barthram turned to the pawnbroker beside him, and mildly suggested he go on ahead to the police station.

‘I shall join you there shortly, sir, the moment I have dealt with this poor little miss and her attackers.’

Amazingly, perhaps dazzled by Ruby’s beauty, the shopkeeper seemed quite happy to do so, making no protest as Barthram Stobbs, in his policeman’s guise, dashed off in the direction of Whitworth Street, hustling Ruby before him, the bag of notes still in his hand.

The moment they turned the corner he dived quickly down a back alley, under a railway bridge and through a maze of streets down by the River Medlock. Only when they were again at Castlefield in sight of the canal did he stop, lean back against a wall and start to laugh. ‘Which is the last that gullible fool will ever see of this particular constable!’

Ruby bent over and vomited into the gutter.

Over the weeks and months following, Ruby discovered, to her great frustration that as Barthram Stobbs’s wife she was as powerless as she had ever been in the reformatory. He cared not one jot for her opinions, or her feelings, only for the state of his own finances. The money he had conned out of the pawnbroker he stashed away in a tin box, before hiding it in his cabin. The next evening he received several visitors, all rough-looking men, and Ruby watched through a crack in her door as he counted and shared out the notes between them.

‘What has that poor shopkeeper ever done to deserve being robbed?’ she asked him later, over supper.

‘One - he is very far from poor. Two - he’s a pawnbroker, not simply a shopkeeper. And three - not an honest one either. He thinks nothing of robbing folk blind of their last halfpenny should it suit him to do so. He had it coming to him. Shed no tears over the fellow, Ruby.’

She was, however, expected to shed many tears on numerous other occasions. He would have her wait by some fancy house or by the dock offices to waylay Ship Company officials after a board meeting, and claim to have been abandoned by a cruel uncle/husband/stepfather, without even the wherewithal to get home. It proved amazingly easy to persuade these toffs to part with tram or cab fare. Sometimes, if they got a good look at her lovely face, they’d toss her half a crown and ask if she had any more favours on offer, at which point Ruby found it more prudent to dissolve into further tears than to stalk off in high dudgeon. Seeing her distress left them riddled with guilt at the improper suggestion they’d made, and they might well add another half crown to go with the first.

‘It’s all down to those wistful hazel eyes of yours,’ Barthram would say as he pocketed the cash.

And look where wistful hazel eyes got me mam, Ruby would think. With three children by different men. A fate that would not be repeated by her daughter, same lovely eyes or no.

‘It’s small change to them,’ Barthram Stobbs was saying. ‘Meat and drink to those less fortunate.’

‘It’s still wrong to steal, and you can’t claim to be starving.’ Nevertheless Ruby found herself required to play many parts and became quite certain she must have heard every lie under the sun, seen him in every possible disguise from undertaker to solicitor’s clerk, military man complete with monocle to idle vagrant. Though she was utterly convinced that the baron was a fraudster, yet she learned he also possessed the skills of an artist and the charm of a rake. He was, without doubt, master of his craft and she couldn’t help but admire his fertile imagination and gift of the gab, for all she neither approved nor understood the necessity for either.

‘Why do you do it?’

‘The whys and wherefores needn’t concern you, Ruby McBride. You’d be well advised to keep your nose out of my business.’

‘What you make me do is my business. I need to understand
why
.
She did nothing to disguise the contempt in her voice, meeting the answering fury in his blazing eyes.

For his part, he wanted to protest, to object to her prying too closely into his affairs and demand to know why she always thought the worst of him, but then he would bite back the words unspoken. She was right. He did push boundaries to their limits, and he couldn’t explain, not to her, not right now, why he did so. Not till he could trust her completely. ‘What is it exactly you object to, Ruby McBride?’ His voice was savage in its harshness.

‘The way you treat people, for one thing. Why do you play these cruel tricks? It’s dangerous, for another. If you got caught, you’d end up in t’clink.’

‘I won’t get caught. The people who contribute to my “fund”, as you might call it, wouldn’t welcome the publicity any more than I would.’

‘Oh, I know you think you’re mighty clever, but it’d take only one mistake, one person to spot you thieving, and that’d be it.’

‘You underestimate me.’

‘That’s what they all think, except in your case maybe I do,’ she agreed with a weary sigh. ‘But you must admit you’re hard to fathom. You have brains and intelligence, and although you’re getting on a bit, you’re not that old.’

‘I’m twenty-eight Ruby. No age at all.’

She was momentarily startled. There was such a sadness to the planes of his face, handsome though it might be, a bitter twist to the sensuous mouth, that he appeared older than his years. What had made him so? Ruby wondered, before briskly brushing the thought aside to be considered later, at her leisure. ‘Well then, why don’t you find something more worthwhile to do, instead of fleecing folk? You could make good money out of these barges that you drag around, if
 
only you’d put your mind to it.’

He pulled a face, as if there were a bad smell under his nose. ‘You’re saying I don’t work hard enough?’

‘
I am.’ She tilted her chin, challenging him to dispute this damning indictment in an effort to persuade him that honest labour was good for the soul. ‘It wouldn’t be too bad a life. I’d be prepared to do my bit.’

‘I suppose you’re right in a way. It’s true that if I put more effort into the barge work, I could build myself a good business. I’d have no objection to that, so long as it was done in a way to suit me. In the meantime, the boats are a good cover for my “other interests” shall we say, and I’ve no intention of dirtying my hands with heavy toil and sweat for a pittance, not if I can avoid it. That would be a waste of my resources.’

Ruby rarely understood the fancy words he used, yet still she struggled to grasp how his clever mind worked. She couldn’t help but be intrigued by him, despite the fury he invoked in her. He’d robbed her of the freedom to marry where she chose - Kit Jarvis - if she’d had her way, and sometimes this resentment boiled over into pure hatred. ‘I’ve seen you stashing away all your ill-gotten gains so, go on, tell me, what are you saving your brass for? What’s it all in aid of?’