The Vice Society (14 page)

‘Do you not regret your life of sinful wickedness? Are you not ashamed at having sold your virtue?’

At this, Charlotte reacted in quite the opposite way he might have expected. She laughed. It was a throaty and unabashed laugh that made her slap her thighs, arch her back and put her head back, showing off the shape of her body and her delicate throat in the process.

‘Regret, sir? O, not a bit of it! And you need not shake your head sadly so at my laughter – I am no poor waif of the streets. Better this life than that of a
wife
.’

‘What do you mean? A wife has a home and her honour. She has a man who cares for her, and she has love.’

‘O, sir, I am sure you are a good man, but you have not spoken with women as I have. Marriage is nothing but bondage for most. They give up their freedom, their youth and their life for a man. You speak of love, but what of desire?’

‘A woman, I mean a respectable woman, does not feel desire. Her duty and her pleasure is to produce and raise a family . . .’

And here, once again, Charlotte began her laughing, animating her frame with such a carefree and sensuous manner that Mr Williamson was made quite uncomfortable at her lack of decorum. He had never seen a woman so unrestricted in the way she inhabited her own body.

‘ “Does not feel desire”, sir?’ said Charlotte when she had regained her power of speech. ‘What woman does not feel desire? She might not show it for fear of bringing shame upon herself, but a woman feels desire just as a man does. Perhaps even more so. Have you never been among the working districts after dark in the summer months?’

‘I have.’

‘Then you will know what sounds emanate from every dark alley and every bush when the public houses close. It is not only men who make those sounds, though I might add that when they do it’s the women who cause them.’

‘Hmm. Hmm. It is almost nine.’ Mr Williamson looked at his pocket watch to avoid looking at the heat – and laughter-flushed complexion of Charlotte.

‘I have made you blush. I am sorry. Let us return to the subject of charity. Why don’t you sit? At least take off your hat and coat. It is lovely and warm here by the fire.’

‘You are no supporter of charities,’ said Mr Williamson, still standing and behatted.

‘And with good reason. I knew two or three girls who agreed to be taken in by those charities and now they are dead.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They were killed. That’s God’s truth.’

‘Absurd. They may have been killed, but there is no connection to a charity. That is just street talk.’

‘Really? Did you hear about the girl on Holywell-street the other night?’

Mr Williamson was about to respond with another rebuttal when the street name struck him. ‘Are you sure? There was nothing in the newspapers about a dead girl, and I have read all of them. There was, however, another incident on that street recently – five days ago.’

‘That’s when it happened. I don’t read the newspapers so I don’t know about any other incident. But Lou didn’t kill herself, I can tell you that.’

Despite himself, Mr Williamson ventured to take off his hat and finally sit beside Charlotte at the fireside. The heat almost immediately began to warm through his coat, and he extracted his notebook. ‘Charlotte – I would like you to tell me everything you know about this girl Lou.’

‘What is this? Why do you need that notebook? I was right – you
are
a policeman!’

‘No. I used to be a policeman – a detective. I am one no longer, but I believe the case of your friend might be part of a greater mystery.’

‘I see. This changes the situation a little. I wonder if you might pay me now, sir, before we begin to talk.’

‘Hmm. I see that you are a clever girl. I will gladly pay you a pound if what you tell me is of use. And you can have your shilling now in recompense for bringing me here. I must warn you, however: I pay for the truth only.’

Charlotte gave a theatrical pout at the suggestion she might be any kind of artificer. It was a most attractive expression. ‘I agree. For a pound and a shilling, I will tell all.’

‘Then begin with her death,’ he said, handing her the money.

‘They say it was suicide, with prussic acid if you please, and they found her in an alley off Holywell in the early hours. None of it makes sense, though. First, Lou had no reason to kill herself. She was happy. A beautiful girl she was: tall and slim with lovely blonde hair. She had just found an older gentleman to keep her and she knew she would have a good income from him. Secondly, Holywell was not her pitch – she was a west-end girl as I am, and used to a better sort. Somebody must have taken her there.’

‘How can you be sure she did not take her own life? Perhaps she was with child.’

‘Ha! When did you ever hear of a working girl who got in trouble, sir? That is only servant girls and milliners’ assistants. We skilled girls know how to control our courses by—’

‘Please – I need not know the details of your trade. Is there anything else that would make you think it was not suicide? Anything other than her seeming happiness and her being away from her pitch?’

‘Perhaps I could not prove it to a magistrate, but I
know.
Would you yourself not know the truth if a close friend or loved one was said falsely to have committed suicide? You just know. And prussic acid? What a horrible way to do it!’

‘Hmm. Do you know any more about this older gentleman she had found?’

‘Only that he was well off and had a good position in society. She would not tell me his name, of course. I might have stolen him for myself!’

‘Where did she meet him?’

‘He saw her from his carriage and invited her to his house. She returned a few more times after that. More than that I don’t know. I didn’t see her for a few days before her murder.’

‘You insist that it was murder, but what motive could there be? And why use prussic acid when a cudgel or razor would do just as well? It is a curious murder weapon.’

‘Why, to make it look like a suicide of course!’

‘To what advantage? I cannot see any reason. The very fact that her death was not reported shows that the death of a pr . . . of one of your kind is considered to be of little consequence. Why go to the trouble?’

‘I don’t know
why!
I just know she was killed.’

‘You said this was connected to those charities for fallen women. What was Lou’s connection?’

‘She had applied to the Magdalene Hospital a few weeks previously. It was after a man beat her and she got afraid. But they were forever pushing scripture at her and she couldn’t stand it, so she went back to the game.’

‘I still fail to see any connection.’

‘There were others. Kate who lived on Dover-street: she was at the Guardian Society for a while. They found
her
in the Thames in May. And Mary of Clifford-street: another prussic acid job after she applied to the Magdalene Hospital. That one
was
in the papers, I’m sure. In July, it was. You will never find me going to those people – not even if I end up a toothless hag selling my a— at the docks.’

Mr Williamson frowned at her language and made a note of the names and places. ‘Hmm. These charities take in many girls. Many more leave, and I am sure some subsequently kill themselves.’

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ said Charlotte.

‘I am dubious.’

‘But you wrote it in your notebook, so you must be interested.’

‘I am always interested in justice.’

‘I see that you are. What else are you interested in, I wonder?’

It seemed, as they had been sitting by the fire, that Charlotte’s clothing had somehow become looser and less decorous, as if she had been surreptitiously revealing more of herself. Mr Williamson saw that one of her legs was exposed almost to the knee and that the graceful curve of her calf was quite as pale as her face.

She smiled in full knowledge of the effect upon her guest, who in his woollen coat was now feeling quite uncomfortable from the fire’s heat.

He fumbled for his watch. ‘Where is this lady? If you are—’

‘She does not abide by any rules of mine, sir. When she returns, she returns. You may read if you like. Here, have a look at this one.’

Charlotte reached to a side table and took the first book from a pile. And as she leaned forward to hand it to him, he could not help but see inside the loose neck of her blouse – a sight whose effect upon him was profound.

‘Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.’

For want of a more cogent response, he took the book.

‘This is a new one of mine. Many visiters say it is my best,’ said Charlotte.

Without looking at the spine, Mr Williamson opened the cover and saw the publisher’s name: Henry Poppleton, Holywell-street. The title page read
Levantine Mysteries.

‘I fear it is not the sort of thing I would enjoy,’ he said.

‘Read to me, sir. If we must wait here for the lady, we might as well spend the time in an improving manner. You should be in favour of that, taking the opinion you do of my life. Please – read to me. Just begin at chapter three.’

‘I ... I do not think it is appropriate.’

Charlotte could not know, of course, that Mr Williamson had once, many years ago, read to his wife thus, beside the fire. The memory of it, particularly under these circumstances, proved difficult.

‘Please, sir. It soothes me so to hear another voice in this lonely room.’

He turned to the first page and scanned the first sentences. They seemed inoffensive enough. He looked around, as if expecting someone to be observing him engaged in such oddness. He looked at Charlotte, who seemed to have changed in an instant from the leg-brandishing temptress to an eager student, albeit one with a plaintively pretty face.

‘Very well. Very well. A few lines only,’ he said, with a look of extreme awkwardness. He placed a finger beside the first line to mark his place and began to read, at first with a faltering voice that seemed not to be his own in the silence of that unfamiliar room.

Mr Williamson’s eyes automatically scanned what followed, and heat rushed into his face. He looked at Charlotte, whose countenance had taken on an expression he had never before seen in a woman.

Her eyes were shining and her face was flushed. She had reclined into a position of such indulgent languor that her legs were positioned in a way no respectable woman would allow. The emotion she exhibited, though utterly alien to him, was fearful to behold – as if she had transformed during those brief moments into one whose moral and intellectual restraint had been replaced by something unashamedly animal.

He hurriedly reached for his hat and stood, letting the book fall to the floor.

‘Hmm. Hmm. You have lied to me, Charlotte. You have brought me here dishonestly. There is no woman living upstairs – admit it.’

‘Sir – you knew that all along. And yet you came.’

‘I did
not
know it!’

‘You did. I knew what you wanted from the moment I saw you on Haymarket. I am never wrong about a man. She, this woman, was simply your excuse.’

Quite apoplectic now with unvoiced emotion, and certainly too vexed to speak, Mr Williamson walked to the door and exited the building without a further word.

Even as he walked and allowed the night chill to bleed the heat of Charlotte’s fire from his clothes, it seemed that the scent of her seemed to cling persistently about him. His face burned with indignation and his fists clenched within the pockets of his coat as his mind worked at the next step – perhaps his only chance.

He did not go directly home. Rather, he went back the way he had come, along the Strand, up Fleet-street and on to Ludgate-hill, where he turned at the scarf shop to enter a small courtyard where the offices of
the Times
can be found
.
There, he managed to place an entry for the following day’s edition:

TEN

I wonder what the reader made of that excerpt from
Levantine Mysteries
. Truncated as it was, no doubt it was a little too ‘warm’ for many of our finer ladies and gentlemen, who look upon such texts as indecent corruptors of the innocent mind.