A Breach Of Promise Part 29

He went into the crowded, noisy, steamy barroom and ordered and ate a good meal of pie with excellent pastry. He dechned to imagine what the filling might be, judging that he preferred not to know. He followed it with a treacle suet pudding and a gla.s.s of stout, then began his enquiries.

He was glad he had eaten first; he needed the strength of a full stomach and a rested body to hear what was told him. It seemed the landlord had paid more attention to the low price than to the goods he was purchasing. When he had got the girls back to Rotherhithe he had put them to work in the sculleries was.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses and dishes and scrubbing the floors. They had worked from before dawn until the public house closed at night. They had eaten what they could scavenge, and slept on the kitchen floor in a pile of sacking by the hearth, curled up together like cats or dogs.

They were willing enough to work, but they were slow, hampered by partial deafness and by being undersized and frequently ill. After a few months he had come to the conclusion that they were a bad bargain and cost him more than they were worth. He had been offered the chance to sell them to a gin mill in St. Giles, and seized the opportunity. It was a few s.h.i.+llings' return on his investment.

Where was the gin mill?

The publican had no idea.

Would a little money help him to recall?

It might. How much money?

A guinea?

Not enough.

The anger exploded inside Monk. He wanted to hurt the man, to wipe the greedy smile from his face and make him feel for a few minutes the misery and fear those children must have known.

"There are two possible ways of encouraging people to tell you what you need to know," he said very quietly. "By offering a reward ..." He let the suggestion hang in the air.

The man looked at Monk's face, at his eyes. He was slow to see the rage there. He felt no more than a short s.h.i.+ver of warning. He was still working out how much money he could squeeze.

"Or by threat of something very nasty happening to them," Monk finished. His voice was still polite, still soft, but there was an edge of viciousness in it a sensitive ear would have caught.

"Oh, yeah?" the man said with more bravado than a.s.surance. "You got something nasty in mind, then, 'ave yer?"

"Very," Monk answered between his teeth. He had the perfect excuse. He knew all the details. He had helped pull the body out of the river before he had quarreled with his superior and left the police force. "Do you remember Big Jake Hillyard?"

The man stiffened. He swallowed with a jerk of his throat.

Monk smiled, showing his teeth. "Do you remember what happened to him?"

"Anybody could say they done that!" the man protested. "They never got the bloke who done it."

"I know they didn't," Monk agreed. "But would anybody else be able to tell you exactly what they did to him? I can. Would you like to learn? Would you like to hear about his eyes?"

" 'E 'ad no eyes . . . w'en they found Mm!" the man squeaked.

"I know that!" Monk snapped. "I know precisely what he had ... and what he hadn't! Where in St. Giles did you send those two little girls? I am asking you very nicely, because I should like to know. Do you understand me... clearly understand me?"

The man's face was white, sweating a little across the lips.

"Yeah! Yeah, I do. It were ter Jimmy Struther, in Coots Alley, be'ind the brickyard."

Monk grinned at him. "Thank you. For the sake of your eyesight, that had better be the truth."

"It is! It is!"

Monk had no doubt from the man's expression that indeed it was. He let the man go, then turned on his heel and left.

St. Giles turned out to be only another stop along the way. According to the woman he questioned there, the girls had remained for several years. She was not certain how many, seven or eight at least. Many of the patrons were too drunk or too desperate to care what a serving girl looked like, and the work was simple and repet.i.tive. Little was asked of them, but then little indeed was given. Such affection or companions.h.i.+p as they ever received was from each other. And apparently each was quick to defend the other, even at the cost of a beating. The elder had once had her nose and two ribs broken in a brawl to protect her younger sister from the temper of one of the yard men.

Monk listened to the stories, and a picture emerged of two girls growing up totally untutored and unhelped, learning what little they did by trial and error-sometimes acutely painful error-able to speak only poorly, words m.u.f.fled by crooked lips, heard by partially deaf ears. They were sometimes mocked for their afflictions, feared for their appearance, as if the disfigurement might be contagious, like a pox.

One woman said that she had heard them laugh, and on two or three occasions seen them play games with one another. They had a pet dog for a while. She had no idea what had become of it.

"Where did they go from here?" Monk asked, fearing this would be the end of his pursuit. No one would know. They were too weary, too sodden in drink to remember anything, or to care. The next bottle was all that mattered.

One woman shrugged and spat.

A second laughed at him.

The third swore, then mentioned the name of a wh.o.r.ehouse in the Devil's Acre, the teeming slum almost under the shadow of St. Paul's.

That was all he could get from them and he knew it. He had already lost their attention. He rose and left.

It took him two days of bribery, questioning, trickery and threats, and several abortive attempts, before he traced the girls to a brothel off a smith's yard in the Devil's Acre. It was a filthy place awash from overflowing drains and piles of refuse. Rats scuttled along the curbs above the gutters and people, almost undistinguishable from the heaps of rags, lay huddled in doorways.

Monk had been there before, but it still made him sick every time. He was hunched up with a cold that seemed to reach through his flesh to the bones. It knotted his stomach and made him shake till he clenched his teeth together to keep them from rattling. It was partly the wind turning and whistling through the alleys and cracks between the walls, partly the damp which rotted and seeped everywhere. Only when it froze did the incessant sound of dripping stop. And partly it was the smell. It gagged in the throat and churned the stomach.

He was too late. They had been there, scrubbing floors, carrying water from the standpipes four streets away, emptying slops in the midden and bringing back the buckets. They had gone the day before.

Gone... ! Where? Why?

One answer to that leaped out at him; because he had been pursuing them. He had asked questions, threatened. He had made his intense interest only too apparent. Someone was frightened, with or without reason. Before he began to look for them they were simply two unwanted girls shunted from one place to another, tolerated as long as some use could be made of them. His persistence and ruthlessness had made them important. He had driven someone to try to get rid of them.

Where do you get rid of people you don't want to be found? Kill them-if you dare. If you are sure you can dispose of the bodies. The thought almost suffocated him. His heart seemed to rise in his throat and drive the breath out of him. He grasped the man by the front of his clothes and jerked him off his feet.

"If you've killed them, I shall personally deliver you to the hangman! Do you understand me? If you don't believe me, then I had better see to it myself. You will have a hideous accident! A fatal one-precisely as fatal as whatever you did to those girls."

"That in't fair!" the man squawked, his eyes rolling.

"Of course it isn't!" Monk agreed, not loosening his grip in spite of the man's gasping and struggling. "There are two of them-and there's only one of you!" He grinned at the man savagely, as if a suddenly brilliant idea had occurred to him. "I've got it! I'll string you up, and then when you're nearly gone-when your lungs are bursting and your face is blue and you're almost on fire-I'll cut you down, throw a bucket of water over you, give you a gla.s.s of brandy, wait till you're all right... then do it again! Once for each girl. Is that fairer?"

"I din't do nuffink!" The man saw death in Monk's face and was nearly sick with fright. "They're fine! They're alive and well, I swear ter Gawd!"

"Don't swear. Show me!"

"They in't 'ere! I sold 'em... pa.s.sed 'em on like. I give 'em a chance ter better theirselves. Get out o' Lunnon and go somewhere better for their 'ealth."

"Where, precisely?" Monk snarled.

"East! Across the water. Honest ter Gawd!"

Monk jerked him up again harshly, hearing his teeth clatter. "Where?"

"France! They're gorn ter France!"

Monk knew what that would be for. From there they would be snipped to G.o.d knows where: the white slave trade.

"When?" He slammed the man back against the wall. He regretted it instantly. He could have knocked him senseless, even broken his neck; but then he would be able to tell him nothing. "When did they leave?"

"Yest'y! They went down to the docks... Surrey Docks... yest'y night." He thought he was staring death in the face. "They'll go out on the afternoon tide terday."

"s.h.i.+p?" Monk demanded. "What s.h.i.+p? Tell me you don't know and I'll send your teeth out through the back of your neck!"

"The S-Summer Rose" S-Summer Rose" the man stammered. "So 'elp me Gawd!" the man stammered. "So 'elp me Gawd!"

Monk dropped him and he slid to the floor, lying there sobbing for breath. Monk turned and ran from the room, out across the dripping yard and along the alley overhung with creaking boards and sagging half roofs onto the wider, crooked street He had about an hour and a half before the tide. He would like to have gone home and changed into respectable clothes and collected some more money, but there was no time.

He stopped on the narrow pavement. It was beginning to rain. Should he go right or left? Where was the nearest thoroughfare where he might find a hansom? Would he even get one in the rain? He had very little money left. Not enough to bribe anyone. It was a good three miles to the docks, even as the crow flies, farther on foot with all the twists and bends of streets. He had not time to go on foot, even if he ran, not and still search the docks for one s.h.i.+p, and that s.h.i.+p for two frightened girls, possibly kept below decks and bound.

He turned towards the river and ran down the next alley and into another broader street. There were drays and carts in it, and one closed carriage. No hansoms.

He started to swear, then saved his breath for running.

Perhaps along Upper Thames Street, the closest one to the water, there would be cabs. It was too far! He needed to hurry. They would have to make a detour around the Tower of London.

He stood on the curb waving and shouting. No one stopped. They all splashed by in the harder and harder rain, going complacently on their way. He started to run eastwards. Queenhithe Dock was a little ahead of him. Stew Lane Stairs were to the right.

A long string of barges was pus.h.i.+ng downriver, making slow way. The tide had not turned yet, but it would be slack water soon.

Barges! On the river!

He charged across the street, colliding with a costermonger's cart, extricating himself with difficulty amid an array of curses from several pa.s.sersby. He yelled an apology over his shoulder and sprinted down Dowgate Hill and along the narrow cut down to the stairs just as the last barge drew level. He yelled, waving both his arms, signaling the barge to slow down.

The bargee must have thought it was some kind of warning. He eased a little, dropping back all the weight that his s.h.i.+ps would allow. It was enough for Monk to run and leap. He barely made it. Without the bargee's frantic help he would have fallen back into the icy water. As it was, he was soaked from the waist down and had to be hauled sodden and shaking onto the deck.

"Wot the 'ell's the matter?" the bargee demanded.

"Got to get to the S-Surrey D-Dock!" Monk stuttered, shaking with cold. "Before the tide..."

"Missed yer s.h.i.+p, 'ave yer?" the bargee said with a laugh. "Yer'll be lucky if they 'ave yer. Were yer bin? Some 'ore'ouse up Devil's Acre? Gaw' lummy, yer look like 'ell! Wot s.h.i.+p d'yer want, mate?"

"S-Summer R-Rose!" Monk found he could not control the shaking. Monk found he could not control the shaking.

"That ol' bucket! Yer'd be better missin' it, believe me." The bargee bent his back and pushed harder on his heavy pole, steering with almost absentminded skill.

Monk debated for a few moments whether to tell the man the truth or not. He might help ... he might not give a d.a.m.n. He might even make his own extra money in the trade.

They were pa.s.sing under London Bridge.

He was weary of lying. He hated being tired and cold and filthy, and pretending he was something he was not.

"They've taken two girls to sell in France, or wherever they send them after that."

The bargee looked at him curiously, trying to read his face.

"Oh, yeah? What are they ter you, those two girls, then?"

"Their father died and their mother discarded them. They are disfigured, and deaf. Their father's sister is a friend of mine. She's been looking for them for years." It was a slight bending of the truth-in fact, but not in essence.

"Left it a bit late, 'aven't yer?" The bargee looked sympathetic, almost believing.

"They're s.h.i.+pping them out because they know I'm after them," Monk explained. "It's my fault!" he added bitterly.

The bargee regarded the comment critically. "Yer'd be better on something a bit faster'n me," he said with feeling.

"I know that!" Monk retorted. "But you're all I've got."

The bargee grinned and turned to look upstream. He stayed balanced for several moments while they drifted gradually past the bridge and towards the looming ma.s.s of the Tower of London, gray turreted against the sky.

Monk was so tense with the pa.s.sion of frustration he could have screamed, punched something with all his strength as they seemed to move even more and more slowly.

A small, light fis.h.i.+ng boat was coming up behind them, skimming rapidly almost over the surface of the water.

The bargee put his fingers to his lips and let out a piercing whistle.

A figure on the fis.h.i.+ng boat c.o.c.ked his head.

The bargee whistled again, waving his arms in what seemed to be some signal language.

The fis.h.i.+ng boat changed course to come closer, then closer again.

"Go on!" the bargee shouted at Monk. "Tell 'em wot yer toP me-an' good luck to yer!"

"Thank you!" Monk said with profound sincerity, and took a flying leap for the fis.h.i.+ng boat.

It was farther than he thought, and again he barely made it, being caught by strong hands and amid a good deal of ribald laughter. He told the men on the small boat his need, and they were willing enough to help, even eager. They put up more sail and tacked and veered dangerously through the current and across the bows of other s.h.i.+ps, and were at the Surrey Docks half an hour before slack water and the turn of the tide.

They even helped him look for the Summer Rose. Summer Rose.

It turned out to be a filthy two-masted schooner, low in the water but seaworthy enough to cross the Channel-as long as the weather was easy. He would not have backed her across the Bay of Biscay.

Two of the fishermen came with him, armed with boat hooks and spikes.

Monk led them, facing the captain squarely as they were challenged on deck. He stood arms akimbo, a boat hook held crossways in front of him like a staff.

"You've got two girls on board. I want them. They're taken illegally. Ten guineas reward for you if you give them up... a spike in your gut if you don't."

The captain resented the force, but he looked at Monk's eyes, and the size and weight of the men behind him, and decided ten guineas was sufficient to save his honor.

"I'll bring 'em up, no need to be nasty about it. Ten guineas, yer said?"

"That's right."

"Before I sail? I'm goin' on the tide."