CHAPTER 13
Julia was late for the clinic.
Snarled Monday traffic at Whitechapel and Commercial Street had forced her out of the cab, so she crossed the last quarter mile on foot. It was well past noon when Julia finally pushed through the doors; her head nurse and three patients awaited her.
Annie O’Neill whispered to a wan, slumping girl at her side, “’Tis Doctor Lewis, Kath.”
Nurse Clemmie took Julia’s cape. “Annie’s friend is waiting to see you. Kathleen Morris. But may I have a word with you first, Doctor?”
Julia smiled at the girls. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.” She followed her head nurse into the office and closed the door. “What is it, Clemmie?”
“Yesterday afternoon, Annie found Kathleen huddled on her doorstep in a pitiable state—exhausted and feverish and complaining of body aches. The girl was no better this morning, so Annie brought her here.”
Her head nurse dealt efficiently with all routine cases, so Julia knew something more was coming. “So . . . she needs more than just a few days’ bedrest?”
“It’s the girl’s hands. She has a blistering rash on her palms. When I asked her about the soles of her feet, the poor child said they were also red and spotted.”
Julia closed her eyes. “Syphilis, most likely.”
“And not yet twenty, by the look of her. What would you like me to do?”
“Is our fever room still unoccupied?”
Clemmie nodded.
“Settle her there while I talk to Annie.”
The young milliner knew only part of Kathleen’s story, but she understood enough. “She made hats for Wheatlands’ shop, like me, before disappearing.”
Julia asked, “Where had she gone?”
“Ireland, I thought. That’s what I’d been told.”
Then, on Sunday, Kathleen found her way to Annie’s flat and waited for her friend to return from Mass.
“But I made a day of it, walking from Saint Anne’s to the Sunday market on Chester Street. When I got home, Kathleen was huddling at my basement door.”
Julia smiled. “So, like a good friend, you took her in.”
“Ten months she was away. She was knackered, the poor lass. I wasn’t wanting to plague her with questions, so I put her to bed. This morning . . . Doctor, she told me it wasn’t to Ireland she’d gone.”
“I see,” Julia said. “We’ll keep her overnight. After that—”
“She can stop with me. I’ll let her have Margot’s old bedroom for as long as she wants.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“I got Kath the job with Wheatlands’. And didn’t I introduce her to that devil, Margot Miller?”
“Annie, what happened to Kathleen wasn’t your fault.”
“I wasn’t brought up to speak ill of the dead, but you can be certain of it. Margot brought the lass low.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She talked Kath into sitting for the artists—the men, I’m saying. And I know what that means. And wasn’t it Margot who put it ’round that she was homesick for Ireland? Lying was as natural as breathing to that one.”
“Lying about what, Annie?”
“All I know is what I was hearing. Whispering, they were, the shopgirls who worked around Wheatlands’, saying Margot got some of the models to do worse than sit and have their pictures painted.”
“I see.”
Annie looked at Julia gravely. “Can you help her, Doctor?”
“I’ll do what I can. Come back tomorrow, Annie. We’ll look after her tonight.”
Julia sat at Kathleen’s bedside at the end of a long afternoon. After telling her story, the girl slept. Julia pulled the blanket to Kathleen’s chin and thought about Lizzie Sullivan, her old nursery maid.
Nothing changes—a quarter century ago, today, or a hundred years hence. Girls were ever exploitable, with poverty on one side and selfishness, appetite, and money on the other.
* * *
That evening, Julia waited in the library for her grandfather’s return and Inspector Tennant’s arrival. She reached for the sherry, changed her mind, and poured herself a whiskey.
Hours earlier, the damaged girl had given her account slowly, haltingly, abashed. But the disgrace was not hers. It belonged to others. At first, her story trickled; then, the words spilled in a torrent.
Kathleen’s ordeal had shaken Julia in a way the narrative about her nursery maid had not. That girl’s tragedy was long past and involved someone Julia couldn’t recall. She hadn’t thought about Lizzie Sullivan once since the evening of the dinner party.
Two nights earlier, Julia had passed near Fenchurch Station.
That was where they’d dumped Kathleen. Julia had rolled past St. Katharine’s Church, where the girl had huddled for the night.
Julia saw—or rather hadn’t seen—the church as her coach rattled along.
Why should she have noticed it? It wasn’t memorable.
Its stubby stone tower was a nondescript landmark she passed nearly every day.
Tired, late for dinner on a Saturday night, comfortable in her carriage, she’d rolled by the church on her way home, unseeing.
We walk past tragedies every day with our eyes on our shopping lists.
It wasn’t an original thought about the ocean-deep troubles all around her.
But when needs stretched like pebbles on an endless strand, sometimes her services seemed nothing more than specks of sand.
Julia wondered if policemen felt the same way as they walked the beats of their blighted neighborhoods, sifted the debris of blasted lives, and tried to sort the innocent from the guilty. As if most people are one or the other.
She heard the doorknocker and the voices of her grandfather and Inspector Tennant in the hallway. Julia had sent him a note promising links to his case.
After some commonplace conversation about the drive over, her grandfather poured two more whiskies. At Julia’s nod, he added a splash to her glass. Then they settled into chairs around the fireplace to hear Julia tell Kathleen’s story.
“I felt I was back in our drawing room the night of our dinner party,” she said. “Kathleen’s experience was the twin of my nursery maid’s ordeal twenty-five years ago.”
Haltingly, Kathleen had explained that Margot Miller had recruited her to pose “the way Annie did.” But unlike Annie, she had been tempted to remove her clothes for “life studies,” lured by the extra money Margot dangled.
“Then, on the last day of the sitting, Margot invited Kathleen to a party for the models. She would collect the girl that evening. Kathleen said she rolled up in a ‘great black coach dressed like a queen.’”
“Poor child,” Dr. Lewis muttered. “Swept away.”
“Margot gave her a drink in the carriage. The next thing Kathleen remembered was waking in the morning in a different room with Margot standing over her. Miller laughed and pointed at the tangled bed linen. ‘Those stains were worth the other half of twenty quid.’ Margot called her ‘ruined’ and told her to make the best of it.”
“Twenty pounds,” Tennant said. “That’s the rumored price for a girl without sexual experience. One guaranteed to be free of disease.”
“Dear God.” Julia shuddered.
Dr. Lewis held up a match, struck it, and tossed it into the fireplace. “Used once. Then, discarded.”
“But not before they’re handed off to others,” Tennant said. “Men with smaller purses and a greater willingness to risk their health.”
Dr. Lewis said, “Continue, my dear.”
“Kathleen said they forced her to make that carriage ride repeatedly. Gin laced with laudanum made it bearable.” Julia shook her head. “At first, they kept her for the exclusive use of the same man. Then they stopped taking her to the second location and brought a string of other men to her room.”
Her grandfather asked, “How did the poor child finally escape?”
“They discarded her once she showed symptoms of syphilis. She made her way to Aldgate High Street and turned up at Annie’s flat.”
Julia crossed the room and gave the fire a few hard thrusts with her poker. “I think Kathleen may have overheard Franny Riley’s murder.”
Tennant asked, “What makes you think that?”
“Kathleen said they brought in a girl who refused to go along. She never saw her. They locked the girl away in a room for several weeks until, one night, Kathleen heard screams followed by silence.”
“Did she say when this was?”
“After the New Year. Sometime in January.” Julia leaned on the mantel, staring into the yellow and orange flames flickering above the pile. The fire glowed white-hot in the crevices deep within the coals.
“They probably drugged Franny like Kathleen,” Tennant said. “Then took her to be raped the night she disappeared.”
“And held her for weeks,” Julia said. “Trying to break her will.”
“It’s a terrible story, but the links are no longer speculation.” Tennant lifted his glass. “Kathleen’s evidence supports Jin’s story and connects Margot Miller to an abduction and prostitution ring. If only she were alive to be charged.”
“Someone you know is alive and well,” Julia said. “A few weeks ago, someone new turned up to guard the girls on the carriage ride . . . a man with a cleft lip.”
“Rawlings,” Tennant said.
“He guarded Kathleen on her last carriage ride. Two Chinese girls were with her, and a third was a child, ten years old at most. Kathleen said the little girl . . .” Julia’s voice caught. “She whimpered in the coach the whole way back to the house.”
“By God, it’s utterly revolting.” Dr. Lewis reached for his whiskey, hands shaking.
“Allow me, sir.” Tennant took hold of the decanter and poured. “Can Kathleen remember anything about the house where she was taken?”
“Not much.” Julia brushed at her cheeks. “It wasn’t a long ride, but the shades were drawn tight. Gates opened, and they entered a courtyard, stopping at a doorway under a canopy. Then they walked down a long hallway to the rooms. Her usual escort for the last few weeks was the man with the lip.”