Chapter 4 #2
“They must have meant something to him,” Miles said. “Either they were sufficient alone to jog his memory, or they’re a companion to another written record.” He cast a glance at Higgins. “How well did you know him?”
“Not well,” Higgins admitted.
Miles could say the same. As editor in chief, he didn’t have direct supervision over the columnists. His attention was focused on larger issues—circulation, advertising, and the serious investigative articles he edited (or sometimes wrote) himself.
The truth was, he’d rarely read Cowgill’s column.
He’d only been notified by his managing editor, Mr. Griffiths, when there had been none available for Monday’s issue.
And then, not because Miles might know something about Cowgill or his whereabouts, but because the absence of the gossip column would affect the paper’s bottom line.
“I have heard that he had a taste for fine things,” Higgins went on. “He once boasted to me that his evening coats were made by the finest tailor in Bond Street.”
That, Miles could believe. Indeed, it had been the impetus for the few meetings he’d had with Cowgill—harsh reprimands in Miles’s office relating to Cowgill’s repeated conflicts of interest.
The man had been notorious for taking advantage of the perks of his position.
He’d relished moving in fashionable circles, and had wallowed in the favorable treatment he received there from society figures seeking to influence him.
Miles had had to warn him more than once about accepting invitations from the people on whom he was meant to be reporting.
“I only accept the ones for lunches, dinners, and the odd house party,” Cowgill had said in his own defense. “If I didn’t, I’d starve. You know I’m incapable of cooking a morsel.”
“Get yourself a housekeeper,” Miles had replied, unmoved.
Recalling the terse conversation, Miles’s attention flew to the iron range in the corner. Cowgill didn’t cook. And given the fine layer of dust that had settled over the cooking surface, Miles doubted whether the man had heeded his advice to find a housekeeper.
Abandoning his search of the floorboards, Miles went to the range and sank down in front of it. He opened the hinged door. The inside of the cold oven was empty except for a heap of ashes at the bottom that appeared as though they hadn’t been cleared away in some time.
Miles’s pulse accelerated. Reaching into the ashes, he felt the unmistakable form of a book. “Eureka.”
Higgins’s head lifted. “Sir?”
Miles carefully dusted off the ashes before removing the small, leather-bound book from the stove and opening it. The pages were filled with Cowgill’s characteristic scrawl. Satisfaction coursed through him. “I’ve found it,” he said.
Higgins came to join him. “His notebook?”
“It appears to be.” Miles thumbed through the pages. “The dates go back some time.”
“The earlier notes must be in reference to his previous columns,” Higgins mused, peering over Miles’s shoulder. “Is there nothing more recent?”
Miles turned toward the end. “This is dated last week,” he said. “The last entry before he disappeared.”
The ink-splotched notes beneath the date were sparse and not readily understandable. Only random names, broken phrases, and a few seemingly unrelated scraps of information.
Fawn-Purvis, Innes
From Hertfordshire to Brothe4
Depot
Sleep/Tea
5000 pounds.
Higgins beetled his brows. “What does it mean?” he asked. “Hertfordshire to brother?”
Miles examined Cowgill’s notes with an editor’s eye. He didn’t understand what they meant yet, not in totality, but he did know one thing. “That word isn’t brother,” he replied. “It’s brothel.”
· · · · ·
The bell over the door rang as Nell entered the dilapidated little rag-and-bottle shop.
Located at the end of one of the narrow, intersecting alleyways that branched off of Commercial Street, it stood at the entrance to the slum—a fact announced by the refuse that littered the ground and the putrid air that rolled in from the docks.
An old woman poked her head out from behind a pile of discolored garments she was sorting. “Who’s that?” she demanded, looking from Nell’s face to her cane and back again. “Have something to sell?”
“I’ve come to visit the seamstress, Miss Jean,” Nell said. “I understand she resides at this address.”
Immediately losing interest in Nell as a potential customer, the old woman jerked her chin toward a curtained doorway behind her. “Second room on the right.”
Nell inclined her head to the woman before passing through the curtain into a dimly lit passageway.
She had remained in her room at the ladies’ hotel only long enough to calm the pain in her aching leg before setting forth on her commission for the Academy.
There was little enough time for it. According to her railway guide, the next train was departing at two o’clock. Nell intended to be on it.
If Miles was back before then, she might consent to speak with him. But she wasn’t waiting around for hours merely to rebuff some misguided masculine attempt at redeeming her honor. She’d already made up her mind.
In any event, she doubted whether Miles would return. The man had been sent a severed tongue, for heaven’s sake. She must be the last thing on his mind at the moment. Indeed, he’d scarcely managed a bow before abruptly taking his leave from her.
Not that Nell blamed him. One of his reporters had been killed. That obviously took precedence over her own ruination.
As for the state of her honor, Nell sincerely hoped that her present errand might go some small way toward repairing it. At least, that is, in Miss Corvus’s eyes.
Reaching the second door on the right, Nell rapped on it firmly.
“Come in!” a woman called.
Nell opened the door, entering a room that was even tinier than her own small chamber at the Academy.
It contained a narrow, neatly made bed, a dainty table with a chipped vase of violets upon it, and two faded chairs on either side of a window.
A handsome woman in a printed floral dress sat in one of them busily stitching the hem of a linen dress.
Her skin was as dark as rich mahogany, her black curly hair twisted back under a muslin cap.
“Miss Jean?” Nell inquired.
“Aye, that’s me,” the woman replied, a cockney accent edging her words.
She appeared to be in her middle thirties.
Poised and self-confident, her back not yet bent by a life of hardship.
“I’ve got no time for any more mending if that’s why you’ve come.
Not ’til next week. I’ve dresses to make, as you see. ”
Nell shut the door behind her. “I haven’t come to hire you. I’ve come to speak with you.”
“You what?” Miss Jean looked up from her sewing to examine her unexpected guest. “And who might you be, milady?”
Nell came forward. She offered her hand in greeting. “Penelope Trewlove,” she said. “Deputy headmistress of Miss Corvus’s Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies.”
Miss Jean’s hand froze halfway to Nell’s. “Miss Corvus?” She snorted. “That’s a name I ain’t heard in a long time.”
“She sends her regards,” Nell said, hand still extended.
Miss Jean shook it at last. “I bet she does.” She gestured to the empty chair. Scraps of fabric and trimmings littered the seat. “Move those aside, and sit yourself down.”
Nell cleared away a place before taking a seat. “I hope I’ve not come at a bad time.”
Miss Jean chuckled as she resumed her work. “It’s all bad times here, Miss Trewlove. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“But excellent craftsmanship, I see.” Nell reached to examine a section of the linen dress. “Your stitching is flawless,” she observed with genuine admiration.
Miss Jean’s mouth quirked with dry humor. “Miss Corvus tell you to say that?”
“No, indeed. I can recognize good work when I see it. I have the honor of teaching a sewing class at the Academy. Needlework is one of my favorite subjects.”
“A favorite subject, you call it? Teaching orphans to mend rich folks’ clothes?”
“We don’t focus a great deal on mending,” Nell said. “We spend more time on samplers.”
“Samplers? Huh!” Miss Jean scoffed. “Won’t earn them no money, sewing samplers.
” Her needle flew as she spoke, stabbing in and out of the linen with unrelenting precision.
“More of Miss Corvus’s crackbrained ideas, in’t it?
Instructing girls on samplers, lock-picking, fencing, and fisticuffs, as though any of those are the means to making a living. ”
Nell’s mouth tipped with amusement at Miss Jean’s unflattering characterization. “I see you’ve some familiarity with our special curriculum. Was it Miss Corvus who shared it with you?”
“Oh, aye. She confided all about the classes she offered to her best and brightest. That’s rich people for you, I said.
They’ve the coin to indulge any odd notion, and all the rest of you fine folk go along with their fancies instead of telling them they’ve lost their bloody minds.
But I told her, and all.” Miss Jean glanced up again, an ironic set to her smile.
“So, why’d she send you to me after all this time?
She already knows I ain’t coming to work for her. ”
Nell failed to contain a flash of surprise. “She offered you a position at the Academy?”
“Aye, she did, the madwoman. She said as how I could be a teacher.”
“You certainly could be,” Nell said.
Again, Miss Jean scoffed. “Teaching what, I ask you?”
“Needlework, for one. As to anything else—I daresay you have your talents. Miss Corvus is adept at choosing teachers who can convey some useful skill to our girls.”
“I don’t read or write, Miss Trewlove. Can’t be taught.
The letters are all backward and upside down to me.
Happen you know that, else you’d have sent a note instead of coming here yourself.
And without a chaperone, too.” Miss Jean looked Nell over with a critical eye.
“You think that mourning costume will protect you from the worst of this place?”
“No,” Nell said. “I don’t imagine it will.” She smiled again. “Fortunately, I can protect myself.”
Miss Jean laughed. “Miss Corvus said much the same when she come here all those years ago.” At last, she put aside her mending. “So, what is it she wants?”
Nell studied her for a moment. She knew various ways of dealing with people—flattery, manipulation, outright intimidation. But none of them would serve here. If Miss Corvus had offered Miss Jean a position as a teacher, then she was an equal in the fight. It would have to be the truth.
“We were expecting a new pupil at the charity school two days ago,” Nell said. “Her name is Flora Brent.”
The health records the workhouse had forwarded to the Academy had given a brief description of the girl. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
“She’s but fourteen,” Nell said. “Dark-haired and exceedingly pretty for her age. She never arrived.”
Miss Jean was quiet a moment. “Happen she changed her mind.”
“She could have done,” Nell allowed. “But we don’t think so.”
“No? Not everyone wants to be saved by an eccentric gentlewoman, Miss Trewlove.”
Nell wondered if that was the very issue that had prevented Miss Jean from joining their ranks. Did she believe Miss Corvus was some patronizing would-be rescuer? That her aims were any less valid simply because she’d been born into a life of wealth and privilege?
“We don’t save people,” Nell said. “We give orphan girls the education they need to effect a better future for themselves—and for all women.”
“Don’t mean a girl of fourteen had any desire to be part of it. Not if she could run off and make her own way.”
“You’re wrong. Miss Brent wanted to come to the Academy. She has a unique potential, one well suited to our aims. I corresponded with the matron at the workhouse about her myself. It was I who arranged for her to come to us.”
“You feel responsible?”
“I am responsible. The matron put her in a third-class railway carriage in Surrey on Monday morning at my request. Miss Brent was to change trains at Shoreditch. We can trace her as far as that, but no further. Something appears to have happened to her here. Miss Corvus suspects it’s the same thing that happens to many a pretty lass who ventures into London unaccompanied. ”
Miss Jean’s countenance grew serious. She comprehended Nell’s meaning.
Disturbing reports abounded of sinister madams preying on pretty village girls who traveled into town to find domestic work.
They coaxed them from the rail stations with tea and cake, and promises of respectable employment.
The next thing the poor girl knew she was ensconced in a brothel somewhere, her life—and her innocence—effectively at an end.
“You thinking she fell victim to some procurer?” Miss Jean asked. “Here, in the East End?”
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Nell said.
“Aye,” Miss Jean replied darkly. “It is.” A troubled frown clouded her brow. “Madams is hard people. And some of the hardest are hereabouts.”
“You sew for them?”
“I sew for all sorts.”
“And have you heard anything of a new girl being brought in? A girl who may have come unwillingly?”
Miss Jean’s expression shuttered. “I’ve heard nothing.”
Nell wasn’t without sympathy. But it wasn’t Miss Jean she was responsible for. It was Flora Brent. Whatever else happened, the girl must be found.
“I don’t ask you to put yourself in peril,” Nell said. “I only ask that you point me to some of these brothels where the madams are known to employ such tactics.”
“And you aim to go there? With that face?” She gave Nell an incredulous look. “They’d snap you up faster than one of them foolish country lasses.”
“Oh no,” Nell said. “I won’t be going myself. I must return to the school this afternoon. I’d be grateful if I had names and addresses to convey to Miss Corvus. She’ll send someone to make further inquiries without delay.”
“Names, that’s all?” Miss Jean repeated.
“That’s all,” Nell assured her.
At length, Miss Jean gave a reluctant nod. “All right, then. If you’re set on it, you may as well start with Mrs. Pritchard.”