Chapter Three #2
Some of these haunts were familiar to Solomon from previous cases. Some people gave him a wide berth. No one in the first two dens admitted to knowing Percy Harvey. At the third, an angry individual drove a knife into the tabletop and swore.
“He owes you money,” Solomon guessed.
“And I’m before you in getting my share,” the man declared, glaring.
Solomon nodded as though that was perfectly fair. “I suppose if you knew where he was, you’d have found him yourself.”
“Damn right.”
“I’ll let you know if I come across him. I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same for me. You can find me at the Silver and Grey office at the corner of Chandos Street.”
“Might be nothing left of him to find,” the man said ominously.
“I wouldn’t,” Solomon advised. “His family’s powerful.”
“Then he can get the readies from them!”
“Time to go,” David murmured, as two more burly men approached them across the sticky floor.
Solomon stood up. “When did you last see Harvey?”
“Days ago. Monday? What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” David assured the man. “Except we all need to find him.”
And better Solomon and David than this angry thug.
It was a story they encountered a couple of times. Someone at the next den claimed to have won some money from Percy on Wednesday night and said he went off with a girl.
“What girl?” Solomon pounced.
“Ellie May.”
“Where will I find Ellie May?”
“On her back,” said the informant, chortling, “all being well with her.”
Solomon pushed a coin across the table and the man gazed at it hungrily.
“No particular place,” he said at last. “But you might see her around the streets here.”
Solomon left him the coin and he and David departed. Footsteps followed them up the dingy alley, causing Solomon’s neck to prickle.
“Looking for someone, handsome?” asked a thin woman barely wearing a torn scarlet dress.
Solomon paused, and so did the footsteps. David looked behind them while Solomon addressed the girl.
“Looking for Ellie May.”
“I’m just as good.”
Solomon extracted another coin from his pocket and stepped closer. “Ellie May.”
His coin vanished, though where the girl put it was anyone’s guess. “Try next on the left, two doors up. She ain’t got lodgings. There’s two of you,” she pointed out hopefully.
“We stick together,” David said gravely.
They discovered Ellie May shaking out her meager skirts while a shadow faded into the increasingly misty night.
“Evening, kind sirs,” she said with entirely false welcome. She was stick thin, her face pinched, her features sharp, and her eyes old and tired. “You got to pay twice, you know, even if you’re quick.”
“We’ll be very quick,” Solomon assured her. “We understand you left Orrie’s Den on Wednesday with a young gentleman called Harvey.”
“Was that his name, stingy bastard? I watched him win five guineas and he paid me bloody twopence. Twopence! I let him stay the night and all. Broke my own rules ’cause he’s a nob, but he ain’t no gentleman.”
Solomon pounced. “When did he leave you?”
“Next morning. Ten or eleven, maybe.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“He didn’t say. Just left his measly twopence and buggered off. I hope he heard my boot hit the door after him. Here, you’d better get out that way,” she added, jerking her head to the far end of her alleyway. “Someone’s followed you up here, and it ain’t for my beautiful eyes.”
Either way, they were taking a chance. The girl’s pimp or other friends could easily be lying in wait to rob them, farther up the alley. But Solomon elected to take her advice, though all his senses screamed of danger. David walked silently at his side.
Behind them, the girl said, “Looking for me, love?”
Poised for trouble, Solomon turned the corner to find more black shadows. The street seemed unnaturally silent, apart from their quiet footsteps, echoed some distance behind, and the sound of his own breathing.
But none of the ominous shadows leapt out at them. Even so, Solomon didn’t breathe easily until they reached a wider street with lights.
“Where now?” David asked.
They had traced Harvey’s movements up until Thursday morning. “Home, I think. I suspect we’re about to run out of luck here. Let’s find a hackney…”
*
The evening party at the establishment was at its height when Constance breezed in.
Both delighted and relieved to find everything running smoothly, she spent a few minutes in the salon, greeting clients like old friends, exchanging a word with each before a rapid catch-up with Sarah, her lieutenant, who had apparently quarreled with a new girl called Tulip, recently brought in off the streets.
Leaving Sarah to keep her eagle eye on the salon, Constance went in search of Tulip and found her drinking hot chocolate in the kitchen with Janey.
Janey, now their chief assistant at Silver and Grey, was a longtime resident of the establishment.
At first Constance had taught her to read and tried to train her as a lady’s maid, for she was quick and eager to learn.
But she could never keep control of her wayward tongue, and so had moved to Silver and Grey, where she was increasingly useful to the business. And she enjoyed the work.
Both establishment cooks, who were clearing up as much as they could before morning, were giving Tulip the evil eye, although they greeted Constance with spontaneous smiles of welcome and offered to make her anything she liked.
Constance laughed. “I’ve eaten and drunk as much as I’m able, but thank you. Get off to bed, by all means. How did you get on, Janey? Did you take the room?”
Aiming for respectability, Janey was looking for lodgings away from the establishment, now that she earned regularly. She had been going to see somewhere on the edges of Covent Garden after work.
“It was decent,” Janey said. “And a fair size, too. I liked the girl I’d be sharing with and the landlady seemed fine—sort of down to earth and took no nonsense, but honest, like. I said I’d take it—I can move in right away—only now I’m wondering if I did the right thing.”
“There was something you didn’t like?” Constance asked, while Tulip slurped her hot chocolate with evident enjoyment.
Janey wriggled in her seat and tapped her fingernails against her cup.
“I don’t know, miss,” she said restlessly.
“Maybe I got too used to here. I’m usually back here by six, but it fair puts my hackles up when someone tells me I have to be home by ten or get locked out.
What if I have to work late for you? Or go out after work and don’t come home till midnight? I feel like I’m tied.”