Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Jenny had waited anxiously for word from Gwen, expecting a note. She’d spent the afternoon practising a new piece on the piano, but had not been able to settle, so when Gwen herself was announced, her nerves jangled.
‘Tell me everything,’ she said, taking Gwen by the arm and drawing her inside the parlour.
‘I think I have found Augusta’s brothel.
Selina Salisbury arrived while I was watching and she went in, so I followed her.
It didn’t look like a brothel, or at least not what I imagine one to look like, but there was a door to a barber’s next door, and I think that is how men go in and out.
I confronted them both, and they as much as admitted they were involved. ’
‘Slow down!’ Gwen was speaking fast, barely drawing a breath and giving Jenny no time to digest the rapid flow of information. She poured Gwen a glass of lemon cordial from the jug on top of the piano and made her take a sip.
‘Gwen, I’m not sure that was brave or foolish, but well done. You say Selina was there too?’
She thought back to the music hall and Selina’s presence in what Miriam had referred to as the ‘courtesan box’. It all painted a rather dubious picture, and Jenny wondered grimly what Uncle Conrad would say if he knew. Assuming he didn’t already.
‘I need to tell Miriam, and you need to tell your friend, Mr Parry,’ she said.
Something subtle in Gwen’s manner changed. A flicker of her eyelids and a twitch of her lips.
‘Does he already know?’ Jenny asked.
‘I went to see him at his hotel. I told him I had been looking, though I didn’t tell him where it is.’
Gwen sank down onto the piano stool. Her hand, still clutching the glass, shook. She took a large gulp of the cordial and swallowed, then gave a little moan of distress.
‘What else happened?’ Jenny prompted.
‘He told me he loved me and that he’d always loved me. He asked if I was happy and I couldn’t answer honestly.’ Gwen looked up, her expression bleak. ‘As I was leaving, he kissed me, and I let him. I kissed him back.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
It wasn’t the appropriate response to an admission of infidelity, but it was the one which jumped to Jenny’s lips.
Gwen put the glass on top of the piano and covered her face with her hands.
Jenny moved the glass onto the lace doily and patted Gwen’s shoulder.
She shouldn’t be happy for Gwen – who was apparently not happy about it – but after seeing how unpleasant Mr Walters was, she couldn’t help it.
‘I’m married and I should have nothing to do with another man, never mind kissing him. I shouldn’t have done it, except I saw the chance to grasp a moment of happiness. But If Mr Walters was to find out—’
‘But he won’t, because who will tell him? I certainly won’t!’ Jenny said.
She perched on the end of the stool, and Gwen shuffled up to let her sit more comfortably.
‘You did enjoy it, though, didn’t you?’
Gwen nodded and even though she kept her head bowed, her cheeks moved to suggest she was smiling.
‘Well, I’m sure it isn’t the end of the world,’ Jenny said. ‘Let’s put it to one side, and decide what we’re going to do about Augusta and the missing girls. We aren’t even certain if they’re there. I think you were right not to tell Danny too much at this stage.’
Gwen raised her head. Her cheeks were rosy, but the guilty look had gone from her eyes. ‘There’s more. Danny won’t rest until he sees anyone involved in the business prosecuted for depravity … and I fear that would include us.’
Jenny’s stomach knotted. ‘But we aren’t involved in it.’
‘If Augusta is selling our product to the clients, I think that we are.’ Gwen wiped her hands over her face. ‘I don’t want him to know. If I can avoid the same sort of argument you have had with your friend, I will.’
Jenny got up and walked around the room.
She had no desire for her connection to Augusta to be made known, but it was more of a concern for Gwen, who had a husband with a reputation to uphold.
Jenny didn’t have anyone, and the only chance she had of mending the quarrel with Miriam was to discover Sally’s whereabouts.
She stood in front of the window and stared out, understanding why Gwen had rushed to tell her Mr Parry.
She wanted to see Miriam, and it was thinking of how they had met that put a reckless idea into her head.
‘Tell me where to go. I’m going to go into the brothel, assuming it is that, and look for Sally. I can’t rest until I know whether she’s safe, and I know Miriam is very worried about her.’
‘We can’t just walk straight into a brothel, even if we are acquainted with Augusta,’ Gwen said. ‘I only got as far as the parlour and I was escorted there.’
Jenny looked down at herself. ‘I don’t intend to go dressed like this. I think it’s time for a young man to pay a visit.’
Gwen looked at her in confusion, then her eyebrows shot up as she realised Jenny’s meaning.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she cried. ‘What will you do? Go in and ask for a woman and hope you get the right one?’
‘That is exactly what I’m thinking, actually,’ Jenny admitted. ‘I’m not sure it will work, but I can’t think what else to do. We really do need to get to the bottom of where the girls are.’
‘I won’t let you go alone,’ Gwen said.
Jenny had rather expected more resistance to her idea and Gwen’s quick acceptance was unnerving.
Her knees trembled and she locked them, standing tall, and put her hands on her waist, thumbs forward as if she was looping them into a trouser waistband.
She’d passed as a man often enough, and doubted that anyone would suspect her of being a woman in such circumstances.
‘You’re right. But you have been there. And if Augusta or Selina happen to spot you, surely they’ll realise something is untoward.
I’ll ask Miriam to come with me and wait outside,’ Jenny said.
‘She’s used to spending time observing the streets, and if anyone asks, she can say that she is sketching and show them some proof. ’
Gwen agreed that this was a good plan and departed.
It was the following evening before Jenny was able to leave the house without alerting Uncle Conrad to it.
She installed him in the sitting room with his tonic and a composition of tulips and alliums, then changed into her trousers, shirt and waistcoat.
She carefully applied a little soot to her eyebrows to make them look thicker and darker, and put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses she had purchased from a pawnbroker.
She added her overcoat, a fringed scarf borrowed from Uncle Conrad’s wardrobe, which she hoped might give her the air of a young man heading to the opera, and her hat.
She reached into her pocket and tightened her hand around the whistle that she had placed there the day before.
If there was any trouble, she planned to blow it and hopefully receive some sort of aid.
She hoped fervently she would not need it.
She met Miriam at the end of the road that Gwen had named.
The neighbourhood was down-at-heel but had a friendly air to it.
The night was warm, with a mild breeze, and a low smog hugged the ground, muffling the voices that came from the houses and pubs.
Young couples, who from their clothing were factory workers, strolled arm in arm, laughing and talking.
A dog barked in a house – which started a volley back and forth from a scrawny mix of innumerable breeds, held by a thick rope by a beggar wearing a battered hat and a coat with an oily sheen.
Two women walked past on the opposite side of the road.
From the brightness of their dresses and the sway of their step, Jenny suspected they were streetwalkers.
The beggar obviously thought the same because he whistled and called something in a dialect Jenny didn’t know.
The women shouted something back and wiggled their hands suggestively.
Jenny blushed, glad of her disguise, and edged closer to Miriam.
Miriam nodded in greeting. ‘Mr Rosewood, good evening.’
‘Good evening, Miriam, you look very pretty,’ Jenny answered. She offered her arm but Miriam shook her head, so they walked side by side along the pavement until they stopped opposite the barber’s shop and the discreet doorway with the sign over the coffee-house window.
‘Rooks and Wrens,’ Miriam scoffed. ‘Could there be a more blatant innuendo?’
It was only the second thing she had said to Jenny since they had met and Jenny tried not to leap onto the words as a sign of Miriam softening towards her.
They put their heads together and watched the doorway, looking like a couple of sweethearts.
In this part of the city it appeared propriety was not as strict since there were plenty of others doing likewise.
She thought of poor Gwen, letting guilt eat her for a kiss.
She wished Gwen could find the happiness that seemed to be missing from her marriage.
The coffee house was closed, with wooden shutters covering the windows, but a faint light shone through at the middle where the shutters didn’t quite meet. More significantly, the light in the shop next door was glowing.
‘The barber’s is open. Does that strike you as odd?’ Jenny asked.
Miriam wrinkled her nose before answering. ‘Perhaps. Though with the hours that men work, it might have to be so they can use it.’
‘Maybe Gwen was wrong and there is nothing there,’ Jenny sighed. The evidence suggested that, because for the quarter hour of their surveillance so far, nothing had happened.
‘There’s something you should know,’ Miriam said, as the bells from the nearby church pealed out the half hour.
‘I’ve answered an advertisement for a position with a family.
The father is an archaeologist, one of those rich men who can afford to indulge in hobbies and call them careers.
His wife is as devoted to the subject as he is, and they have a daughter who will be twelve next week. ’