Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Gwen was standing at the desk doing the accounts.
She found it easier on her nerves than sitting and waiting for news from Jenny.
Archibald was sitting at his desk, putting tablets into bottles.
The mood between them was still icy and showed no signs of thawing, but Gwen found that she didn’t particularly care.
The silence meant she could concentrate on the takings, and once again she caught herself suspecting that Conrad Rosewood was doing his niece out of a great deal of money. Archibald coughed.
‘Mrs Walters, did you take my tweezers? I can’t find them. These damned new spectacles are completely wrong.’
The tweezers were on the edge of the bench. Gwen passed them to him without comment, but her heart filled with dread. Was it the spectacles? Or could it be that his eyesight was already fading again?
She had no more time to consider this, because Jenny burst through the door, pushing it back so that the bell rang loudly. She was quickly followed by Miriam who was wearing a grim expression.
Archibald jumped when she entered and uttered a sharp cry of admonition, glaring at the unruly customers. When he recognised Jenny, though, his glare turned to fawning smiles.
‘Miss Rosewood, how unexpected to see you. Is your uncle with you?’
‘Good morning, Mr Walters. I’m so pleased you’re back at work. My uncle is not with me. I am here on a matter related to … to women’s troubles.’
She gave him a weak smile and rocked back and forth from one foot to the other, clearly agitated. Gwen tensed. She had been waiting on tenterhooks for word of Jenny’s investigation, and from her uneasy manner and the fact that she wasn’t alone, it appeared the news wasn’t good.
Gwen closed the ledger. ‘Miss Rosewood, you look unwell. Let me take you and your friend through to the back and I’ll make a pot of tea. Archibald, you can manage here.’
She ignored his grumbling and took Jenny firmly by the elbow through to the kitchen. Miriam followed.
‘You have to get rid of the tincture. All of it,’ Jenny declared, almost before she was in the room.
‘But I’m making some for Mrs McAllister. She said it does wonders for her hip pain.’
Gwen gestured to the Kilner jar on the side, in which cloves and nutmegs floated. It stood alongside one of bottled pears, Gwen having rightly suspected that Archibald would dismiss both as household ingredients.
‘Augusta isn’t selling it to the customers. She’s using it to drug the girls,’ Miriam growled.
A fist of horror punched Gwen’s ribcage. Her hand halted halfway to picking up the kettle.
‘No! Are you sure?’
Jenny’s lips pursed as if she was trying to control nausea. Her complexion was grey.
‘I overheard her persuading, then forcing, one to drink it. I don’t know if that’s all she’s using it for, but isn’t that awful? She’s making them compliant before they have to do whatever things they have to do.’
Gwen slumped against the table, thoughts of tea forgotten as Jenny told her how she had sneaked in and what she had overheard.
‘The worst thing is, I think Augusta genuinely believes she is helping them and doing them a kindness,’ she finished.
Gwen covered her face with her hands. ‘I imagine she does. She has such a twisted idea of right and wrong. She told me that giving them a roof and room was better than letting them walk the streets. Oh, Jenny, how horrible! And how awful for you, too, to have gone in there and heard that. What a clever idea to blow the whistle. Do you think it worked?’
Jenny grimaced. ‘I don’t know. Miriam and I didn’t wait to find out in case we were caught. I wanted to go back. I feel so responsible!’
‘We didn’t intend this to happen, though,’ Gwen said bleakly. ‘We were just providing enjoyment, an escape for an hour or so, for people who chose it willingly.’
Her breath caught in her throat, feeling as though her stays had been tight-laced.
It was a pathetic excuse. She hugged herself protectively, thinking of all the people who had been hurt as a result of her actions.
Ruth, Sally, even poor Mrs Browne whose husband had beaten her for falling asleep after taking it.
She looked at the Kilner jar in dislike.
‘I didn’t want any of this to happen. All I wanted to do was help Archibald make his stock while he had his eyes treated so that we weren’t thrown out onto the street. I never wanted to start making tonics or potions.’
Her lips quivered and she looked at Jenny, narrowing her eyes accusingly. ‘That’s all your doing, you know.’
Miriam folded her arms, staring at Gwen with contempt. ‘Yes, but when you took the opportunity you embraced it, and now…’
‘Don’t fight each other,’ Jenny said. Her eyes had lit up at Miriams’s unexpected defence of her, and Gwen suspected their quarrel was over.
Jenny put one hand on Miriam’s arm and held the other towards Gwen.
‘It wasn’t only Gwen to blame. We’re both equally culpable.
You were right from the start, Miriam. We have created something dreadful. ’
Gwen filled the kettle and put it on the stove. Tea wouldn’t solve the problem, but it would settle her stomach and calm her nerves. She should have stuck to making tea!
‘There’s no point arguing over whose idea it was,’ she said. ‘We’ve done it, so what are we going to do to resolve the situation? We cannot let this continue, and we have to find Sally.’ The blood drained from her as the monstrous thought occurred to her. ‘Was it either of them?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I know it was not Sally, and the accent wasn’t right for Ruth. I think it was the young girl who we saw in Augusta’s office. I’m sorry.’ Jenny knotted her hands together tightly. ‘I did try.’
‘What do we do? How do we extricate ourselves from Augusta without risking ourselves?’ Gwen said. ‘She knows too much about us. She could ruin us if she makes our involvement known. My husband would be furious.’
She shivered, then saw the cunning look cross Jenny’s face.
‘Miriam and I talked long into the night, and we’ve already had some thoughts.
We know some things about Augusta, of course, and Selina, too.
Miriam and I saw her at the theatre, entertaining a man.
I believe she’s a prostitute, but of a higher class than the poor unfortunates in Augusta’s clutches.
If that is true, then I don’t imagine she’d want her connection to Augusta made known to her patrons. ’
‘Ha! I wouldn’t be at all surprised!’ said Gwen. She tutted. ‘She seems so respectable, with servants and a coach and that grand house, but how do you think she pays for it?’
Miriam gave Gwen a crooked grin, and she found herself warming to the woman. She was around the same age as Jenny and her brown eyes sparkled with intelligent wit.
‘Do you remember at her house, when she went upstairs?’ Jenny said. ‘And what she was doing up there? She must have been testing the tincture’s effect on her inhibitions.’
‘Yes, I think she was.’ Gwen put her hands to her cheeks, remembering the unaccustomed feelings of lust towards Archibald when she had experimented with it.
How long ago that seemed! She doubted that even a dozen bottles would be able to rekindle the passion now, not since his temper had changed so markedly.
‘There’s only one way to discover if she knows what Augusta is doing,’ Gwen said. ‘We need to ask her, but without Augusta present. If she doesn’t, then she might be as appalled as we are.’
‘And if she does?’ Miriam asked.
‘Then we’re in no worse position,’ Gwen said. She filled the teapot, turned it three times and drummed her fingers against the lid. ‘It would help if we had something to hold over her.’
Jenny and Miriam exchanged a look and edged a little closer to each other. There was a new warmth between them that had been absent when they had encountered each other in the street at night.
‘We’ve thought of that, too. Miriam is going to spend some time over the next few days watching her house and if she has any gentlemen callers, Miriam is going to sketch them. Then we can threaten Selina with exposure.’
‘Blackmail!’ Gwen laughed slightly wildly. ‘What sort of people have we become!’
The three women looked at each other, as if none of them could provide an answer. Gwen poured the tea and sighed.
‘A few days, though. That’s too long when those poor girls are being made to perform all sorts of dreadful acts.’
‘I know, but what’s a few more days if we ensure their safety?’ Jenny said.
After bidding farewell to her visitors, Gwen took Archibald a cup of tea, then tried to go back to the accounts, but she couldn’t concentrate.
She went upstairs and into the bedroom. Archibald’s dressing table was at his side of the bed, and she thought she remembered seeing his old spectacles on the top a day or two earlier. She opened the drawer to see if he had put them inside, and her eye fell on an envelope with familiar writing.
Archie!
The envelope was addressed to Archibald.
It was water-stained and crumpled but it looked newer than any she had seen before.
She took the letter out and sat on the edge of the bed to read it, her hands trembling.
The letter was dated the ninth of November.
So long ago, and Archibald had not even told her about it!
A sense of betrayal washed over her at the thought that her son had written to his father but not to her, too.
It was quickly followed by the fear that something was wrong that he didn’t want her to know.
The letter started well enough. He talked of a woman, Veronique, who was native to St Helena.
Gwen frowned. Was that why Archibald had not shared the letter with her?
Did he think she would be offended by Archie falling in love with a woman of a different race?
She tutted at her husband’s narrow-mindedness and turned back to the letter.