Belle

  Even claiming he was an investigator for insurance companies was something of an exaggeration. Mostly he was just sent along to see claimants in their own home and report back anything which could be suspicious. He usually had to call after a death to see the grieving widow or widower. He hadn’t as yet met anyone where there was the slightest whiff of poison, a push down the stairs or anything which might point to the death being other than a natural one, though he couldn’t help but hope that one day he might.

  He washed his face in cold water from the jug on the washstand, slipped on a clean shirt and rescued his trousers from the floor where he’d dropped them the previous night. He was fortunate in his lodgings in that Mrs Dumas was a widow who wanted company and something to do, rather than just money. Her terraced house in Percy Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, was very clean and comfortable, and she treated her three lodgers almost like members of her own family. Noah appreciated this, so he took it upon himself to do any small maintenance jobs, and always filled the coal buckets each day for her. As he ran lightly down the stairs he hoped that Mrs Dumas would keep her distance from the caller; he wouldn’t want her to know he’d been to a brothel.

  ‘Miss Davis is in the parlour,’ she said as he reached the hall. She was a tiny little woman of well over sixty, reminding Noah of a little bird with her sharply pointed nose and bright and beady eyes. She was standing by the door which led through to the kitchen, wearing the white frilly apron she always put over her dress in the mornings. ‘Come on into the kitchen when you’ve finished and I’ll make you breakfast,’ she said, her face alight with curiosity.

  The name Miss Davis meant nothing to Noah, but as he walked into the parlour, he recognized the slight woman in a black coat and rather severe cloche hat as the maid at Annie’s Place, whom Millie had called Mog.

  ‘I’m sorry to call so early, Mr Bayliss,’ she said, standing up and offering her hand. ‘I think you know where I’m from.’

  Noah nodded and shook her hand. ‘My landlady mentioned Millie.’

  ‘I’m sure you heard the terrible news about her murder?’ Mog said.

  Noah reeled back in shock. ‘Murder?’ he gasped.

  ‘Oh dear.’ The woman frowned and took a step nearer to him, reaching out her hand to touch his arm in a gesture of comfort. ‘I am so sorry, Mr Bayliss, to give you such a shock. It never occurred to me you wouldn’t know already, not with you being a reporter and it being in all the papers too.’

  Noah was so horrified and appalled that his wits left him temporarily and he couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. He’d been out on insurance investigation for the past week and hadn’t bothered to buy a newspaper. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes and that embarrassed him. ‘I can’t believe it! Who would kill such a lovely girl? When was this? Has the killer been caught?’ he croaked out eventually, and had to hope Mog wouldn’t realize he’d had romantic dreams about Millie.

  Mog gently suggested they sat down and she told him the whole story. Noah found it curious that a woman who worked in a brothel should be so sensitive and kindly. She explained how she had been out for the evening and arrived home just after the police left, and she told the murder story through the eyes of the young girl who had witnessed it. As she got to the point where Annie, the girl’s mother, had lied to the police and said Belle slept through the whole thing, she had to dab tears from her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Noah hadn’t imagined Annie having a child, much less a fifteen-year-old living on the premises. Just from the way Mog spoke of her it was clear this young girl was very innocent and he could hardly bear to think she should have witnessed something so shocking.

  ‘But to make it even worse, now Belle has been snatched!’ Mog exclaimed, her voice rising in her distress. ‘Snatched right off the street! It were yesterday while we were at Millie’s funeral.’

  ‘Oh, my good God,’ Noah burst out. ‘You went to the police, I’m sure?’

  ‘Yes, of course, though little good it did us as they don’t know Belle saw the murder and they won’t be rushing around on our account. So we don’t know what to do. Then Annie remembered that you were an investigator and that you really liked Millie. So we hoped you might be willing to help us.’

  Noah the journalist couldn’t help but think this could be the scoop he’d always hoped for to make his name. But he immediately felt ashamed of such a thought. He had been very fond of Millie, and though he would like to be the man who brought her killer to justice, he couldn’t possibly exploit her death to further his career.

  He hadn’t known she was a whore when he first met her. He had been in the Strand shortly after a child had been run down by a hansom cab, and hoping to be first with the story, he began asking people if they’d seen what happened. Millie was just one of these people. She was so pretty and helpful, concerned for the child and its parents, and when she said she had to get home, he walked with her. Just as they got to Jake’s Court she blurted out what she was. He said he didn’t care, he still liked her just as much.

  He had only been to a brothel once before he met Millie, and he wouldn’t have gone then but for a friend dragging him there when he was drunk. He disliked the concept that a man could buy a woman as if she were a bag of sugar or a sack of coal. But he was desperate to see Millie again, and nervous as he was about going into Annie’s Place, it was the only way to see her.

  On that first visit, he didn’t even want to have sex with her. He told her he just wanted to be with her, so they went to her room and simply talked and kissed.

  On the next and subsequent visits he did have sex with Millie – he couldn’t hold back once he was up in her warm, cluttered room and she took off her dress and stood there in her underclothes with her full breasts billowing over the top of her chemise. It was wonderful, the most thrilling thing he’d ever experienced, yet it wasn’t just the sex, he liked everything about her – her sweet, kind nature, her silky skin and her vivid smile.

  Maybe he was fooling himself, but he believed she liked him as much as he did her, and over the period of the next six or seven weeks he went to see her every Monday night, the quietest night at Annie’s. But the last time he went, she had someone in with her already and he felt so dejected and hurt he stayed away the next week. Now she was dead and he’d never get to hold her again.

  ‘Look, Miss Davis, I’m not a detective,’ he explained, his voice trembling with emotion. ‘I was fond of Millie and I’d like to see her killer swing for it. I’d like to help find Belle too, but I haven’t any idea of how to go about it.’

  ‘I’m sure you could find out,’ Mog said, pleading with her eyes.

  Noah sighed. ‘I suppose I could start by talking to people around Seven Dials – some of them might know something. Maybe I can find someone at the newspaper too that knows the right policeman in Bow Street to tap for information.’

  ‘Mrs Cooper wouldn’t expect you to do it for nothing,’ Mog hastened to tell him, guessing that like most young men his money was spent as fast as he earned it. Right from the first time he came to Annie’s she knew he was a good man. She liked his rosy cheeks, the way his fair hair didn’t want to lie down flat, however much oil he put on it. He wasn’t handsome – his squat nose reminded her of a Pekinese dog, and his ears stuck out – but there was honesty in his face, and she liked the fact that he was sweet on Millie, rather than just lusting after her.

  When she found he had put his real address in the house book, that confirmed what she’d sensed about him, that he was an honest man. And to find he lived in such a respectable house was further evidence that he was all she believed.

  ‘It goes without saying that the Falcon, or Mr Kent as we knew him, is very dangerous. We think too that he’s probably got many people in his pay, so you’ll have to be careful what you say.’

  ‘Have you got any idea where he might have taken Belle?’ Noah asked. ‘I mean, has he got a house or business address you know of? Any relatives, lady fri
ends?’

  ‘We don’t ask such questions,’ Mog said reprovingly, as if he should know that. ‘Belle said he was asking Millie to go away with him to Kent, so he must have a place there. I dare say that’s why he used the name Kent as an alias too. But Annie is afraid he’s going to sell her. You know what we mean?’

  Noah blushed, his already ruddy cheeks turning fiery. ‘A fifteen-year-old?’ he said in horror.

  ‘It happens to girls even younger,’ Mog said, wincing with distaste. ‘It’s difficult to believe men can take pleasure in a child. If I had my way they’d be hung up by their feet and a bit chopped off them every day, starting with the offending part.’

  Noah half smiled. He believed Mog was capable of inflicting that punishment on the man who had taken Belle. It was clear from the way she spoke of her that she loved her dearly. She had also cared deeply for Millie and that endeared her to him too. ‘But why would he do that? She’d still be able to inform on him.’

  ‘Most girls sold that way never recover their wits,’ Mog said and her eyes filled with tears. ‘They do what’s expected of them and escape from reality with drink or laudanum. Others become hard, just as ruthless as those that sold them, and they often go on to become equally evil. Either way they are lost souls.’

  Noah gulped hard, not liking the images Mog had created for him. ‘I’ll try to get some information for you,’ he said. ‘Now, just tell me about Belle’s friends. I don’t for one moment think she’s off with any of them, but she may have told them something she didn’t tell you about this man Kent.’

  Mog shrugged. ‘She don’t have no real friends. When she left school well over a year ago we kept her home. But we never let her mix with our girls because we didn’t want her tainted. As for the neighbours’ children, they’re either ragamuffins, or their folks wouldn’t let them mix with our Belle.’

  ‘Surely there must be someone?’ Noah said. It sounded such a sad and lonely life for a young girl.

  Mog put her head on one side as if she were thinking hard. ‘There is a lad called Jimmy who lives at the Ram’s Head with his uncle, name of Garth Franklin,’ she said. ‘She ain’t known him long, in fact she only met him the morning of the day Millie was killed. I remember because she come home full of it, telling me all about him. Seems his mother had died recently and his uncle took him to the pub to live. Belle was really taken with him. But I don’t think that’s the only time she saw him. After Millie was killed she disappeared one morning, even though her ma said she were to stay in. I think she met up with him.’

  ‘I’ll start with him then. Is the Ram’s Head in Monmouth Street?’

  Mog nodded. ‘But I never told Annie about this Jimmy. She wouldn’t have liked Belle being friends with any boy, and truth to tell I’d clear forgotten about him until you asked about friends. The boy’s uncle is a hard, difficult man. But if you could get him on our side, he might know people who’d help us.’

  ‘I can’t make you any promises, but I’ll do my best,’ Noah said. ‘You and Belle’s mother must be very frightened.’

  ‘We are sick with worry,’ Mog admitted. ‘Most people think because of the work we do that we don’t have feelings. That ain’t so.’

  ‘Millie told me that Annie’s was a good place to work and that you were very kind to her,’ Noah said. ‘I know she’d want me to help you.’

  Mog reached out and touched his cheek, a gesture of appreciation and trust. ‘I must go now,’ she said. ‘Annie will be wanting to go back to Bow Street to tell the peelers Belle still hasn’t returned. She’s decided to admit Belle witnessed the murder, but we’ll beg them to keep that quiet.’

  Noah went straight out as soon as he’d eaten his breakfast. Mrs Dumas had been very inquisitive about his visitor, so he had to lie and say Miss Davis was a relative of someone he’d had to check out for the insurance company and she’d given him some information which implied there had been a fraudulent claim. When his landlady kept on asking him more questions he had been curter than he’d have liked to be, just to stop her in her tracks.

  It was a raw, windy day and as he made his way down Tottenham Court Road he tied his wool muffler tighter round his neck and turned up the collar of his overcoat. Noah knew that many people thought Seven Dials was a terrifying place where they were likely to be attacked and robbed, or catch some nasty disease even by passing through it. This might have been true a couple of decades earlier, before some of the worst rookeries were pulled down, but it wasn’t that bad now and Noah liked going there. While he could appreciate that it was a deprived, overcrowded, squalid and vice-ridden area of London, it was also lively, colourful and fascinating, and nowhere near as ground-down and depressing as parts of the East End.

  The natives were friendly, laughed easily and didn’t complain about their lot in life. They were wily of course, never missing an opportunity to snatch a pocket watch, handkerchief or wallet, and he’d been told hard-luck stories by the score that would soften a heart of stone. But then he wasn’t a target for robbing: his clothes were cheap ones and he had no fat wallet or pocket watch to snatch.

  An old hunchbacked man was washing down the pavement outside the Ram’s Head.

  ‘Good morning,’ Noah said politely. ‘Is Jimmy in?’

  ‘Well, I don’t rightly know,’ the hunchback replied. He spun the words out in a curious manner. ‘I mean, I don’t know if he’s “in” to you!’ he added after a dramatic pause.

  ‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind asking him if he’d see Mr Bayliss, about Belle Cooper,’ Noah retorted.

  The hunchback went inside the pub with a crab-like sideways scuttle which was even odder than his way of speaking. Noah followed him but kept well back.

  The Ram’s Head was one of the better public houses in Seven Dials. It hadn’t seen a lick of paint for years, the wood panelling was cracking and the floor creaky and uneven, yet even at ten on a Saturday morning, too early for customers, it had a welcoming atmosphere. A fire was lit at the far end of the room, and the bar had been polished. Noah wasn’t surprised it was such a popular place; it was probably far more comfortable and warmer than most of the homes in the neighbourhood.

  ‘Jimmy!’ the hunchback called out at the back of the bar. ‘Someone here to see you about Belle Cooper.’

  There was a clatter of feet on stone steps and a young, freckled-faced, red-haired lad came bursting into the bar. His trousers were wet below the knees, as if he’d been washing down a floor.

  ‘Have you found her?’ he asked breathlessly.

  Noah shook his head. He realized the lad thought he was a plainclothes policeman.

  Jimmy’s face fell. ‘Have you got proof yet that she was kidnapped then?’

  ‘What makes you think she might have been kidnapped?’ Noah asked.

  Jimmy stared at Noah for a moment or two. His expression had become wary as if he was afraid he’d said the wrong thing. ‘You tell me who you are first,’ he said.

  Noah walked over to a table by the fire. ‘Will you come and sit down with me?’

  Jimmy did, but sat on the edge of the seat as if poised for flight. The hunchback went back outside.

  Noah explained that he wasn’t police, but a friend of Millie’s, and that Miss Davis had called on him to ask for help. ‘I agreed to because I really liked Millie,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping you’ll help me because you like Belle. Anything you can tell me will just be between us.’

  Jimmy’s sharp, suspicious expression vanished, replaced by eagerness. ‘I heard that Annie and her maid were out yesterday about half past five asking everyone if they’d seen Belle. I wanted to go and help them but my uncle – he’s the landlord of this place – said Annie would eat me alive if she knew Belle had been talking to me,’ he rattled out quick-fire. ‘Later that evening Uncle told me he’d seen Belle outside the pawn shop opposite here at about four o’clock. He thought that meant Belle might have been pawning something to run away.’

  ‘Why didn’t he go and tell A
nnie that?’ Noah asked.

  ‘Well, I’m glad he didn’t, ’cos I knew she was there waiting for me and everyone would’ve been mad about that. But I weren’t here at the time, I’d been sent up to King’s Cross to take a message to someone.’

  ‘So why do you think she was kidnapped rather than just running away?’

  ‘Because of what she told me after Millie was killed.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘She made me promise not to tell.’

  Noah liked that the boy was honest and loyal. ‘I think she told you what Miss Davis told me too, about seeing the murder,’ Noah said. ‘If I’m right, you must tell me what you know because the man who killed Millie is almost certainly responsible for Belle’s disappearance.’

  ‘Do you think he might kill her too?’ Jimmy asked fearfully.

  Noah nodded. ‘I won’t lie to you. I think that’s more than likely. He could hang with what she witnessed. Desperate men do desperate things.’

  Jimmy blanched, but quickly revealed everything Belle had told him. ‘We have to save her,’ he said breathlessly as he finished. ‘Have you got any idea where she might have been taken?’

  ‘None,’ Noah admitted. ‘I was hoping you and your uncle might have some ideas. Where would your uncle stand on this? Would he want to help find Belle?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask me yourself?’ a deep voice rang out behind them.

  Noah turned on his seat to see the landlord standing there, and his stomach turned over, for the man looked the kind who could twist someone’s head off his shoulders just for looking at him the wrong way. He was big, six foot at least, with massive shoulders and arms like a prize fighter’s. Noah guessed he was somewhere around his mid- to late thirties, with a thick, dark red beard, and a high colour as if he drank a great deal.