Anne Perry - Death Of A Stranger

It was ten minutes later that Bessie returned with Lockhart, tired and disheveled as always, but perfectly willing to help.

“You don’t eat proper!” Bessie chided him, as she had apparently been doing ever since she had found him. “Steak and kidney pudding, you need!” She went over to the stove. “I’ll get you some ’ot tea. Best I can do. But it’s yer own fault!” She did not explain what she meant by that, and Lockhart shot a wry look at Hester, but there was affection in it. He understood Bessie better than she understood herself.

Hester explained what they had done for the girl and took him over to her.

He looked at her carefully, for a long time, but he could not tell Hester the one thing she needed to know, whether there was internal bleeding or not.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head and looking at the girl with pity. “I just don’t know. But if she’s still no worse by morning, she might survive it. I’ll come back midday or so. Until then, you can do as much for her as I can. You’ve made a good job of the bones.”

It was a little after seven, and full daylight, when Hester awoke to find Bessie standing over her, her eyes bright, her hair struggling out of its fierce knot, her dress even more rumpled than usual.

“She’s come ’round!” she said in her penetrating whisper. “Don’ look too good, poor creature. Yer’d better see to ’er. Kettle’s on. Yer look like summit out o’ the morgue yerself, an’ all.”

“Thank you,” Hester said a trifle dryly, sitting up and wincing. Her head throbbed and she was so tired she felt worse than when she had lain down. She swung her legs to the floor and stood up, aware now of the girl on the other bed only yards away from her, eyes open, face so white it seemed hardly warmer than the pillow.

“Don’t move,” Hester said gently. “You’re safe here.”

“I’m all broken inside.” The girl breathed the words rather than spoke them. “Heavens, I hurt!” Her voice was soft, her diction clear, not that of the streets.

“I know, but in time it will ease,” Hester promised, hoping it was true.

“No, it won’t,” the girl said with resignation. “I’m dying. That’s my punishment, I suppose.” She did not look at Hester but stared up at the ceiling with blank eyes.

Hester put her hand over the girl’s, touching it very lightly. “Your bones will heal,” she told her. “I know it hurts now, but it will get better. What shall I call you?”

“Alice.” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, but she was too weak and too tired to sob. She was also too broken to be held in anyone’s arms.

“Just rest,” Hester said, aching to be able to do more for her. “You’re safe here. We won’t leave you alone. Is there anyone you would like me to tell?”

“No!” She turned to look at Hester, her eyes frightened. “Please!”

“I won’t if you don’t wish it,” Hester promised. “Don’t worry!”

“I don’t want them to know,” Alice went on. “Let me just die here and be buried… wherever they put people no one knows.” She said it without self-pity. She was asking for an end, privacy, not help.

Hester had no idea whether the girl would recover or not. She was uncertain how to help, or if she could. Perhaps the best thing would be to leave her, but she could not do that. She was compelled by her own inner will for life not to allow someone else to give up. To be beaten was another thing, but she was not there yet.

“Who did this to you?” she asked. “Don’t you want to stop them? Before they do it to someone else?”

Alice turned her head a little. “You can’t stop him. No one can.”

“Anyone can be stopped, if you know how, and if enough of us try,” Hester said decisively. “If you help. Who is he?”

Alice looked away again. “You can’t. It’s legal. I owe him money. I borrowed too much, then I couldn’t pay it back.”

“Who? Your pimp?”

Alice stared up at the ceiling. “You might as well know. There’s nothing more he can do to me now. But I don’t know his name, not his real name. I was respectable then, a governess! Can you imagine that? I used to teach gentlemen’s children. In Kensington. I fell in love.” There was immeasurable bitterness in her voice and it was so little above a whisper that Hester had to strain to hear her. “We got married. We had six months of happiness… then I realized he gambled. Couldn’t help it, he said. Maybe he was right. Anyway, he didn’t stop… he began to lose.” She took a deep breath and gasped with pain. It was a moment or two before she could continue.

Hester waited.

“I borrowed to get him out of debt… then he left me,” Alice said. “Only I still had to pay back the money. It was then that the moneylender told me he could get me looked after on the streets… especially… if I went into this brothel. It caters to men who like clean girls… ones who speak nicely and carry themselves like quality. Pay a lot more for it. That way I could pay off my debt and be free.”

“And you went…” Hester said slowly. It was so easy to understand-the fear, the promises, the escape from despair. The price might not seem any worse than the alternative.

“Not at first,” Alice replied. “Not for another three months. By then the debt was twice as high. That was two years ago.” She fell silent.

Bessie came over with a cup of beef tea, her eyes questioning.

Hester looked at Alice. “Try a little,” she offered.

Alice did not bother to answer. Her thoughts were inward, remembering pain, defeat, perhaps humiliation more than she would ever forget.

Hester put her arm around Alice’s shoulders and eased her up a few inches. The girl gasped with pain, but she did not resist. She lay as leaden weight against Hester, her splintered arms stiff, her body rigid.

Bessie held the cup to her lips, her own face crumpled with concern, her hands so gentle her touch could hardly be felt as more than a warmth.

It was a quarter of an hour before the tea was finished, and Hester had no idea whether it had helped or not, but she knew of nothing else to try.

Alice sank into a restless sleep, and when Margaret came in at nearly nine o’clock her optimism over raising more funds vanished the moment Hester told her of the night’s happenings.

“That’s monstrous!” she said furiously. “You mean someone out there is lending money to respectable women in financial trouble, and then demanding they pay it back by working in a brothel that caters to men who like to use women they think are decent… to… God knows what!”

“And now with police all over the place they can’t get the trade to pay off, so they are getting beaten,” Hester finished for her. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Fanny is probably another of them, only she’s too frightened to tell us.” She remembered Kitty, who had also spoken well and carried herself with pride. “Heaven knows how many more there are.”

“What are we going to do?” Margaret demanded. There was no doubt in her that they would do something. She expected no less from Hester; it was written plainly in her face and in her brave, candid stare.

Hester did not want to let her down, or any of these women who trusted her to be able to do what they could not. But those reasons were trivial. Above them all was the evil Hester so easily imagined could have happened to hundreds of women she knew-or to herself, had chance been only a little different.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Not yet. But I will.” She would ask Monk. He was clever, imaginative, and he never gave up. A very slight warmth opened up inside her at the certainty of his help. He would hate this with exactly the same passion as she did. “I will,” she repeated.