Anne Perry - The Sins of the Wolf

“You simple or summink?” Doris demanded. “Spin a top,” she said, and made a spiral movement with her fingers. “In’t yer never played wi’ a top when you was a kid? Yer must ‘ave seen one, less yer blind as well as daft.”

“You don’t go to jail for spinning tops.” Hester was beginning to get annoyed. The gratuitous insults were something she could fight against.

“Yer do if it gets in people’s way,” Doris said with a curl of her lip. “Don’t yer, Tilly, eh? Cheeky little sod.”

The child looked at her with wide eyes and nodded slowly.

“How old are you?” Hester asked her.

“Dunno,” Tilly said with indifference.

“Don’t be daft,” Doris said again. “She can’t count”

“I can so!” Tilly protested indignantly. “I know ‘ow many’s ten.”

“Yer in’t ten,” Doris said, dismissing the subject She looked back at Hester. “So what didn’t you steal then, my fine lady wot got caught at it?”

“A brooch with pearls in it,” Hester replied tartly. “What are you respectable ladies doing that brings you here?”

Doris smiled, showing stained teeth, strong and regular. They would have been beautiful had they been white. “Well, some of us was letting gentlemen pay for their pleasures, which is only fair, as I sees it. But there was one in me back room as was screevin’, and the pigs don’t like that, cos’ the briefs don’t like it.” She watched Hester’s confusion with evident complacency. “Or to put it fancy like, so your ladyship can understand it: they says I was taking money for fornication, and the geezer in the back room was writing recommendations and legal papers for people as wanted ‘em but couldn’t get ‘em the usual way. Very good wi’ a pen, is Tarn. Write anything for yer… deeds in property, wills, letters of authority, references o’ character. You name it, ‘e’ll write it, and takes a good lawyer to know the difference.”

“I see…”

“Do yer? Do yer now?” Her lip curled. “I don’t think yer see anything, yer stupid cow.”

“I see you in here the same as I am,” Hester said. “Which makes you just as stupid, except you’ve been here before. To do it twice takes a real art.”

Doris swore. Marge smiled mirthlessly. Tilly slunk backwards and crouched by the end of the cot, expecting a fight.

“You’ll get yours,” Doris said sullenly. “They’ll put yer somewhere like the ‘Steel’ down Cold Bath Fields for a few years, stitching all day till yer fingers bleed, eating slops, ‘ot all summer and cold all winter, and nobody ter talk ter wi’ yer fancy voice.”

Marge nodded. “That’s right,” she said dolefully. “Keep yer in silence, they do. No talking. An’ masks, too.”

“Masks?” Hester did not understand her.

“Masks,” Marge repeated, dragging her hand across her face. “Masks, so yer can’t see nobody’s phys.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. Just to make you feel worse, I suppose. So yer alone. Don’t learn nothing wicked from nobody else. It’s the new idea.”

Hester’s day was taking on more and more of the proportions of a nightmare. This last piece of information lent it a quality of total unreality. Hester tried to imagine troops of women in gray dresses, silent and masked, faceless, laboring, cold, filled with hatred and despair. In such a world, how could they be anything else? And children who spun tops in the street and got in people’s way. She was choked with a mixture of rage and pity, and the almost hysterical desire to escape. Her heart was beating high in her throat, and her knees were suddenly weak, even though she was sitting down. She could hardly have stood, even if she had wanted to and there had been any point.

“Sick?” Doris said with a smile. “Yer’ll get used ter it. An’ don’t think yer ‘avin’ the cot, cos yer ain’t Marge is sick for real. She gets it Any’ow she was ‘ere first”

Early the following morning Hester was taken to a magistrate’s court and remanded in custody. From there she was taken to the prison at Newgate and placed in a cell with two pickpockets and a prostitute. Within an hour she was sent for and told that her lawyer had come to speak with her.

She felt a wild surge of hope as if the long nightmare were over, the darkness dispelled. She shot to her feet and almost fell over in her eagerness to get through the door and along the bare stone passage to the room where Rathbone would be.

“Now, now,” the wardress said sharply, her hard, blunt face tightening. “Just be’ave yerself. No call to get excited. Talk, that’s all. Come wi’ me, stay be’ind me and speak when yer spoken to.” And she turned on her heel and marched away with Hester at her elbow.

They stopped in front of a large metal door. The wardress produced a huge key from the chain at her belt and placed it in the lock and turned it. The door swung silently under the pressure of her powerful arms. Inside was painted white, gaslit and relatively cheerful. Oliver Rathbone was standing behind the chair at the far side of the plain wooden table. There was an empty chair on the nearer side.

“Hester Latterly,” the wardress said with a half smile at Rathbone. It was a sickly gesture, as if she were undecided whether to try to be charming with him or whether he was an enemy, like all the inmates. She looked at his immaculate clothes, his polished boots and neat hair, and opted for charm. Then she saw the look on his face at the sight of Hester, and something within her froze. The smile was a dead thing, fixed and horrible.

“Knock when you want to get out,” she said coldly, and then as soon as Hester was inside, banged the door so the reverberations of metal on stone jarred in the head.

Hester was too close to tears to speak.

Rathbone came around the table and took both her hands in his. The warmth of his fingers was like a light in darkness, and she clung to him as tightly as she dared.

He stared into her face for only a few moments, gauging the fear in her, then as suddenly let her go and pushed her gently back into the chair closest to her.

“Sit down,” he ordered. “We must not waste the time we have.”

She obeyed, fumbling with her skirts to arrange them so she could pull the chair comfortably to the table.

He sat opposite her, leaning forward a little. “I have already been to see Connal Murdoch,” he said gravely. “I thought I might persuade him that the whole matter is one of error, and not something in which the police should be involved at all.” There was apology in his eyes. “Unfortunately I found him very rigid on the subject, and I have not been able to reason with him.”

“What about Griselda, Mary’s daughter?”

“She barely spoke. She was present, but seemed to defer to him in everything and, frankly, to be in a state of considerable distress.” He stopped, searching her face as if to judge from it how he should continue.

“Is that a polite way of saying she was not able to apply her mind?” she asked. She could not afford euphemisms.

“Yes,” he conceded. “Yes, I suppose it is. Grief takes many forms, not a few of them unattractive, but she did not seem so much grieved as frightened-at least, that is the impression I received.”

“Of Murdoch?”

“I am afraid I am not receptive enough to be certain. I thought not, but then I also felt that he made her nervous… or anxious? I have no clear impression. I’m sorry.” He frowned. “But it is all of little importance now. I failed to persuade him to dismiss the matter. I am afraid it will proceed, and my dear, you must prepare yourself for it. I will do everything I can to see that it is settled as rapidly and discreetly as possible. But you must help me by answering everything you can with the utmost clarity.” He stopped. His eyes were steady and seemed to look through all her defenses as if he could see not only her thoughts but the mounting fear inside her. A day ago she would have found that intrusive; she would have been angry at his presumption. Now she clung to it as if it were the only chance of rescue in a cold quicksand that was growing deeper by the moment.