Don Gutteridge - Bloody Relations

“Well, sir, there was plenty of both, and neither me nor my girls has slept more’n an hour since.”

Norah Burgess had little need to make this point: one look at her devastated face was enough. Her green eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen and raw from weeping, the indigo pouches below proof of sleeplessness. She had thrown on an ordinary flowered housedress in obvious haste, and her hair, normally a kind of frizzy, pinkish halo that gave her plain features a natural attractiveness, lay upon her scalp in unkempt, greasy coils.

Her girls, younger and more resilient, had fared better. Their hollow-eyed, tear-stained faces were certain signs of their own grief and anxiety, but their youthfulness and bodily good health (too much of it exposed, perhaps) simply made such distress seem eccentric and temporary. Molly Mason, Carrie Garnet, and Frieda Smiley were draped about their mistress on the arms and back of the padded chair below the parlour window in a variety of wanton poses. Marc had seated himself directly across from them on a hard chair. Cobb was beside him but had angled his chair so that his gaze caught Norah Burgess’s profile and managed to take in as little as possible of the obtrusive female flesh around her. Marc, however, felt he must size up the four women carefully and dispassionately, for all of them were critical witnesses at best, and at worst one or more might be implicated in conspiracy and murder.

“We ain’t got nothin’ to hide, have we, Mum?” Molly said with a trembling lower lip.

“That fella seemed like a nice young gentleman, but I hope they hang him twice!” said Frieda from her perch on the other arm.

“Poor Sarah. The doctor come this mornin’ and carted her off to cut her up,” Carrie said, so vehemently that she slipped from the back of the chair and inadvertently advertised more of her leg and less of her slip.

“There, there, Carrie. The doctor is gonna do no such thing,” Norah soothed.

Cobb tipped up onto his feet. “I better have a look at the other half of the house. We need to check all the windows and the other door to make sure nobody snuck in whilst you ladies were asleep.”

“Good idea, Cobb,” Marc said.

“You go with him, Carrie,” her mistress said, and no one contradicted her.

Blushing furiously, Cobb followed Carrie into the domestic part of the house. Marc noticed that the door between the parlour and the hall leading to the private bedrooms was sturdy and equipped with a bar on the inner side.

“Tell me, Miss Burgess, do you bar that door after, um, business hours?” he said.

“Yes, we do. But I didn’t last night because ‘business,’ as you term it, was still being done in Sarah’s cubicle over there. And please address me as Mrs. Burgess. I was married once, but the bastard ran off and left me nothing but his name.”

“I see. Well, then, Mrs. Burgess, I have some questions for you and your employees that Constable Cobb may not have thought to ask. But first I would like to go over what happened last night, starting with the early part of the evening.”

“As you wish,” Mrs. Burgess replied with a resigned sigh. As she began, Molly and Frieda reached out and put a hand tenderly on each of her plump arms, an apparent gesture of affection and mutual support.

For the next quarter-hour the events of the previous evening were detailed for Marc, and they jibed in every important respect with the account given him by Cobb. And while Mrs. Burgess bore the burden of the sad narrative, Frieda and Molly chipped in spontaneously with minor additions and several emendations: “Oh, Mr. Whiskers had on his yellow vest, didn’t he, Molly?” or, “I don’t think it was me, Mum, who said we better answer the knock after midnight, it was Frieda, I’m sure.” At which accusation Frieda burst into tears and was instantly comforted by Molly and her mistress. The critical points were retold much as Cobb had said: the house had closed for the night; the clock on the sideboard had chimed one o’clock; Mrs. Burgess and the four girls were about to enter their rooms when the knock of a “regular” was heard, loud and insistent. Mrs. Burgess opened to it and was nearly bowled over by Handford Ellice (“the pale gentleman” subsequently dubbed Jocko) stumbling inside, aided by a push perhaps from a black-caped gentleman who melted into the darkness before he could be identified.

“Are you asking me to believe that you had no idea who this gentleman might have been? One of your regulars? Surely his height and bulk and posture would have given you some indication.”

“You may choose to believe what you wish, sir. I am telling you what actually happened.” Mrs. Burgess drew a deep breath, inflating her considerable bosom in the process. “And since I do not inquire after the names of our callers-we know them solely by the nicknames the girls give them-I might tell you only that it could have been Fluffy or Tumbles. But I cannot do even that. The parlour here was unlit. The moon was down in the west. I had one candle that was jarred out when the pale gentleman almost knocked me over. I cannot say more.”

The story continued without interruption on Marc’s part to the point where Sarah, whose turn it was, took Jocko’s money and led him into her cubicle, after which Mrs. Burgess and Molly retired to one of the bedrooms in the domestic wing, and Frieda and Carrie to the one next to it. The door adjoining the two halves of the house was left open so that any “nonsense” in Sarah’s cubicle could be heard and dealt with. The outside parlour door was barred. After a while, perhaps half an hour later, Mrs. Burgess came out of her room, noted that Frieda and Carrie were asleep, tiptoed to where Sarah was entertaining the young man, and saw that they were naked and fast asleep. The heavy snoring from Jocko suggested that he was in a deep, drunken stupor. He had arrived drunk, of course, and nearly incoherent (they hadn’t realized that he stammered), which had prompted a short debate among the women as to whether they should accommodate him or pitch him outside to fend for himself. But he had waved a lot of money at them, appeared harmless, and Sarah had been willing to do her share during an evening when business had been scarce because of the gala. At this detail, Mrs. Burgess came close to losing control, but when the two girls leaned down to console her, she shook them off gently.

Marc was inclined to accept the story as true thus far. He had been alert throughout for any sign of a rehearsed version. But the interjections by Molly and Frieda, and the occasional fuzziness in Mrs. Burgess’s recollection, seemed too natural to have been preplanned. Moreover, the trauma and sheer horror of the murder, whatever their involvement, had left them exhausted, so that any act they might have felt compelled to put on would have been nigh impossible to carry out. The second thing Marc was watching carefully for was any evidence of tension or conflict among the members of the household. It had occurred to him that, even though he had no firsthand experience of how brothels were run-he had begged off the many excursions to the local dens arranged by his fellow officers-there were bound to be petty jealousies and perhaps powerful enmities aroused whenever a group of people were cooped up for long periods of time (the barracks being but one example). Clients would naturally prefer one girl to another, prompting rivalries or aggrievement over a fair division of spoils. And surely the madam, invariably an older woman and authority figure, would have ambivalent and conflicting emotions regarding her charges, complicated by the presence of competition from neighbouring establishments.

Marc was aware that Cobb, who could be heard outside tapping and probing the windows, felt the murder to be the result of a domestic dispute, and if he were right, then motive could be the key to solving it. But there was clear evidence of mutual affection between Mrs. Burgess and the other three girls. It was conceivable, of course, that they all had some reason to hate Sarah and had colluded to get rid of her and blame a nameless client. He would have to keep an open mind about that. Still, he was bothered by the fact that neither Mrs. Burgess nor her three surviving girls fitted the stereotypical view of madam and whore, relayed to him in suffocating detail by his fellow officers eager to broadcast their exploits. What he had expected to find here were women of varying age, coarse demeanour, lathered with makeup and perfumed to camouflage their rapidly decaying bodies, and conveying in every word and gesture a sense of defeat, resignation, ennui, and hopelessness. But Carrie, Molly, and Frieda were of an age, perhaps twenty or a bit more. They looked as if they could have been cousins, sharing a slim build, heart-shaped faces, light complexion (Scots or Irish), and curly brown hair. Moreover, the best adjective Marc could think of to describe them would be “wholesome.” For here in the bland daylight, without makeup or corsets or coiffed tresses or lurid frocks, they looked healthy and guileless. And, Cobb had assured him, Sarah was of similar age and robustness, despite the shocking state of her body in death.