Don Gutteridge: Bloody Relations

He surmised it must be nearly two o’clock in the morning, as the three-quarter chime of the City Hall clock had rung some minutes before. For the past hour or so he had paced along Newgate between Bay and John Streets, watching the gala revellers pass by on their way to their beds or to further wassailing in impromptu parties at home. Most of them seemed to feel obliged to wave at him and roar out some greeting more raucous than intelligible-in derision or pity he could not determine. He declined to return the favour.

Cobb decided to take one more stroll around the perimeter of his patrol and then go home to the comfort of his own bed and Dora’s more than adequate bodily solace. As he moved eastward along the southern edge of Lot Street and passed the lugubrious silhouette of Osgoode Hall at the head of York, he spotted a few feeble lights, bonfires most likely, flickering up into the general gloom. A woman screamed with a sound as sharp and terrified as a seized animal, then her cry skittered upward and became a manic ripple of laughter. Male guffaws answered it. Finally silence, except for the seesawing crick of peepers and the deeper boom of bullfrogs bellowing their belligerent lust from ponds above the shantytown. In the pauses between gusts of night breeze, mosquitoes-bred by the millions in the pools of slime between hovels-buzzed at Cobb with evil intent.

He quickened his pace, praying that the wind would not die and no disquieting noises would erupt from the vicinity of Newgate or Hospital Street. He had almost reached Bay when he heard just such a noise. But it came not from the streets of his patrol to the south. It was coming distinctly and beseechingly from his left, from somewhere in the impenetrable darkness of Irishtown.

“Help! Help me! Somebody. . please !”

Cobb turned and peered across the roadway. The voice was female and urgent with terror. Still, Cobb could see nothing. With his hair rising at the repeated and ever more desperate pleas and with every nerve instantly alert, he edged across the road. Just as he reached the far side, he spotted something white and shimmering in the darkness ahead. There was just enough moonlight to catch its sudden flutter, stepping between the shadow of two trees into the roadway. It was a girl, a young woman actually, clad only in a cotton shift. Her face was as pale as her clothing.

“What’s the matter?” Cobb demanded.

The woman flinched at the sight of a stranger with a club in his right hand. As she turned to flee, Cobb grabbed her by the arm.

“It’s all right. I’m a policeman. What sort of help do you need?”

Cobb was beginning to breathe more easily. Even in this poor light it was plain that the woman was the inmate of one of the brothels or at best the unlucky appendage of some tough or drunk in Irishtown. Unless it were a clear case of attempted assault, he would not move a step farther to the north.

“Thank God, thank God,” the woman sobbed, her fear now venting itself in tears. Cobb felt her young body rock against his, not unpleasantly. He doubted very much whether God would be any more likely to intervene here than the constabulary.

“Do you need a safe place to stay fer the night?” he offered wearily, knowing that Dora never refused a woman refuge in such circumstances. “It’s the best I can do.”

Controlling her sobs as best as she could, she said in a desperate rush, “You don’t understand. Somethin’ terrible’s happened, and Madame Renée’s sent me to fetch the police. I can’t go back without you.”

“And what’s so terrible at Madame Renée’s?”

“Someone’s been murdered! There’s blood all over. It’s awful! You’ve got to come.”

Cursing his fate, Cobb knew that he no longer had any choice. He let the terrified girl take him by the hand and draw him deep into the noisome interior of Irishtown, where no sensible bobby ventured on his own. Fortunately, the girl seemed to know her way through the warren of huts, ruts, middens, and pathways greased with God-knows-what from coop or sty. Cobb skidded and lurched, grazed and ricocheted, arousing the suspicions of several dogs, whose jaws snapped at his boots, and one pig, who protested with a teeth-jarring squeal. The girl took no notice. She continued to pick her way with unerring dexterity, like smugglers were said to do across the deadly night moors of Devon.

Finally, exhausted and panting, they came to an abrupt stop before a dwelling that resembled an ordinary house. There was just enough moonlight to reveal a one-storey brick structure with a gabled roof, regular windows with sills and curtains, and a stout hardwood door that sported a saucy knocker on its scarlet façade.

“We’re here, sir,” the girl said, as soon as she was able to straighten up and breathe normally. “This is Madame Renée’s.”

“Then. . we’d better. . go in,” Cobb said between gasps. Instinctively his right hand moved towards his truncheon, but he did not draw it out for fear of spooking the girl. Nevertheless, he was on alien ground and would need to remain alert. Although he prided himself on being able to smell trouble in a tavern minutes before it actually erupted, it was men he was dealing with there, men whose moods and motives he could read like a divvy. But women were a different species of humankind: unpredictable and unfathomable.

“I’m Molly,” the young woman said, and to Cobb’s surprise she reached up and banged the knocker rhythmically, as if tapping a code. As she did so, one of the straps on her shift slipped off her shoulder. Cobb looked away quickly, realizing with a resigned sigh that he was leaving himself vulnerable to any sort of random assault.

“Why don’t you just call out?” Cobb said.

Molly gave him a puzzled look. “But you could have me in a hammerlock, couldn’t you?”

A heavy bar was heard sliding behind the door, which was then eased open a crack.

“You okay, Molly?” The voice of an older woman, frightened and wary.

“I brung the constable, like you said, Mum.”

“Good girl.” The door swung outward. The tepid light revealed a woman in a flowered dressing gown but was not sufficient to show the features of her face. Her size and posture and the deep alto of her voice signalled unmistakably that this was the mistress of the establishment. She reached out and Molly fell into her arms, sobbing uncontrollably. “There, there, girl. You’ve been a great help. There’s nothing more you can do now but go back to your sisters and give them what comfort you can.”

Molly nodded her assent, gave the dressing gown one last clutch, then tottered into the shadows behind her mistress, who had turned just far enough to let her go by. Then the woman looked Cobb square in the eye and said, “Come in, Constable. I’m known hereabouts as Madame Renée.” She ushered Cobb in as if he were perhaps one of her gentleman callers.

“I’m Cobb, ma’am. Yer Molly come out onto Lot Street babbling somethin’ about a murder.”

Madame Renée’s large, dark eyes were luminous with tears that did little to disguise the contending emotions in them: fear, bravado, uncertainty, defiance, pain-all that complex stew of feelings and responses which Cobb associated with the female gender and which caused his head to spin and his heart to thump.

“I’m afraid so, Mr. Cobb. One of my girls. Come, I’ll show you.”

She glided back into the room and picked up a bright candle lantern from a fancy, draped table, the hem of her dressing gown floating across a patterned Persian carpet. Beyond the carpet, however, and two padded chairs that had seen better days, the parlour of Madame Renée’s bordello, reputed to be the classier of these carnal establishments, was nondescript. Cobb caught shadowy glimpses of a pot-bellied stove in one corner, three or four hard-backed chairs of undistinguished provenance, and a severely scarred sideboard upon which decanters of wine and whiskey tilted forlornly. Somewhere nearby an incense candle wafted a thick scent into the room. Cobb was disappointed: he had expected this brand of sin to have a more sumptuous face.