Page 15 of Blackmailed (The Browns of Butcher’s Hill #2)

I rene Littleman maintained her vast business enterprise from Thames Street near the city dock. After Phillip left the cannery, he changed into clothes he kept for just this type of excursion into a less salubrious neighborhood.

“Where you headed?” Uncle Patrick asked as he dunked a heel of bread into Eliza’s potato soup.

“The docks. Got to see someone there.”

Uncle Patrick looked up sharply. “Don’t be heading there alone. Who you taking with you?”

“You, if you’d ever stop chawing down your dinner.”

Uncle Patrick huffed a laugh and took his cleaned bowl to the wash basin. He pulled on a worn coat and a slouch hat. “Let’s go, boy. I’m not getting any younger.”

“Where are you two off to?” Sarah asked as she came in the kitchen door in a whirl of cold air.

“Got to go talk someone. Uncle’s coming with me,” Phillip said.

Sarah glanced at them both. “Try not to get yourselves hurt or worse. When should I send out troops if you’re not home?”

He kissed his sister’s cheek. “Just a few friendly questions. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

Patrick and Phillip caught the last trolley to the dock area, but it would be a long walk home if they were delayed until after the trolleys stopped.

They opened the door on the Water Tavern, their hats pulled down and hands in their pockets.

The room was low-ceilinged and smoky, with rough wooden tables and chairs and a bar with a large man behind it pouring ale into mugs that a woman carried to customers.

Phillip went up to the bar and laid a few coins down. “Couple of brews.”

Patrick eyed the mug his beer was in and wiped the edge of the glass with his bare thumb.

“I’m looking to talk to somebody about selling a few items,” Phillip said to the barman.

The man eyed them and leaned down to a young girl washing glasses beside him. He whispered something near her ear and she glanced up, wiped her hands on her filthy dress, and hurried away. Phillip sipped his ale, not Bond beer, that was for certain. He felt some eyes on him from behind and turned.

“We don’t sell nothing here,” a man said.

“But you buy on occasion, don’t you?”

“Not from you, Brown.”

“Ah,” Phillip said with a smile. He noticed then that the room had gone completely silent other than the occasional crackle of a log burning in the fireplace. “Just looking for some information.”

The man turned and walked toward a curtain near a set of rickety steps.

Phillip glanced at Patrick and shrugged, following the man, pushing the curtain aside with his left hand, his right hand tight on the knife in his pocket.

The light was dim in the tight hallway they were in, making defending themselves from an attack difficult if it occurred.

But Phillip kept up a slow pace, watching the man ahead disappear into a room on the right.

Phillip stepped into the room, leaving Patrick with his back to the doorway, scanning the hallway.

A woman sat at the end of a long wooden table, a fussy black widow’s cap on her head.

She was not as old as she made herself appear in her black dress and fingerless gloves.

There were papers spread out in front of her and two large men, in addition to the man who’d recognized him and led him there.

“Miss Littleman?” Phillip asked.

“It’s Mrs. Littleman, Mr. Brown,” she said, her cold eyes staring at him, making a flutter of ghostly fingers run down his back. “We know who you are. We know who all the misguided do-gooders are.”

The men around her smiled as they looked at her with what could only be called adoration. These men were not just hired muscle. They were in her thrall and more dangerous by far than a man working solely for his bread.

“What can I do for you, Brown?” she said after a few long silent moments.

“There was a murder in the alley behind Lombard Street ten days ago. Wondering if you know anything about it.”

“Why would I tell you if I did?” she said and flicked a lace handkerchief under her nose. “Stoke the fire a bit, Thomas.”

Phillip thought the room was plenty hot. Sweat beaded on his forehead, although he could not decide if it was because of the danger the place represented or the temperature. “It wasn’t hard to find out who Mr. Colfax sold to on a regular basis. If I can find out, then so can the Pinkertons.”

“The Pinkertons? Guns for hire?”

“That’s right. It so happens that Colfax’s uncle is well acquainted with the owner, Allan Pinkerton. He’s been asked to look into his nephew’s murder.”

“Colfax was a lying, cheating swindler, but it wasn’t me that called for his murder.”

“No? Do you think the Pinkertons will believe what you tell them? Maybe you’d best lay low for a bit.”

Mrs. Littleman stared into the jumping flames, her fingernails worrying the corner of the papers in front of her. “I take your warning. Now, why don’t you get to the part where you ask me to return the favor of your visit?”

Phillip smiled. “I’m hoping you can see your way clear to leaving Dolly Irving alone. She had little part in Colfax’s game.”

Her thick black eyebrows rose. “I had nothing to do with the woman’s troubles.”

“No?” he asked. “Someone broke into her shop and her rooms, tied her to a chair, and tore her place of business up.”

She shook her head. “You are looking in the wrong direction, Brown.”

Phillip took an accounting of the players in this dangerous fiasco. Was there someone missing? Had he overlooked an obvious connection? “Then who?”

“Mr. Colfax not only received property that did not belong to him, sometimes he actively removed it from the owner.”

“Colfax stole it himself?”

She stared at him. “Recently too.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Littleman. I know where to look now.”

Phillip began to back out of the room when she stopped him.

“Please tell Mr. Morehead that I sincerely hope his man will recover from his injuries. Baltimore can be a dangerous city.”

Phillip nodded and turned to follow his uncle, his eyes over his shoulder to see if any of her guards had followed down the dim hallway. They walked through the tavern, out the door, took off at a trot toward home. He had much to think about.

“Have you heard any more about Dolly Irving? The poor woman must be frightened out of her wits,” Virginia asked Colleen as they laid out her clothes for her board meeting with the Benevolent Society for Orphans.

“I was getting fitted when Miss Brown asked her about her daughter. The girl lives with her brother and his wife and their children, and that’s why she was letting that man, the one who was killed, hide things in her shop.

She made some extra money and could send it to her brother because he’d been wounded in the war and lost a leg. ”

“Oh dear!” Virginia said. “That’s terrible. If you hear of some way I could help without embarrassing Mrs. Irving, let me know.”

“She’s careful not to talk about the situation as she was never married and fears her customers would desert her if they knew she had a child out of wedlock.”

“Women suffer, don’t they, Colleen? I am so very lucky. I try and never forget that.”

Colleen folded a silk scarf and laid it back on the dresser. “There was one thing said when they were talking that made me think of you.”

Virginia looked up. “What was that?”

“She said her brother had a chance at a bookkeeping job, but the walk on a crutch would exhaust him. He was going to do it, though. Mrs. Irving wanted to buy him a pony and cart to get him back and forth.”

“We could certainly do that, couldn’t we, Colleen? You’d best have another dress made, and we’ll find out her brother’s direction. We’ll have Mr. Turnbull take care of it,” she said and removed her dressing gown, ready to don her armor to do battle at The Benevolent Society board meeting.

“Good afternoon, everyone!” Virginia said as she entered the conference room at the Benevolent Society for Orphans.

Several heads turned to her as she poured herself a cup of coffee at the table holding urns of coffee and tea and trays of cookies.

She found a seat at the long table in the middle of the room.

Estelle Homan stared at her from where she stood at the head of the table, her place as chairwoman. “Miss Wiest. I sent you a letter . . .”

“And I received it, Mrs. Homan. I’m certain it’s a mistake. We can clear it up now.”

“There’s no mistaking your behavior, which does not fall into the category of ladylike actions that are required to serve on this board.”

“Rescuing a child who’d been kidnapped?”

“Spending the night in a brothel! A house of ill repute! A whorehouse!”

Randall Artman held up a hand. “No further descriptions are necessary, Estelle.”

“Since I was held against my will, I’m not sure you can lay the blame at my door,” Virginia said.

Horatio Clement was staring at her in his typically oily way, which made her skin crawl.

He was the director of the orphanage that the committee funded and was located just below stairs, although she doubted he had much, if anything, to do with the daily work there.

He was always turned out in understated but fashionable well-made clothes, his hair and nails neatly trimmed.

There was something about his smile, though, that made her feel as though she were sitting in her chair completely naked rather than fully dressed.

He always attempted to ingratiate himself with her, clinging to her side when they showed potentials donors around the building and grounds.

She would not have been surprised in the least to learn he was the person who had brought up that event at the brothel to the board.

“But you put yourself in a position that no lady would do. We had no choice. You forced our hands, I daresay,” Sylvia Berwick said from her seat directly across from Virginia.