Fifteen
brODIE
“What of Inspector Dooley and the MET?” Munro asked. “Do we wait?”
Brodie shook his head. He knew how the MET worked—permission needed for additional constables in an area that wasn’t patrolled often, then questions from those high up, more hours spent explainin’ what he’d learned from the man at The Times.
And more time wasted as he explained the possible connection to the girl who had been murdered.
And the matter very likely set aside with the MET once more under the command of Chief Inspector Abberline—‘not a priority when there were other crimes to be investigated.’
He told Munro what he’d learned from Burke and Mr. Charles at the newspaper, the questions Mikaela had asked, and the information that the advertising manager had provided in those tear-sheets.
Munro nodded. “Knightsbridge. I’ve not been invited there in some time,” he commented, with more than a little sarcasm.
“It’s the place where that upper-class department store burnt, some time ago?”
“Aye.” Brodie nodded.
Harrod’s had burned to the ground a handful of years earlier. But other upper-class shops, restaurants, and businesses had continued to fill the district. He drew a crude map on the chalkboard.
“Princes Gate is where the women who responded to that ad were told to meet, in the old part of Knightsbridge. Many of the country manors there have been abandoned or taken down.
“What’s there has been taken over by tenant farmers, making a living the best they can for now,” he continued to explain. “Along with homeless people with nowhere to go and thieves, until all the old properties are gone.” He drew a line at the north end of the district.
“Princes Gate, runs along the edge of the old part of Knightsbridge next to an old river bed. Number 4 would be here.” He marked an X on the board.
“What do we know about the people we might find there?” Munro asked.
“At least three other women answered that advertisement. One has been found murdered. I dinna know how many more may have responded, or who is behind it. It's safe to say the women may be guarded. As for others ...”
Unknown.
“We’ll find out when we get there,” Munro replied.
“Take the hound,” Mr. Cavendish told him as they waited for a driver. “He’ll find her.”
Brodie knew that the hound had a particular liking for Mikaela and he’d proven to be a good tracker. Yet she had chosen not to take him with her.
She had answered that advertisement as if she was simply another young woman eager for adventure. If she had shown up to that appointment with the hound, it would have caused suspicion.
What had she found when she got there? What of the other young women? Was it nothing more than a scheme to lure them? For what purpose?
He knew the usual answer to that—prostitution, and he swore.
He also knew what her reaction would have been to that, to finding others that had been lured into it. She would fight back, and with the usual persons who ran those schemes, it would cost her, dearly.
He should have been there, should have been with her! Now he had to find her.
He glanced down at the beast on the sidewalk that waited expectantly, one ear cocked forward, the other flopped over—an injury from an encounter on the street.
There was no mistaking the hound might be able to find her even before they did ... if she was still alive.
“Aye, get on with ye, then,” he told the bloody animal.
He could have sworn the beast grinned.
MIKAELA
Even with the darkened hallways, Jolie knew every step, each turn in the hallway leading to a door at the other end of the floor that concealed the servant’s passage.
I could only imagine how she had discovered it—perhaps desperate to hide from La Geness, stumbling upon it. Possibly hiding there?
After we left that room, I listened for the sound that anyone had discovered the empty room and followed us. For now, it seemed that no one was aware that I had escaped.
“The steps are dangerous,” Jolie whispered as she opened the door and disappeared into that looming darkness.
I discovered exactly what she meant as I took the first step and felt it give slightly. Time had deteriorated the wood steps, and I could smell rot from the damp wall. I tested each one as I followed her, keeping to the side where the steps seemed to be stronger.
“We must leave ... ” Jolie said in a low voice just ahead of me.
Leave?
What about the other women who were here? I had come for them and would not leave without them.
I started to protest as I came up behind her and realized that we’d reached another door along the passage. I felt a hand clasp my arm in silent warning.
We waited, hardly daring to breathe, as I heard La Geness just beyond the door, and the instructions he gave someone.
“The same as the others. There must be no trouble ... we leave soon.”
There was a brief comment in response, followed by the sound of footsteps that gradually faded.
“Quickly!” Jolie tugged on my hand and we continued past that door and farther down that narrow passage.
We eventually reached the end of the stairway and another door.
It opened onto the main floor very near what had obviously once been the servants’ quarters, glimpsed in the faint light shown from that room. And also the kitchen, according to what my companion whispered.
Someone—possibly a servant, abruptly left the kitchen and slowly approached with lantern in hand where we hid in that stairway.
Through that narrow slit in the door, I glimpsed a woman.
It was only a fleeting glimpse and admittedly the light was poor as she continued past with only the light from the lantern she carried. Yet for a moment, there was something familiar.
“La madame , ” Jolie whispered, and when the woman was gone, she stepped out into the hallway.
La Geness’s wife?
A memory stirred, a question my sister had asked the night of the reception at the Grosvenor. And La Geness had replied that his wife had remained in Paris.
A servant perhaps, as I first assumed. Yet Jolie had called her La Madame .
There was no time to question her about it, nor would I risk being heard as I quickly followed her through the shadows to the kitchen where the woman had been. Jolie moved with the confidence of someone who had done this before.
I could barely make out the shape of a long table, the large hearth behind it, and remnants of kitchen utensils that hung on a wall.
I grabbed a cleaver as Jolie reached for something that hung beside those utensils—a key.
She was cautious as we returned to the hall, then past eerie shapes of stuffed animals and sculptures that loomed up out of the shadows, lit by the ghostly light of the moon that spilled through the windows of a once elegant drawing room.
At the far end of the drawing room, Jolie pulled open a door that creaked in the silence of the large room.
We quickly left and entered what had once been a garden, now overgrown from neglect.
Once we were beyond the manor, I asked once more about the others. She replied for me to follow her.
It was nightfall once more, the sun low at the horizon, and a full day past when I first arrived, as I followed her through overhanging branches of trees. And then onto a well-worn path in the pale moonlight.
I smelled the change in the air from that verdant overgrown scent of grass and trees to the smell of stagnant water as a large stone building loomed up out of the shadows.
It was a water gate with an enormous water wheel that stood motionless but had undoubtedly once provided water to the manor from the nearby stream that gleamed in the moonlight.
The gatehouse was built of thick cut stone with a slate roof. A door at the side of the building was made of stout wood with an iron latch, secured by a large iron padlock.
It was obvious that Jolie had been here before as she inserted the key she had retrieved and unlocked the padlock.
The smell of stagnant water was strong here as we stepped inside, the bottom of my boots sucked into mud on the floor, no doubt from water that seeped in from the nearby stream.
I followed her as she crossed the large wheelhouse to an adjacent chamber, filled with the shadows of barrels and other shapes along the near wall in the light that spilled down from that roof overhead, where tiles had broken and fallen through.
One of the shadows moved, and Jolie called out in halting English, “You are safe.”
I stared through the shadows as a slender figure slowly emerged from the shadows along that wall, followed by another, and then another.
I’d had only that single photograph from her father to know what she looked like, and the young woman I saw now was quite thin, her hair tangled about her shoulders with bruises at her face.
Yet, I was certain I had just found Gwen Tavers.
She had obviously been beaten. Her gown—what remained of it—was torn and hung on her like a shroud.
Horrifying as it was, I immediately thought of the portraits displayed at the Grosvenor, and I could only imagine who those other young women might have been.
My heart ached at what I saw, then came the anger that only sharpened as the others emerged from the shadows—one who appeared younger than Gwen, and then Charlotte Davies, the resemblance to her sister unmistakable.
“Who are you?” Gwen whispered haltingly, her mouth badly swollen.
“Your father asked me to find you,” I replied as the others slowly gathered about me.
“How did you find us?” Charlotte asked.
I gestured to Jolie, who stood silently near the entrance to that chamber. “She showed me where you were.”
The rest of it, deciphering that advertisement that I'd discovered in Gwen’s room, then my conversation with Howard Charles, would all have to wait. There wasn't time now.
“Our angel,” Charlotte whispered. “She brought food for us, but was always guarded.”
An angel indeed, I thought.
“We tried to leave ...” Gwen explained. “But we were caught.” She put her arm around the younger woman’s shoulders.
“You can see what they did,” Charlotte added, her voice breaking softly.
Both were bruised and there was dried blood on the mouth of the other girl, who was introduced as Molly. I recognized her from one of the portraits at La Geness's hidden gallery.
I looked around that small chamber. “Are there others?”
Gwen nodded, and pressed her fingers against her swollen mouth. “A young woman by the name of Lizzie, but she hasn't returned after that last time she was sent for. And the man came for another girl, Sarah, this morning.”
There was no need to tell them about Lizzie’s murder now. There would be time enough for that once they were all far from there and safe.
“Where was she taken?” I asked.
“To the manor,” Gwen replied, her voice stronger now, along with the anger that came with it.
“It’s what they do! They send him, and we’re taken upstairs in that horrible place. He forces us to drink wine, it’s horrible and bitter. Then we’re forced to sit for hours ...”
Was the wine drugged? And then they were forced to sit for those portraits. It did not surprise me.
A drug in the wine to make them cooperate and for that particular expression that La Geness was after?
What sort of person would do such a thing?
Yet I knew. I had heard it in that conversation with La Geness, and he obviously intended the same for me. But it was not myself I was frightened for now.
Another young woman, Sarah, had been taken out of their prison. I could only hope that it was not for the same reason that Lizzie Smith had disappeared.
“How many are there besides the artist and his wife?” I asked.
Were there more?
“There is a man with them,” Charlotte replied. “He brought us here, but didn’t speak. He is frightening, and dangerous.”
“And there is a stableman,” Gwen added. “We heard the sound of horses, and orders he was given ... after they took Lizzie away. That was when we tried to escape.”
That was at least four people including the woman, perhaps more Gwen and the others were not aware of. And Jolie.
“But that door is aways locked,” Gwen continued. “And whenever they came for one of us, they threatened the others if we tried to escape again.”
It had become a prison and those inside threatened—forced to sit for long hours for those haunting portraits I had seen in that gallery on the third floor, and then ...
It was too horrible to think of what would happen next to them, as I thought of Lizzie Smith, a memory that would haunt me for a very long time.
Now, to find a way to get them out of there without being seen. If I could get them to the high road, it was possible they might be able to find a coach.
“Can you walk?” I looked first at Gwen then Charlotte.
They all nodded.
“The high road is not far from the street, then into the new part of Knightsbridge.” I looked at Gwen who seemed stronger than the others.
“I know it,” she nodded.
Everything I’d brought with me of any use or value was in my travel bag, which was taken when I was attacked in that first-floor room.
“You will need to find a coach.”
I looked down, the plain bronze band cool on my finger. I gave her the only thing of value I still had ... my wedding ring.
“This should pay the fare to the nearest police station. Ask for Inspector Dooley. And you must take Jolie with you.”
“What do we tell the police?” Charlotte asked. “What is your name?”
“Tell him all of it, he’ll know.”
“What are you going to do?” Gwen asked.
“I’m going to find Sarah.”
Her hand closed around my wrist. “I’ll go with you.”
Even after everything she’d obviously been through. I shook my head.
“Go with the others,” I told her. “They will need you to help them find the High Street.”
“You don’t know what Sarah looks like.”
It wouldn’t be difficult to find her, I thought, thinking of those portraits and the gallery where they had all been taken one by one.
“She has a sweet smile,” Gwen said then.
As they prepared to leave, I explained to Jolie that she was to go with them.
She refused at first, but I assured her that I would join them, along with Sarah. She slowly nodded, then threw her arms around my neck.
“ Merci .”
Thank you, I thought. Brave girl.
I handed Gwen the meat cleaver I’d taken from the kitchen at the manor.
“If anyone tries to stop you ...”
She nodded, a determined expression amid the bruises on her face.
“I know how to use it.”
“Go now,” I told her. “Keep to the tree-line. It’s the long way around to the street beyond, but it will make it difficult for anyone to see you.”
I followed them to the door of the wheel house, then waited until they had made it into the cover of the trees as they made their way toward Princes Gate Street and the High Street beyond.
I watched for any sign of movement from the manor, any indication that anyone had seen the women leave, then quickly crossed that overgrown green and returned through those double doors where Jolie and I had escaped.