Page 41 of Grace in Glasgow (Seduced in Scotland #3)
G race kept her hood up, sure not to let her face appear to anyone who might recognize her as she approached Rabbit House. She had taken a hackney to just a few blocks over and walked the rest of the way so as to not appear suspicious.
It was perhaps the most foolish thing she had ever done, coming to Gallowgate alone particularly after what happened yesterday, but she was determined to see everyone involved brought to justice and, after stealing the letter opener on the constable’s desk and tucking it up her sleeve, she felt ready to defend herself if needed.
But if the constable was correct, the men were likely already notified of their impending arrest. This was really just an attempt to gather whatever information she could, like their names and places of residence, things some people might not wish to share with the police.
Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door of Rabbit House and not a moment passed before a redheaded woman with foreboding eyes and yellow teeth opened the door. She glared at her, up and down, before frowning.
“We ain’t got any beds. Move on.”
She tried to close the door, but Grace stuck her foot out.
“I can pay.”
Grace spoke in a coarse Scottish accent, but knew that it didn’t sound quite right. She tucked her hand into her sleeve and revealed several bank notes.
“Wot did I just say…” The woman’s eyes lit up at the sight of Grace’s money. “Oh, aye, ya can, I see. Well, come in, come in.”
Grace followed the woman into a dark room, with dirty wood floors and dozens of laundry lines strung up from one side of the room to the other.
All manner of clothing were set out to dry as if after being washed, although they didn’t look particularly clean and Grace had to duck her head several times until they reached a plain wooden desk with an open ledger book on it. The woman scooted around it.
“How long might ye be staying with us fer?” she asked, glancing down at the pages.
“Ah, two nights.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, er, I may be staying longer, depending.”
The woman winked.
“Sounds like ye’re not too familiar with the area. Are ye new in town?”
Grace shook her head but didn’t answer. She was already speaking too much and she worried her accent might not be as convincing as she hoped.
Her silence seemed not to bother the old woman who scooted out from behind the desk and nodded her head in a “follow me” way as she turned around, opening a door.
Grace was close behind her when they crossed another threshold and revealed a room crammed together with long, wooden boxes.
Grace’s heart dropped at the sight of it.
It appeared as though rows and rows of coffins had been built, but upon closer inspection, they were slightly wider than coffins and there were people moving around in them and each one had a number carved onto the foot of them.
These were four-penny coffin beds. Grace had heard about them while reading Aunt Belle’s pamphlets on the poor conditions of the housing problems that had been happening all over the country.
In recent years there had been a boom in population and there simply weren’t enough homes to fit people.
In some cities, they had tried to build affordable houses, such as tenant housing, but these buildings had quickly become overcrowded.
Some boarding houses had ceased renting out single rooms and had instead installed wooden box beds, much like these ones, and rented them out by the night.
There were also hangover benches, where people would be about to sit and lean forward on a rope to sleep, or a penny sit up, where they weren’t allowed to even sleep, but sit all night.
Sometimes, that was all they could afford and a far better prospect than getting frostbite in an alley.
The number of miserable people moving about the room slowly made Grace’s heart ache, but she had to focus on the task at hand. As she followed the woman to the end of the room, where the 19th bed was, she tried to ignore the cries of two children, huddled against their mother.
“Hush, hush,” the young woman cooed.
“Ye shut those brats up or you’ll be out on the street tonight!” the yellow-toothed woman threatened. “These people pay good money to sleep in peace. Ah, here we are.” She held out her hand as if to present the bed to Grace. “Home for the night.”
“Thank you.”
For a moment, the old woman squinted.
“Where’d you say you were from again?”
Grace shook her head.
“Nowhere important.”
The woman lifted her chin and glared at her.
“You’re familiar…”
One of the other lodgers started coughing abruptly, distracting the old woman for a moment.
Grace sat down on the edge of her small bed and hung her head low, hoping to end their conversation.
It worked, for in the next moment the woman let out a curse of sorts and left.
Once she had gone back to the front of the house, Grace glanced around the cramped room.
She needed to ask someone about the bald man; surely someone here had seen him.
One of the children that clung to her mother wailed, causing the poor woman to cover the child’s mouth.
“You must be quiet,” she insisted.
“But I’m hungry.”
“We haven’t any food, so you must hush, or we’ll be frozen and hungry as opposed to just hungry.”
Grace stood up and walked over, kneeling before them. The mother wrapped her arms tightly around her children, as if to protect them from whatever Grace was about to do or say.
“They’ll be quiet, I promise.”
“Oh, no,” Grace said, shaking her head. “I just, I overheard they were hungry and I don’t have anything to eat, but I do have some coins that you could use at the market, down the street?”
The woman glared at Grace.
“I’m not leaving my children with ye.”
“Oh, no, I don’t want you to. I just, here,” she reached into her pocket and handed it to the woman, who took it with caution.
Several people surrounding them turned to stare.
One even got up and left the room, and Grace felt suddenly uneasy.
Instead, she focused on the woman, who was wide-eyed. “Sorry.”
She got up and turned, worried that she had just made a mistake when the far door opened.
There in the doorway was the bald man, staring directly at her.
Panicked, Grace glanced at the back door, then back at the man.
In an instant, he was pushing people out of the way to get to her and she jumped up on the edge of the wooden bed and leapt over a sleeping person before jumping to the ground and rushing to the back door as the bald man shouted.
Thankfully it wasn’t locked and she bolted out the back into a small courtyard that was filled with crates and rubbish.
Whipping around, she saw a narrow walk that led out against the neighboring building.
Without thinking, Grace ran toward it and tried to squeeze through as her dress caught on a number of things.
The sound of the door slamming open only hastened her attempt to get away.
Glancing behind her, she saw the bald man ripping away old crates and pieces of wood to try and make room for himself, but she was too far away.
In the next instant, she was free and out the other side, stumbling into the street until a crushing set of hands gripped her arms, causing her to cry out.
“AH!”
“Keep ’er mouth shut,” the unseen man growled into her ear as the bald man finally reached her.
Panic like she had never known before finally seemed to settle into Grace’s heart as she realized just how precarious this situation was.
Never before had she ever been handled so crudely and when the man placed a dirty palm over her mouth, Grace was forcibly dragged back into Rabbit House, and she felt a pit begin to grow in her stomach.
The bald man walked around her and opened the door.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the yellow-toothed woman glaring as the man behind Grace began to drag her upstairs.
She tried to kick and wrench out of her captor’s arms, clawing at his hand that covered her mouth if only to scream out for help, but he was holding her too tightly and the bald man only sneered.
“A right mess you’ve gotten yerself into, innit?” he asked as he followed them up the narrow staircase. “But I reckon yer won’t be making much more noise fer long.”
“Yeah,” the man who held her agreed, talking into her ear. “We’ve a gentleman who will pay us twelve pounds sterling for a pretty little pigeon like you.”
Grace stilled in her fight to be released as the bald man nodded slowly.
“Oh, aye. You didna think we were digging up the dead, did you?”
“But Bill, we do dig up the dead.”
The bald man glared at the man behind Grace.
“Shut up, Barley,” the bald man snapped, before refocusing on Grace. “It doesn’t much matter. I have a feeling our friend Mr. Roberts might throw us an extra little something for knocking this bird out of the sky.”
“What do you mean, twelve pounds sterling?” Grace asked, her hackles drawn up.
“A new body is worth twelve pounds. Dug up ones are only worth nine,” Barley said.
“Shut it, Barley!”
“Oi, who’s she going to tell?”
The man holding Grace kicked a door open and dragged her backwards into a sparsely decorated room. Wood floors, wood walls, a small straw bed, and the dingiest of windows barely let in any light.
“He didn’t like you snooping about the other day, little miss,” the man named Barley spat as he tossed Grace onto the straw bed. “But ye’re not gonna be a problem fer him anymore, is ya?”
Both men took a step toward her.
“Remember,” Bill said. “No broken bones. The doctor likes ’em intact.”
“Strangled as usual, I know.”
The realization that these two men were not only employed to rob graves, but they were also providing newly killed persons to Mr. Roberts set Grace’s blood cold. All the missing persons in the newspapers, all having been from Gallowgate. Had they been killed by these two?
“Wait. The people in the newspapers, the ones who’ve gone missing in this neighborhood,” she said with her hands up to stall them. “You didn’t…”
Bill the bald man’s brow lifted.
“Looking for a confession, pigeon? Aye, we did them all in and were paid a pretty penny for it too.”
“Not a penny, Bill. Pounds.”
“Will yer shut up, Barley?” he snapped. After a second, he turned back to Grace. “And now, it’s yer turn.”
Without hesitating, Grace reached up her sleeve and pulled out the letter opener she had stolen from the police station. Holding it up before her to defend herself, both men began laughing.
“Is that supposed to frighten us?” Bill asked, reaching for it.
But Grace was too quick. She slashed at his hand when she was suddenly rushed by Barley.
“HELP!” she shouted at the top of her lungs as a pair of meaty hands wrapped around her neck.
The fingers tightened and the air she struggled for wouldn’t come, but for the briefest of moments she could have sworn she heard someone calling her name.