Page 16 of The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin (The Ill-Mannered Ladies #2)

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Evan was already moving. He pulled the hessian back up over Miss Hollis’s head.

“We’ll have to hide.” He grabbed the empty hessian bag and the flagon and rose from his crouch.

Jenny stood frozen against the wall. “Who?” she rasped.

“Dustmen,” I whispered. “To pick up the…bodies.”

That galvanized her into action. She took my offered support, leaning heavily upon my arm. I blew out the last of the candle and we followed Evan into the main chamber.

“We could confront them,” I whispered to him. “We should confront them!”

“No, they might be armed”—he paused to twitch the curtain closed—“or there could be more than two of them. We need to know what they are doing with the girls if it is to be stopped.”

I looked at Jenny’s bruised throat and dazed eyes. Yes. It had to be stopped.

There was only one place to hide. We crossed the room just as a creak sounded above. Feet upon the old wooden steps.

Evan pulled open the wardrobe doors. I shoved the spent candlestick onto an adjacent shelf, then crammed myself into the other compartment, shuffling to one side as Evan firmly guided Jenny into the cramped space. He deposited the flagon and pressed himself in beside me. It was so tight I shuffled straight into the birch rods, gasping as a sharp tip dug into my hip.

“I’ll go to the back,” Evan whispered, and with some difficulty maneuvered himself behind me, taking the brunt of the stored rods. The smell from Jenny beside me was almost overpowering: fear and sweat and the pungent odor of old urine. I braced her arm to keep her upright, but my touch made her jump and gasp. Underneath my grip her whole body trembled. Dear God, we would be lost if she could not stay still and quiet.

I felt Evan’s hands rest on either side of my waist, and then I was drawn back against his solid chest, our legs positioned in an entirely improper manner. But we had enough room now to close the door. I grabbed the wooden frame, dug my nails into the wood, and pulled the door almost shut, leaving barely a half-inch gap. The sliver afforded me a view of the antechamber but little else. I found a better grip on the wood—the last thing we needed was the door to move or swing open. My heart thudded, hard and fast. Surely Evan could feel it pounding, too, for his body cocooned mine. I certainly felt his warm breath against my ear.

“Can you hold it?” he whispered.

I turned my head slightly and nodded, my cheek brushing against his in confirmation. The unbidden caress was rather hairy—I had forgotten my false whiskers. The surprise of it brought an unseemly rise of mirth, even in the gravity of the situation. I felt his own quick smile against my cheek; then his embrace tightened at the sound of approaching footsteps. All amusement within me vanished.

I peered through the gap.

Two men walked into view. The first was shorter than his companion and wore a new black John Bull hat, its smartness in sharp contrast to his shabby coat and dirty breeches. The second man wore a jaunty blue neckerchief and walked with one shoulder hitched higher than the other.

“This place gives me the collywobbles,” Blue Neckerchief said. “I feel like someone is watching us.” He turned, surveying the room, his gaze passing over the wardrobe.

I held my breath, feeling Evan tense behind me. What if Blue Neckerchief noticed the gap?

“For chrissakes, stop whining,” John Bull said. “You’re givin’ me the collywobbles.” He pushed back his hat. “They always put ’em in there.” He pointed to the antechamber. “Out of the way, like.”

Through the gap, I watched them walk to the curtain and pull it back.

“There’s only one. I thought he said there was goin’ to be two this time,” Blue Neckerchief said.

John Bull turned and scanned the room again, frowning. “There ain’t another.”

Beside me, Jenny shifted in alarm, her breath quickening. I leaned against her slightly, willing her to stay still.

Finally, John Bull shrugged. “Never been two before. Deaf fool must have got it wrong.”

“At least they already bagged it,” Blue Neckerchief said. “Coulda tied the top proper, though.”

“You get the head, Gib, I’ll get the feet.”

Ah, so Blue Neckerchief was the expected dustman called Gibbon. That made the other man Reed. And Gib and Reed knew what they carried.

“Not on yer life,” Gib said. “I’ll take the feet.”

With some muttering, Reed switched places and, with little ceremony and less care, they hoisted the sack up between them. In that moment, I hated them almost as much as I hated the men who had murdered Miss Hollis and tried to strangle Jenny. They shuffled their burden to the steps, moving out of sight. We heard the slow creaking ascent amid gruff instructions and muttered curses, and then the footsteps receded, became muffled thumps and scrapes, until all was silent again.

“I think they are gone,” I whispered.

Cautiously, I pushed open the wardrobe door. As expected, the chamber was empty.

With some inelegance, we extracted ourselves from the wardrobe. The rush of fear had, it seemed, restored some of Jenny’s strength, for she stood without assistance and her eyes were no longer dazed.

I crossed to the staircase. Empty, too, and no more sounds of obscene haulage. I did, however, hear a faint, familiar squawk of metal. The gate. “I think they are out of the house. In the yard.”

On that report of comparative safety, Jenny walked—almost steadily—to the side table and grabbed one of the silver candlesticks. “I’m takin’ this,” she said with a challenge in her bloodied eyes.

“You should take them all,” Evan said. He returned to the wardrobe and pulled out the hessian sack. “Here, use this.”

Jenny cocked her head at such unexpected amiability, then took the offered bag with a nod of agreement. All three candlesticks were quickly shoved into its depths, their clank and clash loud in the room.

“Not so loud,” I said, holding up my palms as if I could muffle the noise. “We do not want them to hear us and come back.”

“What you two gents doin’ here, anyway?” Jenny asked, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I’m grateful an’ all that, but you ain’t bad coves like them two up there.”

I looked at Evan. “We are trying to find out what happens to the girls who do not come out.”

“Well, now you know,” she said dryly, pointing to the heavens.

“But you survived,” I said slowly, an opportunity dawning through the horror of the last hour. “If we can find out who is behind this, would you stand witness?”

“Against them who did this?” She touched her bruised throat. “Stand against the quality? You’re off yer nut.”

“But there will be other girls—”

“No one’ll listen to the likes of me,” she said. “And I don’t stick my neck out for no one.” She gave a yellow-toothed smile, dropping her hand from her throat. “Especially now, hey?”

A woman of macabre humor.

Through the hessian sack, she collected the silver into her hand to muffle its clank, then swung her bounty over her shoulder. “I ain’t stayin’ no longer.” She looked up the staircase. “Anyone left in the house?”

“A deaf caretaker,” I said. “You should go out the front. The dustmen may still be out the back.”

“Aye, I’m not stupid,” she said.

Evan stepped forward. “When you get to safety, promise me you’ll put cold rags on your neck. Ice if you can find it. It will stop the swelling and the pain. And take some willow bark. Every day for a week. You know it?”

She gave a nod—a thank-you and farewell in one—and started up the staircase, her steps still a little unsteady. Although it was a lost chance, I could not blame her for refusing to stand witness. She was right: not many would listen to a Covent Garden prostitute. Besides, it was a safe bet that the Exalted Brethren of Rack and Ruin had a good number of magistrates and judges in its membership.

We both watched her reach the top, pause to listen, then disappear from view as she turned to climb the next set of steps. The creak of the old staircase tracked her progress to the ground floor of the house. And then all was quiet.

“Will she recover?” I asked.

“She has every chance—no signs of permanent damage,” Evan said, his expression somber. “Still, a strangulation that does not kill is difficult to treat. It can have effects that linger.”

One of his specialties, but I did not say it. He had been reminded enough of his prison days.

I looked up the steps again. “Shall we go and follow our two bad coves? Do you think they will dump poor Miss Hollis in the Thames?”

“No, she would wash up. If I was getting rid of a body, I would take it to a cemetery. Bury it in a new grave.”

“You sound as if you have thought about this in some detail.”

“I have had a lot of time to think about a lot of things,” Evan said.

He led the way up the staircase, the wood creaking under our weight. On the fourth step from the top, he paused to peer through the banister, checking the basement corridor.

A nod over his shoulder: no one in sight. He proceeded up the last few steps, his body crouched, his steps careful. I followed suit, keeping my progress as silent as possible.

We made our way to the basement door. It was still dark outside, but dawn could not be far away. A half hour, perhaps. If they were going to move a body under the cover of night, they would have to work fast.

With care, Evan opened the basement door.

“For chrissakes, get it flatter or it won’t fit in,” the voice of Reed said.

They were in the yard, above our basement-level sight. Which meant we were beyond theirs. I tapped Evan’s arm and pointed to the arched coal store across the small basement courtyard. He nodded and we slipped through the doorway, a few steps taking us across the cobbles. I pressed my back against the brick archway, Evan beside me.

I pointed my finger upward: I’m taking a look.

He shook his head vigorously: Too risky.

Perhaps, but I was still going. I crept along the wall and climbed the first few of the rough steps, crouching so that I would not be visible as I ascended toward ground level. Halfway up I stopped and, holding my breath, peeped over the edge. Reed and Gibbon stood at the end of a large wooden wheelbarrow, manhandling the sack into what looked like a false bottom beneath the tray. I ducked back down. So that was why Dorothy the flower seller had only ever seen an empty cart. The body of the girl was underneath, in a hidden compartment.

Clever. And despicable.