The Silent Cry Page 8

  He looked at Hester. “We must protect him, Miss Latterly. I trust you to do that. I shall leave you some powders to give him in warm milk—or beef tea, should he prefer it—which will help him to sleep deeply and without dreams.” He frowned. “And I must insist absolutely that you do not speak of his ordeal or bring it to his mind in any way. He is not able to recall anything of it without the most terrible distress. That is natural to a young man of any decency or sensitivity whatever. I imagine you or I would feel exactly the same.”

  Hester had no doubt that what he said was true. She had seen it only too vividly herself.

  “Of course,” she agreed. “Thank you. I shall be glad to see him find some ease and some rest that is without trouble.”

  He smiled at her. His face was charming, full of warmth.

  “I am sure you shall, Miss Latterly. He is fortunate to have you with him. I shall continue to call every day, but do not hesitate to send for me more often if you should need me.” He turned to Sylvestra. “I believe Eglantyne will come tomorrow—if she may? May I tell her you will receive her?”

  At last Sylvestra too relaxed a little, a faint smile touching her lips.

  “Please do. Thank you, Corriden. I cannot imagine how we would have survived this without your kindness and your skill.”

  He looked vaguely uncomfortable. “I wish … I wish it were not necessary. This is all … tragic … quite tragic.” He straightened up. “I shall call again tomorrow, my dear. Until then, have courage. We shall do all we can, Miss Latterly and I.”

  3

  Monk sat alone in the large chair in his rooms in Fitzroy Street. He was unaware of Evan’s case or of Hester’s involvement with one of the victims. He had not seen Hester for more than two weeks, and it was high to the front of his mind that he did not wish to see her in the immediate future. His participation in Rathbone’s slander case had taken him to the Continent, both to Venice and to the small German principality of Felzburg. It had given him a taste of an entirely different life of glamour, wealth and idleness, laughter and superficiality, which he had found highly seductive. There were also elements not unfamiliar to him. The experience had awoken memories of his distant past, before he had joined the police. He had struggled hard to catch them more firmly, and failed. Like all the rest of his past, it was lost but for a few glimpses now and then, sudden windows opening, showing only a little, and then closing again and leaving him more confused than before.

  He had fallen in love with Evelyn von Seidlitz. At least he thought it was love. It was certainly delicious, exciting, filling his mind and very definitely quickening his pulse. He had been hurt, but not as profoundly surprised as he should have been, to discover she was shallow and, under the surface charm and wit, thoroughly selfish. By the end of the matter he had longed for Hester’s leaner, harder virtues, her honesty, her love of courage and truth. Even her morality and frequently self-righteous opinions had a kind of cleanness to them, like a sweet, cold wind after heat and a cloud of flies.

  He leaned forward and picked up the poker to move the coals. He prodded at them viciously. He did not wish to think of Hester. She was arbitrary, arrogant and at times pompous, a fault he had hitherto thought entirely a masculine one. He could not afford to be vulnerable to such thoughts.

  He had no case of interest at present, which added to his dark mood. There were petty thefts to deal with, usually either a servant who was tragically easy to apprehend or a housebreaker who was almost impossible, appearing as he did out of the massed tens of thousands in the slums and disappearing into them again within the space of an hour.

  But such cases were better than no work at all. He could always go and see if there was any information Rathbone wanted, but that was a last resort, as a matter of pride. He liked Rathbone. They had shared many causes and dangers together. They had worked with every ounce of imagination, courage and intelligence for too many common purposes not to know a certain strength in each other which demanded admiration. And because they had shared both triumph and failure, they had a bond of friendship.

  But there was also an irritation between them, a difference which rankled too often, pride and judgments which clashed rather than complemented. And there was always Hester. She both drew them together and kept them apart.

  But he preferred not to think about Hester, especially in relation to Rathbone.

  He was pleased when the doorbell rang and a minute later a woman came in. She was in early middle age, but handsome in a full-blown, obvious way. Her mouth was too large, but sensuously shaped, her eyes were magnificent, her bones rather too well padded with flesh. Her figure was definitely buxom. Her clothes were dark and plain, of indifferent quality, but there was an air about her which at once proclaimed a confidence, even a brashness. She was neither a lady nor one who associated with ladies.

  “Are you William Monk?” she asked before he had time to speak. “Yes, I can see you are.” She looked him up and down very candidly. “Yer’ve changed. Can’t say what, exac’ly, but yer different. Point is … are yer still any good?”

  “Yes, I am extremely good!” he replied warily. It seemed she knew him, but he had no idea who she was, except what he could deduce from her appearance.

  She gave a sharp laugh. “Mebbe you ’aven’t changed that much! Still gives yerself airs.” The amusement died out of her face and it became hard and cautious. “I want ter ’ire yer. I can pay.”

  It was not likely to be work he would enjoy, but he was not in a position to refuse. He could at least listen to her. It was unlikely she would have domestic problems. That sort of thing she would be more than capable of dealing with herself.

  “Me name’s Vida ’Opgood,” she said. “In case yer don’ remember.”

  He did not remember, but it was plain she knew him from the past, before the accident. He was reminded of his vulnerability.

  “What is your difficulty, Mrs. Hopgood?” He indicated the large chair on the far side of the fire, and when she had made herself comfortable, he sat down opposite her.

  She glanced at the burning coals, then around at the very agreeable room with its landscape pictures, heavy curtains and old but good-quality furniture, all of it supplied by Monk’s patroness, Lady Callandra Daviot, from the surplus in her country house. But Vida Hopgood did not need to know that.

  “Done well fer yerself,” she said ungrudgingly. “Yer din’t never marry good, or yer wouldn’t be grubbin’ around wi’ other folks’ troubles. Besides, yer wasn’t the marryin’ sort. Too cussed. Only ever wanted the kind o’ wives as’d never ’ave yer. So I guess yer in’t lorst none o’ yer cleverness. That’s why I come. This’ll take it all, and then maybe more. But we gotter know. We gotter put a stop ter it.”

  “To what, Mrs. Hopgood?”

  “Me ’usband, Tom, ’e runs a fact’ry, makin’ shirts and the like …”

  Monk knew what the sweatshops of the East End were like, huge, airless places, suffocating in summer, bitterly cold in winter, where a hundred or more women might sit from before dawn until nearly midnight sewing shirts, gloves, handkerchiefs, petticoats, for barely enough to feed one of them, let alone the family which might depend on them. If someone had stolen from Tom Hopgood, Monk for one was not going to look for him.

  She saw his expression.

  “Wear nice shirts still, do yer?”

  He looked at her sharply.

  “ ’Course yer do!” She answered her own question with a surprising viciousness twisting her mouth. “And what do yer pay for ’em, eh? Wanner pay more? Wot d’yer think tailors and outfitters pay us for ’em, eh? If we put up our prices, we lose the business. An’ ’oo’ll that ’elp? Gents ’oo like smart shirts’ll buy ’em the cheapest they can get. Can’t pay more’n I can, can I?”

  He was stung. “I presume you aren’t looking for me to alter the tailoring economy?”

  Her face registered her scorn, but it was not personal, nor was it her principle emotion, far more urgent was the re
ason she had come. She chose not to quarrel with him. The reason she had come to him at all, defying the natural barrier between them, was a mark of how grave the matter was to her.

  Her eyes narrowed. “ ’Ere! W’os the matter wiv yer? Yer look diff’rent. Yer don’ remember me, do yer?”

  Would she believe a lie? And did it matter?

  She was staring at him. “W’y d’yer leave the rozzers, then? D’yer get caught doin’ summink as yer shouldn’t ’a?”

  “No. I quarreled with my supervisor.”

  She gave a sharp laugh. “So mebbe yer ’aven’t changed that much arter all! But yer don’t look like yer used ter … ’arder, but not so cocky. Come down a bit, ’aven’t yer.” It was a statement, not a question. “ ’In’t got the power yer used ter ’ave, not w’en yer was slingin’ yer weight around Seven Dials ’afore.”

  He said nothing.

  She looked at him even more closely, leaning a fraction forward. She was a very handsome woman. There was a vitality in her which was impossible to ignore.

  “W’y don’t yer remember me? Yer should.”

  “I had an accident. I don’t remember a lot of things.”

  “Jeez!” She let out her breath slowly. “In’t that the truth? Well, I never …” She was too angry even to swear. “That’s a turn up if yer like. So yer startin’ over from the bottom.” She gave a little laugh. “No better’n the rest o’ us, then. Well, I’ll pay yer, if yer earns it.”

  “I am better than the rest, Mrs. Hopgood,” he said, staring at her levelly. “I’ve forgotten a few things, a few people, but I haven’t lost my brains or my will. Why have you come to me?”

  “We can get by … most of us,” she replied levelly. “One way an’ another. Least we could, until this started ’appinin’.”

  “What started happening?”

  “Rape, Mr. Monk,” she answered, meeting his eyes unflinchingly and with an ice-hard anger.

  He was startled. Of all the possibilities which had flickered through his mind, that had not been one of them.

  “Rape?” He repeated the word with incredulity.

  “Some o’ our girls is gettin’ raped in the streets.” Now there was nothing in her but hurt, a blind confusion because she did not see the enemy. For once she could not fight her own battle.

  It could have been a ridiculous subject. She was not speaking of respectable women in some pleasant area, but of sweatshop workers who eked out a living laboring around the clock, then going home to one room in a tenement, perhaps shared with half a dozen other people of all ages and both sexes. Crime and violence were a way of life with them. For her to have come to him, an ex-policeman, seeking to pay him to help her, she must be speaking of something quite outside the ordinary.

  “Tell me about it,” he said simply.

  She had already broken the first barrier. This was the second. He was listening; there was no mockery and no laughter in his eyes.

  “First orff I din’t think nothink to it,” she began. “Jus’ one woman lookin’ a bit battered. ’Appens. ’Appens lots o’ times. ’Usband gets a bit drunker’n usual. We often gets women inter the shop wif a black eye, or worse. Specially on a Monday. But then the whisper goes around she’s been done more than that. Still I take no notice. In’t nuffink ter do wif me if she’s got a bad man. There’s enough of ’em ’round.”

  He did not interrupt. Her voice was tighter and there was pain in it.

  “Then there were another woman, one ’oo’s ’usband’s sick, too sick ter beat ’er. Then there’s a third, an’ by now I wanna know wot in ’ell’s goin’ on.” She winced. “Some of ’em in’t more’n children. Ter cut it short, Mr. Monk, these women is gettin’ raped an’ beat up. I gets the ’ole story. I makes ’em come in an sit down in me parlor, one by one, an’ I gets it out of ’em. I’ll tell you wot they tol’ me.”

  “You had better put it in order for me, Mrs. Hopgood. It will save time.”

  “ ’Course! Wot did you think I were gonna do? Tell it yer like they tol’ me? We’d be ’ere all ruddy night. In’t got all night, even if you ’as. I spec yer charge by the hour. Mos’ folks do.”

  “I’ll charge by the day. But only after I’ve taken the case … if I do.”

  Her face hardened. “Wot yer want from me … more money?”

  He saw the fear behind her defiance. For all her brashness and the show of bravado she put on to impress, she was frightened and hurt and angry. This was not one of the familiar troubles she had faced all her life, this was something she did not know how to deal with.

  “No,” he interrupted as she was about to go on. “I won’t say I can help you if I can’t. Tell me what you learned. I’m listening.”

  She was partly mollified. She settled back into the chair again, rearranging her skirts slightly around her extremely handsome figure.

  “Some of our respectable women’s fallen on ’ard times and thinks they’d never sell theirselves, no matter wot,” she continued. “Thinks they’d starve before they’d go onter the streets. But it’s surprisin’ ’ow quick yer can change yer mind when yer kids is starvin’ an’ sick. Yer ’ears ’em cryin’, cold an’ ’ungry long enough, an’ yer’d sell yerself ter the devil if ’e paid yer in bread an’ coal for the fire, or a blanket, or a pair o’ boots. Martyrin’ yerself is one thing, seein’ yer kids die is diff’rent.”

  Monk did not argue. His knowledge of that was deeper than any individual memory; it was something of the flesh and bone.

  “It began easy,” she went on, her voice thick with disgust. “First just a bloke ’ere an’ there wot wouldn’t pay. It ’appens. There’s always cheats in life. In’t much yer can do but cut yer losses.”

  He nodded.

  “I wouldn’t ’a thought nuffink o’ that.” She shrugged, still watching him narrowly, judging his reactions. “Then one o’ the women comes in all bruised an’ bashed around, like she bin beat up proper. Like I said, at first I took it as ’er man ’ad beat ’er. Wouldn’t ’a blamed ’er if she’d stuck ’im wif a shiv fer that. But she said as it’d bin two men wot’d bin customers. She’d picked ’em up in the street an’ gone fer a quick one in a dark alley, an’ then they’d beat ’er. Took ’er by force, even though she were willin’, like.” She bit her full lip. “There’s always them as likes ter be a bit rough, but this were real beatin’. It in’t the same, not jus’ a few bruises, like, but real ’urt.”

  He waited. He knew from her eyes that there was more. One rape of a prostitute was merely a misfortune. She must know as well as he did that, ugly and unjust as it was, there was nothing that could be done about it.

  “She weren’t the only one,” she went on again. “It ’appened again, ’nother woman, then another. It got worse each time. There’s bin seven now, Mr. Monk, that I know of, an’ the last one she were beat till she were senseless. ’Er nose an’ ’er jaw were broke an’ she lorst five teeth. No one else don’t care. The rozzers in’t goin’ ter ’elp. They reckon as women wot sells theirselves deserves wot they get.” Her body was clenched tight under the dark fabric. “But nobody don’t deserve ter get beat like that. It in’t safe fer ’em ter earn the extra bit wot they needs. We gotter find ’oo’s doin’ this, an’ that’s wot we need you fer, Mr. Monk. We’ll pay yer.”

  He sat without replying for several moments. If what she said was true, then he also suspected that a little natural justice was planned. He had no objection to that. They both knew it was unlikely the police would take much action against a man who was raping prostitutes. Society considered that a woman who sold her body had little or no rights to withdraw the goods on offer or to object if she were treated like a commodity, not a person. She had voluntarily removed herself from the category of decent women. She was an affront to society by her mere existence. The authorities weren’t going to exert themselves to protect a virtue which in their opinion did not exist.

  The coals subsided in the hearth with a shower of sparks. It was beginning to rain
outside.

  And there were the uglier, dark emotions. The men who used such women despised them and despised that part of themselves which needed them. It was a vulnerability at best, at worst a shame. Or perhaps the worst was the fact that they had a weakness which these women were aware of. For once they had lost the control they had in ordinary, daily life, and the very people they most despised were the ones who saw it and knew it in all its intimacy. Was a man ever so open to ridicule as when he paid a woman he regarded with contempt for the use of her body to relieve the needs of his own? She saw him not only with his body naked, but part of his soul as well.

  He would hate her for that. And he would certainly not care to be reminded of her existence, except when he could condemn her immorality and say how much he desired to be rid of her and her kind. To labor to protect her from the foreseeable ills of her chosen trade was unthinkable.

  The police would never seriously try to eradicate prostitution. Apart from the fact that it would be impossible, they knew its value, and that half of respectable society would be horrified if they were to succeed. Prostitutes were like sewers, not to be discussed in the withdrawing room—or at all, for that matter—but vital to the health and order of society.

  Monk felt a deep swell of the same anger that Vida Hopgood felt. And when he was angry he did not forgive.

  “Yes,” he said, staring at her levelly. “I’ll take the case. Pay me enough to live on and I’ll do what I can to find the man … or men … who are doing this. I’ll need to see the women. They must tell me the truth. I can’t do anything on lies.”

  There was a gleam of triumph in her eyes. She had won her first battle.