was an airing rail, hung with all manner of ragged clothes and linen collecting the kitchen smells.
There were three more girls working at various chores; one at the sink peeling potatoes, one stirring a cauldron of gruel on the stove, the third on her hands and knees with a dustpan. None of them could have been more than fourteen-the youngest looked more like ten or eleven. Obviously the establishment was intended to cater to a considerable number of people on a regular basis.
“How many more are there of you?” he asked before Mrs. Mapes could catch up with him. He could hear her skirt swishing and rattling behind him.
“I dunno,” a white-faced girl whispered. “There’s all them little ones, the babes. They comes and goes, so I dunno.”
“Shush!” the oldest warned fiercely, her eyes black with fear.
Pitt did all he could to keep his expression from betraying him. Now he knew what this place was, but he was helpless to change it. And if he showed his fury, pity, or disgust, he would only make it worse. Nature fueled the need and poverty necessitated the answer.
“What do yer want in ’ere, Mr. Pitt?” Mrs. Mapes demanded from behind him, her voice shrill. “Ain’t nothin’ ’ere as ’as ter do wiv you!”
“No, nothing at all,” he agreed grimly, without moving. There was no point at which he could even begin, let alone accomplish anything. He would do more harm by starting, and yet he was loath to leave.
“’Ow much?” she asked.
“What?” He had no idea what she was talking about. His eyes roamed over the cauldrons: gruel, easy and cheap for the children, potatoes to fill out a stew with no meat.
“’Ow much did Mrs. March remember me wiv?” she said impatiently. “You said as she remembered me!”
He looked at the floor and the large wooden table. They were unusually clean-that at least was something in her favor. “I don’t know. I expect it will be sent to you.” It would depend on what he could persuade out of his superiors. He might even forget it altogether.
“Ain’t you got it?”
He did not answer. If he did he would have no excuse to remain, and there was something at the back of his mind that held him here, a sense that there was meaning, if only he could find it.
What could Sybilla March possibly have wanted with this woman? A child taken for a maidservant in trouble? It seemed the only reasonable thing. Was it worth pursuing, following to Sybilla’s house and seeing if any maid there had been unaccountably absent, perhaps due to a confinement? Did it matter? Life was full of such domestic tragedies, girls who had to earn their livings and could not afford to keep a child born out of wedlock. And servants hardly ever married, precisely for that reason; they lived in their masters’ houses, where there was no room for families.
Mrs. Mapes’s voice grated behind him. “Then yer’d best be abaht yer business, an’ leave me ter mine!”
He turned slowly, looking over the room for a last time. Then he realized what it was that held him: the parcel-the brown paper parcel on the kitchen table, half tied, next to the scissors. He had seen that paper, that curious yellow string before, tied lengthways and widthways twice, knotted at each join and tied with a loop and two raw ends. Suddenly he was ice cold, as if a breath from a charnel house had crawled over his skin. He remembered the blood and the flies, the fat woman with her bustle crooked and her bulging-eyed dog. It was too much to be a coincidence. The paper was common, but the string was unusual, the knots eccentric, characteristic, the combination surely unique. They were at least a mile and a half from Bloomsbury. What of this small parcel wrapped in the off cuts? Where was the first parcel, the larger one? He could see it nowhere in the kitchen.
“I’m going,” he said aloud, surprised by the sound of his own voice. “Yes, Mrs. Mapes, I’ll bring the money myself, now that I know it’s you.”
“When?” She smiled again, oblivious of the parcel on the table and its knots. “I wanter make sure as I’m in, like,” she added in explanation, as if it could mask her eagerness.
“Tomorrow,” he replied. “Sooner, if I get back to my offices in time.” He must get one of these children alone and ask them about the parcels-where they went to, how often, and who carried them. But it must be away from here, where she could not overhear, or the child’s life would be imperiled. “Have you got someone reliable who’ll deliver a message for me, someone you trust yourself?” he asked.
She weighed the advantages against the disadvantages and decided in his favor.
“I got Nellie, she’ll do it fer yer,” she said grudgingly. “Wot is it?”
“Confidential,” he answered. “I’ll tell her outside. Then I’ll be back as soon as I can. You may rest assured of that, Mrs. Mapes.”
“Nellie!” she shrieked at the full power of her lungs; the blast of it shivered the china on the dresser.
There was a moment’s silence, then the wail of a wakened baby somewhere upstairs, a clatter of feet, and Nellie appeared at the doorway, hair straggling, apron awry, eyes frightened. “Yes, Mrs. Mapes, ma’am?”
“Go wiv vis gennelman and do ’is errand fer ’im,” Mrs. Mapes ordered. “Then come back ’ere an’ get on wiv yer work. There’s no food in this life fer them as does no work.”
“No, Mrs. Mapes, ma’am.” Nellie bobbed a half curtsy and turned to Pitt. She must have been about fifteen, although she was so thin and underdeveloped it was hard to be sure.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mapes,” Pitt said, hating her as he had hated few people in his life, aware that perhaps it was only a vent for his rage against poverty itself. She was a creature of her time and place. Should he hate her for surviving? Those who died did so only because they had not her strength. And yet he still hated her.
He went past her to the corridor, along its dank, rush-matted thinness past the children still sitting on the stairs, and out of the front room into Tortoise Lane, Nellie a step behind him. He walked till he was round the corner and out of sight of number 3.
“Wot’s yer errand, mister?” Nellie asked when they stopped.
“Do you often run errands for Mrs. Mapes?”
“Yes, mister. Yer can trust me. 1 knows me way round ere.
“Good. Do you take parcels for her?”
“Yes. An’ I ain’t never lost one. Yer can trust me, mister.”
“I do trust you, Nellie,” he said gently, wishing to God he could do something about her and knowing he could not. If he did, it would be misunderstood, and probably frighten and confuse her. “Did you take the big parcel from the kitchen table?”
Her eyes widened. “Mrs. Mapes told me ter, honest!”
“I’m sure she did,” he said quickly. “Did you take several parcels for her about three weeks ago?”
“I ain’t done nuffin wrong mister. I jus’ took ’em where she said!” Now she was beginning to be frightened; his questions made no sense to her.
“I know that, Nellie,” he said quietly. “Where was that? Around here, and in Bloomsbury?”
Her eyes widened. “No, mister. I took ’em to Mr. Wigge-like always.”
He let out his breath slowly. “Then take me to Mr. Wigge, Nellie. Take me there now.”
12
Nellie led Pitt through a maze of cramped alleys and steps till they came to a small, squalid yard stacked with old furniture-much of it mildewed and worm-eaten-bits and pieces of old crockery, and scraps of fabric that not even the ragpickers would have bothered with. At the far side, beyond the ill-balanced piles and heaps, was the entrance down to a large cellar.
“This is w’ere I brung ’em,” Nellie said, looking up at Pitt anxiously. “I swear it, mister.”
“Who did you give them to?” he asked, staring round and seeing no one.
“Mr. Wigge.” She pointed to the steps down to the dark, gaping cellar.
“Come and show me,” he requested, “please.”
Reluctantly she picked her way through the rubbish to the edge of the stair, descending slowly. At the bottom she turned and knocked on the wooden door which stood open on rusted hinges. Her hands made hardly any sound.
