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“For a lady of my acquaintance who would rather not be seen in this neighborhood until it is absolutely necessary.”
“So she sent you, did she?” She smiled with a mixture of satisfaction, amusement, and contempt. “Well, maybe Mrs. Anderson’ll see you an’ maybe not. I’ll ask ’er.” And she turned and walked slowly toward the back of the room and through a paint-peeled door.
Monk waited. Another fly came in and buzzed lazily around, settling on the blood-spotted counter.
The woman came back and wordlessly held the door open. Monk accepted the invitation and went through. The room beyond was a large kitchen opening onto a yard with coal scuttles, bins overflowing with rubbish, several broken boxes, and a cracked sink full of rainwater. A tomcat slunk across the yard, his body low like a leopard’s, a dead rat in his mouth.
Inside the kitchen was chaotic. Bloodstained linen filled one of the two stone sinks by the wall to the right, and the thick, warm smell of blood hung in the air. To the left was a wooden dresser with plates, bowls, knives, scissors, and skewers heaped haphazardly on it. Several bottles of gin lay around, some open, some still sealed.
In the center of the room was a wooden table, dark with repeated soaking of blood. Dried blood made black lines in the cracks and there were splashes of it on the floor. A girl with an ashen face sat in a rocking chair, hugging herself and weeping.
Two dogs lay by the dead ashes of the fire. One scratched itself, grunting with each movement of its leg.
Mrs. Anderson was a large woman with sleeves rolled up to show immense forearms. Her fingernails were chipped and dark with immovable dirt.
“ ’Allo,” she said cheerfully, pushing her fair gold hair out of her eyes. She cannot have been more than thirty-five at the most. “Need a spot of ’elp do yer, dearie? Well there ain’t nothin’ I can do for yer, now is there? She’ll ’ave to come in ’ere ’erself, sooner or later. ’Ow far gorn is she?”
Monk felt a wave of anger so violent it actually nauseated him. He was forced to breathe deeply for several seconds to regain his composure. With a flood of memory so vivid the sounds and smells returned to him, the thick sweetness of blood, the sounds of a girl whimpering in pain and terror, rats’ feet scuttering across a stained floor.
He had been in back-street abortionists like this before, God knew how many times, or whether in connection with some woman bled to death, poisoned by septicemia, or simply the knowledge of the crime and the extortionate money.
And yet he also knew of the white-faced women, exhausted by bearing child after child, unable to feed them, selling them as babies for a few shillings to pay for food for the rest.
He wanted to smash something, hurl it to pieces and hear the splintering and cracking as it shattered, but after the instant satisfaction everything else would be the same. If he could weep perhaps he could ease the weight which was choking inside him.
“Well?” the woman said wearily. “Are yer gonna tell me or not? I can’t do nothing for ’er if yer just stand there like an idiot! ’Ow far gorn is she? Or doncher know?”
“Four months,” Monk blurted.
The woman shook her head. “Left it a bit, ain’t yer? Still … I spec’ I can do summink. Gets dangerous, but I s’pose ’avin it’d be worse.”
The girl in the chair whimpered softly, bright blood seeping into the blanket around her and dripping through its thin folds onto the floor. Monk pulled his wits together. He was here for a purpose. Indulgence in his own emotions would solve nothing and not help convict Herbert Stanhope.
“Here?” he asked, although he knew the answer.
“No—out in the street,” she said sarcastically. “Of course ’ere, yer fool! Where d’yer think? I don’t go to people’s houses. If yer want summink fancy yer’ll ’ave to see if yer can bribe some surgeon—although I dunno where yer’ll find one. It’s an ’anging crime, or it used ter be. Now it’s just jail—and ruin.”
“You don’t seem worried,” he retorted.
“I’m safe enough,” she said with dry humor. “Them as comes ter me is desperate, or they wouldn’t be ’ere. And I don’t charge too much. The fact they’re ’ere makes ’em as guilty as me. Anyway, it’s a public service as I give—’oo ’round here is gonna turn me in?” She gestured to indicate the whole street and its environs. “Even the rozzers don’t bother me if I keep discreet, like. An’ I do. So you mind ’ow yer go. I wouldn’t wancher ter ’ave an accident….” Her face was still smiling, but her eyes were hard, and the threat was unmistakable.
“How do I find one of these surgeons that do abortions?” he asked, watching her intently. “The lady I’m asking for can afford to pay.”
“Not sure as I’d tell yer if I knew—which I don’t. Ladies as can pay that sort ’ave their own ways o’ findin’ ’em.”
“I see.” He believed her. He had no reason except instinct, but for once, even with thought, he had confidence in his own judgment. This sickening rage was familiar, and the helplessness. He could see in his mind confused and bitter widowers, frightened at being faced suddenly with looking after a dozen children by themselves, not knowing, not understanding what had happened or why. Their wives had faced the growing burden of incessant childbearing without speaking of it. They had gone to the abortionist secretly and alone. They had bled to death without even sharing the reason; it was private, shameful, women’s business. The husband had never stretched his imagination beyond his own physical pleasures. Children were a natural thing—and what women were made for. Now he was bereaved, frightened, angry, and totally bemused.
And Monk could see just as clearly young girls, not yet sixteen, ashen-faced, sick with fear of the abortionist and her instruments, her gin bottle, and the shame of it, just like the girl in the chair now; and yet knowing even this was still better than the ruin of becoming a fallen woman. And what waited for a bastard child of a destitute mother? Death was better—death before birth, in some filthy back kitchen with a woman who smiled at you, was gentle according to her abilities, took all the money you could scrape together, and kept her mouth shut. He wished so fiercely it hurt him that he could do something for this child here now, weeping quietly and bleeding. But what was there?
“I’ll try to find a surgeon,” Monk said with ironic honesty.
“Please yerself,” the woman answered, apparently without rancor. “But yer lady friend won’t thank yer if yer spread it all over the city among ’er fine friends. Keepin’ it quiet is wot it’s all for, in’it?”
“I’ll be discreet,” Monk answered, suddenly longing to be outside this place. It seemed to him as if the very walls were as soaked with pain as the linens and the table were with blood. Even the Whitechapel Road with its grime and poverty would be better than this. It choked him and felt thick in his nostrils and he could taste it at the back of his throat. “Thank you.” It was a ridiculous thing to say to her; it was merely a way of closing the encounter. He turned on his heel and flung the door open, strode through the butcher’s shop and outside into the street, taking in long gasps of air. Leaden with the smells of smoke and drains as it was, it was still infinitely better than that abominable kitchen.
He would go on looking, but first he must get out of Whitechapel altogether. There was no point in looking to the back-street abortionists, thank God. Stanhope would never have trusted his business to them: they would betray him as quickly as thought—he took some of their best paying customers. He would be a fool to lay his life in their hands. The opportunities to blackmail for half his profit were too rich to pass up—half or more! He would have to look higher in society, if he could think of a way.
There was no time for subtlety. Maybe there was only a day, two at the most.
