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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.
“I’ll find him for you, if I can,” he added. “I can’t say the police will prosecute. You know as well as I do what the chances of that are.”
She gave an explosive laugh, full of derision.
“What you do after that is your own affair,” he said, knowing what it could mean. “But I can’t tell you anything until I’m sure.”
She drew breath to argue, then saw his face and knew it would be pointless.
“I’ll tell you nothing,” he repeated, “until I know. That’s the bargain.”
She put out her hand.
He took it and she gripped him with extraordinary strength.
She waited in the room beside the fire while Monk changed his clothes to old ones, both because he would not soil those he valued and for the very practical purpose of passing largely unnoticed in the areas to which he was going. Then he accompanied Vida Hopgood to Seven Dials.
She took him to her home, a surprisingly well furnished set of rooms above the sweatshop where eighty-three women sat by gaslight, heads bent over their needles, backs aching, eyes straining to see.
Vida also changed her clothes, leaving Monk in her parlor while she did so. Her husband was in the shop below, seeing no one slacked, talked to her neighbor or pocketed anything that was not hers.
Monk stared around the room. It was overfurnished. There was hardly a space on the heavily patterned wallpaper which was not covered by a picture or a framed sampler of embroidery. Table surfaces were decorated with dried flowers, china ornaments, stuffed birds under glass, more pictures. But in spite of the crowding, and the predominance of red, the whole effect was one of comfort and even a kind of harmony. Whoever lived there cared about it. There had been happiness, a certain pride in it, not to show off or impress others but for its own sake. There was something in Vida Hopgood which he could like. He wished he could remember their previous association. It was a burden to him that he could not, but he knew from too many attempts to trace other memories, more important ones, that the harder he sought, the more elusive they were, the more distorted. It was a disadvantage he had learned to live with most of the time; only on occasion was he sharply brought to realize its dangers when someone hated him and he had no idea why. It was an unusual burden that did not afflict most people, not to know who your friends or enemies were.
