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Reilly did not need asking a second time. He launched into one tale after another, and it was the best part of three hours before Monk could steer him towards the two deformed kitchen maids he had sold to a man from Rotherhithe who kept a big public house down by the river and could use some rough help where it wouldn’t be seen and no one would mind the twisted lips and the crooked eyes.
“Ugly little beggars, they were,” he said, staring sightlessly at Monk. “An’ slow with it. Could tell ’em ‘alf a dozen times ter do summink, and they still wouldn’t. Jus’ ignore yer.”
“Deaf,” Monk said before he thought to stop himself. He was not supposed to know them, or care.
“What?” Reilly frowned at him, taking another long draft of his ale.
“Perhaps they were deaf?” Monk suggested, trying to keep the anger he felt out of his voice, not very successfully.
“Yeah, p’raps.” Reilly did not care. He set the mug down with a clunk. “Anyway, I couldn’t keep ’em. Upset me customers, and not much bloody use.”
“So you sold them to a man from Rotherhithe. That was clever of you.” Monk tried to force some appreciation into his tone. Reilly could not see the contempt on his face. “Wonder what he thought when he got them home?”
“Never ’eard,” Reilly said, chuckling. “ ’E din’t come back, that’s all I know.”
“You never went after him to find out?” Monk barely made it a question.
“Me? Ter Rother’ithe? Not on yer life! Common place. Full o’ all sorts. Dangerous too. Nah! I likes Putney. Nice an’ respectable.” Reilly reached again for his ale mug, which Monk had refilled several times. “What else’d yer like ter ’ear abaht?”
Monk listened another ten minutes, then excused himself after one more attempt to learn the name of the public house in Rotherhithe.
“Elephant an’ summink … but you won’t like it,” Reilly warned.
It was late afternoon and the mournful sound of ships’ foghorns drifted up the Thames on the incoming tide as Monk got off the omnibus in Rotherhithe Street, right on the river’s edge. He could not afford to ride in hansom cabs on a job like this. Martha Jackson’s pocket would not stretch to meet his legitimate expenses, never mind his comfort.
It was a gray, late-spring day with the water slurping against the stones a few yards away and the smells of salt and fish and tar sharp in the air. He was many miles nearer the estuary here than in Putney. The Pool of London lay in front of him, Wapping on the farther side. To his left he could just make out the vast bulk of the Tower of London in the mist, gray and white. Beyond it lay Whitechapel, and ahead of him Mile End.
The pool itself stretched out silver in the light between the ships coming and going laden with cargoes from all over the earth. Every kind of thing that could be loaded on board a vessel came in and out of this port. It was the center of the seagoing world. A clipper from the China Seas, probably in the tea trade, rocked gently on the swell, its masts drawing circles against the sky. A few gulls rode the wind, crying harshly. Barges worked their way upstream, tied together in long queues like the carriages of a train, their decks laden with bales and boxes tied down and covered with canvas.
Downriver on the farther side lay the Surrey Docks, Lime-house and then the Isle of Dogs. He stirred with memories of that, and of the fever hospital where Hester had worked with Callandra during the typhoid outbreak. He would never forget the smell of that, the mixture of effluent, sweat, vinegar and lime. He had been sick with fear for her, that she would catch it herself and be too exhausted to fight it.
Even standing there with the cool wind in his face off the water, he broke out in a sweat at the memory.
He turned away, back to the matter in hand. He must find a public house called the Elephant and something.
He stopped a laborer pushing a barrow along the cobbles.
“Elephant an’ summink?” The man looked puzzled. “Never ’eard of it. ’Round ’ere, is it?”
“Rotherhithe,” Monk answered, a sinking feeling gripping him that the man did not know. Rotherhithe was not so large. A man such as this would surely know all the public houses along the water’s edge, by repute if not personally.
They were passed by another group of longshoremen.
“You sure?” The man squinted at Monk skeptically, looking him up and down. “W’ere yer from? Not ‘round ’ere, are yer!”
“No. Other side of the river.”
“Oh.” He nodded as if that explained everything. “Well, all I knows abaht ’ere is the Red Bull in Paradise Street an’ the Crown an’ Anchor in Elephant Lane—that’s just up from the Elephant Stair … which you can see up there beyond Princes’ Stair. Them two are real close.”
“Elephant Stair?” Monk repeated with a surge of hope. “Thank you very much. I’m obliged to you. I’ll try the Crown and Anchor.” And he walked briskly along the river’s edge to the Elephant Stair, where the shallow stone steps led down into the creepin
g tide, salt-sharp and slapping against the walls, crunching and pulling on the shingle. He turned right and went up Elephant Lane.
He went into the crowded, noisy, steamy barroom and ordered and ate a good meal of pie with excellent pastry. He declined to imagine what the filling might be, judging that he preferred not to know. He followed it with a treacle suet pudding and a glass of stout, then began his enquiries.
He was glad he had eaten first; he needed the strength of a full stomach and a rested body to hear what was told him. It seemed the landlord had paid more attention to the low price than to the goods he was purchasing. When he had got the girls back to Rotherhithe he had put them to work in the sculleries washing glasses and dishes and scrubbing the floors. They had worked from before dawn until the public house closed at night. They had eaten what they could scavenge, and slept on the kitchen floor in a pile of sacking by the hearth, curled up together like cats or dogs.
They were willing enough to work, but they were slow, hampered by partial deafness and by being undersized and frequently ill. After a few months he had come to the conclusion that they were a bad bargain and cost him more than they were worth. He had been offered the chance to sell them to a gin mill in St. Giles, and seized the opportunity. It was a few shillings’ return on his investment.
