A Breach of Promise - Anne Perry [120]
“Well, you could try Buxton House, down the far end of the High Street,” Mrs. Heggerty suggested. “She must have been at her wit’s end, poor woman. I can’t think of anything worse to happen to a soul than to have to give up your children, and them not right, so you’d never even be able to comfort yourself they’d be cared for by some other person as you would have done.” She stood stiffly, her arms folded across her bosom as if holding some essence of her own children closer, and Monk remembered the rows of small clothes on the airing rack and the doll propped up on the stairs. Presumably the children were at lessons at this hour of the morning.
He rose to his feet. “Thank you, I will.” The tea was half finished. Leaving it required some explanation. “I know it’s futile. I want to get it over with as soon as possible. Thank you, Mrs. Heggerty, Mr. Connor.”
“Sure you’re welcome, sir,” she said, moving to take him back to the door.
A couple of enquiries took him to Buxton House, a large, gaunt building which in earlier days had been a family home but now boasted nothing whatever beyond the strictly functional. A thin, angular-boned woman with her hair screwed back off her face was scrubbing the step, her arms sweeping back and forth rhythmically, her dreams elsewhere.
When he rang the bell it was answered by another woman, so fat the fabric strained at the seams of her gray dress. Her florid face was already angry even before she saw him.
“We’re full up!” she said bluntly. “Try the orphanage over the river at Parsons Green.” She made as if to close the door.
Looking into her bleak, blue eyes Monk had a sudden very ugly idea, born of knowledge and experience.
“I will, if you can’t help me,” he replied tersely. “I’m looking for girls about ten or eleven, old enough to start work and easy to train into good ways. I’m setting up house a few miles from here. I’d sooner have girls without family, so they’re not always wanting days off to go home. I could try city girls, but I’ve no connections.” He could easily have been stocking a brothel or selling girls abroad for the white slave trade, and she must know that as well as he did.
Her face altered like sunshine from a cloud. In an instant the line of her mouth softened and the ice in her eyes melted.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said smoothly. “I’m fair mithered to pieces to take poor children I ’aven’t the means ter care for, though God knows I’m willin’ enough. But you can’t feed ‘ungry mouths if you in’t got no food.” She straightened her skirt absentmindedly. “It’d be a fair blessin’ if yer could take two or three girls, sir. Make room for two or three more wot’s infants an’ can’t do a thing for theirselves. I’ve got several as is both willin’ an able ter please, an’ comely enough. Jus’ coming inter young ladies, like.” She smiled widely and knowingly at Monk. Perhaps in her youth she had been buxom enough; now she was grotesque. His knowledge of her trade made her repellent to him.
He forced himself to look interested. It was difficult to keep the disgust from his face.
“Best young,” she went on. “Teach ’em your ways before they get taught wrong by someone else. Come into the parlor Mr….?”
For some reason he did not want to give his own name. He did not want any part of his true self connected with this business.
“Meachem,” he answered, giving her the first surname that came into his head. “Horace Meachem.” He must make sure he remembered it! “Thank you.”
She opened the door wide enough to allow him in. The thin woman who had been scrubbing the step shot him a look of withering contempt. He wished he could have told her the truth, but it was a luxury beyond him.
The hallway was bare and painted gray. A stitched sampler with several mistakes proclaimed: “The eye of God is upon you.” He hoped it was. Maybe there would be more justice in eternity than there was here.
He was led to a parlor decorated in red and a world away from the hall in comfort. She invited him to sit down and sat decorously opposite him, rearranging her bombazine skirts with fat, wrinkled hands. Then