A Christmas Promise - Anne Perry [34]
“Took yer long enough,” a snaggletoothed man said, leaning sideways in the twelfth doorway. He regarded Gracie with disfavor. “I ’ope yer in’t expectin’ ter sell ’er? Couldn’t get sixpence for that bag o’ bones.” He laughed at his own wit.
“You are quite right,” Balthasar agreed. “She is all fire and brains, and no flesh at all. No good to customers of yours. I imagine they like warm and simple, and no answer back?”
The man looked nonplussed. “Right, an’ all,” he agreed slowly. “Then wot der yer want? Yer can’t come in ’ere wif ’er. Put people off.”
“I’m looking for my friend, Alf Mudway. Do you know him?”
“Wot if I do? Won’t do me no good now, will it! ’e’s dead. Yer wastin’ yer time.” The man stuck out his lantern jaw belligerently.
“I know he is dead,” Balthasar replied. “And I know he was killed here. I am interested that you know it too. I have friends to whom that will be of concern.” He allowed it to hang in the air, as if it were a threat.
“I dunno nuffink about it!” the man retaliated.
“One of my friends,” Balthasar said slowly, giving weight to each word, “is a tall man, and thin, as I am. But he is a little fairer of complexion, except for his eyes. He has eyes like holes in his head, as if the devil had poked his fingers into his skull, and left a vision of hell behind when he withdrew them.”
The color in the man’s face fled. “I already told ’im!” he said in a strangled voice. “Alf come in ’ere ter see Rose, an’ ’e went out again. I di’n’t see nuffink! I dunno wot ’e done nor wot ’e took! Nor the cabbie neither! I swear!”
“The cabbie?” Balthasar repeated. “Just possibly you are telling the truth. Describe him.” It was an order.
“’e were a cabbie, fer Gawd’s sake! Cape on for the rain. Bowler ’at.”
Gracie knew what Balthasar had told her, but she spoke anyway.
“Wot about ’is legs?” she challenged. She knocked her knees together and then apart again. “Could ’e catch a runaway pig?”
Balthasar stared at her.
“Not in a month o’ Sundays,” the man replied. “Bowlegged as a Queen Anne chair.”
Balthasar took Gracie by the arm, his fingers holding her so hard she could not move without being hurt. “We will now see Rose,” he stated.
The man started to refuse, then looked at Balthasar’s face again and changed his mind.
The inside of the house was poorly lit, but surprisingly warm, and the smell was less horrible than Gracie had expected. They had been told that Rose’s was the third room on the left.
“I’m sorry,” Balthasar apologized to her. “This may be embarrassing for you, but it will not be safe to leave you outside.”
“I don’ care,” Gracie said tartly. “We gotta find Minnie Maude.”
“Quite.” Unceremoniously Balthasar put his weight against the door and burst it open.
What met Gracie’s eyes was nothing at all that she could have foreseen. What she had expected, after Balthasar’s words, was some scene of lewdness such as she had accidentally witnessed in alleys before, men and women half-naked, touching parts of the body she knew should be private. She had never imagined that it would be a half-naked woman lying on the floor in a tangle of bedclothes, blood splashed on her arms and chest, staining the sheets, bruises all over her face and neck.
Balthasar said something in a language she had never heard before, and fell onto the floor on his knees beside the woman. His long brown fingers touched her neck and stilled, feeling for something, waiting.
“Is she dead?” Gracie said in a hoarse whisper.
“No,” Balthasar answered softly. “But she has been badly hurt. Look around and see if you can find me any alcohol. If you can’t, fetch me water.”
Gracie was too horrified to move.
“Gracie! Do as I tell you!” Balthasar commanded.
Gracie tried to think where she should look. Where did people keep bottles of whisky or gin? Where it couldn’t be seen. In the bottom of drawers, the back of cupboards, underneath other things, in bottles that looked like something else.
Balthasar had Rose sitting up, cradled against his arm,