Bedford Square - Anne Perry [151]
“Where were these children placed?” Pitt repeated the original question.
Horsfall was clenching and unclenching his hands.
“I told you … I should have to look it up. I don’t have a good memory for the details of addresses … large numbers of … addresses.”
“Approximately …” Pitt insisted.
“Oh … well … Lincolnshire, yes; Spalding. And several … as far north as Durham … yes.”
“And Nottinghamshire?” Pitt suggested.
Horsfall’s eyebrows rose. “Why, yes. Nottinghamshire too.”
“How about Wales?” Pitt went on. “South Wales. Lot of mines in South Wales.”
Horsfall was white, a sheen of sweat on his face. “M-mines?”
“Yes. Children are useful in lots of places … in mines, up chimneys, in factories, cleaning out corners adults can’t get into, especially small children, young … thin. Even three- and four-year-olds can be taught to pick rags, pick oakum, send them out into the fields to work. All sorts of crops need taking up … by hand … little hands are as good as big ones and don’t need paying … not if you’ve bought them ….”
“That’s …” Horsfall swallowed and choked.
“Slavery,” Pitt finished for him.
“You can’t … you can’t prove that.…” Horsfall gasped. His face was running with sweat.
“Oh, I’m sure I can.” Pitt smiled, showing his teeth.
Horsfall ran his hands over his brow.
“Do you know a man named Ernest Wallace?” Pitt asked, changing the subject suddenly. “Small, wiry, very bad temper indeed.”
Horsfall’s deliberation was plain in his expression. He could not judge whether acknowledgment or denial was going to make his situation worse.
Pitt watched him without the slightest pity.
Tellman did not move.
“I … er …” Horsfall hesitated.
“You can’t afford to lie to me,” Pitt warned.
“Well …” Horsfall licked his lips. “He may have done the occasional odd job around the … garden … for us. Yes … yes, he did. Wallace … yes.” He stared at Pitt as at some dangerous animal.
“Where does the money go?” Pitt switched back to the original line of questioning.
“M-m-money?” Horsfall stammered.
Pitt moved forward half a step.
“I don’t know!” Horsfall’s voice rose as if he had been physically threatened. “I only take my pay. I don’t know where it goes.”
“You know where you send it,” Tellman said bitterly. He was shorter and narrower than Horsfall, but there was such a rage in his voice that the bigger man quailed.
“Show me!” Pitt commanded.
“I-I don’t have … books!” Horsfall protested, raising his hands as if to ward off a blow.
Pitt was unimpressed. “You have accounts of some kind. Either you have a master who takes the money from you one way or another, or else you haven’t, and you are responsible for it all ….” He did not need to continue. Horsfall was shaking his head and waving his hands in denial. “Is this house yours?” Pitt pressed.
“No. Of course not. It belongs to the orphanage.”
“And the profits from selling the children?”
“Well … I wouldn’t use terms like that ….” Horsfall sputtered.
“Slavery, Mr. Horsfall—the selling of human beings—is illegal in this country. You can be charged as an accomplice or all by yourself, as you like,” Pitt answered. “Where does the money go?”
“I’ll-I’ll show you.” Horsfall surrendered. “I only do what I’m told.”
Pitt looked at him with complete disgust and followed him out of the room to find the notes he kept of his transactions. He read them all and added them up. Over the space of eight years it amounted to tens of thousands of pounds. But there were no names to prove in whose pockets it had ended.
The local police arrested Horsfall and placed someone in temporary charge of the orphanage. Pitt and Tellman set out on their way back to London, traveling on the ferry, glad of the bright air and the sounds of the busy river.
“He should swing,” Tellman said between his teeth. “That blackmailing swine won’t get him off.”
“I’ll be damned if he’ll get Wallace off either,” Pitt retorted.
Tellman stared straight ahead of him up the river towards the Battersea Bridge. A pleasure boat passed them going the other way, people waving,