Belle - Lesley Pearse [137]
‘She is not in France,’ Lisette interrupted him. ‘She is in America. That is all I know.’
‘America!’ Noah exclaimed, his heart sinking down to his boots. ‘Are you sure?’
Lisette nodded sadly. ‘I did not see her go. I come in morning and she has been taken away. I weesh she were in France or Belgium and I could tell you where for I grow fond of Belle. But they not tell me where in America she go.’
‘She was sold to a brothel?’ Noah spoke almost in a whisper.
‘Pretty young girls are like horses, or cows to these bad people,’ she spat out contemptuously. ‘Belle was prime steak. Young, Engleesh, so pretty. It was the same for me when I was young girl, they took me to English brothel, that is why I speak the English. But I am still trapped by them – too old for brothel, but they make me nurse the girls they hurt.’
‘They won’t let you leave?’ he asked.
‘Never,’ she said ruefully. ‘I am too valuable to them as nurse, and they know things about me which make sure I do as they say. Maybe if I had money I could take my Jean-Pierre and flee France, but that takes a great deal of money.’
‘I could get you away,’ Noah said impulsively.
She smiled sadly. ‘No, that is not a good thing for you to do.’
‘I think it is, and I will give you my address,’ Noah said. ‘If you want help anytime, just ask, and I promise I will come for you or meet you at Dover. You believe me?’
‘Yes, I think you are a kind man,’ she said.
‘Is there anything or anyone you can tell me about who might be able to say where Belle was taken to?’ Noah felt he had to try to push her just a little further.
‘I am just one link in the chain,’ Lisette said sadly. ‘They don’t trust me even with the next link. I don’t know anything more.’
Noah believed her. She might know the names of a few people above her, but he doubted she’d ever been given real names because an organization like this wouldn’t survive if that was known.
He felt in his inside pocket and brought out his list of the other girls who had disappeared. He showed it to her. ‘Just tell me if you’ve seen any of those names anywhere before,’ he said.
She looked at it carefully. ‘There was an English Amy, just for one night,’ she said with a frown. ‘I think too there was Flora, and May.’
Those three girls were the youngest out of the twenty-odd names he had, and each of them had been reported to be exceptionally pretty. ‘Were they sent to America too?’
‘No, I never knew any girl but Belle be sent there. The others went to Belgium.’
She could only say that it was Brussels, no address.
‘When I first spoke to you, you thought I came from Monsieur Deverall?’ Noah asked. ‘Who is he?’
The fear came back into her eyes. ‘I cannot tell you anything about him,’ she said hurriedly. ‘He is the man at the top. I never met him, but I know him to be cruel and ruthless. They say many gendarmes have tried to put him in prison but he is too clever, they never find proof of what he does. But he would not take your Belle to America himself, she will never have seen him. They say he binds his men to him with blackmail. He has many other businesses too. Always the kind where he use force.’
Noah assumed by this that Deverall was a man much like Kent, with fingers in many areas of vice, extortion and gambling. ‘But you thought I had come from him, so that means he does send someone to see you sometimes?’
She sighed. ‘You are as smart as his man,’ she said with just a hint of admiration. ‘He too is charming like you, the kind of man a woman wishes to trust. Deverall sends him sometimes to ask me to go with girls, but I always refuse.’
‘Why?’
‘It is bad to see how they have been hurt, but I make them well. I could not bear to take them to someone who will hurt them again.’
‘I see,’ Noah said. ‘And this man who works for Deverall accepts that?’
‘Yes, he knows how I feel, and there is always someone else who can take the girls for he pays well.’
‘Would this man know where Belle