Belle - Lesley Pearse [29]
‘I’ll start with him then. Is the Ram’s Head in Monmouth Street?’
Mog nodded. ‘But I never told Annie about this Jimmy. She wouldn’t have liked Belle being friends with any boy, and truth to tell I’d clear forgotten about him until you asked about friends. The boy’s uncle is a hard, difficult man. But if you could get him on our side, he might know people who’d help us.’
‘I can’t make you any promises, but I’ll do my best,’ Noah said. ‘You and Belle’s mother must be very frightened.’
‘We are sick with worry,’ Mog admitted. ‘Most people think because of the work we do that we don’t have feelings. That ain’t so.’
‘Millie told me that Annie’s was a good place to work and that you were very kind to her,’ Noah said. ‘I know she’d want me to help you.’
Mog reached out and touched his cheek, a gesture of appreciation and trust. ‘I must go now,’ she said. ‘Annie will be wanting to go back to Bow Street to tell the peelers Belle still hasn’t returned. She’s decided to admit Belle witnessed the murder, but we’ll beg them to keep that quiet.’
Noah went straight out as soon as he’d eaten his breakfast. Mrs Dumas had been very inquisitive about his visitor, so he had to lie and say Miss Davis was a relative of someone he’d had to check out for the insurance company and she’d given him some information which implied there had been a fraudulent claim. When his landlady kept on asking him more questions he had been curter than he’d have liked to be, just to stop her in her tracks.
It was a raw, windy day and as he made his way down Tottenham Court Road he tied his wool muffler tighter round his neck and turned up the collar of his overcoat. Noah knew that many people thought Seven Dials was a terrifying place where they were likely to be attacked and robbed, or catch some nasty disease even by passing through it. This might have been true a couple of decades earlier, before some of the worst rookeries were pulled down, but it wasn’t that bad now and Noah liked going there. While he could appreciate that it was a deprived, overcrowded, squalid and vice-ridden area of London, it was also lively, colourful and fascinating, and nowhere near as ground-down and depressing as parts of the East End.
The natives were friendly, laughed easily and didn’t complain about their lot in life. They were wily of course, never missing an opportunity to snatch a pocket watch, handkerchief or wallet, and he’d been told hard-luck stories by the score that would soften a heart of stone. But then he wasn’t a target for robbing: his clothes were cheap ones and he had no fat wallet or pocket watch to snatch.
An old hunchbacked man was washing down the pavement outside the Ram’s Head.
‘Good morning,’ Noah said politely. ‘Is Jimmy in?’
‘Well, I don’t rightly know,’ the hunchback replied. He spun the words out in a curious manner. ‘I mean, I don’t know if he’s “in” to you!’ he added after a dramatic pause.
‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind asking him if he’d see Mr Bayliss, about Belle Cooper,’ Noah retorted.
The hunchback went inside the pub with a crab-like sideways scuttle which was even odder than his way of speaking. Noah followed him but kept well back.
The Ram’s Head was one of the better public houses in Seven Dials. It hadn’t seen a lick of paint for years, the wood panelling was cracking and the floor creaky and uneven, yet even at ten on a Saturday morning, too early for customers, it had a welcoming atmosphere. A fire was lit at the far end of the room, and the bar had been polished. Noah wasn’t surprised it was such a popular place; it was probably far more comfortable and warmer than most of the homes in the neighbourhood.
‘Jimmy!’ the hunchback called out at the back of the bar. ‘Someone here to see