Belle - Lesley Pearse [50]
She couldn’t have looked more different today. She was grey-complexioned and gaunt, as if she’d lost a lot of weight suddenly, and her eyes were sunken and dead. Her severe black dress with its high neck and leg of mutton sleeves made her look far older than she was, and her hair, which until today Noah had only ever seen in artfully piled curls, was now pulled brutally back from her face, with streaks of grey very noticeable amongst the brown.
‘I am sorry to disturb you again so soon,’ Noah said. ‘But I thought you might like to know that I’ve found out a little more about the man Kent.’
There was a slight flicker of hope in Annie’s eyes as she looked at him. ‘Then I am indebted to you,’ she said, but her voice was flat and expressionless as if speaking was an effort.
‘It wasn’t just me, but Jimmy too. He’s Garth Franklin’s nephew at the Ram’s Head. He’s as keen as I am to try and find your Belle and bring that monster to trial for killing Millie.’
‘Mog told me he was Belle’s friend. Please pass on my appreciation for his help.’
Noah thought it odd she didn’t ask more about how Jimmy knew her daughter, or even jump out of her seat to demand the news he’d brought with him. He thought she was a very cold fish.
He went on to explain how he knew where the man lived now, and that in his opinion Kent had the police in the palm of his hand. ‘Short of entrapping the man and forcing him to tell us of Belle’s whereabouts, I really don’t know how to proceed,’ he admitted. ‘But I can’t really believe he has killed her. I am absolutely sure he is holding her alive somewhere.’
‘Sometimes that can be worse,’ Annie said, half turning on the couch to look at him. ‘I have discovered from my informants, as I’m sure you have too, that he is known to be a procurer of young girls.’
‘That was said by a couple of people,’ Noah admitted. ‘But they found him responsible for so many ills, I really hoped that one was exaggeration.’
‘It is one of the most lucrative sides of our trade.’ She sighed and turned pain-filled eyes on Noah. ‘It disgusts me, and I have never had any girl working for me who didn’t come here willingly, and old enough to know what she was doing. But the thought of my Belle being used that way is too much to bear.’
Noah saw that her lower lip was quivering and she looked close to breaking down. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cooper.’ He reached out and took her hand to comfort her. ‘But Jimmy tells me that she is a brave and clever girl, so maybe she’ll escape it.’
‘I was brave and clever too, I could be a little hell cat,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘But they captured me too, imprisoned and starved me. Even without the beating or withholding food, no young girl, however plucky, is any match for an aroused fully grown male.’
‘So it happened to you?’ Noah asked gently. She was shaking with emotion and he didn’t know whether it was better for her to talk it all out, or if he should try to move her on to something else. ‘I am so very sorry.’
‘I was just a little younger than Belle and I so much wanted to see London that I begged a ride on the carter’s wagon to get there,’ she explained. ‘You know how you are as a youngster, you don’t think things through. I wandered around looking in all the shop windows, and suddenly it was getting dark and I had no idea how to get back. I began to cry and a woman came up to me and asked what was wrong. She looked just like any other wife or mother, not someone to be wary of. So I told her how it was, and she said I could come home with her and she’d show me the Tower of London in the morning before she arranged for someone to take me home.
‘Well, I did see the Tower of London the next day, but it was through a crack in the boarded-up windows of an old warehouse on the river.’
‘She locked you up?’ Noah exclaimed.
Annie nodded grimly. ‘One minute she was promising all the things she was going to show me the next day, the next I was