Belle - Lesley Pearse [65]
‘I have to be in my line of work,’ Noah explained. ‘You couldn’t expect the people I have to question about insurance claims to take me seriously if I looked like a costermonger. My mother is always saying “Clothes maketh the man”.’
‘My mother used to say that too,’ Jimmy said as they walked down the road towards the harbour. ‘I was always very well dressed until she got sick. Then we had to spend the money on the important things like her medicine and food. I used to wish I would stop growing so I didn’t need new things.’
Noah put one hand on the lad’s shoulder. ‘She’d be really proud of you,’ he said. ‘I suspect you’ve even got your grumpy uncle to like you!’
Jimmy chuckled. ‘He’s not so bad once you get used to him. His bark’s worse than his bite. My mother told me that he only became the way he is when his woman ran off with another man. I think now Mog is going to stay with us he might even get jolly because he really likes her!’
Jimmy fell silent when he saw the sea. The wind had whipped up huge waves that were crashing on to the shingle beach with immense force.
‘It’s very different on a summer’s day,’ Noah explained, realizing Jimmy felt a little frightened by the sight. ‘It takes its colour from the sky, that’s why it’s dark grey now, but on a sunny day it would be a lovely clear blue and the waves really gentle. Maybe we can come again later in the year for you to see it.’
‘It’s so big,’ Jimmy said in an awed voice. ‘It just goes on and on for ever.’
‘Yet this is the closest bit to France, it’s only twenty-one miles away. People have swum it!’
‘Not on a day like today,’ Jimmy laughed. ‘You can see how cold it is just looking at it.’
Jimmy was very impressed by the way Noah charmed the clerk in the ticket office. He was a thin-faced, rather miserable-looking man who had started out belligerently saying he couldn’t give out any information about passengers. But Noah said that he was an investigator for an insurance company and that he had police approval to continue his investigations, which made the clerk open a ledger and look back on the passenger list for the day in question.
‘Mr Kent and Mr Braithwaite,’ he said. ‘I remember them now because they wanted a cabin.’
‘Did they have a young girl with them?’
‘Oh no! It was just the two of them.’
‘Can you remember what Braithwaite looked like?’ Noah asked.
The clerk frowned. ‘He had curly hair and he was more pleasant than the other man, but that’s all, it was dark, the light in here isn’t too good.’
‘Is there any way they could have smuggled a girl on to the ship without anyone noticing?’
‘No. Passengers’ tickets get checked again as they go up the gangway to the ship. We’re all vigilant for that.’
‘How did the men arrive at the ferry, do you know?’
‘I can’t see from here, but I imagine it was in a cab or a carriage as they had a trunk with them.’
‘A trunk!’ Noah exclaimed. ‘How big was it?’
‘I don’t know, they didn’t bring it in here. I just heard one of the porters ask if they wanted help with it.’
‘So that was it, they had her in a trunk,’ Noah said as they left the ticket office.
‘You can’t be sure of that,’ Jimmy said.
‘I am,’ Noah insisted. ‘Men don’t take a trunk unless they are emigrating, they’re more for women’s things and household linens. A man would just take a suitcase or bag.’
‘Would she be alive in the trunk?’ Jimmy asked fearfully.
Noah sucked in his cheeks as he thought. ‘I’d say so,’ he said eventually. ‘Would anyone take the risk of being caught leaving the country with a body? That wouldn’t make any sense. But if that is how they got her out, then they must have drugged her to keep her quiet.’
‘That means they had something special lined up for her,’ Jimmy said with a tremor in his voice. ‘What could that be?’
Noah didn’t need to give a reason, he could see that Jimmy already knew the answer. He reached out and squeezed the lad’s shoulder, wishing he could think of a less horrifying alternative. ‘You said Belle has guts and spirit, so she might very well outwit her captors,’ he said.