Belle - Lesley Pearse [94]
Despite all his bragging, Garth had failed to find the man Sly, and indeed to get any further information about Kent. Noah had drawn a blank as well, and it said reams about Kent’s reputation that no one dared talk about him. With the police showing absolutely no interest in apprehending anyone for the crime, it was over three months now since young Belle went missing, which almost certainly meant she was dead too. Garth had mentally given up, even though he wouldn’t admit that to Mog.
To discover his nephew was still trying to do something both shamed him and made him feel inadequate. And it was his way to strike out when he felt like that.
‘I have to find out more about the man,’ Jimmy said defiantly. ‘And from what I heard today, I’d say they were snatching other girls and taking them away somewhere. I’m going to break into that office and see what else I can discover.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Garth roared. ‘You get caught by anyone involved with that club and you’ll be killed and thrown into the river.’
‘I won’t get caught, I know how I’m going to do it,’ Jimmy said stubbornly.
‘You won’t go near that place again,’ Garth bellowed at him.
Jimmy was scared when his uncle yelled like that, but he stood his ground and looked up defiantly at the older man. ‘We’ve found nothing new for ages now, Uncle. Mog is grieving, Annie’s gone away because she can’t bear to think about the fire taking all she held dear, and I want to see that bastard hang for killing Millie, and get Belle back.’
‘She’ll be dead by now,’ Garth shouted in exasperation. ‘Surely you realize that!’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘I feel she’s alive, and so does Mog. But even if we’re wrong and she is dead, I still want to nail Kent.’
Garth was pulled up short by his nephew’s courage and determination. It made him feel ashamed of himself. ‘You be very careful then,’ he said. ‘The last thing Mog and I want is to have you disappear too. And next time you want to play detective, for God’s sake tell us where you’re going.’
Jimmy scuttled off then to do his chores, but he was grinning. He’d half expected his uncle to give him a thrashing; he certainly hadn’t expected to find concern.
Garth slumped down on to a chair after Jimmy had gone, confused by his feelings and by the way his life had changed since his sister died and he took Jimmy in. In fact he didn’t remember having much feeling about anything, he was too busy taking care of the Ram’s Head, and he supposed the past had made him bitter.
He and Flora had not been close as children. He’d only been six and his sister fourteen when she was apprenticed to a fashion house and went to live in there. Flora finished her apprenticeship and stayed in that same fashion house as a seamstress until she married an Irish artist, Darragh Reilly, when she was twenty-five.
Garth was seventeen at the time of the wedding and he could remember his father saying Flora had picked a broken reed. It soon became evident that his father was right, because Darragh believed himself to be far too talented an artist to soil his hands doing any other kind of work to bring in some money. Soon after Jimmy was born he disappeared, never to return, and Flora had to become the sole breadwinner.
Garth did what he could to help her in the early days of her abandonment, but Flora was such a good seamstress that she soon began to make a living for herself. Garth always admired her for that, but he often fell out with her about how she was with Jimmy. He felt she was too soft with him, and that the lad would end up being a waster like his father.
He had to concede now that he’d been wrong there. Jimmy was a hard worker, honest and loyal and a credit to his mother. He could do well in life if he just put this thing