Belle - Lesley Pearse [97]
The other correspondence was mainly from suppliers of drink. There was also a list of women’s names and addresses who Jimmy thought might be dancers or waitresses. He put that in his pocket.
He trawled right through the contents of the cabinet, but there was nothing that proved a link or partnership between him and Kent, or indeed anything other than stuff directly to do with running the club. He pulled the curtain back a little and guessed by a faint light in the sky that it was getting on for six, and he must leave before the Strand became busy with people.
He was just going to open the curtain before turning off the gas when he saw an address tacked on to the wall by the window. It was one in Paris, and he probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but the name was Madame Sondheim, and to an eighteen-year-old boy with imagination, that sounded like a brothel keeper’s. So, just in case, he snatched it down and stuffed it in his pocket, then opened the curtains and turned out the light.
Once out on the window sill Jimmy saw several people walking along the Strand. But it was raining and dark and they had their heads down, and delaying his descent to the street would do him no good as more and more people would soon be about.
He let the rope drop down over the sill, then nimbly went down it hand over hand. A man coming towards him looked shocked and surprised, and called out for him to stop. But Jimmy took off at speed, belting round the corner, then doubling back along Maiden Lane to Southampton Street. The man must have decided against giving chase, for there was no hue and cry or pounding feet following him, and by the time he reached the market, Jimmy slowed down to a mere stroll.
‘Where have you been, Jimmy?’ Mog asked as he walked in the back door. She had a wrap over her nightdress and her hair was loose on her shoulders. ‘You’re soaking wet! What time of day is this to go out?’
‘A good time if you want to get some information,’ Jimmy said with a grin.
‘You haven’t been getting into that man’s office again?’ she asked in alarm.
‘Not the one you mean,’ Jimmy said. ‘Why are you up so early anyway?’
‘I heard you slip out,’ she said reproachfully, and wagged her forefinger at him. ‘I was that worried I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I came down to make a cup of tea in the end.’
For just a brief second Mog had an expression on her face that was so like his mother’s it made a lump come up in Jimmy’s throat. ‘Don’t look like that,’ he whispered.
‘Like what?’
‘Like my mother used to.’
Mog came closer to him, took off his cap and ruffled his hair. ‘Looks like I’ve got to take her place,’ she said. ‘We’ll have a cuppa and you tell me what you found.’
Some half an hour later over a second cup of tea Jimmy had told Mog everything.
‘This Madame Whatsit might not be anything to do with Belle,’ Mog said sadly, but she continued to stare at the piece of paper as if willing it to answer her questions. ‘As for the list of girls or women, it’s far more likely they are girls that work for him.’
‘But I did hear him talking about getting girls, and he said someone had turned yellow-bellied on him. Garth said the man called Braithwaite was known as Sly, and we know Braithwaite went to France with Kent, so maybe it was him who turned yellow-bellied. If we could just talk to him!’
‘A man like that wouldn’t admit anything he’d done, not even after he was sorry he’d done it,’ Mog said sadly. ‘He’d probably cut your tongue out to shut you up if you got anywhere close to him. But this Madame Whatsit, she might be worth following up. Noah might be game for