Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [125]
Pitt took his handkerchief and leaned forward to dry her tears. It was a pointless gesture—she kept on crying—but he felt better for it. Somehow it made her seem more like a woman, less a thing broken and shut away.
“She died, Elsie’s mistress, a long time ago,” he prompted. “Elsie was very sad.”
Polly nodded very slowly. “Starved, poor soul; starved to death, for Jesus’ sake.”
Pitt was startled. Perhaps this had been an idiotic idea, coming to Bedlam for an answer when he did not even know what the question was, and asking lunatics.
“Starved?” he repeated. “I thought she died of scarlet fever.”
“Starved.” She said the word carefully, but her voice sounded empty, as if she did not know what it meant.
“Is that what Elsie said?”
“That’s what Elsie said. For Jesus.”
“Did she say why?” It was a wildly optimistic question. What could this poor creature know, and what could it mean, having come from Elsie Draper’s jumbled mind?
“For Jesus,” Polly repeated, looking at him with clear, shallow eyes.
“How was it for Jesus?” Was it even worth asking?
Polly blinked. Pitt waited, trying to smile at her.
Her attention wandered.
“How was it for Jesus, this starving?” he prompted her.
“The church,” she said with a sudden return of interest. “The church in an ’all on Bethlehem Road. She knew it were true, an’ ’e wou’nt let ’er go. That’s wot Elsie said. Foreign, they was. ’E seen God—an’ Jesus.”
“Who had, Polly?”
“I dunno.”
“What were they called?”
“She never said. Least, I never ’eard.”
“But they met in a hall in Bethlehem Road? Are you sure?”
She made a momentous effort at thought, brow furrowed, fingers clenched in her lap. “No,” she said at last. “I dunno.”
He reached out and touched her gently. “Never mind. You’ve helped very much. Thank you, Polly.”
She smiled warily, then some part of her grasped that he was pleased, and the smile widened. “Oppression—that’s wot Elsie said. Oppression ... wickedness—terrible wickedness.” She searched his face to see if he understood.
“Thank you, Polly. Now I must go and find out about what you have told me. I’m going to Bethlehem Road. Goodbye Polly.”
She nodded. “Good-bye, Mr... .” She tried to think what to call him and failed.
“Thomas Pitt,” he told her.
“Good-bye, Thomas Pitt,” she echoed.
He thanked the matron, and a junior warder showed him out, unlocking the doors and locking them behind him. He left Bethlem Royal Hospital and went out into the sun with a feeling of pity so deep he wanted to run, to leave not only the great building but all memory of it behind. And yet his feet clung leadenly to the damp pavements; the individual faces were too sharp in his mind to be left behind like anonymous facts.
He walked to Bethlehem Road; it took him less than fifteen minutes. He did not want to find Royce but to see if he could find anyone who knew of the religious order that had met in a hall seventeen years ago. Someone there might remember Mrs. Royce and know something about her. He had no idea what he could find. He had nothing but a simple-minded woman’s recollection of a lunatic’s rambling obsessions.
There was still a small hall in the road, and according to the board outside it was open to hire by the public. He noted the name and address of the caretaker, and within another ten minutes he was sitting in a small cold front parlor opposite a stocky, elderly man with pince-nez on his nose and a large pocket handkerchief in his hand against the sneezing which frequently overtook him.
“How can I help you, Mr. Pitt?” he said, and sneezed hard.
“Were you caretaker of the Bethlehem Road Hall seventeen years ago, Mr. Plunkett?”
“I was, sir, I was. Is there some trouble about it?”
“None that I know of. Did you lease the hall to a religious organization on a regular basis?”
“I did, sir; most assuredly. Eccentric people. Very strange beliefs, they had. Didn’t baptize