Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [133]
She found herself telling the truth because it was the only thing that was tolerable.
“I followed Mrs. Shaw’s work,” she said slowly. “I began with the parish council, where I learned very little.”
“You would,” he agreed, his eyes puzzled. “She started from my patients. There was one in particular who did not get better, regardless of my treatment of her. Clemency was concerned, and when she visited her she began to realized it was the condition of the house, the damp, the cold, the lack of clean water and any sanitation. She never would recover as long as she lived there. I could have told her that, but I didn’t because I knew there was nothing that could be done to better it, and it would only cause her distress. Clem felt people’s misery very much. She was a remarkable woman.”
“Yes I know,” Charlotte said quickly. “I went to those same houses—and I asked the same questions she had. I have learned why they didn’t complain to the landlord—and what happened to those who did.”
Mrs. Himer knocked briskly on the door, opened it and brought in a tray with teapot, cup and saucer and a plate of thin bread and butter. She put it down on the table, was thanked, and departed.
Charlotte poured herself a cup of tea, and Shaw resumed his meal.
“They got evicted and had to seek accommodation even less clean or warm,” Charlotte continued. “I followed them down the scale from one slum to another, until I saw what I think may be the worst there is, short of sleeping in doorways and gutters. I was going to say I don’t know how people survive—but of course they don’t. The weak die.”
He said nothing, but she knew from his face that he understood it even better than she did, and felt the same helplessness, the anger that it should be, the desire to lash out at someone—preferably the clean and comfortable who chose to laugh and look the other way—and the same pity that haunted both of them whenever the eyes closed and the mind relaxed vigilance, when the hollow faces came back, dull with hunger and dirt and weariness.
“I followed her all the way to one particular street she went where the houses were so crammed with people old and young, men and women, children and even babies, all together without privacy or sanitation, twenty or thirty in a room.” She ate a piece of bread and butter because it had been provided—memory robbed her of appetite. “Along the corridor and up the stairs was a brothel. Down two doors was a gin mill with drunken women rolling about on the steps and in the gutter. In the basement was a sweatshop where women worked eighteen hours a day without daylight or air—” She stopped, but again she saw in his eyes that he knew these places; if not this particular one, then a dozen others like it.
“I discovered how hard it is to find out who owns such buildings,” she continued. “They are hidden by rent collectors, companies, managers, lawyers’ offices, and more companies. At the very end there are powerful people. I was warned that I would make enemies, people who could make life most unpleasant for me, if I persisted in trying to embarrass them.”
He smiled bleakly, but still did not interrupt. She knew without question that he believed her. Perhaps Clemency had shared the same discoveries and the same feelings with him.
“Did they threaten her also?” she asked. “Do you know how close she came to learning names of people who might have been afraid she would make their ownership public?”
He had stopped eating altogether, and now he looked down at his plate, his face shadowed, a painful mixture of emotions conflicting within him.
“You think it was Clem they meant to kill