‘How long ago was this?’ the Constable wondered.
‘A month?’ The man thought. ‘Aye, it was four weeks ago, I remember. We’d just made a big sale to Spain the day before.’
‘How long did you employ her?’
Cates calculated for a moment.
‘Six months, as near as dammit. Too long, really, for what little she could do.’
‘Thank you.’ Nottingham stood. He’d learned what he needed.
‘You’re wondering why I didn’t tell her mother, aren’t you?’ He sighed. ‘How do you tell someone her daughter’s not only stupid but a slattern as well?’
‘I understand,’ the Constable told him.
‘I didn’t think she’d come to you.’
Nottingham looked at him calmly. ‘I don’t think she had anywhere else to turn, Mr Cates.’
He walked back down Briggate. The market had ended and the men were packing away their wares, laughing and boasting and comparing profits. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the rough, raw scrape of a fiddle. Ragged, hopeful children darted out of the shadows to grab at fruit that had fallen, holding it close, a meal for the night, survival until tomorrow. He’d been one of them himself, long ago in a lifetime he’d put away. After his father, one of the merchants, had thrown out his wife and son, they’d had to scrabble on the streets. His mother had become a whore and Nottingham had lived by theft, work, anything to keep body and soul together.
A pair of women wandered like ghosts through the detritus, eyes sharp for anything they might be able to use, scraps of food, pieces of tin, a dress too ripped or threadbare to sell. They moved silently, hopelessly, so pale and thin they looked like wraiths caught between life and death. One he’d seen for at least five years, her back bent and her grey hair lank, no expression on her face. He took a coin from his breeches and slid it into her cold hand. She didn’t even look up at him. Sometimes he believed that the line between the poor and the dead could barely be seen.
Once he reached the Calls he only had to ask once to find the address he needed. It was a single room in a cellar, the only light a window high in the wall that would never catch the sun.
She owned little, but she kept it clean, the place spotless and scrubbed, a coat and dress hanging from a nail on the wall, a sheet folded carefully over the straw of the mattress in the corner.
‘You’ve seen him, then?’ Alice Wendell asked, her back straight, her gaze direct.
‘Yes.’
She waited quietly for his response, her face composed, eyes intent on him.
‘Cates dismissed her four weeks ago,’ he began. ‘He wasn’t happy with her work, but mostly it was because she was with child.’ He paused. ‘That’s why he didn’t want to tell you.’ The woman remained still. ‘He said she didn’t even seem to know she was going to have a baby.’
‘Aye, that’d be Lucy,’ she said in a soft, tired voice. ‘She’s a lovely lass but she’s not always in this world. Someone will have had his way with her and she’ll not even remember who it was.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the Constable told her. She put a hand on his arm.
‘Nay, it’s not your fault, lad. There’s plenty happy to take advantage of a girl like that. Now I have to find her before anything else happens.’ The woman sighed. ‘She’ll be too ashamed to come back here where I can look after her.’
‘I can have my men keep their eyes open for her.’
‘Thank you.’ For the first time, she gave a brief smile. Four weeks was a long time; he knew she understood that. The chances of finding the girl were small. But it cost nothing to have the men keep watch.
‘What does Lucy look like?’
‘She’s easy enough to spot, is our Lucy. Lovely long, pale hair and blue eyes. But you can’t miss her. She has a harelip.’
‘A harelip?’ His head jerked up and he thought again of the girl from the fire.
‘Aye,’ the woman said with slow resignation, as if she’d had to explain it too many times before. ‘You know what they say, don’t you? If a woman sees a hare when she’s carrying the child, it’ll be born with a harelip. Well, I never saw one when I was big with Lucy, I’ll tell you that for nowt.’ She shook her head angrily. ‘All those bloody tales and she’s had to pay for it her whole life. They’ve allus made fun of her.’
‘Is there anywhere else she could have gone?’
‘Only to her brother. There’s just been the three of us since my man died, and they were just bairns then. But our Peter would have brought her back here if she’d turned up, I know he would.’
‘Where does he live?’ Nottingham asked.
‘Queen Charlotte’s Court, up off Lady Lane. Him and his girl have a room up there.’
‘How tall is Lucy?’
‘There’s not much to her,’ Alice Wendell said tenderly. ‘Thin as a branch and smaller than me.’
He looked at her, seeing the love for the girl in her eyes, and knew he had to tell her. ‘You’d better sit down, Mrs Wendell.’ She looked at him curiously.
‘We found a body in the fire last week,’ he began. He’d spare her the brutal details. ‘A girl who was pregnant. From what I could see, she might have had a cleft lip. It looks as if someone killed her before the blaze.’
For a moment he wasn’t certain she’d understood him. Then slowly, by small degrees, her face crumpled and she brought up her worn hands to cover it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.
‘Why?’ she asked eventually, her words muffled. ‘What was she doing there? Who’d do that to my Lucy?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ll find out.’
He stood, knowing there was no solace he could give now, then he closed the door quietly behind him, leaving the woman to a lifetime of mourning.
Back at the jail he sat and stared. The girl had been gone four weeks, and a little more than seven days had passed since they’d found the bodies after the fire. Now he had a name for her: Lucy Wendell. Pregnant and with a harelip, who else could it have been? He had somewhere to begin.
But that meant she’d been somewhere for three full weeks before she was murdered. Twenty-one days was a long time.
Five
Lister was yawning, barely awake after the long Saturday night. There’d been something in the air; he’d lost count of the fights they’d broken up, men filled with ale and looking for violence. They’d cracked heads, put some in the cells to face the Petty Sessions, and taken blows. His cheek ached where someone had hit him and he had a kerchief wound round his hand to staunch the blood from a cut to his palm. At least no one had died, although one seemed unlikely to survive, cut deep in the chest with a long tanner’s knife.
A light, misting ran had drifted in with the dawn, softening the outlines of the buildings through the window of the jail. Soon the bells of the churches would begin to ring for Sunday services, the carillons echoing around to remind the faithful, and the people would parade around in their best clothes. He’d be home and in his bed, trying to rest before calling on Emily in the afternoon.
He stretched out his legs on the flagstone floor and looked at the Constable.
‘Sounds like it could have been worse,’ Nottingham said.
‘Maybe,’ Rob agreed cautiously.
‘You wait until they’re a real mob,’ Sedgwick told him. ‘It’s been a while since we had that.’
‘I have a name for the girl who died in that fire down on the Calls,’ the Constable said. ‘Lucy Wendell.’
This was the reason he’d come in early this Sabbath morning, Lister realized. He and the deputy both shook their heads. The name meant nothing.
‘It looks like she was missing for three weeks before the blaze. She’d been working as a servant for the Cates family. They dismissed her because she was pregnant. I’ve talked to her mother. The lass didn’t go home after that. There’s a brother lives in Queen Charlotte’s Court. John, you go up there and talk to him. Rob, do you know either of the Cates boys?’