I stepped around the girl on the ground. She was a sister, a stargazer like us. And she didn’t have the look of one of the dockside whores — she was white, for one thing — but she weren’t no parlor house girl. A streetwalker, rather, a ragged robin, sprawled half on her front and half on her side. Her face was lost in her tangled brown hair. Her boots were down at the heels and her hem was draggled and tattered.
She wasn’t wearing stays, and the back of her dress was torn to ribbons and sticky brown with old blood. She’d been flogged.
At least blood that old didn’t make me want to grab one of those dustbins and hide my head in it while I upped my chuck.
Miss Francina laid the back of her hand against the woman’s cheek and paused a moment, head bowed. Then she looked up and found Effie’s gaze. “You get Crispin back out here,” she said. “And a cudgel and a lamp, and your pistol. And you and him run and get the constables, fast as you can.”
“We should get that girl inside,” Miss Bethel said as Effie vanished in a patter of footsteps. Two runs for the constables in two nights, that were a mite unusual.
Miss Francina shook her head. “She’s past help, Beth. We should wait for the brass knuckles and their whistles.”
Miss Bethel said, “This is a threat.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Miss Francina said, but her expression agreed with Miss Bethel. “Karen honey, would you run and fetch my boots?”
* * *
As it turned out, there wasn’t much wait for the law. And it wasn’t the constabulary. By the time I came back with Miss Francina’s shoes — boots only by courtesy, as they was the frilliest, silliest girl shoes you’ve ever seen, and on the largest last — and gave her a shoulder to lean on while she put them on standing, there was a thump of much heavier boots coming down the ladder.
We all turned — we being Miss Bethel, Miss Francina, and me, because Miss Lizzie was keeping the other girls in the library for now. Which was just as well; having them all gathered around sobbing or staring or sobbing and staring would of been more than I could of handled. The tromp of big boots turned the corner, and—
I felt the skin around my eyes stretch as Marshal Bass Reeves stomped into view.
He’d divested himself of his duster and spurs, but he still had a pistol on each hip. Now he wore a town suit — maybe gray, in the lamplight — and a silk kerchief tied into the gap of his shirt. Still the same pair of boots, though, with the stirrup scuffs in the arches.
Under his big gruff mustache, he looked grim.
“Ladies,” he said, and we parted before him like the Red Sea. He could of been our Moses, I suppose, but they say the Negro Moses was a woman and she lives in New York.
Miss Bethel is never at a loss for words, and it was her who said, “How did you know to come here?”
The Marshal crouched beside the girl. He touched her shoulder with some gentleness. The shadow that crossed his face at the sight of her ribboned back was no trick of the lantern light. He looked down again.
I couldn’t read the Marshal’s face, because the brim of his big hat covered it as he crouched, so I looked at the creases across the toes of his boots and wondered how many states and territories they’d seen. He pulled a glove off — they were town gloves now, pearl kidskin, such as none of us nor the dead girl were wearing — and gently took her wrist. The shreds of dress across her back rustled.
There was no wind down here in the well. It was just from him moving her. She weren’t stiff yet.
“Marshal, she’s beyond any help but God’s,” said Miss Francina.
He didn’t look up.
“She’s got to be dead,” I said. “The blood … the flogging—”
She had to be dead. Did I hope she was dead?
Would I want to be dead if it was me?
“I’ve seen men survive as bad,” he answered. “Women too.” But as he stared down at his fingers on her floury-looking wrist, I knowed the answer wasn’t what he would of wanted.
He pulled a compact out of his breast pocket and opened it. He held the mirror under her nose for two, three minutes before he shook his head.
Marshal Reeves looked up at me and heaved a tired sigh. “That’s a right pisser.”
“I did say,” said Miss Francina. The Marshal raised his eyebrows at her, tilting back his hat. She sighed. “But you just had to see for yourself, didn’t you?”
“It’s a character flaw,” he allowed.
Miss Bethel said, “You didn’t answer how you knew to come here.”
She sounded suspicious, even though the silver star glinted on his town coat just as it had the duster’s lapel. Possibly because of it. You learn a little something about the law when you work on your back.
“I was on my way here, actually,” he said. He smoothed the ragged robin’s hair and stood. Easily, his gun belt creaking but his breath untroubled. “I wanted to talk to Miss Wilde and Miss Memery here about what happened … well, I guess now it’s yesterday. It occurred to me that you might know something about the man I’m hunting, and I didn’t think in your line of work you ladies would be abed yet. I passed your man and your girl on the street, and they saw my star. They went on to find a roundsman.”
As if his words had been a harbinger, I heard a distant whistle blowing. The shrill cry was taken up by another, and another after that, until the night echoed with them — tinny, thin, and frail.
I looked at the girl again. I wanted to cover her. “She can’t of been thrown. We’d have heard the thud.”
“She’s not one of yours, then?”
“In that dress? Madame wouldn’t let her scrub floors dressed like that, let alone entertain clients,” Miss Francina scoffed. I knowed it was to cover her horror — she hides the softest heart in the house, and Signor isn’t the only one who knows it — but the Marshal gave her a sidelong glance.
“Look at her face,” the Marshal said.
“I’d prefer not.”
His lips stretched into a moment’s grim smile. “Fair enough. She wasn’t thrown.”
I said, “So somebody got her down here — down the ladder — and left her.”
“Someone did,” the Marshal said. “Which makes me think even more that you might know something that could help me find the man I’m looking for.”
Miss Francina twined one perfect yellow corkscrew curl around her finger — how she keeps her hair unmussed I’ll never know — and pursed her lips at him. She said, “Something tells me you’d better come inside, Marshal. You and Karen go on. Miss Bethel and I will wait for the constables.”
Chapter Seven
I said how Bea is a slip of a thing, all eyes and fingers and crinolines, and how she’s still learning her English. What I might not have said is how she’s kind and clever … so when I walked into the library with Marshal Reeves I shouldn’t of been surprised to find her sitting with Priya on the long divan. Signor was cuddled up in Beatrice’s skirts and Priya was wrapped up in a knit afghan Miss Francina had made. They were chattering away in French.
Or rather, Beatrice was chattering. Signor wasn’t saying much. And Priya was answering, haltingly, and her accent was worse than mine — which was saying something, because mine was no better than wretched. But she was feeling her way through complete sentences, albeit simple ones and with the verbs all cattywumpus. At least Beatrice was laughing at her, the same’s she laughed at me. But that, I reckon, was the moment when I started to figure out just how smart Priya really was. Because she hadn’t listed French as one of her accomplishments to Madame, and I’d bet my toenails that she had been desperate enough to stay that she’d have mentioned anything she might be able to do that would be of the least little use at all. Which meant she’d picked up what she was doing now in whatever time she’d spent with Bea this evening — not much if she’d been roused by the fuss not a quarter hour before — and while I had been out that afternoon.