“Miss Jarvis? What in God’s name was she doing at the Magdalene House?”
“Research,” said Sebastian, and went to hand the lady down from her carriage.
Chapter 6
“I expected I might find you here,” said Miss Jarvis. She accepted Sebastian’s assistance down, then released his hand immediately and took a step back. Within the shadowy interior of her carriage, he could see a maid waiting primly with hands clasped before her.
“That is Paul Gibson, is it not?” said Miss Jarvis, gazing beyond him to where Gibson stood beside the curricle talking to a glowering Tom. “The surgeon?”
“You know him?”
“I attended several of his lectures at St. Thomas’s—on the circulatory system, and on human musculature.”
It was the last thing Sebastian would have expected her to have done, but he kept the thought to himself.
“Frankly,” she said, “I’m surprised to see him here. I didn’t think Sir William planned to order autopsies.”
“He hasn’t. Gibson’s here because he’s a friend of mine.”
She glanced up at him. “And has he discovered anything?”
“He says the women were murdered. Most were stabbed, although he thinks at least one was shot.”
She opened her parasol and raised it against the feeble sun. “You doubted me, did you?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, as if she had expected as much. In the street before the house, Sir William was now busy supervising the loading of that sad row of charred bodies into the back of the dray. She watched him for a moment, then said, “Has Dr. Gibson’s opinion prompted Sir William to order the women autopsied?”
“No. I suspect we can thank your father for that.”
She shook her head. “I doubt it would have happened, even without my father’s interference. Sir William’s attitude toward prostitutes is well-known. Last month, a costermonger came before the magistrates for beating a woman to death in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Sir William let the man go with only a warning.”
Sebastian studied her clear-skinned face. “Why are you here, Miss Jarvis?”
The breeze fluttered her hair across her face, but she pushed it back without a hint of artifice. “I’ve been talking to the Society of Friends. It seems a gentleman by the name of Joshua Walden was at the Magdalene House the night Rose first sought refuge with them. He lives in Hans Town. I thought he might be able to tell us more about her.”
“ ‘Us’?” Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and rocked back on his heels. “I was under the impression this was your investigation, Miss Jarvis. That my role was that of an adviser only and was rapidly coming to a conclusion.”
She tilted her head back, one hand coming up to hold her hat as she stared up at the crumbling, smoke-darkened walls of the Magdalene House. Something quivered across her face, a breath of painful emotion that was there and then gone. “That was mere subterfuge and you know it. I want to find out who killed these women, Lord Devlin, and why, and I am not too vain to acknowledge that you are far more experienced in such matters than I. I was hoping that if you looked into the incident, even briefly, it would catch your interest.”
When he made no response, she said, “Do you believe in justice?”
“As an abstract concept, yes. Although I fear there is little true justice in this world.”
She nodded toward the blackened ruins of the Magdalene House. “In life, our society failed Rose—failed all these women. I don’t want to fail them, in death.”
“You are not responsible for society.”
“Yes, I am. We all are, each in our own small way.” She turned to fix him with a direct gaze. “Will you come with me to Hans Town?”
He started to say no. But as he looked into her fierce gray eyes, he realized that a part of her actually wanted him to say no, because it would give her an excuse to walk away from all of this, away from the fear and the horror that was that night.
Turning, he watched the workmen swing the body of the young fair-headed girl into the back of the dray. And in that moment, he wasn’t thinking about Lord Jarvis, or Hero Jarvis. He was thinking about the life that child would never live, and the men who had taken it from her.
And so he surprised both himself and Hero Jarvis by saying, “Yes.”
Chapter 7
Joshua Walden’s home in Hans Town proved to be a modest house of red brick, with neatly painted white shutters, a shiny black door, and window boxes filled with well-tended masses of dianthus and saxifrage.
A tall, almost cadaverously thin man in his late forties or early fifties with a thick head of graying brown hair, he received them in a plainly furnished parlor. “I am honored by this visit, Hero Jarvis,” he said, inviting them to sit. “Honored. I read thine article on the high rate of mortality amongst children sold by the parish as climbing boys to chimney sweeps. Fascinating work.”
“Why, thank you,” said Miss Jarvis, giving the Quaker a smile so wide it made Sebastian blink. “Although I must confess the methodology used was not my own.”
From his seat beside the empty hearth, Sebastian listened, bemused, while Miss Jarvis worked, deliberately and adroitly, to insinuate herself in their host’s good graces. The two crusaders rattled on at length about everything from laying-in hospitals to poor laws. Only gradually did she bring the conversation around, artfully, to the reason for their visit.
“I understand you were at the Magdalene House the night Rose Jones sought refuge there,” she said.
“Yes. It was the third night.”
“The third night?” said Sebastian.
Walden smiled. “What thou would call Wednesday. I remember it because the weather was dreadful—the rain was coming down in sheets, and it was quite cold. We haven’t been having much of a spring, have we? The poor women were soaked through and dangerously chilled.”
Sebastian sat forward. “Women?”
“Yes. There were two of them. I don’t recall the other one’s name. Helen, or Hannah . . . something like that. She didn’t stay long, I’m afraid. Our rules are not harsh but they are firm. We’ve discovered that some of the women who come to us don’t really wish to leave the life. I’m afraid Helen, or Hannah, or whoever she was, fell into that category. She was frightened the night she came, but that soon wore off. She left after only a day or two.”
Miss Jarvis nodded, neither embarrassed nor shocked by the nature of the conversation. “You say she was frightened?”
“Oh, yes. They both were. It’s not unusual. Many of the women who come to us are fleeing dreadful situations—virtual slavery, you know. The brutes who keep them have either forced them to sign papers the poor simpletons believe are binding, or have contrived to reduce them to a state of hopeless indebtedness, even renting them the very clothes on their backs so that by fleeing they open themselves up to charges of theft.”
“Did she give you any idea what kind of situation she’d fled?” Sebastian asked.