Murder in the East End - Jennifer Ashley Page 0,62
sips of the overly bitter but at least hot liquid. “Then he was sent to prison?”
“Yeah.” Bessie held her cup in both hands. “Bet you think I’m going to say he were innocent, and wrongly banged up, but no. Jack did it. Was a fair cop, as they say.”
“What exactly did he do?” I added a touch of sugar to my cup, but I doubted it’d cut the musty taste of the cheap tea. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Stole a hammer and some other tools. Daft sod. Well, he wanted to be a carpenter, didn’t he? But you have to have tools, or no one will hire you. A man left his box just sitting there, and Jack helped himself. He wasn’t a very good criminal, was he, because he got caught five minutes later. But tools is expensive, so Jack got two years in the Steel.”
A grim place. A rhyme I’d learned as a child told of the devil getting ideas to improve cells in hell from Coldbath Fields. “His sentence is up in six months, I heard the guard say.”
“Yeah. But I think the guv’nor should let him go, for what he did today.” She glared, her belligerence returning. “Helping the hurt men and all, guards and prisoners alike. Jack could have run away, but he didn’t, did he?”
Her baleful look told me she thought I’d disagree, but I had much sympathy for Jack.
“I too hope that this incident lessens his sentence.” My statement surprised but mollified her, and Bessie resumed her tea. “Now, why were you there, Bessie? You were terribly out of sorts today. Did you know the explosion would happen?”
Now she looked amazed. “Me? How could I know? Don’t you be putting the finger on me, Mrs. Holloway. I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to break down a wall, and neither would Jack. He’s a builder, yeah, but he nails up cornices or hinges doors, that sort of thing. He wouldn’t know nothing about blowing things up.”
“Then why were you so worried today?”
Bessie sighed. She noisily slurped tea, but when she met my gaze again, the fight had gone out of her.
“I were trying to take a message to him. Nothing that would get him into trouble, just me telling him I was well and we’d be together soon. I do that once in a while, and he sends me a message back. Only, I hadn’t heard from him in some weeks, and I started to be afraid.”
“That he was ill?”
“Yeah, or even dead. I ain’t his wife, so would they tell me if he were gone? Guard when I went last time wouldn’t let me send a message, just shouted at me to clear off. See, there’s a guard there who’s a bit more friendly, who’ll say a message for me or one from Jack in return. I can’t read none, or write neither, so it has to be by talking. So we don’t say nothing but that we’re well and waiting, or praying for each other. I don’t even want to say I love Jack, because the guard would make fun, wouldn’t he?”
Poor Bessie. My heart burned for her. No wonder she’d been so disagreeable, knowing the lad she loved was so close, and yet kept from her by a thick wall and time. Sent to a place as awful as the Steel for nicking a few carpenter’s tools while he tried to find work.
I would have a word with Daniel about Jack, and he could speak to Inspector McGregor. I vaguely knew that judges had to do with trials and sentencing, not the police, but perhaps the inspector could pass on the fact that Jack was a good lad and didn’t deserve such a harsh fate. As disagreeable as Inspector McGregor could be, he was fair.
I set down my cup, remembering what I was about today. “The true reason I went to the Foundling Hospital, Bessie, is to make inquiries about children who have gone missing.”
Bessie’s head jerked up. “Missing? What children? What you talking about?”
I named them. “And two more lately.”
“Oh.” Bessie relaxed. “You been misinformed, Mrs. Holloway. They ain’t missing—they’ve been adopted. Least, that’s what matron said. Bully for them, I say, if their new home ain’t foul.”
“They might not have been adopted, or fostered, at all,” I said. “The addresses of the places they were supposed to have gone don’t exist.”
Bessie took this in and understood quickly. She sat up straight. “You sure?”