‘I don’t want to know,’ said Declan, hastily.
‘Good, because I don’t want to relive it. Will we go to Islington? I don’t know where it is, but we can get one of those omnibus carriages, apparently.’
Mr Arnold Trumbull’s printing company was housed in a tall building squashed between other tall buildings. There was a smell of ink and paper. Mr Trumbull himself was a wispy gentleman, with a thin neck encased in a high wing collar, and rimless spectacles.
‘We’re here to get information about my cousin,’ said Colm abruptly. ‘We understand you knew her. Her name’s Romilly Rourke and she was one of the girls at Holly Lodge. And you,’ he said, in a tone full of contempt, ‘were one of the men who paid to go to bed with her.’
Mr Trumbull, who had risen to his feet to greet them, now tottered back to his chair.
‘That’s a terrible thing to say,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t slander. I’m a respectable businessman, a lay-preacher at St Botolph’s. And my sister is a pillar of the local community, known for her charitable works—’
‘Mr Trumbull,’ said Colm, perching on the edge of the desk, ‘we don’t care how many prostitutes you’ve had. We’re simply trying to find Romilly. Once we know where she is, we’ll leave you to your lay-preaching and your charitable works and all the rest of it. But it would be a pity,’ he said, ‘if it became known that such a respectable gentleman regularly visited a brothel. St Botolph’s, did you say? That’d be nearby, would it?’
Colm’s veiled threat struck home. Speaking in a half-mumble, Arnold Trumbull admitted there had been an acquaintance with Miss Rourke – Romilly. But he supposed a man was allowed a bit of companionship of an evening – particularly when living with a sister who spent her days polishing furniture and her nights working for the relief of Superannuated Widows or Distressed Gentlewomen. And,’ said Mr Trumbull, in an injured tone, when the house smelled constantly of boiled cabbage and pig’s head. ‘Those being cheap and filling foods, on account of my sister donating most of the housekeeping to her charities.’
‘How often did you go to see Romilly?’ asked Declan, sidestepping these domesticities.
Arnold Trumbull said huffily that being a man of regular habits he had gone to Holly Lodge on the first Tuesday of every month. ‘And I always paid my dues. And when Romilly had her trouble, I accepted responsibility like a gentleman. I gave her money. Ten guineas.’
Declan and Colm stared at him. Colm said furiously, ‘So you were the one who got her pregnant. For pity’s sake, man, this is England, where you can walk into a shop and buy anti-conception aids for the asking!’
Arnold Trumbull, crimson with embarrassment, said he had tried to do that, indeed he had. ‘I scoured the shops around St Stephen’s Road – a large population of merchant seamen there, so it seemed a likely place – and I found a shop where there were several boxes of the items. But I couldn’t face actually asking for a . . . So I fled the shop.’
‘Never mind what you did, where’s Romilly now?’ Colm leaned across the desk, and for a moment it seemed as if Arnold Trumbull’s pale eyes would manage to stare down Colm’s angry glare. But he was no match for Colm. He blinked and said, in a sulky mumble, that he believed Romilly had taken rooms in a house in the East End.
‘Where?’
‘Bidder Lane, Canning Town.’
FOURTEEN
London, 1890s
Canning Town, in the murky light of a fading afternoon, was drearier than Colm and Declan could have believed possible. The streets were narrow and rows of wizened houses huddled together as if for warmth or reassurance. There were narrow alleyways at intervals between the houses which might lead anywhere or nowhere. A solitary dog barked somewhere, and several times they heard angry voices or wailing babies from within the buildings. There were a few people about, mostly men, shabby and slightly furtive-looking, or shambling with the unsteady footsteps of the inebriated. The few women they saw had ragged shawls over their heads and bowed backs. They cast incurious glances at the two boys, and scuttled on.
A faint mist lay everywhere, and Declan shivered and turned up his coat collar. ‘Romilly can’t be living here, can she?’
‘Little Trumbull said so.’ Colm paused at the intersection of two streets, and indicated a smoke-blackened sign.
‘Clock Street,’ said Declan. ‘The abortionist’s lair.’
‘I wouldn’t, myself, have put it so dramatically. But let’s take a look.’
They had both been expecting Clock Street, where the unknown Mr Bullfinch plied his grisly trade, to be a sinister place, but there were only the same narrow houses, the same grey hopelessness. At the far end were warehouses with grimed bricks and blind, glassless windows.
‘We’re nearly at the quayside,’ said Declan. ‘Can you hear the river sounds?’
‘I don’t know about hearing the river; I can smell it,’ said Colm, disgustedly. ‘It’s like a wet coughing infection. If Romilly’s living here, she’ll be dead of typhoid within a month.’
‘There’s a flight of stone steps over there,’ said Declan. ‘That girl at Holly Lodge – Cerise – said Bullfinch lived near the river steps.’
‘He can’t make much money from what he does, or he’d have moved away long since,’ said Colm. ‘Are we going to confront Bullfinch? He’d probably be able to tell us where Bidder Lane is – even which house Romilly’s living in.’
‘Let’s see if we can find it for ourselves,’ said Declan, unwilling to march up to an abortionist’s house and demand to know the whereabouts of one of his clients.
Bidder Lane, when they found it, was no better and no worse than the other streets.
‘But which house?’ said Colm, standing still and looking about him.