“All right, I know, yer always in a rush. Here’s what I’ve got for yer, sir…”
Sebastian listened carefully. Dipper had asked, but no one had heard of Mrs. Slater. The house across the street was taken by a man called Jed Holmes, and he paid for the use of other premises, too, dotted throughout London. He had a reputation for dealing in the darker areas of prostitution.”
“Jed Holmes,” Sebastian said. “No mention of a woman’s involvement at all?”
“Well.” Dipper gave him a sly look. “I did hear somethin’.”
“Come on, Dipper. I don’t have all night.”
“There’s a woman been seen off and on, but she’s a cripple. Gets carried about in a chair. Might be Jed’s mother, the way he treats her, awful polite.”
“You don’t know who she is or where she lives?”
“He keeps her hidden away, I reckon.”
“Ask, will you? Try and find her. There’s money in it for you, Dipper.”
The little man gave him a toothless smile, taking the coins Sebastian handed him. “Thank you muchly, guv’ner.”
“And tell Polly I may have some work for her, too. She needs to look respectable, mind. A lady.”
Dipper chortled. “I’ll tell her.”
“And don’t get caught with your hand in anyone else’s pocket. I mightn’t bail you out of Newgate next time.”
Dipper chuckled and vanished into the crowd.
Sebastian leaned back against a brick wall, pretending to warm himself beside a smoky brazier. Across the street, the shabby house looked innocent enough. But God knew what went on behind that door…
Just then the door opened, and a short, thickset man came into view. He was speaking to someone just out of sight, but by moving closer to the brazier, Sebastian was able to get a glimpse inside the house.
A woman, soberly dressed, holding on to the hand of a child. The little girl was around nine or ten years of age. She, too, was neatly dressed, but the very fact that she was there, in such a place, boded ill for her. Sebastian felt his heart sink. He didn’t like this; he didn’t like it at all.
Chapter 11
Francesca huddled deeper into her cloak. Lil had told her that the trick to not seeming out of place was to pretend you were at home, but she didn’t feel at home. This part of London was beyond squalid, and the shadows had a sinister air to them that she’d never felt on the moor. And there before her was another of those horrible narrow gateways to another horrible dark courtyard where who knew what was waiting.
But this was the place where Lil had been born and lived as a child. Francesca knew that Lil had worked hard to become what she was, but she hadn’t realized quite the depths from which she’d sprung. And now it seemed that Lil was being haunted by a past she’d tried to hide from for twenty years.
Was there a warning in that for Francesca? Perhaps the cold, hard truth was that no one could escape her past.
“The smell of this place,” Lil whispered. “I remember it. I feel like a prisoner, miss, struggling to breathe. I feel like I’m a child again, frightened and hungry. That awful gnawing hunger that used to eat away at my very bones, until I’d do anything to sate it. Thieving, lying, selling whatever I had to sell…”
She glanced sideways at Francesca and bit her lip, as if worried she’d said too much. Francesca wrapped an arm about her and held her tight, not commenting, just listening.
“Do you know the sad thing? This part of London used to be respectable. Toffs built these houses and lived here, but as time went on, they moved away and their big houses were carved up for cheap lodgings.”
“Lil…”
“When I left here I went as far away as I could, and I always promised meself I’d never come back.”
Just then something scuttled across the ground in front of them and they both jumped and squealed. Francesca covered her mouth with her hand, staring at Lil with wide eyes, and saw the maid’s own lips quiver. She giggled.
“Big and tough we are, miss, afraid of a mouse.”
“It looked too big to be a mouse,” Francesca said with a shudder.
“You should see the rats. Around here they use them to pull carts, they do.”