“Dear God.” Julia shuddered.
Dr. Lewis held up a match, struck it, and tossed it into the fireplace. “Used once. Then, discarded.”
“But not before they’re handed off to others,” Tennant said. “Men with smaller purses and a greater willingness to risk their health.”
Dr. Lewis said, “Continue, my dear.”
“Kathleen said they forced her to make that carriage ride repeatedly. Gin laced with laudanum made it bearable.” Julia shook her head. “At first, they kept her for the exclusive use of the same man. Then they stopped taking her to the second location and brought a string of other men to her room.”
Her grandfather asked, “How did the poor child finally escape?”
“They discarded her once she showed symptoms of syphilis. She made her way to Aldgate High Street and turned up at Annie’s flat.”
Julia crossed the room and gave the fire a few hard thrusts with her poker. “I think Kathleen may have overheard Franny Riley’s murder.”
Tennant asked, “What makes you think that?”
“Kathleen said they brought in a girl who refused to go along. She never saw her. They locked the girl away in a room for several weeks until, one night, Kathleen heard screams followed by silence.”
“Did she say when this was?”
“After the New Year. Sometime in January.” Julia leaned on the mantel, staring into the yellow and orange flames flickering above the pile. The fire glowed white-hot in the crevices deep within the coals.
“They probably drugged Franny like Kathleen,” Tennant said. “Then took her to be raped the night she disappeared.”
“And held her for weeks,” Julia said. “Trying to break her will.”
“It’s a terrible story, but the links are no longer speculation.” Tennant lifted his glass. “Kathleen’s evidence supports Jin’s story and connects Margot Miller to an abduction and prostitution ring. If only she were alive to be charged.”
“Someone you knowisalive and well,” Julia said. “A few weeks ago, someone new turned up to guard the girls on the carriage ride . . . a man with a cleft lip.”
“Rawlings,” Tennant said.
“He guarded Kathleen on her last carriage ride. Two Chinese girls were with her, and a third was a child, ten years old at most. Kathleen said the little girl . . .” Julia’s voice caught. “She whimpered in the coach the whole way back to the house.”
“By God, it’s utterly revolting.” Dr. Lewis reached for his whiskey, hands shaking.
“Allow me, sir.” Tennant took hold of the decanter and poured. “Can Kathleen remember anything about the house where she was taken?”
“Not much.” Julia brushed at her cheeks. “It wasn’t a long ride, but the shades were drawn tight. Gates opened, and they entered a courtyard, stopping at a doorway under a canopy.Then they walked down a long hallway to the rooms. Her usual escort for the last few weeks was the man with the lip.”
“I think Stackpole is up to his neck in it as well.” Tennant nodded. “Margot Miller told Kathleen that her bloodstains were worth ‘the other half of twenty quid.’ And Stackpole shouted that phrase at Annie O’Neill when he came looking for Margot weeks ago. He said Miller owed him ‘the other half’ of twenty pounds for ‘the goods.’”
“The goods,” Dr. Lewis spat out. “Trading and trafficking the bodies of young girls. The law makes men the guardians of female interests, but we do a terrible job.”
“That’s the hole in the suffrage argument, isn’t it, Grandfather? That it’s enough for husbands and brothers to legislate for their wives and sisters. But if women had the power to decide, would we set the age of consent at twelve? Never.”
“My dear, if I had the power, I would herd the gentlemen of Parliament into a surgical theater. Force them to witness the ravages of childbirth on an immature mother’s body. The tearing, the fistulas that leave a girl permanently incontinent—if she survives the attendant infections and lives.”
Julia looked at Tennant. “Just now, only one of us has the power to do anything.”
She thought of their many disputes about men, women, and their place in the world and the times she’d thought him deaf to rational argument. How often her judgments about him had been wrong.
He looked surprised when she said, “I’m glad it’s you in charge of this case.”
Julia hooked her arm around her grandfather’s elbow, and they walked to the door. Mrs. Ogilvie waited with Tennant’s overcoat.
As the inspector shrugged it on, he asked, “What do you know about the Topkapi, sir? It’s the new club on Pall Mall.”
