Execution Dock

“Good morning, Squeaky,” she said as she closed the door, giving them privacy in the cluttered room with its shelves of ledgers. The desk was scattered with sheets of paper, pencils, two inkwells, one red, one blue, and a tray of sand for blotting. This last was seldom used; he just liked the look of it.

“Mornin’, Miss ‘Ester,” he replied, searching her face with concern. He did not ask her how she was; he would make the judgment himself.

She sat down in the chair opposite him. “This whole business is becoming extremely ugly,” she said frankly. “There are whispers of accusation that Mr. Durban was procuring boys for Jericho Phillips, and the River Police in general are being dirtied with that accusation. There seem to be several incidents where he found boys stealing and deliberately did not charge them. There may be other explanations as to why that happened, but the worst is being assumed.”

He nodded. “Looks bad,” he agreed, sucking air in through his teeth. “In't nobody ‘oo int tempted by summink, whether it's money or power or pleasure, or just ‘avin’ people owe ‘em. I've seen some where it's just feelin’ superior as does it. Specially women. Seen some awful superior women. Beggin’ yer pardon.”

She smiled. “So have I, and I wanted to slap them, until I realized that's probably all they had. A friend of mine used to say that there are none as virtuous as those who have never been asked.”

“I like that,” he said with profound appreciation. He mulled it over, like a good wine. “Yeah, I do.”

“Squeaky, I need to know how Phillips gets his boys.”

There was a tap on the door, and as soon as Hester answered, Claudine came in. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

Both Hester and Squeaky knew that she had come because she could not bear to be left out of the detection. She desperately wanted to help, but she had not yet let down her barriers of dignity enough to say so outright.

“Thank you,” Hester declined quickly. “But I need to go out, and I think I need Squeaky with me. He knows people that I don't.”

Claudine looked crestfallen. She tried to hide it, but the feeling was too deep to conceal it from her eyes.

“In't summink you would know about,” Squeaky said brusquely. “Don't s'pose you even know why girls take ter sellin’ theirselves on the streets, let alone kids.”

“Of course I know,” she snapped. “Do you think I can't hear what they're saying? Or that I don't listen to them?”

Squeaky relented a fraction. “Boys,” he explained. “We don't get no little boys in ‘ere. If they get beat no one knows, ‘ceptin’ ‘ooever's keepin’ ‘em, like Jericho Phillips.”

Claudine snorted. “And what is going to be so different about why they take to the streets?” she asked. “Cold, hunger, fear, nowhere else to go. Lonely, someone offers to take them in, easy money, at first.”

“You're right,” Hester agreed, surprised that Claudine had apparently listened so closely to what was voiced, including the words themselves, which were often shallow and repetitive, sometimes full of excuses or self-pity, more often with a bitter humor and an endless variety of bad jokes. “But I need to prove that it wasn't Commander Durban procuring them, so it has to be specific.”

“Commander Durban?” Claudine was clearly horrified. “I never heard anything so wicked. Don't worry I'll look after everything here. You find out all you can, but be careful!” She glared at Squeaky. “You look after her, or I shall hold you accountable. Believe me, you will be sorry you were born.” And with that she turned around, whisking her very plain gray skirt as if it had been crimson silk, and marched out.

Squeaky smiled. Then he saw Hester and assumed instant gravity. “We'll be goin’, then,” he said flatly. “I'll put on me oldest boots.”

“Thank you,” she accepted. “I will wait for you by the door.”

They spent a miserable afternoon well into the early evening moving from one to another of Squeaky's contacts in his previous life as a brothel owner.

They continued the next day, going deeper into the network of alleys in Limehouse, Shadwell, and the Isle of Dogs on the north bank of the river, and Rotherhithe and Deptford on the south. Hester felt as if she had walked as far as from London to York circling the same narrow byways crowded with doss-houses, taverns, pawnshops, brothels, and all the multitudinous traders associated with the river.

Squeaky was very careful, even secretive about their search, but his whole ma

“I think yer know better than that, Mr. Kelp,” he said in almost a whisper. They were standing in what was ostensibly a tobacconist's shop, darkly wood paneled, one small window, its glass ringed like the base of a bottle. The lamps were lit or they would not have been able to see the wares laid out, although the pungent aroma was powerful enough to drift out into the alley and tempt people, even above the stench of rotting wood and human waste.

Kelp opened his mouth to deny it, and reconsidered. There was something about Squeaky's motionless figure in its faded, striped trousers and ancient frock coat, his stringy hair and lantern face that frightened him. It was as if Squeaky somehow knew himself to be invulnerable, in spite of not apparently having any weapon, and no one with him but one rather slightly built woman. It was inexplicable, and anything he could not understand alarmed Mr. Kelp.

He swallowed. “Well…” he prevaricated. “I heard things, o’ course, if that's wot you want, like?”

Squeaky nodded slowly. “That's wot I want, Mr. Kelp, things you've ‘eard, accurate things, things you believe yerself An’ yer would be very wise indeed not ter tell anybody else that I ‘ave asked, an’ that yer ‘ave been good enough ter ‘elp me. There are those with long an’ careful ears who would not be pleased. Let us leave them in their ignorance, shall we?”

Kelp shuddered. “Oh, yes, Mr. Robinson, sir. Very definitely.” He did not even glance at Hester standing a little behind Squeaky. She was watching with growing surprise. This was a side of Squeaky she had not imagined, and her own blindness to its possibility was disturbing. She had grown accustomed to his compliance in the clinic, and forgotten the man he used to be. In fact, she had never really known more than the superficial fact that he had owned the brothel that had occupied the Portpool Lane houses.

Squeaky was approximately in his fifties, but she had thought of him as old, because he sat in a bent, hunched position, and his hair was long and gray, hanging thinly down to his collar. He had complained vociferously about being cheated and abused, as if he were a man of peaceful habits wrongfully treated. The man she saw here in the tobacconists’ was nothing like that. Kelp was afraid of him. She could see it in his face, even smell it in the air. She felt a shiver of doubt at her own foolhardiness, and forced it from her mind with some difficulty.

Kelp swallowed what appeared to be a lump in his throat, and proceeded to tell Squeaky everything he knew about the procuring of boys for men like Jericho Phillips. It was sad and very ugly, full of human failure and the opportunism of the greedy who preyed on the weak.

It also included Durban catching boys, some no more than five or six years old, stealing food and small articles to sell. He had seldom charged them, and the assumption was that he had bought them from their parents in order to sell them to Phillips, or others like him. There was no proof, one way or the other, but too many of them had not been seen again in the usual places, nor was anyone saying where they had gone, or with whom.