Paternoster (14 page)

They opened for business that afternoon. Gentlemen taking the waters for gout, nerves and skin complaints shuffled into the opulent room that served as the seraglio and gawked to think they weren’t in London. A painted frieze around the room advertised the delights on offer – a nervous gentleman had just to point and it would be his. And what delights! Mrs Bedwin was no bucolic bawd: her board of fare was the same as in the city, outlandish and foreign enough to ensure there was soon a brisk trade.

‘Get in first, girls, that’s my motto,’ she sang, as the bell rang and another gentleman was shown upstairs. ‘The best brothel in Cheltenham. All tastes catered for. Front, back or sideways, we aim to please.’

Rachel shared a bed with Emma Trulove, a sallow-faced girl of seventeen who was known to be amusing to ladies. Mrs Bedwin had brought her from London with the others, and each night she and Rachel hunkered under the covers and sketched their futures.

‘I shall find myself a rich husband who adores me and who allows me as many gowns and gloves and bonnets as I wish,’ Rachel said, her fair hair tangling with Emma’s auburn tresses on the pillow. ‘And I shall have a little dog who sits in my lap and feeds off a saucer, and a bird in a cage to sing to me while I lie on my sofa.’

Emma sighed. ‘I’ll have a rich, handsome husband, but he’ll be quite old, maybe even forty, and he won’t be interested in bed so I can take as many young lovers as I like.’

‘Men?’ Rachel asked, slyly.

‘Some of them,’ Emma giggled, ‘it’s as well to have variety.’

They tugged the blankets up to their mouths to smother their sniggers.

‘But what do you do?’ Rachel said, rising on her elbow so she could look down at Emma’s face. ‘With a woman, I mean?’

‘All sorts of things.’

‘But there’s nothing to go anywhere!’

‘Oh there is,’ Emma said, pinching Rachel playfully. ‘Anyway, you’ll see for yourself soon enough.’

‘What do you mean?’ Suddenly Rachel went cold. Servicing the men was one thing, but surely Mrs Bedwin wasn’t going to sell her to a woman? She’d never live down the shame. Rachel Lovett, with her legendary maidenhead, a plaything of fat rich ladies? She’d rather die. ‘I’m not a … Mrs Bedwin wouldn’t … would she?’

Emma laughed. ‘No, silly. But Mrs Bedwin’s been asked to take some of us to a party, and she told me there was a woman who particularly wanted to meet me.’

Relief flooded through her. ‘So, am I to go to this party, too?’

Emma nodded. She snuggled down under the covers for a moment, and then asked, ‘What hold has Mrs Bedwin on you, Rachel?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You could’ve left her place in London, but you didn’t. And now you let her bring you here, when you obviously hate it.’

‘I don’t hate it.’ Rachel sighed. That wasn’t true. She did hate Cheltenham. The initial pleasure at seeing the town had soon waned. The water running down the middle of the streets and the stepping stones to cross from the butcher to the grocer. The local women in their drab dresses; the fine women with their haughty expressions. She was a long way from the hustle and grime of London, and she missed it with an ache that penetrated deep into her soul. And right now, she feared she’d end her days in dull, genteel Cheltenham.

‘Rachel?’

Rachel puffed out her cheeks. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

‘Course not.’

‘I thieved some gloves and Mrs Bedwin knows about it. I’ve got to keep her sweet or she’ll sell me to the thief-taker.’

Emma gave a low whistle. ‘Would she really sell you?’

‘If I crossed her, or if it was to her advantage. You know what she’s like.’

‘At least the thief-taker won’t find you here.’

That much was true, at least. She was safe in Cheltenham. May as well sit it out until she was well and truly forgotten. If she went back to London now, it could be Australia for the rest of her life, or dangling on the end of a rope with the crowd yanking on her ankles.

Yes, she was safe in Cheltenham.

‘Best gowns, girls, and plenty of rouge!’ Mrs Bedwin stood, flustered, her hairpiece awry, as girls scurried about with armfuls of silk and petticoats. ‘And make sure you all washes your downstairses,’ she added, with a grimace at Daphne, who was notoriously slatternish.

The girls lined up in front of her: Daphne, Emma, Roseanne and Rachel, each in a gaudy dress of magenta or lime or marigold; bosoms pushed high; faces transformed by paint and powder. Mrs Bedwin paraded up and down the line, tweaking a ribbon here, smudging a triangle of rouge there until she was satisfied.

‘Do me proud, girls,’ she exhorted them, as they all clambered into the carriage waiting outside. Squashed in together, their skirts a tangled flowerbed, the five of them were driven through the streets of Cheltenham to the outskirts of the burgeoning town and through a set of high iron gates, up a long driveway lined with weedy saplings, until the carriage came to a halt outside a huge amber portico.

‘This is it, girls,’ Mrs Bedwin breathed. ‘This is where we makes our fortunes, doing what we knows best. Eh, girls?’

Her cheeks were flushed beyond the reaches of rouge, and Rachel realised with a start that Mrs Bedwin was nervous. She glanced again at the imposing house.

‘Where are we?’

‘Greville House,’ said Mrs Bedwin with a gasp, as if the mere name were explanation enough.

Emma pulled a face at Rachel and tugged her up the wide stone steps and into a magnificent two-storey atrium. Rachel barely had time to marvel at her surroundings before she and the other girls were hustled upstairs and into a grand salon furnished with plush sofas and drapes of gold. Tables were burdened with baskets of fruit and flowers. Double doors, the height of the ceiling, stood closed at the far end of the room.

‘Now, girls, get ready,’ Mrs Bedwin said. ‘Daphne, you’re to lie here.’

‘On the table?’

‘That’s it. Quick smart.’

Daphne hoisted up her skirts and clambered on to the table and lay down. Mrs Bedwin flew across the room and smacked the girl’s thighs.

‘Not like that, you fool! Get your clothes off first. No one wants a plate of ribbons and lace.’

‘Plate?’ Daphne said.

Mrs Bedwin tutted and started undoing Daphne’s gown, her lips working constantly with instructions, imprecations and curses on all the girls. Roseanne was to strike a pose; Rachel was to drape herself enticingly on one of the sofas; Emma to mirror her; and Daphne was to be eaten alive.

She lay naked and squirming as Mrs Bedwin bustled about, placing oysters along her collarbones and draping grapes over her ears. Sliced pineapple lay from her chin to her groin. Cherries festooned her legs, miniature pies balanced on her arms, sweet puddings decorated her thighs. After she’d giggled so hard one of the puddings fell on to the carpet, and been rewarded with a pinch, Daphne lay subdued and submitted to being covered from head to toe in tasty morsels. By the time Mrs Bedwin had finished, only her face was bare.

‘Just in time,’ Mrs Bedwin breathed, as she placed the final oyster. Speaking sharply to Daphne, she said, ‘Now you lie still, my girl. You hear me?’

Daphne’s silence was evidently taken as assent, as Mrs Bedwin clapped her gaze round the other girls, then nodded at the servant standing nearby. He swung the double doors wide, and announced, ‘Supper is served.’

There were four men and one woman. Well-dressed but no aristocrats, Rachel’s finely tuned eye for detail informed her. New money. On the up. Still. A guinea’s a guinea. They swept into the room, their eyes raking from sofa to sofa, from girl to girl, before resting on Daphne, lying as still as death on the table.

Mrs Bedwin dropped a deep curtsey. ‘Mr Ellison,’ she said.

‘Mrs Bedwin, and your young ladies, I see.’

‘Only my finest for you, sir, and your friends.’

Mr Ellison was tall and had a thin, flat face with a Roman nose. His friends were in their early thirties, sporting gay waistcoats and silly grins. The woman was in her fifties, and had a mouth that was more used to scolding than kissing.

Mrs Bedwin bowed herself out of the way, and watched proceedings from the small chair at the side of the room, as the friends selected a girl each and hoisted her on to his lap, while Mr Ellison selected the choicest morsels from Daphne’s spread. Her eyes were huge as his face dipped to her collarbone, his lips snatching up an oyster. He tipped back his head and guzzled it down, then turned his attention to the pies and cherries.

I’m glad it’s not me
, Rachel thought, as she caught Daphne stiffen as Mr Ellison’s teeth nipped her flesh.

‘You’re a table,’ Mrs Bedwin had told her. ‘And tables don’t move, don’t giggle and don’t flinch. Got it?’

Rachel realised the gentleman who was fondling her breast was taking very little interest in it. His hand was clammy and his breath stale, huffing down the side of her neck, but like her, his eyes were fixed on Daphne.

Mr Ellison stood up from Daphne’s spread. ‘Hungry?’ he said to Roseanne’s paramour. He galloped up to the table and was soon gobbling away, mouth slobbering, his saliva juicing along Daphne’s increasingly exposed body. Rachel twisted her head away from the sight.

The men took it in turns to eat from Daphne’s body. When her gentleman got up to eat, Rachel found herself in slobber mouth’s arms. His rubbery lips worked over her neck and down the front of her gown, sluicing her with the salty fishy smell of oysters. She found herself thinking of the pigs on her uncle’s farm, and of the pig killer who came each year to split their bellies open and catch the blood in a bucket ready to be made into puddings.

The woman took her turn, too, nibbling at Daphne’s instep as though shy, then suddenly plunging into the pineapple that covered Daphne’s groin. Mr Ellison laughed as one of the men groaned.

‘Too slow, my friend. Mrs Hardcastle has beaten you to the prize.’

When all the food was either eaten or trodden into the floor, Mr Ellison helped Daphne down from the table. Rachel disentangled herself from a pair of arms, thinking the evening was done, but it was just beginning.

Mr Ellison led the dance with Emma, and was soon joined by Roseanne and Rubberlips, and then by Rachel and a short, fair-haired man. In the manner of dances, partners twirled and moved on a step, and a new partner followed. The dance became raucous and drunken, a tangle of skirts and bosoms, sweating palms and avaricious lips. As the heat rose, Rachel realised that Mr Ellison and Daphne had disappeared. She twisted her head to scout round the room, but there was no sign of them, only Mrs Bedwin at the far end, licking her finger as she counted banknotes.

Daphne wasn’t in the carriage that took them back to Coffee House Lane, either. They slumped against each other as the carriage rattled them back in the early hours of the morning, and Mrs Bedwin tucked them up in bed and ordered them to sleep as long as they wished in the morning.

‘But where’s Daphne?’ Rachel asked, though her eyelids were drooping with fatigue.

‘Never you mind,’ Mrs Bedwin replied, and blew out the candle.

Daphne returned late the next day, and Mrs Bedwin immediately set about drawing her a bath in front of the fire, and called for hot wine and sweet cakes to restore her. Rachel was allowed in to sponge Daphne’s back and wash her long dark hair. The girl was exhausted.

‘Where did you go? Why didn’t you come back with us?’ Rachel hissed.

Daphne turned black-rimmed eyes on her. Checking Mrs Bedwin was out of earshot, she whispered, ‘I went through the tunnels. To a place you won’t believe.’

Eden stopped short when she arrived back at her office. BITCH was painted in red across the door.

‘Who done that, Eden?’ Tony, who ran the sandwich shop just along from her, was locking up. Balding, he over-compensated with a thin ponytail like a liquorice strap. ‘Unhappy client?’

‘I hope not.’ She clipped along the walkway to him. ‘Hey, Tony, do you know when it was done? I haven’t been in my office since yesterday afternoon.’

He shrugged. ‘Last night, I think.’ He rattled his keys into his pockets. ‘It was there when I opened up this morning. Bloody vandals.’

‘Yeah.’ She sighed and went back to her office, calling goodbye as Tony headed off down the stairs. She’d been called some names over the years, but somehow this single word, scrawled on her door, unsettled her much more. The letters dripped red, like a Hollywood vampire caught mid-suck. Not a great advert for her business.

Inside, she switched on the electric heater, which filled the office with the smell of scorched dust, and made a pot of coffee. There were no messages waiting for her on the answering machine. Normally that would make her heart sink, but today she felt a spurt of relief: it gave her time to devote to finding out what happened to Paul. She recalled the dry scratch of his hand in hers as he lay dying. It was she he’d turned to; she’d see it through to the end.

Taking out her notes from her interviews with Janice, Greg Barker and Chris Wilde, she constructed a timeline of Paul’s movements from Monday morning until he died early that morning. Information, source of information, assessment of the reliability of the source, alternative interpretations. Her old training made the process subconscious. With no clue what had killed him, every detail was relevant. There was a gap between seeing Chris Wilde and attending the planning meeting, and nothing to suggest where he went after the meeting ended. She bit the skin at the side of her thumb for a moment, then her tired brain recalled the photographs she’d taken in Paul’s flat.

They were quickly downloaded to her laptop, and she zoomed in on the close-ups of every receipt piled on his bedside table, noting the time, date and place of each one. There was nothing later than five in the evening on Monday: petrol bought at a garage near Chris Wilde’s house. A full tank, by the looks of it, another hint that Paul wasn’t thinking of killing himself any time soon. There were no receipts for dinner or groceries to show what he did after the planning meeting, or suggest what time he got home.