What Cobb was thinking as he picked his way along the hawthorn path towards the shanties of Irishtown was that he had to catch Mrs. Burgess or one of the girls in a lie or a patent contradiction. Once one lie was exposed, others would soon fly up into the light. But so far the women’s story tallied with everything else they had learned about the events of Monday night. Five minutes later, with his generous nose twitching at the cumulative stenches along the way, he reached Madame Renée’s.
The shutters were closed over the windows. Cobb padded all the way around the house. It was sealed up like Pharaoh’s tomb. Either the women were out or still abed. Well, either suited his purpose. Glancing several times up and down the seemingly deserted pathway that served as a thoroughfare, he drew out of his jacket pocket a cumbersome key. It was a skeleton key that Sarge had issued to him and the other three constables when the force was inaugurated in 1835. What he was expected to do with it he was never quite sure. This would be its maiden run. He moved adroitly to the rear of the house once more but was brought up short when he encountered a pair of young ruffians wrestling in the dirt beside the scruffy bush in front of the escape hatch.
“Get outta here, you scamps, before I kick yer arses inta yer teeth!” he hissed, hesitant to deploy his fearsome stentorian tones.
The boys stopped instantly, untangled their limbs slowly, sat back on their haunches, and stared at the intruder as if he were some freak of nature materialized out of the dust, like Adam.
“That yer real nose, buster?”
“Does it glow in the dark?”
“Let’s hear ya honk it!”
Cobb glowered and put one hand on the butt of his truncheon. Laughing in mock fright, the boys scampered off.
Cobb had to stand perfectly still for a full five minutes to determine whether the ruckus the boys had raised would disturb the women inside or attract attention from neighbouring abodes. But all was quiet, so he proceeded to squat down before the hatch. He eased the skeleton key silently into the opening of the lock. Then infinitely slowly he turned it to the left. There was a sharp click. He held his breath. Then he pushed the hatch inward about an inch. Satisfied, he closed and relocked it.
It was just as he had thought. This lock was simple enough to be opened by a run-of-the-mill skeleton key. And that meant that almost anyone in Irishtown who knew about the hatch (who wouldn’t? was an easier question) and possessed such a key (anyone who cared to buy or steal one) would have access to the inner sanctum of Madame Renée’s. And that meant finding someone with both a key and a grudge.
Cobb had already worked out the answer to the latter part of the equation: Madame Charlotte, the competition. To Cobb it seemed inconceivable that two such houses of prostitution, whatever their particular intentions and clientele, would not be rivals. From that premise it was logical that if Madame Charlotte wished to do harm to Madame Renée’s business, all she had to do was hire the nearest hungry thug, supply him with a key, and send him on his way. She may even have suborned Badger himself, who already had a key. Whatever the details-and Cobb intended to get to them-the crime was connected to rivalries and animosities entirely within the boundaries of Irishtown. Whistling softly, he walked a hundred yards up the road to the rambling clapboard house of Madame Charlotte. It too was shuttered and barred. But this time Cobb took out his truncheon and rapped smartly on the paint-peeled door.
Soon after, Cobb sat in the parlour of the brothel on a stiff chair watching the two women across from him, both seated on a battered settee embroidered with roses and a number of random, greasy petals whose provenance Cobb cared not to reflect upon. The contrast between this room and its counterpart at Madame Renée’s was striking. Here, not a stick of furniture or wall surface had escaped being stained, gouged, or otherwise abused. Putrid pools of spilled wine-neat or regurgitated-festered here and there on the softwood floor, whose boards had not been swept or scrubbed since leaving the mill. Cobb couldn’t decide which was worse: the stink or the frantic perfumes used to subdue it. Undaunted, he soldiered on.
“I’m here to question you concernin’ an incident at Madame Renée’s on Monday evenin’,” he said, trying for the exact pitch between authoritative and invitational that the Major used in these situations.
“That slut!”
This assessment was offered by Marybelle, the only one of the inmates who was not “indisposed,” according to Madame Charlotte. Marybelle was perched on the edge of the settee, clad only in a floppy robe and a jangle of hair curlers that looked as if they were trying to escape. She was of indeterminate age but undoubtedly well travelled. She had made a half-hearted attempt to remove the caked powder, waxy lip rouge, and brow-black from her evening face, but had managed only to smear them together. With her dark pop-eyes and sagging chin, she reminded Cobb of a circus clown who’d put his makeup on without benefit of a mirror. Her voice scraped at the air like a rusted handsaw.
“Ya mean the murder, don’t ya?” Madame Charlotte demanded, staring at Cobb with bold, hardened eyes. Unlike her “girl,” Charlotte was dressed for the day or night in a brash, flouncy frock sporting bluebirds and some sort of exotic fruit and cut low enough to display her well-upholstered breastworks. Her considerable makeup had been applied with a trowel and worked to perfection: vermilion lips, rouged cheeks, kohl-sculpted eyelids and brows, topped by a powdered wig that one of Shakespeare’s boy-women might have blushed to wear.
“So you’ve heard what happened?” Cobb said.
“Nothin’s kept secret in Irishtown for more’n ten minutes!” Marybelle rasped.
“I was speakin’ to Madame Charlotte.”
Madame Charlotte frowned. “The name is Char-lotte,” she said with proud emphasis on the ultimate syllable. “And, yeah, we saw the body bein’ carted off yesterday mornin’.”
“Poor Sarah got herself topped, in her own bed!” There was more mockery in Marybelle’s voice than sorrow.
“By some nob, we hear,” Charlotte said. “Which means nothin’ll be done about it, so why’re you here disrupturin’ an honest woman and her business? It don’t look good to have the law lurkin’ about in daylight.”
“P’raps he’s come fer a good time,” Marybelle cackled.
This time it was Charlotte who laughed.
“If you know what’s good fer you, Madam Char-a-lot, you’ll answer my questions and answer them truthful, or I’ll bring the sheriff down here with a dozen torches to rid the town of-”
“All right, all right, there’s no need to get testy. We ain’t got nothin’ to hide, have we, Marybelle?”
“I ain’t ever been accused of hidin’ much,” Marybelle giggled grotesquely, and to demonstrate her point she let the robe drift open to expose the tops and inner curves of her breasts.
“Someone broke into Madame Renée’s about one-thirty Tuesday mornin’ and stabbed Sarah McConkey to death,” Cobb said.
“They couldn’t’ve got through them oak doors,” Charlotte said. “Norah seals that place up tighter’n a heifer’s cunt.”
“I don’t believe the intruder used either door,” Cobb said carefully.
“Ya mean the little hatch?” Marybelle blurted, and got a warning glance from her mistress.
“Ah, so you know about that, do ya?” Cobb said, pleased with his probing thus far.
“Everybody that lives within three hundred yards of the place knows about the booby-hatch,” Charlotte said levelly. “Just ask.”