“But you’d need a key to get in, wouldn’t you?” Cobb said quickly.
“The way I hear it,” Charlotte said just as quickly, “that little hatch was fer gettin’ out, not in.”
“Maybe so, but we think it was used by the killer.”
“So what’s this got to do with us anyways? I was here Monday night and Tuesday mornin’ pullin’ sailors offa my girls when their time was up. You figure I sneaked out and headed down to Madam Pompadour’s?”
“I’m not accusin’ you of anythin’, madam.”
“If I’d’ve kilt anybody down there it would’ve been the fat hooer who runs the place.”
Cobb pounced. “So you two aren’t friendly?”
“You could say that.”
“You believe her business is hurtin’ yer own?”
This remark produced prodigious mirth in both women, which triggered much jiggling of exposed and under-rigged flesh. Cobb felt himself redden.
“I’m not fond of Norah Burgess, but I ain’t jealous. Here, we cater to real, honest-to-goodness men: sailors and lumberjacks and teamsters who don’t powder their hair or perfume their pricks.”
“And Madame Renée takes care of the other kind?”
“Poofs and nobs and old fellas who can’t get it up but enjoy watchin’.” Charlotte spat out the next words: “The perversions that go on down there’d make Marybelle blush, and she ain’t done that since the midwife whacked her backside.”
“So you’re sayin’ you’d have no reason to hire some tough or bruiser to break in down there and stir up trouble-maybe damage or beat up the star performer?”
Charlotte guffawed so gustily her dentures popped halfway out of her mouth. “Sarah McConkey a star performer? That little slut wasn’t here six weeks before she got herself knocked up! She didn’t know one hole from another!”
As the women howled at this witticism, Cobb’s puzzlement deepened. Without forethought he asked, “Sarah McConkey worked here?”
“ ’Course she did. Everybody in Irishtown knows that.”
“ ’Least them that poked her,” Marybelle added. “Couldn’t’ve been more’n a hundred, could it, Char?”
But the look on Cobb’s face immediately dampened their mirth and Charlotte required no prompting. She told the tale of Sarah McConkey straight out. According to her, Sarah had been spotted by one of the madam’s scouts, alone and desperate on Lot Street, in late September. When brought to the brothel to be fed and coddled (“I spoil my girls rotten!”) Sarah informed Charlotte that she had left her home in Streetsville earlier in the month because her father had insisted she marry a religious zealot, who happened incidentally to be old and ugly. (“Them religious buggers is the randiest,” Marybelle added here, “they get so pent up!”) Sarah then found work as a housemaid in the home of some city preacher but, she claimed, he made advances and his wife kicked her out bag and baggage, accusing her of being a harlot. Distraught and friendless, she ended up at Madam Charlotte’s. So grateful was Sarah that after a week of recuperation she consented to earn her daily bread as her sisters in the house did.
However, she was only a “working girl” for a month or so, for the “silly fool” got herself pregnant. When Madame was considerate enough to arrange for the routine (“but ruinously expensive!”) abortion, Sarah balked, for which transgression she was once again tossed out on her ear. This time she was undeniably a harlot.
“We heard from the grapevine that she went back home, but her father closed the door in her face and disowned her. She was on her way back here, we was told, when one of that bitch Burgess’s scouts picked her up and took her to Renée’s. They pampered her there fer the whole winter, till she popped the poor dead babe a few weeks ago.”
Charlotte sat back, hitched up her breasts, and said scornfully, “So there’s yer star attraction at Madam Snooty’s cunny-crib. A common tart!”
Ideas were bouncing around Cobb’s head with alarming speed. Sarah McConkey had worked in this hellhole for over a month before she was dismissed and ended up a few days later at Madame Renée’s. Everyone in Irishtown would have been aware of her stint at Madame Charlotte’s. Why, then, had Mrs. Burgess and all three of her girls lied to him and Marc? They had made it sound as if Sarah had come straight to them from her job in the city. Well, Cobb would soon find out why. And where there was one lie, surely there were others.
“But I still don’t see what any of this has got to do with us,” Charlotte said.
“Nothin’, likely, but you been helpful just the same.” Cobb suddenly realized that Sarah may not have gone home when she left here. She may have gone straight to Mrs. Burgess. Which meant what? That the enmity between the two women may have had something to do with business after all. Sarah had been young and pretty, perhaps a rare find for Charlotte, with potential for expanding her horizons and hopes, only to have them dashed when Sarah was lured away to the competition. Maybe he should ride out to Streetsville and find out. Cobb’s heart began to pound and the tip of his nose throbbed: this detection game was exhilarating, and he was getting good at it.
“Ya sure ya don’t wanta stay a bit and divulge yerself?” Marybelle was saying. She let her legs sag apart. “That’s a mighty truncheon ya got stickin’ up outta yer belt.”
Cobb looked furiously away and jumped up.
“Won’t ya stay fer a cup o’ tea?” Madame Charlotte inquired sweetly, as if she were superintending an at-home.
“And a bit o’ crumpet?”
His proboscis aflame, Cobb stumbled to the door, regained his balance and some of his dignity, and was almost outside when he thought of a critical question. With his entire face now throbbing like a boil, he turned around and said sharply, “What was the name of the preacher Sarah worked for?”
Charlotte looked at Marybelle for confirmation. “Some fire-and-brimstone howler with a crazy name-Finley. . Findlay. . somethin’ like that.”
“Finney?” Cobb prompted, as his heart skipped a beat.
“Yeah, that’s it. The Reverend Temperance Finney.”
Marybelle howled with intemperate laughter.
Was it possible that a respectable Methodist minister had got himself entangled with his housemaid? And if so, had he decided to disentangle himself for good? Could he be the direct connection between the whist players and Madame Renée’s? This was all too much for Cobb. He began to wish the Major were here. Still, he had caught Mrs. Burgess in a lie. That was a tangible fact-unless of course Charlotte was lying. My God, this investigating game was taxing on the brain!
Cobb just managed to sidestep a heap of fresh, festering garbage, but in doing so he bumped into one of the local urchins.
“Watch where you’re goin’, fatso!”
Cobb had the miscreant by the scruff and dangling helplessly before he could blink twice. “Why you little fart, for tuppence I’d wring yer neck and toss ya to the rats.”
“Lemme go!”
Cobb dropped the lad, a sturdy fellow of thirteen or fourteen, but kept a grip on his tattered jersey. “Say, ain’t you Peter, one of them trackers?”
“Donald,” the boy whined. “And I ain’t done nothin’!”
“I doubt that, but what I want you to tell me is this: do you work fer both the madams?”
“What’s in it fer me?” Donald said, avarice nudging out fear.
“A broken arse if ya don’t answer and a penny if ya do.”
Donald pretended to mull the offer over before saying, “I useta work fer them both, but Miz Burgess pays me better not to.”
“Did you bring sailors to Sarah when she worked fer Madame Charlotte?” Cobb was secretly pleased with this bit of misdirection.
“ ’Course I did. But that was a whiles back.”
“Last fall perhaps?”
“Before the snow come.”
“Here’s yer penny, don’t spend it-”
But Donald didn’t tarry long enough to hear Cobb’s fatherly advice.
Well, well, Cobb thought. So here was a tangible fact indeed. Sarah McConkey had worked for Charlotte before moving to fancier quarters. If he could confront Mrs. Burgess and her girls with their dishonesty, who knew what else might then spill out?