Chapter 12

When I arrived at my office, Penelope Potash was waiting for me. I knew at once that something was very wrong. There was a large welt on her cheek and a cut above her left eye.

I took off my cape and so on and quickly ushered her into the examination room.

“Penelope, what happened?”

“A slight disagreement.”

“I would hardly call this slight,” I said, gently touching her bruised cheek.

She flinched and said, “It’s nothing.”

“Was this done by the same man who beat you across your back, Penelope?”

“Can we just do the treatment, please?” she asked as she removed her blouse.

I just stared at her. She coughed and caught her breath. “A client,” she finally said.

“A client? What kind of a client would do this to you? Was it the same man who assaulted you? Who beat you?”

She pulled her blouse back together and fastened it. “No,” she said, a bit too adamantly. “Nothing to do with that.” She paused, looked down and then looked up at me. “What is it you think I do for a living, Dr. Stamford?”

“I do not know, Penelope. You are a cordial, well-mannered, well-dressed young woman. I assumed-”

“A dressmaker perhaps? Or that I work in a milliner’s shop? Or some other ladies’ shop?”

I nodded, but remembered she’d said she could not avail herself of a privy in a shop because she could not afford to buy anything.

“I walk the streets, Dr. Stamford. I may not look it. I don’t wear pink silk stockings or too much rouge. But that’s how I put food in my little girl’s stomach.”

“But you don’t act like... you certainly don’t look like-”

“You think all street women live down on Granby Street and hang out of their windows bare to the waist? Or that we all waltz up and down Haymarket from midnight til morn? I’ve earned a living that way. I’ve learned to steal so I could buy my daughter clothes. But I have regular gentlemen callers. Decent blokes. I have some who come on a weekly basis and I get two or three pound a week from each of them. So Mary - that’s my daughter - and I can at least afford more than a twelve-foot square room with a bed and a couple chairs and a coal cuttle and a slop pail. I meet the men at a house on James Street. The rooms are clean; there are large beds and a cheval glass. Before I built up a regular clientele, I charged five shillings per customer. Ten per day wasn’t all that unusual. It’s much better now. My artistic name is even in the Bachelor’s Pocket Book.”

“The what?”

She tossed her head back, golden curls falling to her waist as she laughed. “I suppose you never heard of it. It gives bachelors directions to a few houses and describes the women who are available. One of the girls is known as ‘Miss Gladiateur,’ like the famous French horse who won the English Triple Crown. She wears his colors and advertises that if you mount her, you’ll feel like you are galloping atop a thoroughbred. And me - they call me-”

“Penelope,” I whispered. “Don’t.”

“They call me the Mute Swan because I wear a nightdress with sleeves that look like swan wings, and I never say a word. I just do a little graceful dance, entwine and drape and bob and dunk when they ask. I used to watch them, the swans. I used to watch how they move.”

She stared at me defiantly but then looked away.

I, too, loved to watch the swans, back in the Broads and here in London, in the river at Victoria Park. Suddenly, my head filled like a poet with a flood of confused, erotic thoughts about love and lovemaking, I remembered how mesmerized I was by them. By how they moved and how they glided across the water, the shiny edges of their delicate feathers glistening in the sunlight. The way they mated always fascinated me. A pair would angle their heads and look at each other and then they would move as one, like an accomplished dancing pair on the floor of a great ballroom. Necks entwined, one bird’s neck draped over his partner’s, they would caress each other, circling and touching cheek to cheek, moving slowly like white clouds across a violet-blue sky. I’d watch them through to satisfaction, always a little aroused and filled with desire - and envy - myself.

I touched her shoulder. “Penelope, tell me who did this to you. If it is the same man who caused the injuries to your back, he must be stopped. I have friends at the Yard. I-”

She shrugged my hand away. “A man. Just a man.”

I sat down in front of her and tilted her chin upward. “Penelope. How did you come to have to live like this?”

She tried to look away again but I persisted. “You are not from Cheapside or Covent Garden or Haymarket.”

“No, I am not. I was raised in... in a nice place. My father was a kind and wonderful man. But he died. And I was not permitted to take his place as I should have been. As I trained all my life to be. And then... and then I found myself with child and the man... he was very powerful, and very married. He sent me away. He said he was sending me to a safe place. He sent me to a woman in Knightsbridge who ran several brothels. She dressed her ladies well - many of my dresses were costly, made in Paris, and I had jewels. Some real, some not. Most of the good ones I’ve pawned. But when the baby was born, she tossed us both out, so I found work on the streets. I took lodgings on Dorset for a while. Then on New Street in Bishopsgate. Eventually I was able to make the connection to my present accommodation house. And the chap who runs it - he’s good to Mary.”

“Oh, Penelope,” I whispered, taking her hand.

She smiled weakly. “That’s not my real name. I’m Kate. Kate Dew.”

“All right. Kate, then. Kate, the first time you came to see me... you said that you saw something that you shouldn’t. What was it?”

She stood up abruptly. “I’ve said more than I should. Might you give me some more medicine? For the cough?”

“Of course.”

I went to my medicine cabinet and retrieved a small bottle. She outstretched her hand and tried to drop a sovereign into my hand. I folded her fingers over her palms. “Keep it. You and Mary need it more than I.”

“I don’t want your charity.”

“Don’t consider it charity then. Consider it payment for an enlightening, educational afternoon. After all, prior to today, I knew nothing of the Bachelor’s Pocket Book.”

She actually giggled at that but she still slipped the sovereign into my pocket.

I was about to hand it to her when one of Sherlock’s young errand boys came rushing into the office.

“Miss! ’ere. A message from Mr. ’olmes.”

I recognized the boy; his name was Rattle and he was about eight or nine years of age. Still thin as a scarecrow, still wearing overalls and a frayed cap above his black, sleek hair, he always remnded me of a street sweeper. “One moment, Rattle,” I cautioned. “I am with a patient.”

I gave the bottle to Kate and said, “I’ll see you next week, Kate.”

She nodded and left.

As I took the message from Rattle, a thought split through my brain like lighting rupturing the sky. I stopped and stared into space.

They call her the mute swan, I thought. In that despicable, deplorable bachelor’s guide to women of the night. Her father had died, leaving her penniless. Her father, she’d said earlier, had had to make a living by cleaning urinals at St. James Palace for four shillings a week when he could not do his regular job.

The boy Sherlock had spoken to, Thomas Abnett, told him that a Deputy Swankeeper had died, but his son stayed on for a while and then disappeared. Abnett said he was very distressed that is father was treated shabbily. And there was something else. What was it? Yes, I thought, I remember. Something to do with a member of Privy Council and the boy.

Kate had told me that she had trained all her life to fill her father’s shoes in his occupation. But she was not permitted to take his place. Why? Why couldn’t she? Because she was a girl, not a boy? Because her gender was discovered when this married man, her lover, made her pregnant and sent her away?

‘They call me the Mute Swan because I wear a nightdress with sleeves that look like swan wings,’ she’d said.

What if Kate knew all about swans, had been trained by her father to become a swan keeper, but could not occupy such a position because she was a girl? What if she and her father had hidden that fact from everyone but then, with her pregnancy, she was turned out on the streets by the Queen?

“Rattle!” I shouted. “Rattle, I have a job for you,” I said as I knelt down and placed my hands on his shoulders. “That young woman who just left. The pretty one wearing the blue dress. You saw her, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

I reached into my pocket and held the sovereign out to him. “This is yours. Follow her. Follow her and then come back and tell me exactly where she lives. Now she may go to James Street or she may go to New Street in Bishopsgate.”

“Worlds apart, Miss.”

“I know. But I must know both addresses. Another half-crown to you if come back here with both addresses.”

“But the message from Mr. ’olmes...”

“Yes, yes, give it to me. Now hurry so you do not lose sight of the woman. And do not let her know you are following her, Rattle.”

“Me, Miss? Rattle is like a shadow.”

He quickly turned and dashed down the hall.

“Run,” I whispered. “Run, run, little shadow.”