The Wanderers of the Water-Realm (24 page)

She carried her tray with its load of bottles and glasses, over to the half a dozen tables, situated close to the stage where the fight-promoter’s party had chosen to sit.

Hetty quickly ran her eyes over the birthday gathering. Pike, she immediately recognised from her son’s description, but the remainder were a very motley crew.

Four of the guests were muscular young gentlemen who appeared to be professional fighters, probably from the Sparta gymnasium, whilst two more were dressed in smart dark suits and might have been country clerics, had not the scars on their faces betrayed them as being hired thugs. The remainder were obviously middle class friends of the fight-promoter, men who probably frequented his numerous venues and possibly sought his company for the sporting entertainment that he was certainly capable of providing; some might even have been close businesses associates of the man. One thing was obvious, with the exception of the scar faced minders; they were all on the way to complete intoxication. Hetty unloaded some of the bottles and glasses at the first table, and then moved on to the next where Pike and some of his cronies were drinking ale like drowning men. “Here’s part of your order Mr Pike,” she said, smiling sweetly as she transferred the bottles and glasses to the tabletop and stretched over the table to collect some empty glasses giving the fight-promoter a close-up view of her very ample cleavage.

“I’ll be back soon with the rest of the order,” she said, and strode back to the bar, knowing instinctively that Pike’s eyes were now riveted upon her.

She placed the tray upon the bar and reaching behind her back with both hands. She deliberately began smoothing out the wrinkles in her velvet dress, allowing her fingers to run seductively over her well-formed buttocks. She turned her head slightly and out of the corner of her eye she noticed, with satisfaction, that the fight-promoter’s eyes were still fixed upon her.

Hetty served a number of other customers and then returned to the fight-promoter’s party, bearing a tray loaded with steaming bowlfuls of pig’s trotters and freshly cooked marrow-bones. She placed some of the bowls on Albert Pike’s table, but as she did so, he reached out and took hold of her by the wrist. “You must be one of my sister’s whores,” he said with beer dribbling down his chin. “I think I’ll take you upstairs right now, and celebrate my birthday by givin’ you a bloody good rodgerin….”

The fight-promoter proceeded no further with his drunken threat, for Mildred appeared at the wisewoman’s side as though conjured by magic. She pulled the man’s fingers from Hetty’s wrists. “Steady there Albert.” She said in a steely voice. “Not even me own brother is goin’ to maul me girls. You can have her tomorrow and ride her raw, besides, you couldn’t screw yer’ own shadow the state you’re in right now.”

Mildred’s final comment drew a burst of laughter from Pike’s immediate companions and the manageress ushered Hetty back to the safety of the bar, “get yerself’ up to yer’ room.” She ordered. “The rest of the girls can manage and get ready to give Albert a bloody good bouncing tomorrow night. Now shift yerself’!”

Alady singer wearing a vivid scarlet dress was finishing the last of a medley of sentimental songs as the wisewoman left the hall. “Enjoy the singing, Pike.” She thought. “Tomorrow night you’ll be singing a different tune. Aye and I’ll be the one doing the listening.”

Fabric ripped, as Albert Pike burst open the wisewoman’s bodice in his eager desire to fondle her breasts. Hetty’s dress, petticoats and drawers already lay in shreds alongside the bed, whilst she herself was stretched out across the embroidered coverlet, as the sexually aroused fight-promoter began licking and sucking her nipples with the eagerness of a child in desperate need for sustenance.

Pike had knocked upon the door of the private room less than ten minutes earlier and, upon being admitted, had completely ignored the Champagne, oysters and other delicacies spread out upon the dining room table. Instead, the man had dragged Hetty, his woman-for-the-night, into the adjoining bedchamber and stripped himself stark-naked, before roughly tearing the clothing from her body.

Hetty continued to endure the fight-promoter’s initially brutal attentions, until his mood began to change into one of languid passion as he feasted avidly upon her breasts, whilst the wisewoman encouraged Pike’s mood-change by gently stroking his back with the tips of her fingers. The man groaned, then ran his right hand down the length of her body, parting her pubic hair with his fingers and began expertly massaging her pelvic area with the tip of his index finger. Hetty responded to the man’s arousal technique by arching her spine and driving her fingernails into his back until she drew blood

The wisewoman’s action further stimulated the fight-promoter, who forced her legs apart and drove his penis into her body in a single movement. Hetty moaned in response and raked the man’s back with her fingernails, then, as the fight-promoter began ploughing into her she reached out with her right hand, retrieving one of the six drug impregnated thorns lying hidden beneath a napkin on her bedside table. Again, she raked the man’s back, using his pain to mask the prick of the thorn, which she slipped beneath his skin.

Pike grunted and continued pushing into her vigorously for another minute, then his movements slowed to a stop and his once rampant penis became flaccid and slipped out of the wisewoman’s body. Hetty laughed quietly in triumph, then slipped from beneath Pike’s body and turned him over onto his back. She took another of the thorns inserting it into the man’s arm close to an artery.

Pike was now quite unable to move and his eyes wandered aimlessly as the wisewoman began her interrogation.

Do you know Darryl Littlewood the ex-boxer?

“Yes.” He answered.

“Were you responsible for the ambush leaving him branded as a murderer?”

The man’s eyes focused upon her face for a moment. “No.” He grunted.

Tell me, who was to blame for the attack at “Hell’s Corner,” she said, pressing the thorn a fraction deeper into the man’s flesh.

“Silas Oldshaw.” Came the reply.

Hetty was amazed by the answer and she began to realize the plot, that had ruined her son, was deeper and far more complex than she had ever imagined.

She paused and visited the dining room to retrieved a glass and a bottle of Champagne, for it was now obvious that the interrogation would be long and complicated.

“We have the whole night before us, Albert my lad,” she said, looking down upon the prone form of the fight-promoter. “I’ll know all of your secrets, even if the drug should leave you stone dead”.

Hetty opened the curtains and allowing the dawn light to flood into her bedroom. She was tired!

The interrogation had taken most of the night, and had required all of the wisewoman’s wit, plus five of the six drug impregnated needles to glean the information that she required.

Albert Pike lay unconscious on the bed and his face was ashen white, yet his pulse was strong and the wisewoman had no doubt that two or three days rest would restore him to his usual self.

Hetty poured the last of the Champagne into her glass and pondered upon the importance of the information that she had extracted from the fight-promoter.

Joe and Mildred Pascoe, as she had suspected, were people of straw, who, despite their undoubted managerial expertise, held only a small financial interest in the eating house, the two commercial hotels and the music hall cum brothel.

Overall control of the group, Hetty had learned early in the interrogation, was vested in Albert Pike who owned a profitable quarter share in the venture. However, long and careful questioning was needed before the wisewoman was able to discover that Silas Oldshaw was the fight-promoter’s silent partner and the real power behind the two men’s various legal and illegal businesses enterprises.

Silas Oldshaw, it transpired, had also been directly responsible for her son’s ruin.

Stove-pipe Arkwright, the fight-promoter had disclosed, had sometimes undertaken small tasks for the mill owner and after his bitter clash with Darryl at the Sparta gymnasium, Stove-pipe had picked himself up off the floor and followed the young boatmaster to the premises of ‘Downes And Son’s’ his bankers. He had then hurried to Oldshaw’s town house and given the man a first-hand account of all that had occurred. The mill owner, Pike had revealed, had flown into a rage at being denied the bare-knuckle contest that he so desired, and had detailed one of his minions to accompany the runner and give the boatmaster a beating that would leave him half-crippled. Robbery, as a means of forcing Darryl to return to the ring had not, as the wisewoman had suspected, been the real reason for the brutal attack at “Hells Corner.” Instead, the motive had been the thwarted whim of a man with the power to hurt those who attempted to resist his will.

Hetty was now in possession of most of the main facts. Even so, she realized that she still had much to accomplish before being able to clear her son’s name.

At first, she had considered reporting both Albert Pike and Silas Oldshaw to the police, but the fight-promoter was sure to deny everything, once he regained full control of his faculties, and a possibility also existed that she would fall foul of a member of the constabulary who was already in the men’s pay.

“No.” She thought, she must bide her time and somehow find her son’s second assailant and his female accomplice and persuade them to provide evidence of Darryl’s innocence.

Pike, however, appeared to have no certain knowledge of their whereabouts, but he believed them to be creatures of the mill owner and members of his household.

Hetty splashed water from a ewer upon Pike’s face and applied smelling salts to his nostrils, as she worked she considered what her future course of action should be. One thing was certain; she must gain a greater knowledge of Oldshaw’s affairs.

Yet her witch’s inner-eye, that had remained dormant during her residence at the Cleopatra’had suddenly come awake, and she was now experiencing a deep feeling of menace whenever matters concerning the mill owner crossed her mind.

Indeed, there was a great deal about Silas Oldshaw that she did not fully understand. Why, for instance, should a prosperous industrialist who owned a large cotton mill in Stalybridge and reputed to have shareholdings in a number of other factories, have need to invest in a music hall that also doubled as a brothel? Only one explanation suggested itself to the wisewoman. Perhaps Silas Oldshaw had invested in the Cleopatra in order to discreetly provide himself with a supply of women, who could be made to satisfy his sexual appetites in any way he pleased. She gasped with horror as she began to suspect the nature of the man’s desire.

The wisewoman had kept her ear to the ground, during her stay in the Cleopatra, and she had discovered that several of the women had experienced varying degrees of physical abuse whilst visiting clients in their own homes. In most cases the injuries sustained were scratches and light bruises occurring during bouts of boisterous sex-play. However, some of the women had suffered far more serious forms of injury. For during the eight weeks that she had been in residence, two women had been excused duty for periods of ten days or more and another girl had needed a much longer period of treatment in a nursing-home at Buxton Spa.