Scarlet Widow Read Online Free PDF

didn’t seem to know what to do. Beatrice felt her heart beating against her ribcage and she was so frightened that she was breathless. Five drunken meat-porters would probably do far more than hurt Robert, they would probably murder him – and they would probably hurt her, too. She suddenly thought of a dead woman she had seen lying in Hosier Lane once, her face bruised crimson and her petticoats dragged up around her waist, and a wooden shovel handle thrust up her.
    She tried to grab Robert’s hand. He didn’t seem to understand what she wanted him to do and she had to snatch at it a second time before he took hold of it. He stared at her wide-eyed and said, ‘ What ?’ but she said nothing at all. She pulled him away from the counter and across the bar towards the pub’s back door.
    The porters shouted, ‘Oi! Oi! Oi ! You come back here, you little shite-cock!’ But Beatrice and Robert scrambled through the door together and Robert slammed it behind them. He turned the key in it and bolted it top and bottom. He was just in time. Two or three seconds later the porters crashed into it, so that one of its panels was split. There was a moment’s pause and then they crashed into it again, but it stayed firmly in its frame.
    ‘ Open up !’ they roared. They sounded more like ferocious beasts than men. ‘ Open up this damned door or else !’
    Beatrice and Robert stayed where they were, staring at each other, not daring to speak. The porters kicked at the door and then they battered a chair against it, but after a few more desultory kicks they gave up. Beatrice could hear voices. It sounded as if Mr Andrews might have come upstairs from the cellar.
    ‘What are we going to do?’ she whispered. It was gloomy and very cold out there in the corridor, and there was a sickly sweet smell which made her stomach tighten. It reminded her of church.
    Robert was about to say something when there was a sharp, quick knock at the door.
    ‘Robert? Are you out there, Robert? Can you hear me?’
    ‘Mr Andrews! I’m out here with Bea, the ’pothecary’s daughter!’
    ‘What’s been happening, for God’s sake? There was five or six fellows in here and they claim that you attacked them. They was bent on tearing you limb from limb if they could.’
    ‘I was defending Bea’s honour, Mr Andrews!’
    ‘What with, a double-headed axe? There’s more blood on the floor than Symond’s slaughterhouse!’
    ‘Mr Andrews!’ Beatrice called out. ‘Have they gone now, those men?’
    ‘Yes, my darling, I threw them all out. But if I was you, I’d leave through the yard, and back-slang along the alley to your place. If you go out by the front door, you may well find them waiting for you round the corner. They’re very drunk, to say the least, and I wouldn’t want you to come to no harm.’
    ‘One of them was trying to make Bea kiss him,’ said Robert. ‘That’s the only reason I lammed him.’
    ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ Mr Andrews told him. ‘Open the door so that I can give Mistress Bannister her two bottles of gin, and then she can go.’
    Robert shot back the bolts and unlocked the door. Mr Andrews appeared, his cheeks even redder than usual. He handed Beatrice a coarse hessian sack with two heavy earthenware bottles in it, which clinked as she took them.
    ‘Give your papa my very good wishes,’ he said. ‘But also tell him he won’t never find the answer to his sorrows in Geneva. Only here at home, in London.’
    Beatrice said, ‘Thank you, Mr Andrews,’ very quietly. She understood exactly what he was saying, and she felt better for his sympathy. He was one of the few people who seemed to understand how lonely she felt, and how hard she had to work to help her father, and how worried she was about his drinking.
    ‘You’ll have to come through the stiffatorium, I’m afraid,’ said Robert. ‘But don’t you worry. There’s none of them can hurt you, not in here.’
    Beatrice hesitated, but then she