[MaC] Interviewing Esme

[Ree Moorhead Pruehs]

At 06:58 PM 1/3/2005, you wrote:
Esme looked at her apprehensively.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"What you're really upset about is that letter."

Esme looked around.  Now that Cyril and Arabella had left, Esme and Vangie 
were alone together.

"Yes," she said at last.  "She is in Bethnal Green, you know.  But ... our 
lives have been very different.  I married Marty and we became rich ... and 
she ... she helps girls in the East End.  And Marty found out!"

She dissolved into tears.

"That bullying husband of yours?" Vangie asked. There was a dangerous tone 
in her voice. As though she knew very well what it was like to have had a 
bullying husband. And before him, an overstrict father.

Esme nodded vigorously.  "He said ... that he would report her to the 
police.  Unless ... unless ... she helped him with chorus girls and so on 
who found themselves in ... in an unfortunate situation!"

Perhaps Vangie was beginning to sense that the sort of help Esme's sister 
gave to young women in the East End was not delivered in the form of soup 
kitchens.

"And she wrote to me," Esme went on, "and said that the rozzers ... the 
police, I mean ... have been asking questions.  About ... well, her customers."

Esme dabbed at her eyes again.

Vangie got up, went in her bedroom -- saw the mess Sweetie had made of her 
jewelry box and said several very bad words under her breath -- opened her 
top dresser drawer and got out some handkerchiefs, and offered them to 
Esme. "There now. Cry it out. It's all right." There were things that could 
be done about Marty Fitzroy, she thought grimly. But not yet.