Page 15 of The Six Murders of Daphne St Clair

RUTH:Scared of going home?

DAPHNE:Oh, I knew I’d never go back to Lucan. I would have jumped in front of a train before I did that. But just scared of being on the street, of maybe even having to sell my body for money, when I was already so sick of men. It’s funny, all these years later, I can still remember how terrified I was. I’d just lie in bed at night, paralyzed by the weight of it all. And that’s when I met Ted, at my lowest point. But that’s always when you meet men like Ted—when life has beaten the fight outta you. . .

That last desperate week was one of the worst times of my life. I walked all day, looking for work around the city, my whole body coursing with anxiety. My feet hurt from the dead wife’s shoes, but I couldn’t wear my old boots because then everyone would know exactly what I was. Most of them guessed anyways. I walked into a bakery and the woman behind the counter took one look at me, sunburnt and nervous, in an outfit that didn’t belong to me, and told me they didn’t hire trash. I tried every shop and restaurant I could find, but none of them had a job for a teenage girl with no schooling and no work experience other than dirt farming.

A shop owner pointed at the veterans lining up outside, hoping someone would give them a day job as a laborer, and asked me what made me think I was better than them. I hung my head and left, even though I really wanted to ask him what made him think he was better than me, even if all I had was a suitcase full of stolen clothes that I was already starting to sell off to other women in the boardinghouse.

I had moved to Winnipeg with something new—hope—and having it taken away so quickly hurt worse than never having it. I couldn’t eat. My mouth was full of a sour, dry taste, and my stomach churned constantly. I felt like the whole world was about to end. All I could hear was a loud, ticking clock, drowning out the rhythm of my own heartbeat.

“What’s a pretty little thing like you crying for?” A voice, low and warm. I was sitting on the back steps again, furiously wiping away loose tears, scraping my face with my red and bony hands. I had two days left at the boardinghouse before my money ran out.

“I’m not crying,” I mumbled, glancing up. A man was standing in front of me in a crisp white shirt and sharply creased trousers. He looked like he was in his early thirties but it was hard to tell; his blond hair and rosy cheeks made him look younger. He was smiling at me and that little bit of kindness after my desperate weeks as a stranger in Winnipeg made me want to cry harder.

“Don’t lie, I can always tell when a pretty gal is lying,” he said, his eyes twinkling. He sat down on the steps next to me, but not so close that our legs touched. He wasn’t bad-looking. He was trim and had clear blue eyes like two windows opening out on the sky. But his large ears, which stuck out from his head so far that his fedora seemed to rest on them, stopped him from being truly handsome.

“I can’t find a job,” I admitted, trying not to let my voice waver. “I moved here by myself and I’m almost out of money, and I’ve tried everywhere.” My voice broke and the tears bubbled up again under my hands.

“Darling, there’s no shame in it. Jobs are tough to find in this town. Look, you seem like a nice girl. Let me guess, you probably grew up in a small town, right? Why don’t you just go back? City life ain’t for everyone.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I can’t go back.” This brought on more tears, and I expected him to get up and leave, filing me away as just another lost cause, blown in from the prairies and destined for the streets.

But he stayed sitting next to me. I felt him press a handkerchief into my palm and I clutched it to my face, my whole body shaking with the effort to hold back the sobs.

“Aw, look, I shouldn’t do this, but I can’t stand to see a young girl in trouble. I rent out apartments in the North End of town. I’ve got a place you can stay. It’s nothing fancy, just one room with a shared bathroom at the end of the hall, but it’s yours. You could do housekeeping in my properties instead of rent.”

“Really?” I asked quietly, not quite believing what he was saying.

“Sure,” he said, writing an address down on the back of a matchbook. “Come by tomorrow. I’m Ted by the way.”

“I’m. . .Rose,” I said, giving him the name I’d chosen for myself when I got to Winnipeg. I felt the door to my old life shut behind me, the last shreds of Loretta Cowell falling away. But what lay ahead, I didn’t know.

HauteHistoire:“Hi, guys, welcome to my TikTok series inspired by Daphne St Clair and the podcastThe Murders of Daphne St Clair. I was sort of hoping things would get a bit more glamorous this episode. But well. . . it didn’t. But rest assured, I know from the news that Daphne does become wealthy at some point in her life, so we’ll have that to look forward to. . . But anyways, here we are. So fashion-wise, the Forties were. . . a bit shit. Everyone was too busy fighting wars and rationing fabric to have any fun. But there were a lot of skirt suits back then, so I’ve gone for a white Miu Miu one with strong shoulders and paired it with a cropped basketball top to keep it modern. This is kind of an office look. Not that Daphne worked in an office. . . but it’s definitely the kind of look that might inspire a young schemer to get to the top, no matter the consequences. Look, guys, I’m just really hoping she gets rich soon.”

The next day I went down to the North End, past the train yards and Ted showed me around the apartment. It was one room with a tidy little kitchen and a bed under a window overlooking a street bustling with all the immigrants to the city. I smiled. My own room. I had grown up in a one-room shack I had to share with my whole family, and now I got the luxury of my own room?

I was probably in that apartment twenty minutes before we had sex, barely enough time for my eyes to adjust.

I wasn’t an idiot. I knew that I would have to sleep with Ted. The whole city was awash with new arrivals, but Ted had decided to help the young, beautiful girl who was in no position to say no. This apartment—this clean, quiet place—rippled with hidden strings.

But I figured that sleeping with one guy was preferable to becoming a prostitute, and I was running out of options. I didn’t feel good about it, of course. In fact, the thought of sleeping with Ted disgusted me. I had wanted to leave all that shameful stuff back in Lucan, back with Loretta Cowell, the dirty daughter of the town drunk. The kind of girl who needed to be kept away from the other girls so she wouldn’t contaminate them with her hard-earned knowledge about the nasty side of life.

But growing up in Lucan in the Depression had taught me something else. I had seen person after person—kind, decent people—lose their farms because they didn’t have enough crops to sell. It didn’t matter how good you were, how much you had helped other people in the past, if you couldn’t pay the bank, your family was homeless and you were ruined. In the Hard Times, we all became what we could sell. All those finer qualities—charity, empathy, chastity—could come later, when we could make choices again.

In the moment when I decided to sleep with Ted, I tried to be optimistic. Maybe this was the beginning of a grand romance. Maybe the sex would be so enticing that I wouldn’t even recognize it as the same thing that had only ever been forced on me. I wanted to use sex to erase the past, to leave my slate blank. It was a tall order for something farm animals did.

“I’m so grateful, Ted,” I said, leaning against the wall. He stroked my cheek and smiled.

“Don’t worry, darling, you’re safe now.” He leaned over and softly kissed my mouth. It was a warm moment, and I found myself thinking that this really did seem different, that perhaps we were going to make love.

That hope was deflated as soon as Ted launched into a pattern of moves, clearly none of which he’d ever consulted a girl on. He kneaded my breasts like bread dough and stuck a slim finger inside of me and wiggled it around. He treated foreplay like the introduction to a novel, something he could skim through with no real need to pay attention, before bending me over the table and pumping away. For a moment, I felt a flash of fear, as if I was being suffocated and I had to take deep, shuddering breaths and remind myself that I wasn’t back in Lucan.

Ted noticed my overwhelmed reaction but assumed I was just overcome by the power of Ted and was encouraged to saw away even faster. I kept breathing until finally, the panic subsided and all that was left was boredom. I stared at the counter and mentally counted numbers—One Mississippi, Two Mississippi—hoping he’d climax soon. It took until 179.

“Thanks for that. You’re a great gal,” Ted said, after he straightened up his clothes.

“You too,” I said, relieved that I had paid my bill.

I moved in that day. Of course, I would take the room and job. In 1948, if the devil himself was offering me a cozy little place in hell, I would have taken it. And I did.

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