Devoured (9 page)
‘It’s absolutely necessary to be objective in my profession. As with all science, Mr Broderig.’
‘Do you play chess, Professor?’
Hatton smiled, relieved at the change of direction. ‘A little. Do you?’
‘It passed the time in Borneo during the rainy season. Perhaps you would care to join me one evening? I’ve been playing with my father since I returned, but he’s not the queen slayer he used to be.’
‘I would be delighted to,’ answered Hatton.
The clock struck twelve. ‘Would you join me for lunch, Professor? You’d be very welcome.’
Hatton shook his head. ‘Another time, sir.’
Leaving Broderig, Hatton walked along the river for a bit. Chelsea riverside was bustling and, for a second, he watched the queue of passengers attempting to take the paddle boat to the city. There were arguments brewing with the steamer’s captain shaking his head and pointing at the ice. Hatton looked away from the ship and back towards the house on Nightingale Walk, which had taken on a melancholy air. He’d take the traces quickly, he told himself. He had no desire to linger there.
He knocked on the door which was opened by a dishevelled footman, his jacket half on and half off. Hatton went straight upstairs and into the room he had been in the night before. There were traces of the wax just along the sides of her desk. Hatton scraped them and bagged them, then went back down the stairs eager to visit the morning room, but found himself stopped on the stairs by a woman who had a rolling pin in one hand and a knife in the other. ‘The footman shouldn’t have let you just glide in here, sir. Why, you could have been anyone.’
Hatton was impatient to get on. ‘I’m working alongside Inspector Adams. I’m here on police work.’
‘I know who you are, sir. You’re the doctor of death, aren’t you? I have heard all sorts of things about your black art, and it’s not right, I say. Not right at all that our lady is being … no I shall not say it, for it sickens me. Isn’t it enough that I have all of this to deal with?’ She waved the knife around in a terrifying fashion and Hatton, not normally a man to shirk a blade, stepped back a little, for the tip was close enough to shave what little whiskers he had, which was hardly any.
‘Please, Mrs …’
‘Cook will do. I don’t go by any other title. I don’t mean to be rude, sir. Just to the point. Are you finished up then with whatever you were doing?’
Hatton shook his head at her and then dared to creep down a little further, sensing that her mood was softening, because the blade had come down to the starch of her apron.
‘I have to check the morning room, so if you would be so kind to show me the way. I have an important report to conclude.’ The cook flinched again but Hatton kept on anyway, because he had become tired of this so-called sensitivity to his work, which he saw as nothing more than hypocrisy. Society used his science, but they didn’t want to acknowledge it.
‘Well, if you must, it’s not my business to say if you can or cannot. And I suppose you’ll be wanting something?’
Hatton answered quickly, before she changed her mind, ‘Tea would be good. Thank you, Cook.’
‘I’ll send a maid up with it. The morning room is one door along.’
He found the room easily, opened the curtains, and looked about the place. Bills and an appointment book on the desk, dressmakers’ patterns left piled high. A mannequin for alterations, and to his left, positioned on its own embossed cherrywood table, a magnificent globe. He pushed his finger hard along the curve, admiring its spherical richness. Hatton smiled to himself, and was just about to look at the place chosen for him by the spinning orb when presto, there was a rap at the door.
He cleared his throat with a stern, ‘Enter.’
The maid was rickets-crooked with poxy skin. She begged his pardon and set the tea tray down clumsily and asked if he wanted milk with it. And as she poured, she sniffled to such an extent that there was nothing to do but to offer her a handkerchief, and tell her to blow. ‘Thank you, sir. I’m not myself and this is not usual my work. Cook told me to do it cos the housemaid, her name’s Emma, she’s off polishing the drawing room …’ And at once the sobbing started. Hatton could do without this interruption to his work, but ordered her to sit down for a bit, saying that he was a doctor and she was to do as she was told.
‘I’m fine now, sir. Really I am. Cook will want me back in the scullery. I’ve got work to do.’
‘Very well, so long as you are completely composed. Tell her to give you some tea with two sugars in it. You’re very pale, my dear. Tell Cook I insist on it. Do you have a name, child?’
The girl looked at him, her big eyes swelling again. ‘Yes, sir. I have a name, sir.’
Hatton was not without humanity. ‘Well, my dear, what is it?’
‘My name is Violet, sir. Violet. I don’t really have a second name, but when Cook took me in, well, I am like a daughter to her she says, so she’s given me hers. She calls me Violet Jennings, cos she says it’s no way for a girl like me to be without a family name even if you’ve got none, so to speak. She says, Nightingale House is my family now, sir.’
‘Indeed.’ Hatton was bemused by this broken creature. ‘And the other maid, Violet. Was she like a daughter, too? The maid who has fled?’
The maid’s eyes widened. ‘Flora ain’t like me. She’s regular educated and was Madam’s favourite. And before you asks me, I don’t know where she’s gone.’
The Professor smiled, and touched her arm, but she pulled it back, embarrassed. ‘But I ain’t no snitch. She ain’t so bad. She took me to a museum once. But now she’s gone, and I must work twice as hard. It ain’t considerate of her.’
‘So you don’t think Flora ran away, then? You don’t think there’s a connection with what’s happened here? There’re no valuables gone. Do you think anything’s missing, Violet? I bet you’re a really clever girl who notices everything.’
The maid moved towards the door, but not before saying, ‘Flora’s a good girl, sir, just a bit la-di-dah, with her gloves and her ladylike manners, but that ain’t a crime, is it? Flora came and went as she pleased. Cook says Madam indulged her. But I’m not supposed to discuss nothing with no one, ’cept the coppers. I told them everything, which is nothing, sir.’
The maid gone, Hatton took what other traces of wax he could find about the place and then, leaving the house, hailed a carriage back to St Bart’s thinking, so Violet must have been the one that found the body and who he heard sobbing last night. What a shock for her. No wonder she was pale.
When Hatton arrived at the mortuary, Roumande was writing, muttering French expletives.
‘Is something bothering you, Albert?’
‘I have damned well put the wrong detail down on this bit of the form.’ He crossed out a line with something sounding like a snort.
‘Is that Lady Bessingham’s autopsy report?’
‘No, Professor. No, this is the little girl’s.’ He flicked his quill over to the smaller cadaver.
‘No one asked you to do that, Albert. Why in heaven’s name do you bother?’ Hatton despaired of Roumande’s overzealousness. An autopsy report for a pauper?
‘Well, I understand you are going to Cambridge, Professor,’ Roumande replied curtly. ‘Would it be too much trouble to give this to him?’
‘Give it to Inspector Adams, you mean?’
‘Is the little girl’s murder really worth less of our time than Lady Bessingham’s? Of course, it’s meant for Scotland Yard. It’s his responsibility, and Inspector Adams, it’s coming back to me now, I’m sure he worked in the slums before he become so celebrated.’ His lips curled round the word. ‘It’s the least we can do for the child. And I shall pay to bury her. She’s not going in the incinerator. I’ll not stand for it.’
‘Calm yourself, Albert. Please, I don’t disagree with you. We’ll go halves. We’ll have a proper burial, a lined coffin, we’ll do her hair, we’ll lace her shroud, I’ll visit the grave myself …’
‘Thank you, Adolphus. I’m overwhelmed a little.’ Roumande gestured at the huge pile of work on their desk. ‘There’s never any end to it, is there?’
‘Work is work, Albert. Don’t let it get on top of you.’
‘That’s easy to say, Adolphus, but you forget it’s my responsibility to make ends meet here. There is so little response to our pleas, so little interest.’
Hatton was sick of the subject. Money, or the lack of it. ‘Send another letter, Albert. You managed to get the saw, didn’t you? And the microscope? There are people out there who want to support us. Just keep going. Leave the letters on my desk and I’ll sign them when I get back. I need to drop in on The Yard.’
‘With all due respect, Professor …’
Hatton rolled his eyes. He knew what was coming. ‘Then sign them yourself, Albert. For heaven’s sake man, you’ve done it before. Just write the damn letters.’
Flora James pulled the blanket up over her lap, shivering a little. She still wasn’t convinced they hadn’t been followed. Moving shadows, when they first came here, looming out on the street and odd noises down the stairwell. Whatever Dr Canning had said to comfort her, it didn’t matter. She was still afraid.
‘Miss James, you’re imagining it. Is it any wonder that your mind should play tricks on you, after all that has happened? Don’t forget that I’ve barely left your side. But you cannot hide in this room forever. I think the sooner we go to the police and explain everything, the better.’ Dr Canning looked at the girl, who was instantly a mass of heaving sobs again.
‘Don’t start up again, please, Miss James. I’m expected back at the museum for a lecture, but I’ll see to it that the doors are securely locked behind me. And tonight I’ll do what your mistress would have wanted. I’ll get the letters to Babbage.’ Canning patted the scroll of letters and smiled. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
They were five flights up in a flat-fronted terraced house in Gordon Square. Flora stood up and moved towards the mantel, taking the invitation down again. It was black rimmed.
‘I don’t even have any mourning clothes, Dr Canning. No crepe. Not even a veil.’ Flora put the funeral invitation, which was addressed to Dr John Canning of 10 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, back in its place. It had arrived today in the morning post. The funeral was to be held in a few days time. She would make do with her fawn dress and her drab winter coat. Perhaps Violet or Cook would have something for her when she got to Ashbourne, a sash or a swathe of sombre bombazine, because go there she would, invited or not.
Dr Canning shut the door firmly behind him, and she listened to his brisk footstep disappearing like a fading echo. She poured herself a little drop of porter and thought of him, this man she barely knew. Her position in his lodging house was not appropriate.
She had tapped on the door that morning in the British Museum, two days ago now, and he’d looked up and smiled, sending the porter away. What a wreck she must have looked. But he didn’t seem to notice and welcomed her in and she had told him everything her mistress had said.
‘Please, Miss James. Sit yourself down because I’ve been expecting you.’
She had rambled a little about what her mistress had said needed checking, which sections needed verifying, before the letters could go to their real destination, the
Westminster Review.
He’d read them initially in silence then suddenly smiling, or sighing or saying out loud, ‘I couldn’t agree with you more’ and then towards the end ringing entire paragraphs. It was beyond her, although Lady Bessingham had warned her that the ideas contained within would cause a storm.
‘Just think. Little Flora delivering a sensation, and myself at the centre. What a commotion we’ll cause. I’m glad I’ve finally made my decision to share them. They’re my letters, after all.’ And her mistress had laughed as she had said it, and asked for the green dress with the jet sash.
Dr Canning’s room at the museum had been crammed with bones, arrows, and masks. The type Flora saw that day she came to the museum as a visitor once. But these artefacts were not for public display, but rather strewn about in corners, or teetering precariously on piles of books.
There were compasses and strange instruments and pictures on the walls of native people. Savage men with haircuts which looked like the latest gentlemen’s fashion for bowler hats. And those monstrous holes in their lobes. Why did they do that?
Dr Canning had caught her staring and had asked if she would like to see the pictures better. Had she actually nodded? She had, and he’d taken a book down from one of the shelves. The image that stuck in her mind was a drawing of a young woman covered from head to foot in swirling tattoos. She had a little star and a flower like the one her mistress favoured, but these were not tiny, delicate things. These were enormous, and curled up the young woman’s hip and spread out like branches or creeping ivy across her breasts.
Flora had shut the book, crimson-faced. She’d forgotten herself. Dr Canning had carried on making notes once again in determined silence and then finally, when he spoke, there was a look on his face, a look of such astonishment it made Flora fear for them both. He shook his head, as if the letters were a burden, but then stood up, ran his hands through his hair, turned to her, and said, ‘They are as I suspected. The ideas in the letters are embryonic but they question all that we know, everything we believe in. She is right. They will set the world on fire, and in the wrong hands could be extremely dangerous. I suspect your mistress wants Mister Babbage to see them as “a shot across the bows” to a bigger debate which must follow. And it will, Miss James, because we’re just the beginning. Tell me, Miss James, there was a publication ten years ago called
Vestiges
. Perhaps you have heard of it?’
