Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (42 page)

Before the evening was out, a wonderful new doctor came. I do not remember Dr Howie’s method, except that he gave us tasks, and thus inspired our confidence. We must get her system into flux again. Make her drink, and sweat, and micturate, in the hope that the passing of fluid through her slight frame might drag the fever out with it. We held hot compresses of rosemary to her temples. We loaded her bed with covers. Whenever she seemed half awake, we put water to her lips. The nurse raised eyebrows at all this. But the poor thing did seem to take some water, and I left that night, filled with hope.

The fifth evening, she had taken a turn for the worse. I cursed myself and all doctors. Uncertainly, we kept up his regimen of treatment. Just before I had to leave, fearing gravely that I might never see the little girl alive again, I was rewarded. Her lips opened to the water I was offering. A few moments later, she stirred.

“Molly?” I said and took her hand. “Molly, can you hear me? This is Ruth. Ruth Villiers. A friend of your brother, Worm.”

The eyes opened heavily and she smiled a smile so weak it broke my heart. “I do know you, lady. I do. Is Worm here? I ’spect he’s busy on business.”

“Molly, take some water.”

“Thank you. I think I just might.” She drank long and full.

“Don’t tire yourself now. You must rest to get better.”

She looked at me reproachfully. “There is no need to fool me, Miss. I thought I was already long gone. Drownded. How he got me out I don’t know. Miss Bilious?”

“Yes, Molly,” I said, trying not to laugh.

“Can I request something of you?”

“Of course you can, my dear girl.”

“When I die, bury me out in the green fields, far far from here. Not them burying grounds.”

I stared at her in dismay.

She smiled and went on cheerily. “It’s this filthy city has killed me. I ain’t no foundling, I’m one of Mr Skelton’s best boys, and I’d rather be buried out there, on one of them hillsides, looking at the cows and maybe a river and trees, if you’d be so kind.”

With that, her eyes closed and her breathing settled. When finally I dragged myself away, her fragile little hand was still holding mine. I was late for my boarding house and had to tap on the poor chambermaid’s window for half an hour for her to undo the bolts and let me in without incurring my landlady’s wrath. I was also late for my exam the next day. Worst of all, I couldn’t seem to care.

The sixth evening, there seemed no sign of improvement. I tried to study but couldn’t keep my eyes open. I dreamt I saw a man by her bedside, a kindly thin man, whispering soothing words to her, who murmured as he passed me, “Bless you, lady,” and silently left. When I awoke, I asked the nurse, but nobody had been in besides me.

The seventh evening, the yellow tinge was gone from her face. I feared at first that we had lost her. Dr Howie appeared, smiling approvingly. “What she will be needing, Miss Villiers, is affection and care and some feeding up.”

I looked at him in consternation.

“Has she a home?”

“She is loath to speak of it. I can only imagine it is some windy slum.”

“You wouldn’t know of any philanthropic folk willing to take in such a wight while she’s recovering from her close call?”

“She is recovering?”

“She is.”

I smiled valiantly. “These philanthropic folk. Would they need to be kin?”

“The Children’s Hospital is accustomed to unusual family set-ups. I’m sure a special dispensation can be arranged.”

I smiled. The next evening I left clear word that, if anyone should ask for her, they should be directed to visit at my lodgings. Still poorly and shivering, the Professor moved in with me.

SERGEANT LAWLESS’ NARRATIVE RESUMED

Aquae Sulis

A visit to the Old Street church proved inconclusive. The priest whom I interrupted whilst working on his sermon was Canon Symon’s replacement. He promised to dig out his predecessor’s new address. When I said I must have it now, he left aside his sermon and our exchange became rather strained. However, I left with a scrap of paper bearing the name of a small parish on the outskirts of Bath.

Over and over I studied Mme Skelton’s note, as if it could yield up secrets. The spindly writing seemed familiar. I supposed it no surprise that it should resemble Berwick’s, if she had taught him his letters. Was it foolish to rush off in pursuit?

The Exhibition would close the following evening with a gathering of luminaries, but more important was the Garden Party at the Palace the day after. Although the Queen had not budged an inch out of mourning, her canny courtiers were gambling on a repeat of last year’s triumph.

How different everything was now. The country seemed in crisis. Riots, famine and anger wherever you turned. The government obsessed by far-off squabbles, and not a drop of confidence in it at home. The party at the Palace must go smoothly, Wardle declared, so that the assembled aristocrats and chairmen and dignitaries would fan back across the country, spreading the word that all was hale at the heart of things. Perhaps such moments really do occur, when the hub of things must hold firm, so that the rest of us can carry on revolving happily around it.

Yet I couldn’t help but see serendipity in the note’s timing. Finding Nellie still seemed to me the crucial step forward. This friend of the family, far from the city, might be free from the endless webs of secrecy that had so far confounded me. The notion of winding up Skelton’s story was intoxicating.

I wired St Jude’s in Somerset on the Friday afternoon. After work, I took my time changing, to leave a decent interval for Wardle to catch his train, then headed for Paddington, beneath gathering storm clouds. By the time the Bath train left the suburbs, the night was already black. My first trip out of London since my arrival, more than three years previously, and it seemed as if the whole countryside had been extinguished. I huddled in the corner of the third class carriage, going over and over Skelton’s threats in my head more out of habit than in hope, and dozed fitfully. I had hoped to make sufficient queries that night to find Canon Symon in the early morning and be back by lunchtime. But I was soaked through by the time I stumbled into the station hotel. With no stomach for polite enquiries, I huddled by the fire and considered my options. Should I give up on my country excursion and head back first thing? The Greenhouse would be awash with constables all day. It was a risk, but as long as I was there by early afternoon, I shouldn’t be missed.

I had counted on finding cheap transport for the day, but the cabbies turned out to be as expensive as their London counterparts and more impertinent. As I sat on the back of a milk cart, gripping the churns as we bumped up muddy country roads, the drizzle came on again and you could barely tell the day had come. The kindly fellow sat a while after setting me down at St Jude’s, on a barren promontory overlooking the river.

“That be St Jude’s,” he said again, chewing on his tobacco.

“Thank you,” I repeated, searching about me for signs of life. “And the rectory?”

The fellow frowned. “St Jude’s, you said.”

“That’s right, my man. But it’s the priest I need to speak to. Canon Symon.”

“Symon.” He nodded slowly, seemingly oblivious to the rain streaming over the brim of his hat. “Symon. That’ll be the vicar man, will it? Him as lives on the edge of the village.”

“The village?” I exclaimed.

He blinked. The rain lightened for a moment, then set in again. “The village as that we just passed through.”

As I stomped back over the brow of another bleak hill, I was in a foul mood. The last roses of summer were nodding around the eaves of the cottage. The warm yellow light at the windows glowed through the haar, offering indescribable relief, and the notion took me that I must escape from the big city before it proved too much for me.

“Skelton?” Canon Symon mused in a tone that must have drawn sober reflection from his congregation. “Yes, indeed. I married them.”

My eyes open wide. “Berwick and Nellie?”

“Who?” He sat back from the hearth, where my coat and boots were steaming in the heat. “Oh, now, is it the son you mean?”

Through the windows of his drawing room, I could see sunlight finally breaking through the clouds and onto the Avon Valley. I felt a swell of relief within me, not just the calm of the countryside, I think; rather the hills. I always found it strange in London that not one horizon was fringed with hills. “Yes, sir. Berwick Skelton.”

“Ah, now, it was the parents I married. Unlucky couple. Perhaps it was a poor match. Astonishing, really, the people that the great city brings together. A fugitive of the French Revolution with an Irish labourer.”

“Labourer? Was he not an engineer, with Brunel?”

“May have worked with Brunel. But shovelling rather than engineering.”

He talked on as I looked about me, thinking of Madame Skelton’s belief that her husband was a great inventor. Was she a fantasist pure and simple? I think not. She simply painted the world, and her loved ones’ place in it, in glowing colours. And who can say that such belief did not instil Berwick with confidence?

“Invalided out, as I recall,” Canon Symon continued. “More of a curse than a blessing, though. He took to drink and gambling.” He told me his version of Mr Skelton’s decline, in which he died not on a charitable visit to the Poor House, but rather living there, after his imprisonment for debt in the Clerkenwell House of Detention. It must have impressed upon Berwick that hard work was no security in itself. “The mother did well to keep the boy from going to the bad. A serious child, I recall, industrious and well-intentioned.”

“And Nellie?”

“I christened a multitude of Ellens and Eleanors in those days. That’s London, you see. All fashions and fads. Everything is so fast there, don’t you find? Life down here has a little more solidity to it.”

I burst out in irritation. “Do you know nothing of his engagement?”

“Why, Sergeant,” he said, palms spread wide in apology, “I had no taste for the revolutionary fervour of the city. I left London in ’49.”

On the train back from Bath, one of those glorious autumn days swept away the remains of the storm and seized hold of the landscape. Yet I was late, and the sunlight dappling the gentle hillsides could not keep my mind from darker things.

I wondered exactly how much Worm knew. I thought of Shuffler, the Tosher King, returning home from a day under the ground. On a dark street corner he bumps into a small figure, a terrier of a man, a man he knows from certain dealings, as yet unresolved. The man barks for attention. Shuffler makes some amusing remark. The terrier is not amused; the blackmail Shuffler has attempted rises up in his gorge and he strikes out in blind anger. Shuffler, not so young as he once was, is thrown off balance. He stumbles. He falls. The man has chosen the place for its darkness, its silence. Shuffler falls down a flight of steps, tumbling over and over. The man follows vengefully, kicking him down to the darkest corner of hell, making sure he will not return. He checks that Shuffler has stopped breathing – though he does not check carefully enough – and he leaves.

I thought too of the foolish expense of this vain excursion. I could make no sense of it. Why had Madame Skelton sent me there, when Canon Symon knew far less than she? I studied the note again. The tone was formal: that was convincing. The message was gushing: that was convincing too. But the English was a little too correct. As the train pounded on, closer and closer to home, I studied the handwriting closely, the extravagant “
g
”, the flourish of the “
f
” curling into the next letter. I should have known. It was disguised, but there was no doubt. It was written in the same hand as the threats.

FINALLY NELLIE

My cab drew up at the Yard, next to a fine carriage, at a quarter past four. I would change my boots and hurry to the Greenhouse. As I was going in, I felt a strange thrill down my spine. I thought I saw a movement within the shutters of the fine carriage – a face, perhaps, withdrawing hastily into the shadows. I stood, indecisive for a moment, until Darlington came out to greet me.

“There you are,” he said. “Had the day off, have you? A couple of messages. Thought you’d want them before you, you know, went off.” He gave a knowing wink and vanished inside.

In some confusion, I ripped open the first envelope. “Where are you? Wardle.” I took a deep breath and opened the other, to see Miss Villiers’ elegant writing. “About time I heard from you. See you at the stereoscope at 3pm.” I put my fingers to my brow. It was as if she had only just received my invitation of months ago. Today, of all days. She would never forgive me.

“Sergeant Lawless?” called a voice from the fine carriage. Only the full lips speaking my name were visible.

I was struck with unease. Had one of Madame Lorraine’s girls been engaged to abduct me from my duties? Was I being tricked again? Come, come, there would be hundreds of coppers at the Exhibition’s closing, and I had learned nothing so devastating in these last days that I would need to be kept away.

The carriage door opened. I tucked away the envelopes and stepped up into the darkness.

“Where are you headed?” said the lady in clipped tones, as if measuring out each syllable. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I studied the shapely young woman. Striking features she had too, framed by a tumble of russet hair. Whether the radiance of her face was rather a febrile pallor, I was not sure. “You are in a hurry, I fear.”