The Solitary House (13 page)

Charles wants to deny it but knows he can’t. Lying is the one tool of his trade he’s never really mastered. He tries another tack. “Sounds to me like you come from round here.”

The man eyes him guardedly. “What’s that to you?”

“I assume most of the men who work here are Bermondsey boys?”

The man puts the knife down and looks Charles full in the face. He’s a big man, and thickly built, with a shaven head and a dark indistinct tattoo on the side of his neck.
“Bermondsey boys?”
he echoes, his voice unable to contain his contempt. “What are you, some kind of bloody nancy? Looking for a bit of local rough-and-ready?”

This last is accompanied by a particularly lewd gesture, and before Charles can react the tanner’s reached out a hand dripping with fat and taken him by the chin like a girl, to the coarse amusement of the rest of the yard. “Well we might just be able to help you there, what do you think, lads?”

Something flickers red in Charles’s brain, and though he’s barely half the man’s weight, he seizes his thick wrist and tries to force his fingers away. “Get your stinking hands off me—”

The man comes closer and brings his face within a kiss of Charles’s. “Oh really?” he says softly. “So you don’t like the way I smell? Well in that case, why don’t you take your pretty face and your fancy voice, and
hook it
. We don’t take to the likes of you round ’ere, and we look after our own. Am I makin’ myself clear?”

The man puts both hands on Charles’s chest and pushes him roughly away. He stumbles, landing flat on his back in the muck, and only just misses downing himself in the bating trough. The viscous white filth is clinging to his face, and he wipes it away in furious disgust. He gets to his feet and retreats across the yard with as much dignity as he can manage. One or two of them grab at his backside as he leaves, and when he reaches the gate, the yard behind him is raucous with whistling and strident laughter.

He made a complete mess of it, he knows that. Well-spoken stranger asking leading questions; small wonder the man was wary. He should have known better. At the building next door he takes different tactics. He opts to speak to the manager, not the men, but it doesn’t get
him much farther. The manager is harassed and only half listens, but he claims he doesn’t know of anyone from Cornwall working in the area. And nor, indeed, does anyone else Charles asks. One owner thinks he recalls a man who might have been from those parts, but it was months ago and he can’t remember his name; another can only think of a young lad who had “a strange accent—thick as soup—we could hardly make out what he was saying half the time,” and a third refuses to speak to him at all, all the while eyeing Charles’s filthy trousers with obvious suspicion. By the time he reaches the end of the street he’s beginning to wonder if he’s wasting his time. He considers for a moment asking in the Fellmongers’ Arms, but a glance through the window at the group of silent men smoking together in the gloomy taproom convinces him otherwise. He’s not sure he would even want to drink in there. And in any case, it’s getting late. He’s had enough.

The journey back is very uncomfortable. It’s not that he’s wet through from shirt to feet (though he is), or even that once the Bermondsey smell abates somewhat he finds he’s ravenously hungry (though he’s that too); it’s the looks of those around him that make him shift in his seat and look determinedly out of the window. The ’buses are more and more crowded the closer he gets to home, but even though the last one up the Strand is packed full, the only person willing to take the seat next to Charles is the smallest son of a large and alarming lady with spectacles and a prominent nose sitting opposite, who flaps her handkerchief in front of her face and says, “Oh, dear me, this is most trying, most trying!” very loudly indeed, to no-one in particular, for a whole slow half a mile. The child looks absolutely ferocious with discontent, and glowers at Charles’s reeking trousers as if he can never forgive the injury being done to his olfactory nerves. By the time Charles gets to Buckingham Street he wants to tear his clothes off and dump them in the nearest ditch, and as soon as he
reaches the house he rushes down the back-stairs to the kitchen, looking for Molly and hot water.

Both of which he finds.

She’s standing before the kitchen grate, stripped to the waist, a bowl before her, and a wash-cloth in her right hand. He’s never seen her without her starched white cap, and her hair is cut so close to her head that he can see the exquisite curve of her skull, the delicate hollow at the nape of her neck. He’s seen naked girls many times, but never one so unadorned. Her breasts are as flat as a boy’s, the nipples erect and tender in the cold air. The dark skin, the white cloth, the cool milky light from the kitchen window; it is as perfect, and as motionless, as a Vermeer. How long he stares at her, he could not have said; it’s only when she lifts her face to his, and meets his eyes for the first time in that house, that he shifts his gaze and turns away, his cheeks burning.

“I—I wanted some hot water. To wash.”

She drops her eyes and nods, then pulls her chemise up about her shoulders.

He turns, and leaves the room.

Half-way up the stairs he hears a noise behind him, and sees Stornaway emerge onto the landing beneath.

“Mr Charles!” he calls. “Someone here to see ye.”

“I need to change my clothes before I see anyone. Who is it—can they wait?”

“A Mr Chadwick, it is.”

Charles stops. “I see. Please give him my apologies, and say I will be down without delay.”

He’s been dreading this interview; dreading it, and putting it off. But now he has to think of something to say, and quick. He peels off his revolting clothes and kicks them into a pile by the bed, then upends the cat from his next-cleanest shirt, there being no time to unearth a new one from the (still-half-unpacked) trunk. He keeps his back purposefully to the door, so that when the girl comes with the water he does not see her. Ten minutes later he is almost fit for decent company; five minutes more and he is downstairs.

Mr Chadwick has appropriated the only chair in the office, though Charles can hardly begrudge it to him. He’s a frail old gentleman, neat and well-dressed, with a little grey head and a bearing that would have been stately but for a trembling in one of his hands and a certain rigidity in his limbs that makes it difficult for him to sit comfortably in his seat, and reduces him to moving in quick small shuffling steps.

When Charles opens the door his visitor is rather ostentatiously consulting his pocket-watch.

“Mr Chadwick, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well.”

The old man puts up his watch and looks at Charles over his gold eye-glasses. “I should be a great deal better if I had not chased around town half the morning looking for
you
. Could you not have informed me that you had removed here? A mere two lines would have sufficed, but instead of that, I not only had to waste both time and money being carried to your former lodgings, but then endure the indignity of being forced to enquire for your landlady at a common—and, I may say, most
insalubrious
—public-house.”

Monday, thinks Charles. Mrs Stacey’s Linen Box committee day.

“I am very sorry you were inconvenienced, sir.”

He wants to suggest going for a second chair, but feels that in his client’s eyes he has not yet earned the right to sit down.

“Well, sir?” demands Chadwick. “What have you to say for yourself?”

“I apologise for my oversight, sir. My great-uncle was taken ill, and I had no alternative but to—”

The old man waves his hand impatiently. “Not that, not that. The
investigation
. Have you, or have you not, made any progress in discovering my grand-child?”

“I have, as you know, interviewed the beadle in charge of the workhouse where your daughter died—”

“—where they
told
me she died. There were no records, you know, no grave.”

Charles looks rueful. “I doubt there are many workhouse inmates who are accorded the dignity of an individual resting-place. As for the lack of proper records, it was, was it not, some time later that you first enquired?”

Chadwick starts to rub his left thumb and forefinger together; it is a tic he has, which usually indicates he is becoming anxious.

“You know very well, Mr Maddox, that my wife and myself had been estranged from our daughter for some months before her death, and you know very well the reason why—”

“—you discovered she was with child.”

The old man is now somewhat flushed about the face; the trembling in his hand is noticeably worse.

“I never could comprehend how such a calamity could have come upon us. Not seventeen years of age, brought up piously in a devout home, watched over day and night, schooled in the strictest observance of her religion, and ever mindful of her duty to a God who is both watchful and avenging—”

“But merciful, too, surely?”

Chadwick looks at him sharply. “That is not for us to say, and certainly no business of
yours
. I may tell you, Mr Maddox, that even in the face of such a terrible blow, I took no hasty step. I searched my
conscience, I consulted members of our families, I spoke to my brother-in-law, and I sought spiritual advice from our minister, a most exemplary man, held in the highest esteem, and a most ardent speaker whose sermons draw attendance from many miles around. And there was not a dissenting opinion among them: It was our duty, as Christians, to cast her out.” His voice falters slightly. “They all agreed, I tell you. Cast her out.”

“But you changed your mind,” says Charles quietly.

“My wife became ill. She had argued, from the first, for leniency.”

There is a silence. The old man is breathing rather heavily.

“Constance made me promise, on her death-bed, that I would do everything in my power to find our daughter and the child, and forgive her. I have taken that as a sacred trust. This is why I persist in this unhappy pursuit. Even after all these years. Even against my own better judgement, and the express advice of my family, who consider the venture doomed to failure.”

Charles clears his throat. “As I said, I have interviewed the workhouse beadle, Mr Henderson, and he has confirmed that there are no useful records remaining from that period. However, after a good deal of prompting, and a certain amount of financial inducement, he did finally remember that a Miss Jellicoe, who was then on the staff, might still be living. Henderson promised to obtain her address for me but I have not, as yet, heard from him. She would be very elderly now, but she may remember something.”

Chadwick nods; the trembling in his hand has not abated.

“I have also,” continues Charles, “seen the superintendent of the orphanage. They, like the workhouse, seem to have either mislaid the relevant papers or never kept them in the first place. However, the superintendent did recall his predecessor telling him of an outbreak of smallpox, which he believes was probably around the time in question. I am afraid we must prepare ourselves for the possibility that your grand-child fell victim to that terrible disease, when still barely a few months old.”

Chadwick nods again, more stiffly this time. “Anything else?”

“I have talked to some of my former colleagues in the Detective. They have promised to inform me if they come upon anything that might assist us. I will, of course, maintain regular contact with them on this matter on your behalf.”

“See that you do,” says Chadwick. His moment of weakness has passed, and his voice has regained some of its former irritability. “And see that you keep me informed of your progress. And rather more frequently than you have hitherto, if you please. Good day to you.”

The visit has, on the whole, gone as well as Charles could have hoped, but he still feels shamefaced enough to sit down and write a second time to Henderson, to enquire whether he has yet succeeded in discovering an address for Eleanor Jellicoe. That done, and a late lunch eaten, he allows himself the indulgence of an hour or two at the British Museum. He needs to decide what to do next in the Cremorne case, and he has, as yet, no clear idea. But he thinks best when he walks, and it’s a good step to Bloomsbury, even though the weather has closed in again, and the snow is starting to fall. Outside in the street a thin track of muddy wet paving has emerged between the frozen heaps of blackened slush, and every now and then a slab of compacted snow slips with a dull thud from the summit of one of the neighbouring roofs. Charles is heading carefully towards the Strand when he hears his own name. It’s Tulkinghorn’s clerk, coming slowly towards him through the swirling flakes. There’s a carriage waiting at the top of the street.

“A package for you, Mr Maddox. Those envelopes you were wanting.”

Charles thanks him and opens the packet. There are three of them. All post-marked from the Charing Cross sorting office, but all collected at different receiving-houses—receiving-houses, moreover, that are at least a mile distant from one another. He sighs. He’d been hoping the letters would turn out to have been posted in the same place. That would have narrowed the task down to a manageable
margin. But it had always been a bit of a long shot: Even the most dunder-headed criminal would have known to take that elementary precaution. He tucks them inside his coat and sets off again, more quickly this time. He thinks best when he’s walking.

The carriage pulls slowly away, and overtakes Charles a few yards farther on, though he barely registers its passing, so thick is the air with the darkness of the day and the density of the snow. And so it is that he walks the length of the Strand without being in the least aware that his footsteps are being followed, and all his movements as closely watched as if he, too, were a prize specimen—one no less worthy of scrupulous surveillance, but far more vulnerable to an observing but unobserved eye. As Charles will, in due course, discover.

SEVEN

Hester’s Narrative