The Solitary House (21 page)

Eleanor Jellicoe’s house proves to be one of a low unfinished row that peters quickly into a quagmire of red clay and gravelly rubble. The few feet of trench outside her gate suggest that digging did at least start on the drains, but from the smell and the slowly caving walls it appears work has stalled. And yet the thin, elderly lady who opens the door to Charles seems remarkably unconcerned by the makeshift state of everything about her. There’s a plant in a pot on her windowsill, and her little cottage is as neat as she is; it occurs to him as he looks around him that she must spend her whole life cleaning.

“Mr Maddox?” she says. “You are prompt, I’ll say that for you.
After a lifetime of working to a strictly regulated timetable, my hours are now my own, but I still appreciate those who respect the punctuality of their appointments. Will you come in? I have made tea.”

The tray of miniature blue-and-white cups and saucers is set in a sitting-room barely large enough to hold them both. Everything seems to be constructed slightly less than life-sized: Charles finds himself stooping like Gulliver. He looks about for a chair sturdy enough to hold him, but there is only one other. He perches awkwardly, worried it may not hold his weight.

Miss Jellicoe pours, presents, and takes charge. “Now. Your letter indicated that you had received my address from Mr Henderson. I gather, therefore, that what you have to ask me concerns my time at the Camberwell workhouse?”

Charles gets out his notebook, hearing the little chair creak alarmingly.

“Though I am not sure whether I will be of any use to you, I’m afraid. My memory is not what it was.”

Charles doesn’t believe a word of it; he’s prepared to bet the mind behind those enquiring eyes is as sharp as it ever was. He thinks, with a pang, of his great-uncle, not realising that she has seen the look of sorrow cross his face.

“It is a difficult case, the one you are working on?”

He hesitates, momentarily wrong-footed. “No—not especially—that is, yes, of course, for those directly concerned. But I am hoping to be able to offer my client some sort of conclusion—an answer to his questions, at least.”

Miss Jellicoe folds her hands in her lap, and sits back in her chair, clearly waiting for Charles to begin.

“The incident in question took place some sixteen years ago—”

“In 1834.”

“In 1834, exactly. A young woman was admitted to the workhouse that May in circumstances—well, shall we say, in—”

Miss Jellicoe nods. “She was with child? I thought as much. I’m afraid that was—and
is
—an all-too-frequent occurrence. We must
have had scores of pregnant girls come through our doors in the course of a year.”

The numbers, if nothing else, are not encouraging, but Charles makes an effort to seize back the initiative. “This young woman was very young indeed. Not much more than seventeen. Pale hair, very slender. Does that remind you of anyone?”

Miss Jellicoe takes a deep breath. “I can recall at least a dozen girls that might fit such a description, Mr Maddox. There were, as I said, all too many of them, and a sad proportion were quite as young as that, if not younger.”

“This girl’s name was Chadwick. Her father came looking for her some months later, but by then both mother and child were long gone.”

“Oh dear,” says Miss Jellicoe with a sigh. “Your client wasn’t the first father to repent a rash condemnation made in haste, and he won’t be the last, I dare say.”

“He was told his daughter had died in child-birth, and the baby removed to an orphanage.”

Miss Jellicoe gets up from her chair. She goes to the window, looking out over the half-desolate landscape. There’s a group of labourers working at a distance; the noise of their digging is just audible in the misty air. A moment later she looks back to Charles, her face troubled.

“There was one young woman—but she did not call herself Chadwick—I’m quite sure of that—”

“She may have gone under another name. I’m sure that’s quite possible.”

She returns to her chair and adjusts her shawl. The house is, indeed, extremely cold, and Charles notices for the first time that the room may be clean, but their two chairs and the low table are the only furniture, and there are neither coals nor ashes in the grate. No fire has been lit here for days. He wonders suddenly, looking again at her gaunt face, if he is idly consuming a whole day’s ration of provisions.
“This girl,” she continues, softly, “if it was indeed her, stayed only a few weeks with us. She was very poorly both before and after the child was born, and we did not think she would survive. The child was removed as a precaution. A sad case, a very sad case.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I take your meaning.”

“It was badly deformed. The child, that is. The spine was twisted, and the face strangely drawn on one side. It gave quite a disquieting appearance. I am afraid to say I have rarely seen such a face outside a circus. Or one of those deplorable travelling freak shows.”

She shakes her head, disapproving, and Charles remembers, with a quick rush of self-disgust, his own boyish delight at being taken to one such in St Giles. Even at that age he was, to be fair, far more interested in the wax models and mechanical contraptions, and what he now knows were—at best—pseudo-scientific displays of bottled foetuses and two-headed calves, but he still remembers the wretched look on the face of the trapped and tamed giant in the room at the back—
Before Your Very Eyes, Ladies and Gentlemen—From the Snows of the Himalaya to the Streets of London—Chico, the Tallest Human in the Known World!

“None of us thought the poor mite would survive,” continues Miss Jellicoe, recalling him to the present. “And of course there were those who said it was God’s will. The outward manifestation of sin and depravity.” She shakes her head.

“What happened to the young woman?”

“She was taken away.”

She sees his face and quickly raises her hand. “No, no—not in
that
way. A gentleman came and took her with him. Said he was a relation of hers. As far as I remember the young woman was barely well enough to walk, but he insisted. But did you not say that your client’s daughter had died?”

“That’s what he was told, but there are no records. No proof.”

Miss Jellicoe looks at her hands in her lap. “I was rather unwell
myself soon after the young woman left. I cannot answer for what records were kept—or not kept.”

“Do you know what happened to the child?”

She shakes her head. “As I think you know, there was an outbreak of smallpox around that time. So many children died. I fear such a weak and undersized baby would have been only too susceptible to that terrible disease. God forgive me, but in such cases death itself is often far preferable to the probability of an even more dreadful disfigurement. Nonetheless, I am sure it would have received only the best of care in Peckham.”

Charles frowns, and flicks quickly back through his pages of notes.

“I have here that the Convent of the Faithful Virgin Orphanage is in Norwood?”

Miss Jellicoe nods. “Indeed it is—I know it well, and it is an admirable institution. But the child was not sent there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. The baby was sent to Mrs Nicholls. In Peckham.”

“And she was—?”

“A dedicated and Christian woman, with the welfare of the babes in her charge always at heart.”

Her cheeks are now rather pink, and she looks away.

“They put the child in a baby farm,” says Charles softly.

“As I said,” she retorts, “it was a reputable and highly respected establishment. I heard nothing but good reports of it, the entire time I worked at Camberwell. I can assure you, Mrs Nicholls’s was a model of its kind.”

Charles does not press her, but he’s not fooled either. The practise of baby farming is not yet as prevalent as it will become later in the century, and won’t become a public scandal for at least another twenty years, but his time in the police force has taught Charles what can really happen to children in such places. All too often the so-called respectable women advertising so innocuously in the newspapers for ‘children to adopt or nurse’ were little better than child-murderers,
prepared to take an unwanted baby off its mother’s hands for an appropriate fee. No questions asked, and never to trouble them again. No surprise, either, that Miss Chadwick’s newborn child should end in such a place—the younger and sicklier their charges were, the better the baby farmers liked it; several pounds for a few weeks’ work was a handsome return, and the death of such an infant was so common as to raise not the slightest concern, official or unofficial.

There is a silence. After a moment or two Miss Jellicoe shifts in her chair, and bends to the table to collect the cups. There is a closed look on her face, and Charles knows he has his cue to leave.

They return to the tiny hallway and he turns to thank her. He expects her reply to be as perfunctory as possible, but she surprises him by asking where he plans to go next.

“Back to town, but my destination is unconnected with the present case. I head for Curzon Street, Mayfair.”

And now it is her turn to look surprised. “How curious. My last nursing engagement was in that very street. Number 46.”

Charles strives, not very successfully, to conceal his astonishment. “You worked for Sir Julius Cremorne?”

“Strictly speaking, no. Sir Julius was my employer, of course, but my patient was his wife. Poor lady. That such a thing should have happened.”

She sees his uncomprehending face. “You obviously do not know the story. Lady Cremorne suffered a bad fall some four or five years ago. She was found one morning at the bottom of the stairs. Her back was not broken, but she was lamed in the hip and has been in great pain from that day to this. I never heard her complain, all the time I nursed her, but she will not walk again.”

Charles frowns. “I find it hard to understand how such an accident
could have taken place in such a well-attended house.” He looks at her downcast eyes. “Were there rumours about it at the time?”

But he has pressed her too much; she answers sharply. “It’s neither my place to comment, nor yours to pry.”

The next moment the door has shut behind him and he’s standing on the rough unmade road, quite alone.

THIRTEEN

Hester’s Narrative

I
DEBATED VERY
much whether I ought to inform Mr Jarvis about what Clara had told me. She had not enjoined me to secrecy, but neither had she given me leave to talk of the matter to anyone but her. In consequence I was very doubtful whether I had a right to speak of it, and sat up half the night thinking and pondering. At last I came to the conclusion that I might do so, because I knew in my own heart I had only her good in mind, and only her and Rick’s joint happiness in view. I hope this may not seem trivial. I was very much in earnest.

Accordingly when the morrow came, I went to Mr Jarvis after breakfast, and said that I had something delightful to tell him. He was in his own room overlooking the garden, as he always was at that time of the day.

“Then you must tell me what it is, little old woman,” said he jovially, putting down his pen.

“Mr Jarvis,” said I, gaining confidence from his smile, “do you
recall that night soon after Rick first came to live with us? When Clara was playing the piano, and Rick was with her, and they looked so fine and well-matched sitting there together?”

I wanted him to remember the moment when our eyes met, and now there was an expression on his face that told me that he did.

“Yes, my dear?” said he, with perhaps just a very little impatience now.

“What I foresaw that night has come to pass,” said I. “Clara and Rick have fallen in love. She has told me so.”

He sat considering for a minute, and then asked me a question or two, concerning what Clara had said, and how I had replied.

“You are not angry with them, are you, Mr Jarvis?” I asked, at length. “They are, it is true, very young, and many years must pass before they can think of marrying. But I am convinced their love is true and will stand the test. Even if any dearer tie must be very far off.”

“Very far off,” echoed he, with a suitable gravity. “Very far off indeed, I fear.”

“I hope I have not done wrong, sir,” I said then, “in encouraging their attachment?”

“How could our Dame Durden ever do wrong?” said he, laying his hand a little heavily on my head, and looking into my eyes. “But we must take care she does not overburden herself in the concern she shows for her fellow boarders. For there are others here who deserve her attention, and a Guardian who has first claim on her love.”

We spoke no more on the subject, either then or at any other time. I admit that I did expect him to raise it again, but I am—no doubt!—making too much of my own importance. I do know—or at least I believe—that he spoke to Clara, and I am sure, to Rick too. What I
am now about to say has long been a cause of regret to me, and I have blamed myself many times, but I must steel myself to it and be as truthful as I hope I have always been in these pages. I am sure Mr Jarvis spoke to Rick, because I observed with pain that Rick and he were never quite as frank and genial with each other thereafter. Rick was civil—more civil, if anything, than hitherto—but all the same, a coolness arose between them that worsened as the months progressed. I feared from the first that this was all my fault, and that a corresponding coolness might develop between me and my darling, but it was not so. It is true that Clara became somewhat distracted and listless as the weeks passed, and seemed more often indisposed. Her appetite, likewise, was a little affected and no doubt for this reason, she took ill of a low fever.