Untitled (41 page)

   He has been waiting: for Mina to return, for this home to be filled again. Soon, though, it could be more empty yet. Will Mrs. Johnson and Cartwright stay in a place like this? Will Elsie? For now, it is only the four of them in this big house, and they are not enough to make it feel alive. So he sits. He doesn't ring for Elsie, who would fumble at the hearth and spill ashes and coal. He merely sits, and waits.

   By the time there is a knock at the door he is thoroughly chilled. "Come in," he calls.

   Cartwright opens the door wide to let Danforth in.

   "Good God, it's freezing in here, Bentley." He hunches his shoulders. "Need to take care of yourself, or you'll be coming down with something."

   Robert shrugs and looks to where the fire should be, sees the ashes, looks away again. "Do you have news?"

   "I do." He settles himself on a chair. He has a notebook, as though he fancies himself a detective, and flips it open. "The body is not that of your wife."

   Robert sinks forward. "Thank God."

   "The number of souls that meet their end in the Thames is astonishing. However, this particular one is not that of your wife. Of that I am certain. The fingerprints of the drowned woman show no similarity to any that I found upstairs."

   "I see." He doesn't even look at Danforth. He's thinking only that the corpse was never one he'd held close, never one he'd caressed. Somehow that helps, as though the grip it has had on him has been loosened. But what of Mina? What has become of her?

   "As for the thief, that is a more difficult matter."

   "The jewelry thief ?"

   "The jewelry box has been handled by a number of people— including the police, I presume. What few prints I could find that belonged to persons in this household were those of your wife and the lady's maid."

   "Price?"

   "I would not make an accusation based on the incomplete evidence I found. The police have made that impossible."

   Robert lets his head rest against the back of the chair. "So my wife is alive."

   "Your wife? All I can say is that the body is not hers."

   "You're certain?"

   "It's impossible for it to be hers."

   It is Danforth who will call on Dr. McPhee, who is eager to take onto himself whatever he can of this business of the body from the river. As for Robert, he sits in the study with his hands under his arms for warmth and looks at the work he has spent so many years on. His equipment, his papers, his cabinet of cards that have the measurements of convicts and servants and even a few friends, all neatly ordered in their drawers—but not hers. What use has it been? What use will it ever be?

Chapter 40

F
rom here England almost looks appealing—the low, green hills of the coast that drop away to white cliffs, the fishing boats with their abrupt prows breaking into the waves, as honest-looking and determined as one could wish. Soon these last signs of land are gone, and she is left gazing at an expanse of sea that's grey and empty. That's a better way to remember England, she thinks—for what were those weeks at the Bentleys'? And the days upon days she spent in a boardinghouse, not daring to go out, waiting for her check? Nothing more than a wretched half life, shut into overstuffed rooms in a dour city.

   She lets go of the railing and starts back. There's still her trunk to unpack in that miserable little cabin. Her cabin, though. Not to be shared with any vicious-tongued Mrs. Thomas, who believes that a companion is a slave to wait on her at any time of the day or night, someone to be tortured, gently, by having her hopes picked away, one by one. Now the trunk is full: a new trunk, holding three dresses—all black, of course, but of her own choosing—hats, underwear. For she is a young lady of means now. Fifteen thousand pounds. Not everything she could have got, for there was the house, and the jewelry, but more than enough to live on. To have tried for more would have meant risking everything.

   She's tied on her hat, but the wind catches the brim and lifts it from her head. With both hands she reaches for it. The ship rolls and, before she can find her balance, she has been thrown to the deck.

   "My good lady," cries a voice. "Are you injured?" Hands take hold of her and she's lifted, ever so gingerly, to her feet. An older man with a huge moustache. Now he will not let go of her, but steers her to the railings, where she can hold on.

   "Thank you," she says, and turns a smile on him. She means, of course, that he can release his hold, but it is only when she glances down at his hands that he understands.

   He gives a sharp laugh. "Sorry, dear lady." Then, "Sorry," on a sigh this time. He holds the railings, too, and looks at the sea swelling around the ship. "Awful business with the S
tar of the Orient. M
akes me think about this sea travel quite differently. Lost a dear friend." He glances at her. "But you, my dear, have also suffered a loss."

   "The S
tar of the Orient,
" she says. "I was aboard when she went down."

   "Good Lord!" He blinks at her in the wind. "So sorry."

   They stand like that, contemplating the chop of the waves while seagulls cry over their heads, until he says, "My nephew. Gordon Douglas. Did you—?"

   She shakes her head. "I lost my husband—Henry Bentley."

   "Bentley?" he says. "That regional administrator chappie? Good Lord. Had no idea he'd tied the knot."

   "On the S
tar of the Orient,
" she tells him. "We met on the S
tar
. Both returning home, though for me it was my first time to England." She's said it often enough now that the story slides off her tongue without her having to think. Even so, she'll have to be careful. She was not the only survivor, and it's possible that one day she will come across someone who'll remember that there was no wedding on the S
tar of the
Orient.
Because that's something one would remember, isn't it?

   He must have jammed his hat down hard on his head, for even the gusts that fling spray into her face do not shift it. "A terrible loss, my dear lady. To find happiness, and then to lose it." He lowers his head, as though the weight of this tragedy is more than he can bear. "Now you're on your way back?"

   The sea smells of salt, a good, clean smell. "Yes. I couldn't imagine what else to do. Nothing in England was familiar. I just couldn't—"

   He nods. "I understand. You are not travelling on your own, I hope?" By the way he has his eyebrows raised, he evidently expects that she is.

   "Yes," she tells him. "I have no one—no one to—"

   "We can't have that. I'll introduce you to my wife and son. You'll be part of the family."

   A few minutes later she is escorted to his cabin to meet a stout woman in a black dress, and a young man with a look about him that suggests that, in a few years, he too will be stout. He's friendly enough, though, and seems more so when his father introduces this young woman as a widow who has suffered the most tragic of losses.

   It's not so far from the truth, is it? After all, she and Henry did take long walks along the deck, and on one of those walks he did propose. She needed a little time to make up her mind, she told him. Although she liked him he wasn't quite what she expected in a lover, being so formal even when they were alone. And while she was thinking about what her answer would be, the ship foundered and sank.

   If it hadn't been for that, she might well have been Mrs. Henry Bentley.

Chapter 41

T
he train snakes between the dreary houses, puffing out smoke that will leave smuts on sheets and petticoats and aprons hung out to dry. It's only half past three in the afternoon, but evening is coming. At least the train is heading in a direction that will stretch the day, nosing its way west from Paddington.

   As yet it has hardly begun its journey. It winds along between the backs of houses cramped together, past gloomy yards hardly large enough for a washing line, rattling everything from cups on tables— no saucers here—to the floor beneath a small boy batting at beetles with a ladle. In windows faces turn—who can resist the sight of such power, such speed, such promise of other places one could be and the other lives one might be leading? Then they look away to the walls of their houses, or to pots of potatoes boiling on stoves, or to the remains of meager dinners.

   Through the train's windows only a few faces stare out at the city rushing past. Others are shielded behind newspapers, or bowed over books, or glowering at their children, who will not sit still. In a third-class carriage, amongst the din of a crying baby and the chesty coughing of an old woman wrapped in a shawl, sits a young woman. All that she owns is in a small bag stowed in the netting above her head, and there is not much in the bag. A dress, a change of undergarments. Nothing more, as though she sprang into being only a few days ago, with no past to carry with her. She leans towards the window. It's misted already, so she wipes a peephole and lowers her eye to it. It is like looking out of a porthole onto a stormy sea: all those roofs, all those bridges like waves breaking overhead. She reaches out beside her, finds a warm hand and squeezes it. "Tell me again—how far did you go?" she asks.

   He says, "All over. Down to the docks, up to Hampstead. You wouldn't believe some of the places I went. I wouldn't give up."

   She turns. "I nearly did."

   His thumb strokes the back of her hand. "Don't say that."

   The train jolts and her shoulder presses against his. "It's true."

   He lets go of her hand and puts his arm around her, though for that he earns a glare from the old woman, who sets to coughing more loudly.

   "You should have waited for me," he says. "Anything could have happened to you out on your own like that."

   She lets her head fall against his shoulder. Those words of Mrs. Robert's have stuck like burrs: T
raitor
,
spy
,
fool
.
Don't you under
stand? You've been used to get to me—what else did you imagine? That
he'd want a girl like you?
She'd picked through them as she'd run to Popham's, as she'd fled, soaked to the skin, as she'd stood on the bridge and watched the Thames slide past, undoing her hopes with every last one of them until she'd understood that she was alone, and friendless, and cold, and that the river was only a few feet away.

   She'd remembered the warmth of his breath on her neck, the way he'd always held the door open for her, even going into the dismal tea shop by the river—as though she was a lady—the way he'd sat across from her with his tea going cold and looked at her and looked as though it would never be enough. So she'd walked back over the bridge, and up the road, and to the uneven street where the tea shop stood, and there she'd settled down on her haunches to wait for morning in the narrow space of the doorway. To her surprise she'd been woken by a gentle shake and made to sit in the kitchen with a blanket around her, and as much hot tea as she could manage, and the cook hurrying a small boy around to Mr. Popham's to fetch Teddy.

   She says, "I nearly didn't trust you, not after all that the mistress said."

   For that she gets a kiss at the corner of her jaw. "We're going to have stories for our kids," he tells her. "They'll know better than to go into service, won't they?"

   The train gives a blast and, clear of the city proper now, picks up speed. The carriages are chilly, but huddled together, Jane and Teddy stay warm.

Chapter 42

N
owadays meals are a silent affair, just him and Cartwright, him picking through his food, Cartwright standing at attention by the sideboard. The house has closed up around him, just like his life. The bedrooms ghostly in dust sheets, the morning room too. All he needs is the bedroom—Henry's old room, because he could never bring himself to sleep in the bed he'd shared with Mina—a place to eat, and his study. Though mostly he just sits and reads the paper.

   He sets down what's left of his toast, and pushes the scrambled egg around his plate. Overcooked. What else can one expect of a young girl with no one to train her? Maybe he should get himself a housekeeper, and he dabs at his lips with his napkin, then runs a hand over his beard. No. Not another one, not after the fiasco with Mrs. Rogers, who installed herself in his house like its mistress and pressed his hand between hers and called him a
dear man
at every chance. Two years of that, and he was saved only by the butcher proposing to her.

   He tucks the paper under his arm and shoves back the chair. He's grown a belly in these last years. Not from the food—he barely eats— but from his evenings sitting in front of the fire with a bottle of brandy. It has given his face a flushed look it never loses, just enough so that he seems like a healthy, active sort while inside he is slowly rotting.

   It's a bright July morning, but the girl has built up the fire in the study—the brightness never reaches the back of the house, and there's no point skimping when he'll be in here most of the day. He settles into his armchair and opens the paper. The king off on a visit to Scotland. A schoolmaster murdered by his own wife. The owner of a small guesthouse in Torquay handsomely rewarded for reporting a suspicious guest found to be an infamous jewel thief. The Belper Committee's recommendation that fingerprints be used as the primary means of identification of criminals finally adopted by the police forces of England and Wales.

   He settles his glasses a little higher up his nose and lifts the paper. So much for the Troup Committee's decision for the country to use anthropometry—eight years ago now. A lifetime ago.

   Well, he thinks, Danforth will be pleased. He's made a point of calling around every few months, taking him to his club—as though the place would not spark memories of the unfortunate Argentinean affair—having him around for Christmas dinner a few times. A wellmeaning man, if somewhat too dogged to inspire much in the way of real friendship. That woman pulled from the Thames turned out to be a shopgirl—her father identified her. For months Danforth went to the morgue on Robert's behalf, armed with Mina's fingerprints, and compared them to numerous other unfortunate women who'd met their end in the river.