by Alex Reeve
When I came in through the back door, Constance was setting out some laundry on the rack in front of the stove. It was much earlier than I had thought, only a little after eight o’clock.
‘Have you been with Mr Kleiner?’ she asked.
‘No, someone else. Someone I used to know.’
She raised her eyebrows, and I could see her brain working. She liked to treat me as the unwilling hero of a romantic novella, with her as the author, chivvying me towards matrimony. Two weeks previously, I had asked her why she was so determined that I should be married and her father not, and she replied that my not knowing the answer to that question was exactly why I needed a good woman to take me in hand.
‘Was it a lady?’
‘No.’
‘A friend? You need to meet some new people.’ She didn’t approve of Jacob. ‘It’s no use being lonely, Mr Stanhope.’
‘I’m not lonely, thank you.’ I folded my arms, slightly piqued by her nosiness. It didn’t dissuade her.
‘What happened to that lady who came here before?’
I cursed myself for blushing. ‘As far as I know she’s still running her pie shop.’
‘You liked her, I could tell. What was her name again?’
‘Flowers. Rosie Flowers.’
It was a silly name, bequeathed to her by her late husband.
‘You should go and see Mrs Flowers. I’m sure she could cure your loneliness for you.’
She nodded firmly, certain she was right. Certainty is easy when you’re twelve.
I trudged upstairs to my room and lay on the bed with my face buried in a blanket. I remembered how it had been, a year before, the last time I was caught up in something. My side still felt stiff every night, and there was worse, much worse; things I wouldn’t name or think about. Since then, my life had become uneventful. It was numbness, rather than happiness, but it was all I wanted. I couldn’t bear the thought that John Thackery might take it away from me.
I was supposed to play chess that evening but couldn’t face it, so I dozed, and for a while was beset by the darkest of thoughts, my fears and memories mixing: light against a slanting ceiling, the taste of salt water in my mouth and the acrid stink of scorched meat. But I surfaced, blinking, when I remembered poor Dora Hannigan and her two children. How selfish I was; how crass. She was dead, and they were lost, and all I could think about was my own troubles.
Better if I went out to play chess with Jacob, especially as he had been known, on extremely rare occasions, to offer useful advice.
When I got to the Blue Posts pub it was packed, and I couldn’t see Jacob. Then I heard the unmistakeable growl of his voice at the bar.
‘Wait your turn!’
I squeezed through, explaining that my friend was aged and needed help carrying the drinks. When I reached him, he was confronting a large fellow with oil on his hands.
I was surprised when the fellow laughed. ‘Sorry, old man. Didn’t see you there.’
Jacob curled his lip. ‘I’m not bloody invisible.’
His fingers were turning white on the hook of his cane. He started to raise it, and I feared there would be violence, albeit of a brief and one-sided variety.
I put my hand on his arm. ‘Shall I take over? You go and find us a table.’
All the other members of the chess club played in the calm of the upstairs room, but Jacob had injured his leg a few months previously, tripping over a kerb near Southwark Park despite, he claimed, being as sober as a Nazirite. The stairs were steep, so we had taken to playing downstairs amidst the throng.
He waved a hand, apparently dismissing me, the bar, London and the whole of England in a single gesture. ‘You’re late. Five times I’ve asked the barman to serve me, but always someone else comes first. I ask for an ale, a porter, two whiskies and a chess set. Five times. Always another customer, as if my money isn’t good enough for this distinguished place.’ He waved his hand again, this time aiming at the peeling walls and collapsing furniture. ‘We should go somewhere else. The beer here tastes like piss and they water down the whisky.’
I steered him outside, where the air was less dense – the best that could ever be said for London’s noxious atmosphere.
He took off his hat and wiped his brow, and I could see the pink skin of his scalp beneath his grey hair. ‘That oaf is lucky I’m not still young.’ He tapped his cane on the ground as if considering rushing back to strike the fellow after all. ‘I was strong once, you know. I used to pull ships along the docks in Nikolaev; just me, on my own, hauling ships weighing tens of tons to be unloaded. They used to call me medved. The bear. No one argued with me in those days. They were afraid of me. I could have pulled their arms from their sockets, just like that.’ He mimed the motion and made a sucking sound with his mouth, and then a pop. ‘Now I am an old man, and no one is afraid of me. Not even you.’
Lilya, his wife, had once confided that she didn’t believe he had ever truly hauled boats along the docks in Nikolaev, despite the stories he liked to tell. She said he’d been a jeweller’s assistant before she met him, and then a jeweller, until they’d been evicted from their home and forced to flee across Europe. He was a jeweller still, spending his days peering through an eyeglass at the fine details of brooches and bracelets. I didn’t mind the pretence. If he wanted to convince himself that he’d once been a feared man with thighs like tree roots, who was I to deny him? Me, of all people?
‘Is your leg getting worse?’
‘Everything’s getting worse. All of me. Never grow old, Leo, my friend. When you’re young, your body and mind are one and the same. You think to speak, and you speak. Your voice does not creak and whine like an old door. You think to pick up a glass, and you pick it up. You think to stand, and you stand. Not so when you’re old. You think to stand, and you ache and shake and groan, and forget why you wanted to stand, and eventually it’s easier to stay seated.’
‘That’s not an answer. Is it still hurting you?’
He shrugged, leaning on his stick. ‘That’s a young man’s question. My back hurts, my neck, my feet. They punish me! They hate me! How can I tell which pain is greater or lesser? At least it means I’m still alive.’ He pointed his cane west, towards Hyde Park. ‘Let’s go to that place on your street. You know the one. What’s it called again?’
‘Very funny.’
‘Little Stanhope Street!’ He grinned impishly, waggling his beard. ‘Your very own. How I envy you! There is no Kleiner Street.’
The pub was called the Pitt’s Head, which I thought made it sound like a coal mine, and in truth the place was hardly better than that; dismal and dark with walls browned by years of smoke, and a boneyard of armchairs, padding spiked by their own skeletons, cushions bursting through their seams. But at least it was quiet and there was less likelihood Jacob would get us into a fight. We found a quiet corner near the fireplace and laid out the pub’s hoary chess set.
‘So?’ he said, his way of inviting me to speak.
I told him about the murder, and John Thackery, who called himself John Duport. I even told him about Dora Hannigan’s visit to the pharmacy, though not that I’d lied to the police about it. I was too ashamed. She had been a living, breathing person, and I had erased our encounter like a clerk rubbing out his mistakes. And that was before John Thackery had threatened to expose me. It was my own action, unforced.
I took a deep gulp of my porter.
‘You say this Thackery is wealthy?’ Jacob said, pulling a cigar box from his pocket and opening it up. ‘Maybe there’s something in it for you, if you help him.’
‘His father, not him.’
‘If his father’s wealthy, he is too. That’s how wealth works.’
I advanced my queen’s pawn two squares and sipped my drink. Jacob was three-quarters down his ale already, and he eyed me over the glass.
‘That woman’s death, do you think it was him? Is he the killer?’
Despite everything that had happened, I couldn’t d
eny that some part of me retained a liking for John Thackery – not perhaps the man he was now, but the boy he had been back in Enfield, with his restless hands and the thin fuzz of hair on his chin, like the fur on a caterpillar cocoon.
‘I don’t know. When we were younger, John was always quite gentle. But he’s more … fervent now. He asked to meet me again tomorrow.’
Jacob swapped his empty glass for my half-full one, and sat back, sucking on his cigar, exhaling slowly, almost chewing on the smoke as it left his mouth. ‘And you’re planning to do it, are you? Spend time with your old pal John.’
I sensed he was anxious, concerned for my well-being, but perhaps something else as well. He was my only friend other than Alfie, who was also my landlord. I rarely considered that I was Jacob’s only friend too, and he might be jealous of any other I might make.
‘He’s not my pal. I was hardly the same person last time I met him, was I? And he said he had information for me. Something important. There are things I don’t understand about all this. The dead woman had my name and address. She came to the pharmacy. It can’t be a coincidence.’ I indicated his rank of untouched pieces. ‘Are you playing or not?’
He grimaced and matched my pawn, seasoning his jacket with ash.
‘She’s dead now. What difference does any of it make? She won’t come back to life.’
‘I know, but … she had two children as well. They’re missing.’
He took a deep breath. ‘How long?’
‘I don’t know exactly. A day, maybe two.’
He nodded, his lips pressed together. He had seven children of his own and loved them devotedly, though he tried his best to hide it.
‘That’s very sad,’ he said. ‘But not your problem.’ He blew out another thick coil of smoke. ‘You of all people have cause to be careful.’
Most of the time, Jacob ignored what I was under these clothes, treating me as a young man in need of his guidance and wisdom. Whenever reminded, he shrugged and offered nothing. I think he imagined my previous life was a part I’d once performed in a play or a character I’d made up, which wasn’t all that far from the truth. I had been constructed from little more than petticoats and bonnets, and hadn’t been sure there was anyone real inside.
‘Are you listening to me, Leo? I said you must be careful. You have a history of foolishness.’ He put his hand on my arm and squeezed it. ‘Remember what you said you wanted? A quiet life. No problems and no excitements.’ He drained my glass. ‘And a dog. Did you get a dog?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? Every man should have a dog.’
‘You don’t have a dog.’
‘Lilya has a dog. It’s our dog.’
‘He’s her dog.’
‘You’re avoiding the point.’ He produced another half a cigar from the box and lit it, surveying me through the smoke. ‘You never do what’s best for you.’
I moved my queen’s knight to aggress his pawn.
‘I want to know what he has to say, that’s all.’
I’d spoken more sharply than I intended, and he sat back, his moustache twitching. ‘You’re like another son to me, Leo, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
I looked away towards the bar while he wiped his eyes.
When I looked back, he was moving a pawn to defend the one my knight was threatening. His hand was shaking, and he had to take care to place his piece without knocking over another, and then it was my turn to wipe my eyes.
4
The Marquis of Granby was a decrepit pile of bricks and wooden pillars that had somehow survived while the rest of Mayfair grew higher and wealthier around it. As ever, it stank. I couldn’t determine the exact combination of substances that permeated the walls and furniture to create such an odour, but they seemed to include stale beer, cigar smoke, lamp oil, blood, bile, flatulence and the vague odour of poultry, making me wonder whether a pigeon had become stuck in the chimney.
Unsurprisingly, the place was almost empty, and what patrons it had were old men at rickety tables, nursing ales and reading brown, curling newspapers. They looked as if they’d been coming here for decades, crumbling along with the plasterwork.
John Thackery was sitting in the most visible spot at the bar, his dented hat in front of him. Seeing him there, I felt strangely fearful. He was like a door into a room I didn’t want to enter. But if I left, I would never find out what he wanted to tell me, and it might relate to Dora Hannigan’s children. I could still picture the little girl’s grin as she pushed the pedal on Alfie’s dentistry chair.
‘What do you have to say to me, Mr Thackery? Or should I call you Mr Duport?’
He peered at me, at my face, my hair, my chin. ‘Call me John, please. We’ve known each other a long time.’
‘We knew each other briefly, a long time ago. It’s not the same thing.’
I wouldn’t pretend we were old friends after he’d so recently blackmailed me into lying for him.
He nodded, accepting my correction. ‘I didn’t want all this to happen. I’m trying very hard to do the right thing, but it’s become rather complicated. Sit down. Please. I’ll get you a drink.’ He summoned the barman and ordered a half-pint of Indian Pale Ale without further consulting me.
I generally avoided stools, but had no choice on this occasion, so I arranged my coat to hang down at the back and obscure my hips.
‘How did you find me? And what do you need an alibi for, if it’s not murder?’
He attempted, unsuccessfully, to straighten his necktie, looking exactly like the young man I had once known. ‘That doesn’t concern you.’
‘None of it concerns me.’ I had spoken too loudly, and two old fellows looked round, unused to having their quietude interrupted. I lowered my voice. ‘Her children are missing. Do you have any idea where they are?’
He took a sip of his drink and gazed at me blankly, apparently having given them no thought at all. ‘I’m sure they’ll turn up. You need to know that I would never do anything to hurt Dora.’ His voice cracked, and he had to swallow to keep it under control. ‘She was very precious to me.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s not what you’re thinking, but believe me, I would give anything to have her here again, alive and well. Anything.’ There were tears in his eyes, and one of them ran down his face and into his beard. ‘Dora was my governess when I was a boy. She wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. She had such belief, such commitment. I didn’t realise until later how much influence she’d had on me.’
I thought back. ‘Your governess? I don’t remember her.’
He shook his head, watching his own reflection in the glass behind the bar. ‘It was before we came to Enfield, when we still lived in London. She came when I was ten, and two years later they packed me off to boarding school. When I got home at Christmas they’d already sent her away.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘I was inconsolable. Afterwards, I discovered what he’d done to her. My father, I mean.’
I felt a clutch in my stomach, and realised I was twisting the bar towel between my fists.
‘What had he done?’
Thackery took a long time to reply, several times opening his mouth as if to speak before closing it again. I sensed he still thought of me as a girl and wanted to protect my gentle nature, which actually brought a smile to my face, albeit of the bitterest type.
Finally, he almost whispered, ‘The worst thing.’ He looked at me squarely for the first time. ‘Worse than you can imagine. That’s how I know it was him who killed her.’
I couldn’t help but feel compassion for him, sitting here in this stinking pub and telling me about a woman he had clearly loved like an aunt.
‘I’m sorry, John, I really am.’
‘She was the kindest person I’ve ever known. She said we shouldn’t force you to cooperate and insisted that I give her your address at that pharmacy. She visited several times before she finally met you.’
‘Why?’
‘She wanted to see if you could be bribed to help us instead. But she decided you couldn’t and demanded that we leave you alone.’ He rubbed his eyes and drew his fingers down his face. ‘Too late for that now, I’m afraid.’
I thought back to our encounter in the shop. She had asked if I would extend her a line of credit in return for a personal profit. Had that been a test?
‘She was right. I’m an honest man.’ I said.
He took a sip of his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, accidentally angling his elbow towards my face, forcing me to lean away from him.
‘Was she? Seems to me you lied quite well to that policeman. I suppose you’ve had a lot of practice.’
‘I only lied because you gave me no choice.’ I picked up my hat. ‘This is pointless.’
‘Wait,’ he insisted. ‘There’s something else I have to tell you.’
‘What is it?’
He looked down at his glass, swirling his beer so it nearly over-brimmed. ‘I envied you terribly back then, you know. You and your brother and sister. I would’ve given anything to have had the reverend as a father instead of my own. The reverend and I used to talk in his study, and sometimes he lent me books from his collection.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘John Stuart Mill and Jonathan Swift. I devoured them in days and couldn’t wait to discuss them with him. When we moved back to London, I didn’t miss much about Enfield. Dull little town. But I missed the reverend.’
‘You don’t know anything about him,’ I said, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. My hatred for my father was far beyond shouting and stamping my feet, childish displays aimed at winning sympathy or apology. I cared not a jot for either of those. My anger was a cold, sharp blade, in and out with barely a murmur. ‘When my mother was sick, in her last weeks, Jane told me that he wouldn’t stay with her or speak to her. He wouldn’t even tend to his dying wife.’
‘I’m sure that’s not correct. He’s a decent man.’ He shook his head sadly, rubbing his thumb across his knuckles. ‘Look, this should really come from your brother or sister. But you need to know. Your father’s very sick. I’m afraid he’s dying.’