The Death of Me

by M. J. Tjia

  I can’t see the colour of his eyes in the bleak light, but they’re wide in a face that is almost obscured by facial hair the colour of tar. His locks are long, and I can’t be sure if it is hair oil or sweat that gives them their sheen, but going by his heavy body odour, I would hazard that he hasn’t seen a bath or barber in many a week. A red kerchief around his throat rises and falls with his labouring breaths, and his coat lies open, a slick blackness spreading across his white shirt and brown vest. Stabbed? Shot? In the dimness it is difficult to tell. I almost wince away as his hand lifts to my face and brushes my cheek, fingers chill, but I realise in time that he’s just trying to hand me something.

  As I clutch the note from his hand, he manages one strangled word. Bombe. His last breath gurgles deep in his throat, and he becomes still. I scrabble away from his body, the seat of my trousers scraping across the dirty floor. For many moments I stare at his body. It’s like my mind is numb, a void space, yet at the same time a million questions swirl. Who did this? Who is he? What do I do? Lastly – with a swift look around at the shadows of the room – am I in danger too?

  Springing to my feet, I burst from the crypt. I wince as the door clangs behind me. I’m not sure if I should call attention to the crime or walk away, let someone else discover and report this death. Tucking the switchblade and piece of paper into my coat pocket, I slip back onto the path. I scuttle along as fast as my legs can take me but, when passing other people, I drop to a saunter, pretend to admire my surroundings. In this way, I arrive back at the cemetery’s imposing gates, with an uneasy smile fixed to my face, raindrops mingling with the droplets of perspiration at my brow.

  The caretaker leans on the end of his broom as he chats to another fellow. I almost halt by him, to report the murder but, when he turns his head to smile at me, I just nod and smile back and keep on moving. There would be too much to explain. I could become implicated unnecessarily. I feel for the note in my pocket again, allow for it to crinkle between my fingers.

  It’s late afternoon before I steal another look at the note that the murdered man shoved upon me. I’ve kicked off my boots but haven’t changed out of my male attire yet, so impatient am I to read the message. Weak light streams through the suite’s bedroom windows as I spread out the note on my lap. Really, it’s just a stub of paper. I flatten out its creases, revealing the grimy edges where it’s been folded. Next to the tear in the page, there are fragments of five words. ’reen’s Court is scrawled above ’oho. A bit further down the remnant of paper, in bolder letters, is written 28 March and the year. I frown over these clues for a few moments. March is over half-finished already. Whatever is planned, it is not far away. Folding the note again, I place it back into my jewellery box. I will take it to Somerscale in the morning.

  I’m just about to pull the shirt from my body when there is a loud rap at the suite’s door. I wait almost twenty seconds, wondering who could be calling. Maybe Hatterleigh forgot his key. Or it might be Violette, returned from her mother’s house, come to ask if I need assistance. I don’t hear Chiggins answer the summons so, after another peal of knocks on the door, I go to answer it myself. Hatterleigh’s man must be off imbibing too much brandy again. I don’t know how Hatterleigh puts up with it.

  Pressing my moustache more firmly to my upper lip, I grin, imagining the look of surprise on Hatterleigh’s face should it be him waiting for the door to be opened. He will wonder if he’s come to the wrong suite, or maybe, just maybe, he will wonder who this blackguard is who is visiting his sweetheart.

  I fling open the door with a flourish. My grin freezes into place. The blood in my body seems to fall to my feet in one chill rush.

  The man in the straw hat.

  And he’s not alone. Two hefty fellows hover behind, dark shadows in the hallway’s gloom.

  I almost swing the door shut again, but manage to move my mouth, ask him in French how I can be of service.

  “Is this where a Madam Heloise Chancey stays? With a…” he glances down at a slip of paper in his hand. “Lord Hatterleigh?” he says.

  I nod, my lips still fixed in that ridiculous, rigid grin.

  “And you are…?” he asks me.

  I blink. “Chiggins. I am the valet to the master.” I revert to English. “I am sorry. My French…”

  His bright eyes roam my face – its lack of stubble, the smooth skin, my lips – and I swear that the tips of his whiskers quiver, like he’s a fox nosing out some rabbit flesh.

  “I am Inspector Mercier, and these are my men,” he says, smoothly transitioning to English. He moves to the side so that I can see the men behind him more clearly. One is older, has a grey handlebar moustache, the other one tall, clean shaven and dark. Both wear their dark blue uniforms with the blood-red piping, kepis crammed on their heads, sword sticks angled against their hips. Police.

  What are the police doing on my doorstep?

  “How can I help you?” I ask.

  “Lord Hatterleigh, is he on the premises?” asks Mercier, peering over my shoulder.

  I shake my head. Please, please, do not let Hatterleigh arrive home right now. How could I possibly explain this new mess to him? “No, I am sorry. I’m not sure when to expect him home. Please, if you would like to leave a message, I will relate it to him.”

  Mercier frowns down at me. Glass tinkles on a lower floor and the older of his men shifts his feet.

  “I think I should tell him in person,” he says, finally.

  Rising to my full height, I try to distil my voice with a little of my butler, Bundle’s, air of reproof. “Really, sir, I can be trusted to pass on your message to my master. What is it?”

  His foxy whiskers twitch again. He gives me a curt bow, but his eyes, when they catch mine, are hard, challenging, even. “Please inform Lord Hatterleigh that we are sorry to inform him that Comtesse Heloise Chancey has been found. Murdered.”

  CHAPTER 8

  AMAH

  Amah wraps her cold fingers around the warmth of her teacup. She hasn’t slept well at all, and her head feels like it’s being squeezed in a vice. She takes a sip of the jasmine tea, willing her scattered thoughts to settle. Leaning her forehead against her bedroom window, she watches the milkwoman make her way down the street, her heavy pails lurching from their wooden yoke with each step. Stooping before the house across the way, she fills a metal can with milk and lowers it to the doorstep. She tramps on to the next house, and her iron-shod shoes tack loudly against the pavement, reminding Amah of the first time she’d been startled awake by their pre-dawn clatter. In Liverpool, it had been. All those years ago. When she had shared a small lodging room with her uncle and nephew, waiting for fortune to change and provide them with work and hearth.

  Liverpool. She had spent nearly fifteen long years by the docks. Thinking of it leaves her feeling hollow. For a period, her time in Liverpool had been the happiest of her life but, almost in turn, some of her loneliest, most worrisome times had been spent there too. One of the only things she’d kept safe in that time – she thinks of Heloise’s desertion, of her own loneliness – was her mother’s earring. Amah smiles as she remembers how, when she was small, she used to imagine the dragons clinging to the golden orbs with their claws as the earrings swayed with her mother’s movements. How they dangled from her mother’s small, shell-like ears when she bent over to kiss her goodnight.

  And now she has the opportunity to reclaim her earring’s sister. But at what cost?

  Besides the exorbitant amount of money the terrible pair demand from her, Amah wonders if, by recovering the earring, she will be exposing them all to ridicule or shame.

  “How do you suppose I could come up with such an amount of money?” she’d asked them the night before.

  “That’s not my problem,” the young woman shrugged.

  Amah tried to remember if Heloise had that amount of money stashed in her bedroom safe, but she doubted it.

  “I’ll need some time,” she said.

  “A week
,” said the young woman. “Meet us back here in a week’s time.”

  Amah knew she wouldn’t be able to raise that sort of money without help, but she couldn’t be sure when Heloise would be home. Sometime at the end of the month? Early April? Amah hadn’t taken much notice of what she had told her.

  “I will need at least two weeks,” she said.

  The young woman took in Amah’s steady gaze. “Two weeks then.” She reached across the table and picked up the earring between her gloved fingers and slid it back into its pouch. Standing up, so that the legs of her chair screeched unpleasantly against the wooden floor, she slapped Joshua on the arm, and told him to move.

  Amah sat and stared at the spot where the earring had been for a good two minutes after she heard their footsteps recede.

  And now, watching the milkwoman turn the corner out of sight, Amah asks herself the same question again: how did they get their hands on her earring?

  She wonders if she should report them to the police, on a charge of blackmail or something similar. But besides their hints of ensuing scandal and the sensation of being extorted, what was it really but a straightforward sales matter?

  She turns from the window and re-fills her cup with more tea. The rest of the household still sleeps and Abigail has not yet arrived to light the fires. Amah’s eyes are gritty from tiredness and her head feels heavy, dull. Anxiety gnaws at her belly, though. She can’t seem to shake the feeling that she may not see the earring again; that she cannot trust that couple to turn up. And what if Heloise does not return in time? How will she raise the £400 then?

  Again, her thoughts turn to Liverpool, to a woman named Golda Berman who worked in her father’s pawnshop. Amah had chosen that particular pawnbroker because it was far away from where she lived, but close enough to not warrant the expense of a cab. The first time Amah had to use Golda’s services, the shame she’d felt had been great. While pretending to browse through the teaspoons and snuff boxes, Amah was thankful that the high collar of her dress covered the blush of mortification she could feel burn across her chest. Finally, when the last customer left and the road through the glass-front door appeared clear, Amah brought out the goods she could spare. Her hand trembled as she handed over a book and a pair of men’s slippers. Golda, a mane of bushy, brown hair loose about her shoulders, framing a striking face with lovely arched eyebrows, whistled the tune cherry ripe cherry ripe between her straight teeth. She looked up at the toddler clasped to Amah’s breast and her lips widened into a smile as she sang, full and fair ones, come and buy.

  Golda turned the book over, and said, “Thackeray. I have not read this one.”

  She spoke with a slight accent, familiar to Amah, yet not an accent she heard often around the Liverpool area.

  Golda slid the slippers onto a shelf below the counter. She then pulled a copper pot towards herself and poured two short cups of coffee, sliding one across to Amah. “It’s very sweet. And hot. Enjoy!” She took a sip from her own cup and nodded to Amah, encouraging her to take up the other.

  “No, thank you,” said Amah. “I just need my money.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Golda, rattling coins in the pocket of her apron. She plonked down two shillings and a groat. About what Amah had expected. Perhaps a little more. “Now, you drink a coffee with me.” Golda pushed the cup further towards Amah.

  Amah juggled the child higher onto her hip and with her free hand lifted her veil to above her nose. Wondered what Golda would make of her skin colour.

  Golda smiled. “You are like me. You are not from here. Where are you from?”

  “Makassar.”

  Golda’s eyes widened. “But I am from Holland. Many years ago. I remember seeing people like you in my country. Golden skin. Beautiful black hair.”

  Amah tasted the coffee, glad of its sweetness. Hunger was her daily companion, made her heart flutter, her mind spin. But as long as the child received her bread and milk, she was satisfied.

  “I’ll be back next week to retrieve the book,” she’d said to Golda.

  “Not the gentleman’s slippers?”

  Amah shook her head. “Not the slippers.”

  Amah blinks at a tap on her bedroom door. “Come in.”

  Abigail pokes her head around the doorway. “You in need of tea, Amah?”

  “No, thank you. I was up early this morning. Fetched my own. An egg would be nice, though, if you could ask Agneau.”

  Abigail bobs her head and withdraws.

  Amah stares down into her teacup. Golda. Golda had become almost a friend to Amah after that. Each time Amah returned to the pawnshop to redeem her goods or to pawn a china teacup, a set of cotton handkerchiefs or even her blankets when the weather became warm again, they had exchanged stories of Makassar and Holland, of youthful days, of half-forgotten songs, of dishes and fruit sorely missed. Amah had liked the woman’s matter-of-fact manner, her acceptance of Amah’s daily existence that spooled to and fro as though she were a bandalore.

  Golda. Surely she would give Amah a good amount of money were she to pawn the pearls, the gaudy diamond and peridot cameo brooch Heloise had received from a lover and eschewed, the agate beads and the gold band she used to wear on her ring finger. Combined with her savings, Amah is sure there should then be enough money to pay for her mother’s earring.

  Amah hesitates as she pulls a skirt over her petticoats. Liverpool’s a long way to go to find a pawnbroker, she thinks. A London pawnbroker would do just as well. But Amah shakes her head, decided, as she buttons up her skirt. How could she be sure she could trust the rascal pawnbrokers in this big city? She would have to explain herself, identify herself. Golda knows her already. The exchange would be quick, reliable. And what else is she to do with the next fortnight? A trip to Liverpool will help keep her mind from fretting over the earring.

  Her pulse quickens at the thought of returning to Liverpool, to be caught up in the bustle of the docks again, to admire the palatial counting houses. But she does wonder how she’ll feel to be faced with the squalor and stench to be found in the courts buried behind the opulence. Will her distance from that time bring her the warmth of nostalgia or the chill of relief?

  She wraps a shawl about her shoulders and trips lightly down the stairs. She slips through the front door and follows the sharp odour of straw and manure to the mews two streets over. She hurries across the dirty cobblestones and peers into the third stable along.

  “Taff?”

  He steps out from behind Heloise’s mare, Malani.

  “You need the carriage, Amah?”

  “Actually… Actually, I wondered if it is possible for us to take a trip to Liverpool.”

  Surprise pleats Taff’s forehead. “Liverpool.”

  Amah nods.

  “Liverpool.” Taff nudges his cap to the side and scratches behind his ear. “That’s a strange whim of yers, Amah.”

  “It may be several weeks before Heloise is home, and I am tired of sitting around.”

  “You should’ve gone with her,” he says, taking up a brush. He sweeps its bristles across Malani’s inky coat. After five strokes he looks back at Amah. “You’m not serious?”

  “Of course I am,” Amah replies. She wouldn’t have walked around to these smelly stables were she not.

  “It would take an age, Amah. We’d need to organise a change of horses and inns along the way.”

  Amah nods. “We’ve done it before, Taff. These things can easily be arranged.”

  “You’d be better finding yourself’m a copy of Bradshaw’s and looking for the trains.”

  Amah stares at him. The thought of travelling with so many strangers and the deciphering of complicated timetables does not appeal. She shrugs. “If you do not have the time or inclination, I can easily travel post or hire another coach and coachman.”

  Taff returns to brushing down the mare. “I don’t know what game you’m playing at.”

  “It’s not a game, Taff. I just have several weeks at my dispos
al with Heloise away, and thought a visit to Liverpool would be interesting. I have often wondered how much it might have changed since we left.”

  “Not much, I’d say,” he grumbles. “Still the pong of the docks and too many people. London’s much better, if you’m ask me.”

  “But tell me you wouldn’t look forward to a tankard of ale with… What was the name of that man you used to drink with?”

  “Old Holker, you mean?”

  “Yes. Wouldn’t you like to have a tankard of ale with him and the other brutes down at the Pink Salmon?”

  His lips twitch a reluctant smile. “If it still be there.”

  “We can find out.”

  Taff wipes his hands on a cloth. “I don’t know what game you’m playing at,” he says again.

  CHAPTER 9

  I fall back a step. Did Inspector Mercier just say I had been murdered?

  My head spins and my trousers and coat feel cumbersome and unwelcome. I almost feel as if my true identity has been spirited away by this silly disguise I wear. Heloise Chancey, dead?

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, sir,” I say. My hand slides to my chest. Yes, there is a heartbeat. “What makes you think she’s… deceased?”

  “We have her body, of course,” Mercier replies. “A couple of carriers found her slumped in an alleyway in Montmartre.”

  “But how could you possibly think it is Madam Chancey?”

  His expression is baleful as he glares at me, rocking back and forth on his feet. “It’s a long story, Monsieur, which I will keep for your master.”

  There’s nothing for it. I will have to tell him the whole, or fabricate a likely tale as quickly as possible. I usher him into the suite, asking if his men could stay behind in the corridor. “I have something to relate to you that is rather private.”

  He hesitates. Saying something briefly to the others, he closes the door behind himself.

  We stand across from each other in the middle of the drawing room.

  “What is it?”

  Taking the hat from my head, so that my braided hair falls to my shoulder, I say, “I am Heloise Chancey, Inspector Mercier. This is merely a disguise I donned as a jest.” His head draws back in consternation as I peel the moustache from my lip. “Therefore, whoever you have found in that alleyway is certainly not me.”