by Sarah Rayne
And incredibly, there it was. A newspaper article that looked as if it might have been rather raggedly cut from the page, headed, ‘Curious Legend of Burned-Out Asylum’.
This Journal brings to the attention of its readers, a curious legend clinging to the ruins of the old Thrawl Asylum.
It will be recalled that The Thrawl burned down some three months ago, [the story was reported with photographs in our issue within three days of the tragedy]. It is still not known how the fire began, although it is suspected that a burning cigarette end may have ignited rubbish or old newspapers in the staff’s rooms.
The shell of The Thrawl can still be seen, of course; the stones are blackened and windows glassless, although many of the iron bars remain in place. What was known as the Paupers’ Ward was completely destroyed, and what is left of its walls rear up against the night sky like rotting teeth. It is impossible to see these decaying bricks and stones without being aware of the despair and the bewilderment that still clings to them – also, the rage – all left by the poor mad creatures incarcerated there. In its time, The Thrawl was sometimes referred to as a ‘tunnel house’, signifying that there was a way inside it, but no way out of it.
[Note: The term tunnel house seems to have been either a colloquialism that has since fallen into disuse, or perhaps a local expression, for I have not found it used anywhere else.]
Visitors were never allowed into tunnel houses, except for the occasional medical man, and, of course, undertakers who must needs remove those who died.
However, a strange story is growing up around the ruins. There have been reports that people living nearby sometimes hear strange singing coming from within the blackened ruins or in the streets immediately around. Because of this, many are avoiding the area after nightfall.
‘Hear it many a night, I do,’ said one Seth Strumble, a street trader, who plies a cheerful trade in several local markets. ‘Chill your marrow it would.’
Asked what the song was, Mr Strumble seemed unwilling to elaborate, and even to regret having spoken of it at all. He muttered, evasively, that he could not say what it might be, adding that he was not a great one for music, not unless it might be a bit of a sing-song down the Cock & Sparrow of a Saturday night.
More than that, your reporter could not get Mr Strumble to say. It does seem, though, that the strange singing is generally heard near to the rooms that overlooked Fossan’s Yard. [Named, readers will know, for Thomas and Lewis Fossan, the brothers who originally held the ownership of the land on which Thrawl Street stands.]
After the fire, a detailed check of the records and the burned bodies was made, and it was finally admitted that not all the inmates of The Thrawl had been accounted for. Tragically, it seemed that most had perished in the blaze, along with four of the attendants.
However, some half-dozen were never found. With that in mind, Fossan’s Journal ventures to suggest that the eerie singing could be some poor witless soul who escaped the fire, and who wanders the streets.
Your diligent reporter, increasingly curious, sallied forth into the streets, where tales of the past linger. Within the huddle of houses and shops and taverns, dwell people who tell how stories have always been whispered about The Thrawl – how the word itself was an old word for larder, and how, as children, they believed the place was the larder of a family of ogres, who, in the best fairy-tale tradition, liked human flesh for their tables.
It was, though, surprisingly difficult to find people prepared to talk about the strange singing heard around the ruins. An imaginative or a superstitious mind might almost think that they were frightened to talk about it.
But one doughty soul who has lived in The Thrawl’s shadow for almost her entire life, did speak out. She told your reporter how she had brought up three daughters in Rogues Well Yard and one son. A small lady, she was, brown as to complexion and grey as to hair, which she wore twisted back in a wispy bun on her neck. No longer young, she declined to give her name, not wishing her children to know she had spoken to reporters – particularly not wanting her eldest daughter to know, on account of the daughter being in service to a famous lady who was on the stage.
This lady had work at a local rag-shop – Peg the Rags, it was called, and all the folk hereabouts knew it. They had a street stall, too, of a Friday and a Saturday, and there’d be nights when they’d be late packing things away, and afterwards they’d have a nip of gin at the Cock & Sparrow.
‘That means I have to go home along by Fossan’s Yard, and what’s left of The Thrawl. That’s when I heard the singing,’ she explained. ‘Last month it was – November, and perishing cold. Misty, as well, so’s you couldn’t hardly see your hand in front of your face. I’m always a bit nervous in those streets, I don’t mind saying it, for I’m old enough to remember those nights when you dursen’t go out after dark for fear of … Well, you’ll know who I mean. Him as prowled the streets hereabouts, killing women in a mad frenzy.
‘Walking along that bit of road, I was, and thinking to go along a bit sharpish. That was when I heard it.’
‘The singing?’ I asked.
‘Froze my bones, it did’
‘Could you hear the words?’
‘Not so’s I could repeat them exactly. But I can tell you it’s about listening for prowling footsteps at midnight.’ She paused, then, drawing a bit closer, said, ‘I recognized it, ’cause I’d heard it before. It used to get sung hereabouts – years ago, it was. But it was kind of a warning. You’d hear it and you knew to run for safety.’
‘Safety from what?’
She leaned forward, one hand curling around your reporter’s wrist for a moment. ‘From him,’ she said, in a whisper. ‘Bad luck to even say the name, even after so long. But around here, we don’t forget. You’ll know who I mean.’ She glanced over her shoulder as if fearful of being overheard, then wrapped the woollen shawl more tightly around her shoulders, and darted away, leaving your reporter staring after her.
It is not, of course, difficult to guess to what – and to whom – the good lady had been referring. Many stories cling to this part of London’s East End, but there is one that lifts its drippingly gory head above the rest. That is the story that belongs to dark, fogbound streets and a very particular terror. A story that stretches back a good ten years and that may even stretch as far again into the future.
It is the story of how the women of Whitechapel learned and sang a strange and rather eerie song by night – a song intended to warn one another of the approach of Jack the Ripper.
TWENTY-TWO
Phin’s first reaction was to wonder if the reporter might have gone on to write gothic horror, and that if so he had probably done quite well for himself, because he certainly knew how to set a scene.
But his second reaction was to re-read the lines about how some of the women of Whitechapel had ‘learned and sung a strange and rather eerie song’. A song that was ‘about listening for prowling footsteps at midnight’, according to the worthy Seth Strumble, and that the unnamed lady said had originally been a warning of the approach of Jack the Ripper. She had not actually mentioned the Ripper by name, but there did not seem much doubt as to whom she had meant. The journalist had certainly not had any doubts at all.
Phin reached for the notes he had brought with him, and leafed through them for the lyrics found in Linklighters.
‘Listen for the killer for he’s here, just out of sight.
Listen for the footsteps ’cos it’s very late at night.
I can hear his tread and he’s prowling through the dark.
I can hear him breathing and I fear that I’m his mark.
Now I hear the midnight prowl,
Now I see the saw and knife.
Next will come the victim’s howl.
So save yourself from him, and run …
… run hard to save your life.’
Was it possible that this was the song referred to by the long-ago reporter – that it was a song that had been sung b
y the women of Whitechapel as a warning that Jack the Ripper was on the prowl? There had been stranger stories about the Ripper, of course, but even so …
The curious thing, though, was that the song – or one that sounded very like it – had been heard a good ten years after the Ripper’s killing spree had ended. But the Journal’s explanation was perfectly credible – that some poor soul shut away in The Thrawl had known the song, and, lost in the tumult and the confusion of the fire, had roamed the streets, singing the song. It might even be one of the Ripper’s near misses, in fact – that would be an experience to scar you for life, and one that would very likely print the song’s words indelibly on your mind.
It was all intriguing and fairly sinister, and one day Phin might see if more details could be uncovered. But it had been Links he had been trying to find, and he had not in fact found anything at all. Links could have drawn The Thrawl at any time after it had burned, from memory or simply from imagination. Equally, he could have drawn it before it had burned, from reality – from his own acquaintance with it.
He obtained a printout of the article, handed over what he hoped was a suitable donation, promised that he would certainly use the library’s excellent facilities again, and took himself back to his flat.
He had hoped that Toby might be at home and free for a drink, or even a meal; Phin would have been glad of anything that would disperse the clinging darknesses of The Thrawl, Jack the Ripper, and eerie disembodied singing in fogbound streets. It was remarkable how, having read the Journal’s article, the lyrics of the song framed in Linklighters conjured up the classic images of the lamplit streets through which the Ripper had prowled. How had those lyrics found their way to Linklighters, though?
However, Toby’s flat was in darkness, so Phin made himself some scrambled eggs, added a wedge of bread and cheese, and ate it at his desk, the notes from the afternoon’s gleanings spread out.
It was only when he had washed up the plate and had carried a cup of coffee back into the study, that he checked emails, and saw there was one from Gregory at Thumbprints.
‘Sorry to have missed you, and we’re about to close,’ said the email, which was timed just before five p.m. ‘But we can speak on Monday? Meanwhile, I’ve turned up an anthology with something that might possibly relate to your research. The poems in it are mostly fairly dull and turgid – they’re mainly from around the end of the nineteenth century. But there’s one that might connect to Linklighters. I’ve scanned it and it’s come out a bit fuzzily, but it’s readable, so I’m attaching it. I’ve put the anthology itself on one side in case you’d like to come in and take a look. Again, this isn’t a “hard sell” – it’s more that with this being such a long-owned family shop, and being next to Linklighters in its various incarnations, I’ve become interested in your research.
All best,
Gregory.’
Phin clicked on the attachment, hoping it would not be scornfully rejected by a too-stern virus checker, or that Gregory had not sent it via some arcane programme which Phin’s own, slightly elderly, computer would refuse to recognize.
But it was all right, the attachment was opening. Probably it would not be anything of any special interest, but it was nice of Gregory to have taken the trouble, and it would be worth checking.
The attachment, once open, was, as Gregory had said, a bit fuzzy, especially at the edges, but when Phin zoomed it up a notch, it was perfectly readable.
The title was ‘The Harlequin’s Last Dance’.
The last dance, thought Phin. It’s not so long since that would have a romantic ring to it – the last dance of the night; the final waltz and an unspoken understanding that the one you danced with was the one who would be taking you, or whom you would be taking, home. ‘After the Ball’, and ‘Goodnight Irene’, and ‘Some Enchanted Evening’. It would have been gentle and polite, and, if it had not always been entirely innocent, it had certainly been light years away from today’s ‘Your place or mine?’ culture.
But there had been an earlier time when the term, the last dance, had had a far more macabre meaning. It had referred to the frenetic jerkings on the gallows, after the gallows trap had been released. Dancing on air, it had sometimes been called, and it had been the description of the last moments of the slowly strangling hanged man. Or the hanged woman.
Woman. Had Scaramel been the Harlequin of this poem? Phin had the sudden feeling that he was about to take a step forward into a cold darkness, but he quelled it, and began to read.
Sunlight bleeding on the old stone court –
The place where Jack Ketch’s own ghost might still walk.
The stage is all set and the lines are all learned,
The script is well Thumbed, and the movements ordained,
For Murder’s the sin that can not be condoned.
And the Harlequin’s dance must perforce be performed.
The great and the good do not dare intervene
So the Harlequin’s last dance must darken the scenes.
A death for a death – that was ever the rule
Tho’ barbaric the punishment, ugly the means.
Once people would gather to hear the death knell
And to Linklight the moment the deep Grave Trap fell.
But today are no watchers, today no stage doors,
The Harlequin’s last dance will have no applause.
Phin read this twice through, then sat back, staring at it. The verses were hardly Shakespearean sonnet or lyric poetry, but there was a rhythm and a resonance to them, and the images they conjured up were vivid.
The Harlequin’s last dance, he thought. That doesn’t have to mean Scaramel, of course. Or might it? The references are all there. The upper case T for ‘Thumbed’ in the well-thumbed script – that could be a nod to Thumbprints. And certainly the capital L for ‘Linklight’ could mean Linklighters.
Even so, this could be referring to anyone, and the date could be anywhere from … Well, from the time that hangings stopped being public events. The mention of people no longer being able to watch or hear the death knell indicated that. The group Phin had met in the Marble Arch pub had said something about public hangings stopping in the mid-nineteenth century. He got up to scour the reference books. The last public hanging turned out to have been in 1868. That was well before Scaramel’s time; it meant that the hanging referred to in this poem could have been in her era.
What else? Jack Ketch was the old name for a hangman, of course, and the reference to his ghost walking in the old stone court probably meant Tyburn. As for linklighting the moment when the old Grave Trap fell – that was surely a theatrical reference. Phin pulled out a couple more reference books specifically dealing with the theatre, and, as he had thought, stage traps – the devices used for raising scenery and actors from beneath the stage – had been given names, according to their shape and size. In theatre parlance, a grave trap was quite simply a rectangle which could be lowered and raised – it was supposed to have acquired its name from early use for the graveyard scene in Hamlet. But by only a slight stretch of the imagination, it could also mean the trapdoor of a gallows, surely?
He sat back, frowning. Whoever this had been – whoever had danced that last dance on the gallows, whoever it had been for whom the great and the good had not dared intervene – he did not want it to have been Scaramel.
He began to search for details of hangings. It seemed that what had been known as the long drop had been introduced in the 1870s – only a few years after public executions had been stopped. So if this hanging had taken place after public hangings, it had also most likely taken place after the long drop had become practice. It could be Scaramel’s era. And that line about dancing on air was most likely poetic licence, because the long drop would have been used – the carefully calculated snapping of the condemned man’s neck. Or woman’s.
In commedia dell’arte, Harlequin had been a man. Yes, but Scaramel had carved out her infamous career in a place called Ha
rlequin Court.
But Scaramel had been the insouciant lady who cavorted saucily across nineteenth-century stages – she was the one who had danced on card tables at a gaming party at three in the morning, who had performed on a grand piano, and who reportedly had danced for the Prince of Wales wearing hardly any clothes at all. Phin did not want her to be a murderess.
And yet the rumour that she had committed murder clung to her legend. There had been that song about the ghost river beds that might refer to the old ditch beneath Linklighters.
It was now after midnight, but he doubted if he could sleep – the image of Scaramel being led to the gallows and standing on the trap was so strongly with him.
But after all, it seemed that life was not entirely made up of darknesses and ghosts, because while he was still seated at his desk, an email from Arabella came bouncing in.
‘I’m missing you a huge amount,’ she wrote. ‘And I meant to dash back to London on Monday, but it seems that while Toby’s plumbers were fitting the new bathroom, they inadvertently screwdrivered or power-hammered (is that the right expression, do you suppose?) straight into the main sewer pipe, and it’s the pipe that serves the whole house, wouldn’t you know it would be, so there was a flood of biblical proportions and revolting content. The first floor wasn’t too badly affected, but the ground floor was awash with unmentionable effluent. All the occupants had to be temporarily rehoused (and probably won’t ever speak to me again), but I shall send Toby to talk to them, because the whole thing was his idea. Fortunately, generous offers of reimbursement are forthcoming, and it sounds as if everyone’s going to be compensated very adequately.
But if you happen to have a spare hour (ha!) when you could just dash out to take a look at the place, I would be really grateful. Just so I know the whole house isn’t dissolving into a lake of loathsome putrescence, like that man in the Edgar Allen Poe story did.
I expect you’ll say I could spend a couple of days at your flat, but nice as that would be, I’m not sure if I could relax knowing Toby is on the other side of your bedroom wall. If you see what I mean, Phin, dear. Or if you can tear yourself away from Scaramel and dash over to Paris, that would be great. The company apartment is quite small, but the bed is very substantial. And the black silk underwear is still folded up in my case, and it isn’t going to be unfolded for anyone else.’