From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  I nodded firmly. ‘Especially not Patrick,’ I replied brightly. ‘I haven’t seen him for weeks.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lucasta sighed then took my hand again and took me out through the french windows that led out onto a small terrace overlooking her mother’s precious rose garden. ‘Have you fallen out with him?’ She closed the door behind us and pulled her blue enamel cigarette case out from her reticule.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said crossly, folding my arms across my body in a vain attempt to keep warm.

  Lucasta shrugged then offered me the open cigarette case, which I waved away. ‘He’s here tonight,’ she said, putting a cigarette into her mouth then lighting it with a match which she then carelessly flung on to her mother’s best white roses below the balustrade. Lady Brennan had only two enthusiasms in life as far as I could tell: her ridiculously spoiled pekinese and her rose garden. ‘I do wish you would decide if you want to marry him or not.’ She blew a plume of grey scented smoke into the air.

  ‘What makes you think that he wants to marry me?’ I said, not quite meeting her eyes. ‘Besides, perhaps we wouldn’t suit.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk such nonsense, darling.’ Lucasta laughed and took another drag on her cigarette. ‘Seriously, Alice, if you don’t want him please do feel free to pass him my way.’

  I laughed and held out my hand for her cigarette. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said, taking a small drag then posing in what I hoped was a sophisticated manner with the cigarette held airily between my fingers.

  ‘Failing that, I wouldn’t say no to that dish you met in Whitechapel,’ Lucasta said with a wink.

  I hesitated for a moment before forcing myself to smile. ‘Mr Mercier?’ I handed back the cigarette. ‘You’re welcome to him.’

  ‘Am I indeed?’ Lucasta sighed and took another drag on the cigarette. ‘Did you hear what happened over there?’ she said, abruptly changing the subject.

  I looked at her. ‘The murders? Of course I heard. All of London is talking about it.’ It had been the hot topic in the capital and probably the entire country for the past four weeks with everyone exclaiming over both the killer’s audacity and the gruesome manner he mutilated his victims. He’d murdered two women in the space of under an hour almost a month before - the first had been discovered with her throat cut but no other mutilations in a miserable little yard near Whitechapel High Street while the other had been discovered in a square within the precincts of the City, ripped apart with her nose sliced off and her cheeks cut to ribbons. It turned my blood to ice just to think about it but my Papa’s dinner guests a few nights ago could speak of nothing else as they spooned raspberry and rose syllabub into their mouths. I’d had to leave the room in the end as the juxtaposition of dripping red food and avid talk of facial mutilation was making me queasy.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, I suppose that you are on the spot as it were, aren’t you?’ Lucasta said airily. ‘I expect you get to hear all about it from the girls at the Mission.’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, turning away. ‘I haven’t been there for a few weeks. Papa is working on a new painting and is keeping me so busy posing for him that I barely have time for anything else.’

  ‘Oh God, what tragic heroine it this time?’ Lucasta said, her eyes wide. ‘Boudicca? Iphigenia? Ophelia?’

  I shook my head, laughing. ‘No, Anne Boleyn preparing for execution. Apparently my sad but brave expression is quite exceptional.’ I smiled to myself, thinking of the long hours spent posing as the doomed queen, draped in crimson velvet and with swags of pearls around my neck, in my father’s studio at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘How utterly ghastly.’ Lucasta flicked her cigarette into the rose bushes and turned to give me a quick hug. ‘You won’t go back there, will you?’ she whispered. ‘Papa says that this violence can only escalate and soon the killer won’t stop at street girls but attack other classes of women too. I would hate for you to be in any danger.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m not in danger,’ I said. ‘Please don’t fret, Lucasta. It’s not like you.’

  She gave a rueful smile. ‘It’s not, is it? Ah well.’ We both turned as the door opened behind us, only to relax when Patrick appeared in the doorway, smiling in his usual charming way but looking ever slightly as if he expected to be told to go away again.

  ‘I don’t mean to intrude,’ he said, looking at Lucasta and then, almost unwillingly and for the briefest of moments, me. ‘Your father said that you might be out here.’ He sniffed the air, which was clearly scented by Lucasta’s Turkish cigarettes but said nothing.

  ‘You aren’t intruding,’ my friend said lightly. ‘We were just talking about the murders in Whitechapel.’

  ‘Jack the Ripper,’ Patrick said with relish. ‘Isn’t that what the press are calling him.’

  ‘What a splendid name,’ Lucasta said with a delighted shudder. ‘I wonder who dreams these things up?’

  ‘He himself if the papers are to believed,’ Patrick said with a shrug. ‘Apparently he signed a letter off with it.’

  ‘Oh, how wonderful and was the letter written in blood?’ Lucasta’s eyes shone. ‘Oh please do say that it was. I can’t imagine anything more delicious.’

  Patrick grinned. ‘Naturally,’ he said, still not looking at me. ‘I believe there is a law somewhere that states that murderers aren’t allowed to write in anything else.’

  I hid a smile behind my hand. ‘We should return to the ballroom,’ I said, rubbing my bare upper arms. ‘It’s freezing out here.’

  ‘Oh lord, I see my mother heading this way,’ Lucasta said with annoyance as she peered through the glass door. ‘I’d better play the dutiful daughter for a while.’ She gave us both a cheeky smile over her shoulder then pulled the door open and vanished.

  Patrick sighed. ‘We should return as well,’ he said, still not looking at me and sounding colder than I had ever heard him. ‘I would hate to give rise to gossip.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said in a low voice as he offered me his arm. Once upon a time we would have joked about how being found alone together would be playing into my father’s hands but the words turned to ashes on my tongue and I couldn’t say them. Instead, I clutched at his arm, forcing him to turn and look at me. ‘Patrick,’ I said, my voice sharper than I had intended but at least I managed to make him look. ‘Please.’

  He shook his head. ‘What is it, Alice?’ He didn’t smile. ‘Have I offended you in some way?’

  ‘No of course not,’ I said, smiling at him and wondering what had happened between us. ‘You could never do that.’ I hadn’t seen or heard from him since the night of Papa’s party several weeks before and his absence had made my heart ache in a way that I hadn’t thought possible and which made my brief infatuation with Henry Mercier seem even more pathetically childish. I’d desperately wanted to write, to ask him how he was and why he hadn’t visited but the silence had felt so deep, so profound and so final that I hadn’t dared breach the chasm that had suddenly yawned between us. ‘I haven’t seen you for such a long time,’ I said lamely.

  He sighed. ‘I was called away to the family estates in Scotland,’ he said. ‘I expected to be back before now but you know how these things can be…’

  I didn’t know, of course but I nodded as if I did. ‘I wish that you had written.’

  He smiled then, but it wasn’t altogether pleasant. ‘Do you?’ He shrugged and brought out his own battered silver cigarette case which was monogrammed with what I knew to be his family crest. ‘I’m afraid that it didn’t occur to me.’ He flipped open the case and selected a thin cigarette which he then lit with a practised flourish.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Have I done something wrong, Patrick?’ I asked. ‘This isn’t like you.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ He gave me a sidelong look as he leaned against the balustrade. ‘Perhaps I should have been more like this in the past.’ He examined the glowing end of his cigarette, a frown between his eyes. ‘We all make mistakes though.’

  �
�You don’t,’ I said, feeling a strange sensation of panic rising within me. ‘You never make mistakes.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ he said maddeningly before looking directly at me then turning away again. ‘I wish that…’ He broke off and took another drag from his cigarette.

  ‘You wish what?’ I moved to stand beside him and put my hand on his arm. ‘What is it, Patrick? Why have things gone so wrong between us?’

  He laughed, a sharp, brutal sound. ‘Why do you think, Alice?’ He shook my hand from his arm. ‘I saw you, you know. You and Mr Mercier.’ He frowned down at his cigarette again and I realised with a pang of shock that he was drunk. ‘He’s not right for you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such an awful snob, Patrick,’ I snapped.

  He shrugged and tossed his cigarette over the parapet. Lady Brennan’s precious roses would be decimated at this rate. ‘You know damn well that I don’t mean it that way,’ he said angrily. ‘Don’t try to put words into my mouth, Alice. I would feel exactly the same way no matter who he was.’ He looked at me almost pleadingly and his voice softened. ‘I don’t think he’s good enough for you.’

  I stared at him then gave a small shrug. ‘I’m not sure what that means,’ I said sadly. ‘There is nothing special about me.’

  ‘No?’ Patrick took my hand in his own firm, warm grip and I felt a throb of relief that things seemed to be returning to normal. ‘Now you are the wrong one, Alice.’

  I stared at him, my dearest friend whom I had known for most of my life, who had covered up my scrapes, taught me French verbs when I had struggled with them, kissed me better when I fell and hurt my knee, spent hours listening to me cry about Beatrice after she had vanished. There had never been a time when Patrick had not given me his full and undivided attention, when I had not basked in the warmth of his complete and unadulterated admiration and care. Not until now. I shivered, feeling left out in the cold more ways than one. ‘I don’t love him,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I thought that I might come to do so but then it just never seemed to happen.’

  He stared at me. ‘So there is no grand romance?’ he asked, his fingers tightening around mine.

  I shook my head. ‘None whatsoever and there never was.’ I gave a small rueful smile as I remembered how badly I had wanted Henry Mercier to kiss me and then how my infatuation for him had dwindled away after it had happened, after I had realised so clearly and with such painful clarity that his feelings for me would never really change and that mine for him were nowhere near as strong as I had built them up to be.

  ‘Poor fellow,’ Patrick said grimly. ‘I saw the way he looked at you.’

  I felt my cheeks go red with a potent mingling of shame and embarrassment. ‘I was infatuated at first,’ I whispered. ‘How could I not be? He was so very different to anyone I had ever met before and so utterly indifferent to me.’ He still kept hold of my hand and I was grateful for it as the warm clutch of his fingers gave me courage to carry on. ‘In fact he seemed to actively dislike me so much that it rather piqued my interest.’

  Patrick smiled. ‘You women are all the same,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘Always running after the men you can’t have and ignoring the ones who would do anything for you.’

  ‘Perhaps we don’t want to have things done for us,’ I pointed out crossly. ‘I don’t need rescuing, Patrick.’

  ‘I know,’ he said with a smile, ‘but please allow me the luxury of pretending that you do every now and again.’

  ‘Mr Mercier wasn’t like that,’ I said, feeling suddenly very weary. ‘He never wanted to do anything for me. In fact on the one occasion when he had to help me out, he seemed inordinately angry about the fact.’ I looked at Patrick from underneath my eyelashes, afraid that I might say the wrong thing and lose him forever. ‘We only kissed once but after that it seemed as if all the things that I had found so fascinating, so invigorating even, became utterly exhausting. He never could have loved me, you see and I began to find his endless disapproval of who I am dispiriting.’ I gave Patrick’s hand a reassuring squeeze - having been totally unable to meet his eyes after my confession about kissing Mr Mercier, which I suppose told me everything I needed to know about my true feelings for the man who stood so silently by my side. ‘We would have ended up hating each other.’

  ‘You have no regrets then?’ Patrick asked. The music from the ballroom swelled behind us and I heard a woman neigh with laughter close at hand.

  I paused, hesitating for a moment to make sure that my answer was absolutely truthful. ‘No, none.’ I shrugged lightly. ‘We are friends, I think, but nothing more than that.’

  ‘And how does he feel about that?’ Patrick moved closer to me now and I leaned against him.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘We haven’t really spoken about it and to be honest I’ve hardly seen him since it happened.’ I smiled up at him. ‘I’ve actually been avoiding him as I feel so awkward about the whole thing but I suspect it meant as little to him as it did to me.’ It was the truth but it still stung my pride to admit it out loud.

  Patrick sighed and pulled me close. ‘I think that my problem is that I don’t think anyone is good enough for you,’ he said quietly against my hair.

  I smiled up at him. ‘Even you, Patrick?’ I asked.

  He smiled back but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Especially me, my dear.’

  I sighed and shook my head, allowing him to pull me further into his embrace and wishing that I could stay there, safe within the circle of his arms for all eternity. ‘I have missed you so much, Patrick,’ I said. ‘I have badly needed to speak to someone over these last few weeks but didn’t know where to find you.’

  ‘You should have written to me,’ he said, pushing me away a little so that he could look down into my face. ‘I would have replied at once,’ He smiled a little, ‘however furious with you I happened to be at the time.’

  I smiled back at him and rubbed my aching temples with my fingers. ‘I didn’t want to trouble you,’ I said, ruefully thinking of all the times I had sat down at my little desk and prepared to write to him but then in the end had not. ‘I didn’t want to trouble anyone.’

  He frowned. ‘Is everything alright, Alice? I don’t think that I have ever heard you sound quite so forlorn before.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’ I thought of the letter that I had found on my father’s desk and which now lived in my locked drawer along with Beatrice’s pendant, photograph and the envelope. Henry Mercier’s note was there too - armed with a map and full directions, I had gone to the address he gave me but the girl Emma had already vanished and I had no hope of finding her again. ‘I found something out about my sister and don’t quite know what to make of it.’

  Patrick nodded. ‘I see.’ He pulled his cigarette case out again and flicked it open, this time offering it to me.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to the ball and doing your duty by all those desperate looking debutantes and their pushy mamas?’ I said as I helped myself to a cigarette then waited for him to light it.

  ‘My place is here,’ he said briefly, shaking the match out and throwing it over the balustrade. ‘As they all very well know.’ He took a drag from his cigarette and blew a series of perfect smoke rings up into the air, the great show off. ‘So what did you find?’

  There was something about his voice, a sort of studied insouciance, that made me look sharply at him. ‘You know all about Panacea House, don’t you?’ I said, my voice catching.

  He hesitated for a moment then nodded. ‘Not all about it, no,’ he looked at me apologetically, ‘but enough.’

  I gave a great sigh and broke away from his arms. ‘How long? How? Did Papa tell you?’ I leaned over the balustrade and stared out into the murky gloom of the garden. He came up behind me but made no move to touch me again.

  ‘Your Papa told me some of it,’ he said. ‘He thought that I ought to know.’ There was no need to ask why my father had thought Patrick should know b
ut still I felt a surge of anger against them both that they should have discussed the matter behind my back while apparently happy to leave me in ignorance of it all. My father and aunt, I could just about forgive for I knew that they acted as they did purely out of a desire to protect me from the truth, that they had believed it better for me to know nothing at all than to be distressed. They had been stupid, yes but not intentionally cruel - or so I was determined to believe. ‘Have you been there?’ he asked.

  I shook my head, suddenly tearful. ‘I know that I should,’ I said. ‘I know that it is wrong of me not to have gone there already but I couldn’t bring myself to and I don’t know what to say once I am there.’ I looked at him then. ‘What does one say, after all?’

  He put his hands on my shoulders and drew me gently towards him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Torrential rain lashed relentlessly against the carriage windows as we lumbered through the countryside towards Rayleigh in Essex. I stared miserably through the glass at the grey, depressing countryside and only occasionally stole a few shy glances across at Patrick who sat opposite me, apparently lost in thought.

  ‘What an awful day,’ I said at last before giving a tiny shrug. ‘Although, to be fair, it certainly suits my mood.’

  He smiled and reached across the gap between us to take my hand. ‘I am with you,’ he said. ‘There is nothing to be afraid of.’

  I gave him a wan smile. ‘Are you sure about that? It seems to me that I have much to be afraid of.’

  He shook his handsome head. ‘I know that it must seem that way, Alice, but it really won’t be as bad as you fear and once this is over with…’

  ‘Yes, what then?’ My tone was harsher than I had intended and I felt my cheeks redden with embarrassment as I turned my face away to stare again out of the window. My eye was caught by a group of small children running, whooping and laughing down the street in the village we were passing through with newspapers held aloft above their heads in a vain attempt to hold off the rain. I felt a sudden longing to be outside with them, gathering my heavy grey silk skirts above my knees and running through the puddles as my hair fell down about my ears. ‘What will happen, Patrick?’