by Jess Kidd
The rats and the immigrants will be sent running.
But for now, the slums are as they have always been: as warm and lively as a blanket full of lice.
Bridie could find her way with her eyes shut and her nostrils open.
Try it now. Close your eyes (eyes that would be confused anyway by the labyrinthine alleys, twisting passages, knocked-up and tumbling-down houses).
Breathe in – but not too deeply.
Follow the fulsome fumes from the tanners and the reek from the brewery, butterscotch rotten, drifting across Seven Dials. Keep on past the mothballs at the cheap tailor’s and turn left at the singed silk of the maddened hatter. Just beyond you’ll detect the unwashed crotch of the overworked prostitute and the Christian sweat of the charwoman. On every inhale a shifting scale of onions and scalded milk, chrysanthemums and spiced apple, broiled meat and wet straw, and the sudden stench of the Thames as the wind changes direction and blows up the knotted backstreets. Above all, you may notice the rich and sickening chorus of shit.
The smell of shit is the primary olfactory emission from the multifarious inhabitants in Bridie Devine’s part of town. Everyone contributes, the Russians, Polish, Germans, Scots and the especially the Irish. Everyone is at it. From Mrs Neary’s newborn crapping in rags to Father Doucan squatting genteelly over his chamber pot. Their output is flung into cesspits, cellars and yards, where it contributes to London’s perilous reek.
Bad air (as any man of science worth his monocle will tell you) sets up stall for the latest bands of travelling diseases. Cholera is the headlining act. When cholera comes to visit you’ll find the lanes empty. Cholera keeps the women and the children from pump and square and the men inside scratching their arses. When cholera comes to visit, the streets are quiet. There is no bustling to and fro, no gossip and ribald laughter, only fervent prayer and the dread of an unholy bowel movement.
Mercifully there is no cholera today and so the streets are full.
Full as only London is full – and the din of it! Chanters, costers and traders, omnibuses thundering along thoroughfares, horse hooves at a clip and carriage wheels at a growl, carts and barrows at a rumble and all of London jostling in all directions at once.
Bridie heads home.
Chapter 2
Bridie Devine has, for some years, resided on Denmark Street in the rooms above the shop premises belonging to Mr Frederick Wilks, bell hanger. Mr Wilks is a very old man with the look of something that has been carefully varnished and then put away for a long time. His face is as benign as his clothes are severe. Above a stiff jet-buttoned frock coat, with the rigidity of something ossified, moons a round face with large bleary eyes and a larger man’s pair of ears, framing a white-haired head. Bridie suspects that the old man lives in the shop, tidying himself away into the tool cupboard at night. By day, he sits by the window fiddling with his tollers or polishing his clappers. Held upright by his coat, Mr Wilks rarely moves, but when he does it’s with a sudden flapping flit, from stool to workbench and back again.
Bridie rents from Mr Wilks the two upper floors (comprising: parlour, kitchen and scullery, bedchamber and maid’s attic room) and the use of a yard if she wants it. It is not the most salubrious of addresses, granted; the more genteel or less robust visitor may recoil at its proximity to slums notorious and their noxious emissions (criminal, moral and pestilential). But it’s a convenient spot in a friendly street nestled between Herr Weiss, baker, and Mr Dryden, gunlock manufacturer. Bridie Devine is unquestionably the best tenant Mr Wilks has ever had. Deaf from decades of bell testing and milky-eyed with cataracts he is nevertheless able to both hear Mrs Devine (oh, a melodious brogue that carries!) and see her (oh, glorious fiery locks!).
Mrs Devine arrived at Mr Wilks’s widowed. Details of the late Mr Devine’s demise, previous standing in the world and other particulars of interest remain unforthcoming. Mrs Devine is held to live either above or below her station (depending on who you talk to) on account of being in possession of a ‘mahogany’ sideboard, a library of books and a giantess of a maid she has taught to read these books. This is untrue; Bridie’s maid only reads penny-bloods (stories old and new, chiefly those featuring romances of exciting interest, highwaymen and hangings).
Then there is the fact of Mrs Devine’s occupation further to that of a widow with a modest annuity. A plaque hangs next to Bridie’s front door, which is beside Mr Wilks’s front door (all cosy-like). This plaque might offer a clue as to the trade conducted upstairs:
Mrs Devine
Domestic Investigations
Minor Surgery (Esp. Boils, Warts, Extractions)
Discretion Assured
Look up. There is a locked-down, tight-lipped feel to Bridie’s residence. Her front door is always closed and the windows are rarely open, the curtains are sometimes drawn and the shutters occasionally fastened. Neighbours are not encouraged to stop by for the cupeen of tea. Cora Butter, Bridie’s housemaid, is impervious to the joys of gossip and will not be baited into conversation, even when she’s out sweeping the front step.
Cora Butter is the only, and most terrifying, seven-foot-tall housemaid in London. The local children never tire of spying on Cora. On fair weather days she can be seen hanging out washing in the yard, singing hymns in her glorious baritone. Or else shaving in the kitchen, stropping her razor, taking time to work the soap into the bristles on her chin. And if she catches the children watching there’s the joy of hearing her bass bellow lift the rooftops and scatter rats and pigeons.
If you are calling on business, then Cora will fix you with an unnerving glare and lead you into the parlour.
Cora greets her mistress at the top of the stairs. Bridie hands Cora her cape. Cora shakes it violently, wrings its neck and hangs it up.
‘There’s a man in your parlour,’ Cora says, a testy look in her eyes.
‘On business?’
Cora nods. ‘He has the manner of a weasel about him. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.’
Bridie smiles up at her housemaid. Cora has never trusted a client. Cora doesn’t trust anyone. And, depending on his size, she can throw a man surprisingly far.
‘Does he have a name?’
‘Didn’t ask.’
Cora opens the door to the parlour a fraction and they look inside. The caller paces from the fireplace to the window and back again, suggestive of a state of nervous agitation.
To be fair, the room itself would do nothing to contribute to his ease. It is low-ceilinged and dreary. The lights burn dim and there is no welcoming fire in the grate, for Cora is frugal with both coal and gas. The furniture is ill-matched and includes a gentleman’s writing bureau of an unfashionable design, cabinets crammed with glass bottles and bookcases stuffed with difficult reads. The sideboard is pretty and makes a stab at mahogany (but even in this light it’s clearly counterfeit). The caller squints at the spines of a few books, raises his eyebrows at several and takes one from its shelf and opens it under the gas-light, only to hurriedly put it back again. He turns and notices, gathering dust on the mantelpiece, an object of mystery and interest. A large unfathomable mechanism wrought in dull metal with a rubber attachment ending in a sinister kind of nipple. A gauge of some kind, an instrument of some sort, but who can tell what?
The visitor draws nearer to this device. He puts out his finger and tentatively touches the rubber nipple, stepping back quickly as if expecting repercussions. When nothing happens he touches it again, stroking it lightly.
‘See what I mean?’ Cora whispers.
‘He has an unpromising aspect to him.’
‘It’s his head,’ observes Cora, ‘as bald as a peeled bollock.’
Bridie frowns. ‘What’s his business?’
‘He wouldn’t say, but it’ll be sneaky business.’ Cora glances at her. ‘Will I give him a clatter and hold him upside down until he admits to something?’
‘We will try to find out what he wants without the clattering. By using our i
ntelligence.’
Cora snorts and sails off to the kitchen. Bridie enters the room.
The caller turns and offers Bridie a rigid bow.
A man of middle age with luxuriant side-whiskers, the twin carpets of which cover his cheeks, as if to compensate for the smoothness of his pate. His chin is clean-shaven and the wire-framed spectacles he wears hooked high on the bridge of his nose are thick-lensed. This inauspicious head is set on a hotchpotch body composed of a long back, thin arms, downward-sloping shoulders and large womanly hips.
He has a pettish face, with a tense, red-lipped mouth and tiny eyes that flicker restlessly under glass, like tadpoles. They travel over Bridie in a series of inky darts.
He expected rather more.
But then people are always disappointing in the flesh if you’ve heard brave things about them. And, of course, Bridie Devine would be diminished, what with the debacle of her last disastrous case.
The caller looks closely to see how diminished Bridie Devine might be.
She is small and sturdy and stalwart in appearance; she’d stand in a storm. Divested of her bonnet her hair, a riotous shade of auburn, escapes in wisps from her white widow’s cap. Her eyes are prominent, muddy green and roguish, changeable in expression. The caller is instantly put in mind of harems and savages, high seas and vagabonds.
‘You are here on business, sir?’ asks Bridie.
‘On a matter of great urgency and even greater delicacy, madam.’
‘You represent yourself in this matter?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, I represent a man of great social standing.’
‘Good for him, and who are you that he’s sent to me then? His valet?’
The smile becomes rigid. ‘His friend and personal physician, William Harbin.’
‘Are you now? Well, isn’t that grand.’
Bridie motions him to sit and takes the seat opposite. Dr Harbin perches his backside on the edge. He’s a man with business so pressing he hasn’t time to sit down properly.
‘And he’s entrusted this matter, this delicate, urgent matter, to you?’
The smile stays fixed. Dr Harbin puts a hand up to stroke his whiskers, one side and then the next, gently, reassuringly, as if they are fretful pets about to jump off his face.
‘I must say,’ says Dr Harbin. ‘I thought my employer was misguided in seeking out your services. I was certain that you had ceased to trade. Shut up shop, so to speak.’
‘As you can see I am still here, Dr Harbin,’ replies Bridie, grimly.
He throws her a sly glance. ‘It shows an admirable fortitude, carrying on, all things considered. Your last case: a young boy, was it not, Mrs Devine?’
A young boy she could not find in time.
She had read the story of her failure on his body: curly-haired, web-toed, dead. Perfect but for three inconspicuous bruises, one each side of his nostrils and one under his chin. Burked. A pattern a one-time resurrection girl would recognise, even if the buyer of the corpse didn’t.
‘Dreadful business.’ The doctor adopts a sympathetic expression. ‘We heard all about it, even where we are. Miles from London.’
Yes, you peeled bollock, thinks Bridie. It was in all the bloody newspapers.
‘The trouble is,’ continues Dr Harbin, ‘any amateur can call themselves an investigator. But is it not best to leave that sort of thing to the police?’
‘The police were involved in the case you referred to, Dr Harbin. I was not the only person searching for the stolen child.’
The doctor makes a gesture with his hand, a wave of sorts, at once dismissive and conciliatory.
Bridie looks him square in his sliddery eyes. ‘If you are of a mind that a police investigation is preferable, sir, then why are you here?’
Dr Harbin reddens, a deep flush inclusive of ears and nose-tip.
Bridie stands and walks to the door. She picks up the bell. ‘Would you care to join me in a drop of Madeira, Dr Harbin? It could only help matters.’
Cora comes instantly into the room. She throws Bridie an impatient look. This is taking far longer than a good clatter would.
‘Cora, would you bring the Madeira? The special vintage.’
Cora winks at Bridie, glowers at the guest and goes to fetch the decanter. Bridie has a plan. She’ll get this arse-sponge drunk on whatever coaxing mix that is in that Madeira bottle and then he’ll be rattling with news.
‘To recapitulate once more, Dr Harbin: you are here on behalf of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick – a baronet, no less. His six-year-old daughter, Christabel, is missing and, by your reckoning, almost certainly kidnapped.’
‘That is correct.’
‘Sir Edmund is widely held to have no heir, that his marriage to the late Lady Berwick was without issue.’
Dr Harbin’s eyes scurry behind glass; he nods.
‘But now it transpires Sir Edmund had kept a small and secret daughter at his home, Maris House.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sir Edmund is adamant that only four people know about her existence.’
‘That is correct.’
‘And those people are yourself, the butler, the housekeeper and the child’s nurse.’
‘Yes.’
‘That is, the nurse who is currently missing alongside the child?’
Dr Harbin is hesitant. ‘Yes.’
‘And Sir Edmund has never mentioned his daughter to anyone else: friends, relations, interested parties?’
Dr Harbin is beginning to sound weary. ‘That is correct.’
‘And Lady Berwick is deceased.’
‘Yes.’
‘When and how?’
‘Is that relevant, Mrs Devine?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
Dr Harbin looks resentful. ‘Lady Berwick had a tragic accident. A few days after Christabel’s birth.’
‘What sort of accident?’
‘Drowned, unfortunately.’
‘Where?’
‘In the ornamental pond in the grounds of Sir Edmund’s estate.’
‘Lady Berwick drowned in a pond?’
Even Dr Harbin doesn’t seem convinced. ‘Yes.’
‘So Sir Edmund’s heir has passed all six years of her life motherless, hidden away?’
Dr Harbin nods.
Bridie palms her pipe. ‘Do you object, sir?’
She reads the lift in his eyebrows as assent.
Bridie finds her tobacco, fills the bowl, tamps it down, lights it and raises a cloud. Then she remembers her resolve not to smoke, and instantly disremembers it.
Dr Harbin’s shuffles; his long legs twitch, wanting to be gone.
‘Have you a problem sitting, Dr Harbin?’
‘I am anxious to return to Sir Edmund in his hour of need, madam.’
‘Naturally.’ Bridie smokes her pipe serenely.
Dr Harbin makes an effort to stay still.
‘I am a little confused, Dr Harbin. Why would anyone hide a child away from sunlight and playmates, parties and Christmas? I’m assuming that, deprived of her liberty, the child has experienced none of these things.’
Dr Harbin looks to be studying his glass of Madeira, but it is hard to tell where his eyes are moving in the far-off depth behind his spectacles.
‘The child wants for nothing,’ he says. ‘She has everything she needs. As for playmates, she has my own daughter, Myrtle.’
‘Then there are five people who know about her existence?’
Dr Harbin’s fingers tighten on the stem of his glass. ‘Yes.’
‘Is there anyone else you’ve neglected to tell me about, sir?’
‘No, madam.’
‘The chimney-sweep, or the cats’ meat man? Perhaps they have met Christabel too?’
He is riled. Bridie detects a tightening of the mouth and an increase of leg-twitching.
She smiles. ‘You still haven’t answered my question, Dr Harbin. Why was the child hidden away?’
‘She is somewhat unique,’ says
Dr Harbin, his voice stilted with anger.
‘What variety of unique?’
‘Sir Edmund has not given me permission to disclose that.’
‘Come, come, as the family physician you must have examined the child?’ Bridie studies the doctor closely.
And there it is: the doctor winces.
‘What can you disclose, Dr Harbin?’ asks Bridie evenly.
Dr Harbin’s hand goes up to his whiskers, for a soothing pat. ‘I can disclose that the child has singular traits – I will not disclose what these are – which have prevented her from entering society.’
‘So many mysteries! A missing girl hitherto kept a perfect secret from the world . . . that must have been difficult to contrive. But then again, six-year-old girls are usually small and quiet.’
Dr Harbin winces again. Again, Bridie notices.
‘And the missing nurse, how long had she been with the child?’
‘Nearly a month. Mrs Bibby came highly recommended.’
‘Not very long, then – and before Mrs Bibby?’
‘Sir Edmund’s own childhood nurse.’
‘Please elaborate.’
Dr Harbin pauses. ‘She drowned, unluckily.’
‘In the ornamental pond?’
‘No, in a wash-tub,’ says Harbin stiffly. ‘She slipped and fell.’
‘Dangerous place to live, Maris House.’ Bridie takes a puff on her pipe. ‘And you are telling me that the rest of the servants know nothing of Sir Edmund’s secret child.’
‘They know nothing of the child, madam.’
‘Dr Harbin, you know as well as I do – having kept them and doubtlessly having read the advice pertaining to them – that servants never know nothing. They have eyes, ears, brains and an addiction to gossip. This equips them to flush out secrets like trail dogs.’