by Jess Kidd
‘Is that what Lufkin is saying?’ asks Bridie.
‘Lufkin says nothing, ma’am. He’s a close-lipped little bastard when he wants to be.’
‘So, these are just rumours?’
‘Oh, they are more than rumours, ma’am. His guard told me that Lufkin intends to unveil the new act at Cremorne Gardens, at the grand opening.’
‘Two weeks from now,’ adds Cora.
‘Has Lufkin received any visitors beyond his usual circle, perhaps in secrecy?’
The snake bumps its muzzle along Euryale’s arm. She strokes its head with absent-minded affection. ‘About a week ago, Mrs Devine, this cove came.’
The water comes to boil. Euryale takes the kettle off the stove.
‘Do you know the name of the cove?’
She glances out of the door and draws nearer. ‘I don’t, Mrs Devine. I heard Lufkin call him “my old friend”.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Funny-shaped head. Bit of a sneer.’
‘Smoking a cigar?’
‘Don’t know, ma’am. I only saw him for a moment and then Lester sent us all away, even his bodyguards. Which I was surprised about.’ Euryale swirls hot water round the pot and throws it out of the door. The python slips and she pushes it back onto her shoulder.
‘Why did that surprise you?’
Euryale shrugs, measuring tea-leaves into the pot. ‘Lester Lufkin is never alone. Too many people have it in for him.’
‘He imagines.’
‘Oh, there’s no imagining in it, Mrs Devine.’ Euryale glances at Bridie. ‘I can’t think of one good reason why someone wouldn’t want to kill the man,’ she says, coolly.
Cora laughs.
Euryale’s venom lessens slightly. ‘He keeps his guards near him always, even when he’s asleep or in the shitter. Even when he’s having his maritals.’
The python recoils. Cora looks distressed.
‘Which isn’t often,’ Euryale adds. ‘Because of the little king’s gout an’ all.’ She draws a full gut in front of her with a quick swing of her hand.
‘Go on,’ says Bridie.
‘I hid and tried to earwig and if it wasn’t for that bloody snake I would have heard the whole thing. It spotted a rat, you see, and went after it. Giving me away.’ Euryale taps one of the cages. ‘Bad, Clarissa, bad girl.’
A snout bumps along the bars. Glittering eyes unblinking.
‘When Lester discovered I was listening he got angry and threw me out of his tent. I’ve been living in this caravan ever since, although he allows me back for the feasts. Appearances’ sake.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘I much prefer it here to his royal bloody court.’
Euryale pours the tea and Cora watches her with admiration.
‘He’s threatening to annul me, or chop my head off. I’m too Anne of Cleves, he says,’ Euryale admits. ‘I’m the reason he can’t get a – you know.’
The snake on Euryale’s shoulder droops. Cora examines her boots.
‘Well, any sign of trouble: get out. Come to us and we will help you get on your feet.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Devine, and if there’s any sign of your stolen girl I’ll let you know.’
‘If she falls into Lufkin’s hands we stand a chance of saving her.’
Cora scowls. ‘They’d be treacherous hands to be in.’
‘Oh, there’s worse,’ says Bridie. ‘Believe me.’
‘I will send for you,’ Euryale assures. ‘I promise.’
The snake drops down from her shoulder and furtively slips under the bunk in the corner.
Ruby is where Bridie left him. Only now he’s sitting cross-legged inside the lion’s cage with his top hat on his knee. The big cat is wearing an expression of grave sympathy. From time to time it nods in agreement. When Ruby sees Bridie, he stops talking and colours a deep red, the like of which she wouldn’t expect to see on a dead man. The lion regards her with momentary interest then yawns, stretches and lies down, resuming his habitual air of bored savagery.
Ruby frowns at Cora. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
Cora has lost her glower and found the trace of a smile.
‘She’s love-struck. Lufkin’s wife.’ Bridie mimes big-eyed rapture.
Ruby raises his eyebrows. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you would notice those sorts of things.’
‘What sorts of things?’
‘Oh, you know.’ Ruby lowers his voice, his moustache twitches with effort. ‘Romance.’
Bridie snorts.
Ruby looks away. The lion glances at him sympathetically.
Chapter 16
A lull in the rain and the river’s a mirror: a breath-held stillness to the Thames. Every vessel it seems, from Gravesend to Deptford, is in the direst of doldrums. There’s no wind for the sail and no thrust for the engine and a dipped oar won’t make a difference. No one can make headway today. It’s as if the river is conspiring against them, flatly checking any progress.
One vessel is moving, and above it, a maelstrom of crying water-birds.
The crew are not paid to wonder, but even so. All sailors are superstitious and there’s a cursed aspect to this voyage. The hired Thames barge goes at a pace that bears no correspondence to the sails, which hang limp. It is as if unseen forces are under the hull, directing it, lifting it, for the boat sits high in the water.
The cargo: a woman, a fella and a casket, nothing to speak of.
The captain won’t speak of this business. Not of the gleam in the woman’s eyes, her very blue, wide-apart eyes, nor of her cat-cream smile. He will not talk of the haunted look of the man, unshaven, eyes alarmable behind smeared spectacles. And he knows his crew will not utter a word about the scuffling sound that came from inside the casket as they loaded it.
The passengers have paid three times over, that buys hush.
The cargo is in the hold. The casket secured and the woman passenger seated on a sturdy chair with her leg up. Her eyes are closed, but there’s alertness to her and a sense of something held ready under her shawl.
The gentleman passenger, green to the gills with boat motion, sits up on deck, crumpled in on himself.
Christabel sniffs at the air holes, her face as pale as a marble carving, still a church-yard angel, only now she is changing daily, in Mrs Bibby’s opinion. Mrs Bibby takes note of these changes to pass them on to the doctor – for his accurate records. Aren’t the child’s eyes more sunken today, her pupils a little flatter? Her cheekbones are sharper, surely, with a harder edge, a skeletal hollowness? Her curls are falling out; they are making way for hair thicker, straighter, with the slippery texture of sea-thong. There is an uncanny speed to her movements now, oh, predatory. And her new teeth are cutting; gums distinctly damson, dog-like. Lord help the next poor bastard bitten.
Christabel taps on the casket, a rapid pattern.
Mrs Bibby bangs on the lid. ‘Stove it. I’ve not a drop of medicine and a stay in bloody Deptford because of you.’
The noise stops.
Mrs Bibby takes in her surroundings. It is nice below deck, in the dim timber belly of the hull, sitting in the light let in by a few scattered portholes. The smell of past cargos lingering, spice, cloves, not unpleasant, mixed with Thames reek.
She could fancy herself a free-trader. Smuggling a bit of contraband. Or a river-pirate! She has the frigging leg for that.
A gentle scraping.
‘Would a story keep you quiet?’
The sound ceases immediately.
Mrs Bibby settles back in her chair and breathes deeply. Becalmed by the boat’s sway she begins. ‘All right, so. In the old days . . .’
A maid was the property of her master and mistress, like a horse, or a teacup, then as now, it has not changed. In return for swollen knees and the bent back of a beast of burden – the housemaid is rewarded with pay, shelter and, on leaving, a first-rate ‘character’.
Dorcas’s friend, Della, sadly found no such security.
As Dorcas was learning to
read and write, Della was fending off her master’s attentions. The mistress, although near-sighted about her husband’s behaviour, was hawk-eyed when it came to the silverware. Della was expelled into the world, without her character, after five years of faultless service due to a mislaid mustard spoon.
Della found a tumbledown cottage two days’ walk away and, with the farmer’s leave, scratched about on the land. With comings and goings, she made a living discreetly and dishonourably. Della’s shame and her fear of tainting her friend’s position by association prevented her from finding her Dorcas. And by the time Dorcas found out about Della—
Mrs Bibby leaves off. She runs her hand over her face and looks up to the wooden heavens.
The wooden heavens creak in answer but offer nothing more profound than the sound of the boat ploutering through water. In the sweet, spice-smelling dim Mrs Bibby hears the softest tap.
‘No more, Kraken,’ she says, her voice hollow. ‘That story ended badly. Even you cannot make me remember it.’
She closes her eyes, her brows draw together as she lapses back into some bitter stream of memory, and the child in the casket, fallen silent, lets her.
And so the barge drives onwards, through the river din, for the river is wakening, quickening, as they pass. Sounds carried over water: church bells, watermen’s oaths, thrumming steam-engines, children playing and the ever-present sound of the water-birds that fly overhead. Onwards drives the barge. Past quays and boatyards, warehouses and landing stages, houses and spires. Past old crooked-beamed public houses that teeter down to the water. Onwards drives the barge. Amid mail boats and passenger boats, paddle and screw steamers, rowing boats and skiffs, steam-yachts, steam-ferries and tugs. Watercraft of every size negotiating the beneficent, polluted, bottomless, shallow, fast-rushing, mud-slickened, under-towed Thames. The world enters London by river – vessels are converging from all corners and heading out to all corners. India, America, seas Baltic, Black and Mediterranean. The river a confusion of spars and rigging, flags and sails, masts and smoke-smudged funnels. For Millwall: marble and timber; for St Katharine: tobacco and wine; for Limehouse: coal; for Surrey: corn – and for Butler’s Wharf: tea, of course!
The barge approaches Deptford, past the steam-boat piers and the gas works. Driven through the water like something controlled by fate.
On the banks dogs howl and cats raise hackles. Babies and drunken men bawl, falling into some strange spontaneous fear which wanes as the barge passes.
Chapter 17
Bridie moves between the stalls at Seven Dials market. Ruby, offended by the jostle of the crowd and the propensity of people to inadvertently walk through him, has gone to find a peaceful spot for a smoke. But Bridie is not alone; she can see her muculent copper in tow. Today he has added to his pocket a natty yellow handkerchief, which he uses to wipe the sweat from his red face. And he needs it, for Bridie is moving twice as fast as usual, just for the fun of seeing the man flustering behind her. What information this spy is taking back to Rose is beyond her, she gives him the slip so often. He’ll be left with her breakfast habits and what the grocer’s boy delivers.
The other idea, that Rose sent this buffoon to protect her, is less palatable. Either Rose knows of some kind of undisclosed threat to her person, or he thinks Bridie is unable to defend herself. Neither proposition is welcome.
The market is hopping today. Everything is on sale, from songbirds to tooth powders, crockery to corn-salves, rabbits to broom-handles. There are cobblers, sheet-music sellers and portrait painters. Coffee stalls, lemonade stands and sellers of quack remedies. Buyers come; dithering and eyeing, lifting and bartering, poking and pawing. Sellers call out, entreat, cajole. Trade, when it happens, is brisk; goods are bought, wrapped and handed over in an eye-blink.
Bridie finds what she’s looking for: Dr Rumold Fortitude Prudhoe, wedged between a button seller and a knife-sharpening stand. The respected toxicologist is hawking his wares from a trunk, his produce being: radical broadsides and experimental smokables. Consumption of which could be made separately or together; individually they are illuminating, together quite transformative.
The raven perched on the shop awning above him fixes Bridie with the bright black bead of her eye and lets out a chuckle, low and morbid. Prudhoe glances up and smiles.
In the snug at the Clock House, Prudhoe raises a glass.
‘To your good health, Bridie.’
‘And to yours, Prudhoe. Commerce is swift?’
‘I make nothing on my broadsides. The blends go down better than my ideas. Now they earn more than an autopsy. This afternoon I may sing my ideas, it works for the chanters.’
‘It’s worth a try.’
Prudhoe looks weary. ‘I’m done with poisoning, Bridie. There’s just no innovation. It’s just arsenic, arsenic and more bloody arsenic.’
‘It’s a popular choice, Prudhoe.’
‘Cheaper than sugar.’
‘A Bradford humbug for you, sir?’
‘A spoonful of murderers’ relish, madam?’
‘That famous condiment of killers!’
‘So why is death by poisoning always such a bloody mystery?’ Prudhoe despairs. ‘Six months the last corpse I tested was in the ground. It took that long for her neighbours to realise that old Mrs Kittiwake, or whatever her name was, was done in.’
‘Remarkable,’ agrees Bridie.
‘I can think of better ways to spend my days than searching for arsenical residue in a broth of suppurating stomach lining. But then, it’s a living.’ Prudhoe drains his glass. ‘And the investigation?’
‘Coming along.’
Prudhoe’ expression is uncertain.
‘What is it, Prudhoe?’
‘I have some news.’
‘About Christabel?’
‘It’s not pertaining to the stolen child.’
‘Go on.’
‘You’re not going to like it, Bridie.’
‘Go on.’
‘Guess who is back from the dead?’
Bridie looks at the empty glass on the table before her. It is real. As are her hands, palms down, either side of it. The table is real, too: heavy, dark wood. Prudhoe, sitting before her, is undeniably real and so is the bar and the drinkers, the lead-lighted windows and, very likely, the landlord. Only nothing feels real; it’s as if something has altered, some basic rule of the universe so that she doubts the substance of everything.
‘And it’s definitely him?’
Prudhoe nods.
‘Not drowned, in Fremantle?’
‘He’s a doctor, Bridie; a surgeon, like his father.’
Bridie shakes her head. ‘How?’
‘He’s been working on the continent, outlying places, making quiet contributions. He’s returned to London to take up a surgical post at Bart’s. His father has influential friends yet, but it appears that Eames the younger has done a good job in promoting his own interests. He’s made money on his travels, Bridie, a great deal of it.’
‘But he fell out of the world, for all those years?’
‘I’d say he was strengthening his position against his return. He had his detractors when he left, those who worried at the reason for his going. After all, it smacked of banishment.’
‘I told no one. Dr Eames swore me to secrecy.’
‘Just me and Mrs Prudhoe?’
Bridie can’t answer.
‘People speculate, it’s human nature.’ Prudhoe frowns. ‘Well, now he’s back, and by all accounts he has some swash.’
‘How can it be,’ Bridie shakes her head, ‘that the General Medical Council baulk at a woman practising but that killer—’
‘Gideon Eames is not a killer in their eyes,’ says Prudhoe, gently. ‘He’s taken a house at Cavendish Square.’
‘Oh, Jesus, I’ll be bumping into him in Oxford Street.’
‘You are forewarned now.’
A thought occurs to Bridie. ‘He’s a collector?’
‘If he follows his fa
ther, very possibly.’
‘Prudhoe, what can I do?’ asks Bridie, her face stricken.
Prudhoe takes her hands in his. ‘Keep wide awake, that’s all you can do.’
They sit in silence for a while. Prudhoe holds up Bridie’s empty glass; when the pot-boy comes he takes the bottle and pours her another.
Then: ‘Did you ever hear about Ruby Doyle, the boxer?’
Prudhoe, sensing a shift in her, replies with relief. ‘The Decorated Doyle, you mean?’
Bridie nods. ‘You knew him?’
‘I saw him fight. The man was thrilling in the ring, that great illustrated body of his. A glorious violent spirit!’
‘But you never knew him, personally?’
‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. He seems familiar,’ says Bridie, vaguely.
Prudhoe is reflective. ‘It was a waste: a man with his talent cut down in his prime.’ He glances at her with a half-smile. ‘Is that your next case? Who killed Ruby Doyle?’
Bridie knocks back her whiskey and pours herself another. ‘Jesus, I hope not.’
A bird hops over the threshold of the pub and skitters across the floor.
‘You’re a mystery, Bridie, a wild dark tornado of a mind – just like my corvids.’
The raven sets a course for Prudhoe and flaps up on the table. She dips nearer and closes her beak affectionately around his thumb.
‘My horrible love!’
The landlord eyes Prudhoe from behind the bar; he holds a rag ready. The doctor is his best and worst customer, what with the liberal ordering of fine victuals on the one hand and the bird crap on the other.
‘We shall watch out for your stolen child, won’t we?’ Prudhoe gestures towards his raven. ‘You see, Bridie, I have eyes all over London.’
The raven lets out a jagged caw, startling more than a few of the Clock House regulars.
‘So you do, Prudhoe. But God forbid she’ll be lost to the circus or worse.’
Prudhoe nods in sad earnest. ‘It happens . . .’
‘Not if I can help it,’ says Bridie grimly.
Tonight, Bridie undresses without Cora’s assistance. She never needs it, but Cora insists, for she enjoys pretending disgrace at the slackness of Bridie’s corset and the challenge of untangling her hair. At this moment, Cora is occupied elsewhere. She is in the Horse and Dolphin, gazing into the kohled eyes of Euryale, Queen of Snakes. They are sharing a jemmy and a few while Euryale tells Cora about her childhood in a fishmongers’ shop in Bermondsey. It was simple, Euryale explains, the move from eels to snakes. Cora glances with consternation at the royal python wound around the table leg. Euryale opens another bottle with her teeth and smiles, unleashing her dimples. Cora is smitten.