Things in Jars

by Jess Kidd

  Inside is a hatbox and inside the hatbox is a head.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Cora.

  Bridie drains her coffee.

  ‘Well, I’d hazard a guess at decapitation,’ says Cora. ‘For the cause of death.’

  Bridie checks the cut. It’s neat, surgical. ‘The head was taken after he died.’

  Cora looks impressed. ‘So what did he die of?’

  ‘I’d probably need the rest of Dr Harbin to tell you that.’

  ‘When did he die? This head’s been knocking about a bit, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Two or three days, I’d say. The head has been stored cold, but is significantly gnawed; missing earlobes, part of a cheek, the tip of its nose—’

  ‘That would be rats?’

  ‘It would, Cora.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus, no,’ moans Ruby, who is through the fireplace at a flinch, agitable since the head arrived.

  Dr Harbin, with eyes veiled and sunken behind broken spectacles that sit crookedly now. Unshaven, with side-whiskers untrimmed. A head hairless and puckered: a peeled, dead bollock.

  ‘It’s a shame really, the state of him,’ says Cora. ‘He was a man who took pride in his mutton cutlets.’

  Bridie catches sight of something protruding from between Dr Harbin’s lips. ‘We’ll move him over by the window, Cora, better light.’

  Cora, with the greatest of decorum, slips her fingertips into the doctor’s ears. Moving cautiously, as if Dr Harbin was a full soup tureen, she sets him on a card table.

  Bridie pushes tweezers between the late doctor’s lips and eases out a flattened lump of paper. She inspects the mouth cavity; as far as she can see it is empty now. She lays the ball of paper on the table and begins to smooth it out.

  ‘It’s written in registrar’s ink,’ notes Bridie, ‘so it’s waterproof. Can you read it?’

  Cora bends closer.

  With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;

  And still as I comb’d I would sing and say,

  ‘Who is it loves me? who loves not me?’

  Cora contemplates Dr Harbin’s pate. ‘I don’t understand. What would he be combing? He doesn’t have a bit of hair on his head.’

  ‘It’s Tennyson,’ says Bridie. ‘From a poem called “The Mermaid”.’

  ‘Someone is telling you that they have Christabel.’

  Bridie is thoughtful. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Well and good luck to them: they’ve bargained for a mermaid and caught themselves a merrow. A memory-reading, dry-land-drowning, man-biting sea lunatic.’

  Bridie momentarily regrets letting Cora read Reverend Winter’s book, but she was encouraged by her interest in anything other than a penny-blood.

  ‘Christabel is a child, Cora. She is not a merrow because they are legendary beasts that do not exist in real life, only in fables.’

  Cora looks mutinous. ‘And the evidence?’

  ‘What evidence? Wet walls and a few snails.’

  Cora, deep in thought, scratches a side-whisker. ‘And the Thames misbehaving and the flood and the rain – what do you think is causing that?’

  ‘Not a six-year-old child.’

  ‘The Reverend Winter made room for fables and he was right to, because there’s a lot of truth in a fable,’ opines Cora majestically.

  Bridie squints at her. ‘Is that a new dress?’

  Cora is wearing a red velvet gown that seems to have been sewn from the stage curtains at Flaxman’s Theatre. It is tied at the waist by a cord as thick as Bridie’s wrist. A pair of foot-long tassels trail at her side. Her chin is freshly shaven and she is wearing a dab of rouge.

  ‘Are you courting, Cora?’ asks Bridie.

  ‘None of yours,’ Cora growls. ‘If that’s all, it is my afternoon off.’ And she gathers her monumental skirts and flounces out of the door.

  Chapter 25

  He has his orders and the job is in hand. He heads to the Coach and Horses, Greek Street, for a swift one. A little livener for Mr Boyd, he takes a pew, then has a spit and a snort for himself, for he is a muculant man of prodigious phlegm and these present London conditions, what with the raining and the flooding, are of no assistance to him. The job in hand requires stealth and quietude, not spitting and snorting.

  The shopkeeper below, the batty bellman, will be asleep now, propped in his tool cupboard, ready to flap into action in the morning. The Big Housemaid is out (a tryst with the Snake Queen, he’d stake a bet on that). The Redhead will be in bed soon, but then she’s in, out, pipe alight, talking to herself at the window half the night. He’ll need to time it so she’s abed. Besides this, he’d be well to remember that too early and the last watch will be swinging by, too late and Frau-up-at-the-frigging-crack will be baking. Mr Boyd knows every habit of the street and of the house and of the Redhead. He’s followed her for days. For a woman, a tiddy one at that, she has locomotion in her. Up and down, down and up, flights of stairs and taking the long way and never a bloody cab or an omnibus.

  Mr Boyd checks his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

  He has lately gone in for a bowler-hat: he finds it becomes him. Tonight he’s added a fancy scarf, blue and red to match his eyes. He likes nice apparel and now that he’s earning the needful he can look the part; every day in full fig. He takes off his hat and frowns at his hairline, artfully arranging the sparse fair froth at the front.

  Long may his association with his current, generous employer continue – and with that thought he reminds himself:

  Tonight, he is to conduct a robbery not a dispatchment.

  Inventory. One item:

  Jar containing specimen of a little baby with a tail.

  (By the nightgown of Christ, how did he get into this occupation?)

  Robbery, Mr Boyd, he reminds himself. Not a dispatchment.

  Sometimes the two go hand in hand.

  Sometimes you arrive at a job calling for the cessation of an individual. Accomplished. You have a prowl and there are a few nice bits and it would be rude not to. But you can’t always vend what you rob. Instead you bury it under the floorboards. Then there’s an unexpected decampment by moonlight. This is the way it goes.

  Sometimes you arrive at a job for the purposes of robbing. Accomplished. Family wakes and contests the situation with you and you stifle them with a touch too much fervour. This is another way it goes.

  Mr Boyd leaves the pub and heads to the house. He’ll approach to the rear. The front of the house is no way in.

  A tradesman passes, paying no note to his person or his phiz (he always sets his face pure, smooth of brow, like a clergyman). Mr Boyd praises himself for having the sense to come smart-attired.

  The back gate is locked. With effort he’s over the fence, mopping his forehead and adjusting his hat.

  (By the dugs of Mary Mother, how did he get into this line of work?)

  Not so many years ago Mr Boyd was a roof dancer at the top of his profession; four burglaries a day and six on a Saturday, but never – God forbid! – on a Sunday. But you need a lightness of feet and arse for that game.

  In through the pantry and here Mr Boyd takes a moment . . .

  Oh, the thrill! Breathing someone else’s private, out-of-bounds air!

  This is why he does the job.

  He moves with stealth, careful not to snort, spit or swear. Occasional tables, lose floorboards and rugs don’t trouble him. He’s after a likely lockable. And here it is. Rows of jars, as they said there would be. Glass cold to the touch.

  He strikes a Lucifer and holds up the lit match.

  (By the beard of Saint Peter, his fucking heart won’t stand this.)

  He sacks the thing with a shudder and is done, with no waking on the Redhead’s part.

  As Mr Boyd makes his exit he feels a trifle despondent. He finds himself reluctant to return to his solitary lodgings, or repair to a tavern for a lonesome drink. He’d like a bit of company, some admiration first. Doesn’t he look the part tonight?

  Mr Boyd saunter
s to the bedroom.

  Bridie is asleep in the bed. A light burns still and the book she was reading is open beside her. If she hears a noise at all – the discreet opening and shutting of a door, the soft tread on the stairs – she decides that it’s Cora retuning home late and stays asleep. Then she remembers that Cora has never treaded softly or closed a door without testing its hinges.

  She sits up with a scream into a man’s hand.

  He kneels on the bed, one leg either side of her.

  Oh God, the horror of his body on hers—

  He’s a neckerchief wrapped around his mouth but she recognises him instantly as the copper who’s been trailing her.

  If Ruby is here she can’t see him—

  Hatless, balding, rheumy blue eyes, sweating with effort. He’s saying something to her that she doesn’t understand.

  And how can a dead man defend her—

  The same question over and over, he asks, muffled by the neckerchief.

  She twists free and lunges for the nightstand.

  Understanding her intention, the man lands Bridie a blow, half punch, half slap. Like he’d changed his mind partway through.

  This is not Valentine Rose’s man.

  He has his hand over her mouth and is doing something with the bedsheet. His face against her neck; snorting, breathing. She goes cold with disgust and with anger. Bridie gets her arm free and catches him hard in the mouth.

  He replies with a fist this time.

  August 1843

  Chapter 26

  They talked about it around Mrs Donsie’s kitchen range in hushed voices.

  Eliza: half-strangled, beaten and worse. They glanced at each other with expressions of shocked meaning on their faces.

  Bridie pretended to be asleep on the couch in the corner. She watched through narrowed eyes. What could be worse than a beating?

  ‘And the child looking on, bless his heart. He was sitting next to her when they found her. His eyes wide and his little hand on her poor broken face.’

  Mrs Donsie started to cry. A quick, angry-sounding sob that was over before it started and made Bridie’s heart stop in a way the words had not.

  ‘Ah, now, Mrs Donsie.’ The servants pressed forward with handkerchiefs. Mrs Donsie found her own and mopped her face with it.

  The servants sat in disbelief: what next?

  The laundrymaid piped up. ‘And the baby—’

  Mrs Donsie shook her head and gestured over at the couch.

  The laundrymaid tried again. ‘On our doorstep, that isn’t right.’

  There was mumbled assent.

  But the police had made an arrest, there had been a fella hanging around.

  ‘There’s some justice there then,’ said the laundrymaid.

  The servants pursed their lips. Mrs Donsie said nothing.

  The man protested his innocence but he had been seen the afternoon of the attack in the field where Eliza and Edgar were found.

  Mrs Eames had witnessed the accused trespassing in the field with a furtive demeanour as she headed back towards the house subsequent to her stroll along the river. The servants raised their eyebrows. In the afternoon Mrs Eames took laudanum and planned a fictional ball. There was never strolling and particularly never in the afternoon.

  The alleged attacker was an itinerant of no fixed abode who had turned up in Windsor in search of work, a meal and a bed. Previously accused of robbing a quantity of building materials and sleeping under hedges, he’d a wife in Portsmouth and had been a coalman. He had a weakness for drink and a weakness to his right arm as a result of an argument with a dray-horse. His left arm fared no better, having been wrecked by a fall through a cellar hatch whilst in his cups.

  Could this man have knocked Eliza insensible, delivering the shocking severity of injury that she sustained to her face and body, difficult. At the trial, his defence had him clench a fist and then lift, with each of his weakened arms, a series of weights. But Mrs Eames knew what she had seen: the man was in the field shortly before Eliza was found unconscious. What’s more, Mrs Eames now recollected that the accused had blood on him. The prosecution called for a thorough medical examination of the accused, which showed he was playing up his infirmities. This was substantiated when the man was allegedly discovered arm-wrestling in a pub in Datchet.

  Eliza’s injuries were hard to accept. Not just the look of her, her lovely smile remade into a grimace, her glossy hair gone in handfuls, her jawline destroyed. It was hard to accept what was taken from her that day in that field. Now her speech was slurred, her rage quick to flash, her humour lost. She found no pleasure, unless sometimes in her meals, and had recollection of few faces and never names. She had no tolerance of her child, who clung to her like a little ugly limpet until in her unheeding fury she threw him off and tried in earnest to hurt him. After that, Mrs Donsie kept the two apart. Edgar played with his string, laughed not at all and was liable to bite anyone who came near him.

  Mrs Donsie gave charge of the boy to the Bad Dorcas, the rough-mannered housemaid. She controlled him well, it had to be said. And it got the pair of them out from under Mrs Donsie’s feet. After the attack Dorcas was seen often with Gideon, laughing and walking, with Edgar sulking behind. Even Mrs Donsie wondered about this state of affairs.

  Bridie watched Gideon closely at this time; she no longer hid from him. In fact, she began to realise that it was Gideon who was taking pains to stay clear of her. Before, it was as if she were an inanimate object, unworthy of his consideration. But now, if their paths crossed, he avoided her eyes. She made him uncomfortable. Bridie thought about what would happen if she walked up to him and said a name, out loud, to his face.

  Della Webb.

  Late one night by Mrs Donsie’s range, when there was just the two of them, Bridie asked the cook, who knew everything about everything, a careful question. Had she heard tell of a woman who lived alone just outside Cranbourne who might have fallen into difficulties? Within days, Mrs Donsie returned a story to Bridie, of a young woman, a barmaid of questionable character, who had perished, not long ago, in a house fire. Rumour had it that the fire was deliberate. That the young woman had poured lamp oil around the house, setting a blaze so fierce there was hardly anything left of her, or of the room she had been lying in.

  To set a fire and go and lie down in it, who would do that?

  Mrs Donsie had looked hard at Bridie for the longest while. Bridie felt that, as she stared into the range.

  Bridie knew about evidence. How small, unnoticed things could tell a story, maybe a story someone didn’t want told. It was possible that Eliza’s attacker had left evidence behind and if she searched hard enough she would find it.

  Bridie searched, and was rewarded.

  She found the boots in a sack hidden in the boathouse. They were Gideon’s. She found the signet ring pressed into the mud in the field where Eliza was found. It was Gideon’s. And after some persuasion, the footman gave her the jacket Gideon was wearing on the day of Eliza’s attack.

  The boots, under Dr Eames’s microscope, showed threads that matched Eliza’s shawl. The ring, beneath the mud, had traces of dried blood within its engraving. The jacket had burrs, embedded in the seam of the cuff, missed by the ministrations of the footman and his clothes-brush. These corresponded to the sticky willow that grew where Eliza had lain.

  Gideon had attacked Eliza; the evidence told a story and this story was indisputable.

  October 1863

  Chapter 27

  Bridie has two swollen eyes and bruising that ranges in colour from the faintest pollen-kissed yellow to the deepest deep-blue-black-green. Her nose came out of the attack unbroken, but her central and lateral incisors didn’t fare so well. Where her teeth should be, she now has soft gum and a gap odd to the stab of her tongue and flavoured with iron. The torn inside of her mouth is mending well; Prudhoe felt confident that her lips would heal without undue scarring. Later, alone with a mirror, Bridie agreed with his prognosis, then cried a f
ew quick, hot tears of self-pity and was done with it. Bridie’s attacker took nothing but the Winter Mermaid. Leaving the cabinet door ajar and a vacancy between the gnawed dormouse and the wide-open heart.

  Deciding one day is ample to be abed, Bridie is up and about this morning, moving stiffly and ignoring Cora’s fussing concern. It takes Bridie a while to get into her gentleman’s clothes. Joking that she’ll be out the door by nightfall, she lets Cora help with the buttons and tippet-fur whiskers. And Cora makes sure to keep her huge hands gentle, and her words as light as her touch.

  If Bridie looked shabby before, she looks derelict now. She hails a cab and heads to Bart’s. There is no easy amble today, no cane twirling and no winking, whether flower seller, shop girl or costermonger’s mule.

  Ruby walks close beside her. He hides his pity as well as he can but it’s her smile that gets him. Bridie’s wide tooth-showing smile has been replaced by an uncertain pressed-lip affair as if she doesn’t understand the joke.

  Bridie will start with the porters at Bart’s, on account of them knowing more about the hospital than anyone else. Their offices are just inside the entrance, or at the Rising Sun, if it’s that time of day. Bridie tries the offices first. An off-duty porter is carving up a game pie. His colleague dozes in a nearby chair. The room is bedecked with homely comforts; Bridie spies a bottle of port and a pipe rack. These are bribes from patients. Make friends with a porter and you will get supplementary benefits to the basic hospital provisions: it will ease your stay no end.

  ‘Sir: a young fellow who may go by the name of Cridge, do you know where I could find him?’

  The porter glances over at her. ‘You didn’t win then, sir?’

  Bridie shakes her head. ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Let’s hope you got a few blows in?’

  ‘Not as many as I’d have liked,’ says Bridie.

  ‘Cridge, you say? There’s no Cridge.’

  Bridie isn’t surprised. ‘Do you know a young man of unfavourable aspect: slight, big head and a tendency to sneer?’