Things in Jars

by Jess Kidd

  Bridie reflects on none of this as she waits, wanting to be gone, watching Mr Scudder unlock and lock doors, bumbling with the loop of keys he wears at his waist. Ahead of them are many gates, which will require opening and closing. Ruby shuffles and picks at the bandages on his fists.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Bridie whispers.

  ‘It’s the confinement,’ he says.

  ‘You can walk through walls.’

  Ruby shrugs.

  ‘You did time, Ruby?’ Bridie’s tone is soft.

  The mermaid on Ruby’s shoulder turns her head away and buries her face in her hair. The anchor pulls up sharply.

  Bridie nods. ‘Wait outside for me.’

  Ruby throws Bridie a look of relief and heads out into the courtyard.

  Progress through the prison is slow. By the third gate, Mr Scudder, who has developed the demeanour of an expectant hen about to lay a blinder, starts to talk.

  ‘The brutal murder of a local doctor, they’re calling it. Cold-blooded, they’re calling it. Horrific, they’re calling it.’

  They stride forward a few paces only to be stopped by another gate.

  Mr Scudder starts the process again, examining his keys, testing them, discarding them and eventually finding the right one.

  ‘Sir Edmund hasn’t stood trial yet, guard. Innocent until proven guilty.’

  ‘Oh, he’s guilty all right. They both loved the waif, you see.’ He unlocks the gate, smirking over his shoulder. ‘The one that was found strangled in the chapel-yard near Maris House. Two gentlemen, both mad for her – imagine, a baronet and a doctor – and her no more than a tramp’s daughter! She bewitched them, one after the other, when she was out selling clothes-pegs.’

  ‘Now there’s a yarn.’

  ‘She chose the doctor. Overcome by grief and jealousy the baronet killed the happy lovers by means very violent.’

  ‘A flight of fancy.’

  ‘Then he lopped the doctor’s head off with the doctor’s own saw,’ he recounts. ‘And then – now here’s a puzzle – he sent the doctor’s noodle to the chef at Claridge’s. He requested that it be set in aspic.’

  ‘Extraordinary.’

  ‘But then Mr Hoy and I realised: it’s a blue blood thing. Sir Edmund’s ancestors would have taken the heads of their foes on the battlefield and, really, what don’t nobs put in aspic?’

  ‘You have all this on authority?’

  ‘Another guest staying with us at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, he’s quite the town crier.’

  The corridor opens onto galleried tiers of walkways.

  ‘Here we are then, ground floor, Hotel Newgate. I’d hold your nose if I were you, treacle.’

  The ferocious smell of human misery takes a sideways swipe at Bridie Devine. She breathes shallow through her mouth. Other guards lead prisoners, fettered like yard-dogs, along the hall. Shells of men with haunted eyes. Dressed in prison clothes they offer a woeful picture. When they see Mr Scudder they throw him aggrieved looks and shuffle on.

  Mr Scudder leads the way. Stopping only to clatter his truncheon between bars or shout encouragement.

  ‘That bed sheet won’t take your weight, Clements,’ he calls out. ‘Let me find you a sturdy piece of rope, sir.’

  ‘Ain’t you the artist, Minton. Would you like to go to the snug? You could decorate that for us, my love.’

  Presently, Mr Scudder stops and turns to Bridie. ‘This one, if you please, treacle.’

  He unlatches a barred window, no more than a peek-hole at the top of the door.

  ‘Visitor for you, Sir Edmund, Peer of the Realm, ain’t that nice? You might want to pull down your nightie, sir, you don’t want all your appurtenances on show.’

  Mr Scudder gestures to a chair down the hall. ‘Do you want me to come in or perch down there?’

  ‘I think I can manage,’ replies Bridie, coolly.

  Mr Scudder nods. ‘You’ve the face of a brawler. Don’t hurt him now.’

  Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick is wearing no more than a nightshirt. He has the stubble of days on his chin and has lost his front teeth and found himself a black eye.

  He’s in no better condition than Bridie herself.

  He rises quickly and climbs backwards over his cot. He holds his hands up over his face and cowers. If he was broken before, he’s ruined now.

  ‘Sir Edmund, it’s Mrs Devine.’

  He looks through his fingers and begins to cry.

  Sir Edmund’s suite at Hotel Newgate comprises a cell no bigger than his water closet at Maris House. He has been provided with the standard: bucket, window, bed-frame and mattress. He also has a blanket, a chair and a card table, as befitting a baronet. Other everyday essentials are sorely lacking. There are no sheets, inkpots, cigars or writing paper. Neither are there decanters of tawny port, seasoned cutlets, fruited jellies or clean linen shirts.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ the baronet sputters, an uncustomary lisp to his voice with the missing teeth.

  Bridie could show him how to avoid that.

  ‘Sir Edmund, we haven’t much time. If someone is trying to fit you for this deed, you need to name your enemies.’ She looks at him closely. ‘Did you have any dealings with Gideon Eames?’

  Sir Edmund shakes his head.

  ‘What about a man called Kemp?’

  Sir Edmund shakes his head again.

  ‘So it was just you and the doctor, then, travelling to Bantry Bay to find a child and take her from her mother?’

  Sir Edmund stares at her.

  ‘Ellen Kelly, remember? The young woman found strangled in the chapel-yard near Maris House.’

  Sir Edmund starts to slap his own head. ‘No, no, no!’

  Bridie moves over to him and grabs him by the wrist. There’s an awful smell of piss rising from him; the front of his nightgown is sodden.

  He begins to cry again but he stops hitting himself.

  ‘You need to use your bucket, Sir Edmund,’ Bridie says, gently. ‘In the corner there.’

  He calms a little and nods.

  She lets go of his wrist.

  ‘Then Dr Harbin took Christabel from you, very likely with Mrs Bibby’s help. Only you didn’t realise your trusted aide, friend even, had betrayed you until it was too late?’

  Sir Edmund looks up at her, his eyes red-rimmed. Bubbles collect in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Is that how it went, Sir Edmund?’

  Sir Edmund lowers his eyes.

  ‘But you didn’t kill him, did you?’

  Nothing.

  ‘And Ellen Kelly: you didn’t kill her either, did you?’

  Sir Edmund puts his hands over his face and sobs.

  Bridie shuts the cell door behind her. Sir Edmund has crawled under his bed and is refusing to come out. He lies there now, sucking his thumb with all his appurtenances on show. Not a word of sense can be drawn from him.

  There is no sign of the guard. Bridie steps back along the walkway.

  ‘Miss!’ A withered finger pokes through the peek-hole at the top of a cell door. ‘Miss, from Maris House!’

  Bridie draws nearer. An eye appears at the peek-hole, and the voice again, from inside.

  ‘You gave alms to me.’

  ‘I did. So you must be Mr Scudder’s town crier? A sensational interpretation of the events at Maris House, featuring the doctor, the baronet and the tramp’s daughter.’

  There’s a chuckle behind the door.

  ‘What did you do to get yourself in here?’ asks Bridie. ‘It can’t just be for tramping?’

  ‘Croaked a man for his boots.’ The eye at the peek-hole looks to see her reaction.

  Bridie groans. ‘I gave you money for boots.’

  ‘His boots were nicer but he wouldn’t sell ’em. Here, I want to tell you something.’ The eye at the peek-hole is swapped for a mouth, the mouth whispers, ‘About what went on.’

  Bridie spies the guard coming back around the corner, swinging his ring of keys. ‘You’d better be quick. Scudder�
�s back.’

  The eye returns. ‘At first I thought it was a dream, a nightmare, what with me being on the beam end that evening. Oh, vain reasonings! Then I heard word of the finding of a body in the chapel-yard near Maris House. The body of a fair young maiden.’

  ‘I found her, sir,’ says Bridie.

  The voice comes quivering. ‘And I saw her light extinguished!’

  ‘Are you saying that you saw her murdered?’

  ‘O the fair young maiden: noble, skin curd-white in the moonlight, walking among the graves! The very touch of her feet on the ground sweetening the cold soil for those who slumber gratefully in it.’

  Scudder strolls down the corridor, giving each cell door a fierce rap with his truncheon as he goes.

  The mouth is back. ‘All of a sudden – a succubus foul, a hag, the very apparition of death, set upon the fair young maiden!’ The mouth trembles. ‘O the maiden did protest: giving scream and holding up her lovely young arms – to no avail.’

  Mr Scudder stops to pry into a cell.

  ‘The maiden fell.’ The mouth shuts. The tongue runs over the lips. ‘The spectre limped away.’

  Mr Scudder approaches, pointing his truncheon at Bridie. ‘That is not your bleeding prisoner.’

  The eye is back at the door. ‘Miss, I saw the grim reaper herself in the chapel-yard that night. That’s what did for that sweet maiden.’

  ‘Does the grim reaper have a name, Father Road?’

  The eye closes. ‘Bibby.’

  September 1843

  Chapter 29

  The document lay between them on his desk, the title rendered in Bridie’s careful hand.

  Pertaining to the grievous assault of Eliza Kempton

  Bridie stood before him, her hands clenched and held behind of her and her heart belting in her chest. Standing in the same spot she’d stood over two years ago, dressed in a dead man’s blood.

  She waited, breath-stopped.

  ‘And you used my microscope, for this?’ asked Dr Eames.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She willed herself to speak clearly and let the right words weigh in, the ones she had practised. ‘The slides showed under magnification that threads from Eliza’s shawl were present in the mud taken from Master Gideon’s boots. There was blood in the groove of his ring and burrs in—’

  Dr Eames held up his hand. ‘There are witnesses, a clear account of events that day. A man has been arrested, Bridget.’

  ‘Sir, the arrested man is innocent of the crime.’

  ‘Then who is guilty: my son?’

  Bridie lowered her eyes. Struck as she was by the bitterness in his voice.

  ‘We have the testimony of Mrs Eames,’ he continued. ‘She saw the accused in the field around the estimated time of the attack. She clearly stated she had left Master Gideon in the library, where he was cataloguing books with Dorcas Chapman.’

  Bridie frowned. She knew that Dorcas had no business in the library that day, nor on any other day.

  ‘On Mrs Eames’s return Gideon joined her in the drawing-room, and did not leave his mother’s side for the rest of the evening. Gideon could not have attacked Eliza.’

  ‘The evidence tells a different story, sir. It puts Master Gideon with Eliza in that field.’

  ‘And what of the witnesses?’

  ‘Witnesses can be mistaken, sir.’

  ‘Are you saying that my wife is mistaken?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bridie, and the words were no more than an exhalation of breath.

  Dr Eames got up from his desk and walked over to the window. He turned to Bridie. ‘Have you considered, Bridget, that someone might have fabricated this evidence to place false blame on Gideon?’

  ‘The threads were lodged deep, sir,’ Bridie responded. ‘And then the blood in the ring and the burrs found—’

  ‘That is enough.’ Dr Eames ran his hand across his forehead. ‘Why didn’t the police find this?’

  Bridie answered, even though it didn’t sound like he was asking her this question. ‘They only searched where Eliza was found, sir. The ring was at the other end of the field.’

  Dr Eames turns to her in amazement. ‘You searched the entire field?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How long did that take you?’

  ‘A week, sir.’

  Dr Eames turned to the window and looked out over the grounds, a new stoop to his shoulders. Bridie felt sad for him in his troubles.

  ‘Gideon’s past behaviour, I am aware, has not endeared him to people.’ He turned to her with a bitter smile. ‘But lately he’s shown himself to be a model of compassion. Has he not made every effort to help Eliza and her boy?’

  Bridie stayed silent. It was true that Gideon had made something of a pet of Edgar. Once or twice he had ridden into town with the child balanced on the saddle before him.

  ‘Besides, Edgar demonstrates no fear towards Gideon,’ Dr Eames reasoned. ‘The child witnessed the incident – if Gideon was the assailant, surely the child would frightened of him?’

  Bridie had no answer for this. That Edgar was an unsound, contrary little boy was common knowledge: could his reactions be relied on? And besides, how could she argue that it was precisely Gideon’s attentive behaviour that was suspicious: he was going to too-great lengths to show Edgar’s tolerance of him.

  ‘And Eliza is not disturbed at the sight of Gideon, is she?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Which means she does not recognise him as her attacker.’

  Eliza didn’t recognise her own son.

  Bridie looked down at her written report, meticulously prepared and utterly useless.

  Bridie was too old to cry and too proud to beg.

  How old?

  No older than twelve, no younger than ten.

  She took her hands from behind her back. She’d pushed her nails into her palms without knowing it, as she’d stood in front of this man. Red crescents. If she looked at her palms long enough, would she divine some long-written fate?

  In one palm: Della Webb, staring at a chalked cross on a wall.

  In the other: Eliza Kempton as she was. Eliza: who had smiled at her in this room and taken her filthy hand without hesitation.

  ‘Dr Eames,’ said Bridie. ‘Gideon assaulted Eliza: I saw him do it.’

  There were questions, easily deflected. Fear had stopped Bridie from coming forward sooner. And without evidence, who would believe her? Bridie knew how to lie. Jesus, she’d been raised by Gan Murphy.

  She had been out walking when she heard muffled cries and she had run into the field to see Gideon in the grass on his knees. As Bridie spoke the scene grew clearer and truer in her mind. She recounted, too, the exchange between Gideon and Eliza in the stables: as accurately as she could, from what she remembered.

  Finally, there were no more questions. Just Dr Eames standing at the window for the longest time.

  He turned to her. He had blue eyes, and a long face, like a sad horse. And he had bought Bridie for a guinea.

  ‘Have you told anyone else about this? What you saw, what you have found?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Dr Eames nodded. ‘Then this matter stays between us, Bridget, do you understand?’

  Chapter 30

  ‘If you could just angle his lordship’s head into the light, Mr Scudder, that’s the ticket.’

  ‘Pliers, Mr Hoy?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Hammer, Mr Hoy?’

  ‘Not quite yet.’

  Sir Edmund kneels before the two guards like a penitent. He holds his mouth obligingly wide and flinches, although the instrument Mr Hoy is wielding has yet to touch lip or tongue, tooth or gum.

  ‘Hold still, Sir Edmund, and we’ll have you out of here in a jiffy. Won’t we, Mr Hoy?’

  The egg-headed man nods stoically. ‘And don’t scream, my love.’

  ‘Or bawl.’

  ‘There’s a good lad.’

  Mr Scudder places two firm hands on Sir Edmund’s shoulder
s.

  Sir Edmund, eyes reddened, hair on end, holds a blood-sodden rag up to his jaw as he crosses an empty street near Newgate Prison. He could not tell you where he is, but he knows where he needs to be. He has lost five more teeth (gold this time) and a pocket-watch but gained his liberty and another man’s smock. Part werewolf, part bumpkin: Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick disappears into the night.

  Chapter 31

  Bridie is out early today. Her injuries are healing well, the bruising is less livid, her cut lip knitted and dry. But her face still startles passers-by, so Cora has pinned a veil to Bridie’s bonnet. Bridie takes a walk to Bart’s to enquire after Kemp at the mortuary, only to be told that he hasn’t shown up for work in days. Next time she will don her gentleman’s disguise before she visits. Would their answer be any different? Ruby, as always, is by her side. He must understand her mood, for he asks no questions and offers no talk. Bridie waits awhile at the hospital, outside the entrance, at the patients’ gate. The clock at St Paul’s speaks the hour. People pass and stop, gather and disperse. The luckless are stretchered in, roofers or run-overs, lolling and groaning, conveyed by friends or strangers. The doorbell is pulled and the porter answers at once and the crowds dissipate until the next show of human misfortune.

  After Bart’s, Bridie strays homeward: down alleys and lanes, along thoroughfares and streets. The rain still falls from time to time and the floods persist in some parts, mixed with London mud, a startling compound in its own right (name not the ingredients). Bridie’s boots and hems, like everyone else’s, stay sodden these days. Rich and poor alike are besmirched with wet dirt. But not to the same degree: there are some who must live in filth while others just visit it. And what’s a mired petticoat or a caked boot to a maid with soapy preparations and stiff brushes?

  Bridie, like many other Londoners, takes advice from omnibus conductors, street vendors and police constables in order to avoid the worst of it. She is less inclined to listen to the tales about the floods being traded in pubs, shops and street corners. With the resurgence of London’s lost rivers and the biblical rainfall, forgotten nursery tales bubble up in many minds. The people start to remember the folk figures of old. Creatures that have long been asleep, in lakes and under bridges, in horse troughs and in ponds, awaken. They trickle and paddle, slip and sneak into London. It’s as if they’ve been summoned. Names from nursery nightmares are remembered and spoken again: Peg Powler, Jenny Greenteeth, Nelly Longarms. Creatures with wild waterweed hair and long sinewy arms; all the better for reaching out and dragging you into the depths. A rash of children, it is said, have been drowned in buckets. Several more have been pulled into wells. A gentleman daren’t walk alone by the Serpentine these days, else some wet-haired floundering beauty will do for him. Three little mud-larks, it is said, were found drowned beside the creek at Deptford, just down by the old ship-chandlery shop.