Things in Jars

by Jess Kidd

  He comes slewing to where she lies in churned mud. He drags her up the bank as if he’s saving her. Turning her on her back, he knocks her head on the ground. His hand on her jaw and chin, her still coughing from the river. The expression on his face familiar: certainty and contempt.

  He wore it the day he killed Della and whenever he saw Eliza.

  Up close, she remembers the colour of his eyes – a blue eye, seen through a crack in the stable wall.

  His hands on her neck now, her throat, for he’s in earnest. As she chokes, she raises her hand and touches his cheek, his beard, with gentle fingers.

  Gideon loosens his grip in surprise, as if hit with a stinging blow.

  Her eyes on his, Bridie runs her hand over his hair, behind his head, under his collar, to his neck. Between them: close as they are, their breath, fast and hot. And the smell of his sweat and pomade and her pipe-smoke and river-water.

  At her touch, his expression changes: revulsion and interest, or somewhere between. Bridie motions that she wants to say something, to whisper; he’s broken her voice.

  He hesitates.

  Look closely: Bridie’s fingers, so light on his neck his nape hairs rise beneath. Her other hand, stealthy, pulls up her skirts, moves to her bent leg, feels round her thigh, finds what is strapped there.

  Gideon Eames puts his ear to her mouth; Bridie grits her teeth against it, as she stabs him.

  He grunts in answer and turns his face away. Bridie drives deeply; she will jag him neck to nethers and never stop.

  Hands pull him off her, hands restrain her and hands wrestle the dagger from her. Arms hold her while she cries and curses.

  In the river a splash stops proceedings.

  It reaches up over the bank and sends the rowing boat hopping.

  Gideon sees, everyone does. He slips the constable restraining him, punching him down, and is up on his knees, his feet, down to the river’s edge.

  It happens in a moment: a splash and a whipped arc described by something sleek, fast-moving.

  And Gideon is gone.

  On the surface of the river bubbles form and break.

  Chapter 45

  In Albery Hall’s yellow drawing-room Bridie downs another glass of Gideon Eames’s fine whiskey. She ought to be on her knees but she’s straight-up sober. She watches from the French window as Rose’s men search the river-bank in the dying light. Rose moves among them, calm and authoritative. Cora has been taken to hospital, Bridie having made a good fist at patching her friend up. Edgar Kempton Jones was admitted alongside her with severe blood loss from multiple lacerations and a gunshot wound. He was lucky on that score: the bullet glanced him.

  Rose’s master criminal is nowhere to be found. Rose, as angry as Bridie has ever seen him, has sent half his men out combing the surroundings. But he holds no hope. Dorcas Chapman is long gone.

  Bridie sat for the longest while in Mrs Donsie’s kitchen, in the cook’s old chair, by the cook’s old range. On the card table next to her: a half-smoked cigar, a half-empty medicine bottle and a half-read volume (overdue) from Mudie’s library. After reading the title, not without surprise, Bridie turned to the first pages and read them.

  She has the book with her now. Where else but lodged in her thief’s stuff-pocket? And will she show it to Rose? Another time, perhaps. She crosses the room and pours another glass for herself.

  Ruby watches her. She feels his eyes on her. He hasn’t left her side since the river. She can’t look at his face for the concern on it.

  ‘I lost another child, Ruby.’

  ‘But you saved that one.’ Ruby points at Myrtle, asleep on a chaise longue, Bridie’s cape thrown over her spangles.

  Bridie walks back to the window.

  October 1863

  Chapter 46

  Mr Wilks, bell hanger, is delighted, as always, to see Bridie home. He perches by his window fashioning his gudgeons and watching out for her. But he is disappointed of further sightings in the days that follow. Bridie keeps to her rooms. She sits for long hours, smoking and thinking of the past, of Eliza and Edgar, Dorcas and Della, Gideon and Dr John Eames. But most of all she thinks of Sibéal. In her mind she sees her, drawing near, under the water; she feels her little hands on her face again, the twisting of her body, the strength of her in her own element.

  Sibéal’s are the only eyes Bridie sees in her dreams now, pearl darkening to jet, and they are not frightening at all.

  Cora doesn’t bother Bridie with corsets and hairbrushes and London news. On that score there’s not much to tell, for the floods have subsided and the rainfall is commensurate with the season (although there are omens that the winter will be direful harsh). Otherwise there’s news Bridie doesn’t need to hear. That the bodies of the two people recently drowned in Windsor – a man and a small girl – have not been recovered. When Cora remembers the events that day her wounds hurt, but really they are healing well, for Bridie dresses them diligently. Cora is confident she could still give a good clatter, although her days of man-throwing may be numbered. Besides, Cora has her large hands full with more peaceable activities – what with Bridie’s new young charge in the rooms above Wilks’s of Denmark Street. Myrtle Harbin, chocolate pudding around her mouth, dancing her one-eyed doll between the parlour and the kitchen. When Jem can be spared from his new job, tea-boy at Scotland Yard, he visits. He looks dapper these days, now that the flower in his buttonhole is real. And then Cora and the children sit down for another instalment of Wagner the Wehr-Wolf with Myrtle feigning fear, safe in the housemaid’s capacious lap and always a slice of something on the kitchen table.

  Sometimes Cora is distracted, gazing off in the direction of Chelsea and the Cremorne Gardens. Perhaps the Queen of Snakes spares a thought for her, as she stands wrapped in a python watching the carpenters strike the stage and the clowns muster the penguins. The circus will be leaving soon and Euryale with it – could there have been any other ending? Lester Lufkin, with the buoyancy of Old Coppernose himself, remains undefeated by his Cremorne fiasco. He has his sights set high, Royal high. He is planning a show fit for a queen – bigger, stranger and more marvellous!

  But for some, life continues in a quieter fashion. Gale and Widmerpole welcome new worshippers daily, it seems. Only this week an elderly pipistrelle and a drabble-coated vixen joined the congregation at Highgate Chapel. And below them, the crypt has been sealed and the lost mother and her merrow-child forgotten. In his Brixton windmill, Prudhoe tends flasks and test-tubes, books and corvids, dreaming up ever-wilder smokable concoctions. His latest broadside is a cautionary tale about collecting, with thinly disguised characters you would almost certainly recognise.

  While life goes on, Bridie sits and thinks.

  Ruby stays by her side. They hardly talk: but this is not contentment and Ruby knows it.

  As he knows it can’t last.

  He yearns to lie down and close his eyes. He wonders if a dead man can be exhausted. He wonders if Bridie has noticed.

  She has, of course. She keeps the curtains drawn and the gas-lights dim, for he is fading daily. Today she can barely see him as he stands by the window, peering out at the visitor below.

  ‘It’s the inspector,’ says Ruby. ‘He has roses.’

  Bridie draws on her pipe. ‘Good for him.’

  Ruby listens. ‘There’s the sound of Cora hobbling down the stairs to answer the door. Will you be indisposed again?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘He’s a good man, Bridget.’

  Bridie glances up at him. He holds his hat in his hand with the air of a man taking his leave.

  And all at once Bridie’s heart turns in her. ‘What are you even saying?’

  Bridie notices the tattoos on his body. They are no longer moving.

  The anchor has taken itself up, its rope coiled neatly, the skull’s teeth meet in a rictus grin and the mermaid gazes fixedly far into the horizon, shielding her eyes with her inked hand. The heart on Ruby’s chest is complete now, still
and whole. Bridie reads her name on it, etched in blue, where it has always been.

  Bridget

  ‘I think you should live a bit, Bridie.’

  And she is crying, sobbing, with the heart floored in her, but not looking away, not now, not ever.

  He holds her with his eyes for the longest time.

  For this is their parting: as sudden and slow, surprising and foreseen as any parting. Between together and apart: an eye-blink and all of eternity.

  ‘What do I have to do?’ she asks.

  But he is already gone.

  *

  Cora opens the door to the parlour a fraction and they look inside. Inspector Valentine Rose paces from the fireplace to the window and back again. Stopping briefly only to examine the large unfathomable mechanism on the mantelpiece.

  Bridie runs a reckoning eye over him. ‘He is different, somehow.’

  ‘It’s the frock coat, it’s new.’

  ‘What’s his business?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say, but it’ll be personal business,’ Cora says slyly. She nudges Bridie. ‘Will I give him a clatter? I could try holding him upside down—’

  ‘With your injuries? I’d rather he admitted to nothing.’

  Cora snorts and sails, a-lop, into the kitchen.

  When Bridie opens the door of the parlour, Rose turns and smiles.

  Bridie returns his smile, a little stiffly, perhaps. ‘You’re here on business, Rose?’

  ‘On a matter of great importance and even greater delicacy, Bridie.’

  ‘Do you represent yourself in this matter, Rose?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Let me guess: you’ve a case, something you want my help with, something strange and unsolvable.’

  Rose glances at the bouquet in his hand. ‘Not quite.’

  Bridie ignores the flowers. A spark, devilish, kindles in her eyes. ‘Does it involve Dorcas Chapman?’

  Rose frowns.

  ‘Before we proceed, Rose, would you care to join me in a drop of Madeira?’ Bridie smiles, a little wider now, perhaps. ‘It can only help matters.’

  She goes to the door and picks up the bell; Cora is in the room before she can ring it.

  ‘Would you bring the Madeira, Cora? The special vintage.’

  Cora winks at Bridie and grins at the guest.

  Bridie has a plan.

  Acknowledgements

  With huge gratitude to Susan Armstrong (C+W), the very best of agents, for your wisdom, creativity and encouragement – and for the fun of developing ideas with you from start to finish. To my editor, the ever-brilliant Francis Bickmore, and to Megan Reid, thank you both for your editorial magic. A massive thank you goes to Luke Speed (Curtis Brown) and to Emma Finn, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Alexander Cochran, Clare Conville and all the supportive people at C+W. To the talented crowd at Canongate, particularly Becca Nice, Vicki Watson, Jenny Fry, Jamie Byng, Jamie Norman, Anna Frame, Pete Adlington, Leila Cruickshank and Vicki Rutherford – thank you for all you do for my books and for me. To my fellow writers, friends and the people and places who have championed my work from the start – thank you. Special thanks go to Rick O’Shea and his magnificent book club, Simon Mayo and the Radio 2 Book Club, the Reading Agency and all the brilliant Indie bookshops getting my books into the hands of readers. Your support means the world to me, everyone.

  To all the people who have read, advised, listened to my ideas and answered my questions with patience and good-humour, I thank you. Special thanks to Eva Farenden (my favourite reader), Gavin Clarke, Dr Mary Shannon, Michelle Birkby, Ken Titmuss (map man and walk finder), Edmund ‘Aspic’ White, Lucinda Hawksley, Christopher Skaife ‘The Ravenmaster’, Helen Barrell (for her wonderful book on Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor – Prudhoe’s role model), Alex Arlango, Rob ‘Jim’ Briggs for the window debates, Dr Ailsa Grant-Turton and Dr Matt Lodder. Any deviation from the realm of historical fact (accidental or deliberate) is entirely my own fault.

  To my family, thank you for always supporting me.

  Finally, to Travis McBride, I owe you a debt of gratitude for your belief at the very earliest stage, when this was a small, little acorn of an idea.

  ‘Mixes up murder and mayhem with the

  eerily supernatural . . . Hugely imaginative’

  Sunday Express

  ‘This dark but comical tale of haunting and

  hoarding ensnares . . . Kidd's imagination is vivid’

  The Times