by Anne Perry
Emily and Jack arrived early. Emily was less glamorously dressed than Vespasia could remember her being since she had ceased mourning for George. Jack looked tired; there were lines of strain on his normally handsome face and the humor was absent from his eyes. He was courteous, from habit, but even the usual compliments were not on his lips.
Charlotte was late, and Vespasia was beginning to feel anxious, her mind wandering from the trivial conversation they maintained until the business of the evening could be shared.
Somerset Carlisle came in, grim-faced. He glanced at Vespasia, then Emily and Jack, and forbore from asking where Charlotte was.
But Charlotte finally arrived, brought by Percival and the returned carriage. She was breathless, tired, and her hair markedly less well done than customarily. Vespasia was so overwhelmingly relieved to see her all she could do was criticize her for being late. She dared not to show her emotions; it would have been most unseemly.
They repaired to the dining room and dinner was served.
Each reported what he or she had seen and done, cursorily and with no unnecessary description; the facts were fearful enough. They did not speak as if they had been tired, sickened or endangered themselves. What they had seen dwarfed self-pity or praise.
When the last was finished they turned as one to Somerset Carlisle.
Pale-faced, weary of heart, he explained the law to them as he had ascertained it. He confirmed what they already knew: that is was almost impossible to discover who owned property if the owner wished to remain anonymous, and that the law required nothing to assist the tenant or shield him. There were no basic requirements of fitness for habitation concerning water, sewage, shelter or any other facility. There were no means of redress regarding payment of rents or freedom from eviction.
“Then we must change the law,” Vespasia said when he had finished. “We will continue where Clemency Shaw was cut off by her murderers.”
“It may be dangerous,” Somerset Carlisle warned. “We will be disturbing powerful people. The little I have learned so far indicates there are members of great families who come by at least part of their income that way, some industrialists with vast fortunes reinvested. It has not failed to touch others of ambition and greed, men who can be tempted and who have favors to sell—members of the House, judges of court. It will be a very hard struggle—and with no easy victories.”
“That is a pity,” Vespasia said without even consulting the others by so much as a glance. “But it is irrelevant.”
“We need more people in power.” Carlisle glanced at Jack. “More men in Parliament prepared to risk a comfortable seat by fighting against the vested interests.”
Jack did not reply, but he spoke little the rest of the evening, and all the way home he was deep in thought.
8
PITT AND MURDO were working from early in the morning until long after dark pursuing every scrap of material evidence until there was nothing else to learn. The Highgate police themselves were still searching for the arsonist they were convinced was guilty, but as yet they had not found him, although they felt that every day’s inquiry brought them closer. There had been other fires started in similar manner: an empty house in Kentish Town, a stable in Hampstead, a small villa to the north in Crouch End. They questioned every source of fuel oil within a three-mile radius of Highgate, but discovered no purchases other than those which were accounted for by normal household needs. They asked every medical practitioner if they had treated burns not explained to their certain knowledge. They counseled with neighboring police and fire forces on the name, present whereabouts, past history and methods of every other person known to have committed arson in the last ten years, and learned nothing of use.
Pitt and Murdo also delved into the value, insurance and ownership of all the houses that had been burned, and found nothing in common. Then they asked into the dispositions in wills and testaments of Clemency Shaw and Amos Lindsay. Clemency bequeathed everything of which she died possessed to her husband, Stephen Robert Shaw, with the solitary exception of a few personal items to friends; and Amos Lindsay left his works of art, his books and the mementos of his travels also to Stephen Shaw, and the house itself most surprisingly to Matthew Oliphant, a startling and unexplained gift of which Pitt entirely approved. It was just one more evidence of a kind and most unconventional man.
He knew that Charlotte was busy, but since she was traveling in Great-Aunt Vespasia’s carriage, and with her footman in attendance, he was satisfied there was no danger involved. He thought there was also little profit, since she had told him she was pursuing Clemency Shaw’s last known journeys, and he was quite sure, since Lindsay’s death, that Clemency had been killed by chance and the true intended victim was Stephen Shaw.
So the morning after the dinner at Vespasia’s house in which they had learned the extent and nature of the law, Charlotte dressed herself in tidy but unremarkable clothes. This was not in the least difficult, since that description encompassed the greater part of her wardrobe. She then waited for Emily and Jack to arrive.
They came surprisingly early. She had not honesüy thought Emily rose at an hour to make this possible, but Emily was at the door before nine, looking her usual fashionable self, with Jack only a pace behind her, dressed in plain, undistinguished browns.
“It won’t do,” Charlotte said immediately.
“I am quite aware that it won’t.” Emily came in, gave her a quick peck on the cheek and made her way to the kitchen. “I am only half awake. For pity’s sake have Gracie put on the kettle. I shall have to borrow something of yours. Everything of mine looks as if it cost at least as much as it did—which of course was the intention. Have you got a brown dress? I look terrible in brown.”
“No I haven’t,” Charlotte said a little stiffly. “But I have two dark plum-colored ones, and you would look just as terrible in either of them.”
Emily broke into laughter, her face lighting up and some of the tiredness vanishing.
“Thank you, my dear. How charming of you. Do they both fit you, or might one of them be small enough for me?”
“No.” Charlotte joined in the mood, her eyes wide, preventing herself from smiling back with difficulty. “They will be excellent ’round the waist, but too big in the bosom!”
“Liar!” Emily shot back. “They will bag around the waist, and I shall trip over the skirts. Either will do excellently. I shall go and change while you make the tea. Are we taking Gracie as well? It will hardly be a pleasant adventure for her.”
“Please ma’am?” Gracie said urgently. She had tasted the excitement of the chase, of being included, and was bold enough to plead her own cause. “I can ’elp. I unnerstand them people.”
“Of course,” Charlotte said quickly. “If you wish. But you must stay close to us at all times. If you don’t there is no accounting for what may happen to you.”
“Oh I will, ma’am,” she promised, her sober little face as grave as if she were swearing an oath. “An’ I’ll watch an’ listen. Sometimes I knows w’en people is tellin’ lies.”
Half an hour later the four of them set out in Emily’s second carriage on the journey to Mile End to trace the ownership of the tenement house to which Charlotte had followed the trail of Clemency Shaw. Their first intent was to discover the rent collector and learn from him for whom he did this miserable duty.
She had made note of the exact location. Even so it took them some time to find it again; the streets were narrow and took careful negotiation through the moil of costers’ barrows, old clothes carts, peddlers, vegetable wagons and clusters of people buying, selling and begging. So many of the byways looked alike; pavements wide enough to allow the passage of only one person; the cobbled centers, often with open gutters meandering through them filled with the night’s waste; the jettied houses leaning far out over the street, some so close at the top as to block out most of the daylight. One could imagine people in the upper stories being able to all but shake hands
across the divide, if they leaned out far enough, and were minded to do so.
The wood was pitted where sections were rotten and had fallen away, the plaster was dark with stains of old leakage and rising dampness from the stones, and here and there ancient pargetting made half-broken patterns or insignia.
People stood in doorways, dark forms huddled together, faces catching the light now and then as one or another moved.
Emily reached out and took Jack’s hand. The teeming, fathomless despair of it frightened her. She had never felt quite this kind of inadequacy. There were so many. There was a child running along beside them, begging. He was no older than her own son sitting at home in his schoolroom struggling with learning his multiplication tables and looking forward to luncheon, apart from the obligatory rice pudding which he loathed, and the afternoon, when he could play.
Jack fished in his pockets for a coin and threw it for the boy. The child dived on it as it rolled almost under the carriage wheels and for a sickening moment Emily thought he would be crushed. But he emerged an instant later, jubilant, clutching the coin in a filthy hand and biting his teeth on it to check its metal.
Within moments a dozen more urchins were close around them, calling out, stretching their hands, fighting each other to reach them first. Older men appeared. There were catcalls, jeers, threats; and all the time the crowd closing in till the horses could barely make their way forward and the coachman was afraid to urge them in case he crushed the weight of yelling, writhing, shoving humanity.
“Oh my God!” Jack looked ashen, realizing suddenly what he had done. Frantically he turned out his pockets for more.
Emily was thoroughly frightened. She hunched down on the seat, closer to his side. There seemed to be clamoring, reaching people all around them, hands grasping, faces contorted with hunger and hatred.
Gracie was wrapped with her shawl around her, wide-eyed, frozen.
Charlotte did not know what Jack intended that would help, but she emptied out her own few coins to add to his.
He took them without hesitation and forcing the window open flung them as far behind the coach as he could.
Instantly the crowd parted and dived where the coins had fallen. The coachman urged the horses forward and they were free, clattering down the road, wheels hissing on the damp surface.
Jack fell back on the seat, still pale, but the beginning of a smile on his lips.
Emily straightened up and turned to look at him, her eyes very bright and her color returned. Now as well as pity and fear, there was a new, sharp admiration.
Charlotte too felt a very pleasant respect which had not been there before.
When they reached the tenement it was decided Charlotte and Gracie should go in, since they were familiar to the occupants. To send more might appear like a show of force and produce quite the opposite effect from the one they wished.
“Mr. Thickett?” A small group of drab women looked from one to another. “Dunno w’ere ’e comes from. ’E jus’ comes every week and takes the money.”
“Is it his house?” Charlotte asked.
“ ’Ow the ’ell der we know?” a toothless woman said angrily. “An’ why der you care, eh? Wot’s it ter you? ’Oo are yer any’ow, comin’ ’ere arskin’ questions?”
“We pays our rent an’ we don’ make no trouble,” another added, folding fat arms over an even fatter bosom. It was a vaguely threatening stance, although she held no weapon nor had any within reach. It was the way she rocked very slightly on her feet and stared fiercely at Charlotte’s face. She was a woman with little left to lose, and she knew it.
“We wanna rent,” Gracie said quickly. “We’ve bin put aht o’ our own place, an’ we gotta find summink else quick. We can’t wait till rent day; we gotta find it now.”
“Oh—why dincher say so?” The woman looked at Charlotte with a mixture of pity and exasperation. “Proud, are yer? Stupid, more like. Fallen on ’ard times, ’ave yer, livin’ too ’igh on the ’og—an’ now yer gotta come down in the world? ’Appens to lots of folk. Well, Thickett don’t come today, but fer a consideration I’ll tell yer w’ere ter find ’im—”
“We’re on ’ard times,” Gracie said plaintively.
“Yeah? Well your ’ard times in’t the same as my ’ard times.” The woman’s pale mouth twisted into a sneer. “I in’t arskin’ money. O’ course you in’t got no money, or yer wouldn’t be ’ere—but I’ll ’ave yer ’at.” She looked at Charlotte, then at her hands and saw their size, and looked instead at Gracie’s brown woollen shawl. “An’ ’er shawl. Then I’ll tell yer w’ere ter go.”
“You can have the hat now.” Charlotte took it off as she spoke. “And the shawl if we find Thickett where you say. If we don’t—” She hesitated, a threat on her lips, then looked at the hard disillusioned face and knew its futility. “Then you’ll do without,” she ended.
“Yeah?” The woman’s voice was steeped in years of experience. “An’ w’en yer’ve got Thickett yer goin’ ter come back ’ere ter give me yer shawl. Wotcher take me for, eh? Shawl now, or no Thickett.”
“Garn,” Gracie said with withering scorn. “Take the ’at and be ’appy. No Thickett, no ’at. She may look like gentry, but she’s mean w’en she’s crossed—an’ she’s crossed right now! Wotsa matter wiv yer—yer stupid or suffink? Take the ’at and give us Thickett.” Her little face was tight with disgust and concentration. She was on an adventure and prepared to risk everything to win.
The woman saw her different mettle, heard the familiar vowels in her voice and knew she was dealing with one more her own kind. She dropped the bluff, shrugging her heavy shoulders. It had been a reasonable attempt, and you could not blame one for trying.
“Yer’ll find Thickett in Sceptre Street, big ’ouse on the corner o’ Usk. Go ter ve back an’ ask fer Tom Thickett, an’ say it’s ter give ’im rent. They’ll let yer in, an’ if yer says aught abaht money e’ll listen ter yer.” She snatched the hat out of Charlotte’s hands and ran her fingers over it appreciatively, her lips pursed in concentration. “If yer on ’and times, ’ock a few o’ these and yer’ll ’ave enough ter eat for days. ’Ard times. Yer don’ know ’ard times from nuffin’.”
No one argued with her. They knew their poverty was affected for the occasion and a lie excusable only by its brevity, and their own flicker of knowledge as to what its reality would be.
Back in the carriage, huddled against the chill, they rode still slowly to Sceptre Street as the woman had told them. The thoroughfare was wider, the houses on each side broader fronted and not jettied across the roadway, but the gutters still rolled with waste and smelled raw and sour, and Charlotte wondered if she would ever be able to get the stains out of the bottom of her skirts. Emily would probably throw hers away. She would have to make some recompense to Gracie for this. She looked across at her thin body, as upright as Aunt Vespasia, in her own way, but a full head shorter. Her face, with its still childish softness of skin, was more alive with excitement than she had ever seen it before.
They stepped down at the designated corner and crossed the footpath, wider here, and knocked on the door. When a tousle-headed maid answered they asked for Mr. Thickett, stating very clearly that it was a matter of money, and some urgency to it, Gracie putting in a dramatic sniff. They were permitted to enter and led to a chilly room apparently used for storing furniture and for such occasional meetings as this. Several chests and old chairs were piled recklessly on top of each other, and there was a table missing a leg and a bundle of curtains which seemed to have rotted in places with damp. The whole smelled musty and Emily pulled a face as soon as they were inside.
There was no place to sit down, and she remembered with a jolt that they were supplicants now, seeking a favor of this man and in no position to be anything but crawlingly civil. Only the remembrance of Clemency Shaw’s death, the charred corpse in her imagination, enabled her to do it.
“He won’t tell us the owner,” she whispered quickly. “He
thinks he has the whip hand of us if we are here to beg half a room from him.”
“You’re right, m’lady,” Gracie whispered back, unable to forget the title even here. “If ’e’s a rent collector ’e’ll be a bully—they always is—an’ like as not big wif it. ’E won’t do nuffin’ fer nobody less’n ’e ’as ter.”
For a moment they were all caught in confusion. The first story would no longer serve. Then Jack smiled just as they heard heavy footsteps along the passageway and the door opened to show a big man, barrel-chested, with a hatchet face, jutting nose and small, round, clever eyes. He hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat, which was once beige but was now mottled and faded with years of misuse.
“Well?” He surveyed them with mild curiosity. He had only one yardstick by which he measured people. Could they pay the rent, either by means already in their possession or by some they could earn, steal or sublet to obtain. He looked at the women also, not as possessors of money or labor force worth considering, but to see if they were handsome or young enough to earn their livings on the street. He judged them all handsome enough, but only Gracie to have the necessary realism. The other two, and it showed plainly in his face, would have to come down a good deal farther in the world before they were accommodating enough to please a paying customer. However, a friendliness made up for a lot of flaws, in fact almost anything except age.
On the other hand, Jack looked like a dandy, in spite of his rather well-worn clothes. They might be old, but that did not disguise the flair with which he tied his cravat, or the good cut of the shoulders and the lie of the lapels. No, here was a man who knew and liked the good things. If he was on hard times he would make no worker: his hands, smooth, well-manicured and gloveless, attested to that. But then he did look shrewd, and there was an air about him of easiness, a charm. He might make an excellent trickster, well able to live on his arts. And he would not be the first gentieman to do that—by a long way.