by Jack Dann
The fire burned low and I lit a lamp. A knock. Unsteadily, I went to the door and flung it open, expecting to find Richmond in the corridor. I was prepared to tell him that I did not have the stomach for this work and would be unable to satisfy his requirements, but it was Jane come to turn down my bed, wearing a crinoline night bonnet and a flannel dressing gown that covered her from neck to ankle. For all her matronly attire, she was no less beautiful than ever and I watched her intently, enlivened by the swell of a breast, the shape of a thigh as she bent to her task. However modestly dressed she was, her every movement was an article of seduction. She asked if there were anything further she might do for me and I bade her sit, saying that I had more questions. Yet I had none. Fuddled by drink, by the idea that I could have her, my mind emptied and, though I racked my brain, I managed to stammer a few phrases by way of preamble, yet nothing more. Once again I had the apprehension that she understood my predicament and was amused. At last I succeeded in dredging up a question that had not occurred to me before that moment . . . or if it had, I had pushed it to the back of my mental shelf.
“Christine’s resemblance to both you and Dorothea,” I said. “What part do you think it played in Richmond’s desire that you remain in the house?”
She seemed to withdraw from me. “He wanted us near to remind him of her.”
“I don’t doubt that, but there must be more to it. He makes love to you, does he not? To women who remind him of his sister?”
“It’s been more than two years since he last touched either of us. He . . . he changed. Our relationship changed. He became more like a cousin, an uncle. He cares for us now, and we for him. That is all.”
I was immoderately pleased to learn she had no current involvement with Richmond.
“That begs the issue,” I said. “He did make love to you. And he kept you here for that purpose. That he has since stopped this practice conjures other questions, but the fact remains that he chose two women who closely resemble his sister to serve as his concubines. Does this not seem a symptom of some tragic family circumstance?”
Jane frowned and spread her fingers on her knees, appearing to examine them for defect. “Dorothea has spoken to you about this?”
“I had a conversation with her earlier.”
“I . . .” She sighed and pressed the heel of one hand to her brow. “I will not speak ill of him.”
“Jane,” I said. “Men and women are often driven to extremes of behavior by emotional distress. In this life we are all at fault. None of us is simon pure, no matter how deeply we may wish it. Society may judge Richmond, but I make no judgments. If I am to determine what is going on, you must be straightforward with me. Anything you tell me will be kept in the strictest confidence.”
She searched my face and then lowered her eyes. “On occasion, with me and with Dorothea, he used her name instead of ours.”
“In passionate address?”
“Yes.” A plaintive quality expressed itself in her face and voice. “But as I said, it’s over two years since he last took either of us to bed.”
After an interval I asked, “What do you make of his use of Christine’s name in these instances?”
“I am not the doctor here,” she said firmly. “You will have to draw your own conclusions.”
“And I will. But my conclusions will be formed in large part by what you tell me.”
“Dorothea believes that . . .” She left the thought unfinished and, after an obvious internal struggle, she stood. “I’m sorry. I have chores to attend before I sleep.”
Had I not been drinking, I might have let that end the conversation, but I too stood, blocking her exit, and said, “I would like you to stay, Jane. We need speak no more about Richmond, but please . . . stay awhile with me.”
A blank mask aligned with her features and she put a hand to the sash of her dressing gown.
“I want you to stay, not because you feel compelled to do so,” I said. “But because it is your choice. Because . . .”
I began to sputter, blurting out the history of my day, the oppressive mood engendered by my encounter with Christine. I suggested that Jane stay until I fell asleep and that nothing more need happen—I did not want to take advantage of her. A lie. I wanted to take complete advantage, but I didn’t want her to believe that was my aim . . . and I may have told her as much. So eager was I to have her good opinion that honesty seemed the only course, unprecedented honesty, honesty divested of the slightest hint of subterfuge. Fortunately I do not recall every idiotic thing I said. While I was speaking she went to the bed, removed her dressing gown and bonnet, shook out her hair, and climbed beneath the covers, clad in her chemise. I made no immediate move to join her, immobilized by desire in conflict with an assortment of anxieties, amongst them the fear of looking more the fool than I already had. I might have stood there forever, but she released me from the thrall of my anxieties with the perfect counterspell.
“If you please,” she said, turning on her side, facing away from me. “Leave the lamp on when you come to bed.”
IN THE MORNING I went to stand in the entranceway of the house to take the air, cold and noxious though it was, perfumed by the ripe scents of Rose Street. A cart passed me by, raising a clatter like an enormous sack of bones and pulled by a moribund horse, its ribs showing through its loose skin, urged along by a driver so muffled in rags that I saw of him nothing apart from steaming breath and reddened cheeks and tufted white eyebrows. Urchins screeched and squealed and whistled to one another, running pell-mell, their flights as erratic as those of birds frightened from their roosts. Ungainly wives lumbered from doorways to empty basins of slops into the gray, gluey mud of the street, disappearing back into the many-eyed oblivions of their black brick homes. Yet all this was given a gloss by the glorious night I had spent with Jane and had for me the quaint charm of a scene from one of Mr. Dickens’s gentler tales. I allowed myself to entertain fantasies about a life with Jane, imagining a cottage on the sea, a child or two who would appear only after a ten-year honeymoon, sojourns in the Italian Alps and the like.
Giddy with these delusions, I headed to the kitchen, intending to cut a slab of cheese and some bread to take upstairs with me, and discovered Richmond eating his breakfast. His face was drawn, the lines around his eyes deepened by fatigue. I wished him a good morning—he gave a curt nod, muttered something I could not make out, and attacked his eggs and sausage with ferocity.
“How goes your work?” I asked, dragging up a stool. “Well, I hope.”
He swallowed, nodded.
“May I inquire what it is that you are working on?”
He sucked at a particle of food trapped between his teeth—his poor table manners were often made the butt of jokes at the Inventors’ Club.
“I am completing a fifth machine,” he said. “I intend to install it soon.”
I started to speak but he held up a hand to stay me.
“I recognize that your investigation will be of some duration,” he said. “I do not plan to replace the machine that summons Christine. Not yet. If I finish before your work is done, I will forbear replacing it or else replace another machine.” He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I have left you a check with Dorothea that should suffice for your immediate expenses. Let me know if you need more. I will be busy at the factory for two weeks—I doubt we will see much of each other during that time. If you have business elsewhere, patients to treat, the coach will be at your disposal. And, of course, the house is yours to use as you see fit.”
I must admit that this discomfited me—it seemed an abdication of responsibility, implying that he did not actually care about Christine and that whatever concern he felt was perfunctory and had been satisfied by the act of hiring an alienist.
“Would you care to learn what progress I have made?” I asked.
He looked at me, expectant, chewing a mouthful of food.
“Progress may be too optimistic a word,” I said. “But I have a
theory regarding your sister’s . . . promiscuity.”
He swallowed. “Yes?”
“I believe she may have been interfered with while still a child.”
I had thought he would display some adverse reaction, but he did not. He had a bite of sausage, chewed, and said, “Hmm.”
“An incident of the sort I envision often leads the child to have an unhealthy view of sexuality. She might, for instance, be prone to use sex as a means of gaining approval.”
He continued eating.
“It might be helpful if I could speak to your father,” I said. “He may recall . . .”
“That would be pointless. These days he is like an infant who must be dressed and diapered. His memory is nearly gone, and when frustrated he comes easily to anger. It would be an unnecessary trial for the both of you.”
“Is there anyone else with whom I might speak? A nanny or another relative.”
“Only myself,” said Richmond. “I am occupied today and will be, I anticipate, for the remainder of the week. Next week I can spare a few minutes, though I can’t think it will be helpful. Christine and I were brought up more or less separately. Summers I traveled the length and breadth of England and Wales with my father, assisting him with one or another of his engineering projects. The remainder of the year I was away at school. All the while Christine stayed home. We had the occasion to spend time together, of course, but our relationship was based on holidays and a weekend here and there. We were more cousins than brother and sister.”
I found this a telling disclaimer and was inclined to press him on the matter; yet I did not think it was the moment to reveal that I suspected him of having had an incestuous encounter with Christine—it would have seemed accusatory and my purpose was to define the problem, not to cast aspersions. I thought to tell him about Christine’s masked client, wanting to learn whether or not it would elicit a strong reaction, for I believed that Richmond was capable of such a deception; but I decided that this, too, would have been premature. I made a packet of bread and cheese, wished him good day, and went about my business.
The weeks that followed saw me make little progress. I had a lengthy conversation with Richmond concerning Christine, but it was, as he had promised, unrewarding. My observations of her shade yielded nothing new, though she manifested for longer periods of time, as if she were becoming accustomed to my presence. Isolated with her for up to an hour, sitting for hours more beside the chamber, cataloguing the motley spirits that materialized in her absence, I imagined that I was being watched, studied by a malefic spirit, and I took to carrying a crucifix for protection. Other suspicions plagued me, prominent among them the idea that this practice brought me closer to death each day. Every so often, that dark, dervish creature appeared in the chamber. Although I had become used to it popping in from the afterlife and announcing itself with a distant, many-voiced roar, I came to assign it a demonic value; yet I did not fear it as much as I feared for my mental stability.
Then one morning as I sat at the bench fronting the chamber, searching my pockets for a pen, Christine appeared beside me wearing her plum pajamas (this had been the uniform of the house during its heyday) and asked in a wispy, genteel voice, one rendered nearly inaudible by the rumbling of the machines, if I would care for a glass of wine.
“No, thank you,” I said upon recovering my poise. “Your company is more than sufficient stimulation.”
A handful of seconds elapsed before she spoke again, looking off to my right and at a point above my shoulder. “Shall I call the ladies in for your inspection?”
“I think not,” I said. “I would prefer to spend my time with you.”
After another brief delay, she let out a peal of laughter, as though delighted by my response; but she said nothing more, only continued looking above me and to the right. I wondered if she could hear me—judging by her attentive expression, she might have been listening to another voice.
“My name is Samuel,” I said. “Samuel Prothero.”
The delay again and then she said, “Yes! Of course! I know your father.”
My father, as far as I knew, had never been to London and was so conservative in nature that the idea of visiting Saint Nichol would have given him palpitations. I began to doubt that Christine was responding to me. Yet if, as Richmond suggested, a ghost was a scrap of life left behind after death, a fragment caught on a metaphysical nail, and not a faded version of the person entire, these oblique statements might be the only responses of which she was capable and she could be trying to communicate, unable to express herself more fluently than a tourist in a foreign land armed with phrases from a guidebook. I decided to risk a direct approach.
“Christine,” I said. “Tell me about the night you were murdered.”
Following an interval of twenty or thirty seconds during which she appeared to be frozen, she vanished. Soon thereafter I apprehended a chill presence behind me. I did not want to see her in that bloody guise and kept my head lowered until the feeling of cold dissipated.
That night Jane came to my room with an excellent bottle of pinot noir, and as we sat by the fire, which had gone to embers, I asked her to tell me more about Christine. What had she been like in her unguarded moments? Did she maintain any friendships outside the brothel? Did she spend much time away from it? If so, how did she spend that time?
“I wouldn’t know about friends outside the house,” said Jane. “She couldn’t have had many . . . if any at all. What time she didn’t spend here, she was at one music hall or another, or at the theater. She’d tell us about what she saw, all the people and what the ladies wore and such, but she never mentioned anyone specific. And I think she would have. We were her employees, but we were also her confidantes. Like us, she was trapped here, unhappy and on the lookout for something that would make her happy. If she found it, I don’t believe she could have kept it to herself.”
Light from the hearth ruddied her pale skin. She leaned forward to caress my cheek.
“You’ll see again her soon enough,” she said. “Stop thinking about her.”
“I know. It’s just . . .”
“Tell me.”
“I’m beginning to feel that my efforts are wasted here.”
“But you said you had broken through to her.”
“I did, but in retrospect it was the kind of moment that persuades me that what I’m doing here is worthless. I don’t believe I will ever be able to communicate with her.”
She mulled this over. “Dorothea says that Christine seems to enjoy her singing.”
“Dorothea’s singing?”
“Yes.”
“What does she sing?”
“Popular tunes. ‘Pretty Polly Perkins from Paddington Green’ and that sort of thing. She says they seem to make her happy. It causes her to hang about longer, she says, but she’s not so horrid looking.” Jane held up her glass so that the fire added ruby highlights to the wine. “It makes me nervous, her hanging about, so I pretend not to see her and let nature take its course.”
“Was ‘Pretty Polly Perkins’ her favorite song?”
“I don’t know as she had a favorite. Oh, wait now! She used to go larking about here singing snatches from ‘Champagne Charlie.’ If she had a favorite, I reckon that was it.”
She had a sip of wine, the voluptuous, vaguely predatory curve of her upper lip kissing the glass. Though she was of Christine’s type, her features were so delicate and fine that I no longer thought of Christine when I looked at her, but saw a beauty entirely her own. And it was not just her beauty that moved me. During our time together she had told me of her life, less a life than an escape route, a flight from one brutal circumstance to another. Despite this, some central essence had come through undamaged, a core of strength and sweetness unaffected by this maltreatment. She had a temper, and when something she held dear was threatened, she would defend it with an unladylike ferocity; but these storms passed swiftly.
“You know,” I said. “If it
were not for you, I would have given up weeks ago.”
“I’m glad I can be a comfort for you.”
“You’re more than a comfort, Jane. Without you to shore me up, I would have been overwhelmed by the morbidity of this enterprise. I can only hope my presence here has meant something to you.”
“I think . . .” She bit her lip and fixed her gaze on the hearth.
“Please! Tell me!”
She sighed and, without lifting her eyes from the hearth, said in a small voice, “I think you know my heart. I think you have always known it.”
I took her hand and the warmth of the fire, her warmth, went all through me—it was as though our physical contact had created a bubble of time and space apart from the world. I wanted to say more, but was at a loss for words, not knowing what there was to say. Our stations in life were at such a great remove one from the other, it was unlikely we could ever have a lasting connection.