Mary Reilly

by Valerie Martin

  “Mary?” Master said.

  I turned to him, still on my knees. “Sir,” I said.

  He was looking down at me over his glass. “Are you unwell?”

  I got to my feet. “No, sir,” I said. “I’m well enough, only the heat made me dizzy for a moment.”

  He sat gazing at me, his face full of concern, but he did not speak.

  “I’m finished here, sir,” I said. “Will there be anything else?”

  “I was sorry to hear from Poole of your mother’s passing, Mary,” he said. “You must take as much time as you need to settle her affairs.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  “Had she been ill?” he asked.

  “That is what I don’t know, sir, though I will find it out soon enough when I get there. The note sent was from her landlord and he only said she was gone.”

  “You have no other family to help you?”

  “No, sir,” I said. Then I thought, my father is somewhere, but I’ve the good fortune not to know where, and as I had this thought I felt Master was thinking the same thing, for he looked as if something pained him of a sudden. He passed his hand across his eyes and when he took it away I saw there was drops of moisture on his forehead. He gave me such a searching look it was all I could do to keep from reaching out to him, then he said, “You weren’t afraid of him?”

  “Afraid of whom, sir?” I said.

  But Master looked away from me and had fixed his eyes on his own hand, which clutched the arm of the chair with such force as made his knuckles white.

  “Sir,” I said, for he seemed not to know I was there.

  Still he stared at his hand and now his whole brow was deep furrowed and I saw he had clenched his jaw. It disturbed me to see him so, yet I could do nothing but wait, which I did for what seemed the longest time, then he recovered himself somehow and turned his face towards me. “What did you say?” he asked.

  But I did not speak, only gave him a wondering look, which made him impatient so I wished I had been able to say something. “That will be all for now, Mary,” he said. It was as if we had not been talking. “Tell Poole I will be late in my laboratory tonight. He needn’t wait for me.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. Then I curtsyed to go out and Master, seeming completely relaxed now, said, “Good luck on your sad journey tomorrow, Mary.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said and went out, more troubled by the memory of our conversation than by the prospect of my trip to the East End on the morrow.

  I was up before dawn and dressed by candlelight in our room. I put on black stockings and my stiff walking boots and pinned my skirts up as best I could to keep them off the ground. I thought it might look unseemly to have them up so high, but I’d rather shock my fellows with the sight of my ankles than drag about in mud all the long day ahead of me. I put on my black shawl, pinned with an ebony brooch Mrs. Swit gave me which I seldom wear, and my dark grey bonnet, as I haven’t a black one. Then I went down to the kitchen as quiet as I could so as not to wake Mr. Bradshaw, who sleeps under the stairs.

  Cook had wrapped up a piece of mutton and another of cheese, also a bit of brown bread, first in cheesecloth and then in paper tied round with a string, which she put out for me last night, so after I put on my cloak I took up my lunch and went out the area to the front.

  It was damp but not raining, and the air was chilly. The gas lamps was still lit though they could scarce do more than glimmer in the fog, which was thick, brown in patches then white in others and shifting about, for there was a breeze. I could hear birds rustling in the square, it was that still, and my footsteps seemed to echo out on the walk. When I come round the corner I heard another footstep, far off at first, but then all at once very close, coming towards me from the corner and at a good clip. I stopped, for there was something I did not like about being in the path of such a rush as this, and I stepped aside against the wall, just at the corner. In the next moment he was passing by me, seeming very close, so that I heard his harsh breath and felt all the air rush about, and I saw him, though not entirely, for the fog was between us. He did not see me, or if he did he did not care, for he was running hard, his head down in his coat like a man pursued, and I knew at once that he was going to let himself in at the laboratory door. I listened as the footsteps came to a halt, then I heard the door open and through the gloom I could just make out a darker bit of fog, which was him, no doubt, going in.

  What is he running from? I thought. And does Master know about it? I listened for a moment to hear if anyone was following, but there was nothing, so I went on my way, feeling that to begin the day with the sight of such a wretched creature was surely no good omen.

  My way lay across the town, and as I went along the quiet streets come to life before me. The costermongers, coming in from the markets where they had been at their business while I was still in my bed, appeared on every corner, setting up barrows and speaking to one another their rough language, one eye to the street children as will steal from them and the other to the sky as will rain upon them. They paid me little mind, though they sang out their wares to me as to everyone. I went a long way without stopping, then bought an apple off a man who told me it should bring colour to my pale cheeks. He was so gay, so pleased with his fruit—which to hear him talk was all one ever needed to be healthy as well as happy—and, it seemed to me, pleased with his life, though I knew it could not be an easy one, he made me smile. When he asked why I was out so early on such a fine, promising day as this, I hadn’t the heart to tell him the sad nature of my business, so I said I was on an errand for my master. As I walked away I thought what makes a day fine for one does nothing for another, so this man and I look out into the same dim gloom and where he sees hope I see naught but difficulty. It has been the bane of my life that I cannot be light at heart as my fellows are.

  So I went along, while the streets grew more and more busy, and soon every crossing was a danger to my skirts as well as my life, for the mud was deep in places and once in it, it was hard to step quickly. The horses’ hooves make a different sound—not crisp but sucking, though they seem not slowed down by it as we are. I went a way on the tram but might have walked for the time it saved me, for a horse was down, the cab turned over as well, and a dreadful noise of people screaming, mud and fists flying and the poor beast struggling to get to his feet while his driver cut the harness as best he could to free up the cab, so the roadway was blocked for some time.

  When I got to the street in Shoreditch where my mother had her lodging, the sun, or the bright patch of fog that might well be all we would know of the sun for the day, was well up over the housetops. The way to her door is a dim alley, the walls slippery with slime, the footway with mud, a drain down the centre that is clogged more often than not, so there is sometimes a narrow river of filth to inspire the passerby with hopelessness. I stayed as close to the wall as my horror of touching it would allow, and stepped across the door-stones of three dwellings before I came to hers. When I knocked there was a shout, a man’s voice, then a pause, a clatter like pots falling from the cupboard, then the door opened and a little pop-eyed man stuck his face out at me. “Can’t you give a man no peace!” he said.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” I said. “I am Mary Reilly.”

  The man looked me up and down, sticking his chin at me as he would poke me with it. “That may be, miss,” he said, “and very fine for you I’ve no doubt, but what should it mean to me that I should be summoned to my door to hear about it?”

  By the time he’d got to the end of this greeting, I’d drawn his letter from my cloak, which I held out before me. When he stopped speaking, for it seemed he could not talk and look at once, he took in the envelope, recognized the begrimed writing for his own and changed his tone entire.

  “Oh,” he said, serious as a church. “You are the bereaved.”

  It was hard not to be amused at his manner, which was so much a show he seemed to make himself up as he went along, but
I was tired from my walk and suddenly dropped very low at the thought of where this fellow had contrived to lay my marm, that I took him at his word and leaned against the doorway. “I’ve come a long way,” I said. “And I’ve come as fast as I could.”

  “Oh my,” he said. “And I’ve no doubt you have, poor bereaved soul that you are. Come in, come in and sit and I will tell you of your poor ma’s passing.”

  So I went in and he told me Marm had taken ill early in the month but would not be taken to hospital and kept at her sewing, though she could do less each day, nor would have anyone do aught for her, nor send to me. She passed on in the night, but that morning she had told her landlord, Mr. Haffinger, that should she expire he was to write to me and that the address could be found on the pack of letters in the tin next the tea tin. Mr. Haffinger said that as soon as he knew Marm was gone, for he visited her each day, he got the letters, then it was a day spent getting together a proper bit of paper and another in composing, so he thought I should have got the letter in three days of her going. As he told me this he fussed among the tea things he had on a dirty little stove in the corner of his room and when he turned around he had a cup of tea for me which I took gratefully.

  “Is she still in her room?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, very slow and shaking his head. “That she is not. I’ve always a great demand, as you may say, for me rooms. I’ve a little space below stairs which I do not let, but it is safe and dry, and there I have laid her until you should come.”

  “And her things?”

  He gave me a long, sad look, so that I knew I should never see anything belonging to my marm again. “Your poor ma wasn’t able to pay her rent the last week, for she weren’t strong enough to work, so as it was owing, I took the liberty to clear out her debt by selling off the few bits of furniture and crockery as she had, you know. I’m sure it were not much.” He went back to his stove and rummaged in a tin there as he spoke. “But I drove a hard bargain, miss, you may be sure, and in the end settled all your ma had owing and”—he produced a coin which he brought to me—“a shilling over.”

  I took the coin and sat looking at it in my palm.

  “I thought to save it for you, as you might apply it for her interment expenses.”

  I could not speak. The shilling seemed to weigh in my hand with all the weight of Marm’s unhappy life. I closed my fingers around it and slipped it into my skirt pocket. “May I see my mother, Mr. Haffinger,” I said, to which he replied, “Of course, of course, perfectly right. Please to follow me.” Taking up a candle and muttering to himself all the way, he led me down a dim hall to a staircase that looked as if it would take us straight to hell, it was that black. At the bottom of it was a low-ceilinged hole, with a few inches of black water standing in it and the sound of dripping continual. I heard the scurrying of some animal feet as we went down, but I could see nothing. To my relief he stopped halfway down and turned to a bolted door that gave off the staircase. It opened out on creaking hinges like an oven door and indeed it was not much larger. The space behind it was no bigger than our kitchen table. The floor was dirt and, as he had promised, dry. There was a low pallet and lying on it the remains of my poor Marm. There was no going in to stand beside her, for the space would not allow it. I saw he had slid the pallet in feet first and I felt a rush of relief that he had not taken and sold her shift, which was the only one she had and which she was wearing, no doubt, when she died. Mr. Haffinger held the candle up high so I could see her face, which was near the door. Someone had closed her eyes and folded her hands upon her chest. Her mouth had dropped open so that she had a startled look about her.

  “Your poor ma,” Mr. Haffinger was saying. “Struck down in the prime of her life.” I touched her cheek, thinking to close her mouth, for I did not like the way it looked, but found her skin as cold and hard as a slab of marble, so I drew my hand away, and it was then I understood that she was gone. I backed away from the door and Mr. Haffinger closed it up behind me.

  “Now,” he said, “you may count upon the parish to see to her burial. She had set nothing by for a funeral, so she told me, but the church here does a fair enough job, so you may say, as I know from my previous tenants what has passed away. I always make it a point to see them to their final rest.”

  Yes, I thought, your tenants must pass on regular in such a pest hole as this. But I said naught of my feelings. Instead I told him I had some money laid by and wanted Marm to have a proper funeral, at least a coach and a lined box proper, which set him in a whirl of excitement till I thought he would pound me on the back for glee. Of course he knew the only funerary furnishers to see, and vowed to accompany me so that no one might take advantage of my grief, for he said, “These fellows may see a young, innocent, gentle creature like yourself and think they may screw up the price and no one will be the wiser.” For, he pointed out, “Your poor ma is not likely to complain.”

  So I was forced to go out into the streets with this unpleasant fellow who clearly had naught to do and looked upon my marm’s passing as a high entertainment. The gentlemen at the funerary furnishers were not much better than Mr. Haffinger, full of fake sympathy and comfort only an idiot would fail to see was a sham from start to finish. They produced a book for me to look at giving the price entire and a description of what they provided, everything from coach to mourning bands, even to the material of the pall, silk being more than velvet, as well as the number of brass fixings on the box. It was all arranged to make my head spin and lay out every penny I had, but remembering both Marm’s pride and her dislike of waste and pompery, I kept my head. I had hoped all the business could be concluded in the afternoon, it was for that I left so early, but Mr. Haffinger and the undertaker howled at the thought and said it could not be done before two days, for the parish only buried on Thursdays and the bearers must be engaged a day ahead of time. So I saw I should have to ask for another day off, though I might leave Master’s as late as ten and make it there and back by dinner, for the funeral man assured me it would not take above two hours. I paid them half the money, three guineas, and agreed to bring the rest on Thursday. Then Mr. Haffinger would accompany me to the church to engage the vicar, who was a slow-witted fellow I think and, like Mr. Haffinger, carried away by the idea that it should be a proper funeral and that there would be in his audience one sober, sincere, unpaid mourner for the departed one.

  So I had concluded such arrangements as I could make by noon and set out on my trip back home feeling heavy-hearted, that Marm must lie three more days in Mr. Haffinger’s basement and that I must ask leave and make the long trip back again before I should have purchased a peaceful rest for my marm. I stopped along the way in Russell Square and bought a cup of milk from a man there, as I had a great thirst, then I sat on a bench and ate the lunch Cook had made for me, of which I left no crumb, for I found I had a great appetite, from walking, no doubt, and from biting back so many of the thoughts that rose to my tongue.

  When I was done I went on my way as quick as I could. The wind was whipping cruelly at every corner, the streets was crowded and the noise terrific, the vendors all calling their wares, and the clatter of the carriages never ending. There were great crushes of folk around the news vendors all along the way and though I could not read their broadsheets it was easy enough to know what they said, for it seemed at every corner they was shouting out the same story, that an MP was beaten to death on the streets last night and the murderer was still at large.

  When I got in, our house was in an uproar. To my surprise it was for the murdered MP I heard of on the streets, who was, it turns out, Sir Danvers Carew, a schoolmate of Master’s, though not I think a close friend these last years. I never saw him in this house, at least. But Mr. Utterson had come straight from the morgue, where he had been summoned to identify the poor man, and gone to Master in his cabinet to tell him the news. Cook said no sooner had he left than Mr. Poole was sent for and he found Master pale and weak, his eyes red from tears and ask
ing for his tea to be served where he was, for he said he hadn’t the strength to come into the house. “He is badly took by this heinous murder,” Mr. Poole told Cook, but when I heard it I thought, why should he be so moved? Everyone seemed pleased I was back early from my sad errand, but only Cook asked me the cause of it and when I said I would have to go again on Thursday, she pressed her lips together as if it were an annoyance and said, “Well, Mr. Poole will have to ask Master leave.”

  So I went into the pantry to take off my bonnet and put on my apron. I had such mean thoughts then, it seemed I hardly knew myself, for I thought, this Sir Danvers Carew was an elderly man who had a fine, long life with the world to serve him, yet we must make more show of his passing than my poor marm’s, who was surely too young to die and had never had a moment’s rest while she lived, which no doubt accounts for her giving up and going off so soon. But then I thought of the elderly gentleman being beaten on the street, for the story is he was found so battered about the head he could scarce be recognized, and it seemed a great pity and a senseless thing as well, for Cook says his money was found upon him, so it was not for that he was murdered.

  Master came into the house after tea but I did not see him, for I was at work upstairs turning the mattresses which I found was a sewing job in Master’s room, for there was a tear in the cover and the feathers was all coming out, so I had to stop and repair it at once. When I come downstairs for the needle and thread, I heard the front bell ring and as I come back through the hall I saw there was two constables following Mr. Poole, whose face was as grey as ash and stiff as a poker, into Master’s drawing room. I wanted to go behind and say, What does it all mean? yet I do not like to ask Mr. Poole anything, so I thought I will just finish this job and by the time I am done Cook will have it all and be eager to tell me as well.