The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  The second officer comes up now and stands behind him, watchful but silent. Charles thinks he’s seen him before, but can’t remember his name. Clough, is it? Or Cuss? Something like that, anyway. The officer’s face is as sharp as a hatchet and his skin as dry as an autumn leaf.

  “So what do you make of it?” the man says eventually, in the same level tone he might use to order a beer. Was it indifference—or just an appropriate and commendable detachment? Charles can’t be sure.

  “Can you tell me who found it?” he asks.

  “Couple of lads, playing where they shouldn’t. I doubt they’ll be back here in a hurry.”

  “And it was like this?”

  “Nothing’s been moved. Not yet.”

  Charles bends down and looks more closely, straining his eyes in the low light. Without a word, the man brings the bull-dog lower, and Charles feels the lantern’s warmth on his skin. It’s clear to him now what must have happened. Judging by the exposed knots of red yew root, the last week’s rain has washed at least an inch of mud from the surface of the soil. And what it’s revealed is the tiny body of a newborn baby, still wrapped in a dirty blue woollen blanket, a scrap of white cotton tangled about the neck. He may never have completed his medical training, but Charles knows enough to make a pretty shrewd guess how long these bones have been here. In this waterlogged London clay, probably three weeks; certainly no more than four. The eyes are long gone, but wisps of pale hair are still pasted to the small skull, and the flesh is largely intact, though almost black with putrefaction and scored with the marks of teeth and claws. Indeed, the rats seem to have done an unusually efficient job. One hand is completely gone below the wrist, but the fingers of the other are curled as if to a mother’s touch. When Charles lifts the edge of the sodden blanket the gaping belly is swarming with larvae. But that isn’t the worst of it. Underneath the body he can already see the buried blue of another coverlet, and the broken rib cage of another small child. His breath catches. He glances up at the officer, “Do you want to, or shall I?”

  “Be my guest. It’s not a job I relish.”

  Charles takes a pair of gloves from his pocket, and the officer hands him a small trowel. Five minutes’ careful digging reveals three bodies buried under the first, one next to the other, exactly aligned. Indeed, they look for all the world like infants in a cradle. Sleeping soundly side by side, carefully swaddled against the night air. Charles sits back on his heels. “So what do we think? Are we assuming it’s a woman?”

  The other man considers. “Most likely, in my experience.”

  “And the same one each time?”

  “Hard to tell for sure. Could be two of them. The body on the top’s a lot more recent, but the other three are like peas in a pod. Probably all went in together.”

  Charles is silent a moment, then shakes his head. “I disagree. The earth here’s been turned over more than just once or twice. And surely even in this light you can see the difference in the bones.”

  Not just the bones, in fact, but the flesh. One baby’s face is smoothed almost doll-like—unnerving the first time, but Charles has seen many times what grave wax can do. The other two underneath are withering one after the other into parched cages of separating bones, their mummified flesh dried in tight leathery tendons, the closed lids stretched paper-thin.

  Charles glances up. “Whoever this woman was, she seems to have been trying to give them a decent burial—or the nearest she could manage. This last one looks like it even had a handkerchief or something put over its face—as if she couldn’t bear to look at it. And yet she kept coming back—kept re-opening the same grave.”

  He stares at the open pit, struggling for a word to help make sense of it, and comes up only with tenderness. It jars horribly with the evidence of his own senses—not just the sight of decomposing flesh but the reek of decay eating into his skin and clothes—but the idea has caught his mind, and it will not go away.

  The other man is dismissive; he’s clearly had enough of this wild-goose chase. “Come on, it’s no big mystery. She’d have needed time, even for a shallow grave, and this is the only part of the cemetery where you’re not much overlooked. It’s just common sense. Nothing more sinister than that.”

  Charles nods; the man has a point—he should have thought of that himself. “All the same, think about what that actually meant. Imagine digging over the same piece of earth time and time again, knowing full well what you were going to find. What kind of woman could do that? It goes against every idea we have of the sanctity of motherhood—”

  The man laughs. “Sanctity of motherhood, my arse! I thought they told me you’d been in the police? Most of the women round here have already got too many mouths to feed. Baby farms cost money; a pillow over the face is free, gratis. And you know as well as I do that unless they’re either very careless, or very unlucky, there’s virtually no chance of getting caught. I’ve lost count of the number of dead babies I’ve seen fished out of the Thames, or found rotting in the street, but I can number the women we’ve prosecuted for infanticide on the fingers of one hand. The courts have better things to do with their time. As have we.”

  He turns and waves at Wheeler, beckoning him over.

  “Come on,” he calls. “There’s nothing for us here. Just another routine child-killing.”

  Charles sticks the trowel into the ground and stands up. “So if dumping them in the river is so easy, why go to all the trouble of bringing them here? Not to mention the risk. It’s because this place is consecrated ground—that’s the only explanation that makes any sense. And that alone means this is a very long way from being just another routine child-killing.”

  There’s a snort and Charles looks round to see Wheeler staring down into the gaping grave, a half-eaten apple in his hand.

  “Jesus,” the constable says, taking another bite, “if this is your definition of consecrated, give me hellfire any day. Looks like the last one they put in over yonder had to be stamped on to get ’im in. The coffin’s rearin’ up out of the ground like the Last Trump’s already blastin’. Though at least ’e did have a coffin. Unlike these poor little buggers. Any use to you, Chas?”

  Charles sees the other man’s cool and quizzical eye; he’s clearly been wondering all this time what right Charles has to be there, but has decided to say nothing.

  Charles shakes his head. “I doubt it. The last anyone heard of the child I’m looking for was sixteen years ago, when it was taken to an orphanage at three months old. These bodies haven’t been in the ground anything like that long.”

  “You ain’t got a lot to go on, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so,” mumbles Wheeler, his mouth full. “What’s the chance of findin’ one solitary kid in a town this size—dead or alive? You might pass it in the street this very evenin’ and never know.”

  Charles shrugs. “I have a picture of the mother, and my client hopes the child may take after her.”

  “Your client,” says the other man softly, “must have money to spare—or a very poor understanding of the likelihood of success.”

  The tone is purposefully neutral, but the implication is clear. Charles turns and looks the man squarely in the face. “My client refuses to give up hope,” he replies coldly, “even though I have explained very clearly that our chances are small. I am conducting as detailed an investigation as is possible after all this time, and doing so in the proper professional manner. I resent any suggestion, Constable, that it could possibly be otherwise.”

  He sees Wheeler’s eyes widen and realises his mistake at once.

  “Last I looked,” says the other man, “my rank was Sergeant. And if I were you, Mr Maddox, I would keep a civil tongue in your head and that temper of yours under control. It’s already cost you more than you could well afford. Or so I hear.”

  Charles feels the heat rush across his face under the man’s steady gaze. The bastard knows. Of course—they all know. Charles has never learned the trick of coping with injustice—not as
a small child, punished for something he hadn’t done, and not now, as a man of twenty-five, unjustly dismissed from a job he loved. The official charge was insubordination, but he knew, and his superiors at Scotland Yard knew, that his real crime was daring to challenge the deductions of a higher-ranking officer—and challenge them as not just scientifically unfounded, but rationally unsound. Looking back, it might have been wiser to make his views known privately—or keep them entirely to himself—but a man’s life had been in the balance, and he’d felt then as he did still, that he had no choice. It was no consolation, months later, to find that new evidence had come to light; by that time an innocent man had already been taken to a place of lawful execution, and hanged by the neck until he was dead.

  The eyes of the two men are still upon him. He turns, as pointedly as he dares, to Wheeler. “Tell Inspector Field that I will continue to be grateful for any information he might come across that could have a bearing on my case. I will detain you gentlemen no longer.”

  He is out of sight in five yards, and out of earshot soon after, but all the same he struggles to keep his anger in check until he is back at the Circus, then vents the full force of his fury on a stack of wooden crates outside the Horse-Shoe, sending glasses and bottles spinning and smashing across the cobbles, and spewing rank beer on the already filthy ground. He stands there breathing heavily for a few moments, then straightens his collar and pushes open the inn door.

  TWO

  In Mr Tulkinghorn’s Chambers

  IT’S LATE WHEN Charles wakes, his head wooden with hangover, and the sulphur of fog still in his mouth. The curtains hang open, and a line of sunlight glances across the farther wall. He sits up slowly, as if careful to keep his brain from tilting, and then pushes his hands through his hair and kicks back the twisted sheets. He opens the door and calls to the landlady to send out for half a pint of coffee from the shop next door, and then goes to the wash-stand and pours a jug of cold water over his head and neck, eyed all the while by the cat, who is understandably disdainful of Charles’s dismal efforts, having attended rather more thoroughly to his own ablutions some two hours before. As he’s towelling his face dry, Charles catches sight of his letter, still unfinished, on his desk. If things had turned out differently last night he might have had something worthwhile to say—a reason to rip up his mealy-mouthed draft and begin again, but as always this case leads only to dead ends. And dead children.

  The landlady knocks with the coffee a few minutes later, and as he’s fumbling in his pocket for what’s left of his money, he sees for the first time that there’s a white edge of paper jutting out from under the trodden rope-matting which is all the room can boast of by way of carpet. Someone has slid something under his door. He looks down at it for a moment. He has no memory of seeing it when he got home the night before—not much memory of getting back at all, if truth be told—but he knows it wasn’t there when he left. Strange. He’s on the point of calling Mrs Stacey back up, but recalls that Tuesday evening is her Harmonic Meeting, and the maid had probably taken the opportunity to sidle out the back and meet that greasy pot-boy from the Three Tuns. He bends down and slides the piece of paper from under the mat. It’s a very superior kind of paper, he sees that at once. Fine-textured, heavy, and sealed ostentatiously with thick red wax. The paper of a very superior kind of man. The kind of man who does not expect to be refused, and does not care to be kept waiting.

  Lincoln’s Inn Fields

  Tuesday, midnight

  Sir,

  I would be grateful if you could present yourself at my chambers, at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. There is a small matter of business I wish to discuss with you.

  Your obedient servant,

  Edward Tulkinghorn

  Attorney-at-Law

  Charles knows the name. Who, in his line of work, does not? A hard, gruelling, and arid man; widely feared and rarely worsted. Such words apply to Mr Tulkinghorn, as they apply to many other eminent London lawyers, but Tulkinghorn of the Fields is, all the same, a man apart. There is hardly a noble family in England that does not have its name inscribed on one of the locked iron boxes that line his room. He speaks only when he can charge to do so, and offers no opinion that has not been paid for, and handsomely. Little is known of him beyond his accomplishments in Chancery, and how he spends that portion of his time that has not been purchased is his private secret. There, he acts for himself alone, and he is never more careful than with his own confidences. To be consulted on a matter of business by Edward Tulkinghorn is an event of some moment, even for the great; to be—perhaps—employed by him is a professional distinction so distant that Charles can scarce allow himself to contemplate it. He has, in any case, very little time to do so. The appointment is less than an hour away.

  He washes again—quickly, but more carefully this time—and retrieves a shirt from the closet. It’s been worn, but not too often, and it’s the best he has. He smoothes his unruly hair as well as he can, and retrieves his comb from where it is currently doing service as a bookmark in the second volume of Erasmus Darwin’s Zoönomia (Charles has recently chanced upon a new work by the great man’s grandson, but considers him, on this showing at least, to be far inferior to his illustrious forebear).

  A quarter of an hour later he leaves the house. The difference in the day is dazzling; the events of the night before begin to seem nightmarish and unreal, a hallucination of the poisonous air. It is hardly possible to believe that such a hell-hole exists, on such a bright, cold morning. Charles retraces last night’s journey as far as the Circus, though progress through the crowds is rather slower than it had been through the fog. Little boys tug at his coat-tails offering walnuts and apples, housewives pick over fruit and vegetables, and tiny children risk trampling to sift up the cigar-ends swilling in the gutter with the rest of the refuse and excrement. The local whores are out in force already, and Red Suke winks lewdly at Charles as he goes past. And it’s hardly surprising—it’s not just his clear blue gaze and thick bronze curls, though they undoubtedly have their effect—there’s something about the way he walks, a swagger that is not quite a swagger, that draws the eye and catches the attention, and has got him into trouble more than once. And even though you will never get him to acknowledge it, even to himself, that trouble is not always or exclusively of the female variety. Suke is clearly in a cheerful mood, having downed her usual three morning quarterns of gin and peppermint before presenting herself for paying custom.

  “Where’s you off to in such a rush, Charlie? Got y’self a sweetheart, have yer?”

  When he turns and grins at her, the whore hoots with laughter and replumps her ample décolletage in his direction.

  “You can al’as fall back on me, Charlie boy. Though falling for’ards might be more to the purpose.”

  The air is raucous with hawkers’ cries, and heaving with the hot smell of open-air cooking. For someone who’s had nothing to eat since lunchtime the previous day the aroma of sizzling fish is too much to bear. Charles decides he will indulge himself, just this once, even if it means no eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Though on this showing it may not surprise you to learn that he goes without his eggs more often than he has them. The decision made, he shells out a penny for a toasted bloater wrapped in bread and eats it greedily in three bites, licking the salt from his lips and wiping the butter from his chin with the back of his sleeve, having forgotten until it’s too late that he no longer owns a handkerchief. As one would expect, none of the usual pickpockets are yet abroad—thieves are alone in loving the fog, and weather like this is no environment for profitable dipping. A couple of the Fenhope lads are making faces at themselves in the boot-maker’s window, but the next moment they’re gone, disappeared into the huddle of women gathered round a stallholder’s table. At least we must assume it is a table, since no square inch of the surface is actually visible under the jumble of teapots, crockery, artificial flowers, plaster-of-Paris night-shades, clothes-horses, tea-caddies, and tins of r
at poison. It looks like some absurdly over-elaborate version of the memory game—as if at any moment the proprietor might whisk across one of the much-darned sheets drooping over his head and challenge his customers to name every rag and cast-off. But then again, you might well counter that this dishevelled display bears more than a passing resemblance to our own young man’s muddle of assorted curios. But if you were to say such a thing to Charles, he would merely look at you blankly: He collects scientific specimens; these people trade in trash.

  A scatter of crows cackles into the sky above his head as he crosses into Holborn and heads towards the City. The crowd thins a little but the traffic is as heavy as ever. Wagons and hackney-coaches rumble past him, and he’s relieved, in the end, to turn in to the relative tranquillity of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Mr Tulkinghorn has not specified a house number, trusting, perhaps, that a man like Charles should either know it, or be able to find it without undue exertion. If it is any sort of a test, then Charles passes it easily. He presents himself at the impressive and oddly Egyptian-looking façade at precisely five minutes before eleven. The door is unlatched before he has raised his hand to knock and swings open to reveal a middle-aged clerk, a little out at elbows, who is showing out a bald timid-looking man with a shining head and a clump of black hair sticking out at the back. Having completed this task, the clerk turns to Charles, who does not, apparently, need to give his name.