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

by Lynn Shepherd

  Charles wants to answer back—wants even more to spit straight in the man’s face—but his lips are so swollen he cannot form the words. Boscawen’s fingers tighten on his neck, and he nods. The next thing he knows Boscawen is dragging him to the door and throwing him hard down the first flight of stairs. Then the door slams above him, and he lies there for a moment, gazing up at the landlord, who is silently watching him, his eyes narrowed and a curious, almost exalted expression on his face.

  By the time Charles drags himself the short distance to Lincoln’s Inn Fields the night is falling, and with it a sharp icy sleet. Anyone with any sense would have found a cab and gone home, but we already know that there’s a certain stubbornness about Charles that does not always serve him well. More than one passer-by eyes him nervously in the street, and he’s lucky not to encounter a constable, since he would quite probably have taken one look at Charles’s bludgeoned face and taken him in for further questioning.

  Knox peers at him warily from behind the door and it’s some moments before Charles can persuade him to open it and let him in.

  “Mr Tulkinghorn is dining, sir. Was he expecting you?”

  “No, he wasn’t, but I’m here now and I want to see him.”

  Knox shakes his head. “I’m not at all sure you’re in any fit state to—”

  The fury festering in Charles’s mind heaves suddenly up and boils over. He seizes the pinched little clerk by the arm, pushes him roughly to one side, then strides up the stairs to Tulkinghorn’s room and throws open the door. His client is sitting quietly in his usual place, a plate and knife and fork placed neatly before him. To one side there is a glass and a bottle of port more than fifty years old, drawn from what remains of a bin that was laid down long ago in the cellars that lie deep beneath the house. He has eaten his bit of fish, brought in as usual from the coffee-house nearby, and is now sitting in twilight, sipping his wine. The sound of the door swinging open brings him to himself with a start. The sight of Charles, grey with dust, where he is not reddened with his own quickly darkening blood, is something of a shock and—frankly—quite unprecedented at this hour, and in this place.

  “Mr Maddox. I was not aware we had arranged to meet today.”

  “We hadn’t.”

  “In that case, I assume you must have something both urgent and significant to impart. Something that—evidently—cannot even wait for a bath and a change of clothes.”

  Charles walks towards him slowly, taking the paper from his pocket, his eyes never leaving the lawyer’s face. He comes to the table and lays the crumpled sheet on it with exaggerated carefulness. It is, perhaps deliberately, just beyond Tulkinghorn’s easy reach. The lawyer looks at it, and then at Charles, then makes a gesture towards a second chair. “Will you join me in some wine? I can have Knox fetch another glass.”

  “No. Thank you, but no.”

  “It is a very old wine, Mr Maddox. And a splendid one.”

  “All the same.”

  The lawyer nods, and swirls the amber fluid round and round slowly in his goblet. The room fills with the fragrance of the warm south.

  “So what is it you have brought me?” says Tulkinghorn at length. If it’s a poker game these two are playing, it is Tulkinghorn who has blinked first.

  “I have discovered the man you asked me to find.”

  Tulkinghorn sits back in his chair. He brings the glass to his lips.

  “I gather from your unsavoury appearance that your quarry was not best pleased to be located.”

  “There was an—altercation, yes.”

  “What did you tell him?” The question is quick, possibly a little too quick, and they both know it. Tulkinghorn shifts in his chair.

  “I told him nothing. He found me in his room, that’s all.”

  “And what do you know of him?”

  “He is a Cornishman by birth, but works now as a tanner in London. In Bermondsey. And as this piece of paper will prove, he is quite definitely the man who wrote those threatening letters to Sir Julius Cremorne.”

  “But you have no idea why he did so—no suggestion to offer as to his reasons?”

  Charles shrugs. He, too, wishes he had found the answer to that question—but only because he would have so deeply relished the pleasure of withholding it. “I wasn’t in the room long enough to find out. Always assuming there was something there to find, of course. After all, didn’t you claim he was in all probability just another motiveless malignant?” He’s rather proud of the phrase, which he’s heard somewhere before, but it’s hard to say all those m’s without slurring. His mouth keeps filling with blood, and two of his teeth feel loose.

  “Indeed I did,” says Tulkinghorn quietly, “and it seems I am very likely to be proved right. Who is this man, and where does he live?”

  “His name is William Boscawen. He lodges above a rag-and-bottle shop at the bottom of Bell Yard. You might walk it from here in less than a quarter of an hour. Take it in as part of one of your customary evening perambulations.”

  The lawyer betrays nothing beyond the slightest, almost imperceptible, widening of the eyes. He is not used to other people knowing his private movements. He takes out his handkerchief and starts to clean his spectacles, then—in no apparent hurry—opens his drawer, unlocks a small strong-box, and takes out a purse of money. He does not open it or count the contents, but tosses it lightly across the table. This also, perhaps deliberately, lands just beyond Charles’s reach. The two of them look at each other silently for a moment, then Charles leans across and picks up the purse. He’s half-way to the door when Tulkinghorn calls him back.

  “And the letters, Mr Maddox?”

  Charles spins round. “I’m sorry?”

  “Could you return the letters I gave you? And the envelopes, of course. I assume you have them with you.”

  Indeed he does, but something about the look in the lawyer’s eyes prompts a prevarication.

  “No. I’m sorry. I don’t have them here.”

  “In that case I will send Knox for them in the morning. Ask him to come up, would you, as you leave?”

  Charles nods.

  “And Mr Maddox—”

  “Yes, Mr Tulkinghorn?”

  “I’m told the chop-house on the corner does very good steak. You might request one if you are passing that way.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Not to eat, Mr Maddox. For your eye.”

  After the door closes, Tulkinghorn sits silently, once more sipping his wine. He is to all appearances more imperturbable and impenetrable than ever. At length he opens his desk drawer once more, extracts a sheet of paper, and starts to write. Knox appears a few moments later, and stands at the door, awaiting his instructions.

  Tulkinghorn looks up and places his pen on his desk. “I will have a letter to take in half an hour. For Curzon Street. We have a name.”

  TEN

  A Discovery

  THE GREAT BELL of St Paul’s strikes midnight, and one by one the towers and spires of the city go through their hourly catechism of answer and reply, making the night air hum and jangle, so that at last, when all is still, the silence that descends is electric with after-echo. The fog came on again just before dusk, but it is clear now, and from where we are, we can look down upon the clustered roofs of Bell Yard, and the ramshackle huddle of its dilapidated buildings. But even as we watch, a sudden shadow darkens the moon, a skein of cloud carried on currents so high and distant they have no power to stir the dark slow flakes that are settling soundlessly on these slates and window-ledges and chimney-stacks. For some reason the atmosphere seems denser than usual, the falling soot blacker and more sulphurous. Come closer, come with me down into the rag-and-bottle shop, and your breath will thicken with every pace, until we penetrate the heart of this unnerving ticking silence and push open the door at the top of the stairs. The desk is as we left it, the grate still empty, and the papers scattered as before. But this time, on the bed, there is a man. His head is thrown back at a
n odd angle so that you cannot see his face, but there, on the coarse and yellowing coverlet, there is a dark and spreading stain.

  When the dawn starts to seep through the half-shuttered windows of Charles’s room the following morning, he turns over drowsily to shut out the light and wakes with a hammer jolt of pain. The ache in his right side has sharpened to a howl, and his face feels twice its usual size. He puts out a hand tentatively and feels along his jaw. He was worried last night that it was broken, but it seems not. That’s something, at least. He hauls himself up and over to the wash-stand, thankful that it has no mirror to reproach him; he doesn’t even want to imagine what he looks like. The water is cold and stings, but somehow that helps and he’s got to the point of slowly pulling on his clothes when there’s a commotion on the stairs and the door flies open without a knock. It’s Stornaway, heaving for breath, his face red.

  “Mr Charles!” he gasps before he’s even in the room. “Something’s gone off. Ye have to come.”

  Charles feels his way back to the bed and sits down heavily; he can barely see out of one eye. It’s only now that Stornaway gets a proper look at him.

  “The good Lord save us—whatever have ye done to ye’sen?”

  Charles takes a deep breath. “I got into a—disagreement. That man I’ve been looking for took quite unreasonable umbrage at discovering me snooping through his things, and decided to make his displeasure known in concrete form. At least that’s what it felt like.”

  Stornaway is not deceived by the lightness of his tone. “Ye ought to get a doctor to look at that face.”

  Charles shakes his head—once only, when he finds how much it hurts. “No need. I’ve had worse.”

  Stornaway smiles. “Aye, so have I, but it dinna make ’em smart any the less. Let me at least send up Molly with some hot water and bandages.”

  “I don’t need coddling. I need a drink.”

  “I’m not sure as that’s such a good idea—”

  “And what were you saying just then? When you came in?”

  Stornaway hesitates. “Well—”

  “Come on, man—you don’t drag that old body of yours up three flights of stairs on a mere whim. You must have thought it was important.”

  Stornaway suddenly looks a little abashed. “The other night when ye were talking to the guv’nor, I heard ye say—that is I weren’t eavesdropping, but I couldna help but overhear—”

  “For heaven’s sake, get on with it, man!” snaps Charles. “You may take it as read that if I was concerned about privacy I’d have locked the damn door.”

  “Ye said ye were looking for a tanner.”

  Charles snorts and opens his arms. “And as you can see, I have found him!”

  But Stornaway isn’t laughing. “I heard it from the post-boy this mornin’. There’s been a fire. In Bell Yard—”

  Charles is out of the room before he has even finished his sentence.

  When he gets to the rag-and-bottle shop there’s little left to see, but from what there is Charles deduces at once that the fire started in the corner of the shop, then ran up the walls with sickening speed and into the shrivelled hovels on either side. There are at least twelve dead. So far. Among them a family of six caught in their sleep in the attic next door, and an old woman who seems to have been sheltering in the lee of the shop door. In the centre of the blackened rubble there’s another corpse still slumped in its chair, the skull mouth gaping, and shreds of cloth soldered into the cracked bone. The stinking air is still fluttering with the scorched remains of old withered paper as Charles picks his way carefully through the smouldering embers towards the constable standing on the farther side. “Good morning, Ainsworth. Any idea what happened?”

  “Not difficult to guess, Mr Maddox. Look at this place—’ard to think of better tinder. And I gather from the neighbours that the proprietor was in the ’abit of taking liquor. Was—to put not too fine a point on it—a notorious drunkard. Easy to see a candle overturned by a drunken ’and, sir. We’ve both seen that enough times. Even easier to see this lot going up like a Roman candle. Must ’ave been like bloody Guy Fawkes ’ere last night.”

  “Where’s the lodger? The one upstairs—is there any sign of him?”

  Ainsworth gestures towards the back of the shop. “See there—that pile of wood and timber? Part of the roof fell in. Compacted two whole storeys together like a stack a playing cards. If your man was upstairs, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

  Charles starts in the same direction but Ainsworth holds him back. “I wouldn’t go no nearer, Mr Maddox, sir. Too dangerous by ’alf. The rest of that roof could come down at any minute. And it looks like you’ve ’ad one too many close shaves already.”

  Charles shoots the man a glance but ignores his protests. It takes a few minutes to clamber across the deathtrap floor but it’s worth it, when he gets there. Under the rubble of singed joists and boards he can see a foot. A man’s foot. Blistered red by the fire but essentially intact. As is the body, when he hauls the planks off it. He crouches down and looks more closely. The back is broken but that could be the result of the fall; no way of telling either way. But not even the fiercest fire, in Charles’s experience, ever left its victims with their throats cut. And not just cut—scored so deep that the head is all but severed from the shoulders. He sits back on his heels. There’s only one conclusion he can draw: Boscawen was dead long before the fire started. Charles stands up and moves back towards the source of the fire. There’s no mistake here either—the tang is unmistakable. Sharp, woody, slightly resinous. Camphene. Notoriously—even dangerously—combustible, but still used to light lamps by half the householders in London. Half the householders, yes, but not, as Charles well knows, by this one. This fire was no accident; it was arson.

  Back at Buckingham Street, he sits for a while with his great-uncle. The room is quiet and Maddox is sleeping in his chair, his breath coming in soft erratic lifts and grunts. Somewhere in the house Billy is whistling. Charles reaches for the notebook in his pocket and his fingers brush the package of Cremorne letters. Apparently Knox called at the house in his absence, and will call again later. Tulkinghorn is clearly concerned to retrieve his client’s property, though why there should be such urgency, especially now that—

  But that, of course, is the crux of the matter. Not only why Tulkinghorn should have involved himself in such an apparently banal business in the first place, but why a man like Boscawen had to be eliminated in so brutal and permanent a manner. For there is, to Charles’s mind, no possibility of coincidence in this affair. Within hours of Boscawen’s name becoming known in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the man was dead.

  Maddox stirs and comes slowly to, blinking.

  “Charles!” he says after a few moments. “You have returned, I see.” He stops and screws up his eyes, peering at his great-nephew. “I hope the deplorable condition of your physiognomy is not mirrored in the state of your investigation?”

  Charles smiles; it’s obviously one of his uncle’s good days. “Quite the opposite. The investigation has closed and you were right. On both counts, in fact. He was a tanner, and he was a Cornishman.”

  “Ha!” says the old man, snapping his fingers. “Exactly so! So did you find out the truth of it? Such behaviour, from such a class of man, can hardly be a random act of gratuitous malice.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Uncle, but I am unlikely to get to the bottom of it now.”

  “Ah, I gather your suspect was not forthcoming.”

  “Certainly not when I last saw him, but even less so now. He’s dead.” Charles’s tone is sardonic.

  Maddox raises his eyebrows, trimmed now, regularly, by the ever-diligent Billy. “Now, that puts quite another complexion on the affair. You are not, I take it, about to inform me the demise was accidental?”

  Charles shakes his head, and gives his great-uncle a short résumé of the morning’s events. The old man sits listening quietly, nodding occasionally, and now and then asking a que
stion: timing, physical evidence, sequence of events. At length he sits back in his chair. “You did not tell me that it was Tulkinghorn who had commissioned you. Had you done so, I would have advised you in the strongest terms not to accept the case. I have had dealings with Tulkinghorn of the Fields myself, though it was some years ago, and we were on opposite sides of the matter in question. He was a formidable opponent, even then, and utterly merciless in the defence of even the most insignificant interests of his clients.”

  “But you were successful—you prevailed?”

  Maddox laughs drily. “We came, shall we say, to an accommodation acceptable to all parties. I think each man knew he had met his match, and neither was willing to pursue a confrontation that would assuredly have been the ruin of one of us, if not both. He has since paid me the ultimate compliment of one practitioner to another, and avoided me. As I have him. But you should know that even in so-called compromise he was utterly implacable. I am not, therefore, as surprised as some might be that this pillar of the law employed you to find a man solely for the purpose of having him killed. Nor is this the only time I have seen our profession made use of in such a fashion. Indeed, I can remember half a dozen similar incidents in my own career. In my case, however, I do not think I can recall a single instance where the culprit in question did not amply deserve his fate—indeed most of them would have received precisely the same adjudication at the hands of the law, could an adequate case ever have been brought. But you know next to nothing about this Boscawen, and there is, as far as we know, no such accusation to be made against him.”

  Charles leans forward and puts his head in his hands. His jaw aches with a deadened throb, and he cannot rid himself of the uneasy conviction that he has been royally duped. After everything he sacrificed in the name of principle in the Boone case, despite the suspicions he’s had from the first that there was something darker driving Tulkinghorn’s demands, he’s still allowed himself to be lured straight into the trap the lawyer laid before him. He looks up and sees Maddox watching him.