When Charles returns with tea and a hot meat pie, the two of them seem to have reached a decision. As the girl crams pieces of pastry into her mouth without any refinement whatsoever, the young woman explains that she’s been living in a lodging-house in St Giles, “but has had a disagreement with the proprietor. When she was unable to pay for last night’s accommodation in advance he refused her a bed, which is quite deplorable, especially on such a cold night. Anything might have become of her.”
To Charles’s mind, ‘anything’ already has, and often. He glances at Sarah, who stares back at him, her eyes wary. An unspoken communication passes between them, and he knows that the version of events she’s given the young woman is very far from the truth of it. Perhaps she’s trying to protect her protector from the brutal reality of the rookery padding-kens; perhaps she has a shrewd eye for a soft touch; either way, the girl suddenly looks far more the whore she probably is, than the unlucky innocent the genteel pair clearly believe her to be.
“Where was it?” he asks. “The lodging-house?”
The girl’s eyes narrow. “Church Lane. McCarthy’s.”
Charles nods. “I know it.”
And he does. Last time he saw the place it was high summer and the largest of the small rooms had fourteen coarse beds, the grey linen rife with vermin and the occupants not much better. Even with every window and door open the stench was unbearable, and when he put his hand to the blackened wall he’d found it crusted with cockroaches. There was nothing but a bucket for sanitation, and no possibility of privacy for any personal function, be it menstrual, matrimonial, or excremental. In some rooms whole families were sleeping in the same bed, even in the middle of the day; in others, two or three girls as young as Sarah had no choice but to share with men much older, and from there to actual prostitution was the smallest of tiny steps.
The young woman turns to Sarah. “We will accompany you. I am sure if we were to speak to the proprietor—”
The girl’s eyes widen and Charles quickly interposes. “There’s no need to trouble yourself, miss. I will see the young lady home. I am sure you have more important things to do with your day.”
The young woman seems to stiffen slightly. He cannot see her face through the veil, but her beautiful voice expresses gentle reproach. “There can be nothing more important than Christian charity to our fellow beings, Mr—”
“Maddox. Charles Maddox.”
“You undertake to accompany her safely to Church Lane?”
Charles bows. “I will consider it a sacred duty,” he answers, wondering, even as he says the words, what it is about this young woman that leads him to behave—and talk—so uncharacteristically.
She turns to the girl. “If you are again in difficulty, please apply to the Asylum for the Houseless Poor in Cripplegate. It is only open on freezing nights, but it is a respectable place. If you give my name to the superintendent, he will ensure you are treated well.”
She presses a card into the girl’s grasp but from the way Sarah squints at it, it’s clear to Charles, at least, that she cannot read. It’s high time to go.
Feeling more than a little foolish, he offers his arm to Sarah and bows to the couple. The man shakes the girl’s hand in farewell; more, it seems, as a discreet means of passing her a coin than for reasons of politeness. As he and Sarah walk back towards Park Lane, Charles sees the young woman standing watching them for some minutes, before her companion touches her gently on the arm and they turn away.
“Gawd, did you ever see the like?” says Sarah gaily, biting the sovereign then rubbing it against her bare thigh. “Fell on me feet there, eh?”
Charles frowns; it’s not so very different from what he himself is thinking, but putting it into such coarse words seems something akin to a profanity.
“She was very kind to you,” he says tersely.
“ ’Course she was. Makes no difference to ’er.”
“Do you want to go back to McCarthy’s? Or to that other place she mentioned?”
“Cripplegate—Christ no! ’Ave you seen the place? Tried it out when I first came to Lunnon. Terrible bloody dump. But I ain’t goin’ back to McCarthy’s neither. Some ’orrible old tooler wanted some for free, and then kicked off when I told ’im he could pay up or ’ook it. And then I was just settin’ meself up for the night on that bench when some bastard nicked me coat. Christ, it was cold!”
Charles looks sideways at her, but his sympathy stalls when he realises the young woman’s handkerchief is tucked into the neck of the girl’s shirt. And, more to the point, there’s a small grubby hand digging round in the pocket of the coat he has—perhaps unwisely—left wrapped around her. He hauls her round to face him and drags the coat, none too gently, from her shoulders and puts it back on.
Sarah laughs. “Don’t worry, mister—I ain’t robbed yer! And I didn’t rob ’er, neither,” she adds quickly, seeing his face. “She gave this to me, cross me ’eart.” She holds out the handkerchief in one hand and sets it fluttering in the breeze. “Nice bit a cloth, though—I know a few fogle-hunters’d give me a good few bob for this.”
Charles tries to snatch it from her but she’s too quick—suspiciously quick, in fact, and he catches hold of her wrist with one hand, and checks through his pockets again with the other. Only then does he let her go, and they continue, rather less comfortably, on their way.
“You don’t ’ave to come wiv me,” says the girl sulkily. “I’m all right on me own.”
“I said I would, so I will. Where do you want to go?”
Sarah shrugs. “I’ll find somewheres. Always ’ave before.”
Charles sighs. “I think I know somewhere you can stay for a day or so. If”—this with a glance at her shoes—“you’re capable of walking a mile or so.”
For a few shillings he can probably persuade Lizzie to put her up, and for a few shillings more ask her to keep an eye out for the girl for a while. Sarah’s chosen a dangerous profession; she may well need someone decent to turn to.
Sarah enjoys their walk far more than Charles does. He stops her at the first second-hand clothes stall they come to on Oxford Street and makes her invest part of her new wealth in a decent if rather threadbare military coat. It takes what he considers an unconscionable time to root through all the jumble, but Sarah eventually picks out a dark green merino shawl, badly stained on one side but fringed with bright emerald silk. Thus decked out she becomes animated, almost coquettish, and he’s forced to acknowledge that she has an eye for colour if nothing else. The green makes richer the red in her hair and the swing of the man’s coat flatters her slender tomboyish figure. For a moment—just a moment—he feels a distinct and absurd stirring of desire, which he stifles ruthlessly by reminding himself that this girl can’t be more than a few years older than the little Park Lane princess he saw earlier, as suffocated by her stiff plaid as she clearly was by parental anxiety. He quickens his pace and forces Sarah to run to keep up; the sooner this enforced excursion is done with, the better.
When they eventually reach the house near Golden Square there’s no sign of life, but that’s no great surprise at this time of day. He tells Sarah to wait at the front, and goes down the narrow alley at the side to the shabby one-up-one-down cottages at the back, thrown up some years ago on what was once a leafy garden. Lizzie lives at Number 5, but there’s no answer from her door. The only ground-floor window is covered with a thick curtain, no doubt to keep in the heat from the meagre fire. Charles knows where she keeps the spare key, and decides that his own need to have done with Sarah is more pressing than Lizzie’s for a few more minutes’ sleep. When the door creaks open his eyes are momentarily blinded by the contrast between the bright sunshine outdoors and the darkness inside. He knows this room well—he’s slept here more than once himself—but as his senses adjust, something about it strikes a strange note. It’s a small squalid space, no more than ten or twelve feet square, sparsely furnished and damp for nine months of the year. But behind the bed, o
n the left-hand wall, the unplastered brick seems to him oddly dark—in fact not just dark but thick with something that—he sees now—is dripping its slow way onto the floor and congealing in pools on the bare boards.
Blood.
Appalling, inconceivable quantities of it. Charles stands there, almost stupefied. The room is like a slaughter-house and it’s only much later that he will realise exactly what it is that’s strewn about his feet in such raw glutinous slabs. For the moment, all he can see is what’s on the bed. What, not who, for identity—personality—self—have been brutally obliterated. It’s Lizzie, but he only knows that because he knows the little rose tattoo still visible on her right shoulder. She’s turned towards him but does not face him—cannot face him because someone has taken a knife to her skin and hewn her pretty features away, leaving only a sodden coagulating mass of flesh. The policeman in Charles computes—almost automatically—that this must have been some time after the killer hacked her throat through with such ferocity that he can see her spinal bones; the man in him has the tiniest moment of relief that she was spared that, at least. Though whether she was still alive when her breasts were sliced off and her torso ripped open from neck to thigh, is far less clear. Coils of gut and offal are dragged across the tangled bedding, and her legs gape open in a gruesome parody of birth, or sex. Charles is hit suddenly by a memory—an image of himself on that bed—of Lizzie in not so very different a pose—and he staggers, reaches for the wall to stop himself sinking, and spews acid vomit all over the floor.
A moment later he hears a sound in the court outside and Sarah’s voice calling to him. He forces himself out of the room into the open air and shuts the door.
“Find a constable,” he gasps hoarsely, wiping his face with the back of his hand, then—louder—“quickly!”
As soon as she’s gone Charles drops slowly to the ground and sits there, his back to the door, his mind and heart in tumult. It’s only when he hears the sound of feet coming back down the passage-way—five minutes later? ten?—that he opens his eyes and looks up. Sarah stands there, looking down at him, and beside her—amazingly—is the round red face of Sam Wheeler, who seems as astonished to see Charles, as Charles is relieved to see him. He tries to get up, only to see a cloud of prickling stars and slide back down. He feels Sam’s hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, old mate. Looks like you’ve had a shock.”
“It’s in there,” says Charles weakly. “She’s in there.”
He doesn’t see Sam’s concerned look back at him, as he pauses on the threshold before pushing open the door. The next thing he remembers is Sam crouched down next to him, talking softly in his ear.
“The doctor’s on his way and I’ve sent one of my lads for reinforcements. But before they get here, I need you to tell me what happened. We need to get this straight. Just between you and me—you follow? So I know what to say.”
Charles is starting to stammer something incoherent when he realises there’s a strange tone to Sam’s voice. He looks up at him. “Christ, Sam, you don’t think I had anything to do with this?”
Sam should look shamefaced, but doesn’t. “Well you found ’er didn’t you? Remember what Inspector Field always says—he who ’appens on it, ’appen done it. And I mean—look at you.”
Charles glances down and realises, for the first time, that there’s blood on his hands, which means there’s probably some on his face too. It must have come from the door, or the wall, because he can’t remember touching anything else. He looks up at Sam. “I’ve been here half an hour—no more. Ask the girl, she’ll tell you. And you know as well as I do that this must have happened hours ago—probably sometime last night. Get your lads to start questioning the neighbours.”
The constable doesn’t seem to be listening. “But you knew ’er, didn’t you—that woman in there—it’s that Lizzie Miller, ain’t it? Hard to tell under all that blood, but I thought she was lodgin’ round ’ere last I ’eard.”
“Yes it’s her, and yes I knew her. I was bringing that girl here to see if she could cadge a bed for a few days. That’s all.”
“So ’ow come you ’ad a key? That’s what the girl said.”
“I didn’t have the key, I just knew where she kept the spare. I’ve only been here once or twice—three times at the most.”
“So when did you last see her—Lizzie?”
Charles hesitates, aware that the truth sits awkwardly with what he’s just said, but that lying is probably worse. “A few days ago. And no,” he continues firmly, seeing Sam’s face, “it wasn’t here, and it wasn’t for that. I met her in Haymarket. She had some information for me.”
Sam frowns. “What sort of information?”
“I can’t say. It’s to do with a case.”
“Come on, Chas! You wouldn’t take that for an answer if you was in my shoes! Here you are, up to your elbows in blood and gore and nothin’ but a twelve-year-old whore to back you up! I need more than that—you know I do.”
“Jesus, Sam—do you seriously think that if I’d been responsible for that—that—butchery—in there, I’d have walked away with just a few piffling splashes on my damn hands? The man who did that must have been absolutely saturated with blood by the time he’d finished with her.”
Sam is shaking his head. “There’s no proof you didn’t kill ’er hours ago. You could have burned what you were wearin’ by now and come back ’ere all washed and brushed with a witness in tow, just to throw us off the scent.”
They stare at each other and there’s a moment when Sam wonders if his old colleague is about to hit him, but then Charles shakes his head and sighs. “In that case, you’d better get your bracelets out and take me in. But in the meantime you can send a constable to Buckingham Street. Abel Stornaway will happily confirm I was nowhere near this place last night.”
Sam opens his mouth to say something, but we’ll never know what it was, because they’re interrupted at that moment by the arrival of the doctor—a very respectable fat gentleman with grey hair and spectacles, carrying a large black bag. He is surprisingly composed in the face of the savagery inside, and betrays nothing more than a certain pallor about the jowls when he re-emerges to inform them—somewhat superfluously—that all life is extinct.
“The victim has been dead a good few hours, I should say. Difficult to tell exactly which of the blows killed her, but I suspect it was the incision to the carotid artery.” He wipes his hands on a large white handkerchief. “As I’m sure you are aware, there are remnants of viscera all over the room. Someone will have to gather them up and ensure they accompany the corpse to the mortuary. I will forward my own report to Inspector Field in due course. Good morning to you.”
As soon as he’s gone, Charles gets to his feet, brushes down his coat, and holds out his wrists. Whereupon Sarah starts shouting, “Leave ’im alone—he didn’t do it—’e was wiv me!”
It takes two constables to constrain her, and she’s only finally persuaded to calm down when Charles warns her she risks joining him in the cells if she doesn’t. Another half hour later and we find her in a back room of the Bow Street station-house, giving a statement to one of Sam’s fellow constables and by the look of her, thoroughly enjoying the attention. Charles, by contrast, is in neither an interview room nor the cells. He’s sitting, thanks to Sam, in an arm-chair by the fire in the front office. All the same, he hasn’t yet been allowed to dispense with the cuffs, and in any other circumstances that fact alone would have seen him pacing and raging like an infuriated animal. But he has no energy left for exasperation. To all appearances he is—unusually for him—doing absolutely nothing, beyond gazing idly at the yellowing police notices pinned to the walls.
£100 REWARD—WANTED FOR MURDER
DEAD BODY FOUND
MISSING CHILD
He stares at the words, reads them again, consciously and deliberately, but however hard he tries—however earnestly he tells himself Lizzie was in all likelihood long dead before she was disfigured
—he cannot take his mind’s eye from that room—cannot change the hacked flesh on the bed for the Lizzie he knew—the Lizzie he cared about as much as he’s ever cared about anyone, and who needed someone in her life to do that, for all her hard-boiled confidence and self-sufficiency. All the while two police officers are calmly filling in forms at the front desk (though they do eye him surreptitiously every now and again), and other than the occasional muffled thumps and shouts from the cells below, the station is as quiet as he has ever known it.
Wheeler is not back until nearly five, whereupon he slumps into the chair opposite Charles’s and runs a hand through his wiry red hair.
“Bloody ’ell, Chas, I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that before, and I ’ope I never do again. She weren’t just disembowelled you know—’alf ’er insides were missin’ and the rest was all over the floor, includin’ the fish and potatoes she’d ’ad for dinner. Quite put me off me lunch, that did. What in God’s name ’ad the poor bitch done to deserve that?”
“Did you talk to Abel?”
Wheeler nods. “Confirmed you was at home all night. As did that boy of yours. Billy, was it? Seems ’e had cause to look in on you in the early hours, though ’e was pretty vague as to why.”
Charles nods, his face grim; he has his own theories as to what—or who—Billy was expecting to find.
“Did you question Lizzie’s neighbours?”
Wheeler nods again, and pulls his ring of keys from his pocket to release Charles’s cuffs.
“No-one saw ’er between eight and eleven last night, but one person thought they spotted ’er in the pub after that. She was obviously ’avin’ a good night—she kept half the courtyard awake when she got back ’ome, singin’.” He shakes his head. “Poor little cow. Never ’ad much to sing about at the best of times.”
“So when was the last time anyone saw her alive?”
“Chap called Bert ’itchins saw ’er on Oxford Street around two. She tried to cadge money off ’im, but ’e told ’er she’d cleaned ’im out after three days in Brighton, so she homed in on another mark. Luckily for us they stopped for a bit of a fondle under a gas-lamp and ’itchins got a good look at ’im. Youngish bloke with a pale face, hat pulled down over his eyes, and a long dark coat. Quite well-spoken but no toff, ’itchins says.”
The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White) Page 18