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

by Lynn Shepherd

  Bucket betrays no irritation at the interruption—if indeed he feels any—but merely nods and goes out, calling to the guard to come and lock the door, and leaving Charles and Wheeler alone together. It’s only to be expected that Charles should beg a word with his friend, but neither of them has any idea that they are not the only ones to take part in the conversation that follows, even if the third party is more by way of an eavesdropper than a participant in the full sense of the term. But Inspector Bucket is nothing if not patient, and he is quite content to sit quiet and unmoving in the darkened cell next door, listening intently and waiting for his moment in his own comfortable manner. He has built his career on that way he has, and his reputation on ruses such as this, and he is rarely if ever disappointed. When Wheeler leaves a few moments later and he hears the bolts slide to, Bucket glides from his hiding-place without making a sound—he is surprisingly light on his feet for such a solid little man. And having let you into this particular secret, you will guess at the next one easily enough. The Inspector has a shorter wait this time, having had the foresight to allow the prison guard an early luncheon, and to have made a certain amount of fuss at the front desk about a carriage he requires for an urgent call he has to make on an eminent member of the baronetage. And so it is that the station-house falls unusually quiet for the time of day, and Bucket has only to wait in stillness in the closet next to the room where they have laid—rather unceremoniously, it must be said—all that now remains of a man who once stood at the shoulder of half the peerage in the land. Once in a while he takes his fat forefinger and pushes the closet door an inch open, then lets it fall softly to. It has been much in evidence of late, that finger. When he is on the trail of a crime, this finger of Bucket’s will be seen placed close to his ear, or held in the air, or rubbed along his nose; but as every one of his subordinates knows, it never fails, be it soon or late, to finally point out the guilty man. But here, for the moment, it performs only the function that God—or evolution—intended.

  And pat they come. Wheeler flushed, fidgety, transparently a guilty thing surprised; Charles pale, slightly hectic still about the eyes, but from the way he starts to examine the corpse his presence of mind has not yet abandoned him. Bucket observes him for a few moments and sighs silently to himself. He has few regrets of a professional nature, but this young man is one of them. And there is something pre-occupying him now—something that seems to be almost literally eating away at him, that Bucket would dearly love to fathom. His forefinger twitches in sympathy, as if itching to prod and probe this little mystery and make all plain. He watches as Charles circles the table and comes to a halt by the old man’s head, where the sheet is pulled tight to the drooping chin. Even in life Tulkinghorn was a parched thing, a thing of sallow paper and old desiccated confidences, but in death he seems to have shrunk back inside his own bones. The blotched and withered skin sags from his skull and the old hair clings in scraps to the wrinkled scalp. From dust we come, and to dust we return, but in Tulkinghorn’s case the process seems to be starting long before he is committed to the ground. Bucket knows well enough what lies beneath that all-concealing sheet and Charles must surely guess, but all the same the young man takes a deep breath before he takes hold of it and pulls it back. It seems the lawyer is a lawyer yet, clad still in his time-honoured suit of black, his lustreless knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and his wilted white stock. But this impeccable palette of monochrome tones glares now with colour—colour almost scandalous in its gaudy flamboyance, its ostentatious indifference to all those qualities of silence and reserve and anonymity the old man once stood for. It’s doubtful anyone ever saw Tulkinghorn, night or day, with his coat unbuttoned, but this particular indignity is only the first of many his dead flesh must now bear. The fine lawn shirt is soaked with a deep red taint that spreads from neck to gut, but the red is rawest, and the stain is densest, and the bloody cloth is bloodiest, around a small tight black hole in the centre of his chest, hard by the heart few of those who had dealings with him ever believed he possessed. Charles stands there a moment unmoving, and Bucket nods unseen, as if reading his thoughts. Who, indeed, would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? But a minute later he hears Wheeler hiss at his companion from the doorway, “Come on, Chas—we ain’t got all day.” Sam’s so nervous he can barely keep still, and keeps darting his head into the corridor then back again into the room. “ ’Ave you got what you came for because if you ’ave, let’s get out of ’ere, and quick.”

  “I was right,” says Charles slowly. “See this bullet wound? It’s far too small to have been made with a bullet from my pistol.”

  He looks again at the corpse. “In fact, I think the shot was fired from only a foot or so away. That means Tulkinghorn knew his killer, and trusted him. Or at the very least saw no threat in having him at such close quarters. Which is precisely the opposite of what Bucket is alleging where I’m concerned. If he’s going to rely on my supposed threats to make his case stick, how does he explain the old man allowing me to get so close?”

  Wheeler edges nearer, interested despite himself. “But if it were close range there’d be powder marks and you’ve got next to no chance findin’ ’em. That moth-eaten old rag’s too dark to show anythin’.”

  Charles turns the coat against the light and is forced to agree. But as Bucket already suspects, he’s the last and very possibly the best pupil his great-uncle ever had. A moment later Bucket sees him dip his head against the body and breathe deeply. A gesture, incidentally, that you would have seen Bucket himself performing no more than an hour ago, when the body was first brought in. Which means he knows exactly what conclusion the young man is drawing: Overlaid on the dankness of old clothes and the sweet metallic aroma of new blood, there is the faint but unmistakable smell of burnt gunpowder. When Charles straightens up there is a hard little smile on his face, but the smile dies when he lifts his eyes and sees who else is now in the room.

  “Well done, young Maddox,” says Mr Bucket genially. “You’re a quick study, that’s what you are, and no mistake. And so you think you’ve found the answer, do you? And I suppose, moreover, that you’ll soon be a-persuading me that this is the answer, and expecting me to unlock these doors and put away my cuffs, and escort you with all due courtesy to the front door? Of course you do,” he continues conversationally, “and very odd indeed it would be if you didn’t.”

  “Don’t blame Sam,” says Charles quickly. “It’s my fault. I persuaded him to let me in.”

  “Oh I know all about that.” Bucket taps his nose with his busy forefinger. “And you do right by him, so you do, for taking the blame. Now don’t you be a-fretting,” he says, throwing a glance in Wheeler’s direction. “I know what’s what, and who’s who, and loyalty’s a quality I prize a good deal even when it’s misplaced. As it looks to be in this case. Well then, I’ll tell you something, young Wheeler. I think you’d be best, all things taken into account, to take yourself back down to the desk and wait for me there. I’ll be wanting a word with you in due course, but I have one or two for Mr Maddox here first.”

  Wheeler shoots an agonised look in Charles’s direction—which the latter does not see—then stumbles out of the room. Bucket hears his feet in the stone passage, first walking, then quickening to a run.

  “Now then,” he resumes. “I heard what you were a-saying about the deceased, and I am obliged to say that I am minded to agree with you.”

  “Then you’ll let me go—”

  Mr Bucket’s finger is raised in the air.

  “But if it wasn’t my gun—”

  “Don’t you be jumping to conclusions,” says Mr Bucket, “and you’ll find it goes much better for you. Now,” he says, “I’m sure you realise, being such a quick study, that it would be as easy as winking for you to have borrowed another gun. That you might a-done so precisely for that reason—to lay me off the trail.”

  “Where could I have found one like it? This gun can’t have been much lar
ger than a pocket pistol—I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one, much less fired one.”

  “Ah, but you would know someone who has, I think?” replies Mr Bucket affably. “You do, after all, frequent a well-known shooting gallery, where all types of tastes are catered for, and all types of firearms are readily to be had. Indeed I’ll bet a pound that if I were to rummage about a bit in the said establishment I might find any number of the like weapons, and recently discharged to boot.”

  “On the contrary—” begins Charles, before faltering. It seems he was about to come to the trooper’s stout defence, but something is suddenly holding him back. Something, muses Bucket, like a case of little pearl-handled guns, kept neatly in a drawer. But he says nothing of this, and merely watches Charles with his most watchful eyes and smiles his most knowing smile.

  “As it happens,” the Inspector resumes presently, as if for all the world there had been no interruption at all, “I am inclined to believe you on this occasion. Which is lucky for you. Even luckier, I should say, is the fact that certain new information has come into my possession, which diminishes the suspicions I had entertained of you and raises them in regard to another party. That being the case, I am willing to discharge you, for the present, on your own recognisance. But with certain conditions. That does not surprise you, I am sure.”

  “And they are?” asks Charles evenly.

  “First, that you keep away from that shooting gallery and have no intercourse—written or otherwise—with the trooper who runs it.”

  The young man gives little away at this, beyond the slightest of flickers behind the eyes. He’s a cool customer, thinks Bucket, and that’s a fact.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Oh, you won’t do that, I’ll wager,” replies Bucket complacently. “You’re a clever young man, and a sensible one on the whole, and your business is a business that requires a reputation for trustworthiness and an unsullied record. I’m sure it ain’t necessary to say to a man like you that it’s the best and wisest way that this little matter of your arrest should not come to your clients’ ears.”

  Charles’s face is set; he knows, and Bucket knows, that he has him there.

  “And the other conditions?”

  Bucket smiles. “In a case such as this one, all is not always what it seems. In my experience, and I dare say in yours, things are apt to come to light, and secrets laid bare, that in other circumstances would no doubt have lain long dead and buried. I say it again, and you would do well to heed my words, all is not always what it seems, even to those most closely involved.”

  He regards Charles with a thoughtful eye. “I am asking you, lad, as a present member of the Detective to a former one, to trust me. I am sure you see me, just at present, as your opponent. Your enemy, even. You know a little of my dealings with Mr Tulkinghorn, and you have extrapolated that little into a very great deal indeed. Moreover, you have picked up other bits and pieces here and there, and have fitted them likewise into the same great puzzle. I can see how this has occurred. I might even—in your place—have made the like error. But it is an error, Charles. I hope it will not be long before you see that. I can say no more than this for the present, but you have heard me say often enough, to the victims in like unhappy affairs, that I will not turn out of my way, right or left, or take a sleep, or a wash, or a shave”—this with a rather pertinent glance at Charles—“till I have found what I go in search of. And when that day comes, you may discover that we are, in fact, working the same case—albeit from opposite ends.”

  “And you ask me to believe that—to take it on trust? On your word merely?”

  “Dear me, no,” says Bucket. “Not on that alone. On your knowledge of me, and my methods, and the fact that I learned those methods from a master of our art. Now you know who I mean, and I know you know, so we need say no more on that.”

  They stand, eyes locked, for perhaps a minute, then Charles shakes his head. “I’m sure you’ll understand,” he says drily, mocking the detective’s words, “that I don’t have much of a mind to accept your word, on this occasion. I will keep away from the gallery, but that is as much as I am prepared to pledge.”

  Bucket nods slowly. “And you still refuse to tell me where you were last evening?”

  The livid anger has returned to Charles’s face. “At ten o’clock last night I was with a woman—though not in the way you probably think. She was helping me. But as I’m sure you are only too well aware, anyone who offers to help me these days has a more than passing chance of turning up dead very soon after. I don’t want any more needless deaths on my conscience, and I’m certainly not going to be responsible for handing you another victim—you or Sir Julius Cremorne.”

  If that name means anything to the inscrutable Bucket, then he makes no sign.

  “Very well,” says the Inspector eventually. “I will make arrangements to have you discharged. But I caution you this: You are making a mistake, my friend. A very grave mistake. I hope it does not cost you dear.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  A Turn of the Screw

  AND NOW, HAVING concealed for so long where our young hero has been, and why—more to the point—his mood has taken such a turn darkwards, it is time to rewind a little. To that conversation between Charles and the trooper and the surgeon at the shooting gallery, and the allusion to Bucket by name that seems almost to have conjured his all-too-solid appearance in the flesh. That much you know. But what you do not yet know, is that barely five minutes after he left the gallery, Charles was tracked down on his way back to Buckingham Street by Billy, who, out of breath and red in the face, handed him an envelope. An envelope that contained a rather formally worded letter from the chairman of the Royal Geographical Society, which eventually, after much preamble and prevarication, revealed itself to be an apology. The society had, after ‘mature reflection’, and ‘due consideration’, and various other carefully measured pairings of adjective and noun, finally determined that the ban laid upon him after the ‘unfortunate occurrence’ (another fine example) on the evening of the 7th inst., has now been rescinded, and he would be welcome to join them at their forthcoming meeting, at which Dr Joseph Dalton Hooker will be discussing his ‘Fourth Excursion into the Passes of Thi-bet by the Donkiah Lah’. The signature at the bottom was suitably ponderous, but there was a postscript underneath that seemed to have been written by the man, rather than the mouthpiece: ‘Though the manner of it was unquestionably inopportune, your intercession was nonetheless a salutary reminder that however similar things might initially appear, they are not always what they seem, and therefore it is of the utmost importance, in every branch of scientific study, to employ the most rigorous criteria in the matter of taxonomy.’

  At which point Charles made a face that would have left no-one in any doubt of his views on the matter, before screwing the paper into a ball and turning to Billy. “I can’t believe you came hot-foot all this way just to give me this.”

  “No, Mr Charles, but seein’ as I was comin’ with t’other letter I thought as how I may as well bring that as well.”

  “The other letter—what other letter?”

  Billy fished in his rather grubby pockets and pulled out another envelope. No elaborate wax closure or fine watermarked stationery this time. A single sheet, folded, and clearly unsealed. Charles flashed a glance at Billy, having formed a rather lower estimation of his trustworthiness lately than the one the boy came with. But then he remembered: Billy could barely read. And when he turned to the note it was clear to Charles at once that the writer of it was scarcely much more literate, and certainly far less effusive. A single line only: an address.

  “He said it was urgent,” said Billy, eyeing Charles with undisguised interest.

  “I bet he did,” muttered Charles, wondering for a moment who it could be from, and concluding that Jacky Jackson was probably the likeliest suspect. He stood with the paper in his hand for a few moments more, half tempted just to screw this letter up too and throw
it in the dung at the side of the road. More than half tempted, in fact, because that’s exactly what he did. Only to change his mind a moment later and scrape about in the mud to get it back. Much to the amusement of both Billy and the gang of scavenger boys who were working the same gutter, and were far better at it than he would ever be. So why the sudden change of heart? Simple: It was already dark, it was Friday night, and the Argyll Rooms would be in full swing, and at full staff. So how could Jacky Jackson be demanding to meet with him urgently, and at an address near Waterloo? It didn’t add up.

  “You said he told you it was urgent, Billy—the man who came with this note.”

  Billy’s eyes widened in a mock innocence that wasn’t fooling anybody. “Oh, it weren’t no man, Mr Charles. It were just a boy. One of the costers I shouldn’t wonder. ’E said she gave ’im threepence—”

  “She?”

  “That’s right—’e said it were a woman as gave ’im the note. All dolled-up smart-like, but talked no better than a fishwife.”

  Lizzie, was his first thought. But no, of course, not Lizzie. Lizzie was dead. But someone like her—someone like her.

  “All right, Billy, you can go. Tell Mr Maddox I’ll be home directly.”

  He stood watching as Billy disappeared into the crowd, his mind working and re-working. He could still see the look on Lizzie’s face—the old woman bearing down upon them—and Lizzie opening her mouth to tell him something else. But meanwhile, she’d said, he remembered that now, but that was all—he never got to hear the rest. What if she’d been about to suggest someone else he should talk to? Someone else who knew about Sir Julius Cremorne? Someone else besides Lizzie who could tell Charles the real truth—who could supply the missing link between Boscawen and Cremorne, and give Sir Julius his motive for murder?

  Someone like her.