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

by Lynn Shepherd

  Charles looks round; something about this sudden departure is making him uneasy. And then he catches sight of the woman’s frosty face.

  “She heard it all,” he says to Woodcourt. “She was listening to every word we said—she knows where Hester went, and now Jarvis has gone after her.”

  He calls to Wheeler to have the cab brought round, and fast, and he’s already stepping into it when Woodcourt catches his arm and offers to go with him. “She will be distraught and very possibly in need of medical attention—”

  “I’ve had some training, myself,” Charles interrupts. “Not much, but enough. I know what to do. And your presence is more urgently required here until more help arrives.”

  It’s clear from Woodcourt’s face that he cannot argue with that conclusion but he is not done yet. “At least,” he says, his hand still on Charles’s arm, “at the very least, take Miss Carley with you. Imagine yourself in this young girl’s position—she has just made a terrible discovery—then finds a man pursuing her she has never seen, in a huge and dangerous city she does not know. She is weak already, and I dare not speculate as to the consequences of further distress so soon after her confinement.”

  Charles nods and the doctor goes quickly back inside, returning almost at once with the nurse, enveloped in a blanket clearly taken from one of the beds upstairs.

  “She is willing to go with you, though heaven knows she could do with hot tea and a few hours’ sleep.”

  “I am quite well,” insists Alice. “The only thing that matters is that we find Hester and take her somewhere safe.”

  “I pray to heaven we can,” replies Charles grimly, climbing up to the box beside the driver and telling him to make all speed towards London, with a crown at stake if he can catch the carriage ahead of them.

  As they clatter towards town, Charles stops every coach and vehicle coming towards them, picking up the trace of Jarvis each time but finding him ever just too far ahead, ever maintaining his crucial advantage before them, until they reach a crossroads where four roads meet and have to make a choice: the road to Finchley, the road to the West End, and the road to London. The driver draws up—they can reach their destination by two of these ways, but which is best—which did Jarvis choose? Charles sits hesitating a moment, before noticing a young man on a small stool at the side of the road, sketching the sun rising over the city and the steeples and housetops lifting through the mist in the slanting rays. Charles jumps down and strides towards him, asking if a carriage has passed this way. “The driver was in a green great-coat, and the man inside had a thick grey beard.”

  “And a rather large watch, I believe,” says the young man. “Yes, I saw him. He has some fifteen minutes’ advantage of you. But I sent him the wrong way.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand—”

  “He asked about the young woman. She passed this way too, something over an hour ago. A strange little creature in a long dark cloak, but I could see she had only a nightgown on underneath. She asked me the way to Tom-All-Alone’s. I told her that polluted graveyard was no place for a young girl, but she began to weep in a piteous fashion, saying I had no right to suspect her and it was the fault of others that she was alone here in such strange circumstances, and something more I did not understand about a ‘guardian’. She became so agitated then, all the while shrinking from me as if I might molest her, that I agreed, much against my better judgement, to find her a cab and give her the money to pay for it. Not before time, I think. She seemed ready to drop with fatigue.”

  And not just fatigue, thinks Charles, attempting to press several shillings into the young man’s hand.

  “That is not necessary, sir,” he says, pulling away. “It was little enough of a service after all, and I can tell you mean her only kindness. That other gentleman said the same, but there was something about him that made me doubt it. Not least the fact that he called her a cripple, and a freak, and various other terms I am too humane to repeat. That and the look of the groom he had with him made me uneasy, so I sent them on the other road, telling them she was still on foot.”

  Charles’s heart turns to iron in his breast. “This groom—what did he look like?”

  “He was little more than a boy, in fact, but the strangest-looking boy I ever saw in such a—”

  “Sandy hair—a long dark coat?”

  “And a bad bruise to the side of his face. Indeed I am surprised his master allowed him in public in such a state—”

  But Charles is already running towards the carriage. He climbs back up, urging the driver to a gallop and cursing himself for not realising that Mann would have made for the asylum just as he did, and imploring a God he does not really believe in that they will find this wretched girl before Mann does. It’s not long before they’re descending fast into narrow streets and gloomy overhanging thoroughfares where the morning has not yet penetrated and the street-lamps still cast their sickly yellow. Perhaps it’s the fall he took, perhaps the chill of the exposed seat, but his vision starts to blur again and his mind begins to play tricks with him. The few people they pass in the streets seem hardly alive, and as they raise faces to him that seem now as blank and eyeless as in a long-repressed nightmare, the kaleidoscope pieces of the case start to shift and mingle with his own haunted memories—his mother gagged and bound, her eyes streaming and imploring, her bare feet kicking against the two women struggling to carry her away. The stifled incoherent screams that even now are inextricable from the cool impersonal voice of the doctor assuring his father that he had made the right decision, that the institution was a model of its kind, and that Mrs Maddox would be treated kindly there and given the time she needed to reconcile herself at last to the loss of her daughter. He never knew how much his father had believed of this; all he did know for sure was that he never saw his mother again. And that all of it—from the beginning—was his fault, and there was nothing he could ever do that would put it right.

  With the clocks striking nine they come to a halt by the grimy side street where we followed him once before. As Charles swings down to the ground into the steam from the horses, he hears the sound of hooves. He turns to see a carriage disappearing towards St Giles and knows with a hopeless certainty that despite their haste—despite the young man’s help—they were still too slow: Jarvis has got here before them. He hastens Alice Carley from the carriage and the two of them begin down the alley towards the covered way. He thought once before how apt this place was for ambush, and as they approach the bend before the tunnel he can just make out a slumped figure lying face-down at the side of the path. But it’s only when Alice Carley gasps and shrinks back against his side that he recognises who it is. The cape and the tall silk hat mark him out as a gentleman; the greying beard identifies him as Alexander Jarvis. But the heavy gold watch is long gone. Charles kneels by the man’s head and sees at once that all the talk of garrotting in this part of town is not just the hype of an over-heated press. There’s a deep weal around Jarvis’s neck and he is struggling to draw breath.

  “What happened?” Charles demands, taking him roughly by the collar. “Where’s Mann?”

  “We were set upon,” Jarvis gasps. “Thieves—four of them. I felt the rope around my neck and hands dragging me down. I called to Mann to help me. But he just laughed.” He chokes, coughing spittles of red over his white stock. “He just laughed in my face and left me here in the filth—”

  “So where is he now?”

  Jarvis lifts a heavy hand and points. “He went ahead. After the girl.”

  Charles gets to his feet and covers the final yards to the tunnel with his heart hammering at his bones. Up ahead, where the lamp is still burning over the iron gate, one slight figure is bending over another, lying prone on the wet ground. Charles takes out his gun but his eyes are dim and he cannot make out his target. He starts towards them again, and even as the images lurch and separate before his eyes he thinks he sees the low glint of a blade—thinks he sees an arm raised—and he
knows he cannot make it in time—knows there is only one thing he can do—

  He lifts the pistol and shoots into the air.

  The recoil has his boots slithering on the greasy cobbles and he slips to his knees. Then all at once he senses Alice Carley come up behind him, and though he cries out to stop her she gives a cry of horror and runs forward to the gate. When he gets to his feet and staggers after her he sees, alone, lying on the step, the twisted body of a young girl, one hand clutched around the iron bars, the skirts of her white nightgown stained dark red. And Alice Carley is already weeping as she takes the girl’s head in her lap and cradles it there, rocking to and fro, the tears running down her cheeks.

  Charles stoops down, and puts his arm about Alice’s shoulders. And then, with the gentlest of gentle hands, he puts the long dank hair aside, and touches Hester’s cold scarred face.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Appointed Time

  Noon, Waterloo Bridge.

  FROM WHERE WE STAND we can look up towards Whitehall and Westminster, and down towards the City, where the lines of barges and tug-boats are advancing slowly up from the Essex marshes, laden with timber and coal and barrels of porter. The river moves sluggishly beneath us as if filmed with oil, but the wind is starting to get up now, scattering the stench of excrement and whirling the gulls upwards in sharp gusts. Down among the gravel and the black sand a group of mud-larks are wading about up to their naked thighs in the freezing water, aprons tied about their waists, looking for iron, copper nails, discarded junk, pieces of rope—anything as might earn a few coins to eat by. The sound of their voices floats up to us in fits and starts—a curse, a cry of success, even, once or twice, laughter. On either side of the bridge we can see crowds of people going about their ordinary business—street-traders and hawkers, patterers and pedlars—but it is a cold day and few are choosing to eat their midday meal in the open air. Fewer still have either the leisure or the inclination to do what we’re doing, and merely stand and stare. But there are exceptions. A few hundred yards away, on Salisbury Stairs, there are two men sitting together in what seems to be a companionable silence. And I can tell you, moreover, that they’ve already been there for some time. The one tall, young, blue-eyed; the other small, black-suited, thoughtful.

  “So she will live,” says Charles eventually.

  Bucket glances at him, then nods. “She was very cold and she had lost a deal of blood, but Woodcourt says that with proper care, she has a chance. Though even if her body heals he is not sure he has the medicines that can mend her mind. But if there’s a doctor in London who can do it, I’ll wager it is Woodcourt. And who knows, mayhap she will find that there is love in this world that is not cruel and disfigured, and that will help bring her back.”

  “And what happens now?”

  Bucket rubs his forefinger against the side of his nose. “I will pursue Mann, if I can. But my guess is the evidence will not be strong enough. What he boasts of to you, he will not confess to me, and I fear he will simply disappear back into the slums of Whitechapel from whence he came. But you have no need to fear—for yourself, or those about you. I will keep my eye on him, as long as I have breath, and as long as I am Mr Bucket of the Detective. He shall not stir, shall do no harm to so much as a street-dog, without my a-knowing of it. Let London look to itself thereafter, for I dare not predict what savagery that young villain might be capable of, or what cruelty he is willing to inflict.”

  A cloud passes across the sun and the gulls whirl suddenly upwards in a shrieking spiral of wings and claws and razor beaks.

  “And the others?”

  “We have enough to pursue Alexander Jarvis. Fortunately for us, he was not as cautious in his record-keeping as his paymaster in the Fields. I suspect we will find plenty enough paperwork at the asylum to bring charges against Cremorne and his associates. Though one of them is already being held to account at a far higher court than I could bring him to. I have just got word that Sir Percival Glyde has been killed in a fire in Hampshire. What the circumstances of this fire be—accident or arson—is not yet clear.”

  Charles turns to him with a bleak look on his face. “How many of them were there?”

  “The young girls? There is some mystery surrounding Anne Catherick that I have not yet got to the bottom of, and that I fear may not be unconnected with that young wife of Glyde’s so lately dead, and that fortune of hers, so greatly wanted. There is more to Anne Catherick’s confinement in that asylum than an obligation to an old servant, you mark my words. And when I hear tell that the second time she was brought to that abominable place she seemed quite different and strangely changed, I prick up my ears and I ask myself why, and I wonder how it is that she is not there still. But all that”—he sighs—“will have to wait for another day. What I do know is that Woodcourt found three more young women like her in the other wing of the asylum, and Jarvis’s records show there have been many more over the years, some of whom seem to have stayed there only a few short weeks. I fear we will discover that they too had been dishonoured and betrayed by uncles and fathers and men of like kind, and it was Tulkinghorn who arranged for ’em to be brought to the asylum, so as to keep the men’s secret, and dispose of its consequences. Who knows how much innocent blood he had on his hands, by the end?”

  Charles looks away, sick at heart. “And Miss Adams?”

  “I am making arrangements for her to be placed in Lady Cremorne’s care, with the strong recommendation that she remove with her to her own family’s seat in Derbyshire. The girl went to live at Curzon Street for a time, they tell me, after her parents died. She had hitherto been a mild and peaceable child but grew capricious and unsettled almost at once. Suffered badly with her nerves and became altogether ungovernable. It was about this same time that Lady Cremorne suffered her unfortunate accident. And as you may remember from your time in the Detective, I am no great believer in coincidences.”

  “You mean, his wife knew?”

  “Did the fall not take place in the middle of the night? When the rest of the household were a-sleeping? And was it not impossible to account afterwards for what she was doing there? My guess, my lad, is that she discovered the two of ’em together—her husband and his niece. Discovered it and either ran away in terror, or took issue with the man and paid the price. But I would lay a hundred pounds that she will never tell. It seems that all this time she has believed Clara had been placed in a distant asylum, far from London and beyond her husband’s reach. Though it appears she has been making efforts to find the child of late. But why now, after such a stretch of years—”

  “The letters,” says Charles. “The anonymous letters. She must have known what they referred to all along, even if she didn’t know who was sending them.”

  Bucket nods; even he has not made this last connexion. “That would explain it, I grant you. And it would likewise explain why Lady Cremorne has been writing so many letters herself in recent weeks—enquiring discreetly of all her acquaintance about establishments where the girl might be found.”

  “But how could she have agreed to have a mere child committed to a lunatic asylum in the first place—even if it was meant to protect her?”

  Bucket is silent a long time, twisting the great mourning ring on his little finger, but finally he turns to Charles. “Not all Jarvis’s patients were put there by Edward Tulkinghorn. Some were entrusted to him by their own families—well-meaning people, most of ’em. The young lad Cawston, for instance, was the apple of his family’s eye. A fine young fellow he was once, and full of promise, but he became so fixed in his habits, and so prey to monomania, they could no longer manage him. The grandmother who brought him up sincerely believed she was doing the right thing—that Jarvis would effect a cure. In my experience, people are more often committed to such places out of love, than wickedness. Love and ignorance. The mind is a singular thing, Charles, a singular thing, and it has depths that even your finest science has not yet fathomed. I have known women”—and his fa
ce is drawn now with the memory of an old and unhealed pain—“who have so longed for a child that they can think of little else, and sink into such a pit of melancholy that there is no recovering them. And what can even the most loving of husbands do at such a pass but follow the advice the doctors give? There is no solving such cases, no knowledge of the heart that can bring back a mind so clouded and astray.”

  Charles thinks of his own mother, driven from her reason by the loss of a child, and of the sister he knows he will never find, and it is a long, long moment before he remembers that the present Mrs Bucket was not the first. And that even now, Bucket has no children of his own.

  They sit in silence again, and it is Bucket, in the end, who breaks that silence first.

  “I must be away soon, to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and to the funeral, but before I do I should tell you what I found there this morning. It’s why I suggested we take a stroll down here. Open air, my lad, is best for evil deeds.”

  He turns his eyes again to the river. “There were secrets in Tulkinghorn’s private museum, my friend, that even you did not discover. Like a wall hung with priceless pictures that turned out to be no more than a wooden partition. Like a little brass clasp that unlocked that partition, and allowed it to swing open. Like another set of pictures, hung inside, of an obscenity such as I have never seen in all my years in the Detective. Images of children, mostly, as would wring your heart and incite you to a blistering vengeance had you laid your eyes upon them. And were that not enough, there was a little parlour hidden behind, in the heart of the spider’s web, where I found the last and worst of all Tulkinghorn’s secrets. There was a box of papers there that chilled the very blood in my veins. Seems that this young Hester was his daughter. Secreted away, all these years, where no-one would think to look. Seems he styled himself her ‘Guardian’, and never revealed, even to Jarvis, that he was the father. Not even when he got her with child—that same child that even now lies mouldering away in the foul earth of Tom-All-Alone’s. Seems Hester’s mother was his own niece, whom he ruined when she was still little more than a girl herself, and then traced to the workhouse when she was turned out of doors, for bringing such disgrace on the family credit.”