by Anne Perry
After two attempts Dominic became more conscious of the urgency and admitted frankly to Carlisle that he needed his help.
Accordingly, the day after, because of the influence Fleetwood might have, Carlisle joined Dominic and Fleetwood in the Park for a spanking drive at a speed that scattered the few pedestrians and sent other drivers and riders into paroxysms of rage or envy, depending upon the strength and direction of their own ambitions.
Dominic had driven, and although it was with a recklessness he would not normally have dared, today he was past caring for anything so trivial as social outrage or a few thrown paraders landed hard upon their dignity on the damp ground.
“Marvelous!” Fleetwood said with delight, catching his breath. “My God, Dominic, you drive like Jehu! I swear I never though you had it in you. If you come and drive my team in the spring, I’ll consider it a favor from you.”
“Of course,” Dominic agreed instantly, his mind on the workhouse, and a trade favor for favor. He would not even consider now how he could find the courage to drive in such a fashion in cold blood, and with weeks to contemplate it beforehand and to fully appreciate all the possible disasters. He thrust it away to some improbable future. “Delighted to!”
“Brilliant,” Carlisle agreed, his tongue in his cheek, but Fleetwood did not see it. “You have a natural art, Dominic.” He turned to Fleetwood, both their faces red with cold and the fierce wind of their passage. “But you have a very fine team, indeed, my lord. I’ve seen few better animals. Though I think perhaps the springing of your carriage could be improved a little.”
Fleetwood grinned. He was a pleasant young man, not handsome, but of a countenance that spoke of abundant good nature.
“Bounce you around a bit, did it? Never mind, good for the digestion.”
“Wasn’t thinking of the digestion,” Carlisle replied with a smile. “Or the bruises. Rather more of the balance of the thing. A well-balanced carriage is a lot easier on the horses, takes the corners better, and is less likely to overturn if you get some idiot run into you. And of course if you do get an excitable animal, less likely for the whole thing to get away with you.”
“Damn, but you’re right!” Fleetwood said cheerfully. “Sorry I misjudged you. Sold you short a bit. I’ll have to get it seen to. Must have it right.”
“I know a chap in the Devil’s Acre who can spring a carriage to balance like a bird in flight,” Carlisle offered with a casual air as if it were of no interest to him, merely a graceful gesture after an early morning’s companionship.
“The Devil’s Acre?” Fleetwood said incredulously. “Where the deuce is that?”
“Around Westminster.” Carlisle threw it away. Dominic watched him with admiration. If he could have been so light, perhaps he could have interested Fleetwood. He had been too earnest, too full of urgency and the horror of it. No one but a ghoul wanted horror, least of all with breakfast!
“Around Westminster?” Fleetwood repeated. “You mean that awful slum area? Is that what they call it?”
“Appropriate, I would have thought.” Carlisle’s peaked eyebrows went up. “Filthy place.”
“What took you there?” Fleetwood handed the horse over to the groom, and the three of them went together toward the public house where breakfast and a steaming drink awaited them.
“Oh, this and that.” Carlisle dismissed it with a wave of his arm, as though it were gentleman’s business that any other gentleman would understand and be too discreet to mention further.
“It’s slums,” Fleetwood said again when they were inside and well started on a rich and excellent meal. “How would anyone there know about balancing and springing a carriage? There isn’t room to drive one, let alone race it.”
Carlisle finished his mouthful and swallowed. “Used to be an ostler,” he said easily. “Stole from his master, or anyway was accused of it, fell on hard times. Simple.”
Fleetwood loved and understood horses. He felt a comradeship with those who tended them and were obliged to make a living. He had spent many a companionable hour swapping opinions and tales with his own grooms.
“Poor beggar,” he said with feeling. “Maybe he’d be glad of a job, a few shillings for seeing what he can do to improve that carriage of mine.”
“I should think so,” Carlisle agreed. “Always try him, if you like. Moves around a bit, have to catch him soon.”
“Good idea, if you’d dome the kindness. Appreciate it. Where do I find him?”
Carlisle smiled broadly. “In the Devil’s Acre? You’d never find him alone this side of doomsday. I’ll take you.”
“I’d be obliged. Sounds an insalubrious spot.”
“Oh, it is,” Carlisle agreed. “It is, indeed. But skill is often to be found best where it grows the hardest. There is something in Mr. Darwin’s idea of survival of the fittest, you know; as long as you count cleverest, strongest, and most cunning as the fittest and don’t tangle it up with any moral ideas. Fittest needs to mean fittest to survive, not most virtuous, most patient, most charitable, or of most benefit to the rest of mankind.”
Dominic kicked him abruptly under the table and saw his face tweak with pain. He was terrified he would spoil the whole issue by moralizing and lose Fleetwood even now.
“You’re saying that the race does go to the swift and the battle to the strong, after all?” Fleetwood took himself another helping of kedgeree.
“No.” Carlisle refrained from rubbing his ankle with difficulty, but he did not look at Dominic. “Only that places like the Devil’s Acre breed peculiar skills, because without them the poor do not survive. The fortunate can be any kind of a fool and get by, but the unfortunate have to have a use to someone, or they assuredly perish.”
Fleetwood screwed up his face. “That seems a little cynical, if I may say so. Still, I would like to see this fellow of yours; you’ve convinced me he knows what he’s doing.”
Carlisle smiled, his face suddenly alight with warmth. Fleetwood responded like a flower opening to the sun. He smiled back, and Dominic found himself included in the blithe good fellowship. He felt a little guilty because he knew what Fleetwood had in front of him, but he refused to think of it now. It was a good cause, a necessary one. He smiled back with equal charm and an almost straight eye.
The Devil’s Acre was horrific. In the pall of smoke and fog the great towers of the minster hung over them, their Gothic glory lost in wraiths of vapor. All the bracing air of the Park was stilled and dampened to a chill stagnancy that sat like dead water from the shadows of the towers in the sky, past the pillared and porticoed homes of the rich and business houses, down to the modest dwellings of traders and clerks. Below them was a separate world of its own, a world of creaking, rat-ridden tenements with teeming alleys, of walls that were forever wet and crumbling, of air that was soured by rimed mold. Idlers, beggars, and drunks littered the way.
Carlisle strode through it as though it were nothing to remark.
“Oh, God!” Fleetwood clutched his nose and darted a desperate glance at Dominic, but Carlisle was not waiting. If they were not to lose him they must follow closely— heaven forbid they should become lost in such a hellhole as this!
Carlisle appeared to know where he was going. He picked his way over sleeping drunks under a pile of newspapers, kicked an empty bottle out of the way, and climbed up a flight of rickety stairs. They swayed under his weight, and Fleetwood looked alarmed as Dominic hastened him onto them also.
“Do you think they’ll hold?” he asked, knocking his hat askew on the beam above.
“God knows,” Dominic replied, stepping past him and going up. A good deal of his mind sympathized with Fleetwood, recalling his own feelings in Seven Dials, which had been less fearful than this. But there was also a strong tide in him that enjoyed it, tasting what Carlisle knew, the passion to alter this world, to force the innocent, the unknowing to look at it, to see and taste all of it, and to care. The emotion inside him was fierce, almost volcanic. He we
nt up the stairs two by two and dived after Carlisle into a fetid mass of rooms where families of tens and dozens sat in the sickly light, carving, polishing, sewing, weaving, or gluing together to make all manner of articles to be sold for a few pence. Children as small as three or four years old sat tied to their mothers by string so they did not wander from work. Every time one of them stopped his labor or fell asleep, the mother would clout him over the head to wake him up and remind him that idle hands made for empty stomachs.
The smell was fearful, a mixture of wet mold, smoke and coal fumes, sewage, and unwashed bodies.
At the far end of the particular tenement they emerged into a dank courtyard that must once have been a mews, and Carlisle stopped and knocked on a cutaway door.
Dominic looked at Fleetwood. His face was pale, and his eyes looked deep and frightened. Dominic guessed he would long ago have run away had he had even the faintest idea which way to go or how to get back to the world he knew. He must have seen things even his nightmares had not conjured up.
The door opened, and a lean, bent little man peered out. He seemed to be lop-shouldered, as if one side of him were longer than the other. It was a moment before he recognized Carlisle.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? What do you want this time?”
“A little of your skill, Timothy,” Carlisle said with a smile. “For a consideration, naturally.”
“What kind of skill?” Timothy demanded, looking suspiciously over Carlisle’s shoulder at Dominic and Fleetwood. “Not rozzers, are they?”
“Shame on you, Timothy!” Carlisle said with heavy disgust. “When did you ever know me to keep company with the police?”
“What skill?” Timothy repeated.
“Why, the balancing of fine carriages, of course,” Carlisle said with a twist to his face. “His lordship here,” he indicated Fleetwood, “has an excellent pair, and a fine chance of winning a few gentlemen’s races, private wagers and the like, if he can get his carriage balanced to do justice to them.”
Timothy’s face lit up. “Ah! Course I can do suffink about that! Balancin’ makes all the difference. Where’s this ’ere carriage, then? You tell me, and I’ll fix it for yer to run smooth as a weasel, I will. For a consideration, like?”
“Of course,” Fleetwood agreed quickly. “Holcombe Park House. I’ll write the address for you—”
“No good, guv—I don’t read. Tell me—I remember anything. Reckon it dulls the memory, readin’? Don’t do you no good, in the long run. Reckon them as writes down everythin’ don’t remember their own name, if they keeps it up long enough.”
Carlisle never missed a chance. He took this one as a swift bird takes an insect on the wing, with barely a flicker.
“But there’s work for men who can read and write, Timothy,” he said, leaning on the door. “Regular work, in offices that close in the evening and send you home. Jobs that pay enough money to live on.”
Timothy spat. “I’d die of hunger and old age afore I learn to read and write now!” he said in disgust. “Don’t know what you want to say a thing like that for!”
Carlisle patted the man’s shoulder. “For the future, Timothy,” he said quietly. “And for those who don’t know how to balance a racing gig.”
“There’s ’undreds o’ thousands what can’t read nor write!” Timothy looked at him sourly.
“I know that,” Carlisle conceded. “And there are hundreds of thousands who are hungry—in fact, I believe it’s roughly one in four in London—but is that any reason why you shouldn’t have a good meal, if you can get it?”
Timothy’s face screwed up, and he looked at Fleetwood.
Fleetwood rose to the occasion.
“A good meal, all you can eat before you do the job,” he promised. “And a guinea afterwards. I’ll make a wager—a fiver if I win the first race with it after that—”
“You’re on!” Timothy said instantly. “I’ll be there for dinner tonight, start work in the morning.”
“Good. You can sleep in the stable.”
Timothy lifted his scruffy hat in a sort of salute, perhaps a sealing of the bargain, and Carlisle turned to leave again.
Fleetwood repeated the address, with instructions on how to reach it, then ran after Carlisle before he was lost to sight and he found himself marooned in the nightmare place.
They passed through the worst of the rookery again and toppled out into the fine rain of a narrow street almost underneath the shadow of the church.
“Dear God!” Fleetwood wiped his face. “Makes me think of Dante and the gates of hell—what was it written over the cave?”
“‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,’” Carlisle said quietly.
“How in the name of humanity do they bear it?” Fleetwood turned up his collar and drove his hands into his pockets.
“It’s better than the workhouse,” Carlisle replied. “At least they reckon it is. Personally, it seems much the same to me.”
Fleetwood stopped. “Better!” he said in broad disbelief. “What are you talking about, man? The workhouse provides food and shelter, safety! It’s a charitable place.”
All the anger was purged out of Carlisle’s face; his voice was a gentle as milk. “Have you ever been to one?”
Fleetwood was surprised. “No,” he said honestly. “Have you?”
“Oh, yes.” Carlisle started walking again. “I’ve been working quite hard on this bill of St. Jermyn’s. I dare say you’ve heard of it?”
“Yes,” Fleetwood said slowly. “Yes, I have.” He did not look at Dominic, and Dominic did not dare to look at him. “I suppose you’d like my help when it comes up in the House?” Fleetwood said casually.
Carlisle flashed him a dazzling smile.
“Yes—yes, please, I would.”
Alicia had written to everyone she could think of, recalling a good few of Augustus’s relatives who had married well and whom she would never have contacted for any other reason. She found most of them insufferably dull, but the cause overrode all her previous inhibitions.
When she had exhausted her imagination on the subject and everything was sealed and in the post, she decided to go for a walk in the Park, in spite of the miserable weather. She had a feeling of good spirits inside her that simply cried for exercise, for the stretching of the body and opening of the lungs. Had it not been so absolutely ridiculous she would have liked to run and skip like a child.
She was striding along in a fashion unbefitting a lady, her head in the air, enjoying the bleak beauty of the trees against the ragged clouds far above. In the Park it was almost still; heavy drops glistened and dripped from twigs. She had never considered February had any loveliness before, but now she took pleasure in the stark simplicity of it, the soft, subdued colors.
She had stopped to watch a bird in branches above her when she was aware of overhearing a conversation immediately the other side of the tree.
“Did you really?” The voice was so soft that she did not at first recognize it.
There appeared to be no answer.
“Come and tell me all about it then,” the voice continued.
Again there was silence, except for a faint squeak.
“My, well, how about that! You are a clever girl.”
Then she knew it; at least she was almost sure she did. It sounded too soft, too American to be anyone but Virgil Smith.
But whom on earth was he talking to?
“My, you are beautiful! Well, come on now, tell me all about it.”
An appalling thought came to her; he must be making advances to some servant or streetwalker! How dreadful! And she had accidentally come upon him. How could she possibly get away without embarrassing them both quite unforgettably? She froze.
Still there was no reply from whomever he was speaking to.
“You pretty thing.” He was still talking gently, softly. “You beautiful girl.”
She could not stay any longer overhearing a conversation that was obviously desperately pri
vate. She took a step to creep, in the lee of the tree trunk, till she was back on the path and could affect not to have noticed him.
Her foot cracked on a twig, and it broke loudly.
He stood up and came around, enormous in a greatcoat; square, like the tree itself.
Alicia shut her eyes, her face burning up with her distress for him. She was sure it must be scarlet. She would have given anything not to have been witness to his shameful conduct.
“Good morning, Lady Alicia,” he said with the softness she had heard in it before.
“Good morning, Mr. Smith,” she replied, swallowing hard. She must force herself to carry it off with some aplomb. He was an American and a social impossibility, but she should know how to conduct herself whatever the occasion.
She opened her eyes.
He was standing in front of her, holding a little calico cat that was stretching and curling under his arms. He saw her glazed look and glanced down at the animal, his fingers running gently over its fur. She could hear the little creature singing even from where she was.
The color rose up to his face also when he realized she had overheard him talking to it.
“Oh,” he said a little awkwardly. “Don’t mind me, ma’am. I often talk to animals, especially cats. I’m kind of fond of this one in particular.”
She breathed out a sigh of immense relief. She found she was grinning foolishly, a sudden, bubbling happiness inside her. She stretched out her fingers to touch the cat.
Virgil Smith was smiling, too, a shining tenderness in his face.
For the first time she recognized it and knew what it was. Only for a moment did it surprise her; then it seemed like something familiar, amazing and beautiful, like the leaves bursting open in the milky sunshine of spring.
10
PITT CONSIDERED WHAT might be reasonable, what he might expect to receive, and then requested three additional constables to help him with the enormous task of sorting and identifying the photographs in Godolphin Jones’s shop.