by Carol Hedges
“Aha! I see you have nothing to say in your own defence,” Regina’s voice rings out triumphantly.
“On the contrary, I am saying nothing because I do not have a clue what you are talking about.”
“We have it on good authority that you were … acquainted with both our husbands in the past. And the connection may still be present.”
“As I told you: those days are long gone. This is my business now.”
“But you sell cakes – I see cakes all around me. And it was by cakes that the poison entered our houses.”
“I supply my customers here with cakes, which I bake myself. I do not sell them to anybody else. Whatever may have happened to you, it is nothing to do with me. Now please leave my premises, or I may have to summon the police and have you ejected.”
Georgiana tugs urgently at Regina’s sleeve again.
“For God’s sake, Regina. It is clear that this woman knows nothing of what has taken place. Let us go at once.”
Regina Osborne glares at Lilith venomously, then at the customers, who are listening avidly to every word of their exchange while pretending to be fascinated by the contents of their cups or the pattern on the table clothes.
“Very well Georgiana. If you insist. But we have done the right thing in confronting this woman. All such polluters of the sacred marriage bed must face up to their actions, either now or before a Higher Presence.”
Lilith’s face is a study as she walks to the street door and holds it open. Her parting words are uttered in a voice intended to carry to the far corners of the room.
“Good-bye ladies. Oh – and always remember I did not invite your husbands to my bed. They came of their own accord, probably because they weren’t happy in yours.”
And having delivered her parting shot, Lilith slams the door shut and crosses the floor of her tea-room, head held high.
As soon as the two women are in the street, Georgiana rounds on her companion furiously.
“How could you behave in such a reckless manner, Regina?” she exclaims. “I recognised many of my own friends and neighbours sitting in there. Now I will never be able to face them again.”
“Nonsense,” Regina replies defiantly. “It had to be done!”
“No, it did not! You could have written a letter, or waited until the shop closed. Instead you have subjected me to a humiliating and degrading episode that may well be related back to Frederick. I am so ashamed. And it was all for nothing! Of course that woman didn’t send those cakes. It was quite obvious from the start.”
“Oh? Did she not?” Regina turns to face her former friend, eyebrows raised in inquiry. “How can you be so sure, Georgiana? Is there something you haven’t told me? Tell me at once!”
But Georgiana does not reply. The days of girlish confidences have long passed. Pressing her lips tightly together, she spins on her heel and walks off down the hill in the direction of home as fast as her legs will carry her.
***
Letters are also the topic of conversation around the Bulstrode supper table. Or rather, a specific letter, delivered earlier this evening. It is from rich, eligible, diamond-owning, damsel-rescuing Mark Hawksley.
In the letter, he thanks Josiah for his own letter, apologising profusely for not responding immediately – regretfully he was called away to the West Country to visit his sick mother.
He goes on to express his gratitude at being invited to partake of the simple fare offered at Number 11 Cartwright Gardens. He informs Bulstrode that he will accept his invitation to dine the following Thursday, and indeed is looking forward to becoming more acquainted with both Josiah and his delightful sister.
No mention of Belinda Kite. Or her leg.
Picking over the letter has been the sole source of interest for the whole of the meal.
“There, Sissy,” Josiah says, triumphantly after a fourth re-reading. “Delightful sister – here it is in black and white. Now if that don’t bring the roses to your cheeks and a sparkle to your eyes, then I’m a Dutchman!”
As he clearly isn’t a Dutchman, Belinda glances across the table at Sissy, who looks very much the same as she ever does: pallid and unsparkly.
“So, Miss Keet, we are to entertain a guest,” Josiah says, turning to her. “What shall we offer him? I don’t think Mr Hawksley is the sort of man who’d fancy frogs’ legs and snails, like you eat in Paree, eh?”
He laughs uproariously at his own joke.
“I’m sure that whatever you serve will be quite delicious,” Belinda replies, keeping her features strictly neutral.
“I think a side of prime English beef is what’s called for,” Josiah declares. “Can’t go wrong with good wholesome English food. I shall order it from the butcher tomorrow first thing. Sissy, you can choose a pudding – sweet stuff is more a lady’s thing.”
“But who will prepare all this food, Josiah?” Sissy asks, frowning. “I cannot be expected to cook it, and I don’t think the current cook is good enough for a fine dinner party.”
Bulstrode waves a dismissive hand.
“Oh, I shall hire a proper chef. And someone to wait at table properly. We don’t want Mr Hawksley to think we northerners can’t do London style and copy London ways, do we?”
Belinda breathes a silent sigh of relief. For one terrible moment, she feared she might be prevailed upon to prepare the feast. What she knows about cooking could fit on the back of a postage stamp and still leave enough room for the front page of The Ladies’ Fashion Weekly.
“Just you make sure you’re looking your best, Sissy. We want to make a good impression upon Mr Hawksley, after all, he has met the Queen,” Bulstrode lowers his voice and utters the final five words in a tone of hushed awe.
“I shall wear my new lavender dress. The dressmaker said the colour suited me.”
Belinda Kite stares down at her plate, upon which she has deposited some bottled cherry stones from her half-finished dessert. She counts them in her head, silently reciting the old familiar rhyme from childhood: Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man …
If only, she thinks. She pictures Mark Hawksley’s handsome, sardonic face. The image comes to her as something desirable, painfully clear. There is a tightness in her chest, a spreading excitement.
She wants to see him again. But not just him: she wants to see the life he has surrounded himself with. The people who inhabit it. Those who have money are afraid of nothing, she thinks. They no longer have any reason to be afraid.
***
One o’clock in the morning is a territory as much as a time, and Marianne Corvid is a long-term resident. She lies in bed, painting the past onto her eyelids. She is not awake, nor asleep, but trapped in between.
She listens to the sound of blood beating upward from her heart. There is a sensation hovering at the edge of her mind, near understanding. She reaches for it hard, and in doing so, feels herself beginning to wake.
After a few minutes have passed she gets up, more wakeful now, clear-headed, nocturnal. She goes downstairs to the rosewood writing desk and places a sheet of notepaper in front of her. Her eyes feel as though they are sinking into her head. There is no fire in the room, and it is as cold as Candlemas.
A church clock strikes the hour. As it does every night. Marianne Corvid wraps her shawl more tightly around herself. She is a pale woman, quite short, with dark hair and dark eyes – twin darknesses that serve only to emphasise the pallor of her skin.
Her hands hold on to the sides of the desk and she steadies her breath. It feels unreal, the smooth rapidity of events. As if she is standing outside her life, seeing it happen to another person. She stares out of the window at the patched sky, her mind churning like a piece of machinery she cannot switch off.
Marianne Corvid dips her pen into the ink pot, and writes:
Dearest,
I have been so unhappy since my last letter to you. I feel I can’t go on without writing once more. I do not know whether you received my last letter – the postal se
rvice is not reliable, as I know to my cost, having not received any letters from you recently. I would have thought that you might have replied.
Every time I recall how we met – how the sudden death of my husband brought us together, my heart skips a beat. How wonderfully strong and supportive you were at that time. And then, when the desire for sensualities so long denied me began to glow again in my blood with renewed appetite, how ardent and persistent. How you warmed me with your kisses!
It is all dust and shadows. I have seen you in the street. You passed me by without recognition. Another probably has your heart and is even now being warmed by those sweet caresses, as I once was. And I, who loved you more than life itself, am left with nothing but the precious memories of our secret times together.
All I ask is for one more meeting. One more chance for me to look my last upon the face of the man I once loved, but have now lost. I need to see you. Please grant me this, my final request.
The candle flickers. She signs her name, blots the signature and slips the letter into an envelope. Tomorrow she will post it. Marianne Corvid picks up her candle, and mounts the stairs. She returns to her bedroom and goes to her dressing table.
For a few seconds, she stares into the mirror, studying the reflection of her face. It is ghostly in the dim light, like a skull. The eye sockets are hollows of darkness. She looks like someone who has not slept peacefully for a long time.
Marianne Corvid lifts the lid of a small jewel box, from which she draws out a diamond and turquoise bracelet. Slipping it onto her wrist, she turns her hand in the dying flame of the candle.
She thinks of what she has done for love. What she has lost. How she has always been unlucky in time, too early, too late, her hope of desire always temporary. The jewels wink and glitter, reflecting light, deceiving.
***
A foggy morning in London. Buildings shadowy with it, the river an oozing stinking miasma of low-tide mud. Grimy pavements. No shade lighter than slate-grey. Faces barely distinguishable. Hoofbeats hollow in the fog. The smell of shit everywhere, settling into the stitch of clothes, and the pores of skin and stone.
At Scotland Yard, the newspapers have just been brought into Detective Inspector Stride’s office by one of the desk constables. The shit is metaphorically about to hit the desk.
By the time Jack Cully arrives at Scotland Yard, a little late as he has had to help Emily pack up a couple of dresses for immediate delivery, Stride is in a state that might reasonably be described as apoplectic.
“See this, Jack?” He exclaims, stabbing a finger at the pile of papers. “Bloody Dandy and his crew have been at it again!”
Cully surveys the front page of The Inquirer, which bears the banner headline:
Mysterious Red-Hand Gang Terrorise City! Riot & Anarchy Follow in Their Wake!!
Under this, in slightly smaller letters is written:
Detective Police Refuse to Investigate.
“I thought it was just a few religious individuals with a Bible, a pot of paint and rather too much time on their hands,” Cully says.
“Ah – that’s where you’re wrong, Jack. According to our good friends in the popular press, we are on the verge of revolution and anarchy. As Mr Dandy points out: the French Revolution began with slogans painted upon walls.”
“I hardly think this is the same thing.”
“The Bastion of the Common Man thinks it is. And where the Bastion goes, the mob follows. No Jack, I’m afraid we will have to take this silly painting lark seriously. Arrange for the night patrols to be doubled.”
“I’ve already got some of the day constables to talk to everybody who has had their property painted,” Cully says. “There seems to be no links. No common thread – other than the words themselves.”
“Then let’s focus on the words. If this is some strange religious sect, somebody must know who they are, where they meet and when. You want to start asking around some of those small chapel places. I wouldn’t put it past one of them to be at the bottom of this. Always seem a bit suspect to me,” Stride says, the concept of religious tolerance being some hundred years in the future.
“I may take Sergeant Evans with me in that case,” Cully says. “I believe he goes to one of those places every Sunday.”
“Does he indeed? He seems like a very normal young man to me.”
“I’m sure he is.”
Stride grunts.
“Do whatever you think best, Jack. Only let’s get on top of this painting nonsense, before it runs away with us and we really do have a riot on our hands.”
***
Frederick Undercroft wakes in the green-papered bedroom he does not share with his wife. A Soho apothecary has prescribed him tincture of opium. The label on the blue glass bottle informs him that it is to allay pain, relax spasms and procure sleep.
Every night, Undercroft counts out ten drops into a silver spoon and swallows them with water. He sleeps, but his dreams are so vivid and violent that they leave him exhausted.
The instant before he wakes he experiences a moment of luminous terror, such as a man falling over a cliff edge must feel, somersaulting through insubstantial air. He wakes up with bloodshot eyes and a strange bitter taste in his mouth.
A knock at his door heralds the arrival of the maid, carrying his hot shaving water in a jug. She is the replacement for Molly, and has been chosen by his wife. He does not know her name. He does know that she is fat, plain, and bovine of expression.
No more fun and games, no sly fondling. Molly had a small strawberry-shaped birthmark high on her upper thigh. On a good morning, she would let him look at it. On an even better morning she would allow him to kiss it.
The new maid slops water into the blue china bowl, mutters something, and goes out. Frederick Undercroft slides his bony shanks from under the bedcovers and prepares for the day ahead. He has clients to see. Wills to be read to disappointed family members. Dressed, he descends to the dining room where his wife is buttering a piece of toast. She glances up, her expression hardening.
How unattractive she is, he thinks. How unlike the gay giddy girl he courted all those years ago. His mind wanders back to that time. Then to other times and other gay girls. He could have done so much better for himself. He should have waited. Not sold himself so quickly.
“Are you feeling well this morning, Frederick?” his wife greets him dully.
He reaches for the toast rack, finds himself holding the cold blackened slice of bread up to the light, as if any poison accruing to it might be visible to the naked eye. Seeing nothing unusual, he places it on his plate.
“I am perfectly fine. I shall be out for most of the day, possibly in the evening also,” he says.
“As you wish.”
He has taken to going out, staying out, eating out. The club, the bookshops along Holywell Street, the women, the friends he knows, the friends he once knew and now regards with faint suspicion. Is it you? his mind constantly asks, while he searches for clues, little ‘tells’ that might reveal who is trying to dispose of him.
He gulps down a cup of bitter black coffee, finishes the toast and gets up from the table. He does not ask Georgiana what plans she has made for the day, for her life is of no interest to him whatsoever. Which is just as well, for she has made no plans.
Since the ill-fated visit to the Lily Lounge, Georgiana has not ventured further than her own hallway, fearing the stares and whispered comments of her neighbours if she so much as sets a foot outside the front door.
She hears Frederick exchange some words with the parlour maid, hears the girl giggle, then the door slams. Relief settles upon her like a comforting blanket. She is just about to ring for more toast, when the parlour maid enters, carrying a silver salver.
“The letters have just arrived, ma’am. Shall I put them on the master’s desk in his study?”
“No, Susan, leave them with me. And bring me some more hot toast.”
Susan hands her the letters, bobs a curtsey a
nd departs.
Georgiana rifles through the post, her heart thumping. Any day, any delivery, there might be something from one of the people in the tea-room who saw her and Regina, who heard Lilith Marks’ dreadful parting words.
Three letters. All addressed to her husband. One is clearly from the Law Society – probably an invitation to a dinner. One, in a plain brown envelope, feels like a catalogue of some sort.
And the third? She stares at the small, sloping feminine handwriting, turns the envelope over, her eyes narrowing, mouth hardening into a straight line. Then in a quick, decisive gesture, she reaches for a clean butter-knife and slits it open.
***
Lunchtime finds Jack Cully and Sergeant Evans sitting on a bench in one of the public gardens. They are enjoying a ham sandwich and the hazy autumn sunshine. From the trees, a drift of small red leaves has collected, like confetti, at the foot of the bench.
An interesting morning has been spent calling in at a few of the more esoteric places of worship in the city, culminating with a visit to the Wesleyan Chapel in Commercial Road, a square-fronted, unornate brick building that reminded Cully more of a workhouse than God’s house.
In each location, the two officers have stood and listened while serious men in a variety of strange clothing gave them an outline of the group’s beliefs. These have varied from vegetarianism to nudity.
They have been invited to attend various meetings. They have had pamphlets pressed upon them and have been informed earnestly and sincerely that in no way would any member stoop so low as to deface a public building, any building, with red paint.
In front of the bench a flock of sparrows have gathered, their feathers puffed against the cold. Cully watches their ragged hopping, then throws them the remains of his bread. As they feed, the little birds appear to dance between his feet.
“Hymn-writing weather,” Evans says, repeating the parting words of the Methodist minister.