by Alex Reeve
‘So the two of you aren’t …?’
‘Oh no.’ I laughed, and part of it was genuine. ‘Nothing like that. We’re almost strangers.’
We were making slow progress alongside the lake, our shoes crunching on the gravel path. I was impatient to get to the point, but Thorpe seemed determined to make small talk.
‘And how do you occupy your time, Lottie?’
‘Well, I’m taking an interest in the murder that occurred, the girl, Miss Milanes. A purely amateur curiosity. I know it sounds macabre.’
‘Certainly unusual.’ He had the kind of politeness my mother would have called ‘well brought up’, meaning he always knew the right thing to say but never said anything interesting.
‘I believe you knew Miss Milanes, Major Thorpe?’
‘Augustus, please.’ He looked away and I had the feeling he was mentally rehearsing his response. ‘I was wondering how you got my name, actually.’
‘Madame Moreau told me,’ I lied. ‘The woman who’s been accused of the crime.’
‘You met her? Gosh. Well, even so, it doesn’t mean anything, does it? She might have picked my name at random.’
I smiled benignly, feeling his tension through his sleeve. ‘There was a letter. From you to Miss Milanes.’
He let go of my arm and leaned on the railing, looking out across the lake towards Trafalgar Square and his barracks. I could see the strain in his jaw. He was drawn tight. ‘And you’ve seen this supposed letter, have you?’
I knew I had to be very careful. That letter was all the leverage I had. If I denied having seen it there would be nothing to connect him to Maria and he would shut up like a cockle. But if I told him I had possession of it, he would certainly demand we went and fetched it this instant.
‘I saw it briefly,’ I said.
He put his head in his hands. ‘You must think me such an idiot.’ He was silent for a while and I thought he might have become exercised, but when he did finally speak, his voice was quite calm. ‘None of this has anything to do with me. I didn’t … you know … I didn’t realise what she was. She seemed like such a lovely girl, truly lovely. We met here a few times, that’s all. I had no reason to suspect her.’
The gravel path stretched out ahead of us. Maria had walked on that path, arm in arm with this same gentleman. I was wearing her clothes and literally following in her footsteps. It was almost too much to bear. The urge to run away was so strong the soles of my feet started to ache. But I had to stay to discover the truth.
‘You were betrayed,’ I suggested.
‘Yes, exactly.’ The memory still seemed painful to him. ‘She told me her father had been a banker until he’d fallen on hard times, and her mother had died quite recently. She wept on my shoulder just thinking of it. But it was all a lie. She was not at all as she appeared. I cut ties with her as soon as I found out, but, well, writing to her was an unwise thing to have done. I know that now. The thing is, I’d dearly love to get that letter back. I’ve tried, but so far … I say, are you all right?’
‘Yes, thank you. It’s just the grass making my eyes itch.’
‘We could go to a tea shop if you prefer,’ he offered, suddenly solicitous. ‘There are some nice places nearby.’
‘No, thank you, I’m quite all right. So you hadn’t known her for long?’
‘Barely at all. I was with the chaps over in India and we only came home, what, five months ago. I’d been wounded, not badly, some coolie with a rifle. An inch to the left and all that, but British officers aren’t so easy to kill.’ He smiled but it was artificial, automatic. ‘That was the one your brother shot, actually. If he’d hit him with his first effort, things might’ve been different.’
So Thorpe had come home wounded and fearful, and Maria had comforted him. I suffered a sharp twinge of empathy.
‘And how did you find out the truth?’
He looked askance at me. ‘You’re frightfully blunt.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I could feel myself reddening. I took a breath and smiled at him. My mother used to tell me: if you wish to say something, always smile, and phrase it as a question so no one thinks you’re pushy. ‘As I said, I have an interest. Don’t you agree these girls need more protection than the police provide?’
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t. That sort of thing’s all very well, but she was a liar and a fraud. She wanted to get married, and I, well, I suppose I was thinking along the same lines at the time. The whole idea seems inconceivable now.’
The poor fool. He probably thought he had seduced her. I wished I could know for certain, but that wasn’t the sort of thing ladies were supposed to ask. I bit down hard on the inside of my mouth. Thorpe didn’t notice, he was too immersed in his own tragedy to see anything else.
‘You have to understand; she was so convincing. Well, naturally I mentioned her to my father. He’s a judge. He did some investigating and that was the end of it.’
‘Until she was murdered.’
He turned to face me, standing a little too close. I lifted my chin and slipped my hand into the bag. The cloth around the knife had come loose, and I could feel the hard, cold blade. It would slip in and out of him, open and shut like a fish’s mouth. My fingers worked along to the handle and gripped it.
He took a deep breath. ‘Yes, quite. And now that woman has my name and perhaps that letter. I did hope that you might have it, or know where it is.’
‘I’m sorry, no. But if Madame Moreau is found guilty quickly, your name may never come up at the trial. You may be kept out of it completely.’
He wrapped his arms around himself and nodded. ‘I can only hope so. In India we’d have hanged her and been done with it. Still, at least they’ve got the right person now. Second time lucky.’
‘What do you mean?’ My thumbs prickled with anticipation, but he hesitated, and I realised I’d been too abrupt again. ‘I mean, if you wouldn’t mind explaining?’
‘Not at all.’ He stood up straight, glad to be back on more agreeable territory. ‘The police are incompetent. They don’t think. They had someone else in custody to start with, a harmless dolt who works at the Westminster hospital and was besotted with her, apparently. The trial would’ve been all over the press. You can imagine the scandal; a reputable hospital, a crime of passion and all that – it would all have come out, including me. Father told them to let the idiot go and arrest this dreadful woman instead. Keep like with like, if you see what I mean.’
I felt a cold clutch around my kidneys. Keep like with like. That was how close I’d come: freed from gaol by Thorpe’s father to keep his son’s name out of the newspapers. He was probably right too; a surgeon’s assistant killing his lover might be considered romantic, whereas an abortionist killing a whore was unremarkable. The trial would be over in a couple of days at most, and the story might not even make the press.
Thorpe took my arm again, guiding me once more down the path. We passed a couple coming in the other direction, and the woman, pretty and young, in her best frock, nodded to me. It was a knowing, collegiate gesture, an acknowledgement that we’d both done well, courting men of standing who were happy to promenade with us in the park. I felt sick.
Thorpe patted my hand. ‘You’ve seen that Moreau woman, so you know what she is. She’s been packed off to Newgate Prison, and it’s no more than she deserves.’
‘Newgate?’ I felt my face blanch. But I couldn’t dwell on it, not now. ‘Major Thorpe –’
‘Augustus, please.’
‘Augustus. How did you even meet Miss Milanes?’
He took several seconds to respond, staring straight ahead at a willow tree trailing its limp fingers in the water. ‘A beastly fellow I met at the club suggested it. He said she was a decent, respectable girl, but he knew she wasn’t.’
There was no one else it could be. ‘Was his name James Bentinck, by any chance?’
He nodded slowly. ‘You’re well informed. I should’ve known he wasn’t to be trusted. He claims to
be related to the Cavendish Bentincks but it’s all nonsense. He’s not a gentleman, he’s a jumped-up nobody who made his money in the worst way and is mixing with his betters. It turned out he owned the place where she was … employed, if you can believe it. The man’s beneath contempt.’
We were back at the bridge, and I’d exhausted my questions and my spirit. I didn’t know what I’d expected. I suppose I’d imagined him breaking down in a fit of remorse or giving away some vital clue that would confirm his guilt beyond doubt: a careless word, a speck of blood or an intimate knowledge of her lifeless body. But reality wasn’t like that.
He wanted his letter back, and there might be other letters, acknowledging her pregnancy or proposing marriage. He might have confronted her – a burst of anger, shouting, pleading, and then a blow to her head, and him on his knees with blood soaking his hands, telling her he’s sorry, praying for her to open her eyes, shaking as he wraps her up and carries her down to the river.
The bag was still tugging on my fingers. I could ask him to walk me home through the back streets. I could suffer a little cough, and when he stopped to see that I was all right, I could stick my knife into his neck. He would never expect it, not from a lady. It was the only way he would ever be punished, if he was guilty. If … if … if. But I couldn’t be sure. I wanted it to be true, but I couldn’t be sure.
I almost felt sorry for him. The girl he’d sent his letter to was a prostitute, and the girl he was hoping would find it would never return it to him. And she wasn’t a girl.
I was chilly suddenly and missed my greatcoat. And my hat; not this silly, floppy thing with no warmth in it, but my solid bowler, shaped to my head by years of wear, more a part of me than this wig could ever be.
‘I should be going,’ I said. ‘I can see myself home.’
‘Of course. But would you be agreeable to taking another walk with me? Perhaps tomorrow?’
I opened my mouth, but the words were congesting in my throat. It took me a moment to assemble them into some kind of order. ‘You mean you’ve enjoyed this conversation?’
‘Well, it’s been … interesting to meet you, certainly. And I should like to stay in touch in case, you know, you find out anything concerning my letter. I should very much like it back.’
It wouldn’t do to turn him down. I might have more questions for him, or want to bring the police to have him arrested. Or, who knows, stab him after all.
‘Not tomorrow, Augustus,’ I forced myself to say, ‘but perhaps on Wednesday? At noon in the same place.’
He nodded. ‘Very well. Until then.’
I was about to leave when he grabbed my hand and kissed it, a formality I’d forgotten about. It was all I could do not to wipe off his vile moisture on the grass. He let go of me and hugged himself again, without apparently realising he was doing it, and strode off towards the barracks, his red jacket visible even as he disappeared into the distance.
Wearily, I trudged back over the park to the Aerated Bread Company tea shop, and once again located myself in their privy. I pulled off my hat and wig, unhooked the brooch, stepped out of Maria’s dress and petticoats, and blissfully removed the towel bustle, relishing my ability to inhale fully. I felt like a snake shedding its skin. Naked, I wiped the powder from my face.
Then I took a long and satisfying piss.
Upstairs, the finger-clicker who’d invited me to his table was still there with his friends, but he didn’t notice me. As I was leaving I jogged his cup with my hip so it spilled tea on to his trousers. He leapt up from his chair.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, and hurried outside before he could call me back to pay for it.
People were everywhere, milling around on the pavement and the streets, enjoying the air of London, as fresh as it ever was. I looked up and around, at the tall buildings and long, straight roads, the carriages and carts, the mess of the city. I stretched out my arms, stood with my feet apart and loudly cleared my throat. Everyone just walked around me. No one gave me a second glance.
I fixed my cap on my head and set off for home, the most thankful man in the world.
16
As soon as I got home I fell into bed, but couldn’t get Thorpe’s face out of my mind. I could still feel the roughness of his beard on my hand where he’d kissed it. I almost retched.
I tried to think about something else, about Madame Moreau, locked up in Newgate Prison.
A man I had known, Angus McCoy, once spent three months in Newgate accused of fraud. The two of us had agreed to sell cookery books on commission among the wealthy houses in Knightsbridge and Kensington, but his basement flooded and we lost the entire stock. The publisher didn’t believe our tale, or claimed he didn’t, and I was forced to beg that loan from Jane to pay back my share. McCoy didn’t have a wealthy sister, and was sent to Newgate to await trial. When he came out he was half the man he had been.
If Madame Moreau truly was the murderer, I was glad she’d been sent there. She deserved it. But still, I found it hard to accept. I couldn’t imagine her hurting a woman.
I toyed with my chess set for a while, playing both sides, trying to pretend I didn’t know my opponent’s next, devastatingly clever move. But I found myself forgetting whose turn it was, staring at the wine cork that stood in for the white queen, whose banishment had brought the chess set within my budget. I found myself thinking about Elizabeth Brafton, who considered herself the queen of the brothel, but owned no part of it. Might she have killed Maria? I couldn’t think why she would, but perhaps there was no why. Perhaps she just lost her temper one day. She had never liked Maria, or so Maria believed.
What about James Bentinck? He was surely capable of the crime, and it was an odd coincidence that Jack Flowers, who had worked for him, had died too. Maybe Bentinck had killed Jack, and maybe Maria found about it, and maybe the break-in at the mortuary was somehow connected, and … it was a lot of ‘maybe’. There was no evidence. Even if Bentinck had wanted Maria murdered, I doubted he would do it himself. He would instruct Hugo, a boxer in his younger days and still dangerous now. Maria had treated him as one might an elderly dog, so safe and familiar it was hardly noticed. But he was Bentinck’s man, through and through. If Bentinck had told him to kill her, he would have.
Hugo wasn’t my top suspect, though. Thorpe, I judged, had been furious with Maria when he realised he’d been deceived. That letter gave him a strong motive, and he was in the army, so he knew how to kill. A crime of passion or simple self-interest, either way he headed my list.
But I couldn’t go to the police with suspicions. I needed proof.
I lay down again and closed my eyes, and finally slept, with questions crowding into my mind, begging for answers I didn’t have.
I awoke sweating, jolted from a nightmare in which I’d been wearing powder and a bonnet.
I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep, so I picked up Oliver Twist, but even though my eyes were following the words, I wasn’t reading them. Eventually, I dragged myself downstairs and ate a cheese bun in the shop.
‘Someone’s waving at you,’ Constance said, nudging me with her elbow and raising her eyebrows, clearly thinking my social life had taken a turn for the better.
I was surprised to see Mrs Flowers peering in through the glass with cupped hands, wearing a blue coat, all done up, and a dark purple hat. The young widow had already given up wearing mourning garb.
I unlocked the door and she came in, casting a brief, dubious look at the dentist’s chair, which stood in glorious isolation, unused and unavoidable. Alfie had removed the pig’s head once it had surrendered all its teeth and much of the pickled flesh along its jawline, and only after it had gone would Constance agree to hold her nose and clean the chair and tools. Now, they gleamed, and the odour had been reduced to a lingering, putrescent stink.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Stanhope,’ said Mrs Flowers. ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling on you. I have some questions.’
I realised I’d never seen her a
t her best, or anywhere close to it. When neither recently bereaved nor recently attacked, she was unexpectedly comely, with sharp eyes behind her spectacles and an expressive mouth that drew attention.
‘Of course,’ I said, thinking that I didn’t want to talk to her here, with Constance in earshot. Better to go out, although I would be frightfully early to work. It wasn’t yet half past four. ‘I’m just leaving, but you can accompany me on my way if you’d like?’
Outside it was cold and dry, but a yellow fog had descended. It was the type the newspapers condemned daily and yet seemed oddly proud of, our city exhaling such potent vapours that its inhabitants appeared jaundiced and sickly, emerging from the dimness, muttering apologies and disappearing again as if they’d never been.
‘Is your injury healing well?’ I asked politely, as we walked through the patchwork of alleyways that led south to the hospital.
She adjusted her hat. ‘It’s not pretty under here, I can tell you. I’ve a bald patch and there’ll be a scar. I suppose I shouldn’t complain.’ We were crossing over Coventry Street between the near-stationary traffic before she spoke again. ‘What I wanted to talk to you about. The police have arrested someone, some woman, for killing the whore. Did you know that?’
‘Yes. She’s been sent to Newgate Prison.’
Mrs Flowers frowned. ‘Well, whatever she’s done, I don’t envy her that. There’s no justice to be found in there.’
‘It won’t be for long. They’ll probably hang her soon enough.’
‘So you think she’s guilty, then?’
‘I don’t know.’ I was so used to keeping secrets it had become my default position, an instinct, and only with an effort of will could I overcome it. ‘Mrs Flowers, did you know your husband worked for James Bentinck, and … what kind of business he’s in?’
She looked down at her hands, and I immediately regretted asking. I was so absorbed in my own concerns I hadn’t thought about the shame she must be feeling. What a terrible thing to have to admit.