by Alex Reeve
The long walk to Rosie’s shop brought me to some kind of consciousness, but even so I couldn’t have recalled a single thing I’d seen on the journey.
The shop was closed. I tore a piece of paper from my notebook and wrote out a message, and was just about to push it through her letterbox when the door opened. Rosie came out in a smart coat and hat, followed by a little troupe of her three children, holding hands, and the woman with the leathern face and her husband, neither of whose names I could remember. No sign of the man I had thought was Jack.
‘Leo!’
I held up my piece of paper. ‘I was leaving this for you.’
‘Why?’
‘I came here before, the other evening. There was someone watching your shop. I think it was the same man who kidnapped you.’
Rosie stared at me for several seconds. Her eyes flicked down, just momentarily, clearly wondering how she hadn’t realised before. I was like a magic trick, obvious once you know how it’s done. Finally, she turned to the older woman. ‘Alice, would you take the children? I’m going to have a talk with Mr Stanhope here.’
The bells were tolling at St Paul’s, and I realised it was a Sunday. ‘You’re going to church.’
‘I was.’
‘I don’t want to delay you.’
She took my arm and pulled me into the little side street by her shop. ‘Are you all right?’ she hissed. ‘You ran off without a word.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘What you did, in that room, for me. I just want to say –’
‘I have to go. Just watch out for that man, won’t you? He’s dangerous.’
I would have left immediately, but she still had hold of my arm. ‘I don’t regret it, you know.’ Her voice sounded constricted. ‘I’d do it again in a heartbeat. That man, Bentinck, he deserved to die for what he did to you and me. And he’s a murderer himself.’
‘Yes, he is.’ But the quibble wouldn’t stay down. ‘Although I don’t think it was him who killed Maria. I don’t think he was even in London. Why would he lie about that?’
‘Then who?’
‘I don’t know.’ I closed my eyes, wanting never to answer another question again. They felt like bee stings, jabbing into my skin and leaving little barbs behind. ‘I did think … but it’s not important.’
‘What? Tell me.’
‘A foolish thing. I went to your shop and I saw a man with you, and I thought he might be Jack, still alive. It seems silly now.’
For once, her reply wasn’t sharp. ‘Yes, it does. That was Billy, his brother, my brother-in-law.’
‘You seemed –’
‘He seemed, not me. It’s the shop he wants, but he won’t be getting it. I’ve had my fill of Flowers, thanks very much.’
‘I see. Well, that explains it.’
‘And what now, Leo?’ She hesitated. ‘Should I still call you “Leo”?’
She was looking at me oddly, in a way she hadn’t before, her eyes searching my face and neck and hands, all of me, perceiving the shape of the body beneath my clothes. But she couldn’t see inside my chest, where a man’s heart was beating.
I pulled my coat more tightly around myself. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘It’s only that … I don’t understand what you are. Have you always been this way?’
‘Since I was very young. Since before I knew what it meant. I’m a man, regardless of my physical nature.’
She nodded, but was frowning. ‘Well, it’s beyond my experience, I must say.’
‘I know, but Rosie, you have to keep it a secret. From everyone.’ I sounded as if I was pleading, but I had no choice. ‘They’d put me in prison or an asylum and make me take medicines or worse. They’d try to change me, and it would destroy me. Do you understand?’
‘How many people know?’
‘Very few. And it must stay that way. Will you keep my secret?’
She took a deep breath and looked at me squarely. ‘Yes, I will. I owe you at least that.’ She fixed her hat and smiled, though it was forced, an attempt to put things back to how they’d been before. ‘So what now, Leo Stanhope?’
I sagged against the wall. ‘I don’t know. It all seems so pointless. I just wanted to know who’d killed Maria, that was all. Some justice for her death. And now everything’s fallen apart. I’ve lost my friend, my position, my lodging and almost all my money.’ I rubbed my face with my palms. ‘And yet I’m as much in the dark now as I was at the beginning. I don’t think I’ll ever find out the truth.’
She pursed her lips. ‘Well, that’s no good.’ She peered into her bag and pulled out a pie wrapped in paper, half-sized, and handed it to me. It had an ‘R’ baked into the pastry. ‘Eat this. Robbie can share with his brother and sister.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Just eat it, you idiot.’
So I did, standing there on the pavement, and even through my despair it tasted spectacular. Spicy minced lamb with leek. It wanted for nothing, save perhaps a flask of tea to wash it down.
Rosie glanced at me from under the brim of her hat. ‘That poor girl, murdered by Lord knows who.’
‘You’re more sympathetic than you were,’ I said, through a mouthful of pie.
It was her turn to look away. ‘Yes, well, experience’ll do that to a person, I suppose. It’s just a shame. Likely now we’ll never know what happened or why, will we?’
‘It’s to do with the stolen money, I think. But I’ve no idea how that links to Maria’s death, none at all. Whoever stole it the second time found the combination of letters to open the padlock written on Jack’s bottle of ale. The break-in was skilfully done too; the mortuary window wasn’t broken. No one even noticed it until Flossie came in on Monday morning.’
Rosie was looking at me with a perplexed expression. ‘All right. So you’re saying you’ve no idea who broke into the mortuary, is that it? Well, whoever it was, they must’ve known Jack. And they must’ve known where he was.’
‘Yes.’
‘And it wasn’t you or me.’
‘No.’
‘Did you tell anyone else?’
‘No. Only Maria.’
She took another deep breath and shook her head. ‘I do swear that men are the blindest and stupidest creatures on God’s earth, especially when it comes to women. And this proves beyond any doubt, Leo Stanhope, you truly are a man.’
We argued for at least ten minutes. I said it wasn’t true, and she said it seemed to her I wasn’t much of a judge of what was true and what wasn’t, and I needed someone blessed with common sense to make me see what was staring me in the face. In the end, we agreed there was only one way to be sure.
I had to speak to Maria’s mother.
I didn’t know where the woman lived, but I knew she went to the church in Bow. I would have to go there today or wait another week, and as Rosie knew the way and I didn’t, I had no choice but to accede gracefully to her insistence, and allow her come with me.
This time, she let me hail a hansom cab. The roads were almost clear and we made good pace eastwards along Whitechapel High Street, bordered on either side by shops with closed shutters. Young men were standing in groups, drinking and watching in silence. At the canal bridge, the driver pulled up his horse and told us he would go no further, so we had to get out and walk. The shops and factories gradually petered out, replaced by shadowy alleyways and looming tenements, and even those seemed the height of luxury compared with the grim shacks and dosshouses further along in Bow, their billysweet walls sagging and sweating on to the pavement.
It amazed me. Maria had been brought up in this place, and yet she had shone like a kingfisher flickering across the water. Perhaps that was why. Perhaps she looked at these streets and decided she was not part of them, and they were not part of her. She became what she chose to be, over and over again, every day. Something I could understand.
The church was a white stone building hidden behind some trees in a half-hearted graveyard where the road divided
. From a distance, it resembled a fairy-tale castle, the battlements on its pale tower rendering it even more other-worldly. Close up, it was in as much disrepair as the slums surrounding it, and the faith of the congregants, singing merrily inside, might have been all that was keeping it upright.
We waited for the service to end. Our earlier conversation about my physical nature seemed to be preying on Rosie’s mind, and we talked of the weather and the glut of recent fogs as if we were acquaintances who had never fought for our lives together or violently killed a man.
Finally, the reverend came out and stood near the porch, and I recognised him as the deaf old fellow who had conducted Maria’s funeral. He looked like a man in need of a smoke, but I didn’t have any tobacco, so we just watched from the pavement. The congregation was starting to emerge. First out was the woman who had accosted me at the wake and asked whether I’d ever been in a mental asylum.
‘Is that her?’ whispered Rosie.
‘No. There she is.’
Mrs Mills was short in stature, with Maria’s curly hair, though thinner and greyer. She had her daughter’s way of holding her hands and even something of her restlessness as she glanced around at the trees and up at the sun. But she was florid where Maria had been pale, and bony where Maria had been soft, and Maria had never walked like that, limping as if each step was agony.
She found her way to a bench under a tree, and eased herself down on to it. As we approached, I could smell her, a corrosive pall of alcohol and piss that turned my stomach.
‘Mrs Mills? I knew your daughter, Maria.’
She nodded, and kept nodding, shaking as if she was cold, although the weather was as mild as a spring day.
‘My name’s Stanhope and this is Mrs Flowers.’
‘Are you him?’ she asked, eventually.
‘Who?’
‘Her soldier. The one she’s going to marry.’
She seemed crestfallen when I shook my head. ‘No. I just want to ask you some questions.’
‘She’s here somewhere. We always come together. She’ll be back soon.’
She was looking around, searching among the congregation still gathering outside the church, for her dead daughter.
‘I saw you at her funeral,’ I said, as gently as I could.
She clutched her hands into her lap. She was just like Maria, sitting on the bed, looking down at her fingers while she talked.
‘She was my last. I buried all the others, you know. Three born dead, two never lasted a month and one made it to five years. My little boy.’
‘I’m sorry. It must’ve been hard back then, making ends meet. How did you survive?’
She looked at me with Maria’s eyes, even with some of their brightness. ‘I sang at Wilton’s in Graces Alley, though it’s gone now, burned down. Such a shame. Maria was born under that stage, you know.’
So that much was true, at least.
‘What was she like, when she was a child?’
‘A performer. She could mimic anyone, accents and everything, and tell yarns that’d make you laugh and cry at the same time. Such an imagination! She persuaded old Mr Wilton she was being adopted by an earl once, who had a solid-gold rocking horse at his mansion.’
‘And in those days, was she … did she ever have to steal things?’
The old woman looked up sharply. ‘You a copper?’
‘No.’
‘All right then. I don’t want no police poking around. What’s mine is mine.’
‘Of course. It’s nothing like that.’
She sniffed, and we sat for another minute or two. It was oddly peaceful. Above our heads, a thrush was bursting out its song, sweeter even than a nightingale’s. But we couldn’t stay for ever. One of the fellows from the church was looking suspiciously in our direction.
Rosie crouched down in front of Mrs Mills. ‘You must be very proud of Maria.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘We just want to know whether she used to steal things when she was much younger. Then we’ll leave you in peace.’
Mrs Mills shrugged. ‘She likes to help me, that’s all.’
‘Of course she does. You’re her mother. Any daughter would do the same.’
‘She’s got brains, you see. Not like me. She knows all the tricks.’
‘What kind of tricks?’ The old woman didn’t reply, and Rosie took her hand. ‘Please tell us.’
‘It’s for Maria that we need the information,’ I said. ‘No harm can come to her because of it.’
‘I know,’ said the old woman, and there were tears on her cheeks. ‘I know she ain’t with us no more. She was my last.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ I said. ‘I truly am. We’re trying to find out what happened. Please tell us about her when she was young.’
She wiped her face and spoke quietly. ‘She was sharp as a needle. She could jimmy a window and be in and out before they even knew she’d been there. Like a ghost. Coins if she could get ’em, or jewellery for me to sell in the market. Sometimes a ribbon or a trinket for herself. She liked pretty things.’
‘And you never worried she might get caught?’ I asked.
‘Oh, she was nabbed a few times, but she always had a story and a winning way, and they let her go. Can you believe it? They catch some scrap of a girl in their home with her fingers on their valuables, and she talks her way out of it. One lady gave her lunch and half a crown.’
The fellow who had looked in my direction was approaching us. He was mousy and bald, in his best Sunday clothes, such as they were, and wearing a temperance medal on his jacket. ‘You after something?’
‘I was a friend of her daughter.’
‘Right.’ He frowned, disapproving, making clear that he knew what Maria’s profession had been. ‘Best not to upset Mrs Mills. She’s a bit bewildered. She’s had a long life and she can’t always tell what part of it she’s in.’ His lips twitched. He was determined to make his point. ‘Little enough of it was on God’s path, her or her daughter. Works of the flesh.’
I felt myself getting irritated. He hadn’t even come to Maria’s funeral, but he thought his little badge gave him the right to judge her.
‘It wasn’t Maria’s fault.’
‘We’ve all got a choice.’
I raised myself up and was about to respond with some heat, when Rosie interrupted me.
‘Well, it’s good of you to look after Mrs Mills, anyway.’
‘A little charity on a Sunday, nothing more. She’s in the dosshouse the rest of the week.’ He clearly thought that was what she deserved. ‘Time we was going.’
We watched him lead her away. The poor woman could barely walk. It was a strange kind of farewell to Maria, but I’d learned more about her in that short, muddled conversation than in all the others I’d had. I could easily imagine how it had been, ten years or more ago: little Maria Mills from Bow, born under a stage, stealing and lying to keep her drunken mother and herself alive.
Rosie was right. Maria, the one-time thief, had been the intruder in the mortuary.
The parts pulled together as a length of thread pulls together a cadaver’s skin.
My keys hadn’t dropped accidentally from my pocket on that last evening with her. Maria had taken them while I was asleep, and then waited to wake me up until I was late, too hurried to notice their absence.
She knew I was Mr Hurst’s assistant and she knew Jack Flowers couldn’t read, so he must’ve copied down the letters to tell one from another. She went to the mortuary after Flossie, Mr Hurst and I had left for the day, and tried my keys in the lock. But they hadn’t worked. They were just the keys to the pharmacy doors, front and back. She must have tried and tried, and when the door wouldn’t open she’d panicked and … no, she knew exactly what to do. She went around to the window at the back of the building and forced it open, just like when she was a little girl, all the while listening out for a dreaded footstep behind her. And once it was open, she slipped inside, and found the combination of letters fo
r Bentinck’s padlock written on a bottle of ale.
My poor girl. How desperate she must have been. How she must have yearned to escape from the life she was leading.
‘It was Maria who stole their money,’ I said to Rosie, as we walked back towards the city. ‘And they killed her for it.’
She grimaced. ‘Bentinck, after all. What an evil man he was.’
‘I still don’t think so. He didn’t get his money back, and he wouldn’t have killed her unless he had. It must be someone else, someone who knew what she’d done. And my guess is, whoever it was still has that money.’
‘That major you mentioned before, what was his name?’
‘Thorpe. But he’s the son of a judge and an army officer. Would he commit a murder for two hundred pounds?’
She didn’t reply. We were almost at Aldgate before she spoke again. ‘Leo, we need to talk about that night. What happened to you.’
My fingers prickled. Why did she keep raising that subject?
‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘Yes, there is. Leo …’
‘I’m going to take the underground railway home.’
‘Leo!’ She grabbed my sleeve and made me face her. ‘All right, you don’t want my thanks, but you have to listen. This is important. When things happen, other things follow. It’s nature. One thing leads to another thing, and even if the first thing is wicked, terrible, the worst thing in the world, still, the other thing can follow. Do you understand?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You don’t want to think about it. It’s unbearable, I know, but it’s a fact of life. I’ve been through it. Jack was …’ She broke off and cast around, looking for somewhere to sit, a bench or a step, but there was nowhere. In the end she clenched her fists and stood in front of me. ‘I got little Sam, and I love him. He’s as precious as the other two, more so if anything, for being my youngest. But it wasn’t love that made him. Do you understand?’
I did understand. I thought she might be the bravest person I’d ever known. Part of me wanted to take her hand in mine and tell her so, but another part couldn’t bear to. If I started talking about that night, I would never stop. I would be lost. There would be no line between where it ended and I began, and I would flood away into it.