It was a campaign, a railing diatribe. In ancient Greece, the writer cried, the Athenians paid tribute to King Minos by sending virgin youths, seven boys and seven maidens, to be devoured by the Minotaur in his foul labyrinth once every nine years. And yet in London, this same beastly transaction was made every night, English girls sacrificed into the maw of the monster. Maidens they were when this morning dawned, but tonight their ruin will be accomplished, and tomorrow they will find themselves within the portals of the maze of London brotheldom. Padded, soundproofed underground rooms for the gentlemen who wanted to make them scream. Leather straps on the four-poster beds. Midwives in the East End to certify their virginity beforehand and patch up the damages afterward. Gruesome stuff. And this London Society for the Protection of Young Females—where had I heard of that before? I backed away from the bed where the newspaper lay. Movement caught my eye; I glanced left into the gigantic mirror, where a bearded, leering stranger eyeballed me as he crouched, wiping his hands compulsively on his trousers. I crept closer, entranced by the feral reflection, and cautiously extended my inky hand toward the hand on the nether side. Instantly I jerked back, alarmed at the contact—not glass, it seemed, but a silken, liquid force. I spun around to my bedroom. The deceptively haphazard furnishings all hoarded their secrets.
That night I hurled my topper from the verandah and watched it wheel in a wide arc over the tiles and gables and then sink from sight. The hat was no good anymore. It had been changed by its sinister ordeal. This was the closest I had yet come to my tormentor. Hide and Seek, Hide and Seek. He was real. He had actually touched me, from the midst of that crowd, reached up and tipped the hat off my head, exposing my face to the people. Ready or not, here I come . . .
Thrilling with defiant dread, I sidled through the throngs the next day in search of a hat shop. I found one on Wardour Street and dove into its musty twilight. The mole-like proprietor would not let me alone until I snapped my teeth at him, and then I was allowed to pass a soothing hour alone amongst the stacks of dusty hats, trying on one after another in front of the crooked looking glass. At last I came upon a pale grey rounded bowler with a satin lavender band, fairly louche, not my style at all, yet when I twisted it down, the fit to my cranium was perfect. I grinned to the gums at myself, tilting my head down till the brim covered all but my glistening shark teeth. It could be like a disguise, this hat, so opposite from my other. Back on the street, I blended into the carnival, keeping my brim low, my red-rimmed eyes darting about. The sun splintered off windows and bits of mica buried in the brickwork, giving me a headache. I passed the doorway of a pub and ducked inside. But it was packed in here too, men shouting their orders down the line. I stood in their rowdy clamour, blinking away the black cigarette hole scorched into my vision. I felt parched, headache like a spike in my orbital socket. I shut my eyes and for a blissful moment leant my weight onto the bodies behind me, a heartbeat or two of sweet, utter blankness. Then I lurched, staggered back, and caught myself from falling with a ringing backward stamp on the floor. As if awoken from a split-second nap, I gazed about, befuddled yet refreshed, my eyesight back to normal, even my thirst somewhat abated. I touched my face, my hat brim, assuring myself that all was still in order. Then I turned and walked out to the street.
I could not put my finger on it, the odd feel of everything, as I wandered down Wardour. The architecture looming above me seemed off—something in the angles, the shadows, as if the whole streetscape had been dismantled and replaced by two-dimensional backdrops. There was the sense of an immense practical joke, stifled laughter in the passing faces of all the background actors. No one was looking at me directly. There was, in fact, something strained and deliberate in the way they weren’t looking at me. Except for a sooty-faced urchin who stood at the corner and stared as I strolled by, his eyes red and hot as cinders, his head turning to follow my progress. I thought of that urchin gang, that coordinated pickpocketing. Had this boy been amongst them? He knew me, and he was afraid of me, for when I made an indecisive move in his direction, he flashed off into the crowds and vanished.
Up Ghyll Road I panted, certain that, as yesterday, something had been arranged in my absence. As I approached, I could see a group of people gathered around the front gate. They were reading newspapers. A man was strolling my way down the road, perusing one. Others were standing with their news sheets spread open, heads inclined. I sauntered up with wretched casualness. A paper was nailed to the gatepost again, and a pile of Pall Mall Gazettes that had been tied with twine were cut loose and strewn across the stones, allowing people to pick up their free issues. I reached for the copy nailed to the post—it had been punched through the old rusted nail—and with a whimpering grunt, I ripped it free.
THE MAIDEN TRIBUTE OF MODERN BABYLON II
THE REPORT OF OUR SECRET COMMISSION
For a second, I considered grabbing up the remaining papers and bolting for the house. Instead, I stepped into the courtyard clutching my own copy and made for the door, feeling like a rifle was aimed from the road at the point between my shoulder blades. It took a fumbling moment to get the key in the lock, and when I slammed the door shut behind me, I found Mrs. Deaker in the drawing-room doorway. She had been watching the spectacle from the window. Her brow was creased and her mouth parted as if to speak. The paper crackled in my grip. I dashed past her up the stairs.
I described yesterday, the article began, a scene which took place last Derby day, in a well-known house, within a quarter mile of Oxford-circus. It is by no means one of the worst instances of the crimes that are constantly perpetrated in London or even in that very house. The victims of the rapes are almost always very young children between thirteen and fifteen. The reason for that is very simple. The law at present almost specially marks out such children as the fair game of dissolute men. The moment a child is thirteen she is a woman in the eye of the law, with absolute right to dispose of her person to anyone who by force or fraud can bully or cajole her into parting with her virtue.
As before I slapped through the pages, appalled: Procuration in the West End, A Firm of Procuresses, “You Want a Maid, Do You?,” An Interview with the Firm, I Order Five Virgins, The Virgins Certified, Delivered for Seduction. I could hardly comprehend it—here was the crusading newspaperman himself at the firm of Madame X attempting to order five certified virgins to distribute amongst his friends. What kind of lunatic story was this?
I opened the slender letter drawer in the antique desk where I had stored two of my tormentor’s poems in their envelopes. From the slit, I extracted one and read it once again: hidey hide, holy hole, kiss the girls, make them go, but when the boys come to play, hidey hide will run away.
Kiss the girls.
The spidery words now assumed a new menace. Had the letters all along been leading to this insane campaign, this underhanded accusation? What was the implication? That I was one of these dissolute monsters, these girlie-shop patrons? Because I’d harboured two girls in my home? I could feel a maddening bulge just beyond the meniscus of my memory, unable to break the skin. I grasped my hair at the roots, gritting my teeth. What was the connection? Where was this all leading? The game was getting bigger and more public with each move. Exposure. No more hiding in my anonymous house, nestled in my secret life. Yes. That had been the message all along, from the first taunting letter. I play hide and you play hide and see who’s found out first!
The next day I determined to watch the front gate. I dragged a wingback to the drawing-room window and settled down to wait. It grew stuffy as the morning bloomed, but I would not open the window, as if some contagion were loose in the air. A thick fly bumped at the glass with its stumbling drone. On the windowsill a dead fly lay on its back, minuscule legs bristling. I could smell myself: my unchanged clothes, my unbathed body, pungent, becalming. The fly dawdled at the glass. My eyelids began to leaden.
Father was sitting beside me in his wheelchair. His wasted yet still shapely hands with their yellowed nail
s hung off the chair’s wooden arms. His ash-white hair fell to his shoulders as he tilted his head to regard me, giving me a small, encouraging smile. Those naked, shaven lips. He nodded at the window as if to say, Let us watch together. I wanted to tell him something, urgently, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
My eyes flicked open.
There was movement out in the courtyard, a flurry in the air. For a second I could not breathe, then I hitched a delayed, strangled gasp and lurched upright in the chair. People were gathered at the gate again. As if drugged, I staggered to my feet and out to the entrance hall, where I flung open the door. Sheets of newspaper were tumbling and skittering across the courtyard, and I could hear shouting, or chanting, like the taunting singsong of schoolchildren. I rubbed at my eyes, and from the gathering at the gate I distinguished a number of boys throwing news sheets into the air and jumping up and down as they chanted. The words—it sounded almost like my name. Mis-ter Hyde! Mis-ter Hyde! Mis-ter Hyde! I lunged down the steps and over the cobbled yard, batting windblown paper from my path. I charged through the gate and skidded onto the pavement. Two of the boys saw me—little scamps, like the one I’d seen yesterday—and they dropped their newspapers and scooted off. There was another boy who was too absorbed in his jumping and joyful yelling of what I swore was my name to see me, but as I windmilled my arms for balance and started for him, he turned and pulled a comical popeyed expression and pelted off. I stood there, chest heaving, glaring at the gathered crowd clustered in the road like an impromptu audience. They considered my arrival on the scene with curious expectation, as if I were a new character in whatever performance they had been watching. Newspaper sheets lay flat on the stones or flapped away; one was impaled on the fence rails. I spun to the gatepost: a single torn-off news sheet was skewered through the nail, aflutter in the breeze. I whirled back on the crowd. My eye caught a fop in front; he wore a white hat and a flower in his buttonhole and was arm in arm with a pretty number in purple—both of them were watching me with eager distaste. Mocking laughter echoed all around me. I yearned to barrel into the crowd and trample them under my hooves, bellowing. But I stepped back, snatched the news sheet off the nail, and strode toward the house with a kind of furious dignity.
Mrs. Deaker opened the door for me and I stamped across the hall and slumped down at the bottom of the stairs. The old lady clicked up in her boots until she was gazing down on me from a few paces away. I lifted a soiled, scowling eye. The adrenaline was draining away; I felt spent and woozy. Mrs. Deaker returned my weary glower from a pitying distance, looking at me as if I were some deformed wretch on a doorstep. A wave of bitterness swamped my heart. You old cunt. Are you happy? This what you wanted, was it?
Happy, she repeated with a soft, scornful laugh. No, Master. I am not happy.
You cursed me. Admit it, you put a curse on me. Because of the girls. This is all your doing, am I right? Am I right? I was pleading. Her pity deepened. She smiled, a stricken twitch. You’ve done this to yourself, Mr. Hyde. She turned and swished from the hall.
The news sheet was crunched in my fist. I forced the fingers to unflex and smoothed the page flat on my knee. It had been torn out from the middle—and marked, I noticed now, with a heavy pencil or a piece of coal, a rough circling around the lower-right column where the crosshead read The London Minotaur:
As in the labyrinth of Crete there was a monster known as the Minotaur who devoured the maidens who were cast into the mazes of that evil place, so in London there is at least one monster who may be said to be an absolute incarnation of brutal lust. Here in London, moving about clad as respectably in broadcloth and fine linen as any bishop, with no foul shape or semblance of brute beast to mark him from his fellows, is Dr. ——, now retired from his profession and free to devote his fortune and leisure to the ruin of maids. This is the “gentleman” whose quantum of virgins from his procuresses is three per fortnight—all girls who have not previously been seduced. But his devastating passion sinks into insignificance compared with Mr. ——, another wealthy man, whose whole life is dedicated to the gratification of lust. During my investigations in the subterranean realm I was constantly coming across his name.
It is no part of my commission, the writer promised, to hold up individuals to popular execration, and the name and address of this creature will not appear in these columns. The name and address of this creature! Up in my bedroom, I scoured the passage again. I knew it couldn’t be referring to me—I hadn’t bought any virgins or ruined any maids. And yet that did not matter. My tormentor had ripped out this particular page and circled this particular column. Dr. Blank and Mr. Blank. Now retired from his profession and free to devote his fortune and leisure to the ruin of maids . . . Mr. Seek, whoever he was, had selected this page to nail to my front gate. Its message was undeniable. Seek knew. About me, about Jekyll. About us.
We couldn’t stay here. Exposure, public exposure to the masses, our secret unmasked. That was the endgame of all this. We had to run, to disappear. We had done it before, could do it again. Leave the house, leave this identity behind. It would be . . . What was the word?
Forfeit. It flew contemptuously into my head. At once I was filled with Jekyll’s disdain and derision. Run? Run where? The East End again? For how long? What about Big House—would we forfeit that too? Cowardly! Pathetic! His thoughts boomed in my mind with an underwatery warble and then subsided, leaving me shaken and ashamed. What, then? I asked the stubborn silence. Tell me! Tell me what to do!
There was no response. The sky beyond the greyed tumble of rooftops was turning a watercolour tangerine with ribbons of uncoiling lilac. Where had the hours gone? The aroma of roasting chicken wafted upward from the lanes below, making saliva spring into my mouth. I had not eaten all day. I shut my burning eyes, rested my temple against the frame of the open verandah.
Then I stiffened, ears flattening to my scalp: a dim but distinct knocking had come from downstairs. I listened, breathless. It came again: knock-knock-knock-knock! I opened my eyes and stared across the bedroom. Someone was here. I could not move a muscle, was frozen like an animal at the sound of a snapping twig. Then a new, sharper noise began, a quick, repetitive clack. I knew that noise. The letterbox.
I crept downstairs and halted, crouching, at the second-to-last step up from the entrance hall. I could see the letterbox winking orange light as if the door—the house itself—were trying to tell me something in a frantic sputter. I should have listened.
I opened the door. Somehow I was not surprised by the sight of the two big men in tweed suits on my front porch. The taller had a sandy moustache, and the shorter a ruddy complexion with ice-blue eyes. Evening, sir, said Moustache politely. Would you be Edward Hyde, then? I could not speak. They exchanged sidelong glances. Sir, I’m Inspector Blank, said Moustache, and this is Inspector Blank. Scotland Yard, Mr. Hyde. May we come in?
I did not absorb their names. My eardrums were roaring like conch shells. Yet I could hear my own voice, oddly calm, saying, Gentlemen, good evening. May I see your identification? Each inspector produced a leather billfold, flipped it open: two silver stars, Metropolitan Police stamped in a blue ring around the centre. I opened the door wider and stepped aside, and they clumped into my home. This way, please, I heard myself say, almost briskly, as I led them across the entrance hall and then up the first flight of stairs. I was astonished at my steadiness. On the second floor I turned into the empty parlour. A carpet of dust lay over the floorboards, undisturbed since the girls had gone. The only place to sit was the sagging velvet sofa coated in mousy fluff. The inspectors were surveying the room dubiously; Moustache peered at the dead chandelier hook in the ceiling. Mr. Hyde, is this your primary residence?
My eye caught on the opposite wall, the picture hanging there. That silvery beachscape with that solitary black figure wavering mirage-like down the glistening shingle. A pang of longing pierced me. How I yearned to be transported into that picture, that alternate dimension, on that forever mo
on-silvered beach . . .
I jerked my eye back to Inspector Moustache, who was watching me with a cautious, puzzled curiosity. My primary residence, I heard myself murmur, yes, yes, it is. Heard you had some kind of disturbance this morning, said Inspector Ice-Blue. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out, as I knew he would, a folded news sheet. He glanced at the type and for a moment I thought he might begin reading aloud. Yes, that, I said. Just kids. Bit of mischief, is all. Well, you’d know about that, wouldn’t you, said Inspector Moustache. Mischief, that is. I gulped and tried to smile, toothy and crazed, anxiously blinking. Was I being arrested? Could they do that? They were the police, they could march me out of my house and throw me into an iron-barred coach and haul me off to a cell if they wanted. Who would stop them? I took a step backward. Gentlemen, I cried. How rude of me. I’ll let my woman know you’re here. I for one could use a drink. I backed out of the parlour, eyes swivelling between Inspector Moustache and Inspector Ice-Blue, waiting for one of them to hold up his hand and say Whoa, sir, to charge and wrestle me down to the floor and clip shackles round my wrists. But they simply stood and watched me retreat, impassive, unconcerned. I backed onto the landing and descended the stairs. The entrance hall was empty. My new grey bowler hung on the banister knob, and I reached out to take it, startled by the thing’s actuality, the stiff dry felt of its brim. My stick leant against the wainscoting by the drawing-room doorway, the brass warm and accommodating to my grasp. The doorknob revolved smoothly in my palm. Across the yard and the road, the neighbouring brick held the marmalade light. I stepped onto the porch in a daze of wonderment. How easy it was. I turned and looked back through the open doorway into Ghyll’s entrance hall.
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