The Fiend in Human

by John MacLachlan Gray

  10

  The Holy Land

  It is mid-afternoon, to judge by the narrow shaft of light from the ceiling, and the communal kitchen has filled considerably. Several of the fallen women glimpsed earlier have come in for tea with gin to assuage their morning sickness; their discomfort is made worse by the attentions of a raucous team of four young thieves with sooty faces and clothing, in high spirits after having stolen a large piece of salt beef and a number of potatoes from some honest vendor. They proceed to cook the meal, divide it, then tear the meat asunder with their fingers. One youth, scrawny as gristle, upon receiving his portion dances around the room, whirling his tin plate on the tip of his thumb. While passing the correspondent, he pauses, dips his nose into the plate and seizes a potato in his jaws, baring his yellow teeth.

  Whitty has attended to the patterer’s yarn carefully, partly for lack of an escape, partly not to give offence, but increasingly from mounting interest – and the smell of a series.

  ‘I don’t mind saying it, Mr Whitty, business could be better. People are more choosy like – they demands more and more of the nasty particulars.’

  ‘I agree with you, Mr Owler. It is getting so that the news is not driven by facts, but by the fickle taste of the reader.’

  ‘Fickle is the word, Sir. Mark you, Hollet was an exemplary fiend, but he wasn’t good business because the wictim was a parson – that put people off the enjoyment of it. Surrell was no go either, not salt to a herring. I put much hope on ‘The Horrid and Inhuman Murder committed by T. Dory on the body of Jael Denny’, a most shocking thing, worked it every which way – but she didn’t take. The weather coopered her, nobody was out on the streets as had a penny to keep warm. There went a shilling’s worth of half-sheets, straight into the stove. Under such circumstances, I tell you, Mr Whitty, one can lose respect for the truth.’

  Furtively, the correspondent opens his chemist’s packet, wets his forefinger and collects the last granules of powder, which he rubs into his gums for the taste and the pleasant sensation of numbness. ‘Sir, there’s not a correspondent in London who hasn’t embellished a story for the sake of a commission. I have succumbed myself, I am ashamed to say.’

  ‘You don’t say, Sir! I am shocked to hear it!’

  How familiar, thinks Whitty, to circulate a cock for the week’s rent, then rediscover one’s principles the following Monday. Indeed, if he were to close his eyes (and nose), he might imagine himself speaking with a colleague at Plant’s.

  ‘Take the Liverpool Tragedy, now – wery attractive. Bless me, it saved me and my girls from shivering on the streets many a long, cold night. Do you recollect the tale?’

  ‘Indeed. A son comes home from the Indies after thirty years, having married a rich plantation owner’s daughter. The young man rents a room in the lodge operated by his parents, meaning to surprise them in the morning. Mother finds gold in his trunk and cuts his throat while he sleeps.

  ‘This young man he was a sailor,

  Just returned from sea;

  Down to Enfield Chase he went,

  His parents for to see;

  Little knew that bloody night -

  Would seal his destiny.’

  ‘Well remember’d, Sir! The old woman severs head from body while the old man places a washing-tub under the bed to catch the blood – these details is stunningly wivid: she washed ’er bloody hands, and then, so that the blood might not lead to detection, drank it!’

  ‘Then comes the twist. On the morning after the murder they go upstairs …’

  ‘And they discover the birthmark. Sometimes it is a tattoo.’

  ‘The telltale mark! Exactly!’

  ‘They have killed their own son! In agony, they put an end to their existence …’

  ‘As I heard it, by swallowing lye.’

  ‘Could be, could be – although self-immolation by fire is fly as well. Once I put my pipe in my pocket and burned the papers by mistake. Sold them as fresh from the fire what killed ’em, with nary a soul contradicting me.’

  ‘Fraser of Dodd’s took the train all the way to Liverpool to verify that one. Scoured the public record, found neither a coroner’s report nor record of a double suicide since 1795.’

  ‘Your Fraser is a fool, Sir. The thing is a total cock and everyone in England knows it.’

  ‘He is not my Fraser, I assure you.’ Indeed, Fraser has outrun him on many a lead; more, seemingly, of late. ‘Tell me, Mr Owler, have you done William Weare?’ So saying, Whitty quotes another verse from memory, much-loved as a boy:

  ‘His throat they cut from ear to ear,

  His brains they punch-ed in;

  His name was Mr William Weare,

  Wot lived in Lyon’s Inn.’

  ‘Indeed, Sir, I can see you have an eye for the best. Still does rattling business, especially in the country places.’

  And now, having set the bait, Whitty springs the trap, though somewhat loathe to take advantage of such a simple soul: ‘Another stunning cock might be the verses concerning your Chokee Bill,’ he says, and watches as the jab finds its mark.

  Owler reddens and is momentarily at a loss for words. ‘Touché, Sir. A good cut. But mark me carefully, for there’s a crucial difference. Readers don’t come from China, Sir, they knows what’s what. Take the Liverpool Tragedy, now: ain’t a particle of it ever existed; I knows it, you knows it, they knows it.’

  ‘Everyone except Fraser, seemingly.’

  ‘But do you see, Sir? The story sells on its merit purely as a yarn, not from curiosity for the true particulars of something partially known. Whereas with Chokee Bill, there being hard facts in the public record, the author is held to a higher standard: he must offer the excitement of a stunner with the integrity of hard fact. Can you see the distinction, sir, or are you that keen to discredit me?’

  ‘I certainly do. Touché yourself, Mr Owler.’

  ‘Christopher Walden came off badly for just that reason.’ Mr Walden were stingy in the fact department. Mind that there was no sorrowful lamentation nor shocking testimony offered by me – not for want of trying, let me tell you, pursued the thing like a terrier, sunk my capital in the turnkey, arrived with pencil and paper day after day to listen to Walden blubber his excuses, to get the Last Confession down on kite, don’t you see? Walden was not forthcoming. Yet even so, I did not resort to a cock. I rooted for facts to the end, stood right under the drop waiting for him to clear his conscience before leaving this here wale of tears – and what was his last words on the brink of eternity? “I have nothing to say to you, Reverend. Thank you for your interest.” Horse shite!

  ‘To be sure, other stationers was bellowing his Last Words before the breath was out of his body, but I had none of it. A man deals in truth or fiction, Sir, one does not mix the two.’

  ‘I am not certain many journalists would exhibit your integrity, Mr Owler, were they similarly cornered by circumstance.’

  ‘I admit the integrity was stretched thin. Fortunately, like Providence answering my prayer, Jeremy here produced an acquaintanceship with Chokee Bill, with new particulars. It was the thing we’d prayed for, me and the girls.’

  ‘How did Mr Hollow acquaint himself with such a notorious fellow?’

  To Whitty’s surprise, the inert gentleman across the table speaks in a distant, weak voice; the open mouth does not perceptibly move.

  ‘It was several years ago. A serendipitous occurrence …’

  ‘Good to see you alert, Jeremy.’

  ‘Only resting, Henry, after the unaccustomed repast. Indeed, a cup of tea might revive me further …’ Obediently, Owler signals the crone at the stove for tea, one for the poet and another for himself, Whitty abstaining.

  After a luxurious sip of the steaming, blackish beverage, Mr Hollow continues: ‘It happened several years ago, when my “Demon of the Sea” had attracted considerable attention. I had prospects, definite prospects, though even then my income was not what I should have liked – has it ever been? Ac
cordingly, I had taken up residence in a dismal padding-ken frequented by the lowest characters. Unknown to myself, a group of coiners had set up operation in the garret over my head. One of these coiners was William Ryan – the man who would, years after, become known as Chokee Bill.’

  Whereupon Whitty’s interest takes on a new intensity.

  ‘Mind, I spoke to the man no more than once in my life. Our association was pure chance. Returning from my day’s work, near Seven Dials I recognized an inspector and two crushers gathered on a corner with an eye to my lodgings. Ordinarily I should not have interfered, for it was none of my business. But this was in the days when coining was a hanging offence. Rather than see a young man hanged when I could have it otherwise, I climbed to the garret by the outside wall. I warned Mr Ryan of the danger and informed him of a hiding-place nearby, wherein he might place his materials in case he was apprehended in flight; for as you know, sheer possession of coining apparatus was a capital offence then. I had learned of this place from an uncle in the business of small loans.’

  Mr Hollow takes a sip of his tea, wincing at its bitterness. ‘The Pelican In Her Piety, gentlemen. Feeding her young with her own blood. Her own blood!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Sir,’ says Whitty, ‘but you have lost me there.’

  ‘Nor did I see the meaning of it then. I who pretended to be a poet …’ The sightless eyes now glisten as though attracted by some faraway object.

  To the correspondent it seems that the man is raving: ‘Mr Owler, I confess I am at a loss.’ In reply, the patterer puts up his hand, calling for patience.

  ‘Mr Ryan and his colleagues made good their escape,’ continues Mr Hollow, picking up the thread as if he had not dropped it. ‘Through the window and over a roof. I emphasize that the hiding-place was of great value. Indeed it was a holy place, for it brought about Mr Ryan’s resurrection.’ The poet laughs, making a dry click in the back of his throat.

  ‘Mr Ryan must have been grateful.’

  ‘Never saw the fellow again. Such a man reduces everything to money, that is the essence of a coiner. They are a separate breed from you and I.’

  ‘Coiners are taking over the world,’ adds Owler.

  ‘Twenty years later, a chaunt went about the Holy Land that a William Ryan had gone up as Chokee Bill. Thought I: Thus might Mr Ryan repay me, the stranger who gave him an additional twenty years of life. Thus might I, in turn, repay Mr Owler for many kindnesses …’ The voice recedes down a hallway as Mr Hollow falls back into slumber.

  ‘So you see, Mr Whitty, thanks to Jeremy here I thought I had another Rush on me hands. By means of a turnkey with whom I had an association over the Walden affair, I gains access to Ryan. He remembers Mr Hollow, and pronounces himself willing to repay his debt of honour before leaving this wale of tears.’ Here Owler begins to recite from memory:

  In vain he repents, with no friend to whom he can communicate private thoughts and in return receive consolation. Hence his nervous system is fast breaking down, every day rendering him less able to endure the excruciating torments he is hourly suffering, haunted by remorse heaped upon remorse, every fresh victim Chokee Bill were required to strangle being so much more fuel heaped upon the mental flame what scorches him …

  ‘The man sounds in a bad way.’

  ‘No, he claims innocence, as you know.’

  ‘How inconvenient for everyone concerned.’

  ‘I remain optimistic that remorse will get the better of him as the big day nears.’

  ‘For your sake, I hope so.’

  ‘Werily, and a white-knuckle business it is.’

  Whitty’s neck prickles, indicating the presence of crisp copy. Skilfully handled, an association with lowlife such as this could be his ticket to solvency – the story being not about Chokee Bill per se (who loses all currency on the day William Ryan is hanged), but about the patterer and the wretches with whom he associates, their occupations, habits, loves …

  Envisage the patterer as a native guide conducting respectable readers through the jungles of Africa. Envisage a series of articles (entitled, perhaps, ‘How The Other Half Lives’) concerning the savages who infest that dark country within the country, which respectable Englishmen regard with fascination, yet would no more willingly enter than they would visit a nest of crocodiles.

  In Whitty’s mind, the Holy Land transforms from a jungle into a garden, whose riches yield a book, a tour of public lectures – not to mention the possibility of a debt-free existence – financial and otherwise. Assuming (admittedly a precipitous assumption) that he can interest the Editor and his grim cabal in the narrative he intends to undertake, convince The Falcon that his thematic point is sufficiently sharp as to prick the public fancy, he has every chance of a healthy stipend …

  Owler’s fist pounds the table, jolting the correspondent to alertness. ‘Werily, Sir, I swear on the memory of me mother that I’m not done with Mr Ryan yet! Is it reasonable that a man should take such pains as to make another man a figure of legend, walk mile upon mile in the rain to do it, and get hardly a ha’penny for his labour? It cannot be thought on! When the wile and inhuman murderer takes his last walk, I shall be paid my just claims!’

  ‘Mr Owler, after hearing your account I think I can be of service to you. More than by a simple retraction.’

  ‘How is that, Sir? Heaven knows I am open to suggestion.’

  ‘You mentioned the fleeting nature of public interest, the unhelpful incursions of professionals such as myself; yet I may be in a position to come to your aid. If you were to take me to meet this party known as Chokee Bill, thereby to witness your interaction with him, I might whet the public interest for you, while attesting to the veracity of your report.’

  ‘Sir, that would be most agreeable to myself.’

  So begins an association between two gentlemen of utterly divergent background and taste. Thus do human beings, out of pure self-regard, come to rely on one another. However implausible – nay, inappropriate – the prospect may have once seemed, a connection, indeed a society, is born.

  11

  Chester Path

  Owing to the genius of the architect Mr Nash, the town-house occupied by the Harewood family faces onto Regent’s Park, providing the property with maximum exposure to the Outer Circle and the gardens beyond, while turning its back on the less favourable addresses to the rear: Gustavus and Stanhope Streets, to say nothing of Market Square, with its stench of old fish and rotting vegetables.

  Regent’s Park expresses in abundance the traditional English love of nature, the requirement of a semblance of the countryside even in the city. Indeed, looking outward from the front entrance of Harewood Manor, one could be situated on a manicured country estate, scrupulously maintained by an army of gardeners. Seen from behind, however, Chester Path is a blank shield of whitewashed masonry. Homeowners on Chester Path are further protected against intrusion from below by a grid of ironwork fences and gates, each with its own key; which effectively prevented lesser citizens from making use of the park unless by trudging all the way down to Euston Street. Thus can a property become a public facility and a private luxury all at once.

  At the same time, there exists a connection between the impeccable house on Chester Path and the worst rat-holes off St Giles High Street – a connection between the investor and the source of revenue, the proboscis and the host.

  A mile away in the parish of St Giles, eighty per cent of the houses in the Church Lane quarter (near which Whitty, Owler and the poet took their frugal repast) are owned by precisely eight people. All of these, excepting the Duke of Bedford, live in the area of Regent’s Park. All are related by blood and marriage, this family of freehold, whose agents rent entire streets to lesser proprietors, who rent to managers, who rent by the room, and on down to parties who rent part of their bed to people with nothing.

  Perched near the middle of the pyramid (though nowhere near its pinnacle, the Duke of Bedford being a cousin of the Queen) are the Harewo
ods, whose holdings in the Holy Land are of such long standing, and whose leases are so secure, as to comprise, in effect, a massive, obscure annuity, the source of which has been long forgotten.

  Once reduced to a dividend, all money looks and smells the same. There remains no lingering odour to trouble the investor.

  This ethic of insulation from the source of one’s existence is expressed in the decoration of the house on Chester Path, its windows draped in successive layers, each providing protection, symbolic and real, from the coarser elements of the city. Seen from the outside, though packed with family and servants, Chester Path appears as bereft as a tomb.

  It is behind such successive tiers of protection that the respectable, well-situated family stores its women, so that their sensibilities may be sheltered, their morals untainted by the rotten world.

  Clara Greenwell is the daughter of the elder Harewood’s sister – who, naturally, did not inherit; nor did she marry well. Thus inadequately provided for, Clara eagerly accepted her Uncle Miles’s invitation to enjoy his protection, thereby to capture the affections of her cousin Reginald (or one of his friends), thereby to assume the birthright denied her.

  To this end, once a week Clara is at home to visitors; it is a special day for which she makes herself even prettier than usual, to entertain the compliments of any young gentlemen who might bother to call; chaperoned of course.

  Which is not to suggest any indecision on her part as to whom she intends to marry. But Reggie has not yet proposed. It is a foolish woman who places all her eggs in one basket.

  Walter Sewell alights from the cab on the Outer Circle and crosses to the iron gate, noting the rustle of an upstairs curtain. Clara has been watching for his arrival, in the way that one might anticipate the postman.

  There is no question in Sewell’s mind that Reggie must marry somebody, and that, all things considered, it will have to be Clara. He accepts this. Aware that Clara and Reggie were meant for one another, Sewell, in his own interest, invested no small effort in persuading Clara that he had fallen a bit in love with her himself, the better to put her at her ease, to satisfy both her vanity and her preference for control.