He notes that the gentleman acting as referee is none other than the proprietor of the Crown, presiding over a spectacle which in any other location would appear outrageous and bizarre, but which seems in this quarter to be a piece of acceptable entertainment.
The audience sets up a cheer as the two women fly at one another with that natural feminine inclination to tear and claw.
Capital. His timing has been perfect. Fifteen minutes after the hour, on the Saturday when the clerks about Fleet Street and Temple Bar receive their meagre stipends. Thus unchained from their scriveners’ desks, their quill pens pried from ink-blackened fingers, they venture outside their prisons and proceed directly to the drinking-houses, divans and gaming-parlours, there to expunge a week of skull-sucking tedium with gin and ale, their consequent hangovers to see them through the interminable emptiness of the Lord’s Day. All of this has been carefully planned on his part, which excellent timing is now augmented by circumstance – for who could predict or expect to have the additional distraction of a prize-fighting match between two Amazons?
Surely it is a sign that God smiles upon his errand.
He enters the Crown only to discover that, such is the lure of the outside entertainment, the place has emptied save for a scattering of nearly insensible customers at the bar and at tables. Without effort he instantly recognizes the young lady with the insolent tongue (Why don’t you go and pork your little fat friend? – his cheeks still burn at the thought of it), seated at the table facing the dance floor, her back to a pillar, its elaborate Corinthian finial dripping over her head like a tropical tree. Thinks he: Some men might find her to be a pretty little thing with her hair parted in the centre, in a dress which has been made from many dresses. He, however, can recognize such vanity as an indication of a woman’s overweening pride, her contempt for her station.
He thanks God to have been blessed with the quality of indeterminateness, a generality of countenance enhanced by a head of prematurely thinning hair – the forehead of a forty-year-old atop the face of a toddler. His fleshy countenance, lacking the definition afforded by prominent bones, can alter its aspect according to circumstance, so that it is unlikely to be identified from one casual interaction; which cultivation of changeable vacuity he augments with a wardrobe selected for its invisibility, its colours approximating the soot, rust and mud of the city; he tops his average coat with an average top hat, so that even his height is a matter for uncertainty.
And there is the advantage of knowing that the Mr Roo she anticipates is an entirely different gentleman.
Thus attired and with an expression of general affability, he steps across the empty dance floor and seats himself at a table whose only other occupant is asleep. He is now mere steps away from his prey, having attracted only the most cursory notice.
Notwithstanding his successful entrance, however, he senses danger. A flash of heat strikes his right cheek, causing it to redden while his left cheek remains cold; he turns casually toward the barkeeper and signals for two cups of hot spiced gin; it is some few moments before he can attract the man’s attention, during which time he puts a face to the danger: the gentleman huddled over his ale, glancing too frequently in the direction of the girl by the pillar, as though having made a resolution not to let her out of his sight.
Whitty. Wouldn’t you know. The dissipated scribbler who came to the hanging. Not a gentleman’s occupation – but of course Whitty is no gentleman. In all probability he means to serve as her accomplice in blackmail, for no Haymarket judy would muster the strength of purpose to launch such an enterprise on her own. A ticklish position to be sure, but it remains playable, for Whitty has not yet recognized him in return – indeed, has not glanced in his direction. Thus assured, with his back to the correspondent he collects his gin from the barkeeper, returns to an inconspicuous table, and waits.
There is a trick a man in spectacles can do. People assume such a man to be looking straight through his lenses, when it may not be the case. Thus, no matter how bad his sight, a man may observe the population of a room unnoticed through the corner of his eye, collect valuable impressions, and be thus at an advantage.
The young lady displays a winsome appearance: with her small, symmetrical features and the smooth arch to the brow, hers is an English, unobtrusive sort of beauty – which guise serves to conceal her low birth and animal cunning. Note that she pretends to be reading from a book: a clever touch, as is the gin before her which she seems not to sip.
Upon closer viewing, he can see her for what she really is.
There! Note the turn of the mouth, the determined – not to say ruthless – set of the jaw. Discern the contempt in the line of the forehead; and upon close inspection, see in her small features, despite their seeming harmony, that nibbling, rodent-like aspect. Take note of her hands, now that she has made the mistake of removing her gloves: see how the little claw grasps the book, while the forefinger of the other taps a tattoo upon the table, apparently at her ease.
For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face …
Were she to know, even as also she is known, he is certain she would fly at him like a bat.
The additional challenge – the presence of his college acquaintance across the floor – does not substantially alter the position, only the sequence and timing. And there will be no need to give her gin.
He waits without touching either cup. Outside he hears a chorus of hooting as a blow is struck, and a minute later a monstrous, extended cheer, which signals the end of the bout, for it is the sound of men delighted by a violent result. Warming his hands with a cup of gin, he listens to the babble outside and forms his plan – or rather, his instinctive course of action, for when one trusts in God one cannot rightfully be said to plan.
As expected, suddenly the doors explode inward and a thick swarm of clerks re-enter in an almost liquid rush of wool coats and hats; the room resonates with the click of walking-sticks, and the jocular palaver of satisfied gentlemen eager to savour their satisfaction, to relive it and comment upon it and commemorate it, then to sniff about for other entertainment.
‘I beg your pardon, Miss. I am aware that we have not been introduced. My name is Mr George Stanley. If I may I be so bold, I believe you have advertised an object which is of more than passing interest to a certain gentleman …’ So saying, he bows, placing his gloved fingers together before him in a way that makes him appear like a small, timid animal, positively the last creature on earth to give offence.
‘Please forgive my disturbance of your repose, Miss. However, if you might please accompany me very briefly …’ He feels his cheeks redden, yet it is from intensity of purpose and not from shyness, as she must certainly suppose. He adjusts his coat collar – though he is not chilly, for he is wearing two scarves.
The effect of his continuous, nervous patter is to set the scene in such a way that it is he who seems threatened by her and not the reverse; in the meanwhile he reaches tentatively with one hand, which she shakes out of politeness (but which he knows to be pure guile), not wishing to arouse his suspicion by appearing suspicious of him – especially given his evidently timorous nature.
‘Dreadfully sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss. I should have arrived earlier but for the appalling business going on outside. Did you see it? Unimaginable, to think of such an outrage occurring not a mile from the Palace.’
Taking her arm, he helps her to her feet. Momentarily at a loss as to the appropriate response, she stands hesitantly, then silently agrees to accompany him, not through a decision having occurred, but in the way that water proceeds on a downhill course, it being the least resistant. He guides her quickly into the crowd, sidling crab-like against the tide of wool converging upon the bar for drink. The ambience of the Crown has turned to bedlam with the sudden crush and the undifferentiated din, as a further cluster of gentlemen enter, with the two pugilists straddled upon their shoulders, their faces and breasts wrapped with bloo
d-soaked towels.
It is as if he and the young woman have gone to sleep and are now in a dream together, in which they move with exaggerated slowness through a mass of humanity, which closes around them like water.
‘And where is the gentleman, Sir?’ she asks with affecting innocence. ‘For I have promised my protectors that I should not venture outside alone.’ In truth, she has good reason to be prudent, for the street is all but deserted. The only human presences are the impoverished grotesques who loiter next the buildings opposite, hardly visible outside the ragged perimeter of gaslight that spills from the Crown, awaiting the opportunity to cadge or to rob some befuddled reveller on his way home.
‘Very wise of you, Miss,’ he says, and the assurance in his voice contrasts with the furtiveness displayed earlier. For it is only at these moments that he chooses to reveal his true strength.
‘Sir, since I don’t see the acquaintance of whom you speak, I believe I shall return inside.’ At this he almost laughs, for seldom has he encountered such a shrewd one as this little witch. He reminds himself that this is not the time to show persuasive meekness; now is the time to show persuasive force.
‘Indeed, Miss, his carriage will be along presently – a yellow phaeton, actually.’ He speaks to her in a tone designed to create confidence in the stability of the situation, that all is well and all will be well. ‘My friend is exceedingly well-born and well-known, as you yourself have shrewdly ascertained, and should be greatly harmed were it understood that he kept such company, in an area such as this. In return for your understanding and discretion in this matter, he is prepared to pay far more than you might have previously assumed. In fact, he has authorized me to present you with a gift, a small token – a family heirloom, don’t you see. Utterly priceless …’
So saying, he guides her gently but firmly by the arm a few steps through the dense fog, the way one guides a recalcitrant child, further into Cat-and-Wheel Alley, to the secluded doorway of an abandoned lodging-house, where they may discuss matters without interruption by any human traffic which might issue to or from the Crown.
‘Sir, I must insist on proceeding no further – indeed, your grip on my arm is hurting me.’
‘Oh Heavens, where are my manners? Might I persuade you at least to step into this doorway so that I might present you with the small present I mentioned – which, I am certain, an assessment would value at no less than twenty shillings.’
‘I don’t know that I want your present, Sir.’ Her tone of unease causes him to smile to himself, for there is nothing so delightful as the moment when they suspect that all is not as it should be.
‘Actually, it is a scarf,’ he whispers, controlling his excitement, the blood rushing to his loins in the anticipation of what is coming, while removing the white silk gentleman’s scarf from about his neck and bestowing it around hers.
‘I don’t want it, Sir,’ she says, trembling slightly. As his eyes adjust to the light he can make out the white face, the white scarf, the eyes widened like a small animal in the presence of a superior predator – utterly delicious!
‘Oh but you deserve it, Miss. You do.’ So saying, he wraps the scarf gently twice around her throat. And begins to pull.
‘A pity there isn’t a glass for you to see yourself in, Miss, for your new scarf looks so very pretty on you. But is it a bit snug? Does it chafe you somewhat? I’m sorry, but I cannot hear you. I can hardly understand a word you say. What lovely eyes you have – so wide, with not a trace of a squint! And how rosy your cheeks are becoming! Do I make you blush? Do I? Does my touch inspire certain urges? Do I excite you to indecent longing? Do I cause you to grow faint?’ He pulls harder, while crooning on about how pretty she is, although in truth he cannot see her face for the fog and dark (a compliment to a lady is an acceptable untruth); applying ever greater pressure to the coiled silk scarf while inwardly marvelling at the sound of his own voice, the way it grows deeper and richer – as though the strength she loses accrues to him.
Delirious with the pleasure of utter command, he prepares to execute (appropriate appellative!) the final twist, in concert with his own spasms of pleasure, then to perform the little ritual that follows, in which he will cut off her nose to spite her face …
Inexplicably, seen only as a vague blur in the corner of his eye, her hand moves beneath her dress and now she leaps upward in a sudden sidewise motion, and suddenly it is as though his face has been inexplicably soaked with water.
O Heavens! It is not water, but blood! Blood!
A knife glints in her hand as she collapses backward with the now loosened scarf about her neck, while he reels in the opposite direction, his back striking against the stone wall of the doorway. Blood! The smell and stickiness of it, pouring over his cheeks and eyes! Blood!
He grows sick to his stomach and vomits, turning sideways not to foul his clothes – except that his coat is now soaked and greasy. Summoning his courage, he gently probes the wound with his fingers — a long, deep gash running from just above the eye almost to the jaw. It is all he can do to keep from fainting.
The girl! Where is the girl? In the initial shock – occurring as it did right at the climax – he released her and she fell, but where? Unable to see, groping with his hands, he feels for her on the stone steps where he left her – and, O God in Heaven, she has escaped!
He cannot see properly, for his fingers, in probing the wound which continues to gush, smeared his spectacles and fouled his eyes with the sticky, metallic substance; even so, through some primitive sensory apparatus he detects a presence, standing nearby – is it she? Is there hope? Please God, let it be she! With no further thought he lunges in the direction of the figure who is surely standing just a few feet to his left, and – O horror! It is a man, stinking with the most odious filth, who now holds him by the front of his coat while pouring fetid breath upon his open wound! Desperately he works himself free of the hands, wriggling and twitching like a small animal (tearing his coat), while gouging the eyes with his thumbs, for which he is rewarded with a roar of pain and a fresh dose of foul odour – and he is free.
And blind! In the struggle, his spectacles have fallen to the ground, and he cannot find them because his eyes are filled with blood! In this hysterical condition Walter Sewell flees into the foggy dark, looking for all the world like a giant decapitated fowl.
When the crush of excited drinkers has dispersed sufficiently that he may move from his place at the corner of the bar, it is a moment before Whitty truly comprehends the meaning of the empty table by the column; momentarily it is as if some feat of prestidigitation has occurred and she has disappeared by the touch of a wand, which gaping vacuity of disbelief is replaced by anger, as though the entire population of the Crown has conspired against them, which anger is overcome by dread, rising from the pit of his stomach, a dread the like of which he has never before felt in his life.
When he first devised this role for Phoebe to play, it was in the interests of uncovering a scandal – a young man of good family (against whom he holds a grudge), engaged in unspeakable acts; and, not incidentally, in the interests of keeping Owler’s young lady out of harm’s way. And yet, what if …
Blast!
Even in moments of journalistic excess, two sources of general terror obtain: the possibility that somebody might actually perform some frightful deed, or suffer some dreadful injury, as a result of the reading or misreading of the correspondent’s text; the possibility that he has made a dreadful mistake, with similarly injurious consequences. For indeed, truth to tell, far more evil is perpetrated on this earth through negligent stupidity than through conscious ill-doing. Hang the incompetents and set the murderers free, and London would be the better for it …
Having recruited Phoebe to his purpose, at this moment the correspondent would gladly place the noose about his own neck.
Now he is running madly through the clutch of dancers with such force that one couple staggers into a table, overturning it and sh
owering its outraged occupants with gin. He throws open the doors and plunges into the gaslit fog of Cranbourne Alley: it is all he can do not to scream at the glowering emptiness of it, this dank, stinking hole in the pit of the universe, bereft of life or hope, where exists not the faintest glimmer of beauty which is not to be instantly snuffed out. Surely it is not necessary to die in order to go to Hell.
At first he adjudges the figure coming out of the fog to be a will-o’-the-wisp, a ragged creature such as frequents the moors of Yorkshire, wailing for the dead; for indeed it is wailing, a sound of primeval distress. His second vision is of a looming tragedy, that he is to take her in his arms only to watch her die of whatever the Fiend has done to her. And then it is all nothing, nothing but this moment in which he is holding this keening young woman – who would not hold her? – wearing a white silk scarf from Henry Poole’s.
He tastes her salt tears upon his lips. ‘Did you see him, Phoebe, dear? Did you see him?’ Even after the unprecedented desperation of the past few moments, Whitty cannot resist the awareness that the Fiend is receding even as he speaks.
‘Might you recognize him if you saw him again?’
‘Anybody will recognize him now,’ she replies.
46
The Holy Land
Somebody is following him. More than one. He knows this, although he can see nothing; a sensation down the nape of the neck and across the shoulders. He must remove himself from the area at once, for she will alert the Metropolitan Police, who will surround him, for that is the purpose which the Peelers serve best – as a human retaining wall. St Giles will become a ratting-pit in reverse – with a horde of dogs in pursuit of a solitary rodent. He imagines a circle of top-hatted sporting gentlemen, peering at him from above the rooftops, looming over him with intense interest, waiting for the kill.
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