The Fiend in Human

by John MacLachlan Gray

  It is some moments before Whitty can discern what is happening, and that the voice is that of Mr Hollow. The distance of the voice lends an abstracted presence, something like the speech of a ventriloquist’s puppet:

  ‘My purpose here is to remind my brethren of this: notwithstanding that the offences of which the gentleman stands accused offend all Christian decency and civilized practice, that they have occasioned untold injury to persons present, still a man is innocent until shown otherwise; moreover his offence, if such there be, must be regarded as an offence, not to any person present, but to Her Majesty the Queen. I say this as one who has more reason than many to wish him ill. God save the Queen, Gentlemen! We will be governed by duty, and not rage, justice, and not revenge …’

  Whitty listens in amazement. Provided one kept one’s eyes and nostrils closed, the oration underway could be taking place in the House of Lords, declaimed by a senior eminence with the ministerial drone of a Methodist.

  Covering the lower part of his face with his handkerchief to ward off the miasma present, Whitty glances at his protector, who seems unbothered and at ease: ‘I say, old man, how do you bear the odour?’

  ‘I have no sense of smell,’ replies Stunning Joe. ‘It was the Sweeney match what did it.’

  ‘May I say that at present I envy you.’

  ‘In my work it has advantaged me greatly. I can view the contents of a man’s stomach without a qualm.’

  Now Mrs Organ stands and speaks – whose air of dominance seems to possess some ancient root; indeed, the degree of deference accorded to the crone is not unlike that of an ancient village for the pronouncements of a witch. ‘You may speak now, young master,’ she says to the gentleman in the chair. ‘What say you, Sir, to the charge what has been laid before us here, for which you have been marked by blood and seen by witnesses?’

  At the sound of her voice, the young gentleman looks up as though dazzled by some bright light, into which he squints with effort. In the meanwhile, the muttering of the crowd in attendance grows tentative and silent, indicating a willingness to wait and listen.

  Whispers the publican: ‘Do you recognize the fellow?’

  ‘Oxford man. I was acquainted with him once – only slightly, for we were not part of the same set.’

  ‘So much for the benefits of a higher education.’

  Indeed, on witnessing Sewell’s bewildered, inarticulate condition Whitty feels a sort of misplaced pity, like the empathy one might experience for a blind hedgehog – which, having destroyed a vital crop, now finds itself in the open, cornered, and facing the ruined farmer.

  The young man moistens his lips in order to speak, at first without success; his mouth seems muffled and dry, as though stuffed with salt biscuits.

  ‘I wish to say … I wish to say …’ He stops in mid-statement, surprised anew by the position in which he finds himself. Now he continues:

  ‘No. Not possible. By which I mean to say that it is not right. I mean to point out that, with all due respect …’

  Whereupon his small eyes widen as though a sudden inspiration has struck his mind. ‘May I remind you that I am a fellow Englishman, of … of, with no disrespect intended … a distinguished family. It is not right that I be placed in judgement other than by … by … other than by a forum of my peers. That is the way of it, duly assembled, which is to say a court of the Queen’s Bench, by authority of the Crown of England. I therefore request in the strongest possible terms …’

  Here he pauses, overcome with alarm: ‘Police! Help! Police! …’ cries the prisoner hysterically, as though he were the victim of a buzzing in Covent Garden, which volley of cries occasions a corresponding shower of mirth from his delighted audience.

  Notes the publican: ‘Your classmate is due for the school obituary, by my reckoning.’

  , In the meanwhile, the crowd settles back into an atmosphere of ritual solemnity.

  Comments the old woman: ‘The young mister makes a joke of himself, not of us. We know what we know.’ The timbre of her voice, cuts through the smoke as scissors cut through paper.

  ‘I only point out my position, Madam. By what authority——’

  ‘You are out of order, Sir. There is no crusher to beat back the horde, nor a daddy to purchase your rescue. You are here before the citizens of St Giles what has suffered injury, being the effects of the actions of which you stand accused. That be our concern, and our dominion, and it is authority enough.’

  ‘What Madam means to say, Sir,’ adds Mr Hollow, ‘is that we in the Holy Land can speak to the workings of the Metropolitan Police and the courts, to our eternal disadvantage. This is well known. Our confidence in those civic entities is of a restrained nature. Nor do you show yourself to advantage by invoking your membership in the quality, to we as have witnessed the quality at their leisure.’

  In response, a whisper erupts of extended agreement, like the rustle of a thousand palms rubbed together, accentuated by more pithy and quotable phrases, which combine into a ripple of seething voices, like hot soup:

  He’s a downy little jemmy.

  If the crushers nib him —

  He as never get the fecking gallows.

  Flam anything, they can.

  Fecking scurf!

  And my Jamie topped for passing snide!

  They gets transportation.

  Mizzle off to Canada.

  Hear what he done to them girls?

  Transport him to Hell!

  Which utterances receive answering murmurs of agreement, invisible in the smoke, yet audibly growing in intensity:

  Do the fiend now!

  A rat, a beast, a dabino!

  Stick him!

  Give him the chiv!

  See the colour of ’is guts, aye …

  Whereupon Owler steps forward to speak – it comes as no surprise to Whitty, to see the patterer master a gathering, to receive a challenge from the masses and respond with intelligence and force.

  ‘Be assured, Sir, that our court is rough, and we do not nose with the crushers … yet still you may rest assured that you will be dealt with fairly. Which must come as a comfort to you, Sir – unless it be the fairness itself which causes you worry, the thinking of the people, that you would prefer to hide beneath the skirts of the Queen. I ask you: Be it fairness or unfairness you seek for yourself?’

  A wave of delighted laughter from the public, followed by an echoing chorus of coughing – indicating that the trial may continue with the assent of all present. Whitty now understands how the French mob managed to try, convict and execute their gentry with such dispatch.

  ‘When the devil’s riddle be mastered,

  And the charnel-house stinks of a pope;

  We shall see the baronial bastard

  Kick heels with his throat in a rope.’

  Following this surprising and familiar recitation from someone in the crowd, the voice of the accused cuts through the babble: ‘Stop, please! I beg you, let me speak!’

  As though to trump the sudden silence there follows an unnaturally shrill wail from the young prisoner, which resonates both within and without the packed arena, while he rises unsteadily to his feet, watched closely by his black Irish wardens. Approaching the edge of the improvised stage in this atmosphere of tobacco and sheep-fat, the accused peers blindly about the room, breathing in little gasps. Now he looks down upon his coat and attempts to brush away the encrusted blood and vomit, as though dusting himself before entering the parlour. Having thus completed his toilet he looks up again – and is surprised anew. Now he licks his lips, grimacing at the taste of his own blood – which, upon looking at his hands, comes to him as a surprise.

  ‘I thank you, Sir, for your intervention on my behalf.’

  ‘Please do not, Sir,’ replies the patterer. ‘Nobody wants your thanks less than I.’

  At this the accused frowns somewhat, then turns to face the darkness, and enters his plea.

  ‘Forgive my rude outburst, Gentlemen, in no wise did I
intend to present a show of disrespect. Yet I beg you to place yourself in my position, and it will become clear that this assembly is unjust, and unworthy of Englishmen, which I know you to be. For at the least, I have not been accorded sufficient time to present you with the full circumstances of my case. Were I given a proper hearing, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have no doubt that you would conclude that, if I am guilty of anything, it is that I was too much the Englishman, too good to a friend, too loyal to my class, overly desperate to protect one whose name and reputation were about to be crushed by scandal. That I may be a fool, Sir, I readily agree. That I lack guile is without question. Yet I beg you, do not make me out to be a monster, but rather ask yourself what you might have done in my situation …’

  So speaks the prisoner, and with such a remarkable tone of earnest gravity that the public of St Giles becomes momentarily confused, unable to summon a clear picture of the actor and the deed he is supposed to have done, the form and the content. Thus does the speaker gain time, in the way that a man experienced in politics or fraud will, purely by dint of apparent sincerity, temporarily overcome the empirical evidence of the senses …

  ‘You are lying, Sir!’

  Another surprising turn of events. All eyes turn to the voice, the first of her sex to have spoken out from among the spectators; indeed, once recognized, the young woman is lent a spectral quality by association with her murdered friend, the more so with the feeble gas flame burning directly over her head, in the light of which, Phoebe, in her new dress of green velvet, appears virtually to glow in the dark.

  ‘I witnessed you, Sir. I stood before you. I looked in your eyes and I saw the bestial pleasure you took in what you were about to do. Murder and ravishment combined is what it was. So I say yes, Sir, you are indeed a monster.’

  ‘Foul strumpet, I shall not be judged by you! How could you presume to do so? What would you know about honour – that which is unclean cannot be made clean! How can you know what it is to suffer under the burden I carry?’ Here he turns to appeal to his unseen audience – whom, such being his deluded condition, he adjudges in some way sympathetic to his argument.

  ‘Gentlemen, I appeal to you as men of the world. I speak to you of nothing less than the spread of disease – of infection both moral and physical, to which women such as this are self-evidently prone, who will go on to infect good men such as yourselves in frightening numbers. As the Bible says, The harlot hast devoured thy life!’

  Cleave him up!

  Skin him and boil him!

  Like a fecking rooster!

  Sputtering these and other less charitable imprecations, the inflamed throng surges forward like a grey tide about to swallow up the prisoner, who now shrinks back in fear – all of which Whitty watches in mounting alarm, notwithstanding the capabilities of his escort.

  ‘Mr Banks, we must reach the young lady at once, for the position has grown exceedingly dangerous.’

  ‘Seemingly, Mr Whitty. But we have yet to hear from the personage in charge. The power of these hags is well known.’ So saying, the pugilist extends both arms in the shape of a wedge and begins to move forward with the stately indomitability of a locomotive, in the direction of the gas pipe with its feeble, flickering blue-and-yellow flame, followed as closely as humanly possible by the correspondent, greatly anxious not to lag behind, for each face he encounters in passing is like an artist’s variant on a theme of dangerous malevolence; upon encountering any one such individual of an evening (and here are hundreds!) the sane person changes direction, clutches his purse and runs for a Peeler …

  ‘Miss Phoebe,’ he says to the young lady, ‘Mr Whitty wishes to speak with you at once.’

  ‘Good evening, Gentlemen.’

  The correspondent notes the effect of this young woman upon the surrounding crowd – which, seen in the present context, might approximate the simultaneous appearance of Victoria, Miss Austen and Miss Kemble; it is she who is in her element, not the correspondent – and sad to say, when she looks up at Whitty it is no longer with the eyes of an infatuated girl.

  ‘Miss Phoebe,’ says Whitty, greatly agitated on all counts, ‘as I made clear to you, an innocent life is at stake. This man cannot simply ‘disappear’. To this combustible situation, I hoped you would provide water and not kerosene.’

  She leans forward to whisper: ‘I did what you asked me, Sir. Do you expect me to waltz in here in the company of the crushers? Do you wish me to write informer upon my forehead?’

  ‘If I may …’ The correspondent feels the weight of Mr Banks’s palm upon his shoulder. ‘I smell crushers about, who will not be bashful with their truncheons. It would be well for the three of us to move immediately hence.’

  ‘Quite,’ agrees the correspondent, who needs no further encouragement.

  He locks arms with the young woman and together the three proceed through the green double doors to the courtyard of Rosemary Lane. Before exiting the premises, however, Whitty casts a long look in the direction of the patterer, who executes a subtle nod in return. Nearby, the Fiend squints into the darkness, muttering to himself.

  Mr Hollow is nowhere to be seen.

  In the meanwhile, on Rosemary Lane the festoons of used clothing have disappeared from the cave-like shops, entrances barricaded with any material their owners can summon up, and the coster carts have likewise been taken to higher ground.

  However, at present the throng seems to have suddenly thinned with mostly beggars remaining, anyone able-bodied having been of a mind to exit the vicinity, with the look of preoccupation, the air of important business which is reflexively adopted by guilty men in the presence of the police.

  ‘There, Sir, do you see?’ whispers Mr Banks. ‘Surrounded by crushers we are – do you see them in the entrance to Grubb Alley?’

  Indeed, by peering vigilantly across the court Whitty discerns a vague outline: the distinctive top hat and tail-coat, its owner leaning inconspicuously against the wall; which collective presence is confirmed by the familiar and unwelcome voice at his shoulder.

  ‘Well, well, Sir. You are in the thick of things, I must say.’ Whitty feels the nudge of a familiar stick in the area of the kidney.

  ‘Mr Salmon. Always a pleasure.’

  ‘Whitty, you may present the police as a race of desk-mites, and yet we have been on top of your fair arse for many days.’

  ‘After the ministrations of your louts, I count myself fortunate to have any arse at all.’

  ‘You are fortunate to have a head. I warned you fairly that you were undermining police business, did I not, Sir?’

  So the coach was black, not blue.

  ‘Indeed, Sir,’ Salmon continues, ‘I cannot overestimate what a nuisance you have been.’ The under-inspector is nudging the correspondent’s kidney in earnest now, for emphasis; only the pugilist’s strong grip maintains Whitty in an upright position.

  ‘I think that is enough if you don’t mind, Mr Salmon,’ cautions Mr Banks.

  Upon recognizing the renowned publican, the under-inspector puts away his stick. ‘Very good, Mr Banks. Yet I assure you, this is a serious business. Certain statements by the gentleman have inflamed the public and impeded the course of justice.’

  Snaps the publican: ‘Not so, Sir. It was that ladies was topped, unacknowledged by yourselves, has impeded the course of justice. Deliberately unrecognized, Sir – such was your zeal to calm a fever and to hang a man.’ Mr Salmon holds his tongue, aware that his neck would be snapped, cause of death uncertain, by a single blow of that broken fist.

  ‘Gentlemen, in the present circumstance, let us not dwell upon these things,’ says Whitty, massaging his kidney with the tips of his fingers. ‘Let all of us return to our good work and resolve to be better men.’

  Stunning Joe Banks extends his arm to the young lady. ‘If you will accompany us, Miss Phoebe, I should be pleased to escort you back to the Crown, where I have a proposition for you.’

  ‘I am afraid I am not cut out for the work, Sir.’<
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  ‘That is not the work I have in mind, Miss. It is your perspicacity and intellect I wish to engage in an official capacity. I require an assistant, with an eye for who is a scoundrel and who is not. And, of course, for light clerical duties as well. Might such a position hold your interest?’

  ‘I shall need to speak to my father, of course,’ Phoebe says.

  In the meanwhile, the under-inspector has placed his face within inches of the correspondent, gripping his arm with one hand: ‘You blunderer, you still don’t know what you have done.’

  ‘Very well, Sir, please enlighten me.’

  ‘It is about the scarves.’

  ‘Yes. Made by Poole’s, all of them. Shocking, that you made so little of it.’

  ‘Not all of them, Sir. Not all the scarves were made by Poole’s. One was not. It was in for a penny, in for a pound, don’t you see. To hunt for one murderer only to lose another is not an acceptable proposition, as I am sure you will agree.’

  ‘I do not understand you, Sir,’ replies the correspondent.

  With a snort of contempt, the under-inspector turns and raises one arm – whereupon the Peelers swarm down Rosemary Lane and converge on Carrier Square like infantry, some heavily armed with weaponry, others with arms linked together, their combined effect being as a constricting human enclosure, in command of which Mr Salmon, tall and thin, like a whipping post in chin-whiskers and top hat, marches to the front of the communal kitchen, there to take charge of the whimpering figure of the Fiend in Human Form, seemingly unable to rise from his knees now that he lacks the support of his Irish escorts, who have surreptitiously left the building.

  Mrs Organ, the keeper of the stove, remains, proudly, in her position of unassailable authority. As the angular old woman nods curtly to the crushers in greeting, it is as though she is in charge of them and not the reverse.

  ‘How do you do, Mr Salmon? We have not seen you here in some time.’

  ‘And a good evening to you, Madam.’