A Fatal Likeness

by Lynn Shepherd

  “Well, Mr Charles, I wouldn’t say as she were a ‘lady,’ if you take my meanin’.” Billy’s cheek twitches, in the half ghost of a half wink. “Though she’s dressed a bit fancy for a ‘woman,’ I should say.”

  “Thank you, Billy. You may show her up here to the office. And perhaps you might consider giving the same degree of attention to the difference between a well-polished boot and a merely adequate one?”

  But sarcasm is lost on Billy, who simply grins and sidles back out of the room.

  When the door opens a few moments later, he would hardly have recognised her. A neat dark blue dress, a white lace collar, and a bonnet demure enough for a Sunday-school teacher.

  “Well,” he says, slightly lost for words, “you look—”

  “Respectable for once?” Nancy smiles. “Weren’t so ’ard. I ’ad all this stuff anyway. Used to be an ’ousemaid before I fell for Betsy and got chucked out on me ear. Comes in useful wiv blokes as wants to act out their little make-believe about doing the governess, and I aims to cater for all sorts. I can do the voice too, if I’ve a mind. Which is just as well, considerin’.”

  Charles pulls out the only other seat in the room and offers it to her, his manners modulating unconsciously to match her dress.

  “So what happened? Did it work?”

  Nancy nods. “Give that to yer—you knew exactly what rope to pull with that one.”

  “So you took the child with you?”

  Nancy smoothes her skirt. “Went one better. Stuffed a pillow up me petticoat and pretended I were in the family way. And I made sure Betsy was ’ungry, so there I was standing outside the ’ouse in the rain with a screaming child and me makin’ as if to faint away. The maid were down to fetch me in a trice. Took me into the front parlour and sat me down, then whisked off to get Betsy a glass a’ milk.”

  “And? What happened then?”

  “I ’ad a good look round the room like you said, but couldn’t see nuffin’ like a box of papers. Piles of books with words on ’em as must ’ave been foreign. And pictures too, though lots was stacked against the walls as if they’d just arrived—or were just goin’. But it were only a minute before the door opened and she were there.”

  “The servant?”

  “No, not ’er—the woman as owns the ’ouse. Well, not owns it as it turned out. She’s just rentin’.”

  Charles frowns. “Are you sure? There was no man there with her? No husband, or brother, or the like?”

  Nancy shakes her head. “Nah, not ’er. No weddin’ ring, that’s for certain. In fact I don’t fink she ’as a lot of use for men. Got the feelin’ she’d been let down once too often and decided she’d do better on ’er own. Lord knows I know ’ow she feels.”

  Charles studies her a moment, his brain absorbing this new revelation. He’d assumed without even thinking about it that the resident of Carlo Cottage would be a man—he may be getting the measure of Lady Shelley now, but even by her standards it seems gratuitously discourteous to have referred to a woman by her surname alone.

  “She were right taken wiv Betsy though,” continues Nancy. “Took ’er on ’er knee and made that much fuss of ’er. Said she’d brought up fifteen kids not ’er own, poor cow. And I fink I ’ave it tough.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure it was the right house?” It’s a stupid question, and the girl bridles, as if he’s implying the stupidity is hers.

  “ ’Course I am! And anyway, the maid used ’er name. Came in wiv a letter for ’er. Must ’ave been a bill because she looked right fretted by it. Put it to one side and said they could wait for their money. I didn’t know what exactly she meant but it seemed clear enough she were a bit strapped. And that’s when I got the idea.” She smiles at him, clearly delighted with herself. “Can’t you guess?”

  Charles shakes his head, more than a little apprehensive.

  “I said to ’er, did she know of anywhere that me brother could lodge for a week or so. Said ’e were comin’ back from a trip abroad and needed a place to stay for a while till ’e could find a place of ’is own. And Lord above she swallered it! Said she ’ad two spare rooms upstairs and ’e’d be welcome to come and ’ave a look at ’em. Said she couldn’t deny the cash’d come in ’andy. Asked a lot of questions, a’course—was me brother a respectable young man, what did ’e do for a livin’, and such like. But I laid it on pretty fick, and she lapped it up. I said ’e was eddicated, but ’e was a painter, so ’e was good wiv ’is ’ands and ’appy to do little jobs about the ’ouse. She’s only got the one maid and I could see there was a few bits and pieces needed doin’, even in that room, so I knew as that’d go down well.”

  She’s still smiling, clearly waiting to be congratulated for her cleverness, but Charles is being uncharacteristically dense. “I don’t see how that helps us, Nancy. Who is this brother of yours?”

  The girl laughs in loud delight. “Why you are, a’course!”

  He gapes at her. “Me?”

  Nancy claps her hands. “Genius, ain’t it? Even if I do say so meself. Now you can get in there and ferret about to yer ’eart’s content. Reckon I’ve earned the rest of that cash, and no mistake.”

  Charles reaches automatically for his pocket, still trying to come to terms with what she’s done. It is—on one level—a masterstroke, and part of him is impressed despite himself with her presence of mind. And as she says, there could be no better way than this to pursue his enquiries—both the covert and the overt, both the Shelleys’ mysterious agenda and his own. Only a month ago he’d have packed his bag this very afternoon, but how can he leave now, with Maddox as he is?

  Nancy has clearly divined his ambivalence. “I did all right, didn’t I? I mean, gettin’ you in there? Sorry about sayin’ as you were a painter, but I ’ad to fink on me feet, and sittin’ there wiv all those pictures it just came into me ’ead. And what wiv all ’em books bein’ foreign, it seemed to me she’d ’ave a fellow feelin’ for someone else as ’ad been travellin’.”

  Charles smiles as he hands over the coins. “You did a fine job, Nancy. Perhaps too good. It’s going to be a bit difficult for me to be absent at the moment, that’s all. My great-uncle is very unwell, and I don’t like to leave him.”

  “But you got all these people ’ere, aintcha? I mean, there’s that boy, and the old fella. And the girl too—that black one. She’s lookin’ after Betsy for me downstairs. Wondered for a minute about ’er, to tell the truth—she seemed not quite all there, if you know what I mean—but Betsy seemed to take to ’er all right.”

  “She can’t speak,” says Charles, blushing; a reaction Nancy no doubt duly notes and files away for possible future use. “Molly understands what you say, but she can’t reply. That’s what makes her seem—elusive. But that’s all it is—the child will be perfectly safe with her.”

  “Right then,” says Nancy, getting to her feet. “Best I be gettin’ back.”

  They stand facing each other for a moment, then she sticks out her hand, as if she feels they need to seal the episode in some formal fashion.

  “Nice doin’ business wiv yer, Mr Maddox. ’Ope I can be of use again. Easiest money I’ve come by in a long time.”

  He follows her out onto the landing and watches her go down the stairs, holding her skirt carefully as if she were indeed the lady she has been mimicking. Standing at the balustrade, he has a view down to the hall below, and he can see Molly on her knees on the floor playing with the child. Watching them, even for this tiny moment, he realises with a jolt that he has defined the girl in his own mind not just in silence but in stillness, whether in the kitchen, on the street, or in his bed. But now she is crawling about on the tiles like a child herself, rolling a ball of twine backwards and forwards as Betsy shrieks in glee and runs about her trying to catch it. And for the first time since Charles has known her, Molly is smiling. A luminous, almost exultant smile that is all the more intense for being private, and unobserved. He must have moved then, or cast a shadow, because su
ddenly she looks up and they stare at each other for a frozen moment, and the look on his face takes all expression slowly from her own. Then Nancy catches her daughter up in her arms, the front door opens, and the two of them disappear down the steps into the windy street.

  It takes Charles a good hour to convince himself that Nancy’s plan is practicable, and the next task thereafter is to convince Abel of the same. Though there, to his surprise, he meets no resistance. Stornaway clearly feels that the household can cope quite well without him. “Like I said, Mr Charles, the interests of yer clients must come first, and yer great-uncle would be proud of ’ee for thinking so.”

  Charles has the good grace to flush at this—he hasn’t told Abel of his recent researches, or that he plans to defraud, or at the very least deceive, these particular clients, and the old man’s honest openness puts him a little to shame. Only a little, though, because surely, he tells himself, Abel would understand. If he knew.

  “I’ll come back at least once a day.” He continues quickly, “To make sure all is well. And you’ll send for me at once, whatever the hour, if there’s any change? Of if my uncle takes a turn for the worse?”

  “Aye, I will. And you dinnae need to worry, Mr Charles. He and I managed on our own long enough, and now I hae Billy and the girl to help me. We’ll fare well enough for a few days, never ye mind.”

  Charles sighs. “Very well. In that case I will endeavour to persuade the lady in question to take me in. At least for a week or so, until I can find out what I need. Though I don’t mind telling you, Abel, the mere thought of being closeted in that tiny house with a sour old spinster is almost more than I can stomach.”

  It’s shortly after nine the following morning when Charles walks up the steps to Carlo Cottage and stops for a moment to take a breath before ringing the bell. He’d been worried he’d never pass muster as a painter, though Abel seems to think he will at least look the part (but if there is a veiled message there about the less-than-immaculate state of Charles’ hair and wardrobe, it completely passes him by). The door is opened by the same servant he saw in the street when he was last here.

  Charles touches his hat. “My sister was here yesterday and suggested I might call—”

  “Ah yes, sir,” she says brightly. “The mistress has been expecting you. Please come in.”

  She shows Charles to the same parlour Nancy must have sat in, and he too is struck at once by the impromptu, provisional look of the place. It looks—in fact—rather as his own attic room did until only a week or so ago, though like Nancy he cannot yet decide if this is the impermanence of moving out, or moving in. He has no talent for languages, as you perhaps remember, but it seems Nancy was right when she guessed that very few of the books here are in English—a number appear to be Russian, or some other language that uses the same alphabet, while most of the rest look to be Italian. The prints and pictures certainly are—the two hanging above the fireplace are views of Florence, and there’s a larger one propped against the far wall that shows the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius, a curl of smoke rising from the volcano’s crater into a clear Campanian sky.

  “Did you visit Italy? When you were travelling?”

  No sour spinster ever sounded like this. A voice the colour of honey—a rich music of a voice that seems to bubble with suppressed amusement, and when Charles turns round the woman before him is a conflagration of all his preconceptions. Shorter and slighter than he is, with smooth olive skin, and glossy black hair that shows no grey, though he guesses she must be—what—fifty? Even fifty-five? But it’s the eyes that have him. So drowning dark the iris and pupil melt together, and so brilliantly intense he can only meet her gaze a moment before he wants to look away. Only he can’t. Something about those eyes holds him and will not let him free, and all he can do in the end is nod and look gauche, and be all too uncomfortably aware of it. The woman, meanwhile, seems to be perfectly accustomed to the effect she is having; she looks at him briefly, her head on one side and that little ripple of amusement playing about her mouth, then offers him, with some panache, her hand.

  “It is such a beautiful country, is it not? Claire Clairmont. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  It is a name that may well be familiar to you, but it means nothing whatsoever to Charles. And he will not be alone, not in 1850, when the circumstances of Shelley’s private life are still largely unknown, and will remain so in some respects, even into the twenty-first century. Meanwhile, and for one absurd moment, Charles is considering kissing those proffered fingers—and wondering immediately how many other men have thought or done the same.

  “You will think me hopelessly frivolous,” she continues, shaking his hand. He can feel the barest pressure of her fingers through the bandage, but while she, for her part, cannot fail to notice it, she chooses to say nothing. “But I omitted to ask your sister your name.”

  “Charles,” he says with a smile, completely disarmed and ripe to be wrong-footed, “Charles Ma—”

  He stops, his cheeks blazing—how could he have been so stupid?

  “Mab,” he finishes lamely, knowing even as he says it that he’s merely compounded his mistake. “Charles Mab.”

  “Really?” She eyes him quizzically. “How very unusual. I’m not sure I have ever encountered a Mab before. At least not in everyday life.” She smiles again and motions him to a chair. “And you are a painter, Mr Mab?”

  Charles is by now so red about the face that there is little to do but flounder on and hope to retrieve himself. He nods.

  “And what sort of painter would you say you are?”

  He swallows; his throat is suddenly very dry. He can see the Bay of Naples behind her left shoulder.

  “Seascapes,” he says, in desperation. “Storms. Shipwrecks. That sort of thing.”

  Her face darkens. “I’m afraid I have no great love for the sea. And especially not in that character.”

  Another blunder, he thinks, cursing. Shipwrecks—for God’s sake! When anything even vaguely reminiscent of Shelley is the very last thing he should be broaching, and certainly not now, barely half an hour into the house.

  “But are you not now in a most difficult position?”

  He stares at her; has she really found him out so soon?

  “Well—”

  “I mean,” Claire Clairmont says gaily, “London is hardly the best place to pursue such subject-matter, surely? I cannot recall much in the way of shipwrecks on the Thames. Though admittedly, I have not lived here for many years.”

  “You have spent time in Italy, Miss Clairmont?”

  He has to be careful now, having snared himself into choosing somewhere for his fictitious foreign escapade that he’s never actually visited, but with luck and some sleight of hand he will have read enough over the years to weave a credible yarn. And a choice born of pure instinct may serve him well in one useful respect: From what he’s gathered so far, it’s a more-than-reasonable bet that this woman came across the Shelleys in Italy, probably in one of those loose-living bohemian communities of English exiles that gather like summer swarms about Florence and Venice. Without being at all religious in any conventional sense, Charles has rather stern views—sterner, indeed, than you might have expected of him—and finds that sort of behaviour both idle and self-indulgent, and feasible only for the feckless few who have plenty of money they have never needed to earn. Though it seems the latter charge, at least, cannot be laid at this woman’s door.

  “The best part of my life was lived in Italy,” she answers, settling back a little in her chair. “But by that I mean the most precious, not the greater, portion. There was a time when I believed I had buried there everything I loved.”

  There is a silence, and she pulls the shawl she is wearing a little closer about her. It seems worn, the shawl, and much older than the rest of her ensemble, which shows a fine disregard for the corseted constraints of London fashion.

  “I feel the cold,” she explains, observing his observation. “Even
after so long in the ruinous wastes of Russia, I still feel the cold.”

  So the Russian books are evidence not only of an unusual flair for languages, but also of an even more unusual strength of character: Few men Charles knows would contemplate travelling to so wild and far-distant a place, and this woman seems to have done so all alone.

  “You cannot imagine the contrast,” she continues, suppressing a shiver. “From the golden heat and scented airs of Italy, to find yourself in such an icy trackless desert. Mile after mile and not a single tree. I once travelled from St Petersburg to Moscow in the very depth of winter. Four hundred desolate unchanging miles by sled. Even with three layers of furs, the cold was unbearable. My eyelashes froze with my own tears.”

  Charles is uncomfortably aware that their conversation has shifted—metaphorically as literally—a good long way in the wrong direction. “I have heard St Petersburg is a magnificent city.”

  “That is certainly the effect its builder intended,” she remarks dryly. “And yes, there are palaces, and domes, and towers aplenty, all bright and new with paint and gilt, but it had to me the feel of fairyland. As if a malicious witch might snap her fingers at any moment and the whole town would fly away. But that is perhaps more a reflection of my own melancholy temper at the time. Though it did bring me one connection I will always cherish.”

  She smiles; clearly she has a rather different view of the value of ‘connections’ than Lady Shelley.

  “My first Russian pupil was in St Petersburg. She is now the Princess Czernicheff”—this with a flicker of pride—“but she will always be merely ‘Betsy’ to me. As I’m sure your Betsy will be to you.”

  Thankfully Charles has now regained some presence of mind. He manages what he hopes is an appropriately avuncular smile.

  “Your niece is an adorable child,” Miss Clairmont continues, a note of wistfulness stealing into her voice. “Such beautiful eyes and such a stubborn little chin. And your sister seems to be in good health. She is fortunate indeed if she has avoided the sickness so often suffered in the first months of pregnancy.” She wraps her arms once more about her, and looks away. Charles has rarely met anyone whose moods seem to vary so swiftly, and he’s not sure how best to proceed, but he is saved, in the end, by the appearance of the maid.