A Fatal Likeness

by Lynn Shepherd

  I do not think, to this day, that they knew I was there. Neither ever said so, and both, now, are long dead—one by water, the other by his own hand. And certain it is that they gave no sign then. Silent still, I inched the connecting door open. I saw Shelley lying on a couch on the far side of the room, his face and shirt soaking wet. It was clear at once that Polidori had thrown water in his face to quiet him, and I could see now that he was holding a cloth to Shelley’s face and adjuring him to breathe deeply. I nearly gave myself away at that moment, so furious was I to see him administering ether to a man in such a febrile and nervous state. Did he not know what consequences it might have? His intention, no doubt, was to induce lethargy, but I had seen ether used before and knew it had the power to provoke a state of even greater agitation. I could scarce keep my place for the next few moments, but Shelley seemed to demonstrate none of the ill effects I apprehended. Indeed he appeared instead to slide slowly into a curious intermediate state; his body lulled to something like repose, but his tongue excited to a flood of bizarre and nonsensical chatter in which half memories merged with true fears, and long-told lies struggled towards the light. He owned the truth, for the first time in my hearing, of Harriet and all that dire affair, but the next instant he was jabbering incoherently of a demon with his own face, and a nameless persecutor who refused to come to blows, which matched with nothing I knew—then or since—of his history. And then my blood ran frozen as he described in heaving gasps how, as Byron was speaking, he had looked towards Mary and seen standing in her place the monstrous figure of a woman with her breasts uncovered, and eyes staring at him where her nipples should have been. He stammered that this horrifying vision had taken hold of his mind, and when Byron spoke then of the witch, and her deformed arm and bosom, the picture had come to his mind of a young girl he had known many years before, whose face still haunted his waking days, and would not let him rest. This, he whispered then, his eyes widening, was the story he was writing—this was the tale that would awaken those who read it to terror, and a sick fear of what lurked unseen in their own souls.

  I heard the door to the drawing-room open then, and Byron calling my name, and I slipped away.

  I was not the only one of us to sleep badly that night, and when I ventured downstairs in the grey light of daybreak, I found Mary alone. She started when she saw me, like a guilty thing surprised. She has said, since, that it was this very morning that she announced to the assembled company that she had thought of a story. It is a lie; no such declaration was ever made, then, or on any other day that summer. She was not at her desk writing that morning, when I discovered her, but on her hands and knees before the dying fire, feeding page after page into the flames—pages covered not with her own handwriting, but with Shelley’s. She answered, when pressed, and with some irritation, that the story he had begun was making him ill—that she had found him sleep-walking again, and he had complained to her that his senses had been brought to a state of such unnatural excitement that the very blades of grass and boughs of the trees had presented themselves to his eye with microscopical distinctiveness. Her duty, she said, with much emphasis on the word, was to prevent further such mischief, and thus it was that she had taken it upon herself to destroy what he had written and ensure that his Genius and his gift were spent on subjects worthy of them, and not on some childish make-believe fit only for the nursery. I looked at her somewhat scornfully at this, tempted to enquire whether it was he or she who would decide what would be deemed thus ‘worthy,’ but I refrained. Though I did wonder, afterwards, at her insistence that the tale was mere fabrication, and bore no relation to the truth. I myself had heard Shelley claim it was sprung from memory, but perhaps she knew, from her own intimate knowledge of his past, that he had once again been subject to one of those concatenations of fact and phantasy, which left him so often doubtful of what was real, and what imagined.

  And what, I said aloud then, will he find to occupy him now, seeing as you have taken it upon yourself to burn his tale? That, Mary replied, was no concern of mine. She stirred the ashen ghosts of Shelley’s story with the poker, watched the flames lift for a moment, then turned on her heel and departed.

  I obtained an answer to my question, all the same, even if it was some days before it became clear to me. For the story which has established her fame, and made her almost as celebrated as the man she married, the story that began—I concede—as her conception, became in the weeks and months that followed no longer hers, but Shelley’s. She has admitted—for how could she pretend otherwise?—that he assisted her with it, that they walked and talked often together as the tale came into being, and that he made many changes to the manuscript, but I know it was more, far more than that. I saw her writing to his dictation—saw him correcting her fair copies and making revisions, both in Geneva and later, once we had returned to England. Why else would he have sent it to publishers under his own name? Why else should this book alone bear the mark of genius, and everything she produced thereafter lack any spark of original thought? And why else would it treat—so painfully and so terrifyingly—of one who considers himself an outcast from society, abhorred and despised, a pursuer become the object of pursuit, tormented forever by the abominable crime he believes that he has committed?

  FIVE

  The Sepulchre of Memory

  CHARLES PUTS THE MANUSCRIPT down, his mind reeling. He is not sure what he expected to find—but it was not his uncle’s name. He knew Maddox had worked for Godwin, but cannot imagine any reason why that should have involved taking charge of his daughter’s possessions, only to find himself condemned as odious for his pains. And what of the murder—if murder there ever was? With Maddox’s words ringing in his brain Charles came here looking for a victim—looking for Harriet—and he has indeed found her, but what he has not found is her killer. Or not, at least, according to this manuscript. Yes, there is mention of Harriet, and of the lies Shelley and Mary told, but there is none of the horror—the natural revulsion—a young woman like Claire would surely have let slip had she known that ‘the truth of all that dire affair’ was that Shelley had killed his own wife. And this is no timid shrinking girl. Horror and revulsion are here in full measure, but they stem from other events entirely—from Shelley’s fear of some dead memory or long-past dream, and from her own recollection of a terror once endured at his side, unchangingly preserved and buried there.

  But if questions about Harriet remain, Charles has, at least, an answer to the mystery of Claire and how she came to be so intimate with the Shelleys. This woman is Mary Shelley’s stepsister. And now Charles thinks about it, he does seem to recall that William Godwin married again after Mary Wollstonecraft’s death. If he had a second wife it’s perfectly possible he also had step-children. But that’s an answer that leaves Charles all the more contemptuous of Lady Shelley and her husband, for even if Claire and Mary were not sisters in the literal sense of the term, it’s the most mean-spirited of casuistries to deny any ‘relation’ between them at all. But if there is a woman alive capable of such small-mindedness, Lady Shelley is surely that woman. And it does, undeniably, explain her fear of Claire. Her terror of what Claire might reveal, were her papers known. Because there is another revelation, even in these few short pages—a revelation Charles could never have foreseen, and one which would break on the unsuspecting world with all the force of a thunderbolt. If what he’s just read is to be trusted, Claire Clairmont is the only person left alive other than Mary Shelley herself who knows the truth about the authorship of Frankenstein. And it is only too obvious to Charles why Lady Shelley and her husband would want to keep that truth concealed—whatever price might have to be paid, and whatever unforgiveable literary betrayal might ensue.

  Charles sits back against the bed, thinking of Claire—thinking how very young she must have been when these events took place. How young, and how beautiful. Beautiful enough, it seems, to have been the mistress of no less a lover than Lord Byron. And perhaps not merely that.
Charles looks back at all those allusions to seeds planted, and secrets yet hidden, and wonders if that summer spawned more than a monstrous fictional progeny. Did Claire Clairmont bear Lord Byron a child? It would explain her wistful fondness for infants not her own, and her mysterious hints about what had befallen her in Italy. And if there was a child, where is it now? Is that what she meant when she said she had buried all she loved there? He closes his eyes, imagining the atmosphere in that house by the lake all those years ago, the darkened room, the stifling thunder, the shadows leering across the walls. The very air they breathed taut with sex and intelligence and possibility, and bitter with betrayals yet to come. Love and hope; desire and fear. And Claire—and Claire—

  Two hours later, Charles starts awake to a grey dawn sifting through the thin curtains, and the sound of the maid in the kitchen downstairs. He curses silently—there’s no chance now of getting the papers back unseen, so he tucks them inside his copy of Shelley, wraps that in a cloth, and hides it in turn at the bottom of his box of paints. Then he washes hastily in the icy water on the wash-stand and slips quietly downstairs and out of the house.

  As he strides back down towards town, the air and the exercise clear his mind a little, and he starts to form a new theory that might fit the facts. Could William Godwin have hired his uncle in connection with the Chancery case for the custody of Harriet’s children? The dates tally, and Sir Percy’s reference to a ‘minor legal matter’ may have had more truth in it than Charles was initially prepared to allow him—and his wish to downplay such a scandalous episode only too understandable in the circumstances. Charles can easily see Godwin turning to a man like Maddox if he was looking for evidence to exonerate Shelley, or discredit the Westbrooks. It’s a stretch, but it might even explain why Maddox took charge of Mary’s writing-desk, if there were documents he believed might be helpful—or indeed unhelpful, if they became known. Though none of that, of course, explains the allegation of murder. Which is why, despite his instinctive antipathy to everything his clients stand for, Charles has every intention of doing exactly what the Shelleys have paid him to do—or at least appearing to. For the moment; until he has found out what he wants to know. Even though that puts he and Claire on very different sides. Even though (as I’m sure you will have noticed) he has singularly failed to maintain a proper professional distance from this woman he may yet have to out-manoeuvre—this woman who is no longer ‘Miss Clairmont’ to him, but ‘Claire,’ despite the fact that he has seen only too clearly that she cannot be wholly trusted or even, perhaps, believed.

  By the time he turns into the Strand the rain has started to come down in a thin miserly trickle that runs freezing down the back of his neck. The only signs of life are the breakfast street-sellers hauling their stalls into their accustomed pitches, and the odd gaunt-ribbed dog nosing about for scraps in the gutters. Charles doesn’t expect much more activity at his uncle’s house either, not at this time of day, but he does assume the fires will be lit and the curtains drawn. So when he opens the door to a cold and darkened house, he knows instantly that something is wrong. He stands in the hall, wondering what to do next, until he hears sounds coming up the back-stairs. Strange, muffled, lurching sounds that resemble nothing Charles can at once identify. Curious rather than really alarmed, he makes his way down to the kitchen, but the sounds, whatever they are, are not coming from there. The room is empty, and the range is cold. And then he hears the noise again and knows suddenly what it is. In the scullery, behind the half-closed door, someone is retching into the metal pail, choking the noise off each time with a stifling hand. Charles frowns grimly. That’ll teach Billy to spend his evening off drinking bad beer with the coster-boys. Perhaps next time he might be more sensible. He turns to go and almost collides with Abel, who is shuffling down the stairs, grumbling about stoves unlit, and breakfasts uncooked, and water still unboiled.

  “Mr Charles,” he says, anxiety flickering across his face, “we werenae expecting you so early. Will you be wanting your breakfast?”

  “No, Abel, or at least not yet. When you bring up my uncle’s I will have something then. We can only hope that Molly will be better soon—we clearly cannot rely on Billy in the mornings.”

  He’s raised his voice a little now, thinking it would do no harm for the lad to hear himself found thus wanting. Abel is looking at him a little oddly, but Charles doesn’t care: Billy needs taking more firmly in hand, and when this case is over and he is back in the house on a permanent basis, he’ll do just that. He puts his hand on the old man’s shoulder, as if to emphasise that he is not to blame. It’s only now that he notices there is a note addressed to him on the table. In Sam’s handwriting. Charles reads it, then slips upstairs to the drawing-room. Maddox is still asleep, and after watching a few moments, Charles closes the door gently and goes back downstairs and out into the street.

  New Cut, Lambeth, Sam’s note said, and, as Charles soon discovers, it is market day. Not just fruit, vegetables, and flowers, like its rather older and more respectable equivalent to the north at Covent Garden, but a full half mile of pans and pitchers, saucepans and shirt-buttons, cakes and crumpets, pickled whelks and plum duffs, kettles and caddies, shoes and sheets and sealing-wax, and cabbages and string, and just about every other random article and eatable a Victorian household might ever have need of. The market proper doesn’t start till evening falls, but the sellers are already setting up, and some stalls are being minded by alert sly-faced boys, who’ve been paid a few pennies to watch the stock. Charles’ destination is at the far end towards the Waterloo Road, and turns out to be a large shop-front with paint flaking off the door and bars on the glass. But this place clearly hasn’t functioned as a shop for some time: There are coloured lamps strung above the entrance, and the glass is layered with posters of vaudeville attractions, featuring actors, singers, and musicians in dramatic, languishing, or suggestive attitudes, as required.

  A large grey rat is nosing about in the rubbish that’s collected about the entrance. A few moments later Sam arrives, wheezing a little, a long coat concealing his uniform and his pockets full of apples. Charles grins—some things never change.

  “Well,” he says, as Sam draws near. “What is it? Have you found something?”

  “I ’ad a look at them records like you said, and sure enough there was somefing towards the end of 1816 as might be what yer lookin’ for. It were all a bit cryptic, though, and it were ’ard to work out exactly what’d ’appened, so I ’ad a quick word with Inspector Bucket and ’e put me on to a geezer as was working in Bow Street then and might remember. And ’e said to give you ’is complimums too, by the way. The Inspector.”

  Charles nods. “So who is this man? And what on earth are we doing here, of all places?”

  “ ’E works in ’ere,” answers Sam, cocking his head in the direction of the window. “ ’E’s the doorkeeper of the New Cut penny gaff.”

  Sam pushes open the door and Charles follows him down a long narrow and unlit corridor. The air is rank with sweat and stale beer. After two turnings, left then right, they end up finally in the lobby of a small theatre, which has been squeezed into the cramped space made by taking out the floor between the ground and first storeys. A gallery of seats has been perched on planks between the joists, and the boards already sag with the weight; up above their heads there are still scraps of floral paper clinging here and there to what must once have been bedroom walls. An old woman is slowly sweeping up scraps of paper, bottles, meat bones, and empty twists of tobacco along the line of benches near the orchestra pit, and on the stage an Italian-looking man with a little pointed beard is playing the piano to accompany two men dressed as women, who are sashaying about the boards, singing, dressed in spangles, feathers, and bright yellow wigs. Charles has been to penny gaffs before, so he should know what to expect, but even he is taken aback at the explicit obscenity, both of word and gesture. At the back of the theatre a line of little coster-boys greets every indecency with whistle
s and cheers. The ticket booth is empty at this time of day, but Sam soon lights on a dirty scowling lad and dispatches him looking for the man they have come to see.

  “Don’t judge ’im by this place,” cautions Sam under his breath. “Seems ’e ain’t any other way to earn ’is bread. Bucket said ’e were a formidable Runner back in ’is day. Bit of a lesson for all of us there, wouldn’t yer say.”

  Charles looks across the theatre and realises that there’s a man now moving towards them between the rows of seats. His dress is as gaudy as his place of work—bright green cravat, embroidered waistcoat, blue velveteen trousers—but his skin is sallow and his eyes red-rimmed and dull. He must be twenty years younger than Maddox, but it’s clear this ageing Runner has not had the famed thief taker’s easy existence. There is an old pride, still, in his erect back, but once or twice he misses his footing and Charles can see, now, the tremor in his hands.

  “Name’s Finch,” whispers Sam. “Started at Bow Street in ’15. Doin’ errands mostly, to start wiv, as far as I could make out. But Bucket swears ’e’s reliable, and even though ’e’s partial to a drop, ’is mind ain’t gone.”