A Fatal Likeness

by Lynn Shepherd

  “No—no,” cries Claire, rushing forwards and pushing herself between them. “It was not like that—he remembers nothing—he awoke in his own bed—it is all a lie—”

  “I am sorry, Miss Clairmont,” says Maddox coldly, “but I do not see how you are in a position to verify the truth—or otherwise—of a single thing he has yet said.”

  She flushes, then lifts her head in defiance. “I know Shelley to be one of the noblest and most exalted beings I have ever encountered—his innocence—his very simplicity—make it impossible for me to believe him capable of such a thing—even unknowing. Even in his sleep.”

  She places her hand gently to Shelley’s cheek. “Tell him it is not true,” she whispers, “tell him, Percy, how much you loved that little girl—that you would never harm any baby, far less your own—”

  Shelley looks at her, eyes unseeing, then turns back towards the window and starts silently to write across the beads of condensation, He smiles so sweet and looks so mild but then he kills a little child.

  Claire seizes his hand in panic. “Do not say such things! Do not let her put such poisonous notions into your head—you know why she does it—”

  “Miss Clairmont,” begins Maddox, placing a hand on her shoulder. But she shakes him off furiously.

  “Do not touch me—how dare you! Leave this house at once—no-one wants you here—”

  Maddox steps back. “I was summoned to assist Miss Godwin, and it is my intention to do so. And she is in need of that assistance. More, I suspect, than any of you realise.”

  Claire looks back at Mary and then at Maddox. “I do not know what you mean.”

  “Very well, I will explain. If a doctor comes to see this child he may attribute its death to wholly natural causes. If chance favours you, and he is either elderly or unobservant. But he may—if he is neither of those things—wonder, as I did, whether a human hand might have been at deadly work here. And if he does—if that is his conclusion—do you know what will happen? You will find the Runners at your door, and a warrant for an arrest.”

  Shelley gasps, his face white. “You cannot cast me in prison—I should not survive it—it is a horrible abode for the coarsest thing that ever wore the shape of man—how much more so for such as I—”

  Claire turns to him. “Do not fear—he says it only to alarm you—it is obvious to anyone that the baby died from convulsions—they cannot detain you on so flimsy a pretext—”

  But Maddox is shaking his head. “They will not arrest you, Shelley, because the courts, in their wisdom, customarily assume infanticide to be a female crime. All the more so when there is no other credible suspect. And there will be none in this case, I know that full well, because neither of these women will be prepared to accuse you. You have so preyed upon their affections that whatever you may have done—whatever vile crime you may have committed—still they will protect you, still they will keep their silence. And while you walk free, it will be the child’s mother the law will light on, the child’s mother who will risk the noose. Are you prepared to take that chance?”

  He surveys them, one by one, Shelley chewing his thumb, his face averted, Mary Godwin, her head bowed, still rocking her lifeless child, and then and finally, Claire Clairmont. She alone will meet his gaze, and she does not, it seems, care that he can read the choice she faces in her eyes. For a moment—a moment only—he sees her waver, but when she speaks her voice is steady. “So what must we do?”

  “Get him dressed. In his poorest clothes. He is the father—he will have to go with you.”

  “With me?” Claire exclaims, horrified. “But where? I had nothing to do with it—”

  “The child must be buried before the day is out. You cannot afford gossip, and I imagine you have attracted quite enough of it already. You must give out, if asked, that the child died of convulsions, brought on by a fever. Do you understand?”

  She hesitates a moment, then nods.

  “There is a graveyard I know,” he continues, “where the sexton will take your money and bury the child, and ask no inconvenient questions. It is not a wholesome place, but it is consecrated ground, though knowing what little I do of Mr Shelley’s beliefs,” he concludes bitterly, “I doubt that will concern him overmuch.”

  “But why must I do it—surely—”

  “Because it will arouse less suspicion if the mother is present. And your sister is in no condition to undertake such a journey.”

  And if this is only part of his reason—if in truth he doubts whether Mary Godwin could bear the dreadful sight of her child’s last resting-place—he does not say so. As for Shelley, his feelings deserve no consideration; if this is his punishment, it is precious little.

  “So I am to be Mrs Shelley,” says Claire softly. “I am to say I am his wife.”

  He wonders for a wild moment if she is not about to smile. He thought he had the measure of these three—thought he had understood the coils of attraction and repulsion that threaten to drown them all in a wreckage of hearts—but it seems he is wrong; there are darknesses here that even his experience cannot find a like for.

  It is scarcely possible to believe this girl is only—what? sixteen?—as she leads Shelley to the bedroom door and whispers a word or two to him. He is as meek in Claire’s hands as a small child. She then walks briskly over to her stepsister and takes the baby—without the least tenderness—from her arms. A moment later Shelley appears once again in the doorway, his coat on and his shirt seemly. His eyes are hollow and he is shaking, but he is presentable. And it will do no harm for him to look afflicted, not with the task he has now to perform.

  “I am going out with Shelley,” Claire announces, taking him by the hand. “You are to wait here.”

  Mary Godwin looks at her for a long moment, and then turns her face away.

  “Fraser will show you to the carriage,” says Maddox, and when they are gone he takes a chair and sets it down beside Mary Godwin. He looks around, wondering again at the contrast with Church Terrace. This would indeed have been a delightful place to raise a child. High ceilings, airy rooms, and windows that will soon be bright with the sun of spring. But why the sudden need to move here, with a sick infant, barely a few days old?

  “Miss Godwin,” he says eventually, “what has been going on?”

  “I told you—the baby—”

  “That was not my meaning. I was asking what it was that impelled you to come to this place—who this man Hogg is—”

  “He is a friend of Shelley’s,” she replies dully. “They met at Oxford.”

  “That much I know, but what is his business here?”

  She hesitates, and at that moment there is a noise in the hall and the man they are discussing appears at the door. He manages to look both flushed and pasty at one and the same time, and his face has a squat beadiness that puts Maddox in mind of a toad. His stock is too tight, and there are chafe marks on his neck where he has been poorly shaved.

  “Mary!” he says, rushing to her side and taking her hand. “I came as soon as I could—I was compelled to go on foot the whole way—what has happened—where is the baby?”

  Maddox gets to his feet and puts on his hat. “I will detain you no longer, Miss Godwin. You know where you may reach me. I shall expect to hear from you.”

  Down in the carriage he finds Shelley huddled against the far window. There is a strange smell about him, not cologne, but something sweeter and drier than sweat. Whatever it is, it does nothing to quell Maddox’s now invincible hatred for everything about the man. He can barely tolerate sharing such a small space in his company, but share it they must. Despite the weather, he almost envies Fraser his place on the box.

  “Was that Hogg I saw?” Claire asks as the carriage starts to rumble slowly away.

  Maddox nods. “It appears he walked here from the Strand. Which would account for him being so late. It would not, however, account for him being so early.”

  She raises an eyebrow, but does not answer.

 
; “What was he doing at the house, Miss Clairmont, at that time in the morning?”

  She slides a glance at him, and seems about to say something, but contents herself with a shrug. “Mary sent for him. I imagine she did not trust Shelley to go in search of you.”

  “And may he be trusted, this Hogg?”

  “Oh he will say nothing,” she replies tartly. “Nothing that might harm Mary.”

  There is something implied here—some intimacy—that tallies with what Maddox himself has just observed, but he fails to find the words that will frame the question. Not to this girl, at any rate, with her too-knowing eyes. He glances back at her and sees she is looking composedly out of the window, the baby unregarded on her knee, but as the carriage rounds a sharp corner the dead child slips towards Shelley, who starts at its touch as if scalded. “Claire?” he says, in panic. “What is he talking of?”

  “It is nothing, my dear,” she answers softly. “Mr Maddox was just enquiring about Hogg.” And she moves the child away from him and wedges it between her body and the door, as if it were a parcel, or a bolt of cloth.

  The rest of the journey passes in a brooding silence, broken only by the growl of the wheels on the road, and the sound, faint at first but getting stronger, of rain drumming on the roof.

  When the carriage eventually stops the rain is falling hard, and as Maddox hands her down the step Claire pulls her shawl up over her hair and grimaces. “What dreadful weather—what a truly dreadful day.”

  Shelley peers round at the dark and dilapidated buildings, the huddles of grey pedestrians, and the dirt and scrap paper drifting in the gutters, and turns to Maddox with a look of distaste. “Where is this foul place, damn you? To what corner of hell have you brought us?”

  “I should have thought,” replies Maddox grimly, “you would welcome such an opportunity to observe the poor and oppressed. You seem all too ready to interfere in their affairs when it suits your own purposes.”

  “Ha!” he cries, “I am the friend of the unfriended poor—I claim no kinship with such loathsome uncleanly animals as these.”

  The latter remark is hurled—far too loudly—in the direction of a group of bricklayer’s labourers who are leaning against the nearest wall smoking, their fustian covered from head to foot in dust. Maddox sees one of them spit on the ground and take a step towards them. “Who’re you calling unclean, you scraggy little by-blow?”

  Maddox reaches out and grips Shelley by the arm. “I should have a care whom you insult, sir,” he hisses. “If these men are unclean it is in the nature of their calling, and proves only that they are worthily and industriously employed.” Which is more than I can say for you, he thinks, more’s the pity. The labourers meanwhile have put aside their pipes and moved forwards into a closed circle of hostile faces. Maddox glances back to Fraser. He is more than a match for any one of them, but not all ten together. And there is the girl to consider—the girl who is now cowering at Fraser’s side crying, “Shelley, Shelley!”

  The first man looks across at her, then comes up close to Shelley, feet apart, face insolent. “She’s a nice piece of cunny,” he says, licking his dry lips. “Is that your kid she’s clutchin’? Wouldn’t ’ave thought you had the mettle in yer mutton. Look more like a lick-spigot to me, what d’yer think, lads?”

  He darts forward and grabs Shelley in the crotch, and the next moment they are rolling on the ground in the mud, Shelley kicking, biting, clawing and the man beating him off with his fists. The labourers are clapping and whistling as Fraser pushes through the crowd to haul Shelley off the man and push him against the wall.

  “How dare you talk to me like that—you leprous scum!” he shrieks, struggling against Fraser’s constraining hands. “I will tear your heart out by the roots—I will wither up your disgusting soul by piecemeal—I will cut you down—”

  “Don’t fink so some’ow,” says the labourer, wiping a scratch on his forehead with the back of his hand, “not on that showing, anyways!”

  The men are laughing as they help him to his feet. The new grime makes little difference to his dirty clothes; Shelley, by contrast, is thick with slime. His lip is cut and he has the beginnings of a black eye.

  “If ’e’s your dilly boy I’d learn ’im some manners,” the man calls to Maddox with a wink as the group walk away. “Though perhaps a bit a’ rough is ’ow you like ’em.”

  Maddox waits until they are far enough away, then turns to Shelley in frozen fury. “If you cannot conduct yourself in an appropriate manner, our association will be at an end.”

  Claire puts her hand on Shelley’s arm. “Please forgive him—he does not suffer fools easily—”

  “—and finds it equally difficult to control his own temper, it would seem.”

  She blushes. “It will not happen again. Please, may we go—I am wet through and this is a truly horrid place.”

  But there is little pity in Maddox’s eyes; if this distresses her, she has more and worse to come. He turns up the collar of his great-coat and leads them a few yards farther down the street before turning suddenly into a side lane that will be unlit and perilous by nightfall. He is following—if he did but know it—the same dismal alley his great-nephew will follow, more than thirty years later, at the beginning of the case that will make his name. The houses in Tom-All-Alone’s are not so filthy as they will be then, the tenements not so teeming, but it is a foul and forbidding path they tread here, all the same. The rain is filling the rutted path with puddles, and as they turn the corner and start down the low covered way, the walls are wet with a sour yearlong damp. Maddox can hear Fraser’s heavy steps echo behind him and the quick shallow breathing of the girl, and when they come out into daylight again they are at the iron gate of a small graveyard, overlooked on all sides by tall buildings. The gravestones are sloping and uneven, names and dates mouldering into a blur of lichen and decay. In the farthest corner he can see two rats scrapping over a thigh bone. Too small for an adult’s, but possibly—and then he hears the girl gasp, “No—surely that cannot be—”

  There are tears in her eyes now, and she is holding her burden for the first time as if it were still a living child.

  “It was no doubt a dog, Miss Clairmont. Or at least it would be best to think so.”

  He smiles at her, not unkindly, and takes her arm. On their left, by the side wall, a grizzled man is sitting sheltering from the rain in a small lean-to. He has a bottle of brandy on a makeshift table, and propped up against the door are the tools of his trade. A mattock, and an old notched spade. The sexton.

  The man touches his hand to his filthy cap. “Mr Maddox, sir. Allus a pleasure.”

  But his eyes have slipped past the thief taker to Claire, and beyond her to Shelley. His eyes narrow, and small wonder: The poet’s lip is swollen now, and there’s a smear of dog-shit on his cheek. Maddox interposes quickly—the sooner this is done and they are gone, the better. He motions the girl forwards. “This poor young woman woke this morning to find her baby dead. She has not the money for a funeral.”

  “Is that so,” says the man pensively. “It’s a wonder she ’as the money to pay for you then. You don’t come cheap. Or so I’m told.”

  Maddox flushes, then is furious with himself for doing so. “I do this as a favour, Blackaby. For a young couple distraught by the loss of their child.”

  “I see,” says Blackaby. “Best give it me then.”

  He holds out his gnarled hands for the baby, and the girl’s eyes widen as what is about to happen finally comes home to her. She casts an agonised look at Maddox, who can do nothing but nod. “It is the only way, Mrs—Shelley.”

  He stumbles at the name, and wishes at once he’d had the foresight to think of another, but the man seems not to have noticed. Blackaby grips the bundle and takes it into the back of his hut. A few moments later he comes back out and leers up at Maddox from under his grey brows with a gleam in his eye. “Let’s say a sov then. If you’re agreeable.”

  “But we
don’t have—” cries the girl, before Maddox can stop her.

  “Your fees seem to have risen of late,” he observes darkly.

  “Well it’s a good service I offer, Mr Maddox, as you know. Not many other places round ’ere you could dispose so easily of a little problem like this, and know it won’t come back to haunt yer.”

  He winks at Claire and she stifles a cry and stumbles away. Maddox takes his pocket-book from his coat and counts out the money, while the man squints at Shelley, who is standing with his back to them, gazing down into an open grave.

  “He’s a rum one, that,” Blackaby says, nodding towards him. “Most can’t bear to look. And that’s a bad one. Water’s eaten away the coffin at the bottom, so the whole pit’s swimmin’ in rottin’ flesh. Even ’ad to stand away meself in the end, the smell got so bad.”

  Maddox hurriedly concludes his business. “When will it be done?”

  Blackaby shifts his chew of tobacco to the other cheek. “The one for that pit’s arrivin’ later today. St Giles work’ouse are sendin’ it, so there’s not much likelihood of meddlin’ relatives. Pox case, they said. Should be room to slip this one in the box with ’im, nice and tidy and none the wiser.”

  Maddox looks away, glad only that the girl did not hear this—that Mary Godwin will not hear this.

  “Very well,” he says quickly. “Good day to you.”

  He goes back to the gate, where Claire Clairmont is leaning against the iron railings, weeping openly.

  “I heard it,” she gulps, “in the night—I heard it.”

  Maddox takes a deep breath. “What did you hear?” he asks quietly.

  “The baby—she was making strange noises—little choking cries—I did not think—not then—how could I—”

  “Did you hear anything else? A footstep perhaps, or a floorboard?”