‘Never ’eard of ’er,’ replies the girl with a sniff.
‘Can you tell me where I might find your …’ Adah pauses, hesitating over the right term to use, ‘your landlord?’
‘Landlady,’ the girl corrects her. ‘Mrs Aarons. Lives in Duke Street, the other side of Aldgate. Number five, I think it is.’
As the girl closes the door, Adah distinctly hears her mutter ‘stupid cow’, and wonders whether the insult is directed at herself or is a comment on the landlady.
Mrs Aarons’s house, as it turns out, is just down the road from the home of Rabbi Meldola, whom Adah visited back in January. But the contrast is striking. While the Hahams’ house seemed a sanctuary of calm and scholarship, Mrs Aarons’s is warm, chaotic, rather shabby and full of the most wonderful smells of baking. The landlady herself is a huge woman, almost as wide as she is tall, with an off-white apron stretched over her bulk, coils of iron grey hair protruding from her cap, and small but bright eyes that precisely match the colour of her hair.
‘Come in, come in, my dear,’ says Mrs Aarons, even before Adah has time to state her business. ‘Would you mind stepping down to the kitchen? I have to keep my eye on the stove.’
The kitchen, down a curved flight of stone steps, is whitewashed and cavernous. Bundles of herbs and onions hang from the ceiling. One side of the room is lined with shelves on which stand gleaming rows of jars filled with preserves and pickles, honey and something white that looks like cream; on the other is a big old dresser filled with blue and white china and copper pots of every shape and size. In the middle of the kitchen, at a long scrubbed wooden table, a young woman with dark ringlets is busy kneading dough. She looks up as Adah comes in and gives her a brief, silent nod.
‘Never mind our Rachel,’ says Mrs Aarons briskly. ‘She’s deaf and dumb. But bakes the best bread and cakes in all of Aldwych. Now, what can I do for you, my dear?’
‘I am the Searcher of the Liberty of Norton Folgate, and I am making inquiries about an incident that happened some years back now. Eight years, to be precise. It concerns a woman who lives, or used to live, in Johnson’s Change, off Rosemary Lane. I think she may have rented a room from you.’
Mrs Aarons’s eyes narrow a little, but she continues smiling as she asks, ‘And what might her name be, dear?’
‘Elizabeth Fisher,’ says Adah.
Mrs Aarons is silent for a moment, and then, to Adah’s surprise, bursts into guffaws of laugher.
‘Elizabeth Fisher!’ she exclaims, wiping her eyes. ‘Oh dear, no! Someone’s been playing a little joke on you, I’m afraid. Elizabeth Fisher indeed! That poor lady would turn in her grave if she heard you!’
‘I … don’t understand,’ stammers Adah.
‘Why should you, my dear, why should you, if you’re not from these parts? But Elizabeth Fisher, you see, was a very grand old lady. Used to live on her own in that big old house with the turret on the south side of Aldgate. Wore black silk every day for forty years after her husband died. Old Mrs Fisher was a famous figure in this area. She died about eight years ago, maybe nine, at a great age. Ninety if she was a day. The thought of Mrs Fisher renting one of them rooms in Johnson’s Change is just too funny.’ Mrs Aarons wheezes with laughter again. ‘No, someone’s been bamboozling you, my dear.’
Adah is silent for a moment, watching the deaf-mute girl pound her dough on the kitchen table as though it represented every grievance and injustice she had ever faced in life.
‘How about a Mary Brown, then?’ she asks. ‘Did you have a Mary Brown renting a room from you in Johnson’s Change eight years ago?’
‘Mary Brown?’ echoes Mrs Aarons. ‘Ah well, there’s plenty of Mary Browns in the world. But as it happens, yes, there was a Mary Ann Brown who used to rent a room in Johnson’s Change. I’m not likely to forget that little hussy in a hurry,’ she adds.
‘Why?’ asks Adah. ‘What became of her? Where’s she now?’
Mrs Aarons gives a meaningful smile and points at the floor. ‘Down there somewhere, I suppose,’ she says.
For one dizzying moment, Adah has a vision of the delinquent Mary Ann Brown languishing in a dungeon beneath the flagged kitchen floor, but then Mrs Aarons continues. ‘Van Dieman’s Land, I believe it was. Transported for seven years. Helped herself to a silver watch belonging to one of her gentlemen callers. One of her many gentlemen callers, if you take my meaning.’
‘When did this happen?’ asks Adah.
‘Two years back. No, more like three now. But she’d been living in Johnson’s Change for six or seven years before they arrested her. Ay ay ay, the Shrewsbury cakes!’
Mrs Aarons leaps from her seat with surprising agility for a woman of her size, and dashes across the room, cloth in hand, to seize the pan of sizzling biscuits from the hob, and even her daughter gives a little grunt of alarm.
‘Ah, we’re in luck,’ cries the mother. ‘No harm done. Caught them just in time.’
As she turns out the biscuits onto a board, her daughter Rachel comes over to peer at them, putting one floury arm around her mother’s shoulder, while the mother gives the daughter’s waist an affectionate squeeze.
‘Just as well I caught them,’ says Mrs Aarons over her shoulder to Adah. ‘Our Rachel would never forgive me if I allowed her precious Shrewsbury cakes to burn. Let me put on a kettle for tea, and you can have one of these before you go. I’ll promise you you’ve never tasted the like.’
In the excitement about the Shrewsbury cakes, Mrs Aarons appears to have forgotten all about the crimes of Mary Ann Brown, but Adah, watching mother and daughter bustle about the kitchen with the tea cups, is lost in thought. No Elizabeth Fisher, but a Mary Ann Brown, with her gentlemen callers and her stolen silver watch.
Surely this justifies another meeting with Raphael, who seems to have become almost as consumed with curiosity about this case as Adah herself. Is it really the strangeness of the case that intrigues us, she wonders. Or has the story of Molly Creamer and Sarah Stone become a bridge for other feelings…? But these are thoughts she does not want to pursue, so she bites instead into the buttery sweetness of the Shrewsbury cake, which tastes of lemon and caraway and something else she has never eaten before.
‘This is delicious,’ she says, conscious of speaking too slowly and loudly to the deaf-mute woman, who gazes at her as she eats with an intense gaze, her eyes drawing in the thoughts that Adah cannot put into words.
June 1822
The Star Apple Tree
Sally tugs at Adah’s hand as they walk together down White Lion Street.
‘Where are we going, Mammy?’
‘To see a fine gentleman, my love. So behave yourself, and don’t ask too many questions.’
The old soldier who begs on the street corner is out again today, but there’s no sign of the poor crippled vegetable seller, and Adah realizes she hasn’t seen him for days now. Suddenly curious, she drops a penny into the soldier’s extended hand.
‘What’s become of the man who was selling vegetables here?’ she asks.
‘Moved away,’ mumbles the soldier. ‘Said there was too many thieves about in this part of town. Don’t know where he’s gone.’
Sally is tugging at her hand again. ‘Mammy. Mammy. How many questions can I ask? Can I ask three questions?’
‘No, three is too many. Only two.’
Somewhere in the back of her mind, for the past five years, she has been imagining this moment, when she will see their faces side by side, and have a chance to compare their features. But in fact – when they enter Raphael’s study and he bends down to greet Sally – what strikes Adah most is not the similarity in their faces, but rather the quiet gravity with which Raphael addresses the little girl.
‘Well, Sally,’ he says, ‘I am so pleased to meet you. Your mother tells me that you like to draw. I love drawing too. Would you like to look at some of my pictures?’
But Sally’s eyes are focused on the painting of Jamaica that hangs to the right of t
he doorway.
‘Did you paint that?’ she asks.
‘No, that was painted by another artist. But I like to have it hanging on my wall, because that is where I lived when I was a child, around your age. We had a house that looked a little like the one in the picture, with a terrace facing towards the sea, and a big tree growing next to the terrace that bore shining purple fruit they called star apples.’
‘Star apples,’ whispers Sally, entranced.
‘I had a nursemaid named Falelia, who used to bring me my breakfast to eat on the terrace underneath the star apple tree, while my parents were still sleeping. Falelia would look out at the sea and sing songs to me while I ate.’
Adah listens in silent astonishment. She has never heard the taciturn Raphael speak about his childhood before, and had no idea that his memories were so vivid.
‘Can you eat star apples?’ asks Sally.
‘Not the skin. That’s too bitter. But inside there is sweet pink flesh which tastes very good. Falelia used to give me star apple flesh to eat when I had a sore throat.’
But Sally has already lost interest in the picture, and turns away to explore the other wonders of Raphael’s rooms, her gaze fastening on a mandolin propped against a cupboard door in the studio.
‘Don’t touch that!’ cries Adah, as the child launches herself in its direction.
‘Never fear, Adah,’ says Raphael with a laugh. ‘It’s old and broken already. She won’t do it any harm.’
While Sally plucks tentatively and discordantly at the strings of the old mandolin, Raphael fetches a pencil and some sheets of paper which are covered with his half-finished sketches on one side, but blank on the other.
‘Could you draw some pictures for me?’ he asks.
Sally seats herself on the worn and paint-splashed rug which covers the studio floor, spreading out the papers in front of her, and sucking vigorously on one end of the pencil. Then she removes the pencil from her mouth and asks, ‘Have you got a wife and children too, Mr Raphael?’
‘That’s three questions,’ snaps Adah. ‘I said you could only ask two.’
But Raphael is already answering, quite calmly, though without looking in Adah’s direction. ‘I have a wife, yes. Her name is Miriam. But she lives in Jamaica. She is not well, and can’t come to England, so I haven’t seen her in many years.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ asks Sally.
Raphael bends down and strokes the child’s shining brown hair.
‘Now that,’ he says firmly, ‘is one question too many. I need to talk to your mother for a little while, so see if you can draw us a fine picture. If it’s truly beautiful, then I will have a little present to give you in exchange.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ murmurs Adah, flushed with embarrassment, as Raphael joins her at the table which is now laden with a larger pile of leather-bound tomes than before. ‘Sally’s forever asking foolish questions. She’s too young to know any better.’
But Raphael’s face, she sees, is infused with a strange happiness. ‘It’s not foolish. She’s a child. Children should be curious. That is how they learn. Now, to this story of the Creamer child and Sarah Stone. I have found the court record of the trial at last. Not only that, I also found a report of the case that appeared in The Times, and another odd little reference to the affair in a book published a few years back. And better still, I have found something, or rather I should say someone, even more interesting, about whom I shall tell you in a moment. Where shall we begin?’
‘First let me tell you what I discovered,’ says Adah. ‘I went to Rosemary Lane and made some inquiries of the landlady who owns the rooms above Johnson’s Change. There was no Elizabeth Fisher living there eight years ago. Indeed, Elizabeth Fisher, it seems, was a very respectable old lady living in Aldgate, and well known to everyone in the district. But there was a Mary Ann Brown, who was earning her living by disreputable means, and was arrested for theft a few years later.’
‘Indeed, indeed,’ cries Raphael, with sudden animation. ‘I was starting to suspect some such thing. For listen to this. There’s a very strange passage in the record of the Old Bailey trial that I could not at first make sense of. This woman who called herself Elizabeth Fisher appeared as a witness at the trial. According to the record, she described how the officers came to her rooms. And then she says this: “I was called down to look at the prisoner; somebody called Brown; I answered; my name is Elizabeth Fisher; that is my real name.”’
‘Whatever does that mean?’ asks Adah.
‘I couldn’t fathom it at first, but when I looked again at the Newgate Calendar, I understood. It is clear that this woman did indeed answer to the name of Brown when first spoken to by the officers. Her only explanation for doing so is that she was “greatly alarmed by the circumstance of appearing before a magistrate”. But soon after, she changed her story to insist that she was not Mary Brown but Elizabeth Fisher. As well she might, if she was living by immoral and possibly criminal means, and wanted to avoid any close inspection of the place where she lived.’
‘And did the officers not ask her neighbours or her landlady to confirm her identity?’
‘Apparently not. And that is not the only strange point about this trial. The Old Bailey record and The Times tell us that Sarah Stone’s mother, who was living in the same building in Sun Street as Sarah, insisted that her daughter was pregnant and bore a child that day, and that Sarah gave the infant her breast. And there was another witness, too, who spoke on Sarah’s behalf. Do you remember how I told you, when we last met, about old Mr Moulton who keeps the jeweller’s shop in Bishopsgate, and how he knew a servant girl who was a witness at the trial?’
At this precise moment there is a sound of knocking at the door downstairs, and Raphael announces, rather with the air of a magician pulling a flock of live doves out of an empty sack, ‘Here, I believe, she is. No longer such a young girl, of course, but a married woman. I managed to find her with the help of young Ezekiah Moulton, and have asked to her come and meet us here today.’
The woman whom Stevens, with exaggerated solemnity, ushers into the room is so fragile and slightly built that she looks almost like a child. Her hair is fair, and her skin pale and transparent. She wears a clean but rather faded and threadbare green gown and carries a small purse which she clutches nervously in her hands. She enters the parlour with downcast eyes, only raising them fleetingly when Raphael greets her.
‘Thank you for coming to speak to us today, Mrs Perry,’ he says. ‘This is Mrs Adah Flint, the Searcher of the Liberty of Norton Folgate, who would like to ask you a few questions about your connection to the case of Sarah Stone. Adah, this is Martha Perry, whose maiden name was Cadwell. She was a neighbour of Sarah Stone and, as I was just saying, was a witness at the trial. Please seat yourself here, Mrs Perry. Can we give you something to drink?’
The young woman perches herself on the edge of the armchair that Raphael points to, with her head bowed and her hands folded on her lap. She shakes her head. ‘No, thank you kindly, sir,’ she murmurs.
‘Now I will leave you with Mrs Flint,’ he continues, turning with a small smile to Adah, who is utterly taken aback at this unexpected turn of events. ‘I think I should see how my young art pupil is progressing.’
And with that, Raphael withdraws into his studio and closes the door, leaving Adah and the newcomer facing one another across the study.
Hardly knowing where to begin, but feeling somehow drawn to this small, nervous young woman, Adah says, ‘Mrs Perry, how old were you at the time of the arrest and trial of Sarah Stone? You must surely have been little more than a child.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ replies the woman demurely. ‘I was twelve years old at the time. My mother and all of us children was living in two rooms at the top of Bly’s Buildings, and Mrs Swaine – that’s what we called her, though they called her Sarah Stone at the trial – her and her husband lived down in the basement.’
‘And did you know them well?’
‘Oh no, ma’am. I’d only seen them once or twice, before the day when my mother came to say that Mrs Swaine would like to give me a little job to do, and I was to be paid twopence a week for it.’
She falls silent for a moment, and then adds, by way of explanation, ‘I’ve five younger brothers and sisters, you see. That’s now, of course. I had six then. Our Joseph, the youngest, he was born with a withered leg. So our mother sometimes had a hard time to keep us all fed, and for as long as I can remember I used to run errands around the neighbourhood to earn a little money here and there.’
‘So what was the task that Sarah Stone – Mrs Swaine – wanted you to do for her?’
The young woman is staring intently down at her hands, and a faint flush has spread across her pale face. ‘She wanted me to draw her milk,’ she murmurs.
‘Draw her milk?’ echoes Adah, puzzled.
‘Yes, ma’am. The baby was suckling, you see, but it didn’t seem to take much milk. It would drink just a little, and then pull its mouth away from the breast and cry, or sometimes just fall asleep in its mother’s arms. So Mrs Swaine, she had too much milk, and her breasts hurt. She had tried to squeeze the milk out herself, but she said that just hurt all the more. She wanted me to suck the milk from her breasts. She paid me twopence a week, and I would go to her almost every day to draw her milk. I sat on a stool beside her to draw it. It tasted a little strange. Sweeter than cow’s milk …’
Adah gazes at the woman, uncomprehending.
‘And you told all this to the court?’ she says at last.
‘Oh yes, ma’am.’
‘But if Sarah Stone had milk, then she must have had a child, or at least carried a child almost to the point of birth!’
‘Yes, ma’am. I never doubted that the infant was hers, until sometime later, when our landlady Mrs Gray and her father started saying the baby had been stolen. And even then, even after Mrs Swaine was arrested, I still believed it was her child. I believe so to this day.’
‘Was it her first child? She was surely rather old to have given birth for the first time.’
Searcher Page 15