Lawless and the Flowers of Sin

by William Sutton

I goggled at this feat of memory. She shrugged it off languorously. Cora did everything languorously.

  Tea was served just as the uniformed police waltzed in.

  “F Division.” Darlington pulled his hat low. “Amateurs.”

  Cora spotted my whisky. I’d had enough to numb my toothache; more and I might yield to temptation. Without a thought, Cora upended the dram into the pot plant. (I took note of this trick of Cora’s, which would save me from many ills.) As the police made a show of looking around, like villains in a thrupenny drama, she was genteelly filling my glass with peppermint tea.

  “Care for a cuppa, officer?” Kate Hamilton boomed, holding out a box of cigars.

  The leading copper took one. He was leaning forward to kiss her when he noticed us. Darlington shaded his eyes as the copper’s mocking glance took in me, Cora and the board. “Wasting your time teaching that simpleton to play chess.”

  “Chess masters may teach anyone,” said Cora levelly. “And don’t call my uncle a simpleton.”

  The wag ventured no further into the interior. They promptly withdrew, a bag handed to them at the door; coins jingled in my imagination.

  “Shambolic operation.” Darlington stared after them. Within two minutes, normal stations were resumed: carpets, drinks, girls, et cetera, and Cora’s déshabillé.

  “Cora.” I gave a low whistle. “You’re a quick-witted little liar.”

  “Not at all, you silly uncle.” She arched her eyebrows, placing a hand on her chest as she set the pieces for the next game. “I was youth champion of Lower Armenia, 1861.”

  * * *

  Demoralised by another swift defeat, Darlington introduced me to the madam.

  Kate lit a cigar and handed it to him. “Chivalrous gent, is he? Just ’ere for the chess?”

  “More interested,” I said, “in delights other than those of the flesh.”

  “Ennui, is it? Plenty here to stave off the ennui.” She pronounced the word as if it were a venereal disease. “If you dispense champers to Cora, Maura and Mehetabel, no one will begrudge your delectatio morosa, that is, a certain lustful brooding.”

  Darlington laughed. “Watchman is my successor, Kitty. On our salary, champagne’s at your discretion.” He winked and strolled back to Cora.

  Kate Hamilton stretched. Her bosom strained beneath mountainous folds of material. “Will you be a more demanding overseer than our Jimmy here?”

  “On the contrary. Lend me a modicum of help, and we might dispense with the farce of these inspections.”

  A hush fell around us. “And of what might that modicum consist?”

  I considered. “Let the girls speak to me. Tell me their true histories.”

  “Ain’t that our business and none of yours?”

  I wanted neither to convict, nor convert, I assured her. Such a well-run establishment I saw no need to police. After all, boys will be boys. I simply had to deliver a census. Let parliamentarians witter on about reform. “Tell me how many girls work for you. Let them tell me how old they are, where from, how come to the profession, and I’ll leave you be.”

  “We might manage that.”

  “I’d be grateful.”

  “Grateful enough to free us from F Division’s nosy parkers? Customers don’t like it, I’m sure you understand.”

  “I can be persuasive.”

  She inspected me intently, her face as weather-beaten as a naval pilot’s. “Is that an equitable exchange?”

  “Well. Since you’re asking.” I clapped my hands together. “I shall be taking a reckoning of the houses neighbouring. Could you help persuade them to talk to me?”

  “We can do better than that, my lover, if you’re serious.” Kate sat back, like the Great Eastern returning to dock, though more amply bosomed. “Why not regard us as your West End office? A glass of Scotch for the Scotchman here. You and I shall come to an arrangement, as sure as Almighty God is sitting on his throne.” She clinked her glass against mine, her pig-like eyes twinkling. “A most favourable arrangement, my lover.”

  THE 9.23 CLUB

  My face burned with shame; my blood was boiling—how on earth could I tackle this mission?

  I was at the Yard, as it emptied out, on a brittle afternoon, long before my nightshift, struggling to tot it up. I must soon set out upon my labours. I set myself nightly goals. Studied maps. Walked miles. Lurked. Stalked. Felt a fraud, a busybody, a peeping Tom. Wandered Waterloo tenements, doors always on the latch. Counted the footfall in Islington alleys. Took tea in Kensington, only to be thrown out for having more questions than cash. We won’t tell you nothing. Why would we tell you? What are you anyhow, gospel-grinder, sawbones or copper?

  “Going well, Watchman, by the looks of things.” Sir Richard Payne popped his head around the door. I had a Stanford map spread out, spilling over the corners of my desk. Jeffcoat and Darlington hovered behind him, full of clubby bonhomie, doubtless heading out for a drink to celebrate solving Palmerston’s little problem, a drink to which I was not invited, because my duties, of course, were about to begin for the night.

  “It’s quite an undertaking, sir.” I kept my eyes on the map: at the moment of Payne’s interruption, I was finishing up Pimlico’s measurements. I’d divided the whole of London into sections, to estimate the magnitude of the task. I looked up to see them already marching down the corridor. I brandished the ruler, as if to spear the commissioner between the shoulder blades. I bit my lip and calculated again.

  I cried out in exasperation. I calculated anew. I checked the figures. Again. And again. I had begun so well. I scoured the boroughs, spoke to local divisions, made first reckonings. All this energy, all this optimism, and it was futile: by my calculations, at this rate I would finish my enquiries in seventeen years.

  I put my head in my hands, exhausted. I snatched up my pen, to hurl it against the wall. I wanted to smash my reckoning into a thousand pieces and see the ink trail down the wall, a chart of my fruitless endeavours. Suppressing my tantrum, I crushed the pen against the paper until the nib snapped. Black ink splattered the map. I leapt up so violently that my chair crashed to the ground. The registrar looked at me oddly, as I charged out of the building onto Whitehall.

  “Ahoy, Watchman.” A deep familiar voice. “Coming to the 9.23, you miserable beggar?”

  “Oh, God.” I turned to scowl at a considerable beard. “Not tonight, is it, Collins?”

  “As you well know. Too long since you’ve graced us with your presence.”

  “I’m on night duty. Thanks all the same.”

  Wilkie Collins placed his bulk in my way. “Pull yourself together, man.”

  “I can’t afford the time.”

  He grabbed my shoulders and looked gravely into my eyes, as if he were deciding whether a beloved but ragged old overcoat was worth keeping or not. “On the contrary, you old sleuthhound. I’d say you can’t afford not to.”

  * * *

  It’s thanks to Miss Villiers that I was inveigled into the 9.23 Club, fearful shower that they are.

  Miss Ruth Villiers, with hair so dark yet face so pale. Ruth, librarian at the British Museum Library, who gave me such assistance last year. She ransacked archives, unpicked puzzles and deciphered coded threats. Without her insight, I should never have solved it in time. I was in awe of her, and most fond. Brilliant as I thought her, and beautiful, I had failed to pursue her as she perhaps wished to be pursued. To be frank, we had fallen out. Molly and Co. had been exposed to horrors, and Ruth felt they deserved recompense. She was right, of course, that they deserved a better chance in life; but what could I do about it? One lowly sergeant’s protests brought nothing to them—and only trouble to me.

  Ruth withdrew, in a state of dudgeon, to live with her dreaded Aunt Lexie in some country backwater. We saw little of each other now, but I heard her words in my mind in times of need, in particular, her stern injunction that I must find some friends to talk to.

  “But I talk to you,” I had said.

 
Ruth rolled her eyes. “A chap needs to share his woes with other chaps. There are things you shouldn’t trouble a lady with.”

  “Are you saying I abuse your capabilities?”

  “I’m saying you irritate me.”

  She wasn’t joking. She still commuted to the Library, irregularly, but no longer sought me out. I missed our tête-à-têtes in the tea rooms of Great Russell Street. I missed more than the tea and scones.

  Through her introduction, however, I was thrown on the mercy of this impromptu salon. Wilkie Collins was a novelist, a merry devil of a soul, outcast from polite society for his untoward marital arrangements. Collins liked nothing better than to drink all evening, and explore the city’s darker quarters all night, as if voyaging to the equinoctial regions.

  Henry Mayhew had struck up his acquaintance while investigating the same night spots. A journalist, long penniless, of lugubrious disposition, Mayhew had lately captured the public imagination with London Labour and the London Poor. These exotic tales fascinated everyone, as if myths of Hindustan, yet these real-life characters lived on our very streets.

  Collins and Mayhew played rackets at their club. Despising the crush of after-work nabobs, they booked a court for eight every Tuesday, aiming to reach the pub by nine.

  I turned up at nine every week.

  Our occasionals drifted in soon after: Lemon, the Punch editor; Lear, the filthy landscape painter; and his heretical pre-Raphaelite friends. Dickens often said he’d come, though rarely did; he gave as excuse charitable duties at Urania Cottage, which doubtless meant he was visiting his mistress. What made us laugh was the way Mayhew and Collins strolled in, rosy-cheeked with exertion, at twenty-three minutes past nine on the dot, without fail and without a word of apology. It was of course I, the Watchman, who noted this aberration.

  I often thought, I haven’t the will to chat tonight, I’m in a mood, I won’t go, or I’ll go but sit sullen and silent, or I’ll just drink myself into comfort. Half an hour of their effervescent foolery, and I was restored to humanity. What nonsense we cajoled out of each other. Mayhew would fulminate over the latest injustice. Collins would goad him about it, only to prove historiographically that the past was worse still and we really ought to be celebrating progress. Whereupon I would pat Mayhew on the back, and he would weep, admitting he was melancholy, not from the grimness of interviewing street folk, but because he had argued with his wife.

  “Six pints of your finest ale, sharpish. I’m off to the worst job in the world.”

  Collins laughed. “What’s got into you, Watchman? You need a dose of laudanum. You’re normally as expressive as a bagpipe.”

  Normally, I sat quiet as the literary men debated issues of the today. Today, I told them my woes: how I had been landed with the Yard’s most intractable task; I must be as clinical as a chemist, saintly as a priest, and reductive as a tinpot major; and all to be reported in nine months. “Payne knows it’s impossible, yet he lets me flounder. It’s ridiculous. It’s indefensible.” I expected them to agree.

  “It sounds bloody marvellous.” Collins downed his first pint and rubbed his hands. “By God, I can think of a few places I could help you count.”

  Mayhew was suitably repulsed. “Show us the figures you have.” He frowned at the tables in my pocket book. “How on earth did they make these old reckonings?”

  “That’s just it. I can’t see how, with fewer police, and worse managed.”

  “Bet you five guineas,” said Collins, “they made half the numbers up. One, two, miss a few, ninety-nine, a hundred.”

  I shook my head, showing Dr Acton’s figures from the last decade.

  “William Acton?” Mayhew knew him. “He’d better vouch for this evidence.”

  “Why, damn it, Lawless?” Collins studied me closely. “Why are you at it?”

  “My blasted commissioner’s orders.”

  “Nonsense. You’re too bloody-minded. Orders be damned. There’s something else.”

  I drank deep of my ale. I had stayed on in London after the underground disaster, against my better judgement. I was hoping to see my efforts rewarded; I was crying out for something new. Now Payne sent me to oversee the oldest vice in the world. It queers your appetites when you spend your nights in brothels, but it hadn’t dented my determination.

  I talked of Felix. Of Felix’s gentleness toward Bede and the Pixie. His indulgence for Molly. His preference of the Oddbody Theatricals over chattering society. About our walk to Brodie’s house, when Felix could go on no further, because… well, because of griefs he could not express.

  Poor wretches. Not just that woman. How many like her across the city? Tossed aside, and never a thought spared for them. When I came to London, I was shocked by the poverty, the naked indifference of rich and poor rubbing shoulders so close. Edinburgh wore its inequalities with Presbyterian shame. London was so shameless, it made us Londoners callous. Felix made me see them again: the disregarded, the exploited.

  “You hope to change something.” Mayhew patted my shoulder. “But what?”

  I gave an impression of Payne, bellowing, “Close all the brothels down!”

  “Unnatural hope.” Collins exhaled. “Shut one, another opens.”

  I laughed hollowly. Payne’s more realistic demand was that, besides venues, I tot up the women, noting age, origin, and whence come to the trade. “Even if I make rough valuations, that will shock Sir Richard’s Commons Select Committee. The lawmakers and reformers don’t know the half of it.”

  “Save one woman,” said Mayhew, “and you have done something.”

  “Something?” Collins guffawed. “You have salved the conscience of the rich. What have these girls left except the workhouse? Stop them selling themselves, and they are without a trade. More ale!”

  I stared into my glass. Molly always complained that governments legislate and reform, careless that each reform impoverishes more of the destitute.

  “Buck up, Watchman.” Mayhew thumped the table. “I interview street folk, beggars and criminals in order to goad the rich out of inaction. Despite his posturing, Collins writes to shame us out of hypocrisy.” He turned his maudlin features upon me, lyrical in his cups. “Your calibration of carnality can change hearts. Assess the figures, as they are, and you compel us to tackle causes. You beg the country to stop punishing and start helping.”

  Collins grinned, proud of our friend’s outburst. “We each of us fight the system, and are one by one defeated. You shall experience sinful things, my friend. To tackle those sinful things, you shall need my help.”

  Another hour, a pitcher of the house ale, and my plans were made, the map repartitioned, my helpers settled.

  I told them of Kate Hamilton’s offer; they agreed it could do no harm.

  I told them of Brodie’s hinted offer, and my evading it.

  “His newsmen to gather information for you, in return for dibs on the latest murders?” Collins snorted. “I trust J.W. Brodie about as far as I can spit him.”

  “We have more reliable helpmates.” Mayhew’s work on prostitution, alongside the assiduous Etonian, Bracebridge Hemyng, meant he knew all the societies: societies for suppressing vice, for protecting young females, bringing peace to the penitent and refuge to the degraded.

  “I’m sure they are well-meaning and charitable,” I sniffed, “but they will hardly hand over all their researches to the police, whom they hold culpable.”

  Collins butted in, promising to inveigle Dickens and his painter friends to tour the boroughs in their sybaritic jaunts. “This very night, I shall take you to St John’s Wood. No! No shirking now. Your commission is quite thrilling, taken in this light. The things we’ll get up to. I shall ask questions, while you take shorthand. Even the closest madam will divulge her character when you hint you may include her in a novel.” With Collins soaking me in ale, the siren call was more alluring than at Kate’s or the Argyll Rooms, where I could resist the demon of temptation easily enough: find a girl, hear her tale, th
e job is done. “But the best notions of all, Lawless, are staring you right in the face, and you’re missing them entirely.”

  I stared at him.

  “Molly,” said Collins simply. “Engage the help of your Molly and her theatrical urchins. They have underworld connections, haven’t they? Inestimably more approachable than the likes of us. And how have you forgot your most instructive ally?” He nudged me suggestively with his elbow. “Your friend, Skittles.”

  I had once mentioned, in my cups, that I knew the courtesan, long before she was famous and her handkerchiefs fetched hefty sums among society gents. Collins’s ribald allusions made me regret this indiscretion. I cast my eyes down. Go hang; if they want to believe I was Skittles’s darling, let them.

  “Is this true?” Charles Dickens appeared behind us. “My goodness.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder and studied me penetratingly, smoothing his beard. “My dear Lawless, are you really acquainted with the illustrious Skittles? Let us pay her a visit. What stories she’ll tell us. More ale? Or is it time for a dram?”

  DAINTY MISS SKITTLES

  The remarkable thing about Skittles—Catherine Walters, the horsebreaker Anonyma—was that she was not the greatest natural beauty. Nor was she dainty, however the song puts it. She was a solid, buxom girl, with upper arms made to steer horses or carry trays of beer, her thick hair without refinement, worn au naturel aside from that singular damask rose. But what did that matter? She was enchanting. I defy any man to talk with Skittles for four minutes without declaring he is a little bit in love.

  How did she do it?

  That is just the thing: I’m not sure she was doing anything. She was behaving as God had made her: attentive, effusive, amused; oh, always amused by what you said. Musical laughter burst from her lips, as if she appreciated not just your wit but the fascinating intimations you left unexpressed. Her head tilted; her brown eyes fixed you with that wry smile of hers. She did enjoy men’s company; she was unashamed to show it. She was so quick-witted that, when the company was dull, she could enliven it, without ostentation, so she made you feel you were the entertaining one, when in fact she was conducting the tempo with effortless flair. If her intimate relations were as warm (and I am told that they were, indeed, more so), then every man who came close to her must have felt he was a master of sensuality, an emperor of love. And who does not desire that?