The March mizzle concealed us. Every hue of light passed over me as I waited by the dark waters, one moment black as night, then like a bonfire, until the haggard daylight struggled through. With the lamps flickering against this mournful sky, it seemed a landscape from a nightmare.
My thoughts were sunken with the diver. I would have been in terror beneath those waters. Guilt stabbed at me: of what I had seen in the warehouse; of the accusations I would make in court; hoping I was more honest than those I condemned; wondering if I truly was.
The diver surfaced with a muffled cry. He hefted a bundle out by my feet, and pulled off his helmet. He gazed at me, eyes hooded. He must go down again, for there were two dozen more bundles the same, some fresh as this, some rotted by the years.
I nodded, uncomprehending. As he dived again, I undid the old rags and unravelled the bundle at my feet. I cried out, forgetting the man we must arrest. My heart thumped in my chest, and I heard a rushing: not traffic, not the wind, just every sound amplified clear in my head. I gazed into the mists wreathing the Caledonian Road as it struck northward; I longed to follow it, all the way, home to the haven of my childhood, where such things never happened.
Jeffcoat came to find out why I had called out. I looked up at him. He saw what lay at my feet.
WILDERNSEA
The rain thrummed on the vaulted roof of King’s Cross. The express awaited, snorting and puffing, a great iron horse—the same that had delivered me to London five years ago. I would take the train north, not knowing what I sought. I must pursue the one thread joining Felix and the Flowers of Sin, leaving Jeffcoat to map out the finishing end.
I bypassed the tranquillity of first and second class, and threw myself into the menagerie of third: dubious dandies, with cravat pins and greased hair; military penitents with muskets that scared ragged old women; a Scotch corporal pretending to read Powder and Piety, but inside the dust jacket Maria Monk; and all of us northward bound at a penny a mile.
* * *
Mrs Agnes McGarrigan was not surprised to receive a visitor, though the telegram I had sent arrived half an hour after I did. A simple soul, she did not leave the range during my visit. I asked to speak with her daughter.
Her face grew troubled. “Which?”
I smiled. “Are there so many?”
“Ten.” Her eyelids fluttered. “Or thereabouts.”
Angelina evoked no response; Eveline elicited a twitch of recognition, then denial. “You had better speak to Susan, my eldest,” she said.
She gave me tea and bread spread thick with butter, speaking all the while of her family. Her husband was a good man, a failed farmer, who ran a ragged school in Whitby. Their numerous daughters worked about the house and the village, and there were sons too, but they were lazy. I could gather no more.
I saw around the room scanty evidence of endeavour: a basket, a cushion unstuffed, a napkin of embroidered tulle. I was thinking to depart, disappointed, when a buxom lass breezed in, soaking wet.
She deposited milk, onions and my telegram upon the table and stared brazenly. “Who do you think you are, then?”
Her mother reprimanded her, timidly. “Susan.”
“I’m looking for someone,” I explained. “Your sister, perhaps.”
Susan’s tongue flickered along her lip. “Which?”
“Eveline?”
Her scowl vanished. She shot a glance at her mother, then tugged me through to the saddle room, where she sat me on a rude bench. “Is it Effie, then?” She leaned conspiratorially close, with unexpected bonhomie. “Bin expecting next instalment. I heard as they’d changed her name, though.”
“Angelina.” I blinked. “That would be Angelina.”
“Bloody southerners. Eh? Eh!” She hooted with laughter and stirred up the fire. “Still, done you proud, I’ll wager, en’t she?”
I took out my wallet and set it on the bench. “Susan, if I may call you that, what payment you are expecting, I don’t know. Let us say, there has been a change within the organisation. I will pay you something, if you confirm a few details for me.”
Her grumpy expression returned. She plumped down on a joint stool and began removing her sodden garments, hanging them up one by one, until she was in a blouse and bloomers. She then lambasted me with an outburst of profanity that would have shocked the navvies down Gray’s Inn Road.
I interrupted. I explained that I was a policeman. That shut her up. “I hope to safeguard your sister’s well-being. But I’ll need help.”
“What’s happed her, then? It en’t our fault. It’s them blimmin’—” She caught herself. Blinking away her suspicions, she glanced at the wallet. The coins clinked, and out came the story. It was a catalogue of woes, but Susan told it as if it were bearable, even amusing, and I pitied her.
They lived on Wildernsea’s smallest farm and least fruitful. Their mother was a cook, their father absent most of the year, and as to why he spent so much time in Whitby, her story was less academic and more amorous. For his children, he cared nothing.
Wildernsea was long troubled; nobody talked of it, but girls had always gone missing. Of course, that’s what every girl wanted: to leave. Men would pass through, paying for their board on the way to Whitby; her mother never minded.
As the sisters reached womanhood, the men paid them more attention than their mother. She, Susan, busied herself with the farm; but Sookie was a beauty and Sarah a tease. One of those who passed through returned from Whitby with a contract, signed by her father, declaring that Sookie was to go into service in London. She would be paid and fed. What’s more, she would join a household influential in the nation’s affairs. He brought her a bonnet and fine boots, and off she went, proud as Punch.
As the daughters disappeared, how could they not rejoice? Their father was pleased with them. He brought presents at harvest. He told them what joy they brought him, needing no dowry.
“How much did Effie bring you?”
“I wouldn’t like to say.” She couldn’t resist: playing coy was not her suit, nor swindling. “But five guineas would make it a round twenty.”
I laughed and took out my wallet. “This man. Describe him.”
“Grey hair. Talked peculiar.” She shrugged. “Rich.”
I thanked Susan for her tale, gave her a pound and said I must leave.
She scowled. “You’ve missed the branch line service. Sunday, in’t it? No express until tomorrow.” She said they would make me comfortable. I gave in.
Her mother called us to the dinner table. Besides her, and Susan, aged twenty or so, there were four little girls, and Shirley, twelve, a pretty wee thing with dark eyes and heart-shaped face, who gave me her most winsome smile.
“You need only ring, sir. Remember. Whatever you should want.” Shirley’s smile seemed familiar. “You need only ring.”
I took dinner alone in my room and retired early.
Did I imagine the scrabbling on my door in the night? It was a struggle to sleep. The long waves rolled in on the shore and into my dreams.
I rose before dawn and left, my cape useless against the disconsolate northern rain. Dozing fitfully on the train, I understood why little Shirley’s smile was familiar: she was the image of her sister, Effie, the girl in Felix’s daguerreotype.
Third class was mercifully quiet. I sat thinking of Felix. Wondering about what Alexandra had told me. The family he had lost. It all wove together in my imagination. No wonder his broken mind was so filled with self-reproach. Had he paid over such a fortune? A thousand pounds, filched, most like, from his Phoenix Foundation; I thought of the cheques I had dropped into Coutts & Co. Had that thousand paid for this Effie, though her family received but ten? What had she to do with these losses of his? Even if I found this mysterious Eveline, this homely Effie, this ineffable Angelina, there were a thousand girls in the same trouble who were never rescued, never remembered.
I tumbled gratefully into sleep. I dreamed of the Wildernsea house, threatened by the risin
g of the sea. From the boisterous waves, gathered to crush it, a mermaid’s starry face emerged, with the Pixie’s features. The spume of sea bubbles danced around her. Mighty as a titan, she uprooted the house and pulled it out into the waves. Her troublesome sisters danced out onto the roof, which turned into the monotonous rocks, and called passing sailors to their doom. Each arm in arm with a gentleman, the sisters lined up in silk gowns, each the same smile, dragging us all ever further from that northern shore, the coast vanishing behind us.
I did not arise from this distracted slumber until the guard woke me at King’s Cross. At last I reached the Yard, damp, and dumb with exhaustion. I looked about, fearful to go forward. I had hoped, by understanding Eveline’s story, I might understand them all. I must try Quartern Mews one last time. First I would check up on Felix. Then we must swoop upon the Flowers of Sin.
PART V
FINAL FLOURISH
MID MARCH 1864
The devil jerks us back, tweaking our strings.
Repugnant objects hold us in their spell;
Each day we take a step closer to hell,
Without disgust, across the shades that stink.
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal Traffic in Foreign Women
One of the most disgraceful, horrible and revolting practices carried on by Europeans is the importation of girls into England from foreign countries to swell the ranks of prostitution.
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor
COMPLAINTS TO THE TIMES RE: GENTLEMEN’S ATTENTIONS
Recently moved to London, I allowed my daughter to go shopping with a female relative. In Oxford Street, a blackguard kept walking behind and had the audacity to make observations, until the ladies took shelter in a stationer’s shop. What an outrage that innocent girls cannot walk unaccompanied without being bothered by the stares and comments of scoundrels masquerading as gentlemen.
“A Northern father”
I have often walked alone in the city and never received any incivility. Perhaps provincial girls invite attention by their hats, dress and demeanour. If they adopted more modest dress and behaviour, they might escape the idlers’ attentions.
“Urban lady”
Walking between my pupils’ residences, I am so often bothered by middle-aged and older men that I endeavour only to go before 10.30am, which I recommend as free from unwanted harassments.
“M, a teacher and female”
The ladies in my aforementioned letter were dressed in mourning, in sympathy with our bereft Queen; and what is decency worth if a girl’s country upbringing is to be blamed for an idler’s advances?
“A Northern father”
There is no city in the world safer than London, with its police and attentive shopkeepers, for unaccompanied women. Every father is certain his own daughters are perfectly demure. That Blanche ever looked kindly at a strange chap who was struck with her appearance, he cannot believe; still less that Isobel showed more than her neat ankle, on purpose, to a young officer as she crossed the street. It never occurs to the father that these kiss-me-quick bonnets, loud stockings, capers, crinolines and ringlets straying over the shoulder say, “Follow me, lads.” Many harmless adventures occur to such dear girls during their walks, of which they say nothing when they return home; but Blanche and Isobel are not displeased to be noticed.
“Common Sense”
Ladies, the remedy lies in your hands. Dress dowdy. Put on poke bonnets, stinted skirts and dreary grey underclothes. Saunter ye not overmuch nor look about too boldly, and ye shall be safe from my amorous glance.
“Beau”
MAUVE FOUND
I was returning from the north when the scandal about Mauve broke. It was revealed that they had found him immolated in his bed, as if Dugdale-Hotten had illustrated a scene from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The week of adjournment was barely enough to let the furore die down. The newspapers enjoyed a gold rush as they pussyfooted around the portrayal, never quite describing what everyone soon knew: how he was found, sans culottes, handcuffed against that fold-down bed in his secret cabinet, eyes bulging out of his head, satin kimono round his neck and Seville orange in his mouth.
In death, they defamed him. I recalled what everyone seemed to forget, that he was toast of the town but six months ago, and Brodie’s bosom chum. Molly’s point entirely: make enough fuss of others’ crimes, and nobody notices your own.
How Mauve became the villain of our times, I never understood. We all reviled him. Papers reviled him. People reviled him. Politicians spat bile upon him. How on earth was he allowed to get away with it so long? Alas, he should have been exposed quicker, had the newspapers’ acumen not been blunted by the Bugle scandal. Oh, let them quiz servants, seduce maids, decode blotting paper, if they save us from such monsters.
The police were full of bluster, their theories void of sense. They were perhaps colluding, perhaps orchestrating this devilry. If only we’d trusted our newsmen. It was their job to scrutinise. If Brodie’s fingers hadn’t been rapped, he would have exposed the fiend.
Everyone forgot the days when Mauve was the toast of the town. All changed now. As each new scandal came out—prostitution, coercion, trafficking, slavery—the public imagination laid them all at Mauve’s door (whereupon others, as guilty, sighed with relief). Gabriel Mauve was lucky to have died before we lynched him.
ONE GOLDEN AFTERNOON
Arriving at The Clapham Hospital for Incurables, I found Felix asleep and alone. I called out for Bede and the Pixie. Nothing. I sat down, fretting for the Oddbodies’ safety. They leapt out, laughing, from the Punch and Judy stall; hard to credit, but the contraption served them as bunk bed.
“We weren’t certain it was you, old man,” Bede said. “By the way, our friend is learning to talk again.”
* * *
When Felix woke, sitting upright in a panic, he stared at me in anxiety. Then the ward mistress knocked with elevenses, and he swooned with terror. We convinced him at last that he was safe. Pixie settled him and poured the tea. The warmth flooded back to his face.
“I cannot say exactly what I mean.” Felix’s voice was unchanged in timbre. It still wrapped you in its warmth, but the gorgeous rhythm was disrupted. “Time,” he intoned, grasping my hand; his pulse beat defiantly. “Past, present, and—and—the other one.”
“Felix, I have only a little time.” I had to plan with Jeffcoat our tactics for the evening, but I longed to get some answers out of poor Felix first. “But if the bad men come, the frightening men, you must pretend you cannot speak.”
Felix nodded.
I sighed. “Bede, do you think he follows me?”
“Hard to tell, old man. We’re teaching him a bit of signing, to augment his vocabulary.”
“Brodie’s men?” Felix broke in.
I stared. “That’s right, Felix. They mustn’t know.”
He tapped the side of his nose. “Shan’t let on.”
I couldn’t help but feel joyful to see his complicitous smile. I had brought writing materials. I needed Felix to write his testimony—though I feared it might be a testament—to unearth the roots of his woes. Bede shook his head, but promised to try and extract said testimony, and the Pixie would scribe it, just as I had taken down hers at the Yard beforetimes.
“Times. Oh, yes,” Felix nodded. “That’s right. Time and—the other one. Lucky, you see. Still here. Otherwise—dead.” He smiled a guileless smile of pleasure at finding himself here with us, still touching and hearing and feeling.
I squeezed his hand. “You poor fellow.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no. My own—the blame—my own.” He tapped his chest. The cup of tea Pixie delivered to his bedside unlocked a moment of lucidity. “Isn’t she d-d-d-darling? Talent. Misfortune. Won’t stay, you? Die Childer haven promisso—play Punch for me—dramaticals.” His concentration gave out.
Pixie and Bede grinned at each other and wriggled into the Punch and Judy. They re-enacted for us their O
rpheus and Eurydice tragedy. These brief hours, spent with those three kind-hearted fools, were the most golden afternoon I spent in all my years in London. Felix kept nudging me at the good bits. “Or-pheu-uuus,” called Eurydice, as she vanished. “With all thy faults I love thee still, Orphe—!” By the curtain call, they had me cackling with laughter.
Felix’s tears were streaming down his grey old cheeks. “I don’t suppose… By Jove.” He clutched his tea, gone cold, and gestured at our little stars. The Pixie leapt out, before I had finished clapping, to settle him back on his pillows, drying his eyes with her raggedy sleeves. “There, see!”
He looked at her, and I wondered: he thinks she might be his daughter, this poor mute girl, so bright, so trammelled, condemned since childhood to theft and depravity in order to survive. Perhaps every ragamuffin girl he ever meets he thinks might be his daughter. I leaned closer. “What is it, Felix? Tell me what it is.”
“I suppose you…” He shook his head. “Not finded? Her?”
“Oh. The girl, Effie?—I mean, Angelina?”
He became still, his attention rapt.
“I haven’t found her yet. I shall search more. Can you tell me where?”
His eyes darted about.
Pixie made signs, repeating my question.
He understood. “Sorry. No designs. Blood—dance—at her touch. Blest. So… she suffer, yes! But I—” His brows knitted. “So joy—of time past.”
“What is he speaking of?” I asked. “His daughter?” Or was he speaking of the Flowers of Sin?
The Pixie gestured.
Felix essayed a reply but could not get it out.
“Time past, time present.” Bede grinned. “He’s altogether spoony over ’em.”
I laughed a soundless laugh.
“Pain,” said Felix, “pain I am. Cannot you relieve me, good apothecary? All I ask, that she be alive. I want. I wish. I not go on.” His body shuddered, his eyes squeezed shut; he clenched his fists, as if to tear back the veil of the past. The tears streamed from him. Poor broken man. How I had admired him, wanted to help him, wanted to be like him; and here he was brought so low.
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