Terror by Gaslight

by Edward Taylor

  With her gaze firmly locked on to her needlework, trying to speak lightly in spite of her racing heart, Harriet took the plunge.

  ‘I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t have a healthier activity. Something in the fresh air.’

  ‘A sensible thought, Harriet. I might get a croquet set for the garden.’

  ‘That would be enjoyable. But I was thinking of something a little more strenuous.’

  ‘Strenuous?’

  Harriet’s mouth was going dry, but she pressed on. ‘Sometimes on a summer’s day the ponds on the Heath look inviting. It crossed my mind that I might take up bathing.’

  ‘Bathing? In Highgate Ponds? Highly dangerous! You know the water is deep?’

  ‘Yes, I have been warned of that. But I’m told they have lifeguards.’

  ‘Common fellows! I would not want them laying hands on my daughter. And that is what they would do, if you got into difficulties! It is unthinkable!’

  ‘Actually, Father, I was hoping you might escort me. I expect you’re a good swimmer.’

  All trace of geniality left Austin in a flash.

  ‘Then you expect wrong! I cannot swim! And, furthermore, I have no wish to. If God had intended man to swim, he’d have given us fins. Put this foolish idea out of your mind, my girl! It is out of the question.’

  Harriet felt crushed, and astonished by the violence of his reaction. But she was also a little proud: she had an answer for Major Steele. She hoped he would realize what it had cost her.

  As Harriet bent over her embroidery again, Austin rose from his chair and began pacing up and down, complaining to the world in general. ‘Why is my dinner not served on time? And why is there no order in this house?’

  Then the door opened, and an anxious Clare came in.

  ‘I can’t find Mrs Butters,’ she announced. ‘I went to the kitchen to ask about dinner but she’s not there. And the back door is wide open!’

  ‘Wretched woman!’ said Austin bitterly. ‘She is always leaving that door open. To let the steam out, she says. Not caring that she may be letting thieves in!’

  ‘But where can she be?’ asked Clare.

  ‘No doubt she’s in the cellar, sampling the wine.’

  ‘That’s not fair, she doesn’t do that. I’m worried about her.’

  ‘You’d do better to worry about yourself, my girl!’ Austin grasped Clare’s arm in an iron grip and glared into her face. ‘I believe you have been meddling at my desk and, if you have, you will be sorry!’ He let go of his daughter and pointed towards the door. ‘But first things first. Go and close the back door at once, and lock it. Then find Mrs Butters and tell her that if dinner is not served at once she will lose a month’s wages!’

  Rubbing her arm, Clare left the room and closed the door behind her.

  Austin began pacing back and forth again, and resumed his grumbling. ‘It is not good for the digestion to have to wait for dinner! Why is the woman suddenly failing in her duties?’

  ‘As Clare told you, I don’t think Mrs Butters is well. She seemed very tired this afternoon.’

  ‘She should go to sleep earlier, instead of sitting up reading trashy novellas! There is no need for her to be awake after 9.30, once the washing-up is done. The woman has no common sense.’

  ‘Please do not be too hard on her, Father. She is very kind. Yesterday she offered to find me a new kitten if Ella does not return.’

  Austin stopped walking and looked sternly at his daughter. ‘Indeed? Well, do not assume I shall give my permission. You know I am averse to animals in the house.’

  ‘But surely you would not have me live without a pet?’

  ‘We shall see. We shall see. But let us have no more talk of swimming.’

  Austin sat down wearily at his desk and began writing on a piece of paper. As he did so, the door was thrown open and Clare rushed in, ashen-faced and trembling and struggling for words.

  Harriet was shocked. ‘What is it, Clare? Are you all right?’

  ‘What’s the matter, girl?’ Austin barked. ‘Where is Mrs Butters?’

  ‘Mrs Butters is lying at the bottom of the cellar steps!’ cried Clare. ‘With her head in a pool of blood!’

  The Dunblane coal store was brick built and stood ten yards from the house. Fortunately for the boy, it was to the southwest of the building and was thus somewhat sheltered from the north wind. Nevertheless, it was bitterly cold, and the boy had no outer coat to combat the freezing winter night. Every few minutes he would exercise his arms and run on the spot to keep his circulation going but it brought scant comfort.

  The jagged lumps of coal, which would soon be warming Frankel’s rooms, were at present dead and cold, stacked in a sullen heap that covered most of the floor. The boy had arranged some of the top pieces to form a crude seat for himself. There was nothing else to sit on.

  A chipped enamel water jug was on the ground, and the paper bag with the black bread was on the coal beside him. He’d put it there in the hope of protecting it from the rats, which scuttled about the floor from time to time.

  The only ventilation came from a small grille at the top of one of the walls. This had been installed many years ago, when a previous owner kept dogs in there. (These days Frankel’s dog slept indoors at night, for extra security.) Luckily, the wall with the grille faced the Highgate Road, so a tiny amount of light filtered in from a street lamp. There was no other illumination.

  For a long time at the start of his incarceration the boy had been absorbed in self-pity, an emotion to which he was well entitled. Life had been cruel from the start.

  Bad memories of a hostile and drunken woman, who must have been his mother, mingled with visions of various men who came and went in the back rooms of the slum house. Most of the time the men ignored him but sometimes he was kicked or cuffed if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Only the sailor called Joe had shown him any kindness. Joe stayed longer than the others, and took an interest in the boy. He seemed to enjoy telling the lad stories of his adventures at sea and in foreign lands. Joe it was who taught the boy the rudiments of reading.

  But one night there’d been a terrible quarrel, and the woman hit Joe with a hammer. The sailor had left the house with his head bleeding, never to be seen again. And then came the day when the woman turned her hammer on the boy, and he too had fled for his life.

  After that came jumbled recollections of the turbulent period that followed, when he was living with the street boys, sleeping in doorways, huddled together for warmth, scavenging food from the rubbish outside taverns and eating-houses, begging for money, or stealing the odd coin if the opportunity arose.

  There’d been some comradeship in those days but there’d also been fear and violence, with bigger boys always eager to impose their supremacy with fist and boot.

  It had seemed like an escape when the prosperous-looking stranger had approached him in the park. The man had been sitting on a bench watching the urchins play football with an old cabbage, found in the gutter after the market closed.

  The boy had fallen and cut his knee, so he was still there, trying to wipe off the blood with a handful of grass, when the cabbage disintegrated and the other boys moved off in search of new diversions.

  The man had tended the injured knee and asked questions in a friendly voice. Then, when he’d established that the boy had no home and no family, he’d invited him to come and live in his house, and be a servant for sixpence a week.

  The boy had jumped at the chance. The idea of living in a house and receiving wages seemed a dream come true. Alas, the reality had proved a bitter disappointment. He’d simply exchanged one grim existence for another. For him, life at Dunblane was a wearisome round of drudgery, accompanied by harsh words, and punctuated by beatings and other humiliations. Furthermore, always under the watchful eyes of three men, he had lost his freedom.

  These sad thoughts had filled the boy’s mind for several hours, creating a mood of resignation. The optimism he�
�d shown Harriet last week was now extinct. He’d begun to accept that misery was his lot in life. He was doomed to suffer. He would sit there shivering in the dark, taking just enough of the cheerless bread and water to stay alive. He’d endure the loneliness and the beatings, and then resume his dreary routine of slavery. It was the line of least resistance.

  But then came the stirring of something different. There was within the boy a spark of resilience, a streak of determination, even of pride. On the Heath he’d seen a better side of life. Before the fear caused by the Maniac there’d been happy well-fed people with smiling faces, walking for pleasure, flying kites, playing games. Why shouldn’t he be part of that world?

  And then there’d been the girl. She’d smiled at him, let him touch her, treated him as a human being. There might be other girls out there who’d give him smiles and let him touch them.

  He’d boasted to this one that he’d escape when the time came. Suddenly, he decided that the time had come. He must get away now.

  For a while, when the boy first came to Dunblane, Frankel had paid him the promised sixpence a week. Before long, of course, the doctor had started forgetting, or withholding the wage as a fine. But there’d been occasional tips, including the cat-money. He now had five shillings and fourpence wrapped in a rag and hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the attic.

  That might be enough to survive on for a few days, while he found the London docks the sailor had told him about. He could get a job on a ship and sail the seas, like Joe.

  Next time he was allowed out on the Heath, or sent on an errand, he must be sure to have his savings in his pocket. And then he’d run! He knew where the river was. He’d go in that direction. The docks must be somewhere on the river.

  And then he recalled Frankel’s malevolent words, which had been almost lost in a haze of fear and pain. He was to be fined five shillings! The tyrant must have guessed the boy had savings and had resolved to grab them, to prevent him escaping.

  Once the rest of the punishment had been served, his master would get his hands on the money, there was no doubt of that. Even if Frankel didn’t find it in its crude hiding place, he’d beat it out of him.

  And then the boy would have no means of subsistence for his first days in the outside world, if he managed to get there.

  But now the boy’s mind was racing.

  He realized he’d have to make his bid for freedom this very evening. Apart from rescuing the cash, this might be the best chance he’d have, while he was out of sight, and disregarded by the rest of the household. If he could somehow get out of this prison, he could sneak upstairs, collect his money, and steal away before his absence was discovered.

  Frankel was coming to thrash him at ten: it would be good to avoid that. The Highgate church clock had just struck seven. So there’d be three more hours during which the men would give him no thought.

  Frankel worked in his laboratory till eight, and then he and Stone sat down to dinner, which was cooked and served by Prosser. Until dinner, Stone would be in the office, working on papers and sipping gin.

  The window of the laundry room was usually left ajar. The boy could reach it by climbing up the drainpipe; he’d done it before. Then he would make his way to the attic and back, using the dark places and short cuts he knew well.

  But how was he to get out of the coal house?

  A memory had been lurking at the back of his mind during his hours of dejection. And now, as his energy began to flow, it came to the fore. He remembered the trick Titch had bragged about last year.

  Titch, of course, had been the smallest of the street gang, but what he lacked in inches he made up for in cunning and dubious skills. He claimed that he could always escape from a locked room and, for a ha’penny each, he’d told the rest of them how it was done.

  The boy felt in his pocket and was reassured to find the matches he always carried, to light the fires at six o’clock every morning. The other essential for that task was old newspapers, and a pile of these was kept alongside the coal. He groped around in the gloom and found a broadsheet. He took a double page from the centre, thought for a moment, and then added another to make a double layer.

  He knelt down and slipped most of his paper mat through the gap beneath the coal-house door, retaining only a few inches on his own side.

  The key of this door normally stayed in the outside keyhole, and he fervently hoped that today would be no exception. He would soon find out.

  He took one of the long lucifers from the matchbox, inserted it into the lock, and pushed. To his joy, it met something hard. The key was there.

  He pressed the matchstick hard against the tip of the key, attempting to dislodge it. The match snapped. He tried three more matches and they all broke.

  Desperately, he racked his brains to try and think of something stronger to use, and it occurred to him that there was an item on his belt that might do the trick. The buckle had the usual small metal spike to go into the holes at the opposite end. He removed his belt and eased the spike into the keyhole. Would it be long enough?

  After a moment he let out a sigh of relief. Metal had met metal. The spike was touching the key.

  He pushed hard with his new tool and felt the key move slightly but not enough to fall out. For five minutes the boy prodded and probed with the spike, attacking the key from every possible angle. In spite of the cold, sweat began to form on his brow.

  And then, just as he was about to despair, he felt the key move decisively and heard it fall to the ground outside. It was not yet time to rejoice. Had the key landed safely on the newspaper? Or had it bounced off and ended up out of reach? And was the space below the door big enough for the key to pass through?

  The boy’s hands trembled as he pulled the paper gently towards him. The light was too faint for him to see if the key was there. He ran his fingers cautiously over the paper to feel for it. And suddenly, amazingly, there it was! Titch had got it right! His key to the outside world was sitting there on the middle crease of the newspaper.

  Carefully, he picked it up and put it briefly in his pocket, while he stood up and restored the belt to his trousers. When he was ready, he put the key in the lock, turned it, and heard the tongue withdraw to its housing with a pleasing click.

  Then he turned the handle and began to push the door open, gently, so as to reduce any creaking. When the door was halfway open he slid out sideways, with the minimum of movement.

  He was surprised to find bright moonlight outside. He blinked, and exhaled heavily after his exertions. He allowed himself a moment of exhilaration. He was free. He peered around him eagerly.

  And now came the shock. A man was leaning against the wall opposite, only a few yards away! It was Prosser, and he was staring at the coal-house door, as if waiting for the fugitive to appear.

  For an instant the boy froze with fright.

  Then he turned to run but already Prosser had taken four swift strides and had an iron grip on the boy’s arm, and a large hand over his mouth.

  The boy was too shaken to struggle as Prosser pulled the door wide open, steered them both inside, and closed the door behind them.

  ‘If you know what’s good for you, don’t make a sound!’ he ordered, removing his palm from the boy’s face. Now deflated, the boy stood helplessly awaiting his fate, which he assumed would be another savage beating to add to the one he was expecting later.

  Prosser spoke quietly and, to the boy’s surprise, without hostility or anger. ‘Good trick that with the key. I ain’t seen that done for years.’ Was the man playing cat-and-mouse with him? ‘I was on my way to let you out when I seen the key moving. I thought I’d let you get on with it. See if it still works.’

  ‘Let me out?’ gasped the boy. This must be some new refinement of torment. ‘You was going to let me out?’

  ‘Yeah. And you’d better get a long way away from here bloody quick. Only don’t go without your dosh.’ He took from his pocket a small cloth bag, in which was the rag c
ontaining the boy’s savings. ‘I put it in a bag, see. Be safer. That weren’t a clever place you was hiding it.’

  The boy’s surprise had turned to astonishment. He could scarcely find his words.

  ‘You mean … you’re letting me go?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Prosser. ‘Better that way. Frankel’s in an evil mood. Crazy with rage, you might say. And he’ll be worse when he’s had his wine. I don’t want murder done in this house. One of us could swing for it.’

  Obviously, he wasn’t going to tell the boy about his moment of weakness an hour ago. After three pints of beer he’d lapsed into melancholy.

  In truth, although an enthusiastic bar-room brawler, Prosser had never cared for wanton cruelty. And the thought of what Frankel would do to the boy later had begun to disturb him.

  And then had come that extraordinary thought. Recalling drunken nights in Kentish Town, it had occurred to him that he could actually be the father of this boy! Or of another just like him. His conscience, which he had regarded as dead and buried years ago, had revived enough to nag him. Perhaps there’d been something wrong with the beer.

  This stupid softness still had a hold on him.

  ‘If you’ve nowhere better to go,’ he found himself saying, ‘go to the Horse and Groom down Archway. My brother works in the taproom. Tell him I sent you. He might give you a hand, if his feet aren’t plaguing him.’

  In a daze, the boy remembered that if someone did you a kindness you were supposed to say ‘Thank you’. It had happened so rarely in his life that he had scarcely ever used the phrase. But he used it now.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Prosser,’ he said. And he liked the sound if it, so he said it again.

  By now Prosser was surfeited with all this kindness and affability and was beginning to feel ashamed of himself. He managed to regain a proper gruffness as he said, ‘Now listen, boy. Don’t you never tell no one what goes on here. You bring Frankel down, you bring me down.’

  ‘I’ll never say a word, I swear it!’ the boy assured him.