The Riddle of the River

by Catherine Shaw

  ‘An aesthetic dress? I should hope that all dresses are aesthetic,’ he said.

  ‘No, I mean Aesthetic Dress, with capital letters. It’s a movement, the Reform Movement in Dress, you know. It’s rather old already, decades, I should think; it gained a little popularity when Oscar Wilde adopted it and began wearing the clothing and writing about it—’

  ‘Oscar Wilde? The playwright-turned-convict?’

  ‘If you want to put it that way,’ I answered with a sigh. There would be a great deal to say about the fate of the once celebrated and adulated writer. But this was definitely neither the time nor the place. I turned the conversation quickly back to dress. ‘The clothing was inspired by the work of the pre-Raphaelite painters,’ I went on, ‘Rossetti, Morris, and the others. They painted women wearing loose, romantic draperies. They just meant it artistically, but the reform movements, Aesthetic Dress, Rational Dress and so on, were inspired by those images to create very beautiful, very comfortable clothing for both men and women. Never cinch the waist; hang from the shoulders, that was one of their main creeds for both beauty and health.’

  ‘And such dresses would have been fashionable…when?’ he asked, eyeing the white dress with its old lace and sparse scattering of embroidery doubtfully. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any like the ones you describe.’

  ‘I don’t think such dresses ever actually became the fashion, in the sense that they were not adopted by the majority,’ I replied. ‘But there are still women who are known to wear them frequently. I am thinking of some rather well-known figures such as Ellen Terry.’

  ‘The actress?’

  ‘Yes, such dresses are typically worn by ladies who wish to appear – or really are – artistic and bohemian.’

  ‘Interesting. So do you think we can conclude that about this particular young lady?’ he asked, fingering the silk.

  ‘I wish we could conclude something more precise than just a reflection on her character. She was no conformist, that much is certain. But it is impossible to say whether she dressed in this manner from personal taste, or as an echo of some artistic profession, or, let me be very frank, quite simply because she found this style of dress more comfortable in her condition.’ I peered at the dress slowly, then turned it inside out.

  ‘You know,’ I added, ‘this is rather curious. The seams of this dress are stitched well enough, but they have not been finished! That is very odd.’

  ‘Oh, girls nowadays,’ replied Inspector Doherty with a wave of the hand. ‘Don’t know how to do things properly any more. Only think about what will show on the outside.’

  ‘That seems unlikely,’ I said. ‘It is foolish to leave the seams unfinished; even the most inexperienced seamstress is taught that one cannot leave them like this – they would begin to come undone after just a few wearings, as the edge of the material frays. No one wants to find themselves with an unravelling seam in the middle of the day. Also, this dress has been altered, and probably more than once. It was originally sewn to fit a different person, someone rather larger. You can see the traces where the seams were undone and redone. Here are the marks of the former seams; at the waist, and on the shoulders and under the arms. And the extra material on the inside has not been trimmed away.’

  ‘Perhaps the dress was borrowed, and would need to be altered back to the way it was before? That would explain not finishing the seams, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It could,’ I said, ‘though it seems like going to a lot of trouble. Still, it is possible. The thread is obviously fairly new, whereas the dress itself looks to me as though it has been worn quite a number of times, and washed many times as well. We’ll keep that in mind; a borrowed, altered dress.’

  ‘She didn’t have any handbag or reticule?’ asked Pat hopefully, as I put the dress aside and turned to the other items.

  ‘No. It may have been taken from her, or else it floated off down river. It may still be found. But look at her jewellery. This is quite interesting, don’t you think?’

  He handed me a remarkable bracelet of intricately carved ivory beads threaded on a silken twist. I looked at them intently.

  ‘It comes from the East,’ he said. ‘Now, where might she have got hold of an Oriental bracelet? I’ve never seen one like it.’

  Hmm, I thought to myself, looking at it.

  ‘The ring holds a single pearl set in silver. Banal, though pretty enough. Do you think you could discover anything about any of it?’ the inspector asked me. ‘It’s annoying: the purchased items seem too typical to trace, and the personal ones too original to have been purchased.’

  I fingered the bracelet of ivory beads, wondering if I had not seen something quite like it…not long ago. Surely – yes, surely…Pat’s eyes met mine, and he stood watching as I tried the bracelet on my wrist, slipped it off, and stood holding it, thinking, and wondering. He stood up and began helping the inspector to pack the unknown girl’s affairs back into the box. They rolled up the dress with pansies and put it away, and I watched them, and thought of the young body itself lying under the scalpel on a brightly lit post-mortem table…and from thence to a hard, dark coffin. Pat piled up all the undergarments and placed the sad little pair of water-soiled slippers together on top. He looked at them a little wistfully.

  ‘Where is the ring?’ said Inspector Doherty suddenly, glancing suspiciously at his brother-in-law.

  ‘Here it is, everything is back in the box,’ said Pat cheerfully, placing the ring carefully inside a shoe. Inspector Doherty closed the lid and snapped the clasp firmly, then handed me the portrait photograph.

  ‘Pat says you’re willing to see what you can do in the way of identification,’ he said. ‘Sometimes locals can find out things more easily than the police. Take this, if you think it might be useful. I can spare it, I have all the others.’

  ‘I will see what I can do,’ I said, rising and taking it. Not that I could really imagine myself using it. Going around showing photographs of dead faces to people – what better way to look like a policeman? Goodness gracious! Yet I did want the photograph, if only for myself. I wrapped it in a piece of paper and slipped it into my bag.

  Pat accompanied me home in a silence quite unusual for him. I had expected him to inundate me with questions as to my intentions. But he seemed wrapped up in his thoughts, and when he did speak, it was not about the murdered girl, but about quite other things. He shook my hand warmly when we separated, and told me to let him know about anything particular which came my way. His handshake was unusually long and firm, and when he dropped my hand, I felt something unfamiliar slide onto my wrist.

  ‘Pat!’ I called, but he was already striding off into the distance. I looked down unwillingly. The Chinese beads hung there looking innocent. They gleamed and winked at me in the darkness.

  ‘All right,’ I said to myself. ‘I knew he was going to do it, that is, I didn’t really know, but really, I did. I saw that he saw I was thinking about them. So there we are. I think these beads are going to be useful, and I shall use them – and then it will be up to Pat to make his misdemeanour good.’

  I returned home and placed the ivory beads carefully in the little alabaster dish on my night-table, where I habitually put my jewellery when going to bed if I intend to wear it again in the morning.

  A Chinese ivory bracelet – I saw such things not long ago, and right here in Cambridge. Not just like this one, to be sure – carved ivory bangles, rather, and bangles and beads of jade. Yet they all differed from each other, and this one may have been among them. I plan a little investigative shopping trip for tomorrow.

  1874

  The servants, tenants and farm workers pressed into the large bedroom to admire the new baby, snuggled in its mother’s arms. Still weak, she made the effort to smile at them from her bed.

  ‘Goodness me, what enormous ears he has,’ observed old Vornelli, who had lived and worked at the villa for forty-four years and had the right to make remarks.

  The mother look
ed up at him.

  ‘He will hear the still, small voice of the air,’ she replied softly, running her fingers over the baby’s fuzzy head.

  Friday, June 24th, 1898

  It is one of the moments of the day I love best; the children are in bed, and a peaceful silence has descended into every corner of the small house, which is nestling quietly in shadows relieved only by the glow of the lamp. This is the only moment at which I can take up my pen to write down the events of the day without fear of instant disturbance of one kind or another, whether it be visitors, tradesmen, urgent household duties or scampering twins. So here I am with my notebook, freshly begun yesterday, in front of me, and the inkpot conveniently to hand. Oh. Arthur has looked up from his newspaper.

  ‘Hum,’ he said. ‘Not writing letters? Fresh notebook? What does this mean, Vanessa? Have you a new investigation on hand?’

  ‘I have, since yesterday,’ I said. ‘A case of identification.’

  I do prefer to recount things when I feel ready to do so and not before. In any case, Arthur seems to know most things without being told, but as he says little, it comes to much the same. He contented himself now with glancing at me penetratingly before returning to his newspaper. So I shall proceed to my task and recount my search for the origin of the Chinese bracelet.

  As it happens, I had seen a number of similar bracelets for sale recently, amongst a large selection of varied decorative objects newly imported by Robert Sayle’s from China. I had visited the sale with little Cecily, but we had not paid much attention to the ivory beads and bangles, her gaze having been captured more vividly by the exotic objects such as fans and conical hats, whereas I spent my time examining the brightly coloured silks, of which I ended up buying a length for my own personal use. And how many ladies in Cambridge, I wonder, did not purchase some object, however trifling, from the far-off land of oriental dreams, during the three days that the sale lasted?

  Upon rising this morning, I slipped the bracelet onto my wrist and scrutinised my memories. I could not recall having seen this precise bracelet, yet it seemed to correspond well enough to the kinds of objects spread over the shop counters. I carried it to the nursery and showed it to Cecily, who, with a large napkin around her neck, was deeply engaged in manoeuvring a spoonful of bread-and-milk to her mouth without letting fall a single drop. I waited until the operation had come to a successful conclusion before showing her the bracelet; not, however, with much hope that her three-year-old mind could contain any really useful memories.

  ‘Ooh, pretty,’ she remarked, admiring it.

  ‘Do you remember the big shop with bracelets like this, Cecily?’ I asked her, but she merely stared at me, shook her head, and thrust her hand through the circle of beads. I had some difficulty in recovering it from her firm grasp. Dropping a kiss on top of her silky brown head, I returned it to my wrist and set off to Robert Sayle’s shop on St Andrew’s Street by myself.

  It is always a pleasant walk, if somewhat long, up the Newnham Road towards the centre of town. The sun was bright and strong, and I failed to open my parasol, letting the warmth radiate down instead upon my hat, comforting and inspiring. The shadows fell, dark and sharply outlined, on the pavement, and all looked so open, so reassuring, so free from secrets that my heart was lifted by a little wave of pure well-being, until the vision of the hand came, unbidden and undesired, floating into my mind. That limp, drowned hand lying like a withered lily on the edge of the photograph, my eyes fixed on it so as not to see the rest, the face, the staring eyes. I quickened my steps, and was glad to finally enter the shop and cool my forehead in its quiet shade.

  There were few clients at this hour, and those were essentially concentrated about the areas selling useful items. The counter where jewellery and imported items of all kinds were presented was deserted. A girl sat on a stool behind it, her dark eyes filled with melancholy boredom. I stared at her, wondering, although I did not exactly recognise her, if she might not be the very same girl who had sold the Chinese items on the days of the sale. I could not quite remember – yet if it were she, if this girl had sole charge of the counter, and if my guess about the bracelet were correct – why then, she herself may have seen the dead girl alive…

  I shook myself quickly, severely. If I could barely remember her face, then how could she, who sold dozens, no hundreds of objects, possibly remember a single client? There was nothing for it but to ask her. I made my way over to her; lost in her thoughts, she perceived me only as I arrived in front of her. Then she jumped to her feet, arranging a polite, albeit artificial smile upon her features. Her simple white dress bordered with black lines outlined an astonishingly firmly laced waist, whose strained tininess provoked me to an enormously deep inhalation, for the sheer pleasure of feeling my lungs expand. In spite of the prevailing fashion of tight-lacing, which has been if anything reinforced by the controversy swirling around it, I really cannot endure lacing beyond a certain, very reasonable point. I like to breathe, not to mention the frequent necessity of bending down. And I consider that as a mature matron, I have the right to do as I please on this score. Anyway, Arthur says that a womanly figure has just as much charm as a young girl’s, if not more. The girls one sees on the streets, however, seem to vie with each other to achieve waists of such small dimensions that they sometimes resemble ants more than young women. I recalled that the dead girl had not entered into this rather frightening game.

  Before addressing the girl, I let my eyes rove over the items spread out in front of her. Today they seemed to be Indian rather than Chinese; a collection of boxes, some of fragrant carved wood and others of gaily inlaid stone, decorated the surface of the counter, and the glass case underneath contained a selection of heavy silver jewellery, necklaces and earrings set with large turquoises. Perching my elbows amongst the things, I leant towards her in a confidential manner and slipped the bracelet off my wrist.

  ‘May I ask you a question?’ I said engagingly, trying to meet her eyes, for she seemed vaguely absent even as she prepared courteously to come to my assistance.

  ‘Certainly, ma’am,’ she replied without any show of interest. I imagined her forced, no doubt, into a tedious and wearisome job by the economic straits of a struggling family, and nourishing secret dreams of rising in life to some higher position, thanks, perhaps, to nothing more than her waist measurement. I felt tempted to talk to her about herself rather than about the bracelet, but I did not want to annoy her needlessly or to waste time, and I was afraid another customer might arrive at any moment. So I simply reached out with the bracelet and showed it to her.

  ‘Do you recognise this? Could it have come from here?’ I asked. ‘Is it possible that you sold it yourself?’

  She took it, examined it closely, letting it run through her fingers a moment, while I thought of the many negative answers she might give: never saw it before, was not working here during the Chinese sale, couldn’t say. Then, unexpectedly, she nodded.

  ‘Yes, I think so. This was among the collection of Chinese bracelets we had here a week or two ago. I am almost certain that I remember it. It is so pretty – look how it is carved. Each bead is hollow and the surface is carved with tiny flowers, or perhaps it is just ivory lace. It is incredible to be able to make such things. Most of the other bracelets were made of a single piece; this was the most exquisite and complicated one. Some of the others still remain,’ she added, searching a key out of a drawer and unlocking the cupboard which was low behind the counter, at the level of her knees. ‘We keep the things for the next time we bring out Chinese goods,’ she explained, taking out some items and setting them in front of me. ‘It is not good to allow the public to become tired of the same things, or used to them, or to see that they are not sold. They must think that everything disappeared very quickly.’ She smiled again, her kind, disillusioned smile. I looked at the bangle she held out to me, and at a decorative object in a circular glass window. I had not noticed these things particularly when I had visited the s
ale, but now I was unable to take my eyes off the almost unbelievably intricate carving protected between the two glass discs. A pagoda stood on a rock, trees made of inexpressibly delicate needles surrounded it, and a stork pointed its threadlike beak into the air. The whole scene seemed to have been created by the hands of fairies, not the thick, clumsy fingers of men (even Chinese ones, whose fingers must be lighter and quicker than our own). I stared into the magic disc, entranced.

  ‘May I buy this?’ I said suddenly.

  ‘It is not for sale now,’ she said. ‘I am not allowed to take out these things and sell them.’ She glanced around nervously, for her superior, no doubt, but the shop was functioning peacefully, each lady busy with her own stock, and nobody was watching us.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I will come back and buy it the next time you have Chinese things.’

  ‘I should like to sell it to you, since you want it,’ she said softly. ‘It is beautiful, isn’t it? I also look at it sometimes. I look at it quite often, when I am here alone. It is even more delicate and miraculous than the bracelet.’

  ‘Keep it for me,’ I said. ‘I will buy it some day, and in the meantime you can go on looking at it.’ I looked at her sober dress, and felt for a moment how it must be to see, touch and hold pretty things, frivolous things, luxurious things all day long, and probably never have the chance to own even one. I turned back firmly to the subject of the bracelet and proceeded to recount a string of falsehoods that I had prepared while on my way to the shop.

  ‘I found this bracelet on the street,’ I began, ‘and was almost certain that it must come from here. I thought I would try to return it to its rightful owner if I could possibly identify her. But it would probably be too much to ask, that you should remember to whom you sold it. If it was you who sold it at all – it might of course have been someone else?’