Not knowing; here lay the hardest part of it. I knew not what to think. Should I torture myself with remorse (though I seemed to be doing so already) or burn with plans of revenge (a course, by turns, also embarked upon). Which likelihood even was preferable? A lifetime’s guilt, or the humiliation of a cuckolded husband who has never himself achieved a night abed with his own erring wife? I really was not sure.
As a rest from such pleasant thoughts I chose to follow the example of my helper and spy, Constable Collins, and stare out of the window.
It was a London unlike itself I saw. A hot breeze, arrived the previous morning, had brought changes that had quite altered the metropolis from its proper character; wearying its inhabitants – usually so full of spirits – and sapping them of energy to pursue their livelihoods, as if natives of some steamy jungle nation. Partly it was the heat that effected this, and partly the constant distraction of perspiration; one’s hands and face would shine with damp, then adhere to themselves street dust from the air, that soon formed a salty crust – filling one with impatience to cleanse oneself – transforming beggars and earls alike into grimemasked savages.
The Thames-damp heat seemed to permeate all. The sun, as it lurked – dazzling but vague of location behind the miasma haze – appeared in one’s wilting consciousness capable of swallowing sound itself, movement too. The muffling of the cab’s wheels, altered to a duller pitch as the vehicle passed over one of the new wooden-surfaced streets; was this not the heat’s doing? So too the stillness of the Monument, looming high above the counting houses and bankers’ homes of the City, as some tower of ancient Egypt. Or the placid silence of barges on the Thames, creeping forward, brown sails limply grasping the hot breeze.
We crossed by Waterloo bridge, hurrying near the great new railway station – also to be called Waterloo – now close to completion, with stonework, iron and glass rising high into the air. Then suddenly a glimpse of fierce activity, from Londoners with hunger enough to be untroubled by mere temperature, working upon a dust heap that rose above the low houses all around, so it resembled some urban volcano. The cab swung past the gates of the dust yard, space alive with scampering and half-naked humanity, clutching to the hillock as insects to their nest, sifting through smaller heaps of still unsorted dust – even now a cart discharged a new load, freshly swept up from the streets – into junk metal, into breeze for brick-making, and into the remainder that made up the main mountain, to be sold as manure.
In moments it was lost to sight. Buildings began to diminish in scale, allowing momentary, half-seen views of hills beyond. Then walls, windows and chimneys vanished altogether, and the cab entered the groan of the orchards and vegetable plots of the market gardens around Battersea.
‘Here we are, sir.’ Constable Collins emerged from his silence. Jumping from the cab I followed the man as, with huge and unhurried steps, he approached the riverside alehouse in which our quarry lay waiting. Occasionally he would glance back as he went, doing so always with a nonchalant air; as if concerned only that he might be walking too swiftly for me, and not at all worried that I might try to slip away unseen.
He gave the door a sharp rap with his hand. When this brought no result – the building seemed lifeless at this early morning hour – he struck it with the rim of his chimney-pot hat, the metal frame causing quite a thump upon the wood. This proved sufficient, and in a moment footsteps echoed from within.
‘At last.’ The door-opener was, I guessed from his pronounced belly and important manner, the landlord. He inspected us, far from satisfied. ‘Just the two of you, are there? And in a cab. Won’t be easy shifting her off in that.’
‘We’ve not come to take her,’ Collins told him. ‘This gentleman just wants to have a look.’
‘A look? How long am I supposed to wait?’ The landlord seemed to grow more paunched with anger. ‘One of your lot thumps on my door in the middle of the night – wakes the whole household – saying I’ve got to store her, then slinks off and leaves me to it. I’ll have customers arriving within the hour. How am I supposed to run my business?’
The constable was unintimidated. ‘It won’t speed things none, us arguing out here.’
Not for the first time during the previous days, I had wished our capital possessed a proper morgue, following the example of that famous institution of Paris. The landlord opened the door wide to allow us inside, noisily, that we might know his continued displeasure. Walking behind, he directed our progress with impatient shouts, ‘Not that way, it’s left here,’ as if it were deliberate carelessness on our part not already to know the building’s geography.
I saw the moment we entered the room that it was not her. Isobella was never so tall. The corpse had been placed, of all choices, in the kitchen – it was a small inn, and perhaps that was the only room of size to easily accommodate her – among baskets of new potatoes and spring onions. The table she lay on was too short, and her legs – grown stiff – jutted out over the end, troublingly straight, the blanket suspended upon them, as if by some trick of magic.
Collins and the landlord stood watching; waiting for me to pull back the blanket and deliver my verdict.
Certain though I was that she would be unknown to me, it seemed easier to comply than not. The girl’s face was bloated from her hours in the river, but not greatly distorted. I was surprised by her youthfulness; though tall, she was hardly more than a child.
‘It’s not her.’
Collins nodded, observing, and the landlord uttered a grunt of disapproval, to show his lack of interest in whether I recognized her or not, as either way we would not be taking her off his hands.
I glanced again at the girl. It was not as if she were greatly different from the half-dozen others I had seen; corpses have a sad way of resembling one another, as members of some specialist club. Regarding her, however, I found myself affected, as not before. Isobella, naked in some other unknown place, lain upon some stained and splintering table, being wearily prodded and joked about by strangers. I could see the scene so clearly.
I pulled at the blanket, sharply, that she would be covered.
‘Something wrong, Mr Jeavons?’ asked Collins.
‘Nothing. Can’t we just leave her be?’
He regarded me, thoughtful. ‘You’re quite sure she’s not your wife?’
‘Quite sure. Of course.’
Joshua Jeavons, very early on a sunny morning, stood impatiently before his father-in-law’s house, shadows of the iron railings still long upon the ground, and the chattering of birds in nearby St James’s Park declaring the dawn to have been of recent occurrence. Joshua Jeavons tugging at the bell-pull, tugging remorselessly, oblivious to the sensibilities of servants within, to the hopes of Barrett the butler – likely still sat droopingly in his bed – that the din may be nothing more than some small-hours drunk, who will soon be gone.
My first thoughts, as I regarded her empty and unused sheets, had been of Trowbridge street. It was the house where she had been brought up; the home of her father, who was – however cool she seemed towards the man – after all, her sole remaining relative of closeness. I imagined her fleeing there, slipping impetuously through the door, exhausted by the tensions between us, by the many preparations for the dinner party, or the shock of overhearing the guests’ discovery of Miss Symes’s apparent attack of Cholera. She might be waiting even now. The breach between us – for which already I felt anguish and remorse – could yet prove reparable. Indeed, I would make it so. I would tell her my regrets, beg her forgiveness in a soft voice.
‘Mr Jeavons?’ Barrett cut a strange figure before me; stiffly butlerish of pose, though he was attired not in his formal coat and tails but a huge nightshirt, upon his head a nightcap with a red woollen ball at its point – this last drooping curiously on to his shoulder – that gave him a carnival air. His face was bleary.
‘Is my wife here?’
His eyes began to show some animation; a faint glow of gossipful curiosity. ‘N
ot that I know of.’ He held open the door. ‘Perhaps you’d best come inside.’
Not that he knew of. Following him within, already my hopes were fast withering. It was Moynihan who put them to rest, stepping down the stairway, dressed in a fine silk dressing gown. But it was the expression upon his face I noticed most; so worried. ‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s Isobella…’ No need to ask if he had seen her; his unhappy look was answer enough. If she was not here… My fears altered to wider alarm. Where then? With whom?
Moynihan frowned darkly. ‘When was this?’
My speedy narration of the events of the previous night proved of little cheer to the man; indeed, he grew troubled in a way I had not seen since the morning he had granted me Isobella’s hand. He leaned slightly against the marble pillar that formed the base of the swirling bannisters, seeming to sag. In his silken dressing gown, bulging now, he looked somehow dissolute, as an old drunk.
‘Where could she have…?’
I could not help but regard the man with some slight sympathy, despite the dislike I had long felt for him. Was he not suffering the same anguish as myself? For a moment we stood thus, both caught for words, the air silent except for the cries of the birds in St James’s Park.
‘There’s not some cousin she might have gone to?’ I asked. ‘Some childhood friend?’
He shook his head. ‘She has no real family besides myself. Nor any close friends of her own age, as she was educated here by tutors and met few other children.’ I was struck by the man’s absence of initiative; so unlike his usual self. He seemed quite without suggestions.
‘A maidservant perhaps?’
‘She had little liking for any I employed.’
One thing was clear; to remain here would gain me nothing except time wasted. ‘The others who were present last night might have observed something,’ I suggested. ‘It would be worth seeking them out.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Moynihan, his voice still numbed. ‘I could come with you.’
‘There’s no need. Really.’
Only as I turned to leave did he begin to recover himself, his speech, all at once, eager. ‘You must tell me if you discover anything. The very instant.’
‘Certainly.’
He would not leave it thus but followed me to the door, naggingly close. ‘The very instant. You promise?’
A strange reversal; he beseeching, I cool towards him. ‘I’ll do all I can.’
Thus, that sunny June morning, began the investigations that were to occupy me so long, so exhaustively. What did I hope to learn from the dinner guests? I little knew myself. Perhaps that one among them might have observed my wife was distressed. Even that she had spoken of her intentions, her words then becoming forgotten in the confusion surrounding Miss Symes’s drama. Anything. Anything that might point away from the direction I was beginning to fear.
To discover each of the fellows proved a lengthy business, all the more so as I could not help but regularly hurry back to Lark Road, in the hope – a vain one – of finding her returned, or at least having sent some message.
Farre I found first, just arrived at the office, grey-faced after the long evening before. Though full of shocked sympathy, he could offer no help. ‘Perhaps she just wanted to be alone for a while. Women can be odd creatures.’
‘Alone where? It’s been all night.’
He shook his head unhappily, his eyes wishful that he had some answer to give.
Sleak-Cunningham, next, I discovered at the Committee for Sewers, fresh from terrorizing a landlord who had left a giant cesspool uncovered. Though not unkind, I found him disappointingly brusque, offering what brief and practical advice his lack of time allowed; as usual another appointment was looming near. ‘She must have gone somewhere. Think carefully. Think of anyone she might have visited.’
It was such thoughts that most alarmed me.
Hove I discovered in the same building, though he proved embarrassed by the matter, seeming to regard it as one unsuited to the attention of a government servant. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know how I may help you.’ Indeed, he appeared faintly disgusted, as if I had spat upon his shoe and was calling him to help me with its cleaning. His recourse was to the world of forms. ‘If anything springs to mind I’ll write you a note.’
Sweet, whom I found in his molasses yard, berating two of his workmen for slackness, showed surprise, but also – much to my annoyance – a reluctance to treat the news with seriousness. ‘Running off into the night? What a business. I’m sure she’ll turn up before long, with all kinds of silly tales to tell.’ His eyes glistened, wondering if I might, while in his office, be made to further discuss the progress of his planned warehouse.
Perhaps he was right, I pondered. Perhaps it would prove to have been no more than a passing ludicrousness. Yet I could not convince myself so for long.
None of the guests having had anything of usefulness to say, I turned my step, reluctantly towards the house of the Lewises. Though they had never been far from my thoughts, I had dearly hoped that some discovery would make a visit thither unnecessary. If the answer to the matter lay with Gideon and Felicia it was hardly likely to be a pretty one. Yet any answer, I was fast coming to feel, would be better than continued uncertainty.
Can one smell deceit, sniff out the bitter scent of lies? So I wondered as I waited in the parlour of the brother and sister, though my nose detected only a mix of wax-polished wood and China tea. Above me stretched a huge canvas depicting Samson’s day of glory, in which the famous hero – a dithering-faced fellow, resemblant of a bank clerk surprised to find himself equipped with fearsome muscles – seemed, puzzlingly, to be not so much causing the temple to topple as hiding behind the pillars, in an effort to shelter from the falling masonry.
‘Mr Jeavons.’ Entering the room, Felicia offered a plump-wristed hand to shake. Her eyes, I observed, avoided my own. Was this because she had never held any liking for me, and was surprised by this unexpected visit? Or because…? Might my wife be here even this instant, concealed in some upstairs room?
‘Miss Lewis…’ The awkwardness of things suspected but unsaid caused me to hesitate. Should I begin with a lengthy explanation? It seemed so clumsy. ‘Your brother’s not here?’
‘He’s at work. Perhaps there’s some way I can be of usefulness?’ She regarded me now, meeting my glance. ‘Would you like tea?’
‘No, no.’ I found my eyes resting upon Delilah, loitering in the shadow of a column, her look perplexed, like a young milliner girl wondering if she may pick her nose without being observed. The best course, I considered, was to begin quietly, hinting, and watch Felicia’s reaction. ‘I have come about a matter concerning my wife.’
But she did not so much as blink. What was more, when I tried again, telling of Isobella’s vanishing, she only frowned with concern. ‘But how terrible, Mr Jeavons. What can have become of her?’
A disappointment. I saw no course left to me except to take the plunge. ‘What indeed?’ For a moment I said nothing, allowing a silence to swell in the room, enlarged by the ticking of a standing clock in the hallway. ‘Miss Lewis, I know about the letters.’
She half-smiled, as one puzzled. ‘What letters?’
‘The two you sent me. Telling of goings-on between Isobella and your brother.’
She only threw me a cold look. ‘Mr Jeavons, I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘His feelings for her.’
‘Feelings? If you are joking – and I can only assume that is the case – then I must say I find your humour of a poor sort.’
I waved away the answer as some annoying curtain. ‘She’s been here. I know it. Is she here now? Tell me.’
Her face grew hard, unrevealing. ‘I will not have you slandering my brother’s good name.’ Her voice rose. ‘Slandering him, what is more, beneath my very roof. Mr Jeavons, I must...’
I did not trouble to hear her out, but decided to settle the matter myself. Pa
st her padded form I marched, and up the stairs; past the gloating miser Moses, past the Easter Weekend Adam and Eve, past the punctured football infant in his crib, and the bearded lady yawning upon the cross, until – ignoring the flow of threats from my hostess, close behind – I had tramped through the house, top to bottom, and searched through every room.
But found nothing.
It was as I was stepping from the porch – for company a salvo of Felicia’s icy promises of legal redress – that it occurred to me that the woman might not, after all, be pretending. I had only my wife’s word that the letters had been in Felicia’s hand. Even Gideon’s described passion might have been mere invention, to shield some other more loathsome soul.
Nothing was certain. Possibilities seemed to slide back and forth as china plates on ice. I felt almost as one in the centre of some giant conspiracy, with scores of fellows energetically employed day and night to enhance my confusion.
One thing, however, was clear. My own attempt at investigations was making little progress. The best remaining course, it seemed, was to try and engage minds more experienced in such matters than my own. I swiftly made my way to a station of the Metropolitan Police Force.
It was one I had passed many times – usually on the top of wind-blown omnibuses – but never ventured inside. Waiting there, among the crowd of blue-coated fellows hard at work, I was struck by a sense of something obscurely familiar. Thus the way the rooms – containing so many neat desks and noticeboards listing objects stolen – were at once open to one another and also snugly cavernous, and all faced upon a central counter. The bow windows, too, were as of some other place, with their tiny panes of glass, resembling melted bottoms of bottles. Then I realized the building must have previously been an alehouse, probably converted hastily to its new purpose when the Metropolitan force had been established, some twenty years before. Its previous life seemed to linger; the constable on duty at the desk taking the place of the landlord serving pints; two desperate-looking arrivals shouting of stolen wallets supplanting hot fellows eager to quench their lunch-time thirst.
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