‘Not an arrest yet, but Mr Bucket believes that one is imminent.’
‘And this is in some way all tied up with my husband’s incarceration and the murder of Mr Mizzentoft.’
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘Then … then I have something to say which may make you and your chief alter your thinking.’
Gordon was so caught unawares by this sudden pronouncement that he didn’t reply immediately. And just as he was about to do so, the maid came in with the coffee and a tray of little cakes.
‘Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but Cook made the cakes special – to welcome you home, like.’
Gordon saw Eleanora smile for the first time that day, and it seemed to light up the room. ‘Thank her from me, Lily, and tell her I am very pleased to be back among my people. But now I have important matters to discuss with this police officer, and I am not to be disturbed on any account. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Very good, ma’am.’ Lily gave a little curtsy and left the room.
As soon as she had gone, Eleanora went to the door and locked it. Gordon’s heart began to beat a little faster.
She dropped the key into a pocket, then leaned with her back to the door, her head bowed.
‘It will be better if you tell me what ails you,’ Gordon ventured. ‘Get it off your … get it out into the open.’
‘Will it?’ she sighed almost inaudibly. ‘What I say will change lives – might even cause one to be destroyed. Will it make me feel any better? Oh, James, this is much harder than I expected.’
She began to sob, and he rushed to her side and escorted her to the sofa. Still crying, she pressed her face against his chest. ‘It’s to do with my husband … and it is very serious,’ she whimpered. ‘Very grave indeed.’
She was by now virtually in a state of collapse, and Gordon had to support her soft, wilting form. ‘You must tell me. Keeping something so painful to oneself can only make matters worse – you will make yourself ill!’
She grasped his hand with both of her small, warm ones, but at the same time pulled slightly away from him and straightened her posture in a way which seemed to represent some new inner resolve. She pointed to a door at the far end of the room.
‘Mr Gordon, through that door is my dressing room. On the smaller of the two tables is a dark coloured hairbrush with ivory decoration on the back. Would you be so kind as to fetch it for me?’
‘Of course.’
He thought nothing of entering that room. Being an innocent in such matters, to him it was just another room in the house like the parlour or the drawing room, albeit a smaller and more private one. But as soon as he took in his new surroundings he realized how naive he had been. Lilac hangings decorated with lace covered the walls, against which hung numerous dresses of all type and colour, and there were silk and tuile curtains of a rich pink. The scent of lavender hung in the air, presumably one of the perfume bottles on a shelf above the larger table, among which other items that one might expect to find in such a room: a horse-hair toothbrush, toilet water, other perfumes, and arsenic – which, Gordon had been told, was good for the skin. But it was what was draped over both the table and two chairs that demanded his attention most of all. There were white calico drawers neatly laid out and smelling of a scent he had detected on Eleanor herself …. Cream and white chemises with lacy trimmings, which seemed to billow as if still containing her full figure …. Corsets, loosely open and with their laces splayed about as if the owner had only just removed the garment …. And garters. Black garters of lace and ribbon. For a moment he was almost overcome by a sense of shame and guilt, as if he were some type of depraved intruder. But he reminded himself that he had been sent here by the owner of these normally private, concealed garments. And did ladies normally leave everything out, arranged in this manner? It was almost as if they had been placed so deliberately ….
He found the brush, which had been placed upon a corset made of some sort of silken, azure material, left the room and closed the door behind him. When he turned to face Eleanor, all became clear.
She was standing in the middle of the drawing room completely naked.
She had unfastened her hair, and it cascaded down her back like a waterfall of honey, framing her delicate, doll-like features and flowing over the edges of her voluptuous breasts. And as she came towards him, those perfectly formed globes swayed, clashed gently together and quivered. Gordon knew he should not stare, but he was helpless. He had witnessed many things which most people never have or would; but that was a socially cloistered military existence, and in truth he had led a life sheltered from the real world. Before him was a sight he had never seen, a physical perfection he had never touched, and it was being offered to him freely. An overwhelming maelstrom of revulsion and desire, of the chill of fear and the heat, quickened the surge of blood in his veins, threw his mind and body into utter chaos, and he could only stand there with his back to the door, wanting to turn away from the mesmerizing sight before him yet completely and pitifully unable so to do.
‘Do I disgust you, Mr Gordon?’ Her expression was open, unfathomable, yet a tear rolled down her rose-hued cheeks. It was almost as if she did not want to do this, but had to.
‘Not disgust….’ He had thought it disgusting, but it now was impossible to experience such an ugly sentiment towards such a beautiful, alluringly pathetic creature.
‘Then let me make it easier for you to express it – because I don’t hesitate to say that I sicken myself. I have only ever known the company of a cold, uncaring man. Then, in my hour of need I met a strong yet kind, understanding one – but the Almighty saw fit to make it impossible for us to decently enter into any kind of union. But is it so bad, so wrong to wish for solace just once in this cruel life? A fleeting moment of comfort and succour against the cold realities of the world?’ She moved again until she was right before him. Her breasts pressed lightly against his chest, and he breathed in that same fragrance he had detected in her dressing room. She gazed up at him through moist eyes, and began to speak in a tremulous whisper.
‘Mr Gordon, while I was away I read an article about the detective force by Mr Dickens. I learned that sometimes detectives pay for confidential information. I have information you cannot ignore. But you will have to pay, Mr Gordon.’
Another tear welled then rolled down her cheek, her voice wavered, and Gordon’s heart reached out to her just as strongly as did his baser desires.
Gordon could not say whether she threw herself at him or whether it was a mutual moving together, for he was no longer thinking clearly, if at all.
XIX
THE COFFEE HOUSE of Simpson’s in the Strand was quiet. A city gent sat at a window seat the more easily to read his copy of the John Bull, and two respectable-looking young ladies, both in crinolines of matching shades of green, chatted gaily at the table closest to the kitchens. In a dimly lit corner well away from these customers, Mr Bucket of the Detective and Lady Rhynde, wife of Sir Dalton Rhynde the Home Secretary, leaned confidentially close to each other across the table, speaking in low voices.
‘My dear Mr Bucket, I know you have already guessed that there is an ulterior motive for my abrupt and peculiar change of heart. I know I can trust you. More than that: I value your knowledge of the world and of the people in it, because that makes it easier for me to reveal what has happened recently.’
She stooped towards her bag on the floor beside the table and pulled out some sort of writing book or journal. What the book was did not matter – what was concealed among its pages did. It was a piece torn out of a newspaper. She handed it over to Mr Bucket, who flattened it out on the table before him and examined it. At first all he could see was advertisements: Professor Grandle’s Famous Brain Tonic; Coffin’s pills for Oppression of the Stomach, Nervousness and Constipation; and a Galvanic Belt for Irregularities of the System caused by Want of Electricity – testimonials free on receipt of one stamp. Then his roving eye picked out personal ad
vertisements: a quiet home is urgently required for a seventy-nine-year-old lady who will not abide children and must be treated firmly. Beneath this appeared to be a publisher’s advertisement – but it was not. It was a privately placed notice, and the wording was very singular:
SHORTLY TO BE PUBLISHED
Original Letters from a Gentleman to a Lady
~ both PUBLIC FIGURES of some note ~
Revealing
Matters touching on the Honour and Integrity of same.
Any interested party should contact the Editor of this
Journal before the 20th Inst.
Mr Bucket issued a snort of derision. ‘Blackmail. Plain and simple for anyone to see. How could any editor of a self-respecting paper even consider—’
‘This appeared in one of the more sensationalist publications which now seem to abound,’ Lady Rhynde explained. Seeing the detective’s quizzical look, she smiled wryly and added, ‘It was brought to my attention by a third party.’
‘Mrs Bucket has been known to peruse the pages of such journals,’ Mr Bucket grumbled, half to himself. ‘She maintains that one must make oneself aware of the depravities of society in order to combat it, whereas I maintain that I won’t have such rubbish in the house. Much good it does me.’
Lady Rhynde laughed unexpectedly and brightly, and Mr Bucket seemed pleased to have lightened her mood, if only for an instant. But his face soon took on a more sober appearance. ‘The substance of this matter is no concern of mine. What we must do is—’
‘I had an abortion last year.’
‘Your ladyship—’
‘I had an affair with a man I loved very much …. In fact we are both very much still in love, but now we have seen sense, even though it is very hard. I am not a naturally deceitful or disloyal person, Mr Bucket ….
‘Of that I am quite sure. Madam, there really is no need for you to explain—’
‘But my marriage is, and has been, completely lacking in any physical, emotional or intellectual connection almost from the beginning. I was resigned to my fate. I considered it my duty to make the best of my lot. But then … to experience a meeting of minds, a meeting of hearts for the first and only time … I was overwhelmed. Anyway, in short, I one day found I was with child. My husband and I have no children and I thought I was medically barren, which obviously proved not to be the case. Recently – after the theft of the ferns – some very personal letters were stolen. Hence the reason we are here today.’
‘Have you any idea who took them – the letters, I mean?’
‘No. None at all.’
‘Well it doesn’t matter, because I believe I have worked it out.’ Ignoring her look of astonishment, he continued. ‘This … procedure. It was carried out by Dr Jonathan Scambles?’
Lady Rhynde’s eyes widened further. ‘Mr Bucket – have you been secretly investigating me?’
‘Perish the thought, your ladyship. No, but other unrelated matters have meant that several things have become rather entangled, shall we say. To some extent your butler – your former butler – Mr Chuddersby is involved in all this.’
‘I must confess that after your earlier hints I am not as surprised as I once might have been.’
Mr Bucket’s fat forefinger glided towards his nose. ‘His real name is Jukes, by the way, not Chuddersby. Our paths have crossed professionally in the past.’
‘My God…. To think I trusted him completely.’
‘He is very convincing, your ladyship.’
‘Then, do you think he is behind the theft of the letters … and the ferns?’
‘I have little doubt but that he has some close connection. But there is more to it than that. I take it you heard about Dr Scambles’ arrest for the murder of Edward Mizzentoft?
‘Of course. Oh, dear – should I have mentioned—’
Mr Bucket waved her self-reproachment away. ‘Irrelevant. Your, ah, treatment at the hands of the doctor has no bearing on things.’
‘But Chuddersby, Mr Bucket – you surely don’t think he rather than Dr Scambles murdered Mr Mizzentoft?’
‘Before his butlering career he led what you might call a colourful life, your ladyship. While I can’t say he was the man that wielded the knife, let’s just say his testimony would be of interest to the police.’
Lady Rhynde shuddered. ‘To think he lived under the same roof as me ….’
‘Think back, ma’am. You mentioned that he was often away from his duties visiting Baroness Sowerby. Mr Mizzentoft was killed in the evening of the eighth of this month. It was a Monday and it occurred at a house in Montague Place, hard by the British Museum. I must press you – is it at all possible he was away ostensibly on one of his visits on that day?’
Lady Rhynde thought hard, pressing her hands to her temples and closing her eyes, but she shook her head. ‘So much has happened since then … I really don’t know. If I attempted to guess I should in all probability mislead you.’
‘It’s only to be expected, and you’ve already been most helpful. As for the – ahem – other matter, I intend to visit Baroness Sowerby and—’
‘Oh please no, Mr Bucket. I beg you.’
He leaned closer in a conspiratorial way. ‘I ask you to trust me when I say that there shall be no exposure as regards any personal affairs of your ladyship’s. Bear with me for a little time longer. Discretion shall be my watch-word.’
Her drawn, pained face softened. ‘Your ability to know things which ought to be unknowable are disconcerting – do you realize that, Mr Bucket?’
‘I depend upon it! Mrs Bucket remarks upon it frequently – though not in such a flattering manner as your ladyship. I fear I must make for a difficult and trying companion in life.’
‘No, sir. I have believed everything you have told me thus far, but not that.’
There was a twinkle in Lady Rhynde’s steady gaze – and just the merest fleeting hint of pinkness to Mr Bucket’s cheeks.
XX
NORMALLY, A LACK of cloud cover, cold temperature and a certain humidity in the air would result, perhaps, in a low-lying mist and cold but brilliantly starry skies. But this was London. Overcrowded, over-industrialized London. Nature’s water droplets and smoke from the homes of two million people and the chimneys of untold factories and smaller places of work combined to form a choking, dirty sea of fog, which her inhabitants must drift through with watering eyes and blackened phlegm. Mr Thomas Jones proceeded from his temporary lodgings in Gravel Lane to the Welsh Trooper public house on the south bank of the Thames near Reddin’s Wharves, Bankside. He clasped a rather ragged scarf of indeterminate colour to his mouth and nose to combat the effects of the fog, having had weak lungs since birth. Despite the conditions he was in a buoyant mood, for several reasons. First, he was no longer Alfred Jukes, an identity that had proved to be a burden from a legal point of view almost from the time he had learned to filch a handkerchief from a gentleman’s coat-tail pocket, which itself had not been so very long after he had learned to walk. Secondly, neither was he any longer the butler William Chuddersby, whose name had sadly also become too hot to handle, despite it providing him with the greatest status, the most material comfort and the most regular income he had ever known in his thirty-seven years of life. Even having all that – more than he could ever have envisaged or hoped for – still there had been opportunities, and for a man from a background like the present Mr Thomas Jones, opportunities were simply too hard to resist. It seemed almost morally wrong to let an opportunity go to waste.
So now, with the net closing in – something he sensed rather than knew – it was time to move on. The only thing left of William Chuddersby was the broken nose bequeathed to him by the General, but even that had healed quite nicely and had left him with a pugilistic appearance that might give future potential adversaries pause for thought. He was now an itinerant potman who, when the work could be found, wandered the streets south of the river selling jugs of porter and stout from a specially constructed frame ha
nging by straps from his shoulders. He was currently residing in a doss house with Long Liza, a dollymop with one set of clothing, a hair brush with a missing handle and seven-and-a-half teeth to her name. But he was not downbeat. He had cadged a couple of shillings off Liza; he was going to enjoy a glass or two of gin at the Welsh Trooper and he was going to make friends, establish useful contacts and move on. Ever on.
But even though he was separated physically and even culturally by the Thames from his usual London haunts, and even though the capital was a city of countless souls and larger than all the other major towns and cities in England put together, the city was still, oddly, like a large village. People knew each other, their business, their movements ….
The newly created Thomas Jones’s evening was enjoyable and productive. He inveigled himself into conversations, was bought drinks and was quickly co-opted into some minor criminal scheme, for the execution of which he was to meet Greek Harry outside the Old Mint at midnight two days hence. He left the pub at around 11.30 p.m. and again used his scarf, despite its reeking of stale alcohol and tobacco fumes, to keep out the noxious fumes hanging in the bitterly cold air. Shadowy figures flitted about in the night fog like ghosts. At least, most of them flitted about. One had been motionless, waiting. As soon as Thomas Jones’s half-covered face was illuminated by the feeble street light outside the hostelry, this particular shape became animated, moving towards the former butler to Lady Rhynde.
Thomas Jones could make out very little of this person. Not the clothes, not the hair and certainly nothing of the facial features. Yet he knew who it was straight away. The bulky shape was enough.
Yet it couldn’t be. He was dead.
Thomas Jones had to consciously tighten his thigh muscles before his failing knees gave way beneath him, and the sudden hammering he could feel against his ribs, even reaching up into his neck, was surely more than any human organ could stand for more than a few seconds. It wasn’t that he believed in ghosts – though he did. No, this was far worse than a ghost. The figure lumbered into the light and Thomas Jones received his final confirmation. It was the man he ran through with his sword; the man who fell into the swollen Thames, his spurting blood mingling with its contaminated, icy waters.
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