Tom All-Alone's

by Lynn Shepherd

  ‘I know to my own cost,’ returns the trooper, shaking his head, ‘that this person he speaks of is undoubtedly a rum customer – and a deep one. The boy is right about that, in every particular. I never saw a man with such an outward appearance of candour, and yet so secretive a way of going on. Nor did I ever meet a man who seems so clearly to be marching straight ahead, only to veer off, at the last moment, in another course entirely.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Charles slowly, as the final recognition dawns. ‘Inspector Bucket.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Hester’s Narrative

  And now I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly indeed, and for which I was all unprepared. It was some months after Clara had been ill, and yet I felt still that there was some strange and inexplicable shadow between us, and yet in every other way my life was just as it had always been. Until that day – oh, that terrible day! – when I first felt myself unwell. My dreams the night before had been unusually tangled and hectic, and when I woke the room was still dark and I could not free myself from the impression that something had happened during the night, though I did not know what it was, that had left me with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too large altogether. I made myself a little tea, and sat down heavily before the dying fire. And as the room grew gradually colder and colder I found I was shivering from head to foot, and yet I was growing all the while not more wakeful but more somnolent, and my thoughts soon became so confused that I began to lose a sense of who I was – now the girl in the room was me, and now she was Clara, and now she was poor confused Miss Flint, distraught and tormented, and crying aloud in fear in the darkness.

  I do not know how long it was that I remained there, but my next recollection is of the grey light of morning stealing between the curtains, which I must have left open. I rose, somewhat stiffly, and went to close them. It was still very early, and the sky overcast and drab, but I was sure I could see figures in the garden. I believe – I am sure I caught a glimpse of white – that one of them was Anne, the boarder I think I referred to once before. She was walking on the farther side of the lawn, accompanied by one of the maids and another woman I had never seen. I should have remembered if I had, for though her figure was comely and her manner elegant, I could see even from my window that her face was ugly. I am not being unkind, I assure you – her skin was swarthy, her forehead low, and her features almost masculine. I had no looking-glass to compliment my own looks, but I could not help feeling a most pleasant satisfaction with them – such as they are. Looking back at what I have just written, I realize that I have omitted to mention that Anne had recently returned to our company after an absence of some months. To my mind, she seemed rather changed from when I had last seen her, but my Guardian said she had been very ill and the slight changes to her appearance were no doubt due to the effects of that illness. Did not my own darling pet look rather different now than once she did? And no doubt he was right, in this as in all things.

  But to return to my narrative. When Carley came to wake me, I asked her who had been in the garden and she looked at me in some perplexity and replied that I must be mistaken. There had been no visitors at that hour of the morning, she said, and none of the maids would have the leisure for a walk at such a time. And in truth, I was by then feeling so much worse that I was no longer sure of what I had seen. Indeed, Carley soon saw that I was very indisposed, and helped me to return to my bed before going at once for Miss Darby. She must have come, and come quickly, for I remember her placing her cool hand on my forehead, and the taste of something dull and bitter between my lips. That day turned into night, and the night into another day, and I had not left my bed, or seen anyone but Miss Darby. Though I found it difficult to talk, I asked once or twice for Carley, but was told she was indisposed, and unable to come. Soon after that I heard my darling in the corridor outside, but Miss Darby went to the door and said that I was asleep. I heard her whisper softly, ‘You must not come in now, Miss Clara – not for all the world!’ And then I knew how ill I must be, and turned my face to my pillow and wept.

  I lay sick a long time, and my old life became like a distant memory. Everything I knew and loved seemed to have retreated to a far remote place, leaving me alone and abandoned in that shuttered room. There were times when all my recollections seemed to run into one another and melt together, so that there was one moment when I thought I was a little girl again at my mother’s knee, but there was my Guardian sitting with us too, caressing my mother’s face and running his hand over my hair. This vision was painfully real to me – the colours too bright, the lines too sharp. I doubt that anyone who has not experienced such a thing can quite understand what I mean, or why I shrank from this vision as if it were a thing of terror, though it was, in every respect, a picture of love. There were nights too when I thought myself harnessed to a terrible treadmill, or forced to work forever some unbearable machinery that burned my hands and brought hot tears to my eyes. But there were other times when I talked quite lucidly with Miss Darby, and felt her hand on my head. But I dare not even think of that worst of times, when I felt drowned in a dark place, while my whole body was ripped apart in some never-ending agony, hour after hour, and I heard a voice calling out in pain, and knew it to be my own.

  But perhaps the less I think about these terrible things, the quicker I will forget them. I do remember the final utter bliss of sleep, and thinking, even in my frailty, that it was over now, and I could rest. I do not know how long this period of convalescence has lasted now. Days, perhaps weeks. I do know that the year has turned, and the weather with it. I sit at the window, wrapped in my shawl, and look down at the grey garden and watch the slow drops fall – drip, drip, drip – upon the terrace. And I remember Amy telling me of the footstep on the Ghost’s Walk, and I wonder if perhaps it might be true, and if it is, what does the sound most resemble? A man’s step? A woman’s? The tiny feet of a little child, ever getting closer, and never coming near? It affects me, now – that sound – as it never has before, in all the long years I have lived in this house. I cannot explain why. And in all this time of my recovery I have never seen my pet. Miss Darby makes up the fire, and brings me my meals on a tray, and she is as always the soul of kindness, but other than her I see no one.

  No one, that is, until this morning. I slept badly last night, disturbed by the dreary and monotonous drumming of the rain on the roof overhead, and I had only just drifted into a troubled and restless slumber when I heard a noise in the passage outside my door, and then the soft careful sound of the key turning in the lock. I sat up stiffly in bed, wondering why Miss Darby should be waking me at such an early hour, but it was not Miss Darby’s face I saw. It was Carley’s. She closed the door quietly behind her, then came quickly across to me and took me in her arms, and I could feel her body shaking. After a few moments she sat back and held me by the shoulders, and started to speak to me. Her voice low, and her eyes always, always fixed on mine.

  And now she is gone.

  I have been sitting here, in the bleak dawn light, for a long time, thinking about what she said, and shedding some bitter tears. I know Carley loves me, and I know – or thought I knew – that she would never lie to me. She said so again – over and over – that what she was telling me was the truth, and yet, how can I believe it? How can I accept what she says, without questioning everything I thought I knew – everyone I thought I trusted – every word that has been said to me in this house since the day I came here? I have gone over it in my mind, a hundred times, and still I cannot – cannot – believe my Guardian could have done such a thing.

  And even if it were true – even if he did – even supposing—

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Mr Bucket

  It is moonlight tonight. A clear, cold night full of sharp shadows, and the restless silence of a city that never fully comes to rest. In the attic at Buckingham Street a large black cat sleeps unchallenged and undisturbed on a tangled expanse of pa
le sheet, and in a room downstairs an old man stirs before the fire, his brow pressed into frowns, his mind astray in a thicket of memories that mingle and separate and re-combine in strange new patterns that he will not remember when he wakes.

  Across town, in that immense but dreary mansion in its dull but elegant street, my Lady Dedlock’s soul is troubled, and she is heartsick. The spectre of her pursuer fills her mind, and the prospect of that pursuit, and of never being free of it, casts a shroud before her eyes. And not a mile away from her, in a small room, and a small street, another woman she once employed nurtures the like dark thoughts of the like implacable man, and festers a bitter hatred that she cares not to contain.

  And then, suddenly and without warning, the air splits open with a hissing crack that sets the dogs barking for a mile around. Those few people still out of doors stop in their tracks and look up into the sky, but it is clear, and threatens no thunder. A firecracker? But no, Guy Fawkes is long gone, and the street-urchins sleeping. A window opens, then another. A man looks out, and calls down to those on the street. What made that noise – do any of them know? A sprat-seller who’s passing claims it came from over yonder near the Fields, but his voice is drowned in the sudden chiming of the hour, and by the time the last bell has faded, the street is silent again, and the moment, or incident, or whatever it was, has passed.

  The morning finds Charles, once again, at the shooting gallery. Where he has been all night he does not say, but his lined shirt and shadowed jaw have their own tale to tell. As, perhaps, does the deep line that has now settled between his brows. What it is that has made him so angry – so angry that the air about him seems to crackle with furious energy – will become clear soon enough. For the moment, though, we will content ourselves with watching. And we will not be alone.

  He has come, it seems, to the funeral of the crossing-sweep, though that is rather a grand term for such a meagre affair. The half-starved body lies in its open coffin, and though there are cuts on the bare feet and sores about the mouth, the thin face is finally – and perhaps for the first time – at peace. Jo has found his rest at last. The trooper has done what he can to dress the lad in clean clothes, and a heap of half-rotten verminous rags are now being fed into the rusty grate by an unusually grave-faced Phil. Charles stands with the doctor as the stern and ponderous beadle has the lid screwed down, and the coffin lifted on to the cart and wheeled towards the door. Their destination is the cemetery where Jo’s dead friend was laid, and though it’s scarcely possible to think of a worse horror than an eternity in such a place, the lad seemed to gain comfort at the end from the thought that he would lie close by the only person who had ever showed him a little human kindness.

  Leaving Phil to attend to the morning clientele, the others take their places behind the cart as it creaks its way along the long whitewashed passage, followed slowly by its small cortège. There may only be three of them, but that’s more than Jo’s wildest dreams would ever have pictured, and certain it is that he is more lavishly attended now than he ever was in his short and disregarded life. It’s only when the cart swings out into the road that Charles seems to realize, with a start, that the procession now numbers four. They did not see him come, they did not hear his tread, but he walks there beside them all the same. Stout and sombre in his unexceptionable black suit, there seems at first glance nothing noteworthy about him at all. Nothing, perhaps, aside from the rather odd way he has suddenly materialized, and a certain glint in his eye as he contemplates Charles.

  Two of the three mourners are clearly well aware of the identity of their new companion, but while the trooper’s face merely sets yet grimmer and more silent, the very sight of this apparently inoffensive little man seems to douse hot oil on Charles’ dry fury.

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’ he says, gripping the man by the sleeve and swinging him round to face him. ‘Haven’t you done enough harm to that miserable little wretch without turning up here now to gloat over your handiwork?’

  ‘Now, Charles, my lad,’ says Mr Bucket, taking his hand from his arm, ‘that’s hardly the way to speak to an old friend, now is it? And all may not be as you currently believe it is, in respect of the boy.’

  ‘He’d done nothing to you. He’d committed no crime.’

  ‘There was nothing charged against him,’ replies Bucket, rubbing his face with his forefinger, ‘but that is not to say he was innocent neither. No – I tracked the boy down because I wished to keep a certain matter quiet that risked being made public in a very unpleasant manner, and bringing all kinds of trouble on the heads of his betters. He’d been more loose-tongued than he should have been about a service he’d been paid for, and that sort of thing won’t do at all.’

  ‘Not, at least, when the man paying for that service is Edward Tulkinghorn,’ Charles retorts sardonically.

  Bucket looks at him with his habitual attentiveness. ‘That’s as may be. Rather more to the present purpose, I gather you have had dealings of your own with that gentleman of late. Dealings that you have also, in your turn, been paid for. And handsomely too, or so I hear.’

  Charles steps closer, his eyes darkening. ‘I’m going to find out the truth of this, Bucket. And then where will you be, you and your loathsome masters? However much Tulkinghorn’s paying you on the side, it won’t be enough. Not nearly enough – not when I’ve finished with you.’

  ‘Ah, there’s no call for that now, is there,’ says Bucket brightly, taking him by the elbow. ‘I will come along with you for a moment, if you’ve no objection.’

  ‘In fact I have a very strong objection indeed to spending a single minute more in your society. You have no business here and none, as far as I know, with me.’

  He turns to go, but Bucket still has his hand on his arm. ‘Half a minute, Charles. I should wish to speak to you first.’

  He stops, looks about him, then claps Charles suddenly against the wall of the alley. The cart is by now at least fifty yards ahead and the doctor turns and hesitates for a moment, not knowing whether to intervene. But it is only for a moment; he must have decided that Charles has some business with the newcomer, and is more than capable of looking after himself.

  ‘Now, Charles,’ says Bucket softly, as the coffin and its followers disappear at the end of the street. ‘You know, and I know, that your great-uncle was a friend of mine once – friend and mentor – and I don’t want this little matter to get in the way of that, not if I can help it. I will endeavour to make things as pleasant as they may be, but you must be under no misapprehension. You are in my custody now, my lad, and you know what that means, none better.’

  ‘Custody?’ scoffs Charles. ‘What the devil for?’

  ‘Now, now,’ says Mr Bucket, reinforcing his words with his insistent forefinger. ‘As you know very well, I am under an obligation to inform you that anything you might say will be liable to be used against you. Therefore, I advise you to be rather careful what you do say. You may drop the pretence now, there’s a good lad. We both know I have come about the murder.’

  ‘You can’t intimidate me that easily,’ says Charles, pushing Bucket’s hand away. ‘You know as well as I do that I didn’t kill Lizzie Miller. I have an alibi. Which I’ve been through already – and in detail – with Wheeler—’

  ‘Now, now,’ interrupts Bucket, tapping his forefinger – perhaps unadvisedly – on Charles’ chest. ‘Think carefully, mind, before you speak again. There has been a murder. Last night. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Shot, he was, right through the heart, clean as you like. You know who I mean, and I know you know. And now you understand what I’m doing here, don’t you?’

  Charles stares at him, then puts both hands on Bucket’s shoulders and shoves him, none too gently, away. ‘I was nowhere near there last night. I reviled and despised Tulkinghorn, yes, but I didn’t kill him. Though I’d like to shake the hand of the man who did. You’ll have to try harder than that, Bucket. You can’t pin this one on me.’

  ‘Now,
Charles,’ returns Mr Bucket, seemingly unperturbed, ‘you know full well that I can. This murder I speak of was done at around ten o’clock. If what you’re telling me is true, a bright lad like you will know where he was at that particular time, and will be able to prove it.’

  ‘No,’ says Charles quietly. All his stridency has suddenly evaporated and his face is white. ‘I cannot prove it. I was – it doesn’t matter where I was – but it wasn’t Lincoln’s Inn Fields, or anywhere within a mile of that accursed house. You have my word.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’ll understand that I don’t have a mind to accept your word, on this occasion,’ says Mr Bucket with a smile. ‘After all, as you will recall from your own days in the Detective, when a certain person has been seen more than once at the scene of the crime, when that person has, indeed, been heard arguing with the victim – even, perhaps, threatening him – a threat witnessed by a most unimpeachable source – then it’s in the natural way of things that I should seek out that person and bring him in for questioning. So, young Charles, am I to call in assistance, or is the deed done?’

  Charles stares at him for a long moment, as if weighing his options. And he must have concluded he has very few, because a moment later he nods slowly. ‘There’s no need for that. If I have to come, I’ll do so quietly.’

  ‘All the same,’ says Bucket affably, ‘this is a very serious charge, Charles, and I have a preference to do such things by the book.’

  He takes a pair of cuffs from his pocket and stands, holding them, waiting. Charles starts back angrily but says nothing, and eventually holds out his hands in silence.