The Great Stink

by Clare Clark

  Although he was tempted to put off his visit until the following day, Rose went directly from the police station to Woolwich. He had never before visited the prison-ship moored there and the uproar and the filth appalled him. The stench made him nauseous. He crept through the bowels of the ship, his Adam's apple rasping like a cricket against his stiff collar, his hands clutched behind his back, wishing for all the world he could shut his bulging eyes and find himself magically transported back to the shabby quietude of his lodgings in the Temple. When at last they reached William's cell the gaol attendant did not open the door. It was not considered safe to permit Rose to enter the prisoner's cell. Instead the attendant unlocked the iron trap in the door habitually used for the passing through of the prisoner's daily allowance of bread and water, and motioned to Rose to squat so that he might talk through it. The gaoler gave Rose an iron bell with which he was to summon help if the prisoner gave him trouble or when he wished to leave. Someone would then show him out. Rose nodded and, when the attendant was out of sight, he bent down. From his side the prisoner would be able to make out only the visitor's eyes but the flap afforded Rose a full view of the defendant. It did nothing to raise Rose's spirits.

  William lay shackled to the wall. He still wore the cotton pyjamas from the asylum, although they were dirty now and torn, and his sandy hair stood up like clumps of tussocky grass around his head. His eyes were closed. He put Rose in mind of the lion at London Zoo, the old moth-eaten one that the visitors grumbled about for it never moved or roared or did the things that lions always did in picture books but only stared at them unblinkingly with its baleful eyes, wishing them all dead. The prisoner stank like an old lion too. Rose extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and inhaled its comforting pear drop smell.

  'Mr May?'

  William opened his eyes, sliding them guardedly from side to side. They were not eyes that wished anyone dead, Rose thought suddenly, despite the prisoner's violent reputation. Rather they had the unpromising flatness of his Manila envelope.

  'Here, through the trap. They won't let me in, I'm afraid, but I'm to represent you. At the Sessions. Sydney Rose.' The lawyer cleared his throat, his Adam's apple catching on his collar. 'Glad to make your acquaintance.'

  Clumsily, uncertain of the appropriate etiquette for so singular a situation, Rose thrust one of his red hands as far as he could through the trap. The metal was cold against his bony wrist. Rose waited for a moment, his fingers twitching awkwardly, but there was no answering hand from the other side of the door. Perhaps he could not reach. Then again, Rose thought suddenly, he was a prisoner, a maniac. He felt a sudden agonized pang of vulnerability. A man like that would likely bite a fellow's finger off soon as look at it. Quick as he could he wrenched his hand back through the trap. Just too late he felt the ghostly touch of the other man's fingers against his.

  'Mr Rose,' William said, very quietly.

  Rose hesitated, rubbing the scraped knobbles of his wrist. The madman's voice was tarnished with disuse but controlled, educated. Less the voice of a madman than the voice of a clerk. Then he put his face back to the slot, so that his pink eyes gazed out from their metal surround as they might have through a medieval helmet. He made for an unconventional knight.

  'Mr May,' he said. 'We have only a few days to make your case. I think you had better tell me everything.'

  The words were careful but the voice was kind. William rubbed his hands over his eyes. He understood his rights. They were required to provide him with a lawyer, he knew that, but they were not required to provide him with an able lawyer. In the long empty hours he tried to hope for no more than a man who had a modicum of human decency and enough of a reputation for sobriety to remain upright through the trial. This man's eyes had the red-rimmed droop of a drinker. But he had placed his hand in the slot. He had wished to shake William's hand, to touch him. He had spoken to him with a tentative courtesy, a deference even, that William had not heard for weeks. He had spoken to him like a gentleman. William felt the tears prickle at the base of his nose and, beneath his diaphragm, an unfamiliar flicker. A flicker of hope.

  Dragging his chain he moved as close to the door as he could and squatted. The men's eyes were no more than a foot apart. William wanted to reach out and touch the man's face, to feel the certainty of another's flesh beneath his fingers, but he kept his hands at his sides. Do not lose control. Stab. William licked his Hps. He was not sure how his voice would sound. He had not used it for days.

  'I — my bucket, Mr Rose.' William swallowed. 'I'd like it emptied.'

  'Of course.' Rose nodded. 'Of course. I'll see what I can arrange.'

  There was another long pause. Rose waited.

  'I am not mad, Mr Rose,' William whispered at last. 'And I did not kill Alfred England.'

  The lawyer's eyes bulged.

  'Well, that's good,' Rose stammered.

  'I did not kill him,' William said again, and the unshed tears pressed at his cheekbones. 'You believe me, don't you?'

  Rose blinked unhappily as the prisoner leaned towards him as far as his shackles would allow. Close up, his eyes were not the flat buff that Rose had first supposed but lit with bright flecks of green and yellow. He'd been a surveyor once, they'd told him, a professional man, before he lost his mind. He had a family.

  'Well,' he said and faltered. Behind his back his scarlet hands clamped together, the raw knuckles pressing like molars through the roughened skin. 'Look, Mr May. It is my job to defend you. Acquittal would be — naturally — an ideal result from my point of view as well as yours. But I've never — the case against you is strong. Very strong, from what I have seen. But, you know, we will try. We will try.'

  William gazed into the pink eyes and bit his lip.

  'You are all the hope I have, Mr Rose. They will hang me.'

  Rose forced himself to return the prisoner's gaze. Was it intelligence that illuminated those lion's eyes, lighting them gold, or was it lunacy? How was one supposed to tell the difference?

  'I will do what I can for you, Mr May,' he muttered softly. 'But I will need all the help you can give me. You — let us just say, it does not look good. For you. Do you understand? So I will need to know everything. Anything. From the beginning.'

  And so William started from the beginning. At first the words came slowly as though he was dragging each one like a rock out of his chest. There were long pauses. May ground his wrists against their irons as though he might rub his way free. Rose's knees ached. He made notes, stretching each letter of each word into elaborate loops so as to fill the extended periods of silence. He strained not to hear the ghastly clankings and groanings from the other cells. He remained like that for several hours, his spirits sinking with the afternoon sun.

  'I will have to leave soon, Mr May.'

  William lifted his head and stared at Rose through the iron slot. Then he shook his head, slowly first and then violently as if he wished to cast it from his neck. The shudder spread through him until it possessed his whole body. His dazed eyes sharpened with desperation and on his bloodless cheeks there bloomed two vivid spots of red.

  'No, no, please — I...'

  William struggled to his feet. He did not look at Rose. Instead he paced the limits of his cell, two short steps in one direction, then two back, two forwards, two back. The irons on his legs clanked against their chains. Still he shook his head, clutching at it with both hands as though to shake the truth out of it. Perhaps that is indeed what happened. For suddenly and without warning the words began to cascade out of him, faster and faster until they thundered like an avalanche from his lips and Rose could barely hold himself steady against the onslaught. Outside the afternoon fog darkened until the rusting hulk was no more than a great slab of black against the charcoal sky, but Rose remained where he was, his face pressed up against the metal trap, and his hand moved frantically over the pages on his lap.

  William seemed barely to know what he was saying but still the words came. He kept his ey
es fixed upon the worn plank of the floor, upon the ghostly footprints of the ranks of prisoners long since gone, and he told the lawyer everything. He spoke of the horrors of the Crimea, of the nightmares that had followed, the blackouts. He told him all he could remember of his dealings with Hawke, of his own refusal to sign papers that Hawke had drawn up without the proper authorizations that would give England a valuable contract. He told him of Hawke's attempt to bribe him and then to intimidate him. He told him of England's desperation, of the brickyard owner's threats and his own continuing refusal to change his mind. He told him that there had indeed been a fight between the two of them, that he had struck England, but that afterwards he had run away. He told him that he had sought refuge in the tunnels as he had always done, and that the chill had given him a fever, from which he was slow to recover. But despite that, despite the heat of the fever, he had known, he had always known, that, in the darkness, he had been witness, albeit blindly, to a murder. He had repeatedly said as much to his wife but she had dismissed it, thought it no more than the fever talking. Which was why when, weeks later, he had heard of England's death, he had felt it so important to write to her, to offer through her his assistance to the police. He told Rose of his certainty that Hawke was somehow involved in England's death. He had agreed to grant England a contract in exchange for money but he had failed to secure that contract. England's yard was on the verge of bankruptcy. England was desperate for money. Had England threatened him in some way, tried to blackmail him? If Hawke had feared exposure, then —

  'Mr Hawke?' Rose interrupted. 'He is the controller of finances for the sewer project, that is correct? A position of some pre-eminence on the Board?'

  'Yes! He has a reputation for making the most stringent of economies. It was brilliant, don't you see? No one who knew Hawke would ever have guessed that he was all the while directing funds into his own pocket. But he was. He said as much to me. He offered me a share in it in exchange for my cooperation, if I made sure that England won a major contract.'

  'Were there any witnesses to that proposition?'

  'No, of course not. Hawke is not a fool.'

  Rose's eyelids lowered a little. William could hear the scratch of pencil against paper as he made another note.

  'He was well known to be an adversary of yours, I believe?'

  'Hawke? No more mine than anyone else's. Or at least not until the business with England.'

  'But you were known to be at odds? It was at his insistence that you were first seen by a doctor, is that not the case?'

  'He wished to discredit me,' William protested. 'Can you not see that?'

  Rose was silent.

  'It was on my recommendation that the contract went to another yard,' William persisted. 'Two days later England was dead. It was weeks before they found his body but Hawke knew it. He knew it then. When I went to him to suggest England for Abbey Mills, he laughed. Because he knew it was too late. He knew that England was already dead.'

  Rose pressed his lips together and he tried not to sigh. His feet prickled with pins and needles and cramps clamped his shoulders. He shifted position, glancing down as surreptitiously as possible at the watch he had withdrawn from his vest pocket. He had been in the gaol, kneeling at the trap, for almost three hours and he still had nothing. There was nothing that the prisoner had told him that would stand up to cross-examination, even if he was permitted to take the stand. Which he would not be. As a certified lunatic his testimony was worth precisely nothing. The best Rose could hope for was that he would turn up something or someone to verify May's story. But what? Who? Hawke was hardly likely to volunteer his help. And the Board would close ranks, of that there was no doubt. Their position was already awkward. They would have no wish to see another of their number implicated in this ugly affair.

  Besides, what chance was there that May was telling the truth? Or that what he believed to have happened had indeed happened? Rose could find himself upon a thousand wild goose chases seeking corroboration for a story that was no more than the product of a fevered imagination. The man was prone to vivid nightmares, to blackouts. He saw things that were not there. He claimed he was not mad but he had had himself committed to an asylum by his own signature. No one else doubted that May was guilty. Why should he? He flexed his feet, feeling the life creep painfully back into his calves, and closed his notebook.

  'It's late,' Rose said and his pink eyes slid sideways. 'I must go.'

  'You'll come back, won't you? Tomorrow, when you've been able to talk to Hawke, to Lovick?'

  'Perhaps,' Rose replied evasively.

  For a moment William stood perfectly still. Then he sank to his knees. The leg irons dragged at his legs but William did not seem to notice. Instead he fixed his gaze on the trap in the door and all the bones in his face seemed to strain forward, sharp with intent. He cupped his hands, one on top of the other. His lion's eyes gleamed gold. In his dirty white clothes, with his tussocky hair, his ragged beard, he looked to Rose like an ascetic from the Old Testament, one of the prophets obliged to endure unbearable suffering in the name of a capricious and vengeful God. Not a lion after all but Daniel, scraping up the courage and the faith to venture into the den.

  'I didn't kill him, Mr Rose.'

  Rose blinked unhappily, forcing himself to hold the prisoner's gaze.

  'We will do what we can,' he said again. 'I can promise no more than that. Good night, Mr May.'

  Briskly he rang the bell provided to summon an attendant. William watched as the eyes withdrew from the trap. Through the narrow slot he could just make out the lawyer's raw red hands as he brushed ineffectually at his trousers, the hem of his coat. The cloth was grimy, rimed with dust and fragments of straw.

  'One last thing,' William said very softly through the trap. 'Please take a message to my wife. Tell her I'm sorry for all the trouble I have caused. Tell her I love her, that I will always love her.'

  The hands stopped. There was a pause before the fingers sought each other out, clasping each other in a tight embrace.

  'Of course,' Rose murmured. 'Of course.'

  'Tell her I am planning her garden. It will be a beautiful garden. Tell her —'

  His words were trampled beneath the harsh footsteps of the attendant. Rose spoke in a low voice to the gaoler before wishing William a good night. In an urgent voice William begged the lawyer to lower his ear to the trap. Reluctantly Rose bent as William whispered something. Puzzled, uncertain he had heard correctly, Rose asked him to repeat it but the second time William could do little more than mouth the words. Exhaustion leached the marrow from his bones. He closed his eyes, slumping against the iron door of the cell as Rose was led away. We will do what we can. We will do what we can. William had thought to derive a little comfort from the words but they repeated emptily in his skull until their edges melted and their meaning seeped away. When at last he slept, his head on the hard pillow of his knees, he dreamed only of pink protruding eyes, framed with rusting metal, and when he woke, in the dark frozen hour before dawn, he was filled with a terrible certainty that, much as the lawyer had wished to find himself convinced, he had not believed a single word of William's story.

  XXVI

  The Crown's lawyers sent word to Rose's chambers the following morning. The investigating officers had the previous day carried out a search of May's carrel at the Board's Greek-street offices and, concealed beneath a loose floorboard under his desk, they had turned up a bayonet blade of the type used by private soldiers in the Russian War. They were certain it was the weapon with which England had been killed. The blade was scabbed with dried blood and, caught on the underside, were two black whiskers, of a length and colour consistent with the whiskers of the dead man. The discovery completed the prosecution case. Given the abhorrent nature of the crime and the dangers inherent in holding a lunatic on board a prison-ship for any longer than was absolutely necessary, the Crown wished to move with all speed towards a guilty verdict. The judge had therefore given his au
thority for the case to be moved to the first day of the Sessions. May would be tried on Monday, six days hence. Rose had till then to construct the prisoner's defence.

  He would object, of course. They could not spring the trial on them in so high-handed a manner. But it was not that that preoccupied Rose as he set the kettle on the fire for tea. He thought instead of May, crouched and shackled in his lightless cell. So he had done it, after all. May had murdered Alfred England. Rose folded the message and set it among his papers, surprised at his own disappointment. As the kettle began to rattle upon its stand he stared into the flames, his elbows set upon his knees and his red hands clasped together. Disappointment was natural, he told himself briskly. No one wished to see their first client hang. But, later, as he took his hat and walked slowly through the Temple and along the river towards Lambeth Bridge, he knew it was more than that. There was something about May that had attracted Rose despite himself, although he could not precisely put his finger on what it was. It certainly wasn't that May's story was compelling, although the prisoner's belief in it had seemed sincere. It was more that, despite the filthy clothes and the matted hair and the kennel of a cell, there was something uncorrupted about him, something honourable. As though the body that contained it was soiled and verminous but, inside it, his soul remained perfectly pure. Well, it showed how wrong you could be. It must have been the trappings of gentlemanliness that had deceived him, for prisoners were rarely so courteous, or perhaps he had mistaken for virtue the meaningless innocence of the insane. Rose sighed. If he was ever to become more than a mediocre practitioner of the law he would have to become more adept at penetrating his clients' fictions.