Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  * * *

  Sally and I emerge from the underground train station in Clerkenwell, where my family lived before my father disappeared. In the paved expanse known as the Green, in the center of the district, people materializing out of the gray murk bear a jarring resemblance to those I remember from my childhood—the blacksmith, the magistrate, the seamstress. I almost expect to see my mother, my father, and red-haired Ellen Casey come walking toward me, looking the same as they did in 1866. Leonora Firth isn’t the only one trying to communicate with the dead. Sally and I are on the trail of a ghost, Lucas Zehnpfennig, hoping he’ll lead us to the evidence we need.

  Great Sutton Street is near the Smithfield meat market. Fog conceals the vast building where butchers sell beef, pork, lamb, and poultry, but the air reeks of blood and decay. In the gutters, fetid water runs amid feathers and bone shards. Great Sutton contains rows of old, narrow, terraced stone houses that front directly on the cobblestone lane, similar to the place where I grew up. Old women sit on crates outside their doorways, watching toddlers play. A younger woman chases after a little boy riding a hobbyhorse.

  Sally points to the house labeled 49. “It’s still here!” She runs up to the door and knocks. I follow slowly, not ready to face whatever is on the other side. A woman answers. An old-fashioned lace cap covers her gray hair, and her brown wool frock fits awkwardly over her dowager’s hump. Before Sally can introduce us and explain why we’re here, the woman gapes at me, clutching her throat.

  “Mary Bain?” She looks as if she’s seen a ghost.

  My mother was Mary Bain. I resemble her, and this stranger apparently knew her. The woman looks at Sally, who resembles me, and her sagging jowls drop at the sight of two ghosts. I hurry to say, “I’m not Mary; I’m her daughter, Sarah. This is my sister, Sally.”

  “What is your name?” Sally says.

  “Emma Kirby. Mrs.” The woman speaks in a breathless rush, as though we’ve punched the words out of her. She starts to close the door.

  I hold it open. “A man named Lucas Zehnpfennig used to live here. Did you know him?”

  She casts a wild glance beyond me toward the street, pushes harder on the door, and cries, “Begone!” as if we’re evil spirits come early for Halloween.

  “If you don’t want us to come in, we can talk out here,” Sally says loudly, for the benefit of eavesdropping neighbors. “What can you tell us about Lucas?”

  Mrs. Kirby reluctantly stands aside so that we can enter the house. The parlor gives me the nightmarish sensation that I’ve walked into my childhood home. It has the same entrenched odor of cooked cabbage, onions, and roasted meat, the same narrow, cramped dimensions, with only one possible configuration for the furniture. I can imagine myself ten years old again, my mother in the kitchen and my father downstairs in his darkroom. Mrs. Kirby sinks into the armchair; Sally and I perch on the divan. Although the floral patterns of the upholstery and wallpaper aren’t the same as in my family’s parlor, they’re of the same vintage, with worn places on the cushions and peeled-off areas on the walls.

  “How did you meet Lucas?” I say, forcing myself back to the present.

  Mrs. Kirby talks over me in a loud, angry voice. “Don’t speak that name here.” In a quieter tone, she says, “After my husband died, I rented out the attic. He was my lodger.”

  Foreboding makes me hesitate before I ask, “What did he do that was so bad?”

  “I shouldn’t have taken him in. I’d never had a man lodger before.” Mrs. Kirby’s manner turns fretful. “But he was clean, with nice manners. And I thought she was too young for that sort of trouble.”

  “Who was too young?” Sally says.

  “My daughter Annie. She was twelve.”

  Sally and I look at each other in dismay. From our previous inquiries, we know that Lucas violated at least two girls besides Ellen Casey, and it sounds as if Annie was another victim.

  “I didn’t think he was that sort,” Mrs. Kirby says. “After all, he had a lady friend who was a lot older than him.”

  I’m surprised, because I’ve never heard that Lucas had a relationship with a mature woman. “Who was she?”

  “Why, it was Mary Bain.” Mrs. Kirby pauses to stare at me, as if newly disconcerted by my resemblance to my mother. Contempt twists her features. “And her a married woman.”

  “But they couldn’t have been—”

  “Oh, they were, mark my word. If you’d seen her hanging around here, kissing his cheeks and stroking his hair and putting her arms around him when she thought nobody was looking, it would’ve been obvious to you too.”

  It’s clear that Mrs. Kirby doesn’t know Mary and Lucas were mother and son. My mother would have kept the nature of their relationship a secret; she wouldn’t have wanted people to know she’d had an illegitimate child. A revolting thought makes my skin crawl. Did she love Lucas so much that, when he grew up, she developed romantic feelings for him? I suddenly remember that often, when I came home from school, she wasn’t there. She must have been with Lucas. Were they indeed lovers?

  I glance at Sally, whose puzzled expression says she doesn’t know what to make of Mrs. Kirby’s story. She’s not inclined to think the dirty, ugly worst of people.

  Mrs. Kirby says, “He sure had me fooled. He must have had Mary fooled too. How could any woman stand to be with him, knowing what he was?”

  My previous inquiries confirmed that my mother had known, long before he raped Ellen Casey. Were her own desires so perverted that she didn’t mind his? I burn with more anger and hatred toward her than ever.

  “Can we speak with your daughter?” Sally says. “Does she live here?”

  Tears run down the creases in Mrs. Kirby’s cheeks. “Annie’s been gone these twenty-four years.”

  As we murmur our condolences, I regret compelling Mrs. Kirby to talk about such painful matters.

  The woman’s eyes spark with anger. “After he left, I found out that Annie was with child. She broke down and said he’d sneaked into her room at night.”

  I envision the layout of the house, the same as that of my family’s, and Lucas creeping down the attic stairs to the tiny second-floor bedroom that belonged to Annie while her mother was asleep across the hall.

  “She died having the baby,” Mrs. Kirby says, her voice ragged and bitter.

  My stomach sickens with horror at the news of another sin Lucas committed, another that led to a death. Sally squeezes my arm, and I see eager anticipation in her eyes. Here we have a witness who knows that Lucas did to her daughter what we know he did to Ellen Casey, who can help us pin the blame for Ellen’s rape and murder on him. Maybe the journey to exonerating our father is near its end.

  “Do you remember the murder of a girl named Ellen Casey in 1866?” I say.

  Mrs. Kirby works her mouth. “How could I forget? When she went missing, the coppers were all over looking for her. Then she was found lying on the dirt at the roadworks on Gough Street. Everybody said that photographer interfered with her and killed her. Benjamin Bain.” She peers at me, as if trying to fit together the pieces of an old puzzle. “Mary’s husband. Your father?”

  “Yes,” I say, “but he didn’t kill Ellen. Lucas did.”

  “Shush—don’t say that name!” Suddenly belligerent, Mrs. Kirby says, “It was a long time ago. Why’re you raking up the past?”

  “We want to clear our father’s name,” Sally says.

  “You think he did it, don’t you?” I say.

  Mrs. Kirby’s tongue probes a broken, rotted tooth.

  “You know what he did to your daughter,” I say. “You think he did the same thing to Ellen and then killed her to keep her from telling.” I shamelessly lay my mother’s crime at Lucas’s door.

  “The coppers think it was Benjamin Bain. It’s not my place to think any different.”

  I’m about to lose my temper, but then Sally jumps up and looms over Mrs. Kirby. Her gentle face flushed, her normally mild eyes ablaze, she says, “You kept qui
et, and Lucas Zehnpfennig got away with murder. It’s time for you to tell the truth!”

  Mrs. Kirby shrinks from Sally’s anger, from the sound of the hated name. She bows her head, surrendering to our pressure and her own need to tell. She whispers, “I don’t just think he did it. I know.”

  My thankfulness for a wish granted is so strong that I would fall to my knees if I weren’t sitting down. Sally, openmouthed with excitement, lowers herself into her seat beside me.

  “It was the day he moved out,” Mrs. Kirby says. “He was upstairs packing his things. Mary was with him. I heard them arguing.”

  That must have been shortly after my father convinced Lucas to leave England with him and go to America.

  “Mary begged him not to go. He said that was the deal, and if he didn’t, her husband would tell the police what they’d done to Ellen. Mary was crying and wailing. He tried to calm her down.”

  “What else did they say?” I ask anxiously.

  “She said they should run away together. But he said they couldn’t, because that would be like telling the world they’d done it, and if they were caught, they would get the rope.”

  Although I already know that my mother didn’t love me as much as she loved Lucas, and although I previously learned that she had planned to go to him in America as soon as I was grown, it crushes me to hear that she would have left me when I was only ten. “Did they say anything more about Ellen?” I ask.

  “Not that I know of. I stopped listening because I heard them kissing.” Mrs. Kirby grimaces in disgust. “I was glad to get that man out of the house.”

  Sally looks aghast; she now understands that the relationship between my mother and Lucas was likely incestuous. “They were terrible people! They deserved to be hanged. Our father doesn’t.” She beckons to Mrs. Kirby. “Come with us and tell the police.”

  “No!” Mrs. Kirby flings up her hands as if warding off the horsemen of the apocalypse.

  My wish to exonerate my father undermines my sympathy for this woman who’s suffered as much from Lucas’s deeds as Sally and I have. “Why not?”

  Mrs. Kirby shuffles to the window and points outside. “Look.” Joining her, Sally and I see the young mother and little boy playing and laughing. “That’s my granddaughter.” Affection tinged with pain softens Mrs. Kirby’s voice. “Her name’s Martha. She looks just like her mum. She’s married to the postman—such a nice young fellow. That’s Henry, their son.”

  Sally and I gape. The mother and son are Lucas’s descendants! My search for our father and the truth about Ellen Casey’s murder has already turned up Sally and Lucas, two relatives I didn’t know I had. Now, here are two more—my niece and grandnephew.

  “I raised Martha,” Mrs. Kirby says. “When she was little and asked me where her father was, I told her his name and said he’d died, just like her mother. I couldn’t tell her what really happened, could I?” She turns to Sally and me, shame and distress branded on her face. “If I talk to the police, everything will come out. What’ll that do to her and the boy? Please, have a heart and go away. Please don’t tell anybody what I’ve told you, and please don’t come back.”

  CHAPTER 11

  After being trapped in an underground train that stalled in the tunnel for more than an hour, I arrive in Whitechapel at five o’clock. Through the window of the Angel public house, I see a whirling flame. A game of apple and candle is in progress. A stick suspended from the ceiling spins horizontally with a lit candle at one end and an apple at the other. Men are laughing as they jump and snatch at the apple with their teeth. I look away, hoping there won’t be many burned faces before the Halloween season ends.

  At home, I find Barrett at the kitchen table, drinking tea while Fitzmorris cooks supper. Barrett smiles and says, “I dropped by to see my wife.”

  “I’m glad to see my husband.” Indeed, my spirits rise like the bubbles in the champagne we drank at our wedding breakfast.

  Fitzmorris stirs diced leftover roast beef with onions and chopped potatoes in a hot frying pan. “Mick went to spend the night outside St. Peter’s Church, watching for ghosts. As for Hugh—” Fitzmorris points at the ceiling to indicate that Hugh is upstairs, sleeping off another overindulgence in liquor.

  My family is all accounted for, if not all well. My tense nerves relax. I wash my hands and put on my apron, and while I slice bread, I tell Barrett the results of today’s inquiries. After I describe the meeting of the Ladies’ Society for Rational Thought, he says, “Diana Kelly? Hmm, that name rings a bell, but I can’t place it. Maybe it’ll come to me later. At any rate, I’m glad you managed to dig up some suspects. I haven’t gotten around to it. The case isn’t a high priority at the station.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “A member of the Clerkenwell Boys gang was found beaten to death early this morning. Word on the street says the Somers Town Boys did it. There’ll be an all-out war unless we catch the killer and quiet things down. Whereas Charles Firth’s murder seems like an isolated incident, not a threat to the public.”

  “The idea that a murderous ghost is at large could cause mass panic.”

  “Maybe. We’re already getting tips about ghost sightings in and around St. Peter’s. Folks are saying the murder is the first in a series and calling the killer ‘The Ghost.’ ”

  My fear is becoming reality. Barrett says, “But we aren’t forming a special squadron or putting extra patrols in the East End the way we did for the Ripper. Inspector Reid is waiting to see how this case develops before he decides whether to make it a big issue.”

  “Is Reid still overloading you with cases in the hope that you’ll quit or die of exhaustion?”

  “No. His superiors have been watching him pretty closely since the hangman murder investigation.” Last January, Reid’s mishandling of that investigation got him in hot water. “They noticed that he’d been giving me extra assignments while other fellows were twiddling their thumbs. They put an end to that.” Barrett laughs without humor. “I’m sure he’s got something else in store for me.”

  “Such as what?” I remember the scene that ex-constable Porter caused at our wedding breakfast. Reid is smarter, with more resources on tap, and therefore more dangerous.

  “No idea, but I’ve got eyes and ears on him. I’ll find out.” Barrett has many friends on the police force. “In the meantime, it’ll help if you check the suspects’ alibis.”

  “Mick has already started. And we may find more suspects soon.” As we eat the beef hash with bread, cheese, and stewed fruit, I tell Barrett about tomorrow’s meeting of the Society for Psychical Studies. Then I describe my visit to Lucas Zehnpfennig’s former landlady.

  “Good progress on both fronts,” Barrett says. “What are you going to do?”

  “Mrs. Kirby’s story is evidence that my mother and Lucas killed Ellen Casey, but I can’t let you report it. It would ruin her granddaughter and great-grandson’s lives.”

  The mere assumption of my father’s guilt made outcasts of my mother and me. The same could happen to Lucas’s descendants if their neighbors hear that Lucas was guilty of the murder.

  “Your father’s life is at stake,” Barrett reminds me.

  “Yes, but Mrs. Kirby didn’t actually hear Lucas and my mother confess.”

  “Well, I suppose Inspector Reid would say there’s not enough evidence to drop the charge against your father.”

  “I’ll have to find another way to exonerate him.” I’m sorry that pinning the crime on Lucas wouldn’t be as harmless as I anticipated.

  “When the truth comes out, the publicity could still ruin those people’s lives.”

  “Maybe the whole truth won’t have to come out. I won’t need to reveal that Lucas violated Ellen if I can show evidence that my mother killed her.” Fate has circled me around to the task I’ve dreaded—investigating my mother’s past and proving she’s a murderess. She was, in spite of everything, my mother, and while I hate her now, I loved her when I was a child.
/>   When dinner is over, Barrett says, “I should go.” He’s been careful not to wear out his welcome with the other members of my household. We look longingly at each other.

  “If you don’t mind my making a suggestion,” Fitzmorris says, “you could spend the night here.”

  Barrett looks surprised, then says, “I guess I could, if you don’t mind. Now that we’re married, it wouldn’t be improper.”

  My body stirs with anticipation at the thought of our making love tonight. My cheeks warm because we’ll be under the same roof as my friends and they’ll know.

  “Oh, we don’t mind,” Fitzmorris says. “We’ve talked about how nice it would be if you moved in with us. ‘One big, happy family,’ as Hugh said.”

  If I can overcome my embarrassment, Barrett living here would be the perfect solution until we find a flat.

  The doorbell’s tinkling interrupts us. “I wonder who that is,” I say. I know it can’t be a summons to a crime scene, as Sir Gerald has temporarily relieved us of those duties.

  “I’ll get it.” Barrett goes downstairs and returns with his mother.

  I’m astonished; Mrs. Barrett has never darkened my door. She’s dressed up in her fur-collared best coat and her hat with the peacock feather. Her face wears the nervy expression of a soldier scouting enemy territory. Barrett looks dumb struck.

  Fitzmorris breaks the uncomfortable silence. “Mrs. Barrett, how do you do? I’m Fitzmorris—Lord Hugh’s valet. We met at the wedding.”

  He offers her his hand to shake. She looks at it as though it’s contaminated; he’s one of the “males” with whom she doesn’t think her daughter-in-law should reside. She bows to him, says, “How nice to see you again,” and flashes a bright, artificial smile at me. “Hello, Sarah dear. So this is your home.” She looks around with avid curiosity.