Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Reverend Thornton counters with unrelenting obstinacy. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “Very well, they can talk to the police. You can’t say no to the police.” I turn to Barrett, implying that he should question the children.

  He frowns because I’ve put him in the middle of my argument with the vicar, then says, “Mother, something smells delicious. Is anybody as hungry as I am?”

  “Dinner’s ready,” Mrs. Barrett says brightly. “Let’s eat.”

  We go to the dining room, where once again I’m seated beside Reverend Thornton. Mrs. Barrett serves cream of celery soup and leads a conversation about food, the weather, and other innocuous subjects. I contribute little. If she invited me because she wanted to mend fences, she’s already defeated her purpose.

  We finish the excellent roast lamb with potatoes and carrots, and we’ve begun the apple tart when she says to the vicar, “I’m so pleased to have Daniel and Lucie in my Sunday school class. They’re lovely children.”

  My instincts tingle alert as I sense that Mrs. Barrett is getting to the point of this dinner.

  The Reverend Thornton wipes his mouth with his napkin and flashes a wary glance at me before he answers her. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”

  He’s obviously afraid I’ll repeat my demand to question the children. Barrett and his father shrink in their chairs like soldiers behind the wall of a fort when the enemy starts shooting.

  “I think they’re adjusting very well to their new life, don’t you?” Mrs. Barrett says.

  “Er, yes,” the vicar says.

  “Such a terrible tragedy they’ve been through.” Mrs. Barrett doesn’t seem to notice his uneasiness. “Sarah, you haven’t heard, have you?”

  “Heard what?” I say.

  “About Daniel and Lucie’s mother. Reverend, perhaps you should tell Sarah the story. We wouldn’t want her to get a distorted version from gossip.”

  Reverend Thornton scowls and drops his fork beside his plate. I perceive that Mrs. Barrett has manipulated him into discussing a sensitive topic. He grips the edge of the table, and I think he’s going to storm out of the house before my curiosity is satisfied, but then he leans back in his chair, thwarted by his good manners. He speaks in a gruff, reluctant voice.

  “My only daughter, Alice, was a difficult girl, high-spirited and strong willed. She liked popular songs and plays and wanted to be an actress. When she was fifteen, she began slipping out of the house at night to frequent the music halls and theaters and taverns. Many times I went searching for her and found her … inebriated.” He reddens with shame at being a clergyman whose daughter preferred worldly delights to the religious and moral values he preaches. “I sent her to three different boarding schools, but she ran away from every one. The last time, she eloped with an actor. It was six months before I managed to locate them.”

  My father had been missing only two weeks before my mother told me he was dead. At least I knew his fate, or thought I did. How terrible it must have been for the Reverend and Mrs. Thornton, the months of not knowing what had become of their daughter.

  “They’d joined a ragtag troupe of actors that traveled around England, and they weren’t married. The actor already had a wife. It was his wife who told me that he and Alice had gone to Paris. I tracked them to a garret near a seedy theater where they were performing. Such a dissolute life they led!” The vicar’s tone conjures up scenes of drunkenness, opium smoking, and revelry with a wild crowd all night, every night. “And—” He rubs his mouth, then says, “She was with child. She refused to come home.”

  His disapproval seems complicated by other, unreadable emotions. I wonder if he secretly thought it better to have his pregnant, unwed daughter far away in Paris instead of in London to embarrass him in front of his congregation.

  “I heard from Alice infrequently, when she wrote asking for money,” Reverend Thornton says. “The actor left her when Daniel and Lucie were three. I went to Paris to visit her and the children and bring them home. But she’d taken up with a different man, and once again she refused to leave. She liked living in Paris, outside the bounds of proper society. Eventually, she wrote to say she was ill with tuberculosis and ready to return to England. But alas, I arrived too late to save her. God rest her soul.” His voice grows so hoarse that he has to clear his throat several times before he says, “Daniel, Lucie, and I came home without her.” He bows his head with regret and grief.

  I murmur, “I’m sorry.” Condolences seem so inadequate, and I’m horrified to be the audience for such a sordid tale so unwillingly told. Barrett and his father look just as uncomfortable as I feel.

  The vicar rises. “Mildred, thank you for a delicious dinner.” He doesn’t look directly at her or anyone else. “I’m afraid I must be going. Since the murder, I don’t like to leave Mrs. Thornton and the children alone after dark. Good night.” He bows, then hurries out of the house.

  The sound of the front door closing is loud in the silence that engulfs the table. I look at Mrs. Barrett, bewildered as to why she’d forced the vicar to share his family’s tragedy with me.

  “Isn’t it terrible, what can happen when a selfish woman goes her own way without any concern for others? She had her fun, and her family is paying the wages of her sins.” Her gaze bores into me.

  I stare at her, incredulous. “You put the vicar through that just to give me a lesson?”

  “You need a lesson. You dabble in murder investigations, you keep dubious company, and who pays for your bad reputation?” Mrs. Barrett gestures around the table. “Your family! Whenever there’s a story about you in the newspapers, Dad and I can barely hold our heads up. People stare and talk about us when they think we’re not looking. You should stop before you ruin us all.” She turns to Barrett. “And you can’t tell me you don’t mind the trouble she gets you into.”

  Instead of defending me, he sits silent. His gaze darts between his mother and me, as if we’re throwing knives at each other and he’s caught in the middle. I stand up and address Mrs. Barrett in a voice that trembles with equal measures of anger and hurt. “If all you care about is keeping up appearances, then I want no part of your family. Now please excuse me—I have to solve two murders and exonerate Mick. He and Hugh are my family.”

  The horror on Barrett’s and his parents’ faces tell me that my temper has taken me too far. I need to get away before I say something unforgivable, if I haven’t already done so. I bolt from the room, grab my coat and hat, and rush out the door and down the cold, dark, foggy street. I walk fast, my feet pounding the pavement. When I stop to catch my breath, my rage dissolves into misery and fear. Did I just destroy my marriage? A new revelation slams me. Marriage isn’t only a personal union between a man and a woman; it includes their relatives. It brings not only the right to sleep together without social censure, but a duty to foster harmony within the clan. I never thought of it this way before, perhaps because my parents’ marriage was so replete with secrecy, lies, and quarrels. Mrs. Barrett is right about one thing: I had nobody to teach me how to be a good wife. My husband and I have proven ourselves willing to die for each other, but can we live together?

  I long to go home, yet I can’t run away from my problems with my mother-in-law. Leaving Barrett to face the music alone won’t help our marriage. I trudge back toward the house, but the sound of men’s voices halts me.

  Barrett and his father are standing outside the door, and I catch a fragment of their conversation. “How can they do that?” Barrett demands.

  I’m outside the light from the streetlamp nearest the house, and they don’t notice me. Mr. Barrett says, “There’s no law that says the Metropolitan Police has to give us pensions when we retire.”

  It never occurred to me to wonder whether retired policemen receive pensions. I gather that Mr. Barrett and his wife live on his.

  “But you’ve been getting your pension for years,” Barrett says.

  “Word around the station says I won�
�t be for much longer.”

  Barrett is silent for a moment. “This stinks of Inspector Reid. He’s pulling your pension to get at me.”

  That Reid would deprive an innocent man just to satisfy a grudge against his son! But then it’s not just Barrett that Reid wants to get at—it’s also me. To punish me for my transgressions, he’s arrested Mick for the murder of Richard Trevelyan and closed the case without a thorough investigation. And now he’s after the elder Barretts. No matter how little my mother-in-law and I like each other, and no matter how little I count myself as a member of Barrett’s family, I am one. And Reid isn’t limiting his attacks to Mick and Hugh; he considers my in-laws fair game.

  They’re paying the wages for my sins.

  How much better off his family would be if Barrett had married Jane!

  “I hate to ask you, but can you do something?” Mr. Barrett says.

  “Oh, I can and I will.” Barrett’s tone is grim with determination.

  I can’t let him go after Reid and get himself in trouble. I brought this on the Barretts. It’s time for me to correct my deficiencies as a daughter-in-law and contribute something good to the family. It’s my responsibility to make things right.

  CHAPTER 24

  At six o’clock in the morning, I walk down Barnet Grove, one of three streets that form a triangle in Bethnal Green. Steeped in dark fog, the terraced brick houses are relatively new, two stories high, their architecture modern and unembellished. Lights appear in their windows as residents awaken. Their black-painted front doors open directly onto the sidewalk, but trees visible above the rooftops indicate the luxury of a private garden behind the buildings. The only activity is at the south end, where the road is flooded and men are digging up the pavement to fix a broken sewer pipe. Shovels and pickaxes clank against stone. I halt just before I reach the house at the middle of the block.

  Last night, I waited outside the Barretts’ house until my father-in-law went inside and my husband called, “Sarah? Are you there?”

  I backed away down the street as he came looking for me; then I walked toward him and pretended I hadn’t overheard his conversation with his father. Putting my pride in my pocket, I said, “I want to apologize to your mother.”

  She deserves an apology—not for my refusal to be the conventional, obedient daughter-in-law she wants, but because I’ve endangered her family.

  “She’s still pretty upset,” Barrett said. “Better wait until she calms down. I’ll take you home.”

  I could tell that he was upset, too, and angry at me as well as Inspector Reid. We endured a silent ride on the omnibus. At home, I discovered that Hugh still hadn’t returned, neither had Fitzmorris, and the house felt emptier without Mick. In my bed, Barrett and I lay facing away from each other. He fell asleep while I concocted a solution to the problems I’ve caused. I can only hope it will undo the damage to our marriage. At four thirty, I rose and dressed, quietly so as not to wake him, then tiptoed downstairs to the parlor. I opened the drawer in the table, took out the pistol, and made sure it was loaded. Then I put on my hat and coat and slipped out of the house.

  Now I feel the weight of the gun in my pocketbook. I brought it because walking alone before daybreak is dangerous for a woman. Although I’ve practiced firing it and I’m a good shot, I’ve seen the terrible injury a gun can do and want never to see it again. But some impulse makes me open my pocketbook, remove the gun, and study its notched cylinder and the textured pattern on the grip. A night without sleep after the turmoil of the past few days works a dark spell on my mind. I touch the curved trigger and realize that here is a device that could solve my problems.

  A strange thrill courses through me. Moving like a sleepwalker, I position myself across the street from the house. I aim the gun at the door and picture Inspector Reid coming out. I smile, tickled by the thought that I could blast him off the face of the earth. My imaginary vision of Reid is so clear that it’s as if he’s really there, in the flesh. My finger tightens on the trigger. Seeing me with the gun pointed at him, he gapes in terrified shock. With no thought for the consequences, I pull the trigger. The bang of the gunshot drowns in the noise from workers digging up the road. Reid falls and lies still. Blood flowing from the wound in his chest turns the pavement red. I run away, concealed by the fog, triumphant. Reid will trouble me no more.

  There’s a loud, metallic crash, and the workers shout curses; they must have dropped something. My fantasy evaporates like a dream upon awakening. I see the gun extended in my hand, and the gleeful excitement gives way to horror.

  I could have done it. I could have killed Reid.

  I stuff the gun into my pocketbook, frantic to hide my guilty intention. An unexpected notion horrifies me: Was that how my mother felt when she killed Ellen Casey? Was she so excited, so caught up in the moment, that she didn’t care about the consequences? My mind argues that our situations were different. She killed an innocent child; I aimed my gun at an evil man who wasn’t really there. But my mother wished death upon someone who’d been an inconvenient, dangerous problem for her, and I almost followed in her footsteps. Now I begin to make sense of the vague notion that’s been bothering me about my mother. It’s the fear I’ve been trying not to acknowledge: Am I the same as her? There’s already blood on my hands, which I thought necessary to shed. But maybe the necessity wasn’t my real motivation. What if I reacted on an instinct that she passed down to me? Is her tendency to solve problems with violence the legacy I’ve inherited?

  The sound of a door opening interrupts my awful thoughts, and Inspector Reid comes out of his house. Concealed by the fog and darkness, I stare at him, shaken to the core by what might have happened. Unaware of me, he walks down the street.

  A little voice from the house calls, “Daddy, Daddy!”

  A boy, seven or eight years old, bursts through the door, runs to Reid, and chatters to him. Reid laughs, bends down to hug him, and says, “Good-bye, Harry. Be good.” He sends the child home with an affectionate slap on the bottom.

  Suddenly nauseated, I retch and clap my hand over my mouth. I almost did exactly what my mother had done—deprive a child of its father.

  Reid sees me, halts in surprise, and frowns. “What are you doing here?”

  I stumble across the street toward him. I blurt out the words I’ve mentally rehearsed on my way here. “May I buy you a drink?”

  Reid hesitates, wondering what I’m up to. “Isn’t it a little early?”

  “Better than too late.” If only he knew it really almost was too late for him to have a drink or do anything else.

  “How did you know where I live?”

  “I once followed you home.”

  Reid considers, then nods; his curiosity has won out. “I know a place.”

  We walk side by side a cautious distance apart, like two ruffians who’ve happened upon each other in a dark alley and are waiting to see who will attack first. At the corner of Columbia Road, we stop at a pub called the Prince of Wales. It boasts a carved stone crown on the roof above the sign, and the decor inside consists of amateurish oil paintings of the current and past princes and commemorative mugs, snuffboxes, and biscuit tins. We’re alone with the publican. Reid sits at a back table while I fetch glasses of ale. They slosh in my shaky hands. He watches me closely, and after I set them on the table and take my seat opposite him, he switches the glass in front of him for the one by my place, as if he thinks I’m trying to poison him. He raises his glass and waits for me to drink first.

  I’m tipping a pint with my enemy, the man I almost shot. When I swallow the ale, for a terrible moment I think it’s going to come back up.

  Reid drinks, licks foam off his moustache, and fixes me with a narrow-eyed gaze. “Well?”

  Setting down my glass, I speak words I never thought I’d say. “I want to apologize for all the trouble I’ve caused you.” It’s he who should apologize to me, for offenses that include arresting my friends for crimes they didn’t commit and persec
uting my father, but I continue. “I’m sorry. Will you please forgive me?”

  Reid stares, astonished; then his expression turns sardonic. “Will you forgive me if I take your apology with a big grain of salt?”

  “I mean it.” At this moment, I do—I’m that desperate to differentiate myself from my mother, who never apologized for the pain she caused and, as far as I know, never experienced a bit of remorse.

  “What else have you got to say?”

  “I beg you to drop the charges against Mick. He’s innocent. I’m the one you’re really after, not him. Please let him go.”

  Reid smirks; he enjoys seeing me grovel. “Well, it’s not my call. The wheels of justice are in motion. His trial is set for November third. A jury will decide whether he walks or hangs.”

  That’s four days away. My heart sinks, but if I’m my mother’s daughter, at least I inherited her stiff upper lip. I glower at Reid instead of weeping for Mick.

  “When the crime is murder, juries like to see someone pay for it, and Mick has a bull’s-eye stamped on his forehead.” Reid laughs. “It’s just too bad you weren’t caught with the body.”

  The gun in my pocketbook is heavy on my lap. I can almost wish I had even more of my mother in me and I’d shot Reid when I had the chance.

  “But I’ll admit that the case against Mick is circumstantial,” Reid says in a confidential tone. “Nobody actually saw him stab Richard Trevelyan. With Sir Gerald’s fancy barrister defending him, a jury could let him off.”

  I look askance at Reid even as I hope he’s right. I think he’s up to something.

  “And I don’t want another bungle on my record. So I might be willing to do you a favor, twist a few arms, and get the charge dropped.”

  A favor from him won’t come cheap, but I’m desperate enough to take the bait. “In exchange for what?”

  Reid smiles and waggles his finger, making me wait, toying with me. “Here’s the deal: I’ll get the charge dropped, if you—” He drinks, prolonging the suspense. “If you tell me the truth about what happened during the Ripper investigation.”