Season of Darkness

by Cora Harrison

  ‘No, nothing,’ he said briefly. ‘Just wondered how you engage all of your staff, that’s all.’

  ‘That lawyer fellow complained to me that his gin bottle had been interfered with; thought that someone had been fiddling through his belongings.’ Don Diamond was obviously still worried by Dickens’ words. ‘Well, that’s as maybe, but I didn’t give him much sympathy. Just told him that cupboards with locks were provided in each room. Look it up, man, lock it up, that’s what I said to him. He should have been in some of the places I’ve been in! Men slept in their trousers for fear that they’d be stolen during the night!’

  And with those words, our American friend waved his stick and left us. We dawdled for a while, allowing him to get well ahead of us and then went towards the city. The bells of St Pauls sounded.

  ‘End of vespers,’ said Dickens. ‘Not a good time to see a parson, Wilkie, don’t you think? After prayer, his soul uplifted to the lord and his body looking forward to a hot whisky by his fireside! Let’s go and visit the canon of St Bartholomew’s tomorrow morning and find out what he knows about the teachers that he employs in his grammar school. I can’t quite work this Mr Frederick Cartwright into the business at Greenwich, can you, Wilkie, but, do you know, I have a strong feeling that the man is somehow implicated in the murder of that poor girl. And when I get those strong feelings,’ added Dickens with a flourish of his umbrella, ‘then I am usually, not to say, always, right.’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘What you need, missus, is a good steak. You’re looking ever so tired and washed-out like. I’m worried about you.’ The morning’s work was done and Sesina was bored after all the excitement of the day before. More than ever it looked to her as though that schoolmaster had something to hide. She needed to get out and investigate him, see if there was anything to be found out at that school of his. She looked solemnly at Mrs Dawson. Can nearly smell her mouth water at the thought of a steak, she said to herself. ‘Ever such cheap, good steaks in Smithfield,’ she added coaxingly. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, missus.’

  That should fetch her in. The butcher, baker and chandler accounts were sent to the landlord at the end of each month. Wouldn’t want no steaks appearing on the bill for a house where no dinners were served for the lodgers.

  ‘I do believe that you’re right, Sesina. I’ve heard tell about the steaks at Smithfield.’ Mrs Dawson seemed to be turning the matter over in her mind. Almost tasting the steak. ‘Now make sure that you get a good-sized one and then, I’ll tell you what, you can have the trimmings, Sesina.’ Mrs Dawson was up out of her chair and crossing the room, key in hand, making for the cash box.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. I’ll just run and fetch my bonnet and shawl.’

  Sesina was off as soon as she got the money in her hand. Didn’t want any more errands. Lucky the woman was half sozzled and at best of times, Mrs Dawson wasn’t too quick on thinking up ideas.

  Great place, Smithfield. She always enjoyed it. Isabella and herself had done a lot of ‘lifting’ there, as Isabella always called it – lifting wallets and purses, of course. There was always a bullock or two, or even a goose, getting loose and causing chaos and it was easy to snatch something while everyone was pushing and shoving to get into doorways and side lanes.

  Sesina made her plans as she went at top speed down the Strand. It was a quarter to four as she passed St Paul’s and she broke into a run. By the time that she reached St Bartholomew’s, the smaller boys were coming out of the school and the nursemaids were lined up at the gate to meet them. Sesina pulled her shawl well around her and came up to them.

  ‘That’s a terrible place, that school in there,’ she said with casual confidence to the group of nursemaids, huddled together beside the gateposts. ‘Family I worked for, well, poor little Master Jimmy was in bed for a week after the beating he got from that schoolmaster, what was his name? Fellow with orange hair. Master Jimmy goes to St Paul’s now. Happy as anything there. His mother said that she’d never let him inside the doors of St Bartholomew’s again, not ever. Not after seeing the bruises on him. Black and blue, he was, from head to toe. I misremember the name of the schoolmaster, but he was an ugly-looking brute. Some poor boy; I knew his poor sister, well, poor fellow, he’s no more …’ She stopped and waited, pretending to be scouring her memory, but crossing her fingers as she clenched her shawl around her head, but no one finished the story for her. There were several teachers in the background ushering the children out of the school. One of them lifted a cane, a thin, black, walking cane and swished it through the air. A child cried out, bent down, doubled up with pain.

  ‘That would be the one, that fellow there. That fellow with the orange hair sticking out under that mortar board of his.’ She kept her voice down to a whisper, but pointed at the familiar figure.

  ‘I know him! Got a terrible scar. Looks like a second mouth on his face. I did hear tell that he did something bad to a boy up north somewhere. Someone told me that.’ The nursemaid’s voice was shrill and Sesina saw Mr Cartwright turn his head. She turned her back on him, pulling her shawl a bit further over her head so that it made a deep frame for her face.

  ‘Wait till I tell you what I heard …’ And then the girl stopped. Her head swivelled and in a moment she was off, dragging the small boy by the hand. Another boy, howling miserably, was quickly taken off by his nursemaid. There was a general scattering. And the tread of heavy footsteps.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ The harsh voice was unmistakable. He had recognized her. Being so dratted small, that’s what had got her into trouble. Sesina swore silently. He was in front of her now, staring down at her.

  ‘Nothing sir, just stopped to give a piece of liquorice to that little boy that was crying.’ She watched his angry face and tried to cling on to her courage. You’re not my employer, Mr Nasty-Face Cartwright. Nothing at all to do with you where I go, who I talk to, and where I stop. The words, as they passed through her mind gave her courage and she looked up at him. Aloud, she said obsequiously, ‘Mrs Dawson sent me on an errand to Smithfield, sir.’

  ‘Well, be off with you, then. Don’t loiter around here. Go on, girl. Do your business. That’s the way to Smithfield.’

  By now his presence had cleared all of the nursemaids and servants. They grabbed the hands of their charges and pulled them away, looking furtively over their shoulders at the repulsively scarred face that glared after them. The older boys were coming out now, shouting, whooping, hitting each other with horse chestnuts threaded on to pieces of string, but when they saw Mr Cartwright they became very quiet, very subdued and slid past him with sidelong glances. Sesina said no more and she, too, sidled past the schoolmaster and went briskly down the road. When she got to the corner, she turned back. He was still standing there. He had taken off his mortar board, and his orange hair blew up from his head and made him look more like that orangutan than ever. And the next time that she looked, he had disappeared. Gone back to Adelphi Terrace, no doubt.

  Well, she had got away from him, and had her suspicions confirmed!

  It was market day at Smithfield. She had forgotten that. Not a good day to come. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire; a thick steam of mist was perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle and it mingled with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney tops. All the pens in the centre of the large area, and as many temporary pens as could be crowded into the vacant space, were filled with sheep, tied up to posts. By the gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen, three or four deep. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys and thieves were mingled together in a mass. The whistling of drovers, the barking dogs, the bellowing and plunging of the oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides; the ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued from every public house; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping and yelling; the hideous and discordant din that resounded from every cor
ner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly running to and fro made it look a scene from hell.

  Sesina hesitated. It had not been like this when she had come before. So this was market day. Everything was wild and savage. She could not even see the butcher that she and Isabella had wrangled with on her last visit. She moved a little back, looking around her for a safe haven.

  And then it happened.

  Sesina saw it all. She had turned around, trying to get her bearings in this scene of confusion. A herd of bullocks were being driven towards where she stood. They were running along, controlled by two men and a pair of efficient cattle dogs that kept the animals in a tight pack.

  And then a long, thin, black stick, or was it a cane, came out from a doorway. Even through the noise of the animals, Sesina heard the swish that came down and landed on the leading bullock’s neck. It seemed to her as if all hell broke loose then. Deep-throated bellowing from the angry animals, high, excited barking from the dogs and hoarse shouts from the men. She stared, mesmerized for a few long moments, and then turned to flee. Too late. Something stopped her abruptly; something hard, unyielding. A stick. Thrust between her legs. For a moment she thought that she would die, trampled to death beneath the hoofs of the maddened bullocks, but her courage rose up. He wasn’t going to get away with this. Just as she lost her balance, her eye was caught by something red and white beside her shoulder. She grasped it with a feeling of desperation. A barber’s pole. Only jutting out from a cart, but enough to steady her. The barber, himself, reached out an arm and pulled her back between the shafts of the cart and she stood panting and listening to the man’s complaints about the drovers.

  ‘Don’t like this place,’ she said, as soon as she could speak.

  ‘Me neither,’ he said, patting her on the shoulder. He was as old as the hills so she allowed him to go on patting while she was getting her breath back.

  ‘Did you see him?’ she said after a minute.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fellow that tried to trip me up.’

  He was stroking her neck now and she took a few steps back from him, scanning the scene.

  ‘Didn’t see nobody,’ he said, abandoning her and sticking his head inside his covered cart.

  ‘Thanks, anyway.’ Sesina moved away from the protection of the cart’s shafts. The bullocks were well away now. A woman was picking up a few filthy cabbages from the roadway and everything was getting back to normal. There was no sign of a man with a cane, just drovers with heavy sticks.

  ‘Did you see a gent walking along here with a cane in his hand, a black cane?’ She asked the question of the cabbage seller, but the woman just shook her head. Had her own troubles.

  I’m getting out of here, thought Sesina. Buy Mrs Dawson’s steak on the Strand. Be a bit dearer, but she could make up a story about that. Anyway, she told herself, fish should be new-caught, but steak should be hung for a few days; Mrs Morson always said that when she was teaching the girls to cook and to give Urania Cottage its due, Mrs Morson could run rings around Mrs Dawson when it came to cooking. She walked briskly away from Smithfield, continually turning her head to look behind her and making sure to keep on the inside of the footpath. Her courage was rising. She knew how to take care of herself. Once she was sure; once she had real evidence, she’d make sure to talk to him inside the house. None of this business of meeting a man out there on Hungerford Stairs.

  FIFTEEN

  Wilkie Collins, Dead Secret:

  There could not be the least doubt of his identity; I should have known his face again among a hundred. He looked at me as I took my place by his side, with one sharp searching glance—then turned his head away toward the road. Knowing that he had never set eyes on my face (thanks to the convenient peephole at the red-brick house), I thought my meeting with him was likely to be rather advantageous than otherwise. I had now an opportunity of watching the proceedings of one of our pursuers, at any rate—and surely this was something gained.

  ‘There is a possible solution, Dick,’ I said and I could hear how eager and how loud my voice sounded. Unlikely that anyone would be listening to our conversation in the busy street, nevertheless I lowered it and seizing him by the arm, made him stop his rapid progress and step aside into an alleyway. ‘I have an idea,’ I said. ‘How about it if Annie Brown from the marriage register, was not Annie Brown, but really Annie Cartwright. She and her husband had parted. Perhaps she ran away from him, taking the baby with her, but leaving the older boy with his father up in Yorkshire. Brown sounds as though it could be invented. Smith or Brown, both of them are the first names you would think of, wouldn’t you? Well, you wouldn’t, perhaps,’ I said as I thought of the extraordinary surnames in Dickens’ books, ‘but lots of people with no imagination would. So Annie runs away from her cruel husband, leaving the older boy with him, perhaps he was good to the boy at that stage, proud of having a son and so she left the boy, came to Greenwich, perhaps she was originally from there, and she and Andrew Gordon got married.’

  ‘Fraudulently,’ put in Dickens.

  ‘It happens,’ I said with a shrug. There was a faint frown on his face.

  ‘Why did she bother?’ He started to walk again at his usual rapid pace.

  ‘Gave her more security.’ I struggled to keep up. I said no more but the ideas were flooding through my mind. Perhaps this Annie left her baby at the workhouse because she had determined on a journey to reclaim her older son. Perhaps this Andrew Gordon had gone with her. He may have lost his job, hoped to get a new one. Plenty of mills in Yorkshire. ‘I’ve got it, Dick,’ I said. ‘Andrew Gordon lost his job at Greenwich. They decided to try their luck in Yorkshire. And Annie may have decided to reclaim her son from his brutal father. They had no money, would have to walk, perhaps, and so Annie left the baby, little Isabella, in the workhouse.’ Dickens wasn’t listening and so I stopped. We were approaching the parish of St Bartholomew’s and the church, with the school nestling beside it, loomed up, threateningly, in the foggy air.

  ‘They say that this place is haunted,’ said Dickens over his shoulder to me, but he led the way without hesitation towards the door. An elderly verger was standing, yawning, keys in hand and he looked at us severely.

  ‘Vespers is finished, gentlemen,’ he said and then his face changed as Dickens came towards the gas lamp outside the porch door. For a moment it crossed my mind to hope that one day my face would be as easily recognized as his, but then I banished the thought, feeling ashamed of myself. I should keep my mind concentrated on that poor young girl, Isabella Gordon, beaten and strangled to death. Nevertheless, I was conscious of a twinge of envy as the familiar words: ‘Why, you must be Mr Dickens! Good evening, sir. I’ve been reading your Bleak House, wonderful work. That poor little Joe. Brought tears to my eyes, it did. Have you come to see our church?’

  ‘We’ve come to see the canon,’ said Dickens. ‘What an interesting old church, you have here!’

  ‘That is the canon, sir. The reverend gentleman up there by the altar, sir.’

  He took us up and introduced us. The canon was a small man with a round head, side whiskers sprouting untidily from ear to jawline. Smaller even than myself. Short, rotund. He had changed from his vestments and was soberly dressed in the Church of England fashion, wearing gaiters and a frock coat. He came rapidly towards us with a slightly stiff walk, legs wide apart. A beaming smile. A nice man; I decided immediately. His opinion on Mr Frederick Cartwright would be worth having.

  ‘Don’t be surprised if a church plays a major part in my next book, Wilkie; I think that churches will haunt my dreams tonight,’ Dickens murmured in my ear as the canon rushed away to find the key to a cupboard where a Queen Elizabeth communion service was stored. We both admired it and consented to see around the outside of the church and have its Norman features pointed out to us. Our host put on a low-crowned, wide-brimmed clerical black hat and escorted us outside where we were shown the ancient features of t
he church. An adroit question about the choir, though, soon turned the conversation to the school next door.

  ‘We met one of your teachers recently at a dinner held by his landlord, an American friend of mine. A man with red hair, if I remember rightly.’ Dickens managed to introduce the matter in a careless fashion, turning to me to supply the name of the teacher.

  ‘Ah, yes, that was it, Mr Cartwright. A Mr Frederick Cartwright. He teaches here, does he not?’

  A visible shade passed over the old man’s face. Absent-mindedly, he hauled on a gold chain, bringing a handsome gold watch to the surface of his waistcoat pocket. He looked at it as though in hope of being reminded of an urgent appointment, but it disappointed him and so he replaced it and turned to face us bravely.

  ‘Yes, well, yes, Mr Frederick Cartwright does teach here.’

  ‘Been here for a long time, has he?’ I asked the question in an idle fashion, reaching out to run my fingers over a Norman buttress.

  ‘No, no!’ He was quite startled. The words came out with a slight squeak. He looked distressed beyond measure as though the long-term presence of Mr Cartwright in the school for which he bore responsibility would have been a sin beyond forgiveness. He wore a plain gold ring on his fourth finger, slightly too loose for him, and as he mused on this, he moved it rapidly up and down, sliding it nervously over the central joint of his finger.

  ‘That’s right, don’t you remember, Collins? Didn’t Mr Cartwright say that he came from Yorkshire?’ Dickens had a reproachful note in his voice and I bit back a smile. Dickens and I had first met when I had played a small part in a play that he was putting on and now I felt almost as though we were both taking our parts in another play. The elderly canon looked from one to the other of us with a puzzled expression on his face. The gas lamp flashed a ghostly reflection from the glass of his gold-rimmed spectacles.