Gideon hesitated. ‘Nothing, sir. I am very grateful indeed for your hospitality.’
‘Indeed.’ Neuilly looked away as if distracted, removing his spectacles to rid them of a smear. ‘And you have found London tolerably diverting? You have been to see St Paul’s, I gather. Wren had a hand in this church, you know, or put his name to the plans in any event. It is a handsome enough place, I suppose.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Gideon agreed, thumbing the edge of his plate. If he was to broach the subject of his return to Cambridge, he must do so soon. His uncle was apt to rise abruptly from the table after taking his meals. ‘Notably so, sir. It struck me at once.’
The reverend doctor contemplated him for a moment, then pushed his chair back and took up his letter again. ‘We have received a visitor of sorts,’ he said. ‘You will welcome the news, no doubt. I’m afraid I am poor company for a boy your age.’
Gideon looked up. ‘A visitor, uncle?’
Neuilly toyed absently with his letter, smoothing out the corner of the topmost page. ‘After a fashion,’ he said. ‘In my ministry, as you may recall, I tend to the needs of the poor. To young women, in particular, who are so much preyed upon when circumstances turn against them.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Gideon said, though in fact he knew nothing at all of his uncle’s work beyond what little he had observed. ‘You have spoken of it in general terms.’
‘There is one young girl in particular,’ Neuilly said, ‘over whom I have taken particular care. An orphan, alas, whose prospects would be poor indeed if she were left without aid. I had found her lodgings and a position – she is a flower-maker, this girl – but a difficulty has arisen with her present engagement. She arrived last evening, and will stay with us for two days – three, perhaps, if my plans are hindered. Her name is Tatton, Miss Angela Tatton.’
‘Ah,’ said Gideon, lowering his eyes. ‘Angie.’
Neuilly blinked slowly.
‘Forgive me, uncle. It came to me just now that I have seen a young woman below stairs whom your housekeeper addresses by that name. It occurred to me that she must be the visitor you refer to.’
‘I see,’ said Neuilly. ‘How observant you are. Yes, that is the girl I mean. Mrs Downey will find some occupation for her during the day and otherwise keep company with her, since we must ensure that there is no appearance of …’
He made a fastidious gesture, at which Gideon discreetly lowered his head.
‘But in the evenings, perhaps, you might think of passing the time with her in some improving manner. Some little education will do her no harm, and I prefer to keep her from wandering abroad when she is at leisure. You might read to her from some suitable works, or instruct her in her letters. You would not find it tedious, I hope?’
Gideon was momentarily absorbed. The morning had been bright, and he had seen her first as he came in from the river, halting by the scullery door when a rift of sunlight caught the stillness of her face. She was intent on her work, forming a lattice of pastry with quick and delicate movements, but was troubled by a fly that settled at intervals on her skin. She looked up at last, as she brushed it away, and he hurried onwards. But he could see, even now, the place where she had touched her cheek, leaving a dusty figure of flour.
‘Nephew,’ Neuilly said, mildly vexed. ‘You will not find it tedious?’
‘Forgive me, sir,’ he said, realising that he had fallen silent. ‘No, indeed not. On the contrary, I should be delighted.’
‘Miss Tatton?’ He crouched over her, whispering her name in wonderment at first, but growing anxious when he could not rouse her. ‘Won’t you wake up, Miss Tatton? Do please wake up.’
She stirred at last and opened her eyes, but gave no sign that she had seen him. Indeed, he could not be sure that she recognised her surroundings at all.
‘Miss Tatton, it is Gideon Bliss. What has happened to you? How did you come to be in this place?’
She turned towards him slowly, her gaze oddly vacant. She would not know him, he was sure. He feared for a moment that she could not see him. But she smiled faintly, as if at some small puzzle that she had solved. ‘I knew you’d come,’ she said. Her voice was thin, faded somehow. ‘You had to go back to your books, you said, but your heart wasn’t in it. I knew.’
‘Angie.’ Unthinkingly, he moved to grasp her arm, checking himself only at the last moment. ‘Miss Tatton. You do know me, after all. How glad I am to see you. I did not want to go back, you are quite right about that. My uncle wished me to, but I – well, I had other hopes.’
‘Other things,’ Angie said. ‘You were put here for other things.’
Gideon dropped his gaze. She had spoken those words on another occasion, and perhaps she had not meant them unkindly. Something had not quite been offered, and not quite refused. It was the gentlest reproach that might still be felt. He encircled her wrist, and with the faintest pressure allowed his thumb to graze her skin.
‘Heaven help us,’ he said, recalled to himself by how cold she was. He worked his coat from his shoulders and settled it about her. ‘How long have you been lying in this place, Miss Tatton? You are half petrified. And what possessed you to come here on such a night? Could you not have gone to my uncle, if you had nowhere else?’
Angie closed her eyes, perhaps to gather her strength. Her breathing was shallow and frayed. ‘My name,’ she said after a time. ‘The name you had for me. Do you remember?’
Gideon thought for a moment. ‘Angie Tatton,’ he said. ‘Angie Tatton in ribbons of satin.’
She shook her head weakly. ‘Not that. Everyone called me that. The other name.’
He looked away in discomfort. His name for her. He had whispered it to himself many times, late at night, but until now he had only once spoken it aloud. It was a moment before he could bring himself to say the words.
‘Look at you,’ she said, smiling again. ‘Always too shy by half. That was it. Maybe that’s what I’ll be now, young master. Maybe that’s how you’ll remember me.’
‘Angie?’ Her eyes had fallen closed again. ‘Speak to me, Miss Tatton, please. Tell me what you mean. Tell me what the matter is.’
‘I can feel it, young master,’ she said. ‘They gave me something, and I can feel it happening.’
‘Angie!’ He shook her again. ‘Stay with me, Angie. You must tell me what happened so that I know what is to be done. Who gave you something? What did they give you?’
Her head lolled, and Gideon feared that she had slipped entirely from her senses, but with a struggle she fixed her gaze on him again. ‘He kept me safe as long as he could. Found new places, when they got too close. But it weren’t just me they were looking for. They found him, young master, and brought him here first. Gone now. He’s gone.’
‘Who, Angie?’ He cast a look about the darkened church, recalling with a lurch of dread that he had not closed the door behind him. ‘Who took him? Is someone coming back for you? Someone who means you harm?’
‘We must keep it hidden, your uncle said. Keep the brightness hidden. But we couldn’t, in the end. I’ll be all brightness soon, that’s what they said, and ain’t that a special thing? I should be happy. But it was black, the air. Like something made of nothing. I can taste it still. I can feel it.’
‘Angie,’ he said, clutching her shoulders. ‘Miss Tatton, listen to me. Someone has poisoned you, I think, and you are delirious. I will go for help. I will fetch a doctor here, even if I must pick someone’s pocket to pay him. I will come back soon, do you hear? I will come back to you, I promise.’
He put a hand to her face, forgetting himself in the tumult of his feelings. Her skin was cold, but dewed faintly as if by a fever. He stroked her cheek, freeing a slip of hair that had clung to it, and with trembling effort Angie covered his fingers with her own. He brought his face very near to hers.
‘Too shy, always,’ she said. ‘Too shy for your own good. You have to go now, young master. They’ll be here soon, and they’ll find you too. It’s too late for
me now, I can feel it. You have to go.’
‘Angie, no. Never say that. I shall call the police. I shall fetch a doctor and he will – and you will be—’
He broke off, a sob rising in him, as Angie’s fingers curled feebly about his neck, drawing him to her. They were frigid still, but her lips, as they parted under his, were warm and living.
‘See?’ she said, releasing him. ‘Other things. You were put here for other things. Now go.’
He drew away, dazed from her, and so lost in her face that for a moment he suspected nothing. But she was staring past him, her scream a hoarse rasp as the rag was clamped to his mouth. He was slowing then, even as he began to struggle, clawing emptiness and breathing only the strange deep sweetness now, remembering nothing else. He saw her once more, as he was hauled up, the sense almost gone from things. He saw it, or thought he did. The brightness of her.
The brightness of her, and then the dark.
II
When her knocking brought no one to the door, Octavia Hillingdon was not unduly perturbed. No doubt she would have been refused admission in any event, and she had been quite prepared for this eventuality. Her plan was a simple one, but it required that she settle upon some distinguishing feature among the uppermost parts of the building. Descending the steps, she retrieved her bicycle and crossed the street, conducting it alongside her as she set off once more in the direction of St James’s Palace.
She scanned the roof line opposite as she did so, and was so much absorbed in this that she very nearly collided with a news-vendor, a weathered and black-shawled woman of above sixty who berated her and her ‘contraption’ in the coarsest terms.
Octavia begged her pardon, though she did so with a certain briskness. The woman presented a formidable obstacle and had hardly been disturbed. ‘News and Post a ha’penny!’ she bawled, holding that evening’s edition stoutly aloft. ‘Ha’penny the News and Post!’
‘What have you on the front page?’ Octavia inquired. Among those belonging to the better papers, the Evening News and Post was regarded with a degree of disdain, but she maintained a certain professional curiosity. ‘May I look? Has another vagrant been found who resembles a long-lost duke?’
The woman backed away, folding the newspaper primly at her side. ‘I only hump them out here and flog them, miss,’ she said. ‘I don’t get them off by heart first. Pay your ha’penny, and you can look all you like.’
‘I am on my way to an engagement and cannot carry a newspaper,’ said Octavia. ‘I will give you a farthing for a look at the front page. Come, the night is cold. It is coming on to snow, and you have half a dozen copies yet to sell at this hour.’
‘Ha’penny,’ said the woman, gathering herself resolutely beneath her dark rags. ‘I should be asking for more, by rights, the fright you gave me. I still ain’t over the shock of it.’
Octavia could not help but laugh. ‘Very well, then, a ha’penny it is. And when I have looked over the front page you may have it back to sell again for your trouble. Does that seem fair?’
The woman regarded her grudgingly still, but handed over the paper, drawing a fresh copy from a broad satchel and resuming her cries. Octavia scanned the front page with a practised eye, passing over the death notices and the claims that were made for sauces and corn cures.
‘“Spiriters feared abroad once more”,’ she read aloud, having settled on a headline. ‘What is this now?’
‘Them Spiriters,’ the woman said. ‘Been at it again, they’re saying.’
For a moment Octavia’s vision dimmed. She grasped the frame of her bicycle and pressed her eyes shut. Not now.
But there was nothing more. She blinked, and drew in a careful breath. ‘Yes, but who are they?’ she continued. ‘What exactly have they been at? “A pall of fear has once again fallen over Whitechapel and surrounding districts, occasioned by the recent disappearance of another young girl. Talk has again turned to the shadowy malefactors known only as the Spiriters.” “Shadowy malefactors”, indeed. It is like something from a bad novel.’
‘Name and address is up at the top, miss, for them as wants to write a letter in. I’ll be sure to tell them to expect it.’
Octavia laughed again and took up her bicycle. ‘Quite right,’ she said, setting off again. ‘You are a working woman, and I have detained you long enough. Goodnight to you, madam.’
She turned into Cleveland-row, quickening her pace against the cold, and came after a little way to a narrow back street that gave on to an irregular and gloomy court. To the rear of the grand establishments of St James’s-street she would find their kitchens and coach-houses, and it was by this route, she supposed, that servants and tradesmen reached them. Crossing again to the far side of the lane, she searched the upper reaches of houses, fixing once more upon the high chimney stack of gaunt sandstone she had observed from St James’s-street. She cast a last look about her, then unlatched a narrow gate and proceeded at a breezy pace towards the kitchen door.
Beyond it was a dingy passageway lined with milk cans and coal scuttles. A porter hoisted up his bucket of potato peelings to let her pass, but his expression was dimly perturbed.
‘I shall be leaving my bicycle in the passageway,’ she told him brightly. ‘One hears of so many thefts nowadays. I do hope it won’t be an inconvenience.’
She passed from the cellars and storerooms to the busier regions surrounding the kitchens themselves, drawing increasing scrutiny as she did so, and as she reached the foot of the servants’ stairs, she was accosted at last by an agitated young man who wore a morning suit beneath his immaculate apron. She bid him a crisp good evening and moved to pass by him, but he raised his gleaming salver to block her way.
‘Pardon me, miss,’ he said. ‘You are in the wrong place.’
‘Indeed I am,’ Octavia replied. ‘I am at the bottom of this staircase, and I should like to be at the top. Would you be so good as to let me pass?’
‘Miss.’ He was hardly more than a youth, really. His complexion was poor and sallow, and he had rather too much oil in his hair. ‘All Souls is a gentlemen’s club, miss. You’re in the wrong place.’
Octavia climbed to the next step, and her proximity forced him to adjust his outstretched arm. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘is Mr Jermyn here this evening? He is the head of the domestic staff, is he not?’
Something of the young man’s confidence leached from his face. ‘It’s his night off, miss.’
‘My grandfather sends him a consideration with his Christmas card. Do you know my grandfather, Mr Felix Hillingdon? He is a sentimental creature, you see, but rather forgetful, so I keep a list for him. Perhaps I ought to add your name. I’m sure he’d be upset if you were overlooked.’
He winced in discomfort as she inched further upwards. ‘My compliments to the gentleman, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘But he’d tell you the same thing if he was standing here now, same as any member. Ladies ain’t admitted, miss.’
‘Perhaps he would.’ Octavia edged upwards again, obliging him to stretch his arm still further. ‘My grandfather is a man of tradition, it’s true. But rules are one thing. An assault on his granddaughter’s person is quite another.’
‘An assault on your—’
‘Well, indeed.’ Octavia rose by another step. Hardly half an inch now separated her uncovered collarbone from his hand, whose slight tremor she could now discern. ‘I’m afraid I don’t see how else the situation could be perceived.’
The young man swung awkwardly aside, contorting himself so as to keep his salver from tipping over. By the time he had righted himself, Octavia had reached the top of the staircase.
‘Come now, miss, please,’ he called after her. ‘The constables will have to be sent for.’
‘What a splendid idea,’ she said, pausing at the top of the staircase. ‘The members would applaud your vigilance, I am sure. But they may take a different view when the matter is reported in the papers. “Constables were called last evening to a scene of disorder at Al
l Souls club in St James’s-street, where they found that a young lady, having entered the premises only to seek directions, had been detained below stairs by domestic staff and subjected to improper advances.” The form of words may vary a little, but you have the idea, I’m sure.’
She turned to look down at him.
‘My own paper won’t carry it, of course, since the proprietor and the editor are both members here, but others will be glad to, especially if I have saved them the trouble of drafting the fair copy. My name is Octavia Hillingdon, young man, of the Mayfair Gazette. Do feel free to give the constables my name.’
The dining room, when she located it, proved to be a grand but sepulchral chamber, with the brownish and looming appearance of places where the tastes of gentlemen have gone unchecked. Only two of its tables were occupied, one of them by a fantastically aged creature who sat hunched over a bowl of soup and that morning’s Times, motionless and quite possibly asleep. At the other, just as she had expected, was Mr Healy.
He greeted her with a bland look when she had seated herself, finishing his mouthful with a show of indifference, then swigging from his claret glass before he spoke. ‘Miss Hillingdon,’ he said. ‘You imagine this intrusion to be amusing, no doubt.’
‘I imagine no such thing, Mr Healy. I certainly don’t find it amusing. I find it tiresome. In fact, since I arrived at your office to submit my article, fully fifteen minutes before the appointed time, I’ve been having an exceedingly tiresome evening.’
Mr Healy sawed at his beef. ‘I do employ a deputy, Miss Hillingdon.’
‘Mr Benedict is of a very nervous disposition, as you know, and hardly trusts himself to check the railway timetables. I did ask him to accept my pages, but he would not hear of it. It would not do to interfere, he said, which is just the answer he gave me the last time you missed our appointment, and the time before that.’
‘I shall be returning after my dinner, as always. You might easily have waited.’
The House on Vesper Sands Page 4