The House on Vesper Sands

by Paraic O?Donnell

  At this Gideon rose in agitation, still clutching the letter. He paced the floor for a time, then crossed again to the door. Finding it locked still, he struck it in fury with the flat of his hand, but it was not his confinement that troubled him most.

  How had it escaped him all this time? He had read the letter countless times, yet until now the starkness of his uncle’s words had made no impression. Gideon could not have guessed the nature of his fears, but he ought surely to have understood their gravity. When Neuilly alluded to peril, he had not been thinking merely of poverty or ill health. He had not meant, as Gideon had blithely assumed, that Miss Tatton was marked out by her circumstances.

  ‘Fool,’ he said aloud. ‘What a fool I have been.’

  He read on, slumped against the door frame.

  I will not abandon her, even if I must endanger myself for her sake. Those who would thwart me will not reveal themselves, but I am not without allies in this – the seamstress is one such – and have reason to hope that they will be undone. In the meantime, their eyes are ever upon me. Even my letters, I have cause to believe, are seen before I open them myself. I warn you, therefore, as I have warned others, to send no word by reply that may aid them. You will soon be here, God willing, but until then I cannot freely speak my mind.

  Gideon bowed his head, but was roused from his despondency by a scuffling beyond the door, followed by the rattling of a key in the lock. He straightened hastily, passing a hand over his hair and beating the coarser dust from his clothing.

  The woman who entered, having worked the door open with some effort, was diminutive and somewhat aged, but her demeanour was very fierce. Fixing him with an accusing look, she advanced upon him without a word.

  ‘Good morning to you, madam.’ Gideon gave a slight bow. ‘My name is—’

  She raised her walking stick, a gnarled length of varnished blackthorn, and thrust it against his chest.

  ‘There he is,’ she said. Her voice, like her stick, had a hard and spiny character. Gideon withdrew by a step, but she came nearer, forcing him to retreat to the cot. She adjusted her cane and prodded again at his sternum.

  ‘It’s all right, he says.’ She jerked her free thumb towards the door, indicating that she referred to the absent inspector. ‘Don’t you worry, he says. That’s just the new sergeant what took a funny turn while we was out on the job.’

  The new sergeant. For a time he had almost forgotten. What had possessed him to attempt such a thing? He must make a clean breast of it at the first opportunity. Cutter would see, surely, that he had acted in desperation and confusion. If his uncle was no longer here – if something really had befallen him – Gideon had his letter to vouchsafe his claim. Might he not then ask for a period of grace while his uncle’s affairs were looked into?

  Gideon tried to sit up, but the woman’s stick held him back. He squinted, propping himself up on his splayed elbows. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I wonder if I might—’

  She silenced him with a look. ‘New sergeant, indeed. I says to him, you know your business, Inspector, but I’ll tell you this much. I says, that boy in there no more looks like a sergeant than I do. You could put him on a donkey’s back come Christmas time, and he’d pass for the Blessed Virgin.’

  Gideon tried to edge sideways, but again found himself firmly pinned. This woman could only be Cutter’s landlady, surely, who had been described to him on the night he arrived in London. She did not appear to be deaf, as Bella had suggested – indeed, she seemed to find it objectionable when he spoke – but she fitted the description in all other particulars. He could not for the life of him recall her name.

  ‘I says, I’ll take you at your word, Inspector. You ain’t never given me a day of trouble, unlike some, so I must give you a bit of credit, but I’m particular about who I let in, as you well know. I gave that vicar a chance, and now he’s up and vanished. If that boy don’t turn out bona fido, I says, you and me is going to have words.’

  Vanished. Was it true, then? When she withdrew her walking stick at last, he ventured to respond. ‘You are quite right to be vigilant, madam. There is a good deal of wickedness abroad. But the vicar you mentioned, do you mind if I—’

  ‘Wickedness, is it?’ The woman raised her stick and swung it now in a menacing arc. ‘Of course there’s wickedness abroad, boy, and that’s where I like it. That’s why I keep my doors locked night and day and don’t open them to no strangers. I wouldn’t have opened them to you neither, but the inspector said you was taken ill. Inspector Cutter and that doctor fellow had to hump you out of a cab like you was a knock-off carpet.’

  Gideon remembered none of this, but began now to apprehend the depth of his humiliation. His last clear recollection was of Miss Tull’s remains, of the solemn quietness in the scullery when the words on her skin were uncovered. He had fainted, then, and in the very midst of an investigation. Perhaps he need not concern himself with revealing the truth, since the inspector would surely dismiss him at the first opportunity. ‘If I may, madam. How long have I been asleep?’

  ‘Long enough, boy. They brought you back before lunchtime, and it’s gone three now. That’s more rest than I get most nights, so there ain’t no excuse for you. You take that bit of broth now and get yourself right. The inspector’s off about his business again, but when he gets back I expect him to take out what he dragged in. You needn’t take it amiss if I lock you in again in the meantime.’

  She withdrew her stick, and Gideon sat up warily. On a low trestle by his cot he found a chipped cup patterned with butterflies. A thread of vapour rose from it, as did an irregular aroma. Reaching for it, he glimpsed a livid whorl of egg yolk, trailing greyish tatters of albumen.

  ‘You are very kind indeed, madam,’ he said, putting the cup discreetly aside. ‘I am most grateful for your hospitality. My name is Gideon Bliss, in case the inspector did not mention it. Sergeant Bliss, that is to say, though of course you may—’

  ‘Some of us has wash days,’ she said, rapping at the floorboards as if to adjourn the proceedings. ‘The inspector’s vests will be boiled away to strings.’

  He slept again, for all his agitation, and it must have been above an hour before he woke again. The narrow chamber had grown dim and the window showed a meagre scrap of sky, its colours deepening now to foxglove and umber. He lay for a time in disconsolate silence. It was not only his humiliation that he now contemplated, or the fresh uncertainty of his circumstances. Though his exhaustion was unrelieved, he had slept through the better part of the afternoon. Nearly a whole day had now passed since he last saw Miss Tatton. Nearly a whole day, and he had not even begun to look for her.

  He stirred at a noise from the adjoining room, lurching to his feet at the oath that followed it. The inspector had come back, and in an ill temper by the sound of it, yet he felt a modest stirring of his spirits. He might now be released from his little cell, if nothing else, and if he was not at once sent on his way, he might be put in the way of a nourishing meal at last, and given one more chance to prove himself of use.

  The door had indeed been unlocked, but could not be dislodged from its frame without a good deal of effort. When it finally yielded, Gideon stumbled into the room beyond, having flung the whole of his weight against the obstacle, and very nearly lost his footing. Inspector Cutter – who had been standing in his shirtsleeves before a long workbench – turned to him with a severe look.

  ‘What is all that racket about, Bliss?’ he said. ‘It’s no use having a burst of energy now. You are not battering down the door of an opium den.’

  ‘I do apologise, Inspector. I did not mean to disturb you at your work. I tried to come in quietly, but the door defeated me. The architrave is considerably askew, I fear.’

  Cutter cast his eyes up at this and turned again to his workbench. A small case lay open by his elbow, and before him was an array of unfamiliar implements. He examined one of these minutely, then scrawled a note in a ledger.

  ‘I see that you were kind
enough to put me up in your own rooms, sir. I hardly know how to thank you.’

  Cutter held a hooked needle to the light, testing its sharpness against the pad of his thumb. ‘There is not much, Bliss, that you do not know how to say. It is more in the shutting off of the valve that you are inclined to struggle. Did Mrs Coombe fetch you up a mug of her broth?’

  ‘She did, sir. And I am glad you reminded me of the lady’s name, for she was reluctant to give it herself.’

  ‘And did you drink it off, Bliss? You complained of a powerful hunger, as I recall.’

  He hesitated. ‘I did not manage quite the whole of it, sir. It was a remarkable sort of a broth, and seemed to fill me up almost at once.’

  ‘You are not trying out for the diplomatic corps, Bliss. It was like a scoop of bathwater with an egg in it, was it not?’

  Gideon shuddered. ‘Very much like, sir. And the egg had a peculiar look to it.’

  ‘Mrs Coombe is a great believer in the nourishment that is to be got from eggs, but she is dead set against waste. It would be a rare thing to see her boil a kettle twice in the same week. She maintains that a good swirl of a hot poker is all that is needed to cook an egg.’

  ‘That is a practice I have never encountered until now, sir.’

  Cutter gathered his papers into an unruly sheaf, fixing them in place with what appeared to be a pair of leg irons. Nearby, nestling in a fold of velvet, Gideon glimpsed the fragment of crystal he had found at Strythe House. Cutter parcelled it up, noticing his gaze, and stowed it out of sight.

  ‘That item, sir,’ Gideon said. ‘Did you happen to give it further attention?’

  ‘I did not,’ the inspector said. ‘But a man who knows about such things did.’

  ‘And what did he tell you, sir, if I may ask? Is it of interest?’

  ‘Never mind all that now,’ Cutter said, clapping his hands together. ‘You will not depend on Mrs Coombe for your dinner, you will be relieved to hear. We will venture out to Leggett’s, which is an establishment I am fond of. Have you ever been to Leggett’s?’

  ‘I cannot say that I have, sir.’

  ‘No? Well, you will come to know it tolerably well, for I do a good deal of my business there. A fellow is obliged to have dealings with all kinds, in my profession. They are bad specimens, some of them. And the worst of them – did you ever kill a rat with a knife, Bliss?’

  ‘Kill a – no, sir. I have never killed a rat by any means.’

  ‘Well, think of a rat, in any case, but a rat that would stand up and take the knife off you and eat it. He would eat the knife and shit it out, and then he would stab you with it. That is the class of fellow I mean. Mrs Coombe would never stand for them coming here. Come, put on your coat. It is a sharp evening, you will find.’

  Gideon followed the inspector unsteadily from his rooms, descending with him by a gloomy staircase to the hall, where Cutter paused to put on his own hat and coat. From the front door, he turned and called out – just as Gideon had seen him do the morning before – that he was off out about his business. No answer came from the darkened quarters at the rear of the house, and Inspector Cutter did not seem to expect one.

  Mrs Coombe took most unkindly to disturbances, it appeared, and regarded most of humankind with deep distrust. It was a thought whose implications troubled him. If he were to confess his deception, he reflected, he would not only be throwing himself on the inspector’s mercy but on Mrs Coombe’s as well. He would be asking her, having admitted to masquerading as a police sergeant, to accept almost entirely on faith that he was the nephew of a tenant who had recently disappeared.

  No, it would not do. If he was to have any hope of keeping a roof over his head, he must stay the course for now. No doubt he would be exposed soon enough – it would not be long, surely, before the real sergeant reported once more for duty – but in the meantime he would do all he could to win the inspector’s confidence. Then, when the right moment presented itself, he would introduce the disappearances of Miss Tatton and his uncle. He would persuade him, if he could, that the full might of the Metropolitan Police must be brought to bear on the case.

  They set off along Frith-street once more, and Inspector Cutter led the way at his habitual clip. Gideon tried for a time to catch up, but he was far from fully recovered and could not match the older man’s pace. He fell into step a little way behind him, breaking now and then into a panicked run when the inspector threatened to disappear from view.

  He kept this up until they turned into Warwick-street, where the inspector came to a halt at last before an unmarked door. Athwart it stood a pockmarked fellow very near to seven feet in height, who issued in greeting a guttural rumble that Gideon could not interpret.

  ‘This is Sergeant Bliss, Sweeney, who has been inflicted upon me by the fellows in G Division. He is not much to look at, but I must make do with him for now. Will you let him in whenever you see him, like a good fellow, for I may not always be with him.’

  One of Sweeney’s eyes was set awry, and he adjusted the bulk of his head so as to bring the serviceable one to bear. ‘You won’t get much wear out of that fellow,’ he said. It was meant in jest, perhaps, but Sweeney’s voice was not an instrument of levity. It might have been produced by an injured bull that had been flung into a well.

  Gideon shrank by him warily, but Cutter only laughed, clapping a familiar hand to the man’s great unshaven jaw. ‘Not all dogs are bred for fighting, my friend. Will you give my compliments to Mrs Sweeney?’

  ‘I will not, sir.’ Sweeney replied. ‘She is a ferocious bitch and a disgraceful cut of a woman. She has me nearly in my grave.’

  ‘She will succeed yet, Sweeney, and then I will give her my compliments in person. Now, Bliss, it is this way. Get along in, man. It is not a cave full of adders.’

  Leggett’s proved to be a public house of uncertain character, whose interior was so dim that Gideon was obliged in places to feel his way. The inspector led him through a sequence of cramped and low-beamed chambers, where patrons kept for the most part to the shadows and did not raise their eyes. Those who did greeted Cutter with nods and murmurs of deference, but Gideon was looked on with surly scepticism. He might have been a show dog that had entered upon its hind legs, and which might presently provide a moment’s amusement by toppling over.

  He was greatly relieved when the inspector led him into a secluded parlour at the rear of the premises, where a modest fire burned in the grate between a pair of dilapidated armchairs. Cutter hurled his overcoat onto one of these and directed Gideon to the other.

  ‘The finest seats in London, Bliss,’ he said, planting himself in front of the fire and beating his hands together. ‘And reserved, as you might say. There is no shortage of rogues in this place, but you will find those chairs empty at any hour of the day or night. I get better value from them, I fancy, than the Queen does from her box at Ascot.’

  Cutter had crossed to the door before Gideon could reply, and bellowed at some unseen functionary that chops and cordial were wanted.

  ‘No doubt you would sooner have a mug of ale, Bliss.’ The inspector turned to him, having warmed himself for a time before the fire. ‘Or is a glass of sherry more in your line? In any case, you must fall in with my habits while you are under my command, and I cannot abide drunkenness. You must make do with peppermint cordial, which is sovereign in clearing the muck from a fellow’s pipes. Here we are now. What kept you, lad? Had you to cuddle the lamb to death?’

  The serving boy put out their plates – on each was a brace of chops and a potato the size of a navvy’s fist – and Gideon fell upon his at once, with a swell of gratitude that very nearly moved him to tears. ‘I take this as a singular kindness, sir,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘I am temporarily embarrassed, I’m afraid, since a sergeant’s pay goes only a little way in the metropolis, but I will gladly return the favour on another occasion.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Cutter, who had not yet joined him at the table. He had taken up a newspaper
instead, and was giving keen attention to an article that had caught his eye. ‘We must feed you up a bit. We will not make much headway with our case if you are forever keeling over in sculleries.’

  Gideon swallowed a morsel of his chop. ‘I am mortified to think of it, sir. I am afraid I put you to a good deal of trouble. It was very much out of the ordinary, I assure you, and you need not fear for the soundness of my constitution. If you will allow me to continue in your service, sir, I will do my utmost to recover your confidence. You have my word upon it.’

  Cutter looked up from his newspaper. ‘There’s a fit of oration, Bliss. You must be feeling yourself again. And you need not worry, I will not be packing you off back to the King’s Cross-road just yet. You proved yourself useful enough, in your way, before your fit of the vapours.’

  Gideon put down his knife and fork, having scoured the plate quite clean. ‘Useful, sir?’

  ‘Oh, I should say so,’ Inspector Cutter replied. ‘Those notes of yours were as handsomely done as I have ever seen. There was a good lot of guff, mind you, that could have been done without, but you have the knack of noticing the right things all the same, and not a letter out of place. It would pass muster before a judge, which is the main thing, and more than can be said for many in the Yard. Why, there are chief inspectors with twenty years behind them who could hardly spell out a list for the grocer.’

  Gideon wiped his mouth and straightened his posture. ‘It is no more than I might have done, sir, but I am very glad to have your good opinion.’

  Cutter folded his newspaper under his arm and scrutinised Gideon for some moments. ‘Well and good, Bliss,’ he said. ‘Well and good. But do not write home with your news just yet. I have certain reservations as to your fitness.’

  ‘Again, sir, I must stress the exceptional nature of what occurred this morning. I am no prize wrestler, I do not pretend that, but I am in excellent health.’

  ‘That is not what I meant by fitness. I had only to look at you on the doorstep this morning to know that I would not be putting you in among the brawlers of Putney on a Saturday night. I am more concerned with your – what is the word I am thinking of, Bliss, for the quality a fellow has when he is straight with you?’