The House on Vesper Sands
Page 33
‘Good evening to you, Inspector. And to you, Sergeant. I hope you will spare me an hour or two of your time some evening soon. We have a great deal to talk about still.’
‘I shall look forward to it, miss,’ said Bliss, turning to follow the inspector. ‘I shall look forward to it with the utmost eagerness.’
He raised his hat again as he scurried after Cutter, a neglected bowler that he replaced at a slightly comical angle. The inspector had reached the steps already, and was descending at a clattering pace to the wharf below. Octavia went to the parapet to retrieve her bicycle. She had meant to return home at once, so as to begin transcribing what she had learned, but found herself lingering. When he reached the wharfside, the inspector paused. He made a show of working a stone from his boot heel, but it was plain that he meant to allow Bliss to catch him up. Cutter swung his arm to chivvy him along, but must have noted his halting gait, for when he set off again it was at an easier pace. He was obliged to sidestep a bollard, allowing Bliss to pass him for a moment. As he came abreast of him he raised one great hand, thinking himself unobserved, and held it a little way from the sergeant’s back, as if to keep him from harm.
They passed out of sight at last somewhere beyond the Old Swan Pier. These were the longest days of June, and the sun had only now begun to set, seaming the river with rose and bronze. It infused the lightly shrouded air, setting a blush on the great calyx of St Paul’s and, far below, gilding the trusses of piers and the buckled ridges of tin sheds. Octavia had spoken in haste about Miss Tatton and what might remain of her. She could not say where the words had come from, or what she herself believed, but some nameless conviction had formed in her all the same. There was this light, if nothing else, and a sense that it was sufficient. There was the plenitude of this midsummer dusk, exalting all that was ordinary. It seemed impossible, even as it faded, to imagine that it was anything other than eternal.
Afterword and Acknowledgements
Passenger carriages with side corridors had been in use since the 1880s, and in March of 1892, the Great Western Railway introduced the first complete ‘corridor train’ (as The Times described it) on its Paddington to Birkenhead service. However, trains of this design were not yet in service between London and Kent by February of 1893. This minor historical liberty is the only one I have knowingly taken, and by confessing to it openly I hope to escape censure.
Among the locations in London that figure prominently in this novel, some were chosen for their personal significance, and wherever possible I have walked – but not, admittedly, bicycled – the same ground as Gideon, Octavia and Inspector Cutter. In other instances, especially where streets or structures no longer exist, I have relied on contemporaneous records, and in particular on the Ordnance Survey’s 1894 map of London. The National Library of Scotland has not only digitised this resource but made it available – in a gift beyond price to the shiftless novelist – as a fully navigable overlay for Google Maps. My debt to the archivists involved is incalculable.
A full bibliography, when appended to a work of fiction, serves only to assure true scholars of the author’s delusions, but such has been my reliance on certain sources that I cannot in good conscience fail to acknowledge them. Jerry White’s London in the Nineteenth Century (Vintage, 2008) is indispensable to understanding the transformation of London’s built environment during this period, while Victorian London (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), by Liza Picard, is likewise essential if you want to know what people did all day (and all night, for that matter) and exactly how much it cost them.
Of the many works of scholarship on Victorian spiritualism, only Alex Owen’s The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England (University of Chicago Press, 1989) has – at least to my knowledge – examined its singular cultural importance to women, both as a source of social capital and a means of expressing subversive or even illicit ideas.
Joan Lock’s Scotland Yard Casebook: The Making of the CID, 1865–1935 (Robert Hale, 1993) serves, albeit incidentally, as an invaluable guide to the procedural and administrative intricacies of the Scotland Yard that Inspector Cutter would have known, while The Invention of Murder (Harper Press, 2011), by Judith Flanders, illuminates not only the journalistic practices of Octavia’s predecessors and contemporaries, but their engineering of conventions and expectations that have shaped our depictions of crime and punishment ever since.
I am deeply grateful to Melissa Harrison, who laboured through an early draft of this novel in manuscript, and who has offered wise counsel and candour throughout its difficult history.
I would like, finally, to make a small act of reparation. Writers tend, by convention, to acknowledge those we love only for what they enable us to do. We dedicate our books to them, as if such dedications were gestures of tribute, truly, and not further increments of vanity.
Sinéad O’Donnell has heard quite enough about this book, and so have Sophia and Jacob. What matters is not that their brightness sustains me, but that it surpasses me, exceeding these meagre inventions. Never mind the book, then. To them I dedicate only my love, and – as poor a gift as it may be – whatever else remains of me.
About the Author
Paraic O’Donnell is a writer of fiction, poetry and criticism. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Guardian, the Spectator, the Irish Times and elsewhere. His first novel, The Maker of Swans, was named the Amazon Rising Stars Debut of the Month for February 2016 and was shortlisted for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards in the Newcomer of the Year category. He lives in Wicklow, Ireland with his wife and two children.
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Also by Paraic O’Donnell
The Maker of Swans
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Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2018
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
Copyright © Paraic O’Donnell 2018
The moral right of Paraic O’Donnell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 978 1 4746 0041 5
www.orionbooks.co.uk