by Carol Hedges
“Nothing, Jack. Nothing at all. For the time being. I shall file this away. And next time our Mr Dandy, in his role as speaking for The Man in the Street, chooses to write one of his scathing articles about the police or about me in his tawdry rag of a paper, I shall expose him for the rogue and scoundrel that he is.”
He folds up the letter with an air of satisfaction and slips it into his desk drawer.
“Excellent. A good morning’s work. I think I may celebrate this turn of events with a nice mutton chop and a glass of ale to wash it down. Would you care to accompany me to Sally’s?”
****
Letters are also the focus of attention at the Islington town house of Lobelia and Hyacinth Clout, where earlier in the day Hyacinth returned from her outing to St James’s Park to a light luncheon and a heavy scolding.
Her absence has meant that Lobelia has had to take charge of the meal – even though Hyacinth left a pot of soup on the stove and a loaf of bread and pat of new butter on the bread board.
Now the two sisters are seated opposite each other at the dining-room table.
“I do not think Mama would approve of your gadding about,” Lobelia remarks.
“I was not gadding, I was meeting Miss Mullygrub, as I explained to you earlier,” Hyacinth replies, wielding the bread-knife with a rather determined air. “I hardly think Mama would mind. After all, her mother has addressed the church upon charitable matters.”
Lobelia sips soup from the side of her spoon.
“And anyway, I think it is a good thing to make new friends and acquaintances,” Hyacinth continues.
Lobelia sets down her spoon with an air of deliberation. She folds her arms and regards her sister accusingly. Hyacinth feels her heart quail. She recognises The Look. Something unpleasant is about to be visited upon her.
“Mama was always very particular about social contacts,” Lobelia says tartly. “She believed it was better to stick to one’s own circle of acquaintances. That way, no unfortunate ‘mistakes’ could be made. People are frequently not what they seem, Hyacinth. You are too naive to understand that. Would your determination to disobey her wishes apply to epistolary acquaintances also?”
Hyacinth looks at her, puzzled.
Lobelia reaches into her pocket and pulls out a white envelope which she waves triumphantly in the air.
“A letter arrived for you this morning. It is not in a hand that I recognise.”
Hyacinth jumps up and snatches the letter from her grasp. She checks the seal – it is unbroken.
“Who is writing to you, Hyacinth? Why have you not told me about it?”
“Because,” Hyacinth says stoutly, “it is none of your business.”
Her brain is in a ferment. She recognises the handwriting – it is that of the editor of the newspaper. Therefore, within the envelope must be a letter from Lonely Widower.
Lobelia eyes her coldly.
“It is indeed my business. Since Mama’s death, everything in this house – which means you also – has passed into my charge. So, I repeat, who has written that letter?”
“It is from Mudie’s Circulating Library,” Hyacinth lies, the words issuing with a speed and fluency that surprise even her. “I requested a new book. Mr George Eliot’s Adam Bede. It is, I gather, a very moral tale. The letter is undoubtedly from one of the staff advising me that it has arrived.”
“Humph,” Lobelia snorts. “I am not sure Mama would approve of all this novel-reading either. The Bible and Fordyce’s Sermons are more suitable to a Christian young woman than novels, even if they are written by a male author.”
“But I do read my Bible every night before retiring,” Hyacinth says.
She spoons up the last of her soup.
“I have finished my luncheon, so I think I shall go up to my room. There are some drawers that need rearranging. I shall clear the table later.”
Ignoring Lobelia’s frown, Hyacinth pushes back her chair and scurries out. She will have to borrow a copy of Adam Bede (which she actually read before Christmas) and leave it prominently displayed somewhere in the house, so that her sister will believe she was telling the truth. But that is for later. Now she closes her bedroom door and with trembling fingers, opens the envelope.
Dear London Lady (she reads),
I was very pleased to receive and read your reply to my letter. After perusing the contents, I now wonder whether the time has come for us to meet. If this is agreeable to you, please let me know.
There are many pleasant and discreet small tea-rooms situated around London, where a light repast may be purchased by respectable individuals of both sexes without fear of bringing down any social opprobrium upon their heads.
If you are agreeable to meeting in this way, please send a response indicating your willingness. I shall then suggest a suitable venue.
Yours sincerely
Lonely Widower
Hyacinth breathes in sharply. So finally, she is to meet her unknown correspondent. Or could meet with him, if she chooses. She feels as if she stands at the threshold of her safe predictable world. One step – and she might enter a different world altogether. A world where marriage and a new life await.
Hyacinth rereads the letter carefully. She reminds herself that Portia Mullygrub, a young woman of a similar age, and not that much prettier, is engaged to be married. If Portia can be, then why cannot she?
Downstairs, the dining room door slams. A sure sign that Lobelia is in one of her moods. She hears heavy footsteps mount the stairs and quickly stuffs the letter under her pillow. As soon as she is quite sure her sister has retired to her room for the afternoon, she decides that she will sneak downstairs and pen her response to Lonely Widower. The dishes will just have to wait.
****
There is not a lot of waiting inside the dark and dusty dolly shop owned by Morbid Crevice. Indeed, business couldn’t be brisker if it tried. This is because today is Friday, when rent is due. All day a steady stream of tenants has arrived at the counter with money or excuses. The former has been accepted, the latter have not.
Also entering the shop are people with items to pawn, it being the weekend, when food and fuel become slightly more necessitous than during the working week. And finally, those who pawned their Sunday clothes on the previous Monday arrive to reclaim them for the approaching Sunday. After which they will pawn them once again.
Such is the world of Morbid Crevice and Tonkin. All day long they have been grasping and squeezing and threatening and cajoling. Now it is the end of the day’s trading, the ledger is closed, and the money is counted, bagged and locked away in the big iron safe.
“It has been a good day,” Crevice says, boxing Tonkin’s ears in celebration.
The apprentice scowls. He has been chivvied and shouted at all day. He has not been fed, and the warm coat he has been using as a blanket to cover himself at night has been redeemed and taken away by its owner.
“Put up the shutters, boy,” Crevice commands.
Tonkin lifts the heavy wooden shutters and begins to slot them into place. He is so focused upon his rumbling stomach and his rebellious spirit that he does not notice the girl on the opposite pavement. Half in lamplight, half in shadow, she stands and watches the shop intently, like a cat outside a mouse hole.
But even if he did notice her, Tonkin wouldn’t recognise her any more. Life in the Workhouse, even the short life she has endured, has exacted its pitiless toll, etching lines into her youthful face, paring away flesh to barely-covered bone.
The girl’s eyes are daggers in the dark as she stares at the darkened, shuttered shop. Then, as Morbid Crevice appears from round the back, she spits on the ground and shakes her fist at him, before slipping into shadow and disappearing from sight.
****
London by night is a place of secrets and fantasy, where gas-lamps flicker like corpse-candles. Phantoms arrayed in satin and lace flit upon the sight, a gothic scene of lost souls. Mrs Witchard’s lodger is hurrying back to his
room. He has sought her all night, but this time he has had no luck. Sometimes he thought he caught a glimpse of her and his heart leaped, but when he drew closer, it turned out to be someone else. Somebody he did not recognise at all.
Once, sickened with longing and despair, he went into a bar, sat at a table with a drink. Nobody noticed him. Nobody wished him any harm. Sometimes that was not enough. A clock chimes midnight. A gust of wind catches the lamps; shadows dance across the pavement.
He quickens his pace, wondering whether the sleepers whose houses he passes shiver in their warm beds. Do they feel a chill entering at bone-marrow level, like a door unlocking itself on a cold night and suddenly blowing wide open?
Where does it come from, this evil that follows him, dogging his footsteps like a black cancer, like a thousand years of darkness formed in the depths of the earth? He wants to run from it, to trample it down. But he cannot. He is the monster. The monster is him. There is no longer any separation.
****
Death is unfortunate. Always. But not always for everyone. It is early morning, and the gas lamps have been extinguished. A clattering on the setted stones heralds a solitary cart, pulled by a solitary horse, driven by a solitary man wearing a long dark overcoat and a hat pulled well down over his forehead.
The cart stops at the back entrance of a large building in Gower Street. The driver descends and knocks. Eventually, the door is opened by a porter.
“Another one for you,” the carter says laconically.
The porter’s hands are thrust deep in his trousers pockets. He stares at the cart.
“Man or woman?” he asks.
“Old woman. Starved to death in the Workhouse.”
The porter nods. The two men unload the cart of its tragic burden. Money changes hands. The carter whips up the horse. The relic of humanity, who in death barely weighs anything, is placed upon a table in the centre of a high-ceilinged, circular room. Round the sides runs a wooden gallery with wooden benches.
There are over a thousand medical students in London in the 1860s, and part of their anatomical education consists of dissecting corpses. Each student requires three bodies during the sixteen-month training. Two are for learning anatomy, the third for practising operating techniques.
As soon as it is light, the students attending this medical school will stream into the dissecting room and await the division of the body. Those given the torso will comment upon the way the bones protrude and are barely covered by the yellowy-white skin, so that each bone and its peculiarities can be clearly seen.
Those allocated the limbs will observe the lack of musculature and the tightly-stretched skin, together with the bent and twisted fingers. The rope-like veins on the backs of her hands, and the particular callousing of the first two fingers of the right hand, will be remarked upon, but no association will be made with the deceased’s former life in an attic in Carnaby Street, or her profession as a lacemaker, or the recent tragic death of her daughter. For as far as the students are concerned, those are of no interest whatsoever.
****
Death has also brought good fortune to young dressmaker Emily Benet, in the form of an unexpected promotion. Mrs Crevice has raised her status from second hand to deputy superintendent. It is a popular move. Annie Smith, the former occupant of the post, was an abrasive character, never afraid to speak her mind or throw her weight around. Emily’s quiet but determined personality has won her many friends and admirers amongst her co-workers. She is seen as fair and reasonable. And the sad loss of her best friend strikes a chord with all the girls. There is nothing like a tragic story to win people over.
Today, as part of her new-found elevation, she is starting off a new girl who has come in as an improver – having mastered the drudgery of the trade as an apprentice. Emily takes her over to the pattern-cutting table, where a roll of expensive crimson watered silk awaits.
“Innit beautiful,” the girl sighs, brushing the material reverently with a forefinger.
“It is to be made up into a day dress,” Emily tells her. “The pattern girls will lay on the papers and cut it out. Then you can chalk it and baste the bodice seams.”
“It must be luvverly to be able to afford beautiful dresses,” the girl says. “I never had more than one dress, and this is it what I’m wearing.”
Emily consults the client book.
“Well, this dress is for a Mrs Lilith Marks, from Hampstead.”
“Another rich bitch,” one of the dressmakers adds, to be quelled by a quick warning shake of Emily’s head, coupled with a significant sideways glance at the new girl.
“Well they are,” the complainant persists. “I hate the Season. March to July, it’s nothing but slave, slave, slave. They order their dresses the day before they’re going out, and we have to slog away till gone midnight making them. Hampstead. I bet this Mrs Marks has never lifted a finger all her life. Rich husband to pay for her clothes. Servants to wait on her hand and foot, I don’t doubt.”
“Maybe so,” Emily says equably. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make her a lovely dress. And whatever her life may be like, I’m sure she can’t sew pleats and tucks as fine and neat as yours, Caro. Nobody can, can they?”
“Hmph,” Caro says, but a small satisfied smile lurks at the corner of her mouth.
Emily turns back to the new girl.
“Mrs Crevice is up in the showroom at the moment, so why don’t you go and watch the silk being cut up.”
The girl nods, and heads for the cutting-out table, where the silk has just started to be rolled out.
Emily lowers her voice, “She’s arrived from the provinces,” she says to the truculent Caro. “Maybe we should watch our tongues.”
“If you say so, Em,” Caro shrugs, her needle flying in and out of her work. “Have you told her about The Slasher?”
Emily pulls a face.
“I will do. Soon as she’s settled in.”
“They ain’t caught him yet,” Caro says. “How many more of us is he going to kill before they do?”
“None of us,” Emily says firmly. “Because we are taking care on the streets at night and looking out for one another.”
“Why us though?” Caro’s neighbour queries. “I mean, what have we done?”
Emily shakes her head with a sigh.
“I am not sure. But then I don’t understand how anybody could have such hatred in their hearts in the first place.”
“That’s because you are a good person,” Caro declares stoutly. “And I’m not the only one to think so, eh girls?” she adds slyly.
Emily colours up.
“A certain member of the detective police seems to agree with me, don’t he, girls?”
There is a ripple of laughter, but it is friendly and well-meant.
“How many times has he called to walk you home? Wish I had someone like that to keep an eye on me,” Caro’s neighbour sighs. “Every time I leave my lodgings, I feel my heart quaking inside.”
“I’m sure Detective Sergeant Cully is looking out for all our welfares,” Emily says, but her blushing cheeks tell another story.
“Well, good luck to you, Em,” Caro says. “None of us here would begrudge you a nice man. Not after what you’ve been through with your friend.”
Emily lays her finger to her lips as the sewing room door opens and Mrs Crevice appears. Her eyes rake the room, seeking something to criticise. Finding nothing, she beckons Emily to her.
“Miss Benet, I find we have more orders for new ball gowns than can be fulfilled in normal working hours. I shall need you to organise some home workers for me.”
Emily’s heart sinks. Home working is generally hated, not just for the pittance paid, but for the encroachment into the young women’s free time. Threepence an hour barely covers the cost of candles, and the extra workload leaves precious little time to get to the shops and buy food, let alone eat it.
“I need hardly mention,” Mrs Crevice sniffs, “that given your new posit
ion, I shall expect you to set the example.”
Emily bows her head. “I shall see what I can organise.”
She picks up the order book and turns to the back page, where the names and addresses of the sewing-room employees are kept. Reminding herself that it will only be for a couple of months, she begins to work through the list, selecting those she hopes will take on extra sewing.
Not for the first time, Emily Benet thinks about her future and wonders whether she will ever stop plying her needle to make dresses for rich women who, as Caro suggested, never have to lift a finger. She remembers the dream she and Violet shared of having their own business one day.
Now the dream has gone, and there is nothing to replace it. She feels a sadness so profound that for a moment it threatens to overcome her. Then one of the pattern-cutters calls to her. Taking a deep breath, Emily straightens her shoulders and hurries over to see what is amiss.
****
Later that day, we find Hyacinth Clout walking determinedly towards an impressive building in New Oxford Street. The building, with its classical façade, is Mudie’s Circulating Library, where, for an annual subscription of a guinea, members of the public may borrow the latest novel, poetry book, religious tract or scientific work.
Hyacinth enters the Temple of the Muses, as its founder Charles Edward Mudie liked to refer to it, and approaches one of the semicircular desks where books are exchanged and borrowed. The interior of the library has been deliberately designed to resemble the famous round Reading Room at the British Museum.
Hyacinth hands in her request. The assistant checks the shelves of volumes, then informs her that regrettably, Adam Bede is not currently available for loan as it is on loan to another borrower. Hyacinth’s spirits sag slightly. The thing about a good lie is that it should always contain a modicum of truth.
She selects The Mill on the Floss instead and is just turning to leave, when she spots a familiar figure stalking purposefully towards the desk. It is Reverend Ezra Bittersplit. Oh horror! He carries a large volume under his arm – Hyacinth just knows it will contain dry boring sermons and commentaries. She tries to flee, but it is as if an invisible spotlight has fallen upon her. The Reverend spies her at once.