[The Victorian Detectives 09] - Desire & Deceit

by Carol Hedges

  He speaks eloquently, but not for too long. After all, he is not the main attraction here ~ the main attraction is harrumphing and fidgeting in his seat at the end of the row. Eventually, Langland makes the necessary introduction, and sits down, leaving the floor to Wm. Boxworth.

  It is the first time Arthur Harbinger, who is technically only invited for pecuniary reasons, and to make up the numbers, has met Boxworth. He has never encountered the ‘rough and ready, man of the people, rags to riches, boosterish,’ style of oratory employed by the developer. He listens in amazement, unable to take his eyes off the bulky Boxworth, who holds his audience in the same way a circus barker might. Langland, who has not only encountered it, but regards it with deep disdain, studies his well-manicured nails and thinks about how many racehorses he will buy with the money.

  Eventually, Boxworth boasts himself to a halt. The invitation to buy shares is made and to the three men’s delight, the tables where the clerks wait are quickly overwhelmed by punters waving fistfuls of notes, while their wives retire to the back of the room, where they help themselves to tea. Small groups of ladies quickly form, based on certain sartorial signals unknown to the outside male. Langland glances at the clerks, the lines of eager punters, nods in satisfaction, then steps down from the dais and prepares to do what he does best, meeting and greeting the general public.

  Harbinger watches with some envy as the smooth-talking Member of Parliament works the room, occasionally signalling out an individual for a favoured word, placing a hand on the shoulder of another. It is clear that he has invited some of his own close parliamentary friends to the event. It is also clear that Langland is a much liked and trusted person. He has the happy knack of pleasing people. Harbinger, on the other hand, does not. His own particular area of expertise lies elsewhere: worrying people into taking out life insurance for themselves and their nearest and dearest.

  He wonders fleetingly whether he should descend into the throng and attempt to be pleasant to complete strangers. But as he does not think any of the assembled company would be interested in purchasing life insurance, and that is the only basis upon which he would care to exchange conversation, he decides to remain where he is. As for the ladies at the back, their bright bonnets dipping and rising, their teacups tinkling, their womanish laughter hovering lightly on the air ~ a shudder goes through him. He’d rather face a cageful of monkeys than advance upon the gay throng by the refreshment tables.

  Arthur Harbinger lets his gaze stray towards the far end of the meeting room, where various unlikely people are attempting to enter (including some of the banner wavers). He feels completely out of his depth. Why, even the uncouth Wm. Boxworth is paying court to a pair of equally impossibly clad fellow roughnecks. Their loud vulgar laughter falls like grated glass upon his sensitive ear. He feels revulsion rising up within him. He has done his duty, and that is enough. He crams on his hat and heads for the door, pushing past the waifs and strays on his way out.

  ****

  Meanwhile, Harriet Harbinger, who has strayed, but is not in the least waif-like, is settling into her new life as a ghost. In a house peopled by an invalid, one housekeeper, a part-time maid and cook, it is surprising how easy it is to avoid detection. Food is left on sideboards or sits on trays outside the green baize door leading to the basement kitchen, just waiting for her to help herself. Her great aunt eats like a bird, but still expects the full range of breakfast meats to tempt her waning palate. Harriet is happy to help her out with the surplus.

  After breakfast, while morning ablutions and dressing the invalid are taking place, she slides into the sitting room and plays with the parrot, who is delighted to see her. After this, she retires to her attic quarters to read and study. Harriet has discovered a room containing shelves of books. More books than she has ever seen in her life. She has paged through a couple of novels (she is not allowed to read novels at home, as they are supposed to be ‘fast’ and bad for young girls’ brains), eventually helping herself to an atlas and a big fat book of history and world facts, which she has taken up to the attic. With such riches, and her own fertile story-telling imagination, she can occupy herself for hours.

  Luncheon follows the same pattern as breakfast: random but sufficient. Then, while her great aunt takes a nap in her room, and the servants are busy elsewhere, Harriet is free to wander around, looking at the ornaments and mementos of Euphemia Harbinger’s past, though she always keeps an ear open for a servant’s footsteps, ready to duck behind a curtain or a door, or hide under a table.

  In the evening, when the house has settled into quiet, Harriet tiptoes down the stairs, helps herself to whatever she can find in the well-stocked larder. Then she slides the bolt of the kitchen door and takes her supper out into the small basement area to eat. High above her, the moon is a luminous disc on a cloth of black velvet; pinprick stars shine silverly bright. She maps the planets by the light of a streetlamp, picking out constellations from one of the star charts in her book.

  All the while, up in the street the night-time people pass to and fro. She hears their footsteps, snatches of conversation, arguments, whispers, and sometimes, as night wears on, loud singing and arguments. Night-time cabs clop by. Cats howl and prowl. Dogs bark. Small animals scurry. In the distance, the local church bell tolls the hour, then the quarter, half, and three-quarter hour. Nobody notices the slight figure sitting on the stone step under the arch of night sky, with her supper and her book on her lap.

  For the first time in her short life, Harriet is blissfully happy. Gone is the aura of fear that always surrounded her father’s arrival back from work. Harriet didn’t even need to hear the front door being closed; she knew he was back by the stillness in the air. The very hallway seemed to hold its breath. If such a place as heaven on earth exists, Harriet is inhabiting it now. And thus, time passes by, as if in a beautiful dream. But like all dreams, it cannot last. Eventually, one has to wake up.

  The morning of the third day arrives. Harriet has now learned the routines of the house. She waits at the top of the stairs until the breakfast tray has been removed, and the old lady helped up to her bedroom to be dressed. Then, with silent catlike tread, she scurries down and helps herself to cold toast, a few rashers of bacon and a cup of milk from the tray.

  With breakfast in her possession, Harriet returns to her attic domain, tucks herself back in bed and opens one of her books. Munching her breakfast while reading about the skeletal structures of Australian mammals keeps her occupied for some time. Eventually, she sets the book aside and gets ready for the day, a process that involves splashing her face with cold water, buttoning herself into her very crumpled dress and running her fingers through her matted hair.

  Harriet tiptoes out of her room onto the landing. Today her plan is to sneak downstairs and, after playing with the parrot, slide open the catch on the small side window. With a bit of luck, she might manage a few hours outside, exploring the neighbourhood. She stands in the hallway, ears strained. Muffled voices from the first floor indicate that the owner of the house is still being made ready for the day.

  Harriet hurries into the sitting room, where she is greeted by the grey parrot, who turns somersaults on his perch at the sight of her. She checks his food cup and his water, then lets him nibble her fingers through the bars, while she croons songs to him. Hearing voices in the passageway, Harriet darts across the room and slips between the folding doors that separate the sitting room from the drawing room.

  She peers through the crack and sees Great Aunt Euphemia in a violet silk dress and smart lace cap being seated gently on the sofa by Rose. The parrot screeches “Harriet … hello, Harriet! Where are you?” and the old woman smiles at it indulgently.

  “No, Poll, Harriet is not coming today. But we are having a visitor, an important one, whom I have waited some time to see, so you’d better be on your best behaviour!”

  Harriet sucks in her breath as the front doorbell sounds, and Rose leaves the room. A short while later, she r
eturns. “If you please, Miss Harbinger, Miss Wilhelmina Harbinger to see you.”

  Harriet gently widens the gap in the folding door, so that she can spy on the visitor. She sees a slim young woman, her face half-hidden by the brim of a straw bonnet, trimmed in blue ribbon rosettes. Her dark hair ~ the same colour as Harriet’s own, is parted at the front and tucked up under the bonnet at the sides. She wears a pale green dress, buttoned high at the neck, and an ivory shawl with long fringes. Harriet tries to make out her features but all she can really see is a pair of spectacles, perched on a short sharp nose.

  “Sit down, Wilhelmina,” Euphemia Harbinger says. “I am pleased to see you after all this time. Tea will be served shortly. I hope you have had a reasonable journey. I find this heat very oppressive.”

  “Indeed, it is,” the young woman replies, her voice low and pleasantly musical in tone. “But the park is refreshing and green, and I enjoy seeing nature at work and play.”

  “You visit London for the first time?”

  “It is a wonderful city.”

  “Really? Do you think so? I have to say that I find it too loud, and too dusty. And there are far too many people,” the old woman replies. “But then, I am old. I daresay when I was your age, I’d find it amusing enough. Though I have always held Paris to be a much finer city. Now, you will take tea? Cook has made some shortbread, I see. I seem to remember you always had a sweet tooth as a child.”

  Wilhelmina Harbinger accepts a cup from Rose and helps herself to a biscuit. The small ghost mentally crosses her fingers that there will be a few biscuits left over after the visit ends. The conversation meanders politely through the weather, the state of the streets, the problem finding good fruit and fresh milk in high summer, the cost of cotton gloves. Harriet’s concentration falters. She is about to return to her books when she hears great aunt say, suddenly and briskly:

  “Well, enough small talk. Let us not beat about the bush any longer, Wilhelmina. I wanted to see you before I die because there is something I do not understand, and I wish to have it explained to me. When your father passed away, I was led to believe that everything left was to be shared equally between you and your two brothers. And yet, you tell me in your letter that you have received nothing at all, and moreover, that you have had to work ever since to earn your living and support yourself. Is this the truth?”

  The young woman sighs. “It is quite true, dear aunt. I was excluded from the reading of the Will, and then told by my brothers that our father had left everything to Arthur and Sherborne. You must understand that my brothers and I were not on good terms ~ we fell out many years ago, when we were still children. They looked down on me because I was a girl, and my father always favoured them over me ~ I do not complain, I merely state the facts.”

  “I see. I recall visiting your house when you were a little girl. You had a white kitten you doted on ~ what was its name? You dressed it in dolls clothes and wheeled it round in a pram, I remember that quite clearly.”

  “Blanche. How strange that you remember that! My brother Sherborne locked her in the coal shed.”

  “An unkind thing to do.”

  Wilhelmina’s mouth tightens. “He was not a kind child. Neither of them was ever kind.”

  There is a pause. Harriet tilts her head to see what is going on in the room. Both women are staring hard at each other. They are not speaking, but a conversation is clearly happening, even though no words are being uttered. The silence fills the room so thickly it could almost be cut into slices and served up on a plate.

  “I should not like to die knowing any member of my family has had to struggle through life, when it is in my power to make amends,” Euphemia Harbinger says slowly.

  “You need not worry, dear aunt. I am employed. I have a profession that I love, and I earn money for doing it. I may not live as well as my brothers do, nor in such luxury, but I survive. And I am content. I owe no man my duty or obedience. Nor their praise. It is important for a modern woman to be independent and not rely on anyone else. At least, that is what I think. As the poetess writes: ‘And in that we have nobly striven at least. Deal with us nobly, woman that we be. And honour us with truth, if not with praise.’ You may not be familiar with her work.”

  “Hmm. Yes, I have read Aurora Leigh. Many years ago, of course. And I am familiar with the work of Mary Wollstonecraft also. Well, you may be right, my dear. It’s a new world and I am glad to see you are making your own way in it. Nevertheless, I would like to leave you something in my Will to make up for what you ought, by rights, to have had. That is why I wished to see you. Some reparation should be made, and I am rich enough to do it and would like to do it. What do you say?”

  There is a pause. Harriet leans her ear to the crack in the door. Finally, Wilhelmina Harbinger replies, “I say, thank you, dear aunt, that is indeed most generous, but no. I should not like to fall under money’s spell and become greedy and grasping and uncaring like …” she lets the words fade into silence.

  Another meaningful pause. Then the old lady rings the little bell on the arm of the chair, and Rose enters. “Bring me my jewel case,” she orders.

  The housekeeper goes, returning shortly with a large green shantung case, which she places on the sofa beside her mistress. The old lady unclips the tiny gold clasp and lifts out tray after tray of bright jewels.

  “Then maybe you might accept some jewellery? I have beautiful diamonds, given to me in my youth by an admirer. And this ruby ring is worth a small fortune.”

  “That, too, is most kind, dear aunt, but I am not permitted to wear jewels in my current employment,” comes the calm reply. “However, I should be glad of a keepsake, to remember you by.”

  The old lady beckons to her. “Then choose whatever you want, Wilhelmina.”

  The young woman’s hand passes over the sparkling brooches, necklaces, and rings. “I’d like to have this, if I may,” she says.

  “The forget-me-not brooch? Ah, that was given to me by a famous artist when I sat for him. I was about your age at the time. A good choice. You are sure that is all?”

  Wilhelmina nods. “Yes, this is perfect. And now I must go. It was such a pleasure to call on you after all this time, dear aunt. And thank you for my keepsake. It will always remind me of you, and of this meeting.”

  She stands. The old lady rings the bell and asks Rose to show the visitor out. After she has left the room, Euphemia Harbinger starts putting jewellery back into the box, but her hands soon fall into her lap and lie still. Next minute, soft snores fill the air. Emboldened, Harriet slips through the partition, approaches the sofa, and stands staring down at the jewels. She has never seen so many sparkling things. Her mother has a small necklace of seed pearls and a silver cross on a chain for Sundays, but that is all.

  Harriet lifts up a diamond bracelet, fascinated by the way it catches the light, then releases it, brighter than before. It is as if it has swallowed the sun and is throwing out rainbows, she thinks. The beauty of it grabs hold of something inside her and tears it open. All at once, she cannot breathe. She is so engrossed in the sensation that she fails to notice the parlour door quietly opening, fails to hear the soft footsteps of the housekeeper crossing the carpet, fails to feel her presence just behind her, until Rose’s hand suddenly grasps her shoulder, and then it is too late.

  “Harriet?” the parrot squawks, as she is hauled unceremoniously out of the room, “Harriet ~ go up to your room at once, you stupid girl!”

  Harriet Harbinger is maid-handled down to the kitchen and plonked unceremoniously onto a wooden stool. Rose goes to stand by the Welsh dresser, her arms folded, her expression stern. A black and white pillar. Harriet bites her lip. She is certainly in trouble, though she is not exactly sure how much trouble she is actually in.

  “I’m waiting, young miss.”

  “I … it … I wanted to see my parrot,” Harriet tells her.

  “How did you get into the house?”

  “Window.”

  �
�How long have you been here?”

  Harriet bites her lip. “A few days.”

  “Does your father know you are here?”

  Harriet studies her nails. There is a semi-circle of dirt under each one.

  “I see,” Rose says sternly. “Well, that explains the missing food, and the sounds I have heard up in the attic. It was you. I thought, at first, that we had rats. I was going to send for the ratcatcher. Don’t you know that my mistress is unwell? Her heart is failing. Seeing you standing over her unexpectedly like that could have brought on a heart attack and killed her. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  A lone tear trickles down Harriet’s cheek. “I didn’t know. I am sorry. So sorry.”

  Rose’s expression unhardens slightly. “Well, no harm was done, fortunately. But your parents must be out of their minds with worry. London isn’t a safe city for a little girl to go wandering about in. I shall take you back to your hotel at once, and you can explain to your parents where you have been. Come, we shall go now, while my mistress sleeps.”

  Harriet shifts on the stool. “Might I … I need to …”

  Rose rolls her eyes. “Upstairs on the first floor. And be quick.”

  Harriet runs straight up to her attic hideaway and grabs her precious notebook and pencil, thrusting them into the pocket of her pinafore. She takes a final look round, mentally bidding farewell to the books, the view from the window, and her freedom. Then she descends to the kitchen and follows the housekeeper out of the basement door, and up into the street.

  They set off for the Excelsior Hotel. Harriet tries to walk as slowly as she can, but Rose is in no mood to let her dally and chivvies her along until they reach the hotel entrance and the liveried doorman, whose eyes widen when he sees them.

  “My, you are in such trouble, young lady,” he says, shaking his head. “Half the police force in London has been combing the streets night and day trying to find you.”