The Quickening and the Dead

by J C Briggs

  Mrs Brimstone looked up to the ceiling. ‘I was just about to say. My niece is in Kitty’s room now — with her baby. Arthur, you’d best see if she’s all right. Teethin’, I think, an’ Bessie — that’s my niece — gets a bit anxious. Arthur’s very good — he has a way with little ones.’

  Arthur Brimstone went off. They heard him going upstairs. A door opened and closed. Then the crying stopped.

  ‘What about Kitty’s possessions?’

  ‘Took ’em.’

  ‘When?’ Jones’s tone was sharp. Mrs Brimstone had not heard of her since the night of the murder and Billy Watts had said Miranda was alone when the police came.

  Mrs Brimstone remained unmoved. ‘I don’t know. In the night, I suppose — after they’d taken that girl away. Next morning, no Kitty and her things gone.’

  It was possible, thought Jones, but altogether too pat, somehow. Something not right here, but what? Mrs Brimstone looked at him steadily.

  Jones gave in. He wasn’t prepared to waste any more time on her. ‘Well, if you hear from her, you must let me know at Bow Street. It’s important that I find her.’

  ‘I will.’ That was all she said. Her thin lips closed on the last word. Dickens thought it curious that she did not ask why they wanted to find Kitty. Either she simply didn’t care or, more likely, she knew something that she was not telling.

  Dickens and Jones went out into Dab Lane, making their way north up East Street towards the workhouse and Fox Lane, where they hoped to find Mrs Raspin. Perhaps she knew something about Kitty Quillian. They walked in silence for a while, thinking over the interview with the Brimstones.

  Jones broke the silence. ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘Samivel —’

  ‘Mr Weller?’ Jones looked down at Dickens.

  ‘I think he’s the wictim o’ connubiality — a dilluded wictim o’ a designin’ female, that’s wot, ’e is.’

  Jones laughed. ‘Odd pair, weren’t they. She’s the power there.’

  ‘I tell you what I noticed while you were talking to Mrs Squeers there. I noticed how Brimstone looked uneasy — I thought he looked frightened when the baby cried. They’re hiding something.’

  ‘I thought so, too — they know something about Kitty Quillian.’

  Dickens thought for a moment. ‘That baby — Kitty Quillian left Mrs Hodson’s about six months ago and, now there’s a baby. Suggestive, ain’t it.’

  ‘So, you think she was pregnant when she left Mrs Hodson. So, who paid for her to stay at Mrs Brimstone’s?’

  ‘Plume? Blackmail?’

  ‘That might explain why she thought Plume would give Miranda something to get rid of her. But why should the Brimstone woman tell us it was her niece’s child?’

  ‘That’s what worries me — what do they intend to do with the baby? Sell it? Or worse?’

  ‘The first, I’d wager. It happens. She’s just the type – greedy, I thought. But, we need proof that it is Kitty Quillian’s child.’

  ‘May Brady’s mother?’

  ‘Mrs Raspin. We’ll go there first. And we can ask about Evie Finch. On the way, though, I’d like to look in at The Neptune — see if Stemp’s there. I want to know where Scrap is.’

  Constable Stemp was standing outside The Neptune as they approached. He was looking up and down the street as a man might who was trying to make up his mind what to do or which way to go. When he saw the Superintendent, he looked somehow relieved.

  ‘Have you seen Scrap?’ Jones asked.

  ‘No, sir — I was just decidin’ what ter do fer the best. Whether ter go back ter Bow Street or go lookin’. I ain’t seen ’im all day. I come back ’ere ter see if ’e’d left any message.’

  ‘What’s worrying you, Stemp?’

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else, sir. I don’t want them in there seein’ me with you — perlice ain’t their favourite folk.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘There’s a chop house, sir, on South Street — ’bout five minutes away.’

  ‘We’ll go there. We can get a bite to eat while you tell us.’ Jones was concerned. Stemp was a tough, practical man, taciturn and imperturbable. And there weren’t many villains who frightened him. Jones often wondered what went on behind that unreadable face. He’d seen Stemp angry once after they’d found the body of a little girl who’d been abused. Stemp had hung on to the man they’d arrested, Jonas Finger, a brawling brute of a man. Not that Stemp had cared about Finger’s violence. Stemp had children of his own — and for some reason, he was worried about Scrap.

  The chop house was a shabby affair with its sanded floor and straight-backed chairs, lit by some sickly gas lamps, but it was warm and there was food — of sorts. It would do.

  The hot pies weren’t bad. They looked to have meat in them, and the pastry was crisp enough. Whatever was inside tasted like meat. And the tea was hot.

  ‘Well,’ said Jones, ‘tell me.’

  ‘It’s them alleys, sir — I knows my way about. I’ve seen a lot, you know that, sir. It don’t bother me, but I dunno, sir, it’s ’ard ter say. There’s somethin’ not right. A feelin’ — lot o’ frightened folk and queer talk, sir.’ Stemp looked at them, his expression pained. Stemp liked certainties, hard facts, hard villains who deserved what they got, but this sense he had of menace, it was very difficult to put into words.

  Jones was patient. ‘Talk?’

  ‘O’ Satan, sir. I know it sounds daft, but that’s what I ’eard. Folk — an’ not jest kids — sayin’ they’ve seen a ghost — figure in black with a black face an’ a long nose. Not human, they say. Satan’s in them alleys — that’s what they’re sayin.’

  ‘And Scrap?’

  ‘It worries me, sir. I felt it meself — as if someone’s be’ind you, but when yer turns, there’s nothin’ there — ’cept, well I thought I saw it — somethin’ black — I can’t say more than that. Coulda bin just a person, but it vanished. Like a ghost, I thought. It’s a rotten place, them lanes, an’ that burial ground, no wonder. Anyway, I think I should try ter find ’im. It ain’t right fer ’im ter be there, an’ when ’e dint come I was worried.’

  ‘So am I. You need to get back to The Neptune. Leave a message for Scrap, telling him to come here. Say that Mr Jones wants him. Then go and look. I’ll send a constable to Bow Street to get Rogers to come and help. Don’t put yourself in danger. In the meantime, Mr Dickens and I must go and see a Mrs Raspin — about Evie Finch and Kitty Quillian. No sign of her or the Italian boy?’

  ‘No, sir — will yer come ter The Neptune?’

  ‘No, we’ll meet you here with Rogers — in an hour — I don’t want us all to go in just yet, but if you haven’t found Scrap by then, I’ll get more men — armed.’

  ‘Right, sir. In an hour then.’

  Stemp went off. Dickens and Jones hurried away to Fox Lane. On the way, Jones found a constable to send to Bow Street for Rogers. The word “armed” echoed in Dickens’s head, and he thought of Stemp’s talk of Satan. Dear God, where was Scrap?

  Chapter 19: Wherefore to Dover?

  In that scrubbed clean house in Dab Lane, Arthur Brimstone eyed his wife nervously. ‘They’ll come back,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you think I bloody know that, B.A.’ B.A., she called him, somewhat humorously — a reversal of the initials A. B. and reference to his learning. She was not without pride in her husband’s education when it suited her — for example when she recommended him to Doctor Plume. It was true that Arthur had studied for his degree. That he had failed his examinations was nothing to her. Whether it was art or science was nothing to her. He had studied to be a chemist — and that’s what he was. Good job the police hadn’t known that.

  ‘But we’ll have gone out, won’t we? Just a little errand. I’ve a parcel to deliver.’

  ‘But, the baby?’ He was worried. He never quite understood her. Had never. Nor had he understood how he had married her. Mr Tony Weller could have given him the words of wisdom he had shared with M
r Pickwick about the mysterious machinations of women: You’re never safe vith ’em, Mr Pickwick, ven they vunce has designs on you; there’s no knowin’ vere to have ’em; and vile you’re a considering of it, they have you — but Arthur Brimstone hadn’t read Pickwick Papers. Mrs Brimstone didn’t hold with fiction — real life was enough for her. Poor Brimstone was none the wiser. He had married her — and she frightened him.

  ‘The parcel, Arthur. We’ll be deliverin’ —’ she smiled at her joke — ‘that baby to Mrs Jocelyn Cartwright. You’ll be tellin’ her to meet me at St Pancras Church, and you’ll be tellin’ her to be sure to bring the money. And with that nice little bit of money, you and me’ll be takin’ a little holiday an’ when we come back — whenever that’s to be — Mr Policeman will be long gone.’

  Arthur knew better than to ask where they might be going. He didn’t much care — he just wanted to get away. This baby business — he hated it. Not that Mrs Brimstone would do harm to the kiddies — she only sold them — to better lives she said. But, he felt sorry for the poor girls who left their babies. Some were brazen, it was true, and glad to get rid of an unwanted burden, but some wept and held them, and looked back longingly until Mrs Brimstone closed the door and shut them out for good.

  Kitty Quillian had said she was keeping her baby. Mrs Brimstone had said that, seeing as Kitty had left it, the baby was theirs to do what they liked with. What she liked, he had thought bitterly. Mrs Cartwright wanted a baby. Mrs Raspin had promised her one — but it had gone and died. And now, said Mrs Brimstone, they had one. A bit older than had been agreed, but it was small enough — and no doubt Mrs Cartwright would manage. She was desperate enough.

  So desperate that she had agreed to come to Mrs Brimstone who would, for a fee, arrange the “birth”. Arthur knew what she and Mrs Raspin did — bottles of bullock’s blood were obtained from the slaughterhouse. Sometimes, even a placenta could be got by Mrs Raspin. The “mother” was encouraged to make as much mess and noise as she liked. Her companion in the outer room could well believe that a birth had actually taken place.

  But, Mrs Brimstone said, all that wouldn’t be necessary — they’d deliver the child to Mrs Cartwright. She was hardly likely to say no, was she — and her husband was in on it anyway.

  ‘Get the carpet bag, B.A. and put the baby in it. A touch of laudanum’ll keep it quiet. You know what to do. On your finger — not too much, mind — well, you’re the chemist. I’ll leave it to you. Five minutes, no more.’

  Arthur Brimstone went upstairs to Kitty’s room. The baby was asleep. He had given it a little laudanum when his wife had sent him upstairs while the police were there. Hungry, he supposed. Mrs Raspin had sent a girl to feed it — some poor kid who had a baby of her own and needed the money. He looked at it — poor little thing. Kitty had loved it — him, a boy. Kitty had named him Billie — as good as gold, too, until Kitty had gone. Well, perhaps it was for the best. But, if Kitty came back? He didn’t want to think about that. He liked the babies. He’d thought once that Martha might… When they married, he was twenty-two to her thirty-two, but he hadn’t known that. Well, he’d better be quick — she was an impatient woman. He put the sleeping child into the carpet bag as gently as he could.

  Mrs Brimstone would take a cab to St Pancras Church with the baby. She’d wait for them by the colonnaded entrance to the Church. Arthur was to go to Mrs Cartwright’s in Montague Square and then make his own way by cab to Euston Station, where Mrs Brimstone would meet him at the bookstall. She didn’t want him spending any time with the Cartwrights — he might let something slip about Kitty. All Mrs Cartwright needed to know was that the baby’s mother had died. Mrs Brimstone preferred to talk to the Cartwrights herself — she could tell the pathetic tale of the poor dead mother, an orphan herself, who’d only wanted a loving home for her child. It had been her dying wish — that Mrs Brimstone would find somebody to be a mother to her child. It’s what Mrs Cartwright would want to hear — and why not? Kitty might not be dead, but she’d want a good home for her child.

  When Arthur came down with the carpet bag, Martha Brimstone was ready. She was taking nothing with her — except money. It didn’t do to let Arthur know how much, which was why she had sent him upstairs. There’d be plenty with the Cartwrights’ money. And there was Kitty’s money, too — no sense in letting it go to waste. They could stay away for good if they needed to.

  Arthur left her. Montague Square wasn’t far. He went down East Street, past The Neptune pub and then into Dorset Street. He was glad it was dark. The visit of the policeman had unnerved him. Everything seemed, suddenly, bafflingly complicated. And it had all started with the murder of Doctor Plume. That girl, Kitty’s friend, Annie Deverall, hadn’t done it. It was impossible — a skinny, silent thing like that. And Kitty disappearing. And Mrs Hodson. Now the baby to be sold. He had to admit it — good homes or not, they were trading in babies. And something else — something he hadn’t dared tell his wife — the man who had asked for Plume. Arthur had come out of the garden door at the doctor’s where he’d delivered medicine — stuff he made up himself. Plume used him as his chemist. Arthur was cheap and asked no questions. Chloroform, laudanum, paregoric, savin, slippery elm, tonics, cordials — his own mixtures, all sold to Plume who asked no questions either, only suggesting the increase of tincture of opium in some of the remedies, for coughs, he said, or to soothe the restless patient. A little less treacle and a little more morphine in Godfrey’s Cordial, or, perhaps Arthur could make up his own. Brimstone’s Cordial, Plume had joked, it had a ring to it — Brimstone’s Cordial with treacle. Arthur had not laughed, but he did as he was asked. Mrs Brimstone said it was a nice little business. They were all in it — Mrs Hodson, Bertha Raspin, Martha, him. He wanted out.

  Because that man worried him. A man in a low-crowned hat and a long, dark coat who he’d seen with Kitty Quillian and, what was worse, who had been in the alley some nights before Plume was murdered. And he, Arthur Brimstone, had told him that it was the doctor’s house. Had he seen a murderer, or, more terrifying, had a murderer seen him? He thought of the accused girl again. She hadn’t done it. But, he couldn’t tell the police. They’d find out about it all — the babies, the drugs, Plume. He thought of Martha’s furious face. He couldn’t face that, either.

  He stopped suddenly in the crowded street. He could go. After seeing the Cartwrights. He needn’t go to Euston. He could go anywhere. He could sneak back through the alleys to the back of the house in Dab Lane. No one would see him in the fog that was coming down now. He could pack a bag, take his medical case with the bottles of laudanum, paregoric, tincture of opium, cocaine, arsenic, all the things which might interest the police and he could dump it in the river. Then he could go — where?

  Martha wanted to meet at Euston — she was going north then. He could go south from London Bridge Station to — to — Dover? Wherefore to Dover? He’d read that somewhere — at school, perhaps. And he thought of an odd thing. Once, when he’d been in Weymouth Street at Plume’s, he had met Mrs Plume and she had asked him if he knew the work of Mr Dickens. He did not. She gave him one of the numbers of the serial David Copperfield — just published, she’d said — number five. She was following the story avidly. Take it, she’d said.

  And he’d read the number in a pub over his lunch. He had never forgotten the story of the little boy’s journey to Dover on foot, selling his jacket to a mad old man, sleeping under haystacks, washing his blistered feet in a stream — a lonely, outcast child. When he’d read it, he’d left it in the pub, not daring to take it home. And he never encountered Mrs Plume again, nor had he ever found out what became of David Copperfield.

  Had the lonely boy become a lonely man? Lonely — like him. He suddenly felt it — the real loneliness of his life in that roaring city. It had always been so. Tears pricked at his eyes. Dover then. If a little boy could walk it, so could he. He would never come back — never.

  Chapter 20: Mother Hubbard

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sp; Someone was hammering on the door.

  ‘No need to knock the ’ouse down — I’m comin’ — Bloody ’ell,’ Bertha Raspin said under her breath. She shouted again, ‘Give us a minnit, will yer.’

  She was alarmed. She had a patient upstairs and she was struggling — so was the patient. ‘Stay with ’er and don’t come down fer anythin’ — keep ’er quiet.’ She addressed her words to the servant who looked back at her with terrified eyes. She pointed to the knotted cloth. ‘Put it in ’er mouth.’

  Outside, Superintendent Jones continued to bang on the door. This one wasn’t getting away.

  ‘Here’s a knocking indeed,’ murmured Dickens, unhelpfully. Jones gave him a twisted smile, but continued to thump the door — a quite respectable door, in fact, not unlike Mrs Hodson’s, or, indeed Mrs Brimstone’s. Not, it must be admitted, as smart a door as Doctor Plume’s in fashionable Weymouth Street, but, Dickens thought, they all had this in common: secrets. Every house encloses its own secret; every room in every one of them encloses its own secret, and these doors had the ugliest of secrets behind their painted respectability.

  The door flew open, but before Mrs Raspin had time to do more than open her large mouth in indignation, Jones was through it, followed by Dickens.

  ‘Police. Evie Finch and Kitty Quillian — I want information.’ Jones looked down at the woman who stood before him, her face red, her breath coming in little gasps. She was unable to speak. Jones pointed to a half-open door. ‘In there.’

  Mrs Raspin obeyed. She sank like a spoiled loaf onto a sofa.

  Upstairs, someone screamed.

  ‘Upstairs, constable.’ Jones looked at Dickens meaningfully.

  In the room above the parlour, Dickens’ eyes took in the exhausted figure on the bed, the blood, the terrified eyes of the servant and the bloodied lump she held in her hands.