by J C Briggs
‘Where’s the doctor?’ he shouted. ‘The nearest doctor.’
‘Work’ouse ’ospital — Northumberland Street.’ The girl knew it. It was where she had been born.
‘Stay with her — there’s a policeman in the house.’
He clattered downstairs. Shouted to Jones, ‘A doctor — I’m going for one.’
Mrs Raspin’s red face turned to the colour of purplish liver, then to a yeasty grey.
‘Get upstairs to your patient — do what you can until the doctor comes.’
She staggered away. Jones followed her as she stumbled up the staircase. Evie Finch would not have recognised her — nor would any of her other patients. Gone was the beaming, red-faced, seemingly kindly old nurse who told them all: ‘I’m a jokeler person, I’ll cheer yer up. Don’t fret none — I’ll see yer awright. I’m the old original I am.’
The old original looked a hundred years older to the servant, but she took the thing from the girl’s hands and put it in the bucket, and then she sat down by the bed to bathe the patient’s head. Jones stood at the door and felt sick.
Mr Sydney Fuller, the medical director of the Marylebone Workhouse Infirmary looked in astonishment at the man in the doorway of the dispensary, who looked — and sounded, by his breathing — as if he had run a mile race and been pursued along the way by Furies. That, in itself, was surprising. Astonishing was the fact that he recognised the man.
‘Mr Dickens?’
‘Yes —’ Dickens exhaled a long breath — ‘Mr Fuller, is it not? We met when I came here in May. I need your help — I’ll explain on the way. I’m with Superintendent Jones of Bow Street. There is a young woman — Fox’s Lane — Mrs Raspin —’
‘The midwife?’
‘Yes — will you come?’
Doctor Fuller turned to the nurse who was with him, and who was gazing at Dickens as if he had dropped from a faraway planet. ‘Miss Andrews, would you get my bag from my office, organise a stretcher and follow us to Fox’s Lane. What number?’
‘Number ten.’
The nurse nodded and went out.
Dickens and Doctor Fuller went out into Northumberland Street, turned right by the northern burial ground and into Fox’s Lane. The Doctor went upstairs to find the large policeman by the open door. Inside, he saw the girl on the bed. The bucket told him what he needed to know.
‘You did this?’ he asked Mrs Raspin.
Good question, thought Jones, and one to which I would like the answer.
‘Yes — that is, I — she — a miscarriage.’
The Doctor insisted. ‘You aborted the child?’ He didn’t need an answer for he saw what Jones had not seen. On the table by the bed was a set of curling tongs, altered to resemble forceps. And the blood on them told the truth. Doctor Fuller picked them up and held them before her. ‘Answer me.’
Mrs Raspin nodded and whispered, ‘Yes.’
Jones turned to the servant. ‘Get me some paper.’
From a cupboard in the room, the girl retrieved some brown paper — the sort in which a parcel might be wrapped. He wondered about that. There had been a story in the paper back in October, the story of a parcel found in an open grave which had been flooded in heavy rain before a funeral. There had been a dead baby in the parcel. The sexton had said he knew nothing about it, but Jones knew that such things happened. Mothers who couldn’t afford a funeral. Enough, however, for the time being.
The Doctor turned back to his patient. ‘She’s alive. When the stretcher comes, I’ll have her taken to the infirmary. If she recovers, you can question her there, Superintendent.’
‘Thank you. Mrs Raspin, you must come with me. You will be charged under the 1837 Act which says that anyone intending to procure a miscarriage, who unlawfully uses any instrument —’ he looked at the curling tongs — ‘shall be guilty of felony. And, if she dies, it’ll be murder.’
If anything, she looked sicker than ever. ‘I niver meant — I was just —’
‘Save it for the magistrate,’ Jones said curtly. He took her downstairs. Dickens watched her as she stood in her neat parlour, gazing at her sofa, her chairs, her two china shepherdesses on the mantelpiece and the waxen cherubs under domes like little cupping glasses. They looked like miniature dead babies. Perhaps she thought that they might offer the consolation of angelic resurrection to the bereft mothers.
Jones took Dickens into the hall. ‘She confessed. I’ll have to find a constable — keep your eye on her. I’ll want someone to take her to Bow Street. Then we must go to that chop house — it’s nearly time. When the doctor comes down, tell him I’ll contact him at the workhouse infirmary. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Dickens waited, contemplating the varnished door. No varnish can hide the grain of the wood. How true. Plume, for all his fine shirts and expensive coats, was a sordid seducer, and this house with its pretty parlour, was a sink of vice.
The nurse came, and two men with a stretcher. In a while, they came down again with the patient.
Doctor Fuller stopped to say goodbye to Dickens, who gave him Jones’s message.
‘A bad old woman,’ Fuller observed.
‘Will she live?’
‘If blood poisoning doesn’t set in, there might be a chance. I can’t say. You can’t blame the girl — not married, I daresay. No one to turn to. The father nowhere to be found — he’ll know that there’s no law that could have made him responsible. Thanks to the New Poor Law — but, you’ve said your bit on that, Mr Dickens. I read your piece in May about the Itch Ward Nurse at the workhouse.’
Dickens had entitled his article A Walk in the Workhouse and had described the nurse’s grief when a little child she had looked after had died. The dropped child, she’d called it, because it had been found in the street.
‘Perhaps children wouldn’t be dropped in the street or young women butchered if the law made fathers responsible — as it used to.’
‘No, indeed,’ Dickens replied. ‘I’ve heard of three cases now — one young woman missing, one dead, and this poor girl.’
‘Missing?’
‘A girl called Kitty Quillian — you’ve not heard the name?’
‘No, but I’ll ask about. We have plenty of Irish girls in the workhouse. You never know.’
‘If you hear anything, send to the Superintendent at Bow Street.’
‘I will, and I’ll go now to see what I can do about my patient. Good day, Mr Dickens.’
Dickens watched him go. A decent man — and a caring one. There were as many as three hundred patients, he knew, in the Workhouse Infirmary. Fifty pounds a year in salary and he had to pay for medicines. So much did the Poor Law Guardians care for their charges. And that nurse — a pretty young woman. Good people. To set against the bad old woman within. He heard her crying. For her lost cherubs, he’d bet, and her china ornaments. Bah! Humbug!
He heard the sound of a cab. Jones jumped out, followed by a uniformed constable to whom he had already given instructions to take Mrs Raspin to Bow Street. The constable was to speak to Inspector Grove and the woman installed in a cell.
Mrs Raspin was allowed to put on her bonnet and cape, and, unaccountably, she took an umbrella from the stand in the hall. It wasn’t raining. Mrs Gamp, thought Dickens, watching the dumpy figure totter down the steps. The constable helped her into the cab, and away she went to her cell.
Jones went upstairs again to speak to the servant. He did not suppose she was any more than a wretched instrument of Mrs Raspin — she had looked about fourteen. But the room was empty. An open window showed an iron staircase leading down to a yard, the door of which was ajar. Poor kid, he thought, hoping she had a home to go to. He didn’t even know her name.
He came down the stairs. ‘We must hurry, Charles — it’s been more than an hour. Let’s get to that chop house — and quick.’
Chapter 21: Until Death Us Do Part
In the safe darkness of the closed carriage, Mrs Jocelyn Cartwright listened to the story of
‘Patsy Molloy’ and her baby. Patsy was, of course, a good girl — Martha Brimstone could vouch for that — her bein’ as much as a ma to her as ever Patsy had. A good girl, seduced by a young man of means — in the bankin’ way, it seemed. Good family. Handsome, too.
Good, thought Mr Eldred Cartwright, looking down involuntarily at the sleeping baby, though he couldn’t see much of it in the dark. Good blood. The fact that the entirely fictitious father might have been a debauched young man whose blood was as bad as could be was an irony that escaped him. A good family mattered.
Patsy was Irish and Catholic, continued Mrs Brimstone, warming to her theme. She did not hold with fiction — unless, of course, the tale was of her own devising.
Irish and Catholic — not so good, reflected Eldred whose Anglo Saxon name was a source of pride — it had been his father’s and grandfather’s. It meant “wise counsel”. Whether it was wise to be here at all, he had wondered, but, a son — to be called Eldred, too. He hoped the child wouldn’t look Irish. He thought about asking the woman what the father looked like, but thought better of it. No one need know.
The rusty whisper went on. Poor Patsy had died as she had lived, friendless and alone — well, except for Martha Brimstone who had, out of the goodness of her heart, taken her in.
Get on with it, you old witch, Eldred thought, but he saw in the shadows how the set of his wife’s head showed her listening intently. He stilled his impatient foot.
Patsy’s last words were repeated — how she’d begged Martha Brimstone to find a good family who would love and cherish the child, and how she’d be glad that Mrs Cartwright was the woman — p’raps she knew already — you never knew, did you, what went on in heaven?
That was enough for Eldred Cartwright. He was a man of the world, read the papers, knew what Martha Brimstone was. His voice was curt like a blade in the darkness.
‘Your payment?’
Martha Brimstone was unmoved by his sharpness, but she took the hint without changing her tone. Take no chances — concentrate on the wife. She wouldn’t change her mind.
There had been Patsy’s funeral to pay for, the wet nurse for the baby and the clothes. Little Billie Quillian had been carefully dressed by Mrs Brimstone — good investment, she’d told Arthur. And it was. Mrs Cartwright had noted the frills and spotless linen in the brief flaring of the Lucifer match held by her husband, which had illuminated the child’s sleeping face. Her son — hers — at last.
Money changed hands — fifty guineas. Mrs Brimstone liked the sound of guineas — more professional, she thought.
Little Billie Quillian was taken away to a house in France where he would be born again as Basil Archibald Cartwright, who would, in due course, come into his inheritance. In the event, Eldred Cartwright could not give his name to the child — neither could he love him. But, he died when the boy was five — and Mrs Cartwright had enough love for a regiment of parents.
He would never know that his auburn hair and brown eyes came from his mother. Fortunately, Jocelyn Cartwright had brown eyes. The auburn hair, she said, came from her dead cousin Archie who had been a Fraser, family legend had it, from the Highlands of Scotland.
He would never know — no one yet did, except the murderer — that Kitty Quillian lay dead in an unused privy behind a house in a wretched alley off East Street. She lay where she had fallen, her head stove in, her right eye destroyed, her head split by some blunt object. Blood had poured inside her skull, drowning her brain. She had died within minutes. One amber eye was open, looking up to the pitiless stars.
Martha Brimstone hurried into Euston Station. Arthur was to meet her by W.H. Smith’s bookstall. She was surprised that he wasn’t there. If he had come straight from Montague Square, he should have been waiting for her. She’d told him to get a cab. Twenty minutes, surely, at the most. The Cartwrights’ carriage had come quickly enough — she’d been standing by the porch of St Pancras. How long had she been with them? That didn’t matter. Arthur should be here. Surely the fool hadn’t gone back to the house.
She scanned the faces sweeping into the Great Hall from the portico outside. The place was crowded. No use lookin’. He knew where to find her — if he was comin’. She thought about that. Arthur was easy to read. He was a worrier — always had been. But — and that gave her a sudden, nervous feeling — Plume’s murder had shaken him for some reason. He had been badly frightened when the police came — afterwards, she’d told him it wasn’t anything to do with them. And, they’d taken that girl away — so why worry? Arthur had remarked that such a skinny, silent creature couldn’t have done it. Not to do with us, she’d told him — again and again.
He wasn’t coming. She knew it. She’d waited — an hour. Time to go. There was a train to Manchester at nine o’clock — the last one. And she was going. She’d plenty of money and somewhere to go. Amelia Hodson was living in Chorlton with cousin Lizzie Josser. Time to go, Amelia Hodson had said after the murder of Doctor Plume. They didn’t want police askin’ too many questions. Think about it, Martha, we could start a nice little business up there — you and me.
And Martha had thought about it. She had made her plans. When the arrangement had fallen through over the last baby, she’d thought then that it might be worth moving on. But when Kitty left her baby behind, she’d thought about the money — fifty guineas, a nice little nest egg worth waitin’ for. There was plenty in the bank, too.
If Mr Dickens had asked the question he always asked about his characters: What’s his motive? The answer would be simple. Money. Born greedy she was. She wouldn’t have killed for it. In a way, she was worse than that — she just didn’t care for any living thing.
The house was clean. Rent paid for the next month. The landlord couldn’t complain. She’d told him they were goin’ away for a while — Arthur’s health. Kitty’s stuff sold as well as some of hers and Arthur’s. The few bits she wanted in the carpet bag at her side.
She went to the booking office. She bought a first class ticket to Manchester. Might as well travel in style.
Chapter 22: A Long Black Nose
At Bow Street, Jones’s office seemed a bit crowded. Dickens sat on the desk, Stemp and Rogers took the two straight-backed chairs, and Jones stood by a fire of rather miserable coals. Brandy and warm, Dickens had said, darting into his office at Wellington Street to get a bottle of brandy, and now they felt the benefit of it — warmer than the fire, at any rate.
Scrap was looking at the feeble flames while he sipped his drink. The rest were waiting. Scrap had been found by Stemp, coming at a run from the alleys that led off Dab Lane. Rogers had met them at the chop house — he, too, had experienced the eeriness of those alleys. As he had observed trenchantly to Stemp, ‘Give me the creeps, I’ll tell you.’
Dickens and Jones had been mightily relieved to find Scrap unscathed, if somewhat subdued. Back to Bow Street, Jones had decided. He wanted to question Mrs Raspin — though she would keep for a while. Let her stew, he thought grimly. First he wanted to hear Scrap’s tale for, he thought, seeing something curiously sombre in those eyes which usually sparkled with confidence, there was a story to be told.
‘I dint find the boy, Mr Jones, but I found some Italians — livin’ in Beggar’s Lane. I asked ’em if they knowed of Joe Seppy. I think they did, but they don’t speak much English. Jabbered a lot, they did, ’ands flappin’ an’ that — all talkin’ at once. Got the impression they woz frightened.’
‘What kept you so long? Constable Stemp was worried about you.’ Jones’s tone was mild, but he wondered about the expression in Scrap’s eyes — something had happened, other than his discovery of the Italian family.
Scrap looked at Stemp. ‘Sorry about that — I woz follered. Dint see no one, but I knowed it.’
‘How?’ asked Jones.
Scrap thought. ‘Felt it — yer knows. Yer senses someone — a footstep, p’raps, a sound o’ somethin’. Yer looks back, but nothin’ ter see. But, ’e’s there. An’ it’s q
ueer, Mr Jones, there ain’t no one about — not like the Dials — dead quiet — as if folk are hidin’ indoors. I dunno — it’s ’ard to explain.’
‘Just wot I felt,’ Stemp offered.
‘Any idea who followed you?’
‘There was a lad — in Bones Alley. ’Ard case — black eyes. Nasty look in ’em. Dint trust ’im, some’ow.’
Dickens looked at Jones. Jimmy Brady, they both thought. ‘I think we met him,’ Jones said, ‘and you’re right — a nasty piece of work. Go on.’
‘Well, ’e told me about Beggar’s Lane and them Italians. Said ’e ’adn’t ’eard the name Joe Seppy, but I don’t know. Picked up a brick so I went off. Anyway, I went ter see if I could find Beggar’s Lane. Met a woman an’ a little girl — queer-lookin’ like she was only ’alf there. I dunno — jest — innocent — some’ow.’
May Brady, Dickens thought. He wasn’t surprised. Scrap was a perceptive reader of human nature. Some sense, he had, about people. Intuition. He thought of how Scrap had tried to comfort Eleanor Brim after her father’s death. Scrap saw into people, and he felt for them. He thought about the difference between Scrap and Jimmy Brady — and why Jimmy Brady might have followed Scrap.
Scrap continued his tale. ‘The woman told me where Beggar’s Lane was. She said it was dangerous down there — told me to be careful. While she was talkin’, I saw the lad across the street. An’ she saw ’im, too. Then she hurried off an’ I went down the alley. I dint see ’im, but I knew ’e was there. I lost meself, tryin’ ter shake im off, yer knows. Dint know where I was. That many twists and turns, but I found Beggar’s Lane. When I came out o’ the Italians’ place, I thought —’ he stopped again, and Jones saw how his eyes took on that unusual darkness.
‘What?’
‘It’s ’ard ter say, Mr Jones. I dunno wot I saw, really.’
‘Not the lad?’
‘Nah, it wasn’t ’im — it was a sort o’ figure — it woz dark down in them alleys — jest a bit of a gaslight, an’ I saw a shape, but the thing wot scared me woz that when it turned my way, I saw jest a nose — a long black nose — then it was gone —’