by Tim Mason
“How much?”
“Blimey, you are going to make me regret my generosity, are you not, Charlie Field? I will pay you twice what you was paid as a peeler, how’s that? I’ve a sweet little bedroom for you, just one flight up, and you’ll be free to spend one night each week with that ravishing wife of yours.”
“I’ll need an advance.”
“Good God! Two weeks’ pay in advance, Charlie, I’ll have a lad bring it direct to your wife this instant. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?”
Field finally nodded.
Tom Ginty’s hours of freedom had gone horribly wrong. He, too, had sought salvation at the Fortune of War. But the giddy elation he had felt as Belinda slipped him out the back garden and as he raced, a free man, through the streets of London toward Smithfield, had vanished. He had been told at the tradesmen’s entrance that his mother was no longer employed there, nor did she any longer live in the room high above. A bundle of her clothing and linens, tied up in the kitchen, proved it. She had just walked off, according to one of the scullery girls.
“She say where she was going?” Tom had asked.
“She said nothing whatever! Gave no notice, just waltzed out the door and left me with a whole morning’s washing up to do! Where’d you get to, then? You didn’t half break her heart, you know, running away like that.”
He flushed, realizing what his mother must have thought. Tom had abandoned her. Gone off and joined a world that had altered and tainted him to such an extent that he would never be fit company for her again. The boy found himself homeless and motherless in one go.
Tom knew Jake Figgis lived nearby, but where? He had no idea. There was no one to whom he could turn. He considered chucking the lot. He could lose himself in London, scavenge some sort of work, and never think about Master again or the house that held Master’s people and all his nasty secrets. And if he did?
Mary Withers will think what Mum thinks, that I run out on her. And she’ll be right.
Tom hesitated for a long moment, torn. And then, almost against his will and certainly against his better judgment, he resolved to return to Half Moon Street and the china doll who lived in the attic. He would have to wait until morning; there would be no getting into the house unnoticed at this time of night. He would sleep rough, in a doorway or under a bridge, and hope that Master and everyone else below would assume that he was still above in the garret. Tom set out looking for a spot in which to kip. He would set Mary Withers free. He would get her out all on his own.
26
In little more than a week at the beginning of July, Police Constable Sam Llewellyn had lost his partner, his famous chief officer and his standing within the Metropolitan. “The Darwin conspiracy” was the sarcastic name given in the department to Charles Field’s final pursuits with the force. The investigation was over. According to Llewellyn’s superiors, Josiah Kilvert had been murdered at a crowded public lecture, most likely by a pickpocket he was about to apprehend. The young scholar, David Gates, had been robbed by a common highwayman and bludgeoned to death. Philip Rendell had added his name to the list of lunatics who had tried and failed to kill Victoria. He was subsequently the victim of a typical prison murder. Field had been attempting to connect events that were wholly unrelated.
Llewellyn found himself on a foot patrol of the south bank with a junior constable named Crawley. Crawley was young and wide-eyed to an irritating degree as far as Llewellyn was concerned; the lad was in a perpetual state of morbid excitement. It seems a Frenchman had been found garroted in a Park Lane hotel; Crawley had learned the grisly details from one of the other recruits and was sharing them with Llewellyn as they walked.
Then he launched into the story of another recent murder; a man had been pulled from the Thames, just about there. A small boy had discovered the corpse and stolen what he could from it. Fellow had been with the telegraph company. One of his ears was sliced clean off.
“What’s that you say?” said Llewellyn suddenly. “The chap’s ear was off?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Eaten away?”
“Sliced off is what they told me, but of course I wasn’t there, was I. Mr. Llewellyn! Hi, Mr. Llewellyn, where are you going?”
Despite the heat, Llewellyn ran. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt a surge of urgency. At London Bridge he hailed a hackney cab to London Hospital, expense be damned.
After dropping Inspector Field’s name, he found the chief coroner willing to talk to him. Thomas Wakeley, Esq., was in motion, walking briskly along a corridor, with Llewellyn trotting alongside. Oh yes, the river corpse. It was only a few days ago, after all. No, the fellow hadn’t drowned; there was no water to speak of in the lungs. Ear surgically removed. Cause of death, well, that had taken some searching, hadn’t it, given the state of the body and the minute size of the fatal wound: a precisely aimed puncture of the heart’s left ventricle. Death would have followed quickly. The fellow’s possessions? Couldn’t say. Might be with the police still or returned to the telegraph company.
When the constable called at the Electric Telegraph Company, Mr. Apfel was not disposed to be of assistance. The entire affair bungled by the Metropolitan, as per usual. Theft of company property and murder of company personnel, but what do the police and the courts offer me? A shrug, little more. No, Officer, of course the pouch was empty when that deranged wastrel found it—it had been in the river for days! A list? Mr. Llewellyn, or whatever your name is, there happen to be strict laws governing the privacy of communication via the electric telegraph. You certainly may not have a list of the telegrams the deliveryman was carrying that night!
At New Scotland Yard, Llewellyn found two of the men who had helped fish the corpse ashore. They said the hooligan who had discovered the body was a mudlark called Button who lived in a barrel on the south bank.
As he picked his way carefully along the slimy sand and slippery, rubbish-littered stones of the Thames’ south bank, Llewellyn wondered how long it would be before he got himself dismissed from the Metropolitan. He took off his woolen tunic and carried it, his shirt clinging sweatily to his back. The shoreline was strewn with debris. There were any number of broken barrels. Llewellyn peered into each one. Most were skeletal, consisting of hardly more than a few shivered staves. From a couple of them, the beady black eyes of crustaceans peered back at him. It was slow work.
“Wotcher think you’re a-doing?”
Llewellyn stood up from the barrel he’d been looking into and turned to see a short, ferocious-looking boy glaring up at him with unfocused eyes and balled fists. His hair was tangled and filthy. The rags in which he was dressed were barely hanging on to his skinny frame. In contrast to his dirty skin, his teeth and disconcerting eyes shone a brilliant white.
“Mr. Button?” said Llewellyn.
“Don’t you Mister me! Clear off!”
“Just Button, then. All right? I’d like to talk with you if I may.”
In the end, after enduring a diatribe on injustice and the incompetence of the police, Llewellyn was able to induce the young businessman to retrieve a mass of sodden papers from a tin box hidden beneath his barrel. They cost Llewellyn several shillings of his own money after an extended period of haggling.
The constable, heading toward his chaste bedsit in Pimlico at the close of day, was aware that he smelled of his afternoon’s endeavors. He resolved to ask his landlady to prepare him a hot bath and to have his uniform thoroughly sponged and brushed. Whenever the Metropolitan sacked him, he was determined to look his best.
The gout was acting up again. Sir Jasper slowly made his way up the marble staircase of the Athenaeum Club to the dining room above. Sir Richard Owen, climbing one step at a time at his side, fairly radiated impatience.
“I believe I have things well in hand,” wheezed Sir Jasper. “One of my shipper friends in Hamburg has put forward a young anarchist for the task, and I think he’ll do.” Sir Jasper paused yet again, one hand clinging to the iron
rail, the other clutching his stick. “My friend had one of his spies stand drinks for the chappie, and the report is he’d do the deed gratis.”
Two other members, Charles Dickens and his close friend, the artist Augustus Egg, overtook them on the stairs and quickly disappeared above. Owen watched them trip rapidly up the steps with barely concealed irritation, which delighted Sir Jasper.
“You’ve called off your man, I trust?” said the latter.
“My man?” said Owen. “Decimus Cobb was your man until recently. I believe he has been in your home at your invitation. He’s never been in mine.”
“The fellow’s a lunatic. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Suggested I had a tumor! Infernal cheek. Saw my man in Harley Street. Said it was a load of rubbish.”
“By the way,” said Owen, “Officer Field is no longer a problem. I used my influence to have him dismissed from the Metropolitan Police.”
“Really? Odd, my Fleet Street friend, reporter chappie, told me the man was dismissed for gross insubordination. Nothing to do with your influence.”
Owen’s lips disappeared. Lunch was going to be an ordeal.
Tom appeared at the glass-paned door giving onto the kitchen garden just after dawn. Blinky threw the bolt and let him in. “Where are all the butchers?” she whispered. “You said you was bringing butchers.”
“Never mind the butchers, Blinky. Are the stairs clear, you reckon?”
“Call me Belinda.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s me name.”
“It is? All right, Belinda, are the stairs clear?”
“No one about. Where were you last night? I waited.”
“Master’s out?”
“I think so,” the girl whispered vaguely. Exasperated, it finally dawned on Tom that she might fancy him. There was nothing for it but to hope there were no watchers and no Master nearby. He took the stairs two at a time as softly as he could, three flights up, and then the small steps to the attic door, with Blinky—Belinda—pattering after him.
Tom knocked three times and then once more. There was no answer. He turned the knob and pushed open the door. There was no one there.
“Mary?” The garret was deserted.
Tom wheeled on the girl. “What’s this, then?”
“Dunno, Tom!”
He ran to the wardrobe and flung open the doors: no clothes. The top of the ink-stained writing desk was bare. Tom pulled out the drawer: empty. The history of the world was missing.
“She took her book with her, Tom,” said Decimus, standing in the door. Blinky shrieked.
“Please don’t do that, dear. It goes right through my head.”
“What have you done with her?” said Tom.
“I did what you couldn’t do, certainly. I found her a position. She’s been placed with a fine family. I’m confident she’ll give every satisfaction. When I came to give her the good news about the position—this was soon after you left yesterday, Tom, with little Blinky’s help—Mary told me all about you and your aspirations.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Young love et cetera. The thing about women, Tom, is that one must give them what they want or it’s simply not on, isn’t that right, Blinky? Mary wanted work; I found her work. I myself prefer a woman who wants nothing, but that’s just me.”
Mary Do-Not’s words came back to Tom. Everyone in this house is a spy, Tom. Everyone.
Decimus moved to the dumbwaiter, both Tom and the girl shrinking from him involuntarily. He slid open its door and looked in. “Long way down,” he said. He closed the door again and turned to the young people.
“You’re a slow learner, Tom. We’re going to have to get serious about your studies. Hey, ho, I’ve gone freelance!”
Tom looked blank.
“Doesn’t know what I mean, never mind. We’ve got work ahead and some traveling to do, and you’ll need to acquire much more knowledge than what you appear to possess. Take inspiration from Mary Do-Not, Tom. There’s a girl with vision! I believe that wherever she goes, for as long as she lives, she will be writing and rewriting the history of the world.”
He glanced briefly at the girl. “Would you like me to drop little Blinky down the chute, Tom? Didn’t think so. Come along, then.”
Decimus left the room and started down the stairs, and after a moment, his shoulders sagging and his head down, Tom followed.
27
Buckingham Palace
Albert was reviewing a tall stack of dispatches, and his wife, seated at the adjacent desk, was reading and writing letters. The evening meal was long over and Victoria was barely suppressing her yawns.
“Vicky does not answer one’s questions,” said the Queen. “It is most frustrating.” Princess Victoria, their firstborn and favorite child, had two years earlier married Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia. “In my letters I tell her to answer questions briefly and in the order one asks them, but she will neglect to do so.”
“Indeed,” murmured Albert, not looking up.
The Queen had had their two desks moved together years earlier. Her husband possessed firm ideas about the duty owed by the monarch to her subjects and her empire, and eventually he had been relatively successful in imparting them to the Queen. The tempestuous early years, when young Victoria was fond of society and dancing until dawn, had passed long ago. Her early rejection of his attempts to be the head of the household had given way to unstinting respect for her Prince and a love that bordered on adoration.
In return, Albert was mindful of his duty to his wife and Queen, and to his adopted nation. He felt a profound gratitude to Victoria as the mother of their children. The fact that she had borne nine of them was proof, he felt, of his commitment, as well as hers.
Victoria turned to the second page of the letter she was reading and shook her head. “Naughty Vicky! She’s painting in oil again, never mind the sound advice you gave her, my dear. An amateur’s oils will never stand up to an artist’s and will only suffer by comparison, so why put oneself in such a position? And what does one do with the product of one’s labors? Watercolors can be kept so nicely on a mantel or a piano, strewn casually for the visitor to come upon and discover with delight.”
A massive ornate clock ticked sonorously. The Queen’s quill scratched along a fresh leaf of paper with frequent, emphatic underlinings. She stifled one yawn after another and then said, “Perhaps I’ll finish in the morning.” She looked fondly at her husband’s balding head, still bent over the dispatches. “Bist du nicht müde?” she said gently, speaking as she often did in her husband’s native tongue.
Albert looked up and offered an affectionate smile. “Ja, so, meine Liebste, perhaps I am tired.” He swept a hand above the papers on his desk. “If everyone is not very careful, very delicate, there could be in America a war within the year. But what does Mr. Palmerston care for delicacy or caution? Nothing at all!
“Whoever is going to war with America?”
“Other Americans,” said Albert gloomily.
“I must say, little Bertie seems to be acquitting himself well in the United States.”
“Miracula miraculum,” muttered the Prince.
“I’m certain that it’s due, however incomprehensibly, to the Americans’ astonishing fondness for my unworthy self.”
Victoria waited for Albert to agree, but he continued reading silently. “In any event,” she said finally, “you can prevent war in the morning.” She rose and waited. After a moment the Prince obediently closed a folder, straightened the stacks on the desk, and stood. The Queen started for the door, which a servant was already opening.
“My dear?” said Albert.
“Yes?”
“Do you know the man Sims? One of my grooms?”
“I believe I do. Welsh. Nice-looking boy, very well mannered.”
The servant was still holding open the door. “Leave us, will you?” said Albert, and the servant disappeared.
“He’s become very atte
ntive, Sims. Oddly so. I feel that I’m being watched over.”
“Yes? What is this about, Albert?”
“That’s what I was wondering, meine Liebste. So this morning, when we were riding in the park, I asked him about it. He feigned not to understand me, but I pressed him. ‘You seem to be on guard every minute, Sims,’ I said. ‘I cannot make a move but you’re there at my elbow, so to speak. It is distracting and disconcerting.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘one hears rumors.’ ‘What sort of rumors?’ I said.”
“You’re frightening me.”
“In the end, I had it out of him. The whispers he had heard concerned a threat against my person, and the whisperer had been a member of the Metropolitan Police.”
“Against you, Albert? Surely not.”
The Prince shrugged. “Sims claimed not to know anything more specific.”
“The young man is entirely mistaken, of course,” she said somewhat archly. “It is I who must bear the constant threat of annihilation. The harsh spotlight of the world, for good or ill, is directed at me, and I must endure its glare as befits a head of state.”
Victoria turned rather grandly and put her hand to the door, which was opened instantly by the waiting attendant. “Yes, my dear,” said Albert, following in her wake, “I am sure you are right. Still, I might have a word with this policeman, whoever he is.”
In time, Charles Field learned the real reason he’d been taken on at the Fortune of War. This was a public house that sold, with great efficiency and remarkable profit, much more than food and drink.
Field had returned home for an evening with his wife, the night after he was first enlisted by Goodfellow. He had not been pleased to discover that Jane had taken in Martha Ginty and was housing her in the empty nursery, but he didn’t want any unpleasantness to interfere with their night together, and besides, it was all his fault in the first place, wasn’t it. Jane was already wide-eyed with the first pay packet she had received. In the morning she had packed him a small trunk filled with clean clothing, an extra pair of boots, a razor, hairbrushes, and other necessaries. Field quietly retrieved his pistol from its hiding place and stashed it in the trunk as well.