A Fatal Likeness (15 page)

Forgive me, my love, for such a long and broken letter. I have never written thus before, and I will not do so again. But now, for these few moments, I can ease my heart by opening it to you. How much more it would relieve me to see you—to place my head on your soft bosom, and feel the gentle breathing of your heart. I know that you have your own pain—that you are anxious for your darling Allegra, and trust not Byron to have the care of her a father owes. But I fear you have no other choice but to trust to time and change on his part. Who knows what may happen in the space of a few short months? And what words may achieve, I will attempt. Anything that might diminish your pain, my darling Claire, I would do it. I cannot endure the thought of your lonely unheard tears—I would put up with any anguish if I might thereby ease a moment of yours. I know
she
does not agree with me on this—she thinks my care an interference, and nothing of our concern. But she is right in this respect, if none other: You cannot take the child. Byron would not allow it—and a rash attempt to remove her such as you have lately contemplated would have the direst consequences, and not the least for you, my dearest girl. I know you fear the convent is in an unwholesome district, subject every summer to malarious airs, but I can only beg you to remember that when I last saw Allegra there, she was in good health and fine spirits. Taller than when you saw her last, of that there can be no doubt, but in every other way recognisable at once as the babe you once held against your breast—her eyes the same deep violet blue, her hair as darkly lustrous, her little face just as lovely, her little chin just as determined. Still vivacious, still mischievous, still—O how beautifully—
your
child.

Six have I had, of my own, and one alone is left to me. Two torn from my heart by the vile judgment of a tyrannical court, and three consigned forever to the cold earth’s iron embrace. And now there is to be another. A child I do not want—did not expect—indeed can hardly account for, so rarely have I shared her bed. Jane Williams took me aside some days ago and wondered aloud, in that way she has, that one might almost believe that rough and piratical fellow Edward Trelawny were Mary’s lover, so intimate they seem, but if the child be his she will not tell me so. It is mine, Mary says, mine begotten, and mine to sustain. The fruit of another accursed Spring. Like all those other Springs that have led not to renewal but only to death and grief.

And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:

Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead.

I must close, my dearest girl. I hear her step and I dare not be found at my pen—dare not give her any new excuse to raise her hand to me. Hold fast, my dear girl, and all may yet be well. She says she has had a presentiment that this pregnancy will come not to term, and though I swear by all I hold true that I do not wish for such an end, if her premonition proves correct, it will be the last summer I spend with Mary as my wife. I will find a way, dear girl. Make no plans for Vienna until we may speak together of this. All may yet be well. Know that I love you, and all may be well.

Good-bye, my dearest love. Do not forget—be sure to burn this letter, and directly.

S

SEVEN

Mary

T
HE
FIRE
IS
DYING
low now, the embers preying upon themselves. It is not a comfortable image, and Charles gets up and walks to the window for light and air, his mind sombre with mute rage. Claire gave him this letter—this letter never burned, much read, and stained here and there with tears—because she deemed it proof—proof of Shelley’s love for her. But to Charles the proof—the evidence—in this letter is not of love, but of death. A woman threatening suicide in terrible revenge. Three innocent children dying before their time, and a fourth discarded because she did not suit. And yes, of course, children died, no-one knows that better than Charles—in the first quarter of the nineteenth century almost a third of babies were dead before the age of five—but for the Shelleys to lose three of their children, one after the other, argues that something more disturbing than mere misfortune was at work. Even a mother’s constant care was not enough, it seems, to counter that grand self-centred disregard that characterised so much else about Shelley’s life. For despite all his shrill self-justification, this is a man who clearly believed that one dead infant could be readily replaced by another, however randomly chosen, and that maternal affection might transfer as casually as cast-off baby clothes. And where did Shelley find that little girl he brought home? Did he discover the child in that Naples orphanage, or did he perhaps see a baby left a moment in some crowded market-place, and decide it would have a better life brought up his own? Take it with him there and then, and give it to his desperate and grieving wife as a substitute for the child she claimed he killed, only to see that mother’s face curdle to a mask of scorn. A sudden surge of nausea almost overwhelms Charles as he remembers his own sister—another golden-haired and green-eyed child—who was snatched in the street and never again found. Left perhaps to die, like this little girl, because she failed to find favour, no more real to those who took her than a puppy, or a porcelain doll.

You may think Charles is deducing a great deal here from very little, and extrapolating far too much from the pain of his own past, but you might change your mind if you knew (as Charles does not) that Shelley never made any attempt to see his first two children after the custody case, even though the ‘tyrannical court’ accorded him that right; that he once took up a child he found wandering, and it was only the merest chance the parents discovered her again; or if you had heard, as I have, a story still told, all these years later, by some Oxford city guides, of the day when Shelley switched two babies in the High Street and walked serenely on, hilarious at his own joke, not caring whether the exchange was ever noticed, or if the changelings were ever returned to their rightful mothers’ arms.

Charles can picture, now, and only too clearly, the bizarre and claustrophobic atmosphere in which this strange
ménage
played itself out—the looking-glass world Shelley built for himself, and then could not escape. One man, two women; and the women bound in their turn b a tie they could neither of them break. Well might Claire have called it a
folie à trois.
For there is something tinged with madness in all these echoes and half reflections, these endless repeating patterns, and the incessant giddying sense of having to constantly re-assess what is real, and what is feigned. The two women drawing him always in opposite directions—one dark, one fair; one passionate, one chill; one always eager, one forever aloof. And what is Charles to make of the man at the heart of the maze—this man who is at once pitiful and pernicious, at once tender and terrifying? Because for all his talk of love and freedom, the fact remains that Shelley abandoned a young and pregnant Harriet to take two teenage girls on a mad scramble across Europe which rendered the both of them social outcasts—one expecting an illegitimate child, and the other unlikely ever to make a conventional marriage. And yes, Shelley could have argued that brought up by Godwin as those girls had been, they would neither of them have cared about such conventions, but Charles suspects that whatever the philosopher may have preached about sexual liberation and the equality of the sexes, he would have recoiled in horror at his own daughter putting those precepts into practice in such a flagrant and irrevocable manner. Indeed is there not a hint of that in this very letter—there would have been no need for Shelley to argue the case for the postponement of his marriage to Mary after Harriet’s death if Godwin had not been strenuously pressing for just such a ceremony, and at once. And is not Shelley’s attempt to place all the blame for his ill-treatment of his first wife to the account of the second a little discreditable? Was he really so weak—so easily manipulated? Charles sighs, thinking of Claire, remembering the tears in her eyes as she handed him this letter—this letter she has kept all these years as a pledge of love. And it can indeed be read as such, but it can also be read as a shameful attempt to defend an eight years’ status quo that brought her nothing but pain, and stole from her whatever life and love she might still have found. The deeper Charles reaches into Shelley’s past the darker it becomes. Well might Maddox accuse him of bringing death and ruination to everyone about him, well might he conclude the poet’s was a midwinter heart.

Charles turns back to the room, wondering, for the first time and with sudden misgiving, whether he has been drawn into the same mirror world of deceit and subterfuge that had his uncle seeing murder where there was only suicide. A world as phantasmagoric as one of Shelley’s own nightmare visions, bearing all the appearance of daylight reality, but which is nothing more than the writhings of an overwrought imagination. It is time to draw a line; time to regain some detachment, some objectivity. He goes to ring the bell, and the door opens almost at once.

“May I speak to your mistress, Annie?”

“She’s indisposed, sir. She said to give you this.”

My part of our bargain has been fulfilled; I expect you now to honour yours. You will not be received in this house again until you have done so. I am not well—indeed I have been ill for many years—and I need repose. You have already occasioned me quite enough suffering.

C.C

Both content and style sit rather oddly with the confident, flowing hand, and the bloom of health he saw in her face not much more than an hour ago. Nor does Charles quite concur that what he’s caused Claire so far can really be called suffering. Inconvenience, yes, even irritation, but she’s turned the situation so smartly to her advantage he could almost believe she contrived it. Like all her sudden shifts of mood, it is disconcerting, and all the more so now.

The maid meanwhile is waiting, “Was there a message, sir? Madam said—”

“Yes, yes. You may tell her that I will do as she asks. As we agreed.”

She bobs. “And madam said you were to give me a letter, sir. Most particular she was.”

Charles takes it from the table where he left it and sees the maid smooth the pages and place them carefully, once again, in the trunk.

“Will you be requiring dinner, sir?”

“No, Annie. Indeed I am not sure when I will next be here. I shall go upstairs and collect a few things. In case I should need them.”

“Very well, sir. I will inform Madam.”

Out on the street the rain is falling finely, and the day failing in a gathering fog. It’s too late for Chester Square now, even had Charles a mind to go there. By the time he turns into Buckingham Street the mist has thickened to a heavy brown haze, and it’s only when he’s a few short yards from the house that he sees there’s someone standing on the doorstep. Someone a little shorter than he is, a little thinner—someone who moves now into the light cast by the upstairs windows.

Charles quickens his pace, a flicker of unease catching at his heart. “Sam?” he calls. “Sam?”

Wheeler starts at the sound of his voice, then comes towards him through the fog.

“It’s all right, Chas. Nothing to concern yerself about. Old Stornaway got a bit carried away, that’s all.”

“Carried away about what?” demands Charles, gripping Sam’s arm. “What’s happening? What are you doing here?”

“Seems Abel went up to check on yer uncle earlier this afternoon and found ’im lying on the floor, and a lot of books and papers strewn about the place—”

“What do you mean ‘on the floor’? Is he hurt—”

He makes to push past Sam into the house, but the constable holds him back. “Easy, Chas. Like I said, it’s all right now. ’E’s got a coupla bumps ’n cuts but the doctor’s been and no ’arm’s done.”

“The
doctor’s
been—and no-one thought to send for me?”

“Well Abel probably weren’t thinkin’ that clearly. And Bow Street’s a lot closer than St John’s Wood.”

“But why you? Why the police?”

Sam gives a shrug. “He had some wild idea the ’ouse’d been broken into.”

“And has it?”

“No sign. And that boy of yours swears all the doors was locked.”

“And nothing’s been taken—nothing’s missing—”

Sam shakes his head. “I got Abel to ’ave a look, after we’d got ’im calmed down. ’E were a bit shamefaced by then. Realised ’e’d got everyone panicked over nothin’. Looks to me like yer uncle might ’ave woken up when no-one was by and tried to take a look at the books by Abel’s chair. Only ’e’s a bit unsteady, and managed to trip over the blanket or some such, and in the process knocked a whole lotta stuff flyin’. Seems the simplest explanation anyway.”

Charles stares at him, remembering seeing his uncle struggling to his feet in exactly that way. He might well have done something similar again. The question is, what on earth was Abel doing leaving him alone?

“Thank you, Sam,” he says eventually. “For coming.”

Sam smiles. “You’re welcome, Chas. You know as I’d always do it.”

They shake hands and Sam strides up towards the Strand, whistling quietly under his breath. Charles, meanwhile, is making his way up the stairs, two at a time. Whatever happened before, the room’s been put to rights now, and Abel is sitting in a chair on the far side of the fireplace, a blanket drawn up over his knees. He looks pale, and paler still when he sees Charles. “I were only gone a little while, Mr Charles,” he starts, “I were looking at those old files again, in case there were anythin’ I’d missed, and I just left yer uncle a minute to go upstairs. I only sat down for a moment—I cannae think how I came to fall asleep, it’s not like me at all—”

Something Charles cannot but accede, which in his current mood makes him only more suspicious. He says nothing to Abel, but goes over instead to his uncle and kneels down beside him. There’s a graze on his forehead that’s darkening to a bruise, but otherwise he seems unscathed. But as Charles reaches to touch the injury gently the old man opens his eyes and utters a strangled cry, throwing up his hands to shield his face. There are scratches on both palms. Charles frowns, and whispers soothingly to him, before turning to Abel. “Where are the books Sam said were on the floor? The ones my uncle was supposed to be reaching for?”

Abel glances across to the table by the fire. “Well—” he begins hesitantly.

Charles gets up and goes to the pile. Half a dozen case books are stacked together, but it’s the one on the top that he picks up. It’s the 1816 file—the file that started this whole affair. Only now the leather binding is scorched, and the edges of the pages blackened. Charles’ heart is hammering as he opens the book and turns to where Maddox’ notes on the Godwin case had been—where the allegation of murder had been. But the paper is so charred now that it crumbles away in his hands. There is nothing left; the words Charles deciphered are gone, the name obliterated. There is nothing to show the accusation was ever made.

“What happened to this book?” he says quietly.

“It were on the fire, Mr Charles, when I came in. The boss were lying on the floor, and the book were on the fire. Billy pulled it free, but by then the flames had already took hold.”

“And was that why you thought someone had been in here?”

Abel flushes. “Well it seemed a mite coincidental, Mr Charles. That it shouldae been that book, of all of ’em, when ye’re workin’ on the same case. But young Mr Wheeler checked everythin’ downstairs, and he’s convinced no-one couldae got in. So I have tae assume the boss dropped the book by mistake. He were sitting in that chair by the hearth, and I left the book on the table next him when I went upstairs. I suppose I can see how it mightae happened.”

Charles looks at Abel, and then at the armchair. He, too, can see how it might have happened, though he, like Abel, is wary of coincidence; he is more apt to see design than accident in such apparent happenstance. But if someone did indeed throw the book on the fire deliberately, is an unseen intruder more or less disquieting than the possibility that his uncle tried to burn the book himself? Has he, in fact, already tried to do that once before—that time during the storm? Charles had thought, then, that his uncle wanted to tell him something about the case, but perhaps it was the book
itself
he was after—the
book
he wanted to destroy. Has the old man been watching and listening all this time, trapped in his own silence, terrified of what Charles might discover, and what might be disclosed about his own past? But even that makes no sense. Because if Harriet’s death was indeed suicide and not murder, what can there be in that for him to fear?

Charles sits down by his uncle and takes his mottled hand in his own. The old man’s pulse flutters like a pinioned bird. His eyes are open, but there is no recognition, no response.

“Have you heard from Fraser yet?“ Charles asks Abel without lifting his gaze from Maddox’ face. “Does he remember the Godwin case?”

“I’ve not heard from him, Mr Charles. I’ll be sure to tell ’ee if I do.”

Billy arrives with more tea, and Abel sets him bustling about Maddox. Tucking blankets, straightening pillows.

“Where were you, Billy,” says Charles, “when this happened?”

Billy flashes him a glance. “Down in the scullery, Mr Charles, ’aving another go at those boots a’ yours. Like you asked. I ’eard Mr Stornaway cryin’ out and came up sharp.”