Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (26 page)

The man was offensive, but his claim nonetheless disturbed me.

“What else is cooking in the office, if I may ask?”

“You may not ask, Mr Jackman.” I took pleasure in not calling him “sergeant”, which seemed to pain him. “Though you left me a deal of refiling.”

He stopped on the spot. “Tell me,” he said in deadly earnest, “have you worked upon the Mary Ann Brough case?”

“The wet nurse?” I said casually, pleased to feel I knew something of Wardle’s past.

“The royal wet nurse,” he said.

There was something in Jackman’s manner I didn’t like, a suggestion that I was not truly admitted to Wardle’s confidence, not as he had been. “That was twenty years ago.”

“What do you know of it?”

I trotted out the facts that Wardle had mentioned: the royal wet nurse had gone mad and murdered her own children, six of them, and tried to take her own life.

“Did you stop to ask what drove her mad?”

“Family troubles, wasn’t it? I forget. Violent husband.”

“That’s what the popular press hinted,” said Jackman, his manner unsavoury. “Wouldn’t you be violent if you worked hard your whole life and came out without nothing? Hmm? Tell me that! Cast out like so much scrap iron.”

I was determined not to be drawn by his air of cheap mystery and walked on into the parliamentary gardens. “Servants are dismissed every day. There are hard-luck stories worse than hers, that kill nobody.”

“Maybe so, but injustice rankles, wouldn’t you say?” His dark eyes bored into me. “Injustice you daren’t speak of. That puts terrible pressure on the mind.”

“I wouldn’t know, I’m sure,” I said uncomfortably. “But you weren’t there either, twenty years ago.”

“I wasn’t,” he smiled eerily, gazing across to the south bank, “but I have been to see her.” And he began to recite, in a querulous tone:

Within the prison’s massive walls,

What anguish will torment her breast

When phantoms of her six dear children

Will disturb her of her rest?

Such a sad and dreadful murder,

On record there is no worse,

Committed by a cruel mother,

Once the Prince of Wales’ Nurse.

The Parliament bells pealed as prelude to the hour striking, but Big Ben was being repaired, and in place of the great bell’s two o’clock chimes a silence fell between us. “Look here, Jackman, I haven’t time for your poetry,” I said flatly.

“It was a popular pamphlet of the day,” he said in less portentous tones. He sensed that he was losing my sympathy and went on rapidly. “There’s a lot that doesn’t come out in a trial. Things left unsaid. Strings being pulled. Manipulation behind the scenes. Only you never know who is the puppet-master. You’d assume the defendant only conceals things to improve their chances, to cast themselves in the best possible light. But there are things in this world more frightening than prison. When threats are presented in a particular way, when someone powerful wants information kept secret, sometimes you’ll beg for a life of poverty and malnutrition.”

“Please, do not treat me as a novice. If you wish to speak of dark secrets from that trial, kindly speak of them.”

He looked over the railing at the dark waters. “Mary Ann Brough chose not to speak of the circumstances of her dismissal, a dismissal in no way her fault. You would admit that a wet nurse must be empowered to scold children in her charge? What, then, if the situation were reversed? If the nurse had no power of chastisement, while the child was permitted to abuse her with any amount of violence?”

“Then I call that household a madhouse.”

He turned to me sharply. “Why do you say that?”

I wafted a hand. “Because it’s as children that we learn our place in the world.”

He breathed out. “I thought you might be referring to rumours about the Queen.” He looked around to check that nobody was near us and began in a tone of earnest pleading. “You’ll have heard of the Koháry curse. No? Well, well. The Coburgs, you see, have an eye for advantageous nuptials. But they’re suffering for it. Our beloved Prince Albert made the most brilliant marriage; he was penniless when he crossed the Channel. But his Uncle Ferdinand scored almost as high, winning the Hungarian heiress, Antoinette Koháry, whose father was so delighted with the match he bequeathed her his entire estate. What luck! Except that one cousin, a monk no less, was aggrieved at being precipitously disinherited. So he takes his manual of exorcisms to the churchyard at midnight. Oh, verily shall the Lord Almighty visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons, intones this old monk, to the third and fourth generation. You see? The blood curse of the Coburgs!”

I looked back and forth in impatience, up and down the river. The tide was high and the reflections of the bridges, shimmering upon the turbid waters, seemed phantasmal links to another world. “Spare us the mumbo-jumbo, Jackman.”

“Superstitious it may sound, but the Coburgs have been afflicted ever since by melancholic illness. Have you not read how Prince Albert’s cousins are falling like flies? It’s disastrous, this conjunction of royal bloodlines. It begets incurable maladies.” Jackman leaned closer to me. “The Hanovers, they’re notorious for brutality. Victoria’s father was drummed out of the army for flogging men hundreds of times over. Her uncle Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was suspected of murder, and incest. Of George III and his lunacy, the tales untold are countless. Now it’s the turn of the Prince of Wales.”

I could brook this nonsense no longer. I turned back towards the Yard.

Jackman dogged my footsteps. “Bertie is a charming enough young man, but he has a cruel streak. The stories in the clubs–”

“Enough of the tall tales,” I retorted. “What happened to Mary Ann Brough?”

“Victoria’s brood took their toll. She was dismissed. Heartbroken. Penniless. It is my belief, when she saw in her own children one iota of the cruelty she received at the hands of Victoria’s eldest son, she decided she could not bring such monsters into the world.”

“Enough of this, Jackman. What is it you want to tell me?”

He looked at me, hesitating. “He’s not a bad man, don’t get me wrong. Only there are decisions a man makes, early in life, that mark him, that alter his direction, so that when he has lived for many years with the consequences of that decision, he looks back upon a chain of actions he has taken that would have been anathema to his younger self.”

“You are speaking of your own career?”

“I am speaking of the inspector’s.”

I looked at him and smelt only his bitterness. He had hinted that he had been unfairly sacked. It might be true.

“I want to warn you. There are things that go on in the force. You’re young, an upstanding chap. You think you’re above all that. Don’t be too sure. You could lose everything, just like I have.”

His look troubled me. I shook his fishlike hand and returned to work, trying to put from my mind that wheedling tone, that pleading gaze. Wardle had gone out. But I recalled his reaction when I first complained about the spout report, and I wondered if in every career the compromises and half-truths began so swiftly as they had in mine.

It took all Saturday and a series of exorbitant cab-rides to find her, but I tracked Hester down in a shabby Hoxton dance hall far from the West End. She seemed pleased to see me and lost no time excusing herself from a desultory rehearsal.

“Gone down-market?” I asked as we sat down in the tea shop opposite.

“Got to take the work that’s going.” She pouted. “My glamour days is over.”

I smiled. “Surely not.”

“Oh yes. Someone’s got it in for me.”

It took me a moment to realise she was in earnest. “What happened?”

“Another bleeding spout, wasn’t it?”

“At the Evans?” I said breathlessly. “I didn’t hear of it.”

She shrugged. “Toffs and royalty are never too keen on seeing their mistresses’ names plastered all over the press.”

“But how has that affected you?”

“They decided I was the Jonah, didn’t they, and sent me packing.”

I leaned forward. “You know something, Hester.”

“I know I’m no bleeding jinx,” she burst out, “and I can tell you her name, if you like. Starts with an N and ends in Hell.”

“Was Nellie in the show?”

“She was in the bleeding box. Safety curtain comes down at the interval and sends bloody Niagara Falls on her and her fancy man. Only I’m the one as gets the blame for it, while her with her friends in high places waltzes off free as a lark. Buy us a bun, won’t you, love?”

I smiled, sad to see her disappointed. Yet there I sat, calculating for my own ends how to lead her into indiscretions. I told myself it was from admirable motives, the type of game Wardle would play without qualms, but it turned my stomach. Still, a mug of chocolate and a cream bun, and it all poured out, without my prompting.

“You could see the shillings in her eyes,” she said. “All doe-eyed she’d been over Berwick while they were courting. She loved being admired, and he admired her like no other man could. He was clever, you see, and funny, which flattered her the more. They were a handsome couple, it’s true. Him with his hat and sideburns, cracking some hare-brained joke; her with her waist and her bust, and that hair of hers, flailing it round like a fire torch, and putting on elegant airs. But I tell you, for all she was full of it, of how clever he was and how fascinating he talked, she couldn’t bear playing second fiddle to him. All her life she’s been centre of attention. Since the day she was born! They picked her up and clucked over her chubby cheeks and that flaming hair. But at those posh parties, it wasn’t enough and she felt like a fool. Finding herself in a circle where words counts as much as looks, and where her filthy tongue wouldn’t do, it came as a shock to her.”

The posh parties she spoke of were, of course,
soirées
chez Dickens. The professional actresses of whom Miss Dickens had spoken were Nellie and Hester. She had a soft spot for the novelist himself. “Stickler for details is Mr Dickens. None too keen on the, shall we say, improvisational style I’m used to. But he’s always ready for a laugh and a jape after hours. We had grand times. Played to gentlemen and ladies all over. I met the Queen, you know.”

“And Berwick?”

“He came along to start, but he had his meetings and that.”

“Meetings?”

“You know, all that protest nonsense.”

“What nonsense?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Reform? Some kind of secret society?”

“You’re talking to the wrong girl, love.”

“Then tell me where Nellie is and I’ll ask her.”

She looked at me reproachfully. I was about to push the point, but something told me that Hester didn’t know, or care. “Can you tell me about Nellie’s fancy man?”

“Is it that still? Well, young actresses tend to draw a lot of attention from gentlemen. At the cocktail parties, we received an embarrassment of invitations, not all of them above board. I often wonder if that was why Mr Dickens stopped re-engaging us: he wasn’t confident of our morality.” She raised an eyebrow. “Fair enough. We weren’t too sure of our morality and all. Some of these gentlemen, I couldn’t tell you the things they’re after.”

“Hester, don’t tell me you are blushing.” I had imagined the world held nothing secret or shameful for her likes, but nonetheless she blushed. Still, I had no need to hear of the indelicacies and indecencies that gentlemen demanded. “Tell me about the spout at Euston Square.”

A smile played across her lips. “You know already.”

“It was Berwick, wasn’t it? Ho there! Another bun for the lady.”

She giggled. “All right, I admit it. I tipped him the wink about the time.”

She still seemed to think I knew more than I did. “How? When?”

“There was me and Nellie and Roxton and–” She bit into the second bun. “You know who.”

“Nellie’s fancy man. The one she met after
The Frozen Deep
.”

“That’s right. Up at Roxy’s place in the country we were. What a mansion! All the frills and trimmings. Though Nellie reckons it’s all for show, he hasn’t two shillings to his name, and the whole place is put under dust covers the moment we leave. The way he goes on, gambling and drinking and showing off and worse, I thought he had a goldmine up his
derrière
. Anywise, Berwick was distraught about Nellie. He wouldn’t believe it at first. Then off he went and hid like a mouse. Half-starved himself.”

A strange envy took me. “He sounds a curious fellow, Hester.”

“Berwick?” She looked at me quizzically. “He’s all right of a chap,” she laughed, as if to describe the Koh-i-Noor as a nice little diamond. “Says what he means, which is more than can be said for most people. Thinks the best of everyone.”

“Of everyone?”

“Everyone who deserves it. There’s a few fools he won’t suffer. I always liked Berwick. He’s what I call a gent, not like some of ’em that are said to be born into it. Always a kind word he has. Makes you feel like you’re worth a thousand guineas. Tell you what else, he has big ideas. Yet she dropped him like so much dirt.”