The Fiend in Human (33 page)

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Authors: John MacLachlan Gray

BOOK: The Fiend in Human
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A REPREHENSIBLE ACT
And a Nadir for British Journalism
by
Alasdair Fraser
Senior Correspondent
Dodd’s
It is now clear that the correspondent for
The Falcon
intends to spread poison into every hearth in the realm with his outrageous allegations, the sum of which constitutes a monstrous insult to every Londoner, and to British Justice.
One can scarcely muster the dexterity to parse such twisted sentiments. It is as though, unconfined to the spectrum of Good and Evil, Decent and Fallen, Mr Whitty would treat the City itself (the greatest city on earth) as a village of damned souls, her policemen having become demons and her beloved Queen a predatory monstrosity with the claws of a dragon.
‘It does not help our work,’ laments Under-Inspector Salmon of Scotland Yard, ‘that members of the press employ devious means to inflame the public.’
Of all Mr Whitty’s deplorable pronouncements, for shamelessness and sham, none approaches the latest onslaught. It is as if a chemist were to proclaim the existence of a poison, then turn around and market it to the general public as a tonic – the poison in this case being that which fouls the public mind with all that is vile, corrupt and pernicious. And if that is the state of things, who will not steal? Who will not resort to unspeakable practices in the name of pleasure? And which among us will resort to murder, there being no reason to recoil from anything, here in the village of the damned?
‘Our enquiries,’ continues the under-inspector, ‘are not made easier by the flawed and false conclusions of the correspondent from
The Falcon.’
As with the cry of ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre, no good will result from the capricious exaggerations of Edmund Whitty. And yet why should he care, when such obscene provocations sell papers and thereby enhance his pocket-book, as well as that which is left of his reputation? Whether the victim be a debauched doxy such as Dorcas Owler or an innocent of good family, the death of every one of these women is a gain to him. How long will London authorities countenance such atrocious public mischief as this?
A VISIT TO WILLIAM RYAN IN NEWGATE GAOL
by
Edmund Whitty
Senior Correspondent
The Falcon
Surely not one man out of a hundred whose road to business takes him through Newgate Street or the Old Bailey passes Newgate Gaol without a furtive glance upon its empty recesses, its small, grated windows – yet how many give a thought to the wretched beings immured in its dismal cells? What gentleman imagines that, day by day, hour by hour, he passes within a yard of some fellow creature, bound and helpless, entombed within this gloomy repository for the guilt of London, whose misery will soon terminate in a violent and shameful death?
Ever inquisitive, your correspondent set about to discover where, precisely, William Ryan may be situated.
Having shown our credentials to the servant, we were ushered into the office of the Governor’s House, where, after a delay, the officer arrived whose duty it was to conduct us – a man of about fifty in a broad-brimmed hat, who looked as much like a clergyman as a turnkey; which gentleman led us into a small room containing a desk and a book for visitor’s autographs.
On a shelf over the desk, curiously, were the heads and faces of the notorious murderers, Bishop and Williams; their features have been depicted so as to supply sufficient moral grounds for their execution, with no other evidence against them …
Leaving the office, your correspondent entered a long room with a choice collection of irons, then passed through a heavy oaken gate, studded with nails and guarded by another turnkey. Together with our escort, we passed through a number of tortuous stone windings, guarded in their turn by gates and gratings, thereby dispelling the slightest hope of escape – if only by virtue of the maze of confusion to be undergone in doing so.
Down a flight of steps we proceeded past the chapel, where, but a few years ago, condemned prisoners were suffered to attend their last service seated beside their own coffins.
Further downward are the dungeons known as Stonehold, where the miasma is indescribable. Sufficiently poor the ventilation, sufficiently thick the stench, that prisoners must be doused with vinegar before they are taken to court.
We now pass through the press-room – a long, sombre space with two tiny, grated windows and a table, upon which sits a Testament with no sign of having received recent use. In this room, three wretches sit pinioned and awaiting their execution.
‘They are dead men,’ notes the turnkey, within his subjects’ hearing.
A few paces away, through a dark passage in which a charcoal stove casts a lurid glow over the vicinity, lie the cells. In one of these sits William Ryan, in irons, attended by an experienced turnkey who never leaves him under any circumstances.
It is a stone dungeon, eight feet long by six feet wide, with a bench at one end, under which are a prayer book and a Bible, with an iron candlestick fixed on the wall to one side. The tiny grated window above admits neither air nor light.
On the bench sits William Ryan.
‘Welcome, Sir,’ announces the unfortunate. ‘I regret that I cannot offer you refreshment, but my circumstances have been limited somewhat since last we met.’
Conceive the situation of this man, his state of isolation! Consider the thoughts which must weigh upon his mind! Imagine his feverish restlessness, the fear of death amounting almost to madness, together with an overwhelming sense of his own helplessness in the face of an implacable officialdom, yet tantalized by a faint hope of reprieve – faint indeed, for all the good that your correspondent has been able to effect!
Conceive, therefore, the heavy heart of your correspondent, who, after having received the most civil of greetings, must inform our anxious friend that there is no hopeful news, that the official line has not altered, that the under-inspector fails to see, or cannot see, or refuses to see, that which is patently plain to any man with a pair of eyes. What a temptation to fall into bitterness and despair!
Though noticeably weaker (the result of foul air, bad food and want of exercise), his fine features having grown ever more pinched and old, the condemned man rises to his feet and stands erect, grey eyes sharp as he shakes our hand, asks after our health, commends himself to persons dear to him, and speaks of the future with optimism.
Replies your correspondent: ‘I am deeply sorry, Sir, for the disappointing manner in which your case has been dealt thus far. But we must not give up. Do not lose hope, Sir. For we are in England, where sanity prevails.’
Replies William Ryan: ‘I am grateful for your assistance, Sir. Bring on the worst, yet still I shall be grateful.’
Grateful to me!
The Crown
Phoebe has not wept since she left Dorcas’s side, not once, not a tear. There is no room inside for grief, such is her anger — which is for the best; being young, she is more equipped for the latter than the former.
Unlike grief, anger may be contained within an anaesthetic, almost pleasurable, calm; to look at Phoebe, a casual observer would see nothing other than another young woman naively determined to defeat poverty, using the one saleable commodity in her possession: dressed like a whore, but with no eye for the subtleties – that, for an example, it is of no use to unbutton a bodice when there is no cleavage to display, nor to paint lips red whose natural expression is of precise determination.
The girl in question would make a far more suitable prospect were she to have remained properly buttoned and to make use of her natural attributes – keen features, a quick wit, an sardonic eye – thereby to beguile some university gentleman.
For in truth there exists no young female (charwoman or countess, schoolgirl or flower-seller) in London who does not exist in some male mind as a tantalizing fantasy, in whose honour some schoolboy does not regularly engage in self-abuse – a fantasy which, when he becomes an old boy, he will seek to make real. Hence, the relation between the brothel and the theatre: success in both depends upon one’s observation of the world, of the human mind, as well as one’s own outward identity in the calligraphy of sex.
Given that Phoebe is a virgin who has never sought to acquire such insights, the weapon hidden in her dress (the knife with which she prepared her father’s supper each evening) is but a useless extremity, her pose a trap improperly set – a trap which has not been set at all.
Yet this is her only hope if she is to look him in the face.
Dorcas once treated Phoebe to a ride in a hackney coach in their customary guise of well-born ladies – the price of the ride, Phoebe was assured, having been extracted from a gentleman’s purse on Oxford Street. On that occasion did Dorcas point out the house off Bruton Street; then they rode around Berkeley Square again and again, having no place else to go.
‘Ain’t it prime,’ Dorcas said wistfully of the house, momentarily allowing her accent to slip. ‘And to think he is tall and handsome into the bargain! And he likes me, Miss Phoebe, so he does …’
The day and night following that terrible afternoon, Phoebe sat under a plane tree in Berkeley Square, not once taking her eyes from the four-storey corner building, confident that she would recognize Mr Roo on sight. Not until she felt certain to have inspected every occupant, both entering and exiting, did she admit defeat; for there was not one resident she could describe as resembling Dorcas’s handsome lover.
Not that it is by any means certain that Mr Roo is her friend’s murderer. As Mr Whitty demonstrated, one does not find the truth straightaway but blindly and step by step …
Now she finds herself at the Crown, pursuing her alternate course – taking Dorcas’s place, literally so, at a table that she knows her friend favoured, from which position she hopes to encounter the gentleman she seeks. With the confidence of the young she knows she will recognize Mr Roo when she sees him.
On the dance floor, the ladies – Miss Fowler, Miss Bolton and a nameless blue-eyed girl with colourless hair – wearing short capes over their
décolleté,
dance with shop managers and the sons of shop managers, warehouse-owners and the sons of warehouse-owners. Unused to dancing and therefore ill at ease, the gentlemen don’t speak as much as one word to their ladies; indeed, the atmosphere is oddly formal. But the hour is still early; by midnight these awkward gentlemen, emboldened by two bottles of champagne at ten shillings a bottle, will warm to the atmosphere on the dance floor, not to mention the
décolleté
before their faces, and the ladies will profit well.
Carefully Phoebe studies the faces of the women, their subtlety of expression and economy of gesture; so rapt does she become that at first she fails to recognize his voice.
‘Good evening, Miss Owler, I am relieved to have found you.’ Anticipating the advances of a stranger, momentarily she panics, unable to formulate a sensible reply, nor to look the gentleman in the face; having been rendered in this instant paralysed at the prospect of a prospective gentleman—a
customer —
who expects her to carry out the unmentionable thing, a thing she blushes to speak of, even to another of her sex …
Mr Whitty.
The sudden appearance of that familiar and agreeable face comes as
a not unwelcome shock. Her fury at his apparent sang-froid amid the stark horror of her friend’s demise having abated, she has had time to make excuses for him. It is the profession which is heartless, not the practitioner. All men in public life are benumbed in certain ways; it is not his fault.
‘Notwithstanding the events on Cannon Street Road, Miss, surely you’re aware that, while I’m a hard gentleman with a bitter tongue, I am not a monster.’ Whitty lights a cigaret, allowing the point to sink in. ‘Surely you know that the death of your friend affected me greatly as soon as I realized it was she. Please understand that this dismal circumstance has only increased my determination to seek out the beast who would do such a thing.’
Whitty is a smooth man and she does not trust him; nonetheless, she gives him her full attention. Even in her present preoccupation with death and retribution and unimaginable loss, the young woman cannot help noting Mr Whitty’s fine coat and haberdashery, his impeccable grooming – whatever the condition of the man within.
‘I’ve been searching for you, Miss. Your father is in anguish. He needs you.’
‘I’m on other business, Mr Whitty.’
‘Evidently — you have assumed an uncharacteristic wardrobe.’
‘It has accomplished me nothing, I regret to say.’
‘To be candid, I found you presentable as you were.’
‘Maybe so, Mr Whitty. Men’s tastes, I’m told, vary.’
The correspondent pauses to nod a tribute in the direction of Miss Fowler and Miss Bolton, who smile over their admirers’ shoulders. ‘Indeed they do vary.’
‘And how do you do, Sir? Well enough?’
‘Somewhat battered by events, Miss Phoebe. As, I am certain, are you.’ A long pause ensues. Unprepared to withstand a tense silence under Whitty’s gaze, Phoebe reaches for her glass — disastrously, for she cannot bring the gin to her lips for the trembling of her hands. The truth now being obvious, she buries her face into the crook of one bare arm and falls to sobbing upon the table; whereupon in an instant Mr Whitty has occupied the chair alongside, there to enfold her in a pair of surprisingly strong arms for an idle gentleman, arms whose attendant tenderness gives heart to her in the way her father once did when she was small, and her mother too, she supposes, whoever she was.
‘Miss, I request the honour of your company, that we might speak privately on a matter of importance to us both.’
So saying, he rises and extends the crook of his elbow to her — which she takes, in the way she has seen with ladies and gentlemen of the quality. Thus appearing, to her own eyes at least, like any other lady of the evening in the company of a sporting gentleman, she climbs the open stairs to the mezzanine and thence down a carpeted hallway, which opens onto a series of supper rooms for private entertainment. One of these facilities contains two laughing young women, their male friend, and a ‘guest’ — the latter gentleman being entertained over food and drink, amid light-hearted games of chance, inadvertent touches and exposures of flesh – the object being to extract from the bedazzled guest everything he has in his purse and get a good dinner into the bargain. At the end of another short hallway they enter an office which is clearly that of the proprietor, for its walls have been papered with advertisements for signal matches in a career of over a hundred prizefights, culminating in his two epic encounters with the Negro Narcissus – the last of which Stunning Joe Banks survived for thirteen rounds, despite a right forearm dislocated from prematurely putting his weight into a jab during the sixth.
The gentleman looming over his desk is of truly alarming proportions – greyhound-thin around the waist, yet massive about the chest, with pads of muscle seemingly overlaid like armour on the shoulders and arms; as well, she notes the ugly, inexpressive countenance, the imprint of its owner’s former profession – the flattened nose, the cheeks covered by layers of scar tissue with the metallic sheen of a fish.
‘Miss Phoebe Owler, allow me to present Mr Joseph Banks, an associate.’
‘What manner of associate, Sir?’
‘Mr Whitty and I exchange information to our mutual benefit, Miss,’ offers the gentleman behind the desk. ‘How do you do? I have the honour of serving as the proprietor of this establishment.’
While adapting to an unprecedented situation in the company of two such impressive gentlemen, Phoebe maintains what she deems to be an icy poise.
‘How do you do, Sir? I am reasonably well and hope you are the same.’
The grotesque yet elegant gentleman rounds the desk to extend a hand which might be a lump of knotted hardwood, which she holds briefly, though unwilling at the same time to release the arm of the correspondent.
‘Please sit down, Miss.’ Stunning Joe gestures to a surprisingly delicate chair made of wicker. ‘Might the Crown offer you its hospitality in the form of something to drink?’
‘Spiced gin, if you please—I prefer “the Out-and-Out”.’
The correspondent intervenes: ‘A cup of punch for the young woman please, Mr Banks.’
‘You are impertinent, Mr Whitty. The gentleman asked me and I requested spiced gin.’
Replies the correspondent: ‘It was Miss Dorcas who customarily asked for spiced gin. May I ask, Miss, if you are contemplating this impersonation for some private purpose?’
‘That is none of your business, Sir.’ She maintains her calm: How does he know her so well?
A discreet cough from the proprietor: ‘And something for yourself, Edmund?’
‘A small whisky for the moment, Mr Banks, thank you.’
‘How small?’
‘Rather large, actually.’
‘Very good, Sir.’
Phoebe waves a small thank-you to the retreating proprietor, who responds with a near imperceptible nod before closing the door. The correspondent, having worried himself white over the young lady’s absence, then having calmed himself by means of forty drops of tincture of opium, therefore being insensible to the quiver of erotic content in the ambience at present, continues: ‘You manage a fine portrayal of Dorcas, to be sure. However, at this time it is my wish to communicate with Miss Phoebe Owler, and not her tragic friend.’
‘Such presumption, Sir. I don’t recall having become your ward.’
‘Miss Owler, under these difficult circumstances, what is it that we are attempting to achieve?’
‘May I ask, Sir, what is it you mean by
we
? You and I are not in business together.’
‘
Touché,
Miss. Yet my question stands.’
‘I am not so unpresentable, Sir, and thought a gentleman would like me. That I might go with him to a room and let him do what he likes to me for money. Is that not how a girl makes a place for herself in this world?’
‘I take your point. It is a dirty business and the great hypocrisy of our time.’
‘Please don’t talk to me in headlines, Mr Whitty, I don’t like it.’
‘Never reject a member of the press, Miss. A trite spokesman is better than none at all.’
She nearly laughs. Strange how one can still laugh.
‘Miss Owler, allow me to express my condolences over your terrible loss. Such loss is meant for soldiers.’
‘I don’t understand you, Mr Whitty. Do you wish to make a joke of it?’
‘On the subject of misery and death, jokes are all I have left.’
‘Then you should make better jokes.’
‘True. Now that I think about it, I never laugh at them myself.’
‘Why did you wish to see me?’
Replies the correspondent: ‘To congratulate you.’
‘Congratulate me? What have I accomplished?’
‘You have instinctively grasped that the fiend cannot be hunted but must be lured. A sophisticated concept and I commend you for it. However, if I may be so bold, there remain important particulars.’
‘And what might they be?’
‘For one, your father has no knife with which to make his supper. He has requested that you please return it to him, so that he may slice a bit of mutton.’
‘I have no knife. He should look for it in the box next the fire.’
‘I am relieved to hear it, for the implement will be of more use there than under your skirts. Which subject brings me to the second particular: May one take it that you seek to attract the attentions of one specific gentleman – as opposed to the male population at large?’
She feels her cheeks redden at the thought.
‘Correct, Sir. His name is Mr Roo, and with my own eyes have I once seen him.’

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