The Fiend in Human (41 page)

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Authors: John MacLachlan Gray

BOOK: The Fiend in Human
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‘Mr Sewell, Sir,’ replies the under-inspector, ‘I hereby place you under arrest, both for your own safekeeping, and as a suspected murderer.’
‘Thank you, Sir,’ replies the Fiend.
Newgate Gaol
Seated in the soiled elegance of a hackney coach situated in front of Newgate Gaol, Whitty peers between the ragged curtains at the empty Grecian niches in the wall: which gods and goddesses were they intended to contain? By the spirit of this place, one might expect demons and snakes of the inferno. But perhaps not. Perhaps absence is its best expression in the end.
Where are Cobb and Fraser? Where are Punch Crocker and Mr Hicks? Back at Plant’s Inn is the correct answer. Because, for as far as their publishers are concerned, the freeing of an innocent man presents a far less noteworthy prospect than his arrest; indeed, the event pales in comparison to the truly vital interests of the moment: the couple who starved their kitchen maid and forced her to perform indecent acts; the elderly woman in a basement cubby-hole who stabbed a girl to death for urinating into her kitchen. Against such copy, what is the release of an innocent man?
Consequently, when at last Ryan’s gaunt, ragged, yet handsome figure, having undergone the formalities of release in the Governor’s House, steps between the iron gates to savour the smell of freedom – the smell of ale at the Saracen’s Head Inn, the smell of cattle at Smithfield Market – only the correspondent is there to greet him.
‘Mr Ryan. How do you do?’
‘Well enough, Mr Whitty, for weeks spent in a cess-pit. I am pleased to see you, for I have not so much as the price of an omnibus.’
‘I am surprised that Mrs Marlowe has not chosen to make the journey herself.’
‘Unfortunately, it is unwise for my love and I to be seen together. A professional matter, of some delicacy.’
Ryan settles into the greasy velvet cushion, savouring its softness, while Whitty directs the driver to the now-familiar address on Portland Place. As the coach rattles down Snow Hill, the correspondent for
The Falcon
produces notebook and pencil:
‘Mr Ryan, to business. For the benefit of our readers, would you care to place on the public record the impressions of the vindicated, acquitted, exonerated William Ryan?’
The grey eyes become amused and he considers his reply.
‘First, Mr Whitty, I must thank you twice. I thank you for taking up my case, and for carrying it through to the end, despite all setbacks. There were times when it seemed only a sceptical remark in
The Falcon
stood between my neck and the rope. The power of the press, Mr Whitty! God save the power of the press!’
Having thus supplied a favourable quotation for publication in
The Falcon
, the speaker abruptly changes his tone. ‘Got a cigar, old man?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Capital. Absolutely capital.’ Ryan luxuriates in an all but forgotten pleasure.
‘Quite.’ A damp uneasiness slips over the correspondent, like fog.
‘There is a second blessing I must thank you for, Sir. Mind, this one must remain between ourselves. Indeed, you are the only human being in the world I may tell it to.’
Odd, thinks Whitty, the need to confess.
Irish. Catholic. Of course
.
‘It concerns a woman named Sally. You did not know her.’
‘You refer to the fifth victim, Sally Hunger, your former partner in crime.’
‘The very one, Sir! Well remembered!’
Whitty braces himself for what is coming.
‘Oh, I done her, Sir. I did Sally, as we say in the trade. Dispatched her to a better world. Simple necessity, don’t you see, a financial matter. I tell you this that you might comprehend the extent of your assistance to me. Why, what is the matter, Mr Whitty? You seem to have lost your colour, there is no bloom in your cheeks at all. Take care, Sir, for a man is nothing without his health.’
William Ryan smiles, with an aspect of smug, triumphant satisfaction. The grey eyes become brittle.
The correspondent, who would give anything for a drink, turns away, not to give him more satisfaction than necessary. ‘I must have been a godsend to you.’
‘You surely were, Mr Whitty, that is the truth. Your cleverness saved me from my own.’
‘It was the crim-con game. Your little blackmail. All was as described, except for one small detail: the mark in question, whoever he was, did in fact pay the required ransom.’
‘More than willingly, he did. The price, though considerable, was but a momentary inconvenience for the Earl of Claremont.’
A running footman. A mustard-coloured chariot with a trail of liveried servants. Portland Place. Of course.
‘The Earl of Claremont is a wealthy man. Your dividend must have been substantial.’
‘Oh it was a handsome sum, you’re right there.’
‘All the more handsome as an undivided sum.’
‘You’re a quick study, to be certain. In any case, the partnership was already winding down. Age in a woman is not the same as it is in a man. When a woman ages, she deteriorates, and becomes less valuable.’
‘Therefore you disposed of her, murdered her, in a manner calculated to mimic the work of Chokee Bill in every detail.’
‘The knife-work required a strong stomach. It is not easy to mutilate an acquaintance.’
‘The scarf, of course, was not from Poole’s.’
‘Oh, that was not my only miscalculation. I have no doubt that the changes I made to her face did not exactly match the preferences of Chokee Bill. But my chief miscalculation was in underestimating the outcry for an arrest, the public fever whipped up by such as yourself. By the time I took care of Sally, any garrotter who topped a whore would have served Mr Salmon’s purpose, at least for the time being.’
‘Even if nothing quite matched.’
‘Details Mr Salmon elected to ignore, until I was safely hanged. He knew I did for Sally, don’t you see. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The crushers are pragmatic in that way. I ask you, Sir, is there no greater injustice than for a man to hang for crimes of which he is innocent?’
‘Indeed, you might have hanged for five murders, and not just the one you committed.’
‘To be candid, I prefer not to hang at all. So you see, Mr Whitty, no cloud is without a silver lining. Thanks to these perilous events, I am now a free man, an affluent man, and about to be reunited with the woman I love.’
‘Spare me the Byronics, Mr Ryan. You are a tick, Sir. You suck the blood out of every woman who enters your orbit.’
‘That is hard, Mr Whitty, and I do not like it.’
‘It makes no difference to me whether you like it or not. I intend to expose you.’
‘And expose yourself into the bargain? As the dupe who abetted a murderer? I doubt if that will do much for your professional standing.’
‘You overestimate my professional standing.’
‘If a man desires to destroy himself, there is no stopping him. But be assured, I shall not accompany you. You cannot touch me, Sir. Allow me to point out that it is fundamental to Common Law that a man may not be tried twice for the same crime. This was central to my thinking, don’t you see, when you made your proposal to me: that once acquitted of the whole, I should be free of the part.’
The coach rolls to a halt on Portland Place. William Ryan extends his hand, which the correspondent chooses not to accept.
‘I do not expect that we will be seeing one another in future. You see, as luck or fate would have it, the Earl of Claremont was also a client at the Grove of the Evangelist. Isn’t it a small world? Liked a good thrashing I’m told – though that wasn’t Sally’s line at all.
‘So the worry is that, despite his generosity, His Lordship might take exception to having a blackmailer on the premises.’
‘The Earl may be a fool, but he is a powerful fool. So my love and I have decided to relocate in the New World. For the protection of the lady – don’t you see? As I maintained to you from the beginning.’
Smiling at the irony of it, Ryan steps down from the coach and turns to the correspondent for the last time.
‘What a shame, Mr Whitty! Your notepad is empty! You have not written a word!’
Chester Path
Having determined to ride his cob for a satisfactory entrance (the trip to the stables was a bother), Reginald Harewood canters about the perimeter of the park twice before proceeding to the Outer Circle and the family town-house on Chester Path.
Reginald Harewood’s life is at a crossroads. The situation combines the direst urgency with a need for the utmost delicacy. With proper handling, he might emerge from his difficulty safe and sound. If handled poorly, he faces disgrace, disinheritance and ruin. The Governor’s displeasure with his style of life is one matter, but an intimate association with a murderer? Worse, an intimate association with one of the victims? Harewood is in no doubt that, should the facts emerge for all to see, his life to come will be a rum business indeed.
In every life come crises in which the spirit must rise to the challenge and overcome adversity.
Courage, mon vieux.
He alights from his mount in order to push open the iron gate, while tethering Raffles to the fence for the liveryman to deal with. Such is his preoccupation with his unenviable position in the light of recent events that he does not notice the movement in the curtains, two floors above.
He must marry Clara. This much is clear. However, the acceptance of such a conclusion does not render it any easier to bring about. After snubbing the girl for weeks (being hot for another – and they always know or at any rate suspect), it will require no small amount of persuasion to reacquire her favour.
So it is with a degree of unease that the only son and, it is to be hoped, future heir of the Harewood fortune (which he suspects to be greater than the Governor will ever acknowledge) approaches the town-house he stands to inherit. Nervously he smoothes his coat of robin’s-egg blue and adjusts his fawn breeches. Assuming a posture of firm resolve, he grasps the brass knocker with one gloved hand, smoothes his whiskers with the other, and arranges his face into something noble.
The door swings open with startling suddenness, as though the footman were crouched within. ‘Master Harewood. An unexpected pleasure, Sir.’
‘Damn it, Bryson, must you startle a fellow so?’ So saying, he thrusts his riding-crop, hat and gloves into the white-gloved hands of the footman.
‘I beg your pardon, Sir. You were not expected this early. Unless I am mistaken, your letter indicated your visit would take place at tea-time.’
‘Are you suggesting that I must make an appointment in order to enter my own home?’
Striding down the hall and into the reception room, Harewood is about to burst into the house proper with the usual
éclat
, but thinks better of it: he is seeking a woman’s hand. For the moment, his demeanour must suit the seriousness of holy matrimony.
The footman, smarting from the master’s unexpected cut, flutters about with a little clothes brush in one white-gloved hand. ‘Allow me to brush the back of your coat, Sir.’
‘That will do, thank you, Bryson.’
‘Very good, Sir.’
‘Please tell Miss Greenwell to come down directly, that I wish to see her.’
‘As you wish, Sir.’ The footman turns to leave, his face a blank façade.
‘No, Bryson, amend that. Please tell Miss Greenwell that I beg her to come to me in the sitting-room, at her pleasure. And tell her that I appear unwell.’
‘Unwell in what sense, Sir?’
‘Sick at heart, sort of thing. Treat it as a worrying situation.’
‘I shall do my utmost, Sir.’
‘See that you do, and there’s a half-crown for you.’
‘Most kind, Sir.’
Stepping into the sitting-room with its swaddled, subterranean hush and its necrophiliac aroma of hyacinths, Harewood notes that two chairs have been set near the ferns, conveniently before the fire, on either side of a small drum table upon which someone has placed a Doulton comport containing mints by Callard & Bowser; the perfect setting for a
tête-à-tête.
His thoughts affixed to the forthcoming interview, he proceeds past the unfinished jigsaw puzzle to stand before the fire, removing his gloves. Savouring a mint, he contemplates the representations of the Queen, the Iron Duke and the Saviour above the mantel, the former duet gazing into the distance, the latter looking to Heaven as though for assistance.
Nobility, Courage, Forbearance:
qualities upon which he must now
draw deeply in this time of crises. For indeed, the enormities of the past week scarcely bear thinking upon – therefore he resolves not to think upon them, lest his self-possession falter. He lights a cigar, then turns away from the Saviour in order to warm his behind.
Upon hearing the crisp click of footsteps on marble, he turns back to a contemplation of the Queen. Presently the door opens behind him. He pauses for effect, then, with the goose-flesh rising on the nape of his neck, he turns to face a chilly welcome that leaves him in no doubt as to the challenge at hand.
‘Clara. Dear Clara. You are lovelier than ever.’
‘How do you do, Mr Harewood? It is my understanding that you wish to see me.’ Her voice is a monotone; her eyes refuse to meet his, being cast down as though in prayer.
He gazes upon the young woman before him, framed in the door as though in a portrait, with an aspect inspired by
The Lady of the Lake.
‘To what may I credit this unexpected visit, Sir? For I have not heard from you in some time.’ So saying, Clara executes a small shrug as though to say,
I am beyond this. Nothing can hurt me now.
Harewood notes with relief that the girl can still get the blood going. The dishevelled blonde curls in appealing disarray; the fevered flush of the cheeks; the white fullness of the bosom; the slight puffiness about the eyes as though having just awakened: a package of sensuous vulnerability, wrapped in lace.
Harewood sinks to his knees. ‘Oh, Clara. Dear, dear Clara.’
‘Sir, I am astonished. Whatever can this mean?’ Again she affects indifference, a few drops of laudanum having mitigated her excitement to good effect.
Only at this juncture does he note the presence of Miss Brown, half-hidden behind the veritable balloon of lace that fills the portal, peering at him from beneath her perpetual eyebrow. Harewood rises briskly to his feet, mortified. Blessed if he will humble himself any further with a servant in attendance.
‘Miss Brown. Lovely to see you. You are well, I trust?’
‘Much obliged to you, Sir, I am well within reason.’
‘Madam,’ he continues, ‘I wonder if you would be so good as to have a word with Mother. Please tell her that I shall be visiting her in approximately a half-hour with an important announcement.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Harewood, Sir, but my duty as Miss Greenwell’s companion is to remain with her.’
To which her ward musters sufficient strength to speak: ‘Go, Miss Brown. Go now.’
Continues the future master of the house: ‘Allow me to assume that you feel at liberty to leave my cousin under the protection of a member of the family. Otherwise, I should wonder how you can bear to continue with us.’
‘I only wish to do my duty, Sir.’ With an imperceptible nod to Miss Greenwell, Miss Brown glides down the gaslit hallway like a small black cloud, and disappears.
An uneasy silence ensues. For a long interval these two handsome, proud, well-born young people regard one another with looks of solemnity and hurt.
Clara ventures a few steps toward him, then turns away: ‘Oh, Reginald,’ she says. ‘It is all so degrading and beastly.’ Whereupon, having nothing else to say about the matter, Miss Greenwell bursts into tears.
Gently, Harewood conducts the sobbing young lady to one of the chairs set conveniently before the fire, wherein she sits. He is about to take the other chair when, overcome by depth of feeling, he falls to one knee beside her and grasps her little hand in his.
‘Dear Clara, please try to understand that I have been in a state of utter shock. Conceive of it! Sewell and I were schoolmates! The scoundrel was my oldest and dearest friend!’
She takes back her hand to brush away the tears which wet her cheeks. ‘Yet you never suspected? You saw nothing that might warn you of his true nature? How ghastly – to think that I have been left alone with a monster in human form!’
‘Upon my word, Clara, I was as utterly deceived as you. The man is devilishly cunning. If you had seen him on that day, how he transformed before my eyes, from an Oxford man and regular good fellow, perfectly good chap, to a brutal monster! I tell you, I doubt that I shall ever recover.’
‘Have you spoken to him since? Has he explained himself?’
‘Sewell is in Newgate Prison, Clara. I would rather throw myself into the Thames than enter the building. My reputation is compromised enough as it is. To be burdened with such a notorious association, in addition to my current difficulties with the Governor – I swear, Clara, on my honour, were I to see the man face to face I should give him a deuced thrashing. But of all the ignominy, most injurious of all is that which he has done to our love.’
‘Why, Reginald, what do you mean? Though I confess to having been deeply wounded by your neglect. Indeed, I feared the worst.’ A tear falls.
‘Exactly so. You, like I, have been doubly deceived. It is as though the Devil himself were in this house!’
‘What is it you mean, Reginald? Deceived in what way?’
‘Think of it, Clara. Name the gentleman who arranged for us to be alone together under irresistible circumstances. Name the pander who egged us on, without whom …’ Here Harewood takes a moment to summon his moral courage. ‘Oh my dear, let us confess to each other that we were led astray, that our former conduct is something we must keep a secret for the rest of our lives. But who was it that led us? It was the Fiend himself, by Heaven! And to think that I never suspected! That I failed in my duty to the woman I love!’ Overcome, Harewood buries his face in her lap.
‘You were led astray by him. And I was led astray by you.’ Clara thinks about this. ‘I am disappointed in you, Reginald. I had assumed that a square man might recognize a crooked one.’
‘Clara, I swear on my honour that I shall set everything right.’
‘But how is that possible, Sir? You have intertwined my life and my reputation with that of a filthy murderer and … oh, it doesn’t bear thinking about! I have been betrayed in the lowest possible way!’ So saying, she launches into a fresh round of weeping.
‘Betrayed you? Whatever do you mean? How have I betrayed you, Clara?’
‘I cannot pronounce the words to describe it. It would foul my lips to do so.’
Reginald Harewood rises suddenly to his feet with an expression of horror. ‘I understand. It was he, was it not? He set you against me!’
The weeping pauses momentarily. ‘I must confess that the facts ensued from that, that beastly man …’
‘It was he who told you that … that …’
‘That you had … another.’
‘Another damnable lie! I swear it to you upon my honour!’
‘But why, Reggie? Why would he say such a thing if it were not true? It possible for one person to be so deceitful?’
‘Oh Clara my dear, you are such a child.’ So saying, he puts his arms around her. To which she does not object.
Victoria and Wellington look to the future. The Saviour looks to Heaven.
‘What is it you came to say to me, Reggie?’ she asks, wiping her eyes with a lace handkerchief. With her other hand she takes a mint from the bowl, and places it in her mouth.

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