The Solitary House (29 page)

As he makes his way through the box, page by page, he finds he is confronting the painful reality of his uncle’s slow and harrowing descent into the dark. The sheets are covered with annotations in black ink, but as with his uncle’s handwriting, so with his subject matter: There is a terrible distance between the confident magisterial comments that mark the older newspapers, and the impenetrable scratchings on the more recent ones. In consequence it takes longer than it should to decipher exactly what crimes this box records, but when he does, Charles’s heart starts to beat a little faster and he grips the page he’s holding until the elderly paper crackles in his hands.

The crime referred to hereunder is archetypical of that committed by the ‘sequential killer’, by which I mean it exhibits a gratuitous brutality, allied with an extreme, not to say excessive, ceremoniousness in the way the corpse has been performed upon, plundered, and positioned
.

NB: This man will kill again, and has very likely killed before: Investigate the possibility of earlier instances
.

The date at the head of the page is August 1817—far too early to have any bearing to the Cremorne case, but it’s the theory, the
thinking
, that has Charles turning up the lamp and emptying the box onto the floor. He’s sure now that this is what his uncle was trying to tell him—that a crime so elaborate as the murder of Lizzie Miller cannot possibly be a single unique act. That it must, in fact, have been preceded by other similar outrages—killings that display some of the same characteristics, if not the same degree of premeditated cruelty. Now he knows what he’s looking for, everything suddenly accelerates. Within minutes he has the pile of print in two groups—those too old to be relevant, and those recent enough to be plausible. He rearranges the latter heap chronologically and works backwards in time—six months first, then ten, a year. And then he finds it. No more than a paragraph, at the bottom of a column titled ‘Accidents, Inquests, &c’. The story in question clearly sits under the third of the three categories, though a mere ‘&c’ hardly seems strong enough to contain it:

Frightful Murder near St Giles

A dreadful murder took place last Monday week, in the vicinity of Church Street, St Giles. The mutilated body of Mrs Abigail Cass was discovered shortly after midnight by a Police-constable of the St Giles sub-division. We are assured that the unfortunate lady was of unblemished character, and appears to have been the victim of a spontaneous and frenzied attack by an assailant armed with a knife. It is not known what led to this awful crime, and every effort is being made to bring the killer to justice
.

Were it not for Maddox’s notes Charles might never have noticed it—there’s nothing, after all, so very unusual about this report, which resembles a dozen others appearing in the London press every day. Though there is perhaps a coded message here you would not habitually find—the writer is clearly signalling that this was no common streetwalker, and words like
mutilated
are rare, even for the more sensational papers. It’s irritating not to have the name of the officer who found the body, but that’s an omission that can soon be remedied. But what was a respectable woman doing in that part of town in the first place, and what link can there possibly be between her and a whore like Lizzie? And what can either of them have to do with the strange persecution practised by William Boscawen, and the violent death meted out to him by way of retribution?

SEVENTEEN

The Track

C
HARLES FIGHTS UP
to consciousness, beating the dream back, forcing himself awake. It was the same dream, the same nightmare he’d had ever since he was a child. It was never monsters or ghouls that terrorised him—he’d never had that sort of imagination—this dream’s terror lies entirely in its mundanity. Just his small self, his five-year-old self, following his mother through the garden of the house where he was born. He could tell he was just a little boy because the plants and flowers were taller than he was. There were huge furry bumblebees and bright butterflies as big as his small fat hands. It was always the same, always identical. The sky as blue as cornflowers, the huge white clouds billowing like yeast, and up ahead of him, his mother, walking gaily, and holding his baby sister nestled in her arms. He could see her pretty print dress and the red hair coiling in ringlets down her back and lifting lightly in the warm breeze. And he wanted desperately to walk with her—to have her turn and see him—take him by the hand—but however hard he tried to catch her up, she was always just too far away—however loudly he cried out, she never
acknowledged he was there, never took her eyes from her tiny sleeping daughter. He knew she could hear him, but she wouldn’t turn round, he called to her again and again but she never looked back, never turned her head—

He sits up, sweating despite the cold. It’s still dark outside and the fire died hours ago. At his side Molly stirs, and whimpers, then falls silent once more. Charles slips from the bed softly, so as not to wake her, and goes to the window. The sky is clear and the moon full and bright, ringed with a thin greenish edge like the peel on a fruit. Ice is already starting to cloud the glass. He breathes on it and rubs it with the sleeve of his night-shirt. Anything—
anything
—to dispel the image of his mother’s face. Not the face he’d longed to see in his dream, the beautiful face of the mother of his infancy, but the face he last saw more than six years ago. The face he has tried ever since to forget.

His wound is throbbing and he loosens the dressing, concerned still about infection. He goes to the wash-stand and slowly unwinds the lengths of cloth, clumsy and left-handed, before sinking his arm into the basin. The shock of the cold water against his skin is raw, but then soothing, and the pain ebbs gradually down. He’s still sitting there at five, when Molly wakes and helps him change the bandage before going downstairs to stoke the kitchen fire and clear the hearths. Charles is just about to leave an hour later when a note is delivered from Mr Chadwick. It’s in reply to Charles’s own letter of a few days before, enquiring whether his client can think of anyone who might have taken his daughter from the workhouse. The response is concise, and characteristically curt.

As I have explained to you on at least three previous occasions, I have no information whatsoever as to the identity of the father of my daughter’s child. I can only surmise that this was the gentleman responsible for her removal, though he has forgone any right he might once have had to such an appellation through his own corrupt and vicious conduct
.

I shall expect a report of your progress within the week
.

F. H. C.

“I’ve told you already, I don’t know, and even if I did, I couldn’t tell you.”

We are now at the desk of the police-station in Bow Street, in front of a hefty constable Charles doesn’t know, and who clearly doesn’t know who he is either.

“Look, sir,” he says with a practised theatrical sigh, “you
say
you know Inspector Field, and that may very well be so, but he’s not
my
Inspector, and
my
Inspector would take a pretty dim view of me divulging anything in our files without the proper authority. So until you can show me such authority, then I’m afraid the answer is going to remain the same: No.”

Charles stands there, drumming his fingers on the desk, but he’s beaten and he knows it. The constable now makes a great show of ignoring Charles and carrying on with what he’s doing, and summons a pink-faced young man from the back of the office to collect a stack of paperwork. Charles turns away, only to find himself face-to-face with the sergeant he met at the graveyard. It seems weeks ago, but it’s actually barely two.

“Maddox isn’t it?” says the man. “What can we be doing for you?” He’s eyeing Charles’s bandaged hand with some interest, but he conforms exactly to our previous experience of him by pointedly refusing to ask.

“He was enquiring about the Cass case, sir,” interjects the constable. “You remember—about a year ago. That woman we found up at Church Street—had been cut up good and proper.”

The sergeant nods. “I remember,” he says slowly. “You seem to take
rather an unhealthy interest in that part of town, Mr Maddox, if you don’t mind me saying so. What’s got you poking around in that old case?”

“I was wondering which of your officers was first on the scene.”

“And why should that concern you?”

Charles wonders for a moment if what he’s about to do is all that well-advised, but decides he has little real alternative. He takes a deep breath. “I believe the man who killed Abigail Cass may have struck again. But I cannot be certain of that until I know more about the first attack.”

“Struck again, you say?” This with a frown. “And where was this, precisely?”

“Near Golden Square, on Sunday night. Young woman by the name of Lizzie Miller.”

“Can’t say it rings any bells. Whore, was she? Must be, in that neighbourhood. Street robberies like that—ten a penny.”

“But this one wasn’t a street robbery. She was killed in her own room. I think she knew the man who killed her, and I think Abigail Cass may have known him too.”

The sergeant manages a thin smile. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that these two crimes have very little in common. What makes you think there’s a connexion?”

“The newspaper report of the Cass death mentioned a ‘frenzied attack’. It sounded unduly brutal for what you appear to be dismissing as a petty alley-way assault.”

If he was hoping that would draw the sergeant out, then he’s misjudged his man; he’s far too wily for that.

“This other girl—Lizzie Miller—was practically eviscerated. Breasts cut off, heart cut out, face removed. Does any of that sound like Abigail Cass? I can’t believe you wouldn’t remember something like that, if it happened on your patch.”

Is it Charles’s imagination or was there just the merest flicker—the merest trace of a flicker—in the sergeant’s eyes? But it’s not enough—not on its own.

“Can you look at the file for me? Or better still, let me look at it? It would only take a minute.”

The sergeant is no longer meeting the eye. “That’s not possible, I’m afraid, as the constable here has no doubt already informed you. Police files are confidential—you should know that better than anyone. Was that all?”

Outside, the sky is clear and bright and the street is heaving with traffic, both on foot and on wheel; Covent Garden is creating its usual gridlock. There are greengrocers’ vans, coster-mongers’ carts, and row upon row of donkey-barrows backed up all the way down Bow Street to the Strand, while their owners wait their turn to unload. The men are catching a last coffee from nearby stalls and groups of women in rough shawls are sitting on the kerbs, smoking pipes. The smell of cheap tobacco is layered with the earthy aroma of fresh-dug vegetables, and the stronger wafts of scent from wagons laden with oranges. Some of the coster-mongers’ carts are bright with new brass, but most are drawn by cowed and miserable animals, the barrows patched together with pieces of sacking and bits of old rope. On both sides of the road the pavements are stacked with sacks of produce—cauliflowers, carrots, swede, turnips—and shreds of cabbage are being trodden slippery underfoot in the mud. Women have baskets of apples balanced on their heads, and some of the men are managing whole stacks of them, so that from a distance a squadron of wicker giants seem to be lurching and swaying up the street. Charles’s eye is caught suddenly by the sight of a girl in a thin print frock weaving her way through the crowd, a basket of violets over her arm and auburn curls under her velveteen bonnet. He’s sure it’s Sarah—how many girls have hair that shade—but when she turns in his direction he realises his mistake at once. This girl must be at least fifteen and the hair, now he sees it against her face, is far too garish to be natural. He looks away, anxious not to catch her eye and have her misinterpret his interest, and finds himself feeling a vague sense
of disappointment. Which is, of course, ridiculous. He has no interest in Sarah—no desire whatsoever to see the girl again. He’s so absorbed in reminding himself of this fact that he starts like a gazelle when someone touches him on the arm.