The Solitary House (32 page)

He puts away his handkerchief and adjusts his frill, then looks Charles straight in the eye, for very possibly the first time.

“Let us be clear, once and for all. If I hear word that you are continuing with this investigation of yours, I will see to it that you are shut up in jail under hard discipline. There is a treadmill, sir, in Coldbath Fields where the inmates stand and grind for eight hours a day. And an iron crank requiring ten thousand daily turns. A man with an injury such as yours would scarce last a week under such a regimen. I will give you no further warning,” he concludes, a rare spot of colour appearing in both cheeks. “And be assured of this: Cross me again, and I will not flinch. For I make no threat I have not the will and the power to accomplish, and to the utmost extremity.”

Charles nods. “You have been admirably clear. Now let me be so.” He crosses the three feet that still separate them in one stride and takes Tulkinghorn’s flaccid throat hard in his hand. “This conversation is the last—the very
last
—time you will seek to impede my enquiries. If I am hindered again in any way—whether by violence or otherwise—you will live to regret it. Do you understand?” he whispers, his breath hot on the lawyer’s papery flesh. “However well you bolt your door, however strong you think the key, I will come here, in the night, in the dark, when you least expect it, and you will discover to your cost that I, too, have never yet made an idle threat, and I, too,
will not flinch
.”

He stares in the lawyer’s watery eyes for a long moment, then pushes him against the wall, and turns and leaves without looking back. He does not, therefore, see the clerk Knox emerge from where he has been standing behind the door and make a few notes in a small leather pocket-book, before going quickly to his master, who has staggered to his heavy mahogany chair and thrown his head back against it, and is now lying there gasping, staring sightlessly at the inscrutable figure of Allegory above him, whose finger points now even more insistently, from the flowers, and the pillars, and the painted clouds.

NINETEEN

Perspective

F
OR ALL
C
HARLES
’
S
bravado, the next few days mark a pause. Or perhaps a
recul pour mieux sauter
. I’m not at all sure even Charles knows, fully, what he intends to do but I do know that he spends the best part of two days in the Buckingham Street house, venturing out only to meet briefly with Sam Wheeler over lamb chops to check on progress with the Miller case (none), and to practise (three times) at the shooting range off Leicester Square. It’s on one of these occasions that he arrives to find an unaccustomed throng of people at the far end of the gallery—or rather, if we are being strictly accurate, a gathering of unaccustomed people, for the figures he can see standing with the trooper by one of the little cabins are very far indeed from the establishment’s usual clientele. There is a little plump bald man with a shining head and a clump of untidy black hair who seems familiar to Charles from somewhere, though he’s clearly never held a gun in his life, and beside him a tall dark young man with sunburnt skin and a calm but troubled face. The gallery is—other than these—quite empty of custom.

The little bald man seems anxious to be gone, and once the trooper has shown him out, he makes purposefully towards Charles with his usual military tread and—somewhat unusually—extends his hand.

“I am glad to see you, Mr Maddox.”

“Are you in some sort of trouble?” asks Charles, glancing past the sturdy shoulder. He has picked up, here and elsewhere, that the old trooper has money worries—money worries that may be entangling him in an even deeper predicament. But his interlocutor shakes his head.

“No trouble, Mr Maddox. At least not for me, and not for today.”

He takes Charles by the elbow. “The last time you came, I believe you mentioned that you had been looking for a young crossing-sweep?”

“The lad from Newton Street? What of it?”

“And I believe you said that this lad—if you could find him—might be able to help you discover who had murdered an innocent woman?”

“
Two
innocent women. I think the same man this lad saw has also killed at least one other woman since, and probably set that fire in Bell Yard as well, which killed a dozen more.”

“But if you were to find him, I’m sure you would not wish this lad any harm, or hand him over to those as might wish to harass him or move him on.”

Charles frowns. “That is not in my nature, as I hope you would know.”

The trooper bows. “Right enough, sir, so I do. But it is a delicate matter and I’m sure as you’ll understand my method of proceeding soon enough. You see, the lad is here.”

“
Here?
How on earth did he come to be here, of all places?”

The trooper gestures briefly towards the back of the room. “He were brought here by that young gentleman. A surgeon by trade. Seems he
found the boy in the rookeries. Seems he knew him—or of him. There be some sort of connexion between them, that I do know, though neither has said what it is. Anyhow, this young doctor took pity on the lad, and brought him, by a rather roundabout route that need not trouble you, to me. He has been here two days now, and Phil and I have been doing our best to care for him. Having been found, when a baby, in the gutter, Phil naturally takes an interest in the poor neglected creature.”

Charles stares at the trooper, then starts eagerly towards the cabin, but the man holds him back. “The lad is clean now, and fed, and as comfortable as we can make him, but he is quite worn out with all that has befallen him, and not long for this world, I should say. Go gently with him, sir, and keep the doctor by.”

The little cabin at the back is dim and cramped but it’s clean, and the mattress is provided with sheets that have been lately washed, albeit a little worn. There’s a small shelf of medicines on one side of the bed, and on the other the figure, hunched now, of the young doctor. He looks up when Charles enters and motions silently to a place by his side.

“He is sleeping. Rest can do more for him now than I can.”

He reaches across and lays a hand gently on his patient’s heart. The boy murmurs at the touch and his bony chest heaves and rattles. His eyelids flutter, but there is no ignoring the deep hollows under his eyes, or the thin fingers clutching at the bedclothes.

“How long has he been like this?” asks Charles softly.

“When I found him he was the most abject figure you can possibly imagine—all in rags and cowering against a wall, with a hand over his face as if the only things life has ever dealt him are blows. Which is probably not so very far from the truth. Not so much a human being as a rat, or a stray dog.”

There’s a bitter ring to the doctor’s voice at this, and the lad stirs and opens his eyes. He sees the doctor’s face, and huge tears well up
and spill onto his emaciated cheeks. “You’s not angry wiv me agin, are you, Mr Woodcot? I is wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and I never went fur to do it, and I wos a-hoping as you’d be able to forgive me in your mind.”

“No, Jo,” says the doctor, though his tears are falling too, “I’m not angry with you. You had a reason for what you did, and you could not have known what consequences it was to have. And I know the young lady forgives you too.”

“What’s he talking about?” whispers Charles.

“Oh,” says the doctor, passing a hand across his eyes, “it is—another matter. Unconnected with your own.”

He takes the lad by the hand and bends over him. “Now, Jo,” he says kindly, “there is a gentleman to see you. He wishes to ask you some questions—”

“He ain’t the police, Mr Woodcot?” cries the boy, his eyes flaring with terror.

“No, Jo,” says the doctor soothingly. “He is not the police. But if you can tell him what he needs to know, you’d be helping to catch a very bad man, and that would go well with you, would it not?”

“I’ll do anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it’s good.”

“Very well then.”

The doctor motions Charles closer, and he crouches close to the little feverish face.

“I want to ask you about a woman, Jo. A woman you saw once, in the street.”

“Not the lady in a wale and the bonnet and the gownd as sed she wos a servant?” The boy is suddenly distressed again, and catches at the doctor’s hand. “Not the lady at the berryin’-ground! Don’t as make me talk about that, Mr Woodcot! I sed—it is her and it an’t her and I don’t know nothink more about it.”

Charles looks bewildered but the doctor gently interjects, “No, Jo. Not that lady, another one. Mr Maddox here will explain.”

He nods to Charles. “Go on.”

“I think this woman was dead when you found her, Jo,” says Charles.
“Do you remember that? It was something over a year ago. Do you recall seeing a woman lying dead in the street around that time?”

The boy nods slowly. “It were near the berryin’-ground. It warn’t the lady in the wale but it war nigh the same place. She war lying on her back, wiv her legs up. And there were blood. Lots of blood. Running like water, it wos, like wen it rains bad and my broom ain’t enough to kip the mud away.”

“Did you touch her, Jo? Did you take anything from her?”

The boy looks fearfully from one face to the other. “It warn’t me as killed her, Mr Woodcot!”

“We know that, Jo,” says the doctor. “Mr Maddox is just trying to make sure that the woman he’s concerned about is the same woman you saw.”

The boy looks away. “I knew it war wery bad and I deserve to be punished and serve me right, but I wos wery hungry and poor and ill, I wos, and they warn’t no use to her no more.”

“What weren’t, Jo?”

“Them pretty rings. Bright gold they wos, and shining,” he mumbles. “Only not a bit like the sparkling one wot t’other lady had—her as wos and yit as warn’t the t’other lady—her wiv the wale and the bonnet and the gownd. Can’t have been, cos they only gave me five bob for all three on ’em.”

Charles nods quietly, and edges closer to the boy; already the rank smell of death hangs heavy about him.

“This next question is very important, Jo. Did you see a man nearabouts where the woman was? The man who might have killed her?”

The boy’s eyes widen, and he looks back at the doctor imploringly. “I told you, Mr Woodcot, I dustn’t. I would but I
dustn’t
.”

“But that was about—the other matter.” A spasm of pain crosses the doctor’s face. “This is something quite different, Jo.”

“No,” whispers the boy, his voice breaking. “No, it’s all the same—all on it. He ses to me, ‘Hook it! Nobody wants you here. You move on, or you’ll repent it.’ And I am, Mr Woodcot, I am!”

The doctor turns to Charles. “I am afraid he is still confusing the
two occasions. I happen to know that what he is saying is the truth—he was indeed told to move on, but that was in relation to the other matter, and the two things cannot possibly be connected.”

Charles shakes his head. “I’m not so sure. Is it possible that the real reason the boy was told to move on was because he saw something that night that certain people did not wish to come to light? Because he witnessed a murder?”

“That’s an extraordinary theory, Mr Maddox—”

But Charles has already turned back to the boy on the bed. “Who was it, Jo? Who told you to move on?”

“I dustn’t name him,” says Jo. “I dustn’t do it, sir.”

“You may trust me, Jo, just as you trust the doctor here.”

“Ah, but
he
may hear,” replies Jo, shaking his head in distress. “He is everywheres, all at wanst. I dustn’t give his name!”

“I know who it is he speaks of,” the doctor tells Charles in a low voice. “There is no need to alarm him further.”

Charles swallows hard, then reaches out and places his hand on the boy’s damp forehead. “Don’t think about that now. Just think about that night. When you saw the woman dead. Do you remember the man you saw? Think carefully, Jo, and tell me the truth. You know, don’t you, that it’s wicked to tell a lie?”

But that was clearly the wrong thing to say: Jo’s eyes are now round with terror. “I don’t know nothink. It war wery dark, sir, that it wos, and I niver saw his face or nothink. I wish as I’d never gone a-nigh her—don’t let them took me away agin, Mr Woodcot!”

“Don’t worry, Jo. You’re quite safe here. I’m not leaving you now.”

Charles reproaches himself silently; he tries another tack.

“If you didn’t see what he looked like, did you perhaps see what he was wearing?”

Jo thinks for a moment, then nods warily. “I remember there wos a hat and a coat. Long and dark it wos.”

“And was he tall? Taller than the doctor, for example?”

Jo shakes his head, but his eyes are losing their focus. “I’ve been a-chivied and a-worried and a-chivied but now I is moved on as fur as
ever I can go and can’t move on no furder. It’s time fur me to go down to that there berryin’-ground, Mr Woodcot”—he falters—“and put along with him as wos so good to me. Let me lay there quiet wiv him and not be chivied no more.”

It takes him a long time to say this and they have to stoop to hear much of it, but he slips, finally, into sleep, and the doctor gestures to Charles that the interview is over. The trooper has been standing silently in the doorway all this while, and the three of them leave the cabin and return to the table, where Phil is cleaning his tools.