by Alex Reeve
‘It’s unusual, though, in my experience.’ I took her hand, pulling up her sleeve and turning her palm upwards. Accustomed to cadavers as I was, it still felt strangely intimate. ‘No cuts, wounds or bruises from a fight. If someone attacked me with a sword, I’d try to deflect the blade. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Maybe she was taken by surprise.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Or maybe she was stabbed in the back! That would explain it.’
‘By surprise perhaps, but not in the back. Look here. The wound on her front is wider than the one in her back, so the blade was tapered. A dagger or a shortsword.’
Beneath her hair, her neck was purple and mottled. I pressed my finger against her skin, and the mottling didn’t change. ‘Livor mortis has set in and her blood has already congealed. She’s been dead for twelve hours at least, I would say.’
Hooper shook his head with a condescending smirk. ‘You’re wrong. She’s not stiff yet, so it happened some time today. Like I said, must’ve been someone local.’
I was growing impatient. In my experience the police could see about as far as their fists could reach, and no further. ‘She’s lying in cold, wet ground, and that can delay rigor mortis significantly. This happened more than twelve hours ago, but probably less than thirty-six.’
Pallett wiped his hands down his jacket. ‘And where were you during those hours, Mr Stanhope?’
‘Aside from being asleep, I was working at St Thomas’s Hospital and drinking whisky with my landlord until late. He can vouch for me.’
Hooper pulled a tortoiseshell pen from his pocket and wrote that down, slowly and carefully. A drizzle had started, and he had to hunch over his notebook to keep the paper from being soaked.
‘Right then. You can go now, Mr Stanhope. We’ll let you know if we have more questions for you.’ He turned abruptly towards Pallett, thumbing in the direction of the group of men. ‘We should have a chat with this lot, especially that shifty fellow. What was his name?’
‘Duport, sir,’ said Pallett. ‘John Duport.’
‘Yes, him. Let’s see if he has a sword or something similar.’
I was covered in mud and starting to shiver. I bent down to push Dora Hannigan’s hair from her forehead and noticed something glinting at her neck: a silver locket. I opened it up.
The pictures inside had survived the water. They weren’t well drawn, and I wouldn’t have known who they depicted if I hadn’t seen the living subjects a few days before: the dour boy and inquisitive girl, one either side, facing each other across the hinge.
‘Detective!’ I called after Hooper.
He looked back at me, frowning, appearing surprised I was still there. ‘It’s Detective Inspector.’
I held up the locket. ‘She had a son and daughter. Where are they now?’
‘She was unmarried, like I said.’
I ignored his idiocy. ‘You should ask the people here if anyone has them.’
He raised his eyebrows and cast around as if they might be hiding behind a water barrel. ‘I suppose so. See to it, Pallett.’
He stood under one of the lamps, reading his notes. He hadn’t thanked me.
A man approached and put out his hand to pull me upright, which I ignored. He was the large, whiskered fellow I’d seen earlier.
‘J. T. Whitford,’ he announced. ‘The Daily Chronicle. And you are?’
‘Cold,’ I replied. ‘And wet. And keen to get home.’
I rarely read a newspaper, but even if I did, it wouldn’t be the Daily Chronicle, a salacious rag filled with gossip about actors’ latest dalliances and hysterical warnings about rabies epidemics. I had no idea why anyone would read such claptrap.
Whitford pulled out a notebook and pencil. Today, everyone seemed to want to write down what I had to say. ‘When did you first meet Mrs Hannigan?’
He had a blunt accent that I thought might come from Yorkshire. My sister, who could place a voice to any county south of Hadrian’s Wall, could have told me for sure, down to the nearest town probably.
‘Never.’
‘Are you a member here or just a radical sympathiser?’
‘What?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Look, these coppers’ll spill the whole story for fourpence. A cigarette, most of ’em. You might as well tell me what you’re doing here.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’
I pushed past him, intending to leave, but then stopped. The man I had recognised, with the ragged beard and unlaundered suit, was staring at me. He glanced quickly at Hooper, who was still flicking through his papers, and beckoned me to follow him away from the others, beneath the gallery, where ice left over from January’s blizzards was still clinging to the ground. I ignored him, but he waved more insistently, and I feared he would call out my name if I didn’t respond. It was a risk I couldn’t take.
He was huddled against the wall, so deep in the shadows I could hardly see him. He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me closer, almost hissing into my ear.
‘Why are you here? Tell me. Be quick.’
Despite his urgency, his voice was well-mannered and clipped, every consonant pronounced perfectly.
‘I will not,’ I said, trying to pull away from him without anyone noticing.
‘Dora must’ve kept your name and address. That’s it, isn’t it?’ He stepped into the lamplight, his eyes shining orange. ‘But this could be good news. You can help us. You’ll do it, won’t you?’
‘I don’t even know who you are.’
‘Of course you do. We met in Enfield – goodness, it must be ten years ago. More, even. Our mothers tried to … well, it seems pretty foolish now, wouldn’t you say? My word, and to think of what might’ve happened.’
‘I don’t know you.’
‘Yes, you do. I’m …’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘I’m John Thackery. And you’re Lottie Pritchard. Or you used to be. And I’m certain you remember me full well.’
I could feel myself shaking and clasped my hands together, pinching the skin fiercely between my thumb and forefinger. I wished I had refused to come to this place, and I wished I had acknowledged having met Dora Hannigan, and I wished most of all that I had not come face to face with this man.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I need an alibi for yesterday,’ he said. ‘And unless you want your secret exposed right now to these policemen, you’re going to provide one.’
2
When I was fifteen and living with my family in Enfield, a businessman and his family moved into the area. They took up residence in the grandest house, hired a dozen servants and starting riding around the town in a regal carriage pulled by two black horses who picked up their hooves like dancers. He was in the jute business, making cheap cloth for sacks and cart covers, and had taken a share in a mill at Ponder’s End, employing dozens of local men. My father was deeply impressed. He talked about it every time we sat down to dinner:
‘Mr Thackery said the jute crop looks very promising this year.’
‘Have you seen the walled garden Mr Thackery has built? It might be the best in Middlesex.’
‘Mr Thackery thinks the Liberal government will fall soon.’
And so on, until we were all sick of hearing about him.
My father started angling his sermons towards Mr Thackery’s interests too, beseeching his flock to work hard and show due respect for their betters. At the time I took no interest, but afterwards I concluded he must have been hoping for a substantial donation to the church or to achieve the kind of influence that might one day lead to a bishopric.
My mother had a different objective. The Thackery family had two sons, one very small, but the other, John, was a year or so older than me. She invited the Thackerys to tea and placed John and me on the velvet settee together, casting sidelong glances at us while Mrs Thackery instructed her on crochet hooks and the men talked about the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which they naturally opposed, and the exorbitant cost of labour.
>
John was a pleasant lad, I thought, and quite amusing. Not for one second did he honour his father, instead rolling his eyes quite blatantly at Mr Thackery’s more grandiose outpourings. He even made a sly motion of slitting his own throat when he heard he was expected to go into the army, making me snort audibly, garnering a frown from my mother and a smirk from my older sister, Jane, who was newly engaged to be married and plainly found my discomfort amusing.
I rarely saw John over the summer, and it was not until mid-October that we spoke properly. The congregation was milling around after a morning service, and we found ourselves on the same bench, swishing the autumn leaves with our feet. Outside of his parents’ orbit he was surprisingly shy, and sat fiddling with his fingers, gazing mutely at the tombstones, until he hit upon the idea of making up biographies for the deceased.
‘Edith Charm, beloved wife and mother, seventeen ninety-two to eighteen fifty-five. She was a local witch, you know. She cursed the village men and turned them into dogs.’
I laughed, imagining what my father would say to that. ‘What a horrible story.’
‘Yes, it was. They attacked each other with tooth and fang, until every last one of them was dead.’
‘How unkind.’
‘Not at all.’ He attempted to centre his necktie, without success. ‘They deserved it. They’d tried to trap her, you see, and imprison her in a cage.’
‘But still.’
‘And it was for the best in the end.’ He pointed towards the fields stretching out in the distance, beyond the houses. ‘Afterwards, she turned herself and her friends into sheep, so they could live together freely and without violence. No dogs left to bite them or humans to confine them.’
When it was time to go, he was awkward again. He probably knew what my mother had in mind, and was embarrassed, believing I wanted it too. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I was already saving for my escape, earning threepences for teaching arithmetic to local children. But I was fascinated by how he talked, how he held himself, how he took up space on the bench, his legs splayed out or one foot propped up on the opposite knee. He was my model, my exemplar, far more so than Oliver, my older brother, who was away training for the army and already a man. Oliver was born a man, somehow. He had reached my father’s height, over six feet, by the age of sixteen, and at nineteen he was broad and strong enough to pick up a pew on his own. I could never be like Oliver. But John was boyish and slight, with a diffident manner and a sharp wit. I could imagine myself like him.
On the day I left home, tearing myself from my mother’s arms and dashing down the hill towards the station, actually passing my father coming the other way without him so much as glancing at this slim young man with reddened eyes and badly cut hair, I never considered I might see John Thackery again.
And now here he was, eleven years later, turning up like a ghost, dragging the chains of my previous existence behind him.
He was as crumpled as I remembered, wearing loose trousers and a bowler hat with a boot-shaped dent in the brim. But there was something curious about his clothes: despite his dishevelment, I would have expected them to be expensive, made of good-quality cloth and lined, as befits the elder son of a wealthy mill owner. But these were the garments of a man who worked for a living. He resembled a university professor fallen on hard times.
‘We need to talk properly,’ he said, his tone pleasant but firm. ‘I have an office here we can use.’
‘I’m very busy,’ I replied, trying to sound efficient and slightly harried, the kind of person who hasn’t the time to stop for a chat. ‘You’ve mistaken me for someone else.’
‘We’ll see.’ He cleared his throat loudly and made as if to wave to Hooper.
‘All right,’ I said quickly, hating the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. ‘I’ll listen to what you have to say.’
‘Good.’ He raised his hand as if about to clap me on the shoulder, but then lowered it again. ‘Come with me.’
It was late March, and seagulls were crying over the rooftops, gathering in flocks ready to head back to the coast. I looked longingly at the back gate. If I simply marched out, what could he do? I answered my own question: he could tell the police about me. And even if he didn’t, I would always fear that he might.
I followed him through one of the doors into a small kitchen, where two women were rocking babies, onwards along a corridor piled with open sacks of old clothes and rags, and into an empty hall where dozens of chairs had been arranged in rows. The sound of our shoes echoed off the walls.
It was clear that this building was much larger than I had supposed. I was acutely aware that I was accompanying a man I hadn’t seen in many years, and that he might be involved in a murder. I looked back the way we’d come, our damp footprints chasing us across the woodblock floor, and tried to remember the route we’d taken.
He led me up a flight of stairs to a narrow landing, ducking under a low lintel, his hands behind his back as if he was strolling through a museum. Finally, he stopped next to a door cut down diagonally to fit beneath the gable.
‘Mind your head.’
I followed him inside and went to close the door, but he put his hand on it.
‘No, please,’ he said, his face flushing. ‘I prefer it open.’
The room had a writing desk under the window, a tray of unwashed teacups, two club chairs and walls lined with bookshelves. I suffered a pang of jealousy, picturing myself having a study like this one, spending my days reading and practising chess openings. More books were piled on the floor and desk, with titles like Progress and Poverty and Principles of Political Economy. Not what I would have chosen.
Thackery perched on the edge of his desk while I stood. I didn’t want him to think I was staying.
‘It’s Leo now, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Mr Stanhope,’ I replied, sounding pompous even to myself.
He studied my face, cocking his head to one side, his eyes straying downwards. I pulled my jacket tighter, but his expression was one of wonder rather than revulsion.
‘I wouldn’t have believed it,’ he said. ‘It’s quite remarkable.’
‘What is?’
I was keeping my voice calm and friendly even though I knew what he was thinking: that I could mimic masculinity quite well considering my limitations, rather as one might applaud a dog wearing a waistcoat. Bravo! It’s almost like the real thing.
He ignored my question. ‘You left so suddenly. Everyone was talking about it. I mean, it’s not something that can easily be explained away.’ I said nothing, and he sighed, still examining me, seeming most interested in the length of my shoes. He couldn’t know they were stuffed with newspaper. ‘We have many things to discuss, but first you must acknowledge that we know each other. I won’t speak further unless you do.’
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. We were alone, and there was no point in denying the truth. And I needed to know what he intended.
‘Very well. We know each other. Now what of it?’
‘After you left, most people thought the obvious, I’m afraid.’
‘Which was?’
‘That you’d been sent away for reasons of impropriety … a young lady, you know, you wouldn’t be the first. My father even asked if we had … well, he thought perhaps you’d tempted me astray. I think he rather hoped you had, though he’s always convinced everyone is after his money.’ His face took on a sour expression. ‘Your father told everyone you’d gone away to France, but no one believed it. The reverend’s daughter, you know, it’s like a joke, isn’t it? And, if it was true, why did your mother stay in bed for a month afterwards? It didn’t hold water.’
I felt a lump rise in my throat. Before I had left home, I promised my mother I would write to her and had meant it at the time. But I never did. Much later, I discovered that she had pined for her youngest child, her jewel, every day for the rest of her life. The most difficult is always the favourite.
‘A few
people thought you were dead,’ he continued. ‘There was a suggestion we should dig up the churchyard and open all the coffins.’
‘I don’t have time for your reminiscences.’
I turned towards the door and he put up his hands in surrender.
‘Please, sit down, Lott— Leo.’ I remained standing, holding my bowler in my hands. It was new and shiny, and droplets of water had beaded on the brim like gemstones. ‘There are things you need to know. We don’t have time for all of it, under the present circumstances.’ His voice caught, just a fraction. ‘But we should meet properly, and soon. There’s this thing called the greater good. Do you know what that means?’ He paused as if expecting me to answer, but I didn’t. He smiled thinly, acknowledging my silence as deliberate. ‘It means that sometimes we do things that seem wrong, but they lead to a better thing in the future.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m saying that you really do need to help me with this. If you refuse, it will be the worse for you. I’ll tell everyone who and what you are. If I must be exposed, so will you be.’
He seemed entirely serious, and yet I still found it hard to accept that he was blatantly threatening me. What had I done to make him hate me so? All the care I took, day after day: the trials of finding the right clothes, the endless washing and drying of sanitary cloths, the salving of my bleeding sores where my binding chafed my skin, and most of all, the constant alertness to my voice, my stance, the way I used my hands and the exact blitheness of my laugh, much of which had been modelled on him; after all that, he would betray me? If it wasn’t so tragic it would be funny.
I took a deep breath. ‘What exactly do you want?’
‘You must tell the police we were together all of yesterday, including the evening.’
‘But we weren’t.’
‘I know, but I want you to say that we were. Not here, somewhere else.’ He scratched his head, thinking. ‘Say we went to Alexandra Park. There’s a horse show on, and the two of us spent the day there and had a friendly drink afterwards.’
‘I’ve already told the police the truth.’
