by Jean Stubbs
‘Is Nanny telling – fibs, sir?’ she dared to ask, and was appalled.
Lintott considered the question gravely.
‘She’s made a mistake, that’s all. She thought it was true, but it isn’t. So next time she mentions the sergeant fetching you, you tell her that Inspector Lintott said she had made a mistake. Say it politely, mind. And tell her, by the by, that I’ve spoken with Sergeant Malone, will you?’
‘Was there any message, sir?’
‘No message, my love. Just tell Nanny I’ve spoken to him.’
The sound of Nanny’s footsteps on the stairs took the ease from the child’s body, and brought anxiety back.
‘Well now,’ Lintott said blithely, ‘Miss Blanche is a credit to you, Miss Nagle. All that bread and butter’s eaten right up!’
*
Miss Nagle did not return from the parlour immediately, and when she came in to the nursery she was concealing something in her apron.
‘I’ve got somethink for you, sir,’ the nanny whispered, though no one could have overheard.
‘Indeed, Miss Nagle? And what might that be?’
‘You know what you said, sir, about keys being left in desk drawers and that?’
‘I can’t remember every blessed thing I say, my lass. You may have misunderstood my meaning, for all I know.’
‘I’ve got her diary.’
‘Be careful, now,’ he warned her with an uplifted finger. ‘Be very particular as to your words, Miss Nagle.’
‘Oh, I’ve done nothink wrong, sir. It all turned out as you said.’
‘I said nothing.’
She was impatient, wanting to impress and soothe him, to rid herself of him since he had the power to make her uneasy.
‘Very well then, sir, you said nothink. I happened to notice this diary lying about and I brought it to you while Mrs Crozier and Miss Blanche are in the parlour. Only I must be quick to put it back, sir.’
‘Lying about, eh? Harmless enough, I should think,’ turning the pages swiftly, snapping up items.
Nanny stood tall and thin, twisting her hands in her apron, trying to read his expression.
‘A lady writes down her daily sorrows and blessings, Miss Nagle. Our dear Queen, God bless her, keeps a diary. Nothing that can’t be read by anyone. But precious, Miss Nagle, very precious to the lady concerned.’ He stopped, noted, passed on. ‘Something to look back on in one’s old age.’ Turning, memorizing, calculating. ‘Something to pick up and think, “Ah! That was the time!” Eh, Miss Nagle?’
‘Yes, sir. To be sure.’
‘A carriage ride here. A theatre there. A gift. A letter. What does it mean to the outsider? Paltry stuff, one might say. And yet, to the writer, a whole world. Yes, as I thought, nothing here, Miss Nagle.’ He closed the book, held it out, and said sharply, ‘When did you find the key?’
‘On Tuesday, sir.’
‘Two days ago. Have you read this?’
‘Oh no, sir. No, sir.’
‘Where did you find the key, Miss Nagle?’
Ferreting among silk and velvet and serge and linen. Searching closets and drawers. Feeling beneath pillows and mattresses. One ear cocked for footsteps. Finally, closing the fingers round it at the bottom of a bowl of pot pourri. Sly cat! So that’s where she hides it?
‘I must take it back, sir. I’m sorry it’s of no use to you.’
‘Not a bit of use,’ said Lintott airily, examining his fingernails. ‘But then I didn’t expect it would be.’
‘I hope I did right, sir,’ holding the green leather volume to her starched front.
Lintott looked at her heavily from beneath his brows.
‘I hope you did, too, Miss Nagle. Private property is private property. If you were so tempted as to commit a little breaking and entering, or anything of that sort, it would be a serious matter.’
‘Oh no, sir,’ she sought to protect herself, falling between one lie and the next, contradicting herself. ‘The key was in the lock and the drawer half open.’
He regarded his nails with interest.
‘And if you were to talk to anyone – I hope you haven’t done so, my dear – even to that dashing sergeant that worships the ground you tread on … Well, I couldn’t answer for the consequences. That would be slander atop of theft, to my mind. But then, you’ve done nothing of that kind, have you, my dear?’
‘No, sir. Indeed I haven’t.’
He became genial and patted her shoulder.
‘Then pop it back and let’s forget it, shall we?’
‘Oh yes, sir, if you please.’
He donned the hat from which even Kate had been unable to part him, and nodded amiably.
She watched the inspector descend the stairs in slow dignity, and then hurried to Laura’s bedroom. Fearful that Kate might come in on her early evening duties, she thrust the diary back, locked the drawer, and buried the key beneath the dried confetti of pot pourri. Then she smoothed the surface, so that no one should notice.
19
As a general rule, a modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband only to please him … No nervous or feeble young man need, therefore, be deterred from marriage by an exaggerated notion of the duties required from him.
William Acton, M.R.C.S.
LONDON at dusk was poignant enough to stir even Lintott’s stolidity. The evening light on the river, the long exquisite shadows, the dark alleys, the tall chimneys on the skyline, softened him. Clicking his tongue in contentment, he walked more slowly and looked all about him. A lamplighter trod his nightly round, leaving behind a train of shimmering gas globes. At the street corner an old man roasted chestnuts on a brazier, and shovelled them into paper cones. A hurdy-gurdy ground its plaintive tune, and the monkey whisked off his military pill-box hat. Lintott, finding the animal’s eyes distressingly human, dropped a farthing into its braided cap.
The steamed windows of food shops shone against the dark, cajoling customers with warmth and odours. For one penny you could buy a meaty saveloy, two faggots, a paper of fish and chips, a fried or boiled egg, a bloater, sardines on toast, a slab of Nelson cake (sweet with icing sugar), two large oranges, two thick slices of bread and butter, a pair of kippers, or a big cup of tea, coffee or cocoa. Twopence brought you into the realms of ham sandwiches, sausages, bacon and fresh cream horns. For threepence you could dine on a helping of ‘Harry Champion’ (boiled beef and carrots), ‘Baby’s Head’ (steak and kidney pudding), or ‘Side View’ (half a baked sheep’s head). Butchers, clad in blue and white striped aprons and straw boaters, offered fresh rump steak at one shilling a pound; or the same quantity of any boiled joint at the same price with a pint of gravy; wing rib and sirloin at eightpence; small chops and stew cuttings for fourpence to six-pence. The walls of the General Stores were studded with cheeses, and a shaving of any given on request, for tasting. The dairies – brass scales gleaming, deal counter scrubbed white – sold eggs in wicker baskets at ninepence the dozen, full cream milk at twopence a pint. All the shops had opened before eight that morning, and would not close until ten or eleven o’clock that night.
By the bookstalls, men with more learning than substance browsed endlessly and sometimes bought a battered volume for a penny or so. In the great workshops of the West End the sempstresses and milliners stitched twelve hours a day, and would work through the night on a special order.
A cavalcade of horse-drawn buses bore an army of clerks home from offices: lit inside by oil lamps, rich outside with advertisements. Holloway’s Pills & Ointment, Oakey’s Wellington Knife Polish, Paysanda Tongue, Vinolia Soap, Pink’s Jam, Borwick’s Baling Powder. On top, muffled in scarves and greatcoats, topped by oilskin capes and an old hat pulled well down, rode the kings of the highway: the omnibus drivers. Their bellies were warmed by frequent draughts of Disher’s Barley Wine (a potent ale); their faces crimsoned by all weathers. They carried their whips like wands of office. Their horses, also supported by an inward appli
cation of a ‘Burton’ beer, hauled their loads fifteen hours a day. These Victorian knights bore the burden of envy and impudence with stalwart indifference: taunted by boys who could not afford the fare. ‘Garn Whiskers!’ they would shout, running alongside. ‘Who strapped you in? Muvver?’ Sometimes to be dispatched with a light flick of the whip, like flies. And there were conventions among the passengers, too. Ladies and children rode inside, young bloods rode outside; and no young man would be seen boarding a bus in the usual style, they either leaped on when it was moving or jumped down before it had stopped. Furthermore The Dumb Friends’ League insisted on printed pleas bearing the message ‘Stop the Bus as Seldom as Possible as the Restarting is a Great Strain upon the Horses’. But the drivers stopped anywhere, when signalled from the pavement.
Now, as the light waned, and the muffin man took home his bell and tray, the other life of London came awake. Fortunate children were at home or abed. The unfortunate scurried into shops to buy fragments of cheese or ham for the family supper; begged from the shadows; waited outside public houses; or huddled together for warmth in doorways and arches and along the embankment; homeless and destitute.
The majority of chop-houses and coffee-houses would be closed by eleven, but taverns and supper-rooms and night coffee-houses were coming into their own. The earlier entertainments – from the glitter of Covent Garden to the tawdry threepenny show at the Royal Victoria Theatre – were done. As lonely men finished dining or applauding, the darkest face of London turned from its looking-glass and sought the streets.
In the West End, the great courtesans distributed fleshly largesse to an exclusive and well-heeled clientèle. In Brompton or Chelsea, in St John’s Wood or Fulham, clever ladies, securely esstablished, gave their favours exclusively to one admirer who settled the rent. In the night-resorts their more available sisters, gaudily dressed, coquetted for money among the gentlemen present. Along the Ratcliffe Highway, and in every dock, sailors’ tarts strolled arm-in-arm and hoarsely cried their wares to any passing seaman: lifting beribboned gowns to show a plump pinkstockinged calf, flourishing bright brass heels which could dance or stamp. Against the damp walls of alleys, love and cash made rapid exchange. A man could be robbed and coshed if the lady had a waiting accomplice, but on the whole the trade of buying and selling was straightforward enough. Lower down still, the worn vendors of pleasure walked the city pavements, soliciting. They promised paradise for a few pence, in a voice husky with gin; though the pocked face beneath the veil and the ravaged body beneath the frippery were visions out of hell. And deepest in the pit, lying or squatting on bare boards, racked by disease and wasted by poverty, the remnants of the oldest profession in the world died in rags and squalor.
Expensive but obtainable, virgins of thirteen were lured, drugged and raped by particularly fastidious connoisseurs – some of whom thought to cure themselves in this way from venereal disease. A little court of necessary accomplices ministered to this gourmet’s market, from the procuress to the woman who first pronounced the girls pure and then made good the subsequent despoliation.
Less prolific, because less easily traced, the other side of sexuality catered mainly for members of the services who had acquired a taste for the male body. Open solicitations were infrequent, but behind the respectable skirts of many a madam, boys sat up late at night ‘waiting for Jack’, and older she-shirts were available at every port. The Amendment Act of 1885 – the ‘Blackmailer’s Charter’ as it was dubbed – pronounced any public or private sexual act between males a criminal offence, thereby arousing an interest among members of the underworld which had formerly been absent. Threats of giving information to the police now drew gold from the pockets of citizens who could not afford to be known as homosexuals. This simmering cauldron was to boil over England in 1895, dimming the brilliance of Oscar Wilde and marking ‘Bosie’ Douglas’s failure either to be a normal man or a loyal friend. They had made the cardinal mistake of being found out: a sin Victorian society was unable to forgive.
From these various caterers incarnate, the brothel-keepers, the fancy men and the pug-uglies collected a lion’s share of earnings. The honeycombed lodging houses of Bluegate Fields rented out rooms for a few shillings a week, or a shilling a night, to any wretched whore who could pay. But elegant establishments charged a couple of guineas per client. Allied to the accommodation houses were the introducers who found ladies to suit all tastes and contacted potential customers at their clubs or offices, by letter.
Last and most vulnerable of all, the unwanted offspring of a desperate girl could find a market. For the sum of five pounds a baby-farmer would undertake to adopt and raise the infant, promising a comfortable home and a parent’s care if the child was sickly. Bastards, being the result of vice, naturally succumbed more quickly. The death-rate among illegitimate children was eight times higher than among the legitimate.
All this Inspector Lintott carried in a shrewd head, and regretted in a private heart. So much misery, acquisitiveness and degradation must have set his face against humanity had it not been for the Richmond sanctuary. Here, in his slippers and old jacket, he could listen to lighter voices and enjoy a sweeter world. Twenty years of marriage had fleshed Mrs Lintott handsomely, turned a vivacious girl into a mettlesome woman, and transformed a tendency to giggle into sound good humour. She thought her husband the cleverest and best man on earth, and he concealed nothing from her but the noisome details of his profession. So she darned and sewed and knitted, and passed on the news of the neighbourhood while he smoked and thought. He listened because he loved her and the sound was pleasing, but the policeman in him never rested: sifting, docketing, remembering. As he often said, all information could be useful. So Richmond, too, was under his vigilant eye. He picked up knowledge from his children in the same manner, and was proud that John thought of entering the Police Force, and Joseph the Queen’s Army. He tended – as his wife told him – to be over-indulgent with his two daughters, though he insisted on good schoolwork so that they might obtain posts in offices. This consideration apart, they took gross advantage of his affection. And he, knowing how hard life was for a woman, rendered their girlhood easy.
The tenderness in him could temporarily bemuse his judgement, and he had clung to a belief in Laura’s innocence of adultery until the evidence was paramount. Now, treading his corrupt city, he turned over the pages of her diary in his mind and searched for excuse. She had taken him into deeper feminine waters than those to which he had been accustomed, and he brought all his seamanship to negotiating them. Titus’s love-letter might have been merely an expression of his feeling for Laura; and no woman could be blamed for arousing love, only for wrongly gratifying it. She had torn his letter into pieces, and could have appeared to dismiss his suit.
Foolish, Lintott thought. She should have burned it. But then she is careless with pen and ink. The diary.
The name of Woman, to him as to all members of his sex, even though they might desecrate it, was synonymous with Virtue.
‘When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray.’ She should have thought of that. And she should never, never have written it. Anyone might have found it. Her husband even.
He wondered for a moment whether Theodore had indeed unearthed the diary and, doubly betrayed, sought a violent way out. Then sent the idea packing as romantic nonsense.
‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Lintott aloud, and startled a beggar in a doorway.
He had formed a pretty accurate picture of Theodore Crozier, and his strength of purpose was too powerful to be dismissed.
No, you would never find a man like that shirking his duty, Lintott thought. A great one for duty. He would have confronted both wife and brother and demanded an explanation. Then what? Dissolve the partnership with the brother, probably, and turn the wife onto her relative. And he himself, brooding over the household and children, would face life alone. Alone but right. That was what mattered to Theodore: the rightness. A righteous man,
a correct man, a man who insisted on all the rules and kept them strictly.
Then why the mistress? And, taking it further, why the letters? A man’s physical needs were not the same as those of a woman, but even there a code existed, rules existed. It was laid down in heaven, where marriages were made, that one loved one’s wife. So it followed that one did not love one’s mistress, only found relief or amusement with her. This mistress, according to Kate – whose opinion he respected – had been one such as a fastidious man would not be expected to love.
But you never get to the bottom of the human heart, and that’s a fact, Lintott mused. Anything might be so. That diary!
Laura’s hand etched the night with words and phrases which caused him softly to click his tongue in rebuke.
It wouldn’t be half so bad, he thought, if the Titus fellow was worth it. But he ain’t.
He stopped in his tracks, appalled, and shook his head as if to clear it. No, it would be bad whichever way you looked at it, he admonished himself. What more could such a woman want than a rich husband, three fine children and a nice house? Theodore Crozier wasn’t mean with her. Those dresses of hers cost a pretty penny, let alone the jewels. Money of her own, of course. Five hundred a year was not to be sniffed at.
I’ll never smell that much, and that’s another fact, he thought. But he didn’t keep up such a front on four times that amount, I’ll wager. That firm must be worth – what? And she’s inclined to whim money away, I’ll be bound. Reckless, though you’d never think it to look at her. Reckless with money as long as there’s nobody to stop her. I wonder if that fellow has coaxed his debts out of her, yet? Got her to sign something. Reckless with her reputation, and that’s a thing a woman should value above all else. Everybody talking, sniggering, speculating. Reckless in feeling, more heart than judgement. Reckless enough to … Well, women are fickle cattle. Even the good ones can surprise you. The desperate ones usually do.
