The Darkest Sin
Page 4
Chapter 4
The past few years had not been kind to East London. The docks had spread east along the Thames, and crowded housing brought epidemics of crime and disease. Mrs. Banks’s shanty reeked of decomposing flesh and remnants of fear. Located on the far side of Shoreditch, the abysmal dwelling was the final destination of those who had never been cherished in life and even less so in death. For a fee, she would collect the flotsam and jetsam of fate before the weekly arrangements were made for deposit in a pauper’s grave, where twenty-five shillings would buy an open maw to be filled forty feet and thirty corpses deep.
Mrs. Banks had left Rushford alone for the moment, scuttling outside to argue, in a voice rattling with ague, with the char woman. The well-deserved exhortations rained over the woman’s cowering head for overcharging on a bundle of wood, dropped hastily at the doorstep earlier that morning.
Inside the narrow building, a dim light barely illuminated dark corners filled with towers of cracked china, glass vases, and the occasional tarnished candlestick or oil lamp. These items were the elastic currency in which Mrs. Banks often chose to trade with those too poor to produce the shillings required to finish off what ill fate had begun. Rushford stood at the foot of a scarred wooden table, looking down at what was barely recognizable as a human form. The rumors had been correct, he thought. A bloated mess. He resisted the urge to pull the sheet over the suppurating mass sprawled on the table and topped garishly with a heap of golden curls. The stench was overwhelming, but he forced himself, in a kind of self-enforced punishment, to withstand it.
His eyes lingered on the tangle of hair draped over the bruised throat, his vision blurring as he remembered another body and another time. His Kate. Who, they claimed, had taken her own life by wading into the Thames, her pockets freighted down with stones. Only Rushford knew otherwise.
His mind spun back in time. It had been early spring, sometime before dawn, in the Duchess of Taunton’s husband’s home, adjacent to Apsley House. Rushford had fought his way into the grand pile, far past caring about the wild rumors, the shocked outrage, and even colder stares of the Earl, who should have been wild with grief. The stench had been just as overpowering then, of white calla lilies, their powdery scent invading every crevice of the mausoleum that the Duchess had never called home.
Kate lay lost on the big bed, staring unseeing into the distance, beyond the high-ceilinged room where they had prepared her for burial for the following morning. Incredulous, he had leaned in close, stroking her cheek, the flesh already cold as stone. Half expecting some response from the still form, he continued caressing her face, feeling the fine bone beneath the blue skin like the map of a familiar territory. Her eyes were open and clouded, the brown indistinct and muddy as the waters in which she had drowned.
He had gripped her hand, the small fingers like stiff twigs. Perhaps he said something, whispered near her cold and parted lips, but she no longer responded to him, her frame still against the pillows, straining against a death that came too soon. For what seemed like hours, although it must have been mere minutes, he continued to sit in the silence she had left behind, waiting for a breath that would never come.
Mrs. Banks’s shrill voice, charged with outrage, pierced the fetid air, displacing the scent of lilies with the heavy fugue of decomposition. Rushford placed his left hand to his eyes, but it was as though his right hand still held Kate’s. He smiled grimly at his folly, his gaze lifting to the lone begrimed window overlooking a narrow alley. For an instant, he thought that he wasn’t quite alone, half expecting a face at the window. In two strides, he was at the dust-streaked casement, peering into the alley. Nothing.
He hesitated for an instant before returning to the bloated form beneath the soiled sheet. He didn’t like what he saw. There was a cruel symmetry here. Death by drowning. Another woman whose unexpected and violent demise had been quite deliberately brought to his attention. His eyes moved along the length of the table, and back up to the face that remained unrecognizable. The vivid blue silk and rich lace of the woman’s garment poked out from beneath the gray sheet, incongruous details that hinted at a greater story.
Rushford scrubbed a hand down his face. He had all but promised Archer that he would make this pilgrimage to Shoreditch. To accomplish what exactly, he wasn’t entirely certain. Perhaps he’d hoped to scare away the demons that regularly bedeviled him.
At the thought of demons, he decided that he didn’t want or need to think about Rowena Woolcott for the moment. Their encounter the past night had taken on the shape of a shadowed delusion, yet another ghost come back to haunt him. Fortunately for him, a ghost that was summarily exorcised. He recalled her widening eyes, her shocked expression, moments before she had slipped away from him. This time for good, he hoped, despite his clamoring instincts that told him differently.
He was a man who couldn’t afford to believe in happenstance or coincidence. Yet, he convinced himself, there was nothing else behind Rowena Woolcott, in her blindness, finding her way back to him again. The broadsheets had been full of the Cruikshank murders and the name of Lord James Lyndon Rushford, the narrative holding out tenuous hope to a young woman intent on finding answers.
He should feel guilty for turning her away. But he knew with unshakeable conviction that Rowena was safer without him. He had done as much as he could, as he’d learned in the bitterest way possible. Kate’s cold face and unseeing eyes still mocked him.
Behind him, Mrs. Banks’s shrill words penetrated the dampness, a wet cold that seemed impervious to the bright sunshine cutting through the small windows of the one room with floors so warped by time and humidity, it was like walking the deck of a rolling ship. She was still arguing with the char woman and had reserves of acrimony to spare, giving Rushford the time he needed to work unobserved.
Mrs. Banks had already stripped the body of anything of worth, including jewels and gold teeth. Even the remaining bits of lace that might have survived their owner’s fate would not last long. A woman who believed in neither heaven nor hell, Mrs. Banks had faith only in what she could test with her teeth or barter the next day for a bag of grain or bottle of gin. To confirm his suspicions, Rushford glanced at the corpse’s hands; the once plump fingers were empty of rings. The hands rested against the sodden fullness of the silk skirts, the flounces filled out with stones.
“Mrs. Banks. May I speak with you a moment,” he said, turning on his heel toward the low entrance of the shanty. He hoped it was not already too late. Unbelievably, the rank air of the narrow alleyway outside Mrs. Banks’s establishment was welcome relief. She stood with hands on her bony hips, shaking a fist at the retreating back of the char woman.
“Thievin’ doxy.” The epithet was more spittle than words. She turned her raisin eyes upon Rushford, shrewdness emanating from every begrimed pore. “Ye’ve had enough time in there. Now what else is there ye be wantin’, guvnor?”
Rushford saw no need for subtlety. “Whatever jewels were on the body. I shall pay handsomely.”
Mrs. Banks snorted in feigned disbelief, knowing it was best to play coy for a few minutes at least. “I be beggin’ yer pardon, guvnor. I would do no sech thing as takin’ jewels from a body barely cold.”
Rushford stared down at his boots, the ground dusty beneath his feet, allowing what seemed an interminable amount of time pass by while Mrs. Banks continued with her denials. “How much?” he asked finally, abruptly.
Mrs. Banks grunted something in reply before disappearing for a few moments into the narrow building. Returning promptly, she held out a dirty handkerchief to Rushford in one gnarled hand.
Without undoing the knot to take note of the contents, he repeated, “How much?”
“Ten guineas.”
“Done.” Rushford pulled out the coins from his jacket pocket. Glancing down the narrow street and then up into a sliver of blue sky revealed by the narrow buildings, he added, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
“For a
price, guvnor.”
Rushford returned his gaze to Mrs. Banks. “I shouldn’t have it any other way.”
Mrs. Banks grunted. “There was a gentleman here last evenin’.”
“Go on.”
“A Frenchie by the looks and sounds of ’im. Medium height, scrawny I’d say; ’air black as a raven’s wing.”
Rushford’s gut tightened. Coincidence was a word used when one couldn’t see the levers and the pulleys. “And what was he about?”
Mrs. Banks shrugged. “He didn’ say, not that I was expectin’ ’im to. Jest wantin’ to let you know you didn’ get ’ere first, guvnor.” She clucked her tongue against a series of missing teeth. “Not the type to disturb the body. Too squeamish like.”
“And had you already stripped the body by that point?” Rushford asked bluntly.
Mrs. Banks nodded. “He left after five minutes. No more.”
Probably could not endure the stench, thought Rushford. He pulled out another two guineas. “Thank you, Mrs. Banks. Most helpful as always.”
Pocketing the handkerchiefed bundle, he walked toward Molton Street, not bothering to glance over his shoulder, aware that he was, once again, being followed. He kept a deliberate pace, wending his way outside the warren of streets before ducking into the last tavern on Blackall Street. All but deserted midmorning, Rushford found a table in the back of the low-ceilinged room. In a few moments, he had untied the bundle given to him by Mrs. Banks, holding the remnants of a life in his hand. Three gold teeth, a filigreed silver bracelet, and a man’s signet ring, the gold winking dully in the dimness. The crest was familiar. A capital G, festooned with laurel leaves.
Suspicion flared as suddenly as his thirst for a brandy. Rushford signaled the sleepy publican from his slumbers behind the length of a sticky counter. His mind was already planning an evening of gambling at Crockford’s, where the company of Lord Ambrose Galveston beckoned. In the interim, he thought, eyeing the low doorway of the tavern, he would await Rowena Woolcott’s arrival.
The heavy pall of ale in the air and sawdust underfoot did little to dispel Rowena’s growing unease. Pulling her cloak more tightly around her shoulders despite the warmth of the tavern, she ignored the stares of the publican who was in the process of filling a tumbler with spirits and glowering at her with unconcealed dislike. Unaccompanied women had no place in a drinking establishment. Convention, Rowena reflected desperately, had less place in her life than ever before.
After a short and sleepless night at her lodgings on Holburn Street, she had risen early to return to the town house on Belgravia Square, observing Rushford from what was now a familiar place in the mews. He had uncharacteristically chosen to hail a hansom cab rather than walk to his regular boxing club rendezvous, which he kept as regularly as a cleric did his Sunday sermons. Rowena quickly followed suit, quelling the reservations uppermost in her mind. You do not wish to become my lover. Rushford’s intimidation, meant to strike fear into her heart, drummed stubbornly in the background of her thoughts, the implications scalding. Yet, she conceded with suppressed panic, the prospect made a kind of wild sense.
She had alighted from the hansom at the far end of the narrow streets that leaned in upon themselves like collapsing bookshelves. Watching from a distance, she had seen Rushford duck into a low entranceway from where a stick figure of an older woman had emerged, shaking her fist threateningly. The street had been all but deserted as Rowena followed a serpentine of alleys that wound their way to the back of the narrow building and a window dark with soot.
Her eyes had taken a few moments to penetrate the grime and adjust to the room’s dimness. She could still hear the rush of blood in her head when she first saw the corpse, a hellish blue-green of mottled skin and rotted silk, and Rushford standing beside it, lost in thought, his eyes flat and expressionless. Her skin crawled. Absorbing the scene a moment longer than was wise, she had been left with the implausible impression that, for at least one instant when Rushford had looked up at the window, almost meeting her gaze, his expression had changed from one of cold objectivity to intense longing. Impossible, she thought, as her mind attempted to make sense of what she saw.
Pulling back from the window, she waited outside, around the corner of a tavern, losing herself in the neighborhood of pickpockets, thieves, and prostitutes slowly awakening to the demands of the day. Behind the torn awning of the tavern, she observed another abbreviated conversation between Rushford and the old woman, watching as he took a dirty bundle from her hands. Rowena waited until he nodded curtly and began walking away, following behind him a discreet distance. In short order, his broad back was absorbed by the thickening crowd until at the last moment, he ducked into an entranceway.
Rowena quickly retraced her steps toward the old woman, whom she discovered still standing, one hand on her bony hips, the other counting the coins Rushford had given her. Without looking up, she said, “What you be wantin’ with Miz. Banks, eh?” The old woman spat on the ground, before surveying Rowena with immediate suspicion. “We don’t be needin’ any good works here. Too late for all that. Me customers are all dead.” Men of the cloth, dour-faced women intent on good deeds—she had no use for either. Last time a rector had tried to close her down, he’d been arguing for proper burial for paupers. Wasn’t that precisely what she provided?
Rowena had secured her reticule beneath her cloak but extracted several coins from her pocket. “I’m not here to do good works, madam.”
The woman’s eyes glinted. “What you be wantin’ to know, then?” Her shrewd glance reassessed Rowena’s muted dress and anxious demeanor. “Lookin’ for a missin’ relative? Well, don’t know what ye will find ’ere.” Mrs. Banks deftly pocketed the coins Rowena pressed into her bony hand. “Lots of people certainly are lookin’, let me tell ye. She must be somethin’ important. Or at least, important to somebody.”
Glancing up and down the narrow street to discern whether they were calling attention to themselves, Rowena sized up Mrs. Banks for the businesswoman she was and seized the advantage. “Mrs. Banks—who has been here inquiring about the poor woman who lies dead inside?” she asked coolly. “Aside from the gentleman who just left?”
“Ye know ’im, do ye?”
Rowena thought it useless to lie. “Yes, I do. Lord Rushford.”
A tabby cat slunk along the stoop, wisely avoiding Mrs. Banks’s skirts. “A strange one, ’e is.” The old woman curled her upper lip, communicating her unease. “Don’t happen very often to have all these guvnors sniffin’ around. Before Rushford came another,” she said, deliberately vague, her foot shooting out to chase the cat away.
Rowena was loathe to let her eagerness show. “Another man? How do you mean, Mrs. Banks?” she asked, sensing that she was getting somewhere. “Do you have a name or a description?”
A wet series of coughs was the answer. Thumping her chest, Mrs. Banks made a great show of clearing her throat. Rowena dug into her pocket to extract another coin. With a surprising swiftness, it was snatched from her outstretched palm.
Hauling in a deep breath, Mrs. Banks seemed to recover, wiping her eyes with the back of the hand clutching the coins. “Another ’igh born one, ’e was. All dressed for the opera or some such.” Rowena’s frustration grew, listening to the old woman describing half of London. “And ’e had black hair, slicked back like from a ’igh forehead, with pomade.”
Of course, he had not introduced himself, as such courtesies were neither necessary nor wise when going about business in Shoreditch. Disheartened, Rowena asked with a painful smile, “I’m certain your powers of observation are acute, Mrs. Banks, so I’m to wonder whether the gentleman in question displayed any other distinguishing features.”
Mrs. Banks followed the cat’s progress with her eyes, as though rummaging through her store of memories. “ ’E was alone,” she concluded, watching the cat’s tail curl around the broken leg of a stool. “An’ yes, I be forgettin’. ’E ’ad an accent, Frenchie, I would say.”
The aroma of ale and sawdust assaulted her nose. She bent down to enter the tavern, opening the heavy door, her eyes adjusting to the dimness of the interior. Wavering on the threshold would do little good. She swept up her skirts from the sticky floor and walked toward the lone man who sat in casual disarray, booted legs stretched out beneath a bench, in the far corner of the hostelry.
Rushford did not feign surprise at her sudden appearance, but nonetheless his gaze was fixed on her with an intensity that made the tavern with its miasma of stale ale and sawdust fade away. She blinked rapidly, her eyes curiously raw. He had been expecting her.
“Difficult to believe that I could be in such demand. Twice in twenty-four hours,” he said, rising to pull out a chair for her, dressed in his usual somber black suiting and white broadcloth shirt, which did nothing to mute the impact of his presence. “Although if you persist in following me, I promise to offer you advice as to how you might better remain invisible. I noticed you two blocks away from Mrs. Banks’s establishment.”
Rowena bit back a sharp reply, hoping to muster a civil tone. She needed this man—to help her find the Frenchman. She pretended to fuss with her skirts as she sat down, the echo of her conversation with Mrs. Banks making it difficult to collect herself. She had been catapulted back into the netherworld of her abduction, reluctant though she was to cross the threshold again. When she looked up again she cleared her throat, but the words were tentative nonetheless. “I don’t expect you to understand, my lord,” she said, “to what lengths I have been driven. Please believe me when I say that I am hardly practiced in this type of endeavor.” A Frenchman. It could have been Meredith or Julia lying on Mrs. Banks’s table. She swallowed her panic, finding strength in her burgeoning anger to continue. “You might have saved us both time and effort had you listened to my appeal yesterday evening.”