‘Do you have an address for Mr McLuker?’ I said.
‘I do. But I don’t want you disturbing my writers. They’ve got enough to do. Mind you.’ He smirked. ‘They might take one look at you and decide to put you in a story.’ He peered at my crimson face. “The Curse of the Bloody Mask”. Might write than one myself.’ He scribbled a few lines onto a scrap of paper. Cost you,’ he said. ‘A quid.’
‘One pound for the address of your worst hack writer? I hardly think so. Especially as I’ve already inspired your next piece.’
‘Oh well.’ He held out the ink-scratched words. ‘Worth a try. Make it two shillings and we’ll call it quits.’
‘Here?’ said Will in disbelief. ‘22 Wicke Street? Really?’ He seized the bit of paper Mr Dykes had given us and checked the address.
There was no fog that day, not even a brown fuzziness in the air to blur the sight of the hideous street before us. Once a graceful curving terrace of tall and elegant town houses, in my lifetime they had never been anything but ramshackle. Even so, the place was far more decrepit than I remembered its once white stucco now a streaked and blotchy ochre, like a row of rotten teeth. One building drew the eyes, however, for it was the worst of all. Here, chunks of plaster had dropped away entirely, revealing the brickwork beneath in ugly dark welts. Green streaks smeared the edifice from gutters to ground, like curtains of translucent seaweed pasted to a rock at low tide. Dr Bain had come here often. Dr Graves had come too, and so had I, though I had despised myself for doing so. Since St Saviour’s had been demolished and the doctors and medical students moved across the river to the new building, the place had fallen on hard times. The curtains were more ragged and dirty than ever, a pipe protruding from the wall seeped a sticky brown fluid, and one of the lower windows was clumsily boarded over.
As we stared, the door opened and a man appeared. He was big and flabby, his coat shiny with grease, his face as round and expressionless as a turnip. Mr Jobber. He stood on the top step, his arms swinging. Mrs Roseplucker always said that he never forgot a face, though as the man scarcely said a word I was not entirely sure how she knew. She also used to say that he ‘never forgot an arse, neither’, for those who outstayed their welcome at Mrs Roseplucker’s Home for Young Ladies of an Energetic Disposition were likely to be pulled from between the legs of their hired companion and jettisoned, naked, into the street by Mr Jobber himself.
Will and I climbed the steps. We scraped our boots, and entered the hall in silence. Inside, the place was as warm and damp as a laundry. The decor was just as I remembered – the walls ox-blood, the cornice as purple as entrails, the ceiling daubed in mottled crimson. Dusty curtains of red damask draped the windows. Mr Jobber closed the door behind us, and pointed silently to the entrance to Mrs Roseplucker’s lair.
The woman herself was sitting behind a desk at the back of the room. The curtains were drawn so that daylight was excluded, and the room had the musty odour of long occupancy – sweat, breath, dirty linen and cheap coal. Mrs Roseplucker was stationed, as she always was, behind an oak desk in the far corner of the room. Her face was a sagging ruin, the features daubed on with a lurid palette. The décolletage exposed above the rim of her bodice was wrinkled and liver-spotted, the fingers that rooted in her box of coins yellow and scaly, like the talons of a chicken. She looked up at me.
‘Well then,’ she said. ‘Mr Flock’art, ain’t it? One gentleman I ain’t seen for a while.’ She cackled. ‘And your virgin friend with the tall ‘at, o’ course. Got to bring ‘im along too. Well, you’re early. None of the girls is up yet.’ She slammed her box of coins closed and scratched her head, moving her wig of auburn curls back and forth, her expression a mixture of irritation and ecstasy. All at once she snatched it off. ‘Damn this thing,’ she said. ‘It itches like the devil. I thought you was some gent’men wanting one o’ me girls, but since it’s only you.’ She tossed the wig onto the desktop and sat back with her pale scabby scalp lewdly exposed. ‘You ain’t gent’men. Leastways not ones what wants any o’ my sort o’ business, I knows that much, at least!’
‘Good morning Mrs Roseplucker,’ I said smoothly. ‘How nice to see you so well.’
‘Got any salve?’
‘Salve?’
‘For me sores.’
‘Why, yes I do,’ I said. I rooted in my satchel and produced some calendula balm – essence of marigold mixed with beeswax, olive oil and tallow, plus a little lavender to make it more appealing to the nose. Mrs Roseplucker sniffed at the pot.
‘Oh,’ she said, grinning like a death’s head. ‘Lavender, ain’t it? Reminds me o’ when I were a girl. The Prince o’ Wales always smelled o’ lavender.’
‘So I believe, ma’am,’ I said. ‘He was known to favour it. It deters the moths, you know.’
Mrs Roseplucker dipped a black fingernail into the pot, extracted a blob of salve and smeared it across her scalp. I saw Will’s expression resolve into one of such disgust I could hardly stop myself from laughing. ‘Well?’ The salve vanished into a secret pocket in Mrs Roseplucker’s voluminous crimson costume. She pulled her shawl tight and peered up at us belligerently. ‘What is it? Can’t you see I’m busy?’
‘I was sent here by Mr Dykes, of Tales of Violence and Blight,’’ I said. ‘He said I might find one of his authors here. A Mr McLuker.’
‘Prosser McLuker?’
‘I believe so. Is he here?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Roseplucker.
‘May I see him?’
‘Yes.’
‘May I see him now? This very moment?’
‘You is doin’.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Oh!’ Will groaned. ‘Of course.Jem, “Prosser McLuker”. It’s her. It’s an anagram—’
‘You?’
Mrs Roseplucker gave a fiendish laugh. ‘Course! “Prosser McLuker” is “Mrs Roseplucker” but all mixed up. Me an’ one o’ the girls worked it out. You remember Annie? Clever girl, our Annie.’
I smiled. I could not help but admire her. I knew Mrs Roseplucker to be a shrewd old hag, but her opportunities in life had been limited. I was surprised to hear that she could write at all, never mind complete one lurid story after another for publication. And yet she had always been an avid reader of the stuff, and she was something of an expert in sensation. Her position behind the table in the front parlour had always been adrift in a sea of penny papers. There was a mound of them beside her chair even now.
‘Since when?’ I said.
‘Year or more.’ Her voice took on a tired, complaining tone. ‘Business ain’t what it was, ‘specially since St Saviour’s were pulled down. And the girls! Too picky by half, though I told ‘em they must do whatever a gent’man asks and pretend it’s the best sport they’d ever ‘ad.’ She shook her head. ‘Ain’t nearly as obligin’ as they used to be. An’ then last year we weren’t even in Bartleby’s Book o’ Gent’men’s London Pleasures. Mrs Roseplucker’s Home for Young Ladies of an Energetic Disposition ‘as always been in Bartleby’s Book o’ Pleasures.’ She sighed and sucked absently on one of her teeth. ‘Then one day Mr Jobber ups and says, “Now then, Mrs Roseplucker, ain’t you always bin one for tellin’ tales? Ain’t you always readin’ them there penny bloods? Why bless us, Mrs R, why don’t you go and write one yourself?’”
I looked over my shoulder at the silent man-mountain sitting it the hall. I had never heard Mr Jobber utter more than three words at a time. No doubt the fellow saved his eloquence for the intimacy of the private realm. But Mrs Roseplucker was still talking: ‘An’ I thought ‘You’re right, Mr Jobber, yes I will!” And so I writes ‘em up and I sends ‘em to Mr Dykes and ‘e prints ‘em.’ She laughed again, that deep sepulchral rattle like the shifting of chains in a dungeon. Her sputum was sure to be as thick and brown as treacle. ‘I get paid by the column inch, Mr Dykes says. Us girls’d not make much of a livin’ if that’s ‘ow we asked our gent’men to pay,’ and her face split like a rotten apple as she cackled.<
br />
‘So you wrote Vicious Dick and The Accursed Stranger?’
‘Bless you, sir, yes I did.’ She grinned again. ‘Straight from Prior’s Rents is that one.’
‘You didn’t make it up?’
‘Didn’t have to. Leastways not all of it.’
I pulled out my crumpled copy of Tales of Violence and Blight. “Young Jack the boy highwayman grabbed Vicious Dick by the wrist and dragged him down the steps to the cellar,”’ I read. “‘I won’t scream,” said Vicious Dick. “As sure as my name’s Vicious Dick, I won’t.” “That’s the truth, Dick,” said young Jack. “For if you do you know what will happen. Bodkin Bess will find you. And when she finds you she’ll cut you up – cut you up straight, she will!”’ I paused to miss out a few lines of repetitive dialogue, before resuming. “You’ll get cut ugly, cut ugly and stitched up like a worn petticoat. She’ll cut your ears off. You won’t hear nothing then, will you? She’ll stitch up your lips. You won’t say nothing then, will you? She’ll stitch up your eyes. You won’t see nothing then, will you? She’ll stitch you up good and proper, will Old Mother Bodkin. I can’t stop her once she finds you. No one can, though it ain’t no more than you deserve for what you’ve done.’”
Mrs Roseplucker was rocking back and forth and nodding. ‘Oh,’ she crooned. ‘But you read it jus’ lovely.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
She grinned up at me. ‘What’s it you want to know?’
‘Where did you get this story?’
‘I made it up. Vicious Dick ain’t real, you know.’
‘But the stitching?’ said Will. Up till then he had been standing beside me in silence. I had sensed his agitation, and out of the corner of my eye I had seen him turning his hat in his hands, running his finger around his collar. The sticky warmth, and sulphur reek of the fire, the sight of Mrs Roseplucker’s bald and scabrous head above her costume of ragged crimson flounces – evidently he could bear it no longer. ‘Where did you get the idea for the stitching, woman? Can you not just get on and tell us, so that we might leave this hellish place? Good God, Jem,’ he muttered. ‘It is like the ante-chamber to Hades in here and she’s the very devil.’
‘Is this about that doctor?’ said Mrs Roseplucker. ‘That dead one at Angel Meadow? The one that got stitched?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He was killed before your story was printed. Gabriel buys Tales of Violence as soon as it comes out, and he got it the night the doctor was murdered, so it’s not as though the murderer was copying your story. Perhaps he was copying the crime. But how might he know of it? Where does it come from? Is it common knowledge?’
‘Not unless yer from Prior’s Rents.’
‘What does that mean?’ I clicked my tongue. ‘Come along, woman. I came here for help, not riddles.’
‘Help?’ she laughed. ‘There’s nuffin’ fer nuffin’ at Mrs Roseplucker’s.’
‘I know that,’ I said. Were we never to find someone who didn’t want moneyjust for passing on a bit of information? But times were hard, I could see that. I bounced her a half crown. She caught it deftly in her left hand, bit it – Lord knows how such rotten dentition could test the validity of anything – and stowed it away in some secret nest beneath her skirts. ‘Now get on and tell us.’
‘I used to live in the Rents,’ she said. ‘Long time ago now. The place were bad, even then – p’raps worse than now, some might say. Too many people, nowhere for ‘em to live, no work . . . It were full o’ gangs. Gangs o’ boys, gangs o’ men. Thieves, they were, robbers an’ cutthroats, gibbet dodgers and wanted men the lot of ‘em, and those what weren’t were boys learnin’ the trade. Rob anyone for sixpence, all of us would.’ She shrugged. ‘Most of ‘em are dead now. Most of ‘em was caught and hanged.
‘But the gangs kept each other close. They had to, see, to keep others from knowin’ their business, and to keep them what was in the gang loyal. And quiet. They had their own language so as to keep what they was up to a secret. They ‘ad punishments too, and warnin’s all rolled into one so’s you’d not cross ‘em and they’d not cross each other.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘Come along, woman, get to the point.’
‘I’m tellin’ you, ain’t I?’ she snapped. ‘Interrupt me again and it’s another shillin’.’
‘For God’s sake, Jem, let the woman finish,’ muttered Will. ‘My dear lady,’ he addressed Mrs Roseplucker. ‘Pray continue. But to the purpose, if you please. Punishments and warnings, all rolled into one?’
‘That’s what I said, ain’t it? That’s what you wants to know. Cause what they did back then, some of ‘em who was partic’lar vicious and cruel, what they did was cut you up, and stitch you. Cut your face up – ears off mostly, then stitch up your eyes an’ mouth. “Stitched up”, that’s what they called it, just like what I put in Vicious Dick.’
‘What for?’ I said.
‘What for? Weren’t you listenin’? It was fer doin’ what’s wrong and deservin’ it!’ She shrugged. ‘Most o’ them what was in the gangs was got rid of – hanged or sent to the hulks an’ put on a transport. More ‘n one of ‘em were dissected by your Dr Graves, as I recall.
‘My stitched up eyes will never see
My sewn mouth cannot speak of thee,
Cut both my ears to ‘scape the fee
Of one last jig on Tyburn’s Tree.
‘That were the rhyme. All the children knowed it.’ She looked up at me, her face hideous and sunken. ‘“Bodkin Bess will get you”, that’s what my mother used to say.’ She chuckled.
Will and I exchanged a glance. It was hard to imagine Mrs Roseplucker having a mother. Looking round at the spongy red walls and ragged crimson curtains it was as though the woman had emerged fully formed from the very fabric of the room.
‘’orrible times, ‘orrible doin’s, Mr Flock’art,’ she said. ‘But ‘orrible times and ‘orrible doin’s is what people wants to read about. Mr Dykes says they can’t get enough o’ blood an’ murder an’ suchlike.’ She pulled out a pen knife and began whittling on an old yellow goose feather. ‘Can’t hardly keep up,’ she muttered. ‘There’ll always be gangs, and robbin’ and stealin’ and murder. But bein’ cut and stitched? That’s somethin’ from Prior’s Rents.’
Chapter Fourteen
Will needed the garden more than I, I realised now, and I had hardly put the keys back into my pocket after locking the gate behind us before he pushed past me and vanished behind the lavender bushes. I hoped we would be alone this time, for I wanted no other company but his.
‘Thank God the sun is out, for once,’ I heard him say. I looked at the sky. I could tell that the fog was coming, even if it was not yet with us, for there was a dampness to the air that was unmistakable. I had noticed it at Mrs Roseplucker’s. We would have a couple of hours and then the world would be lost to us.
Will was on his back in the middle of the camomile lawn. I considered a lawn to be a waste of space in a garden, especially a working, productive one. But Will had persuaded me, and for him I had sown a square of fragrant low-growing camomile mixed with zesty lemon thyme. Will loved to lie on it, staring up at the sky through half-closed eyes. He had discovered that if he lay at a certain angle he was unable to see any walls, spires, or windows, and so could indulge his fantasy about being back in the country. It was only the reek from the middens beyond the haven of our walls that threatened to destroy the illusion, though the herbs where he lay did something to sweeten the air.
I had bought a jug of ale from Sorley’s, a piece of pie each and a bag of apples. Will took a swig from the flagon and bit into his pie. Already he was looking better. He crushed some lemon thyme between his fingers and held it to his nose. ‘I didn’t think we’d ever see Mrs Roseplucker again,’ he said. ‘The place hadn’t changed much, had it? It was worse, certainly, but other than that—’
‘Mm,’ I said.
He pulled out his knife and sliced his apple into quarters. ‘What are you thinking?’
; ‘I’m wondering how the murderer knew about the cutting and stitching. Mrs Roseplucker said it was from the Rents. From the gangs of thieves and footpads, but I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘Why should you have heard of it? It’s from a thieves’ code. The customs and rules of Prior’s Rents are a mystery to outsiders. We’re not supposed to know.’
‘Then how did the murderer know about it? We can only assume he – or she – comes from Prior’s Rents. More than that, we must assume it’s someone who is familiar with the codes and habits of its most vicious residents. Perhaps Rutherford was cut and stitched as some sort of retribution?’
‘For what? He surely wasn’t in a criminal gang. Dr Golspie certainly wasn’t’
‘No, but perhaps he knew people who were. I am minded to think that the two murders are linked, but separate,’ I said. ‘Designed to look the same, but in fact perpetrated by two quite different hands. I believe Dr Golspie was killed because he saw someone in Dr Rutherford’s mirror. Dr Golspie also said that he thought Dr Rutherford was waiting for someone. Whoever he saw in the mirror was, in all likelihood, that person. But who was it and why had they come? Was that person the murderer?’
‘And what is the connection between all this and Prior’s Rents?’ Will munched on his apple.
‘We must look at Rutherford’s past to find that out, to discover what connections he had to that place.’
‘We know one already,’ said Will. We looked at one another, but neither of us spoke. I saw Will shiver. ‘There’s a fog coming in.’ He sat up and drew his coat back on. A name hung between us, unspoken, in the dampening air: Susan Chance.
We walked back to the apothecary. I was not sure what to do next. We did not know who had murdered Dr Rutherford and Dr Golspie. We did not know who the woman in the photograph was, nor did we know who Dr Golspie had seen in the mirror. Was it Susan Chance? She had been staying in the asylum. For all I knew she might have even pickpocketed some keys and gained access to every room in the place. And had she not attempted to maim Dr Rutherford when she was a child; had she not beaten a man to death with a poker? Was violent cruelty a part of her nature? She was familiar with Prior’s Rents where such things were commonplace. She was also the daughter of a seamstress. Was she not adept with the needle herself? And Billy Slater said he has seen her on Dr Golspie’s stairs. But Susan Chance was small; she was a cripple, ungainly and lacking agility. Surely she would be no threat to men like Rutherford and Golspie? Both of them might have batted her aside with one swipe. And yet she was quick and strong. Had I not seen her lash out at Big Brendan’s opponent with her metal boot?
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