The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  “Mr Tulkinghorn is expecting you. Follow me, please.”

  They pass the high pew where Charles’s guide normally sits, and proceed at an appropriately ponderous pace up the imposing staircase to the first floor. There Mr Tulkinghorn is sitting in state behind a large writing-table, at the far end of a room painted the colour of blood. The blinds are drawn and the green lamp is lit; the bright day clearly has no business here. Mr Tulkinghorn seems not to have noticed Charles’s presence, though the creak of the floorboards must have given him away the moment he entered. The air is close with the must of old paper, but Charles is uncomfortably aware that there is also a distinct under-tang of fried fish, which can only be his own personal contribution. All the same, it is at least another slow minute before Mr Tulkinghorn lowers the paper he has been reading and removes his spectacles. Charles makes sure to keep his eyes fixed upon him, all the while making his own private map of the precise configuration of the room. To the left, a cabinet of parchment scrolls and leather-bound law books, the lettering all but dissolved into the spines; to the right, the shadowy portraits of eminent and anonymous men, ranged one by one between the long windows; and on the wall behind Tulkinghorn, a rack of iron boxes in niches that resemble nothing so much as a columbarium, a last repository for cases long dead, and a hiding-place for secrets still very much alive. The surfaces are dusty, like Charles’s own; but clear, unlike his own. There are no papers visible, aside, of course, from the one Tulkinghorn has been reading. Has been being the phrase, since the lawyer has now placed that paper carefully on his desk and raised his eyes to meet his visitor.

  “You have been recommended to me.”

  It’s not the opening Charles expected, but it is, all the same, a promising one. He waits; Tulkinghorn waits. There’s a chair on Charles’s side of the desk, but he’s not invited to use it.

  Tulkinghorn picks up a piece of broken sealing-wax and weighs it in his hand. “It is a—somewhat delicate matter.”

  “Most of my work is.”

  Tulkinghorn raises an eyebrow. “You mean the Chadwick case? That, if you don’t mind me saying so, is a waste of your time. I would say a waste of your talents, but I am not sure, as yet, how far those talents extend. You will never find that child, as more seasoned police officers than you have already discovered. If the earth has not swallowed it, this city has. Even if it lives, it will be as depraved and degenerate as the rest of its class. You could not find it, even if you searched every thieves’ den and rookery lair in London.”

  Charles has his own views on that score—and reasons of his own that we may yet discover, for his dogged persistence in continuing with the case—but he elects not to share them. And if it surprises him to find Tulkinghorn so well informed, he is not going to pay his interlocutor the compliment of showing it.

  “You said there was a recommendation?”

  “Ah yes. It was Inspector Bucket. Of the Detective. I believe you know him?”

  It’s like a blow to the gut. Bucket? There are, undoubtedly, people who might have mentioned Charles’s name in Tulkinghorn’s hearing, but the list is not long and Bucket, surely, is at the farthest and most remote end of it. What on earth can possibly have induced him to do anything to advance Charles’s interests? Indeed, Charles would have laid a good deal of money he does not possess on the Inspector doing everything in his power in the opposite direction. It was Bucket who’d had him dismissed from the police—Bucket whose judgement he’d questioned with such disastrous consequences. His mind is racing, and he is all too aware that Tulkinghorn is watching him with extreme though concealed attention. Does Bucket, perhaps, feel guilty? Even the famously infallible Inspector must have accepted by now that he made a terrible mistake in the Silas Boone case. Perhaps he feels, now, that if he’d listened to Charles, the man might never have hanged. So was this his way of making reparation? Boone was beyond even Bucket’s long reach now, but Charles was alive and had to earn his bread somehow.

  “I am aware, of course,” continues Tulkinghorn, “of your family antecedents. Inspector Bucket was, I believe, something of a protégé of your great-uncle in his youth?”

  Charles nods. “He worked for him for a time, before joining the Detective, and I dare say he owes much of his subsequent success to my uncle’s methods. As, indeed”—this with the slightest bridling that the lawyer does not fail to register—“do I. Mr Maddox has been my teacher and mentor since I was a boy.”

  “Indeed so. And now you are a young man. A young man, moreover—or so I have been informed—of intellect and discretion. The matter I wish to discuss with you requires both qualities, but it is the latter that is my paramount concern.”

  “I understand.”

  Tulkinghorn eyes him. “Possibly you do. But I shall repeat the point nonetheless. Discretion in this case is all in all. My client in this affair is a man with an unimpeachable reputation. A man trusted with the confidential business of the highest in the land.”

  For one wild moment Charles thinks the lawyer is referring to himself, but Tulkinghorn has not finished.

  “You will have heard, I think, of Sir Julius Cremorne?”

  As Tulkinghorn is to the Law, so Cremorne is to High Finance. The latest in a long family line to head one of the City’s oldest and most astute merchant banks; a prime enabler of imperial trade, and lender of first resort to the country’s largest corporations. Even—it’s rumoured—an adviser to the Queen. Yes, Charles has heard of Sir Julius Cremorne, but he cannot begin to imagine what such a man could possibly want with him. His bafflement must be legible in his face, because Tulkinghorn gives the ghost of a smile. It is not an expression that finds an easy home on his impassive features.

  “The case is not, of itself, a taxing one,” the lawyer continues. “The need for discretion arises purely from Sir Julius’s rank and repute. In all other respects it is utterly trivial. But it must, nonetheless, be resolved, and with dispatch. I am afraid, Mr Maddox, that there will always be those who seek to besmirch eminent men for their own nefarious purposes. I have seen it happen many times before. The more spotless the family credit, the more zealous such villains seem to be to compromise it.”

  “I see,” says Charles, who does not, quite. “Perhaps you could—?”

  “Of course. You will want details. It is in the nature of your profession.”

  A noise. So low as to be almost inaudible—little more than the slightest creak of the ancient boards, but Charles is suddenly alert. Is it possible that there is someone else in the room? He’d noticed the elaborate Oriental screen when he came in, and thought in passing that it sat rather oddly with the austerity of the rest, but he had not suspected its role might be more than decorative.

  “Sir Julius,” continues Mr Tulkinghorn, looking at Charles from under his bent grey brows, “has been receiving letters. Very unpleasant letters.”

  “Letters of a threatening nature?”

  Tulkinghorn considers. “Nothing specific. Merely the expression of a vague but undeniably malevolent intent.”

  Charles frowns. “But as you said yourself, it cannot be the first time that Sir Julius has been harassed in a similar way. Why should this particular example concern him so much?”

  Tulkinghorn places the tips of his fingers together. “Sir Julius has always gone to extraordinary lengths to protect his wife and daughters from the less seemly consequences of his public position. In this endeavour he has, until very recently, been entirely successful. Unfortunately, the eldest Miss Cremorne is about to be married, and the house has, as a result, been thronged at all hours of the day by dressmakers, provisioners, flower-sellers, and I know not what. In short, there has been an unwarrantable breach on the part of one of the footmen, such that one of these infamous letters was given directly to Lady Cremorne’s own hand.”

  “There have been how many, so far?”

  “Three. The earliest some five months ago; the most recent, only last week.”

  “May I see it?”
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  There is, perhaps, a slight hesitation on the lawyer’s part at this request, but he takes out a ring of keys from his waistcoat-pocket and unlocks the desk drawer. The letter has been placed on plain brown paper, under a small oblong paperweight carved of some highly polished black substance. From where Charles is standing it looks, improbable as it sounds, like two slender fingers, one slightly longer than the other, the fingernails carefully incised. He’s still staring at it when Tulkinghorn leans forwards and hands him the paper. One sheet only, soft with frequent handling, with marks here and there in a dark and dirty brown. The handwriting is not educated, that much is both obvious and expected, but there is strength in it, and considerable resolution.

  I naw what yow did

  I will make yow pay

  Charles looks up. “Was there no cover?”

  “I believe it was mislaid.”

  “But it was posted, not delivered by hand?”

  Tulkinghorn nods.

  “And the others? May I see them?”

  “Possibly. If they have not been disposed of. I will enquire.”

  “And Sir Julius has no idea what this latest letter refers to?”

  Tulkinghorn spreads his hands. “Like the others—anything and nothing. You know what the people who commit these affronts to decency are like. And you can also imagine, I am sure, the effect of such a missive on a lady’s mind. The matter must be settled with all possible speed: There must be no recurrence.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Discover the culprit. And tell me his name.”

  “As simple as that. Even though, on the face of it, this letter could have been written by any one of a thousand men.”

  Tulkinghorn inclines his head. “Even so. It is a complex puzzle, I grant you; if it were not so I should not have required assistance to resolve it, and I should not have hired you.”

  He has him there; Charles is intelligent enough to know he is being flattered. But he’s human enough to pride himself on that intelligence, and crave the credit for it.

  Tulkinghorn gets to his feet, as Charles folds the paper and puts it in his breast-pocket. “I will expect you to keep me fully informed. If you have expenses you should apply to Knox. He, likewise, will require you to render a comprehensive account.”

  The clerk shows Charles back down the stairs and out onto the square. He has been in the house less than twenty minutes. He walks slowly to the corner and waits to let a carriage go past, then stoops for a moment to refasten his boot. So it is that he does not see that same equipage come to a halt at Tulkinghorn’s door, or the man who emerges from it. He is a little below middle size, this man, pale-faced, and about five-and-forty. His beard is shaven on his chin, but grows a fine rich brown on his cheeks and his upper lip, though his most distinguishing feature is concealed at present by a black leather glove: He bears an unsightly red scar on the back of his hand, the result of an unfortunate wound received some years since while travelling on the Continent. He stops a moment on the top step and looks about him, but by the time Charles straightens up he has disappeared inside, and the groom is closing the carriage door. The panel bears a rather striking black swan on its coat of arms, which Charles glances at idly before turning and walking away. Heraldry was rather a hobby of his, as a boy, and somewhere on his crowded shelves there is still a tattered old scrapbook of the armorial bearings of the English peerage. But these arms, arresting though they are, he did not recognise.

  The man, meanwhile, is ascending the stairs of Tulkinghorn’s house much as Charles had done. But he, unlike Charles, finds his host waiting to greet him at the door of the room. Tulkinghorn bows solemnly and leads the way to a smaller ante-chamber. They cross the floor under the opulent if rather faded ceiling, which seems to depict some sort of allegorical figure, reclining among flowers, clouds, and chubby pink-cheeked cherubs, and pointing with a plump arm which—from where we’re standing, at least—seems oddly foreshortened. Tulkinghorn’s new visitor admires the ceiling, having seen it many times. He considers it rather fine, of its type; Charles thought it obscene.

  There are three other gentlemen already seated at the round table in the ante-room, two of them smoking, and a third man with a finely trimmed beard, who has just emerged from the recess behind that extremely useful Oriental screen.

  “So?” It is the oldest of the men, upright and self-possessed, with fine white hair and an equally fine white shirt-frill, perfectly starched. “Is he our man, or not?”

  Mr Tulkinghorn takes his place at the table. “I think, Sir Amyas, that young Mr Maddox is ideal for our purposes. Bright, but not dangerously so, and very much in need of gainful employ. He has sufficient astuteness to do what we ask, and judgement enough not to probe any further.”

  There is a silence. The last gentleman to arrive shifts in his seat, clearly not yet convinced. “I am sure I need not remind you why it is absolutely imperative that my own particular part in this business should remain a matter of the utmost secrecy. You say this young man is unlikely to discover the truth, but what if he should—”

  Mr Tulkinghorn holds up a hand. “He will not. Indeed he cannot. As far as he is concerned, he is investigating a distressing but ultimately inconsequential incident, involving only Sir Julius Cremorne. It is impossible he should discover the full extent of the affair. He knows enough to locate the culprit, nothing more.”

  “That’s all very well,” says the bearded man quickly, looking round the table, and shifting rather stiffly on his old-fashioned mahogany-and-horsehair chair. “None of you face the m-meddling of a vulgar and impertinent upstart—”

  “Hardly that, surely,” murmurs Tulkinghorn.

  “—none of you run anything like the risk you expect me to assume. We’ve all had those damnable letters, but I’m the only one menaced with exposure by this plan. I told you before, Tulkinghorn, and I’ll tell you again—I d-don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. And as for that latest abomination—”

  “My dear Sir Julius, we have, as you say, discussed this already, and at some length. In the first place, your letters are among the most recent, and we may hope that their trail has not, therefore, gone completely cold. In the second place, it will be far easier to convince our young man that, for a gentleman in your position, such letters are little more than an occupational commonplace. No-one, after all, has any great love for bankers.”

  Sir Julius sits back in his chair, his face very red. “To speak frankly, I fail to see why we need this Maddox at all. That other f-fellow has always given perfect satisfaction in the past.”

  “The circumstances have changed, Sir Julius, as well you know. What is it that good Mrs Glasse says in her housekeeping compendium? ‘First catch your hare’. Mr Maddox has the skills we require to complete that particular task, but you have my assurance that I will—as always—make my own arrangements thereafter. And if he proves foolish enough to delve deeper into the affair than the task demands, I will make it my business to ensure that he does not live to profit by it.”

  “You m-mean—”

  The lawyer gives a small grim smile. “It would not be the first time such a problem has occurred, Sir Julius, and I hope the other gentlemen will do me the justice of acknowledging that whenever such a circumstance has arisen, I have never once scrupled to take whatever steps were necessary to eliminate it. If young Maddox insists on putting himself into the like category, I shall not hesitate to have him dealt with in the like manner, and with the like expediency.”

  There is an unsettled silence, broken only by the puttering of the coal fire and the breathing of cigars. The man with the scarred hand glances at Cremorne, but he is half turned away from the rest and will not meet his eye. He looks to the lawyer:

  “And the lady? What of her?”

  Mr Tulkinghorn sits back in his chair. “I have, as promised, concluded my enquiries. It appears that the lady in question is indeed in possession of certain facts that, put together, could allow her to
discover our secret.”

  There is a gasp at this, but once again, Tulkinghorn holds up his hand.

  “The word I used was could. I did not say will. I very much doubt that my Lady Dedlock has any idea of the significance of what she knows, or how to connect what must appear to her to be little more than a random collection of meaningless scraps.”

  “All the same—”

  “All the same, I am not proposing that we sit idly by. Trusting to luck is, in general, a notoriously unreliable defence, but it seems in this case it has been singularly favourable. It has come to my knowledge—I need not trouble you how—that my Lady has a secret of her own. A dire and shameful secret that threatens to bring stain and ignominy on the proudest of lineages. I have suspected it a long time—fully known it only a little while. And now my Lady knows that I know it.”

  “And you intend to expose her?”

  Tulkinghorn shakes his head. “Not yet. Perhaps not at all. Once disgraced she would have nothing to lose, and time on her hands to ponder those facts which at present are the very last and least of her concerns. No, gentlemen, better by far that she remain where she is, dragging out her present life at my pleasure, from day to day, from hour to hour, wondering when the blow will fall, and when the dark and lonely path she chose so long ago will at last find its end.”

  Sir Julius looks at him narrowly; his agitation has somewhat subsided, and with it his slight but perceptible stammer. “I should not like to have you for an enemy, Tulkinghorn. You show neither pity, nor compunction, nor hesitation. I congratulate you.”