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

by Lynn Shepherd

  The little bald man seems anxious to be gone, and once the trooper has shown him out, he makes purposefully towards Charles with his usual military tread and—somewhat unusually—extends his hand.

  “I am glad to see you, Mr Maddox.”

  “Are you in some sort of trouble?” asks Charles, glancing past the sturdy shoulder. He has picked up, here and elsewhere, that the old trooper has money worries—money worries that may be entangling him in an even deeper predicament. But his interlocutor shakes his head.

  “No trouble, Mr Maddox. At least not for me, and not for today.”

  He takes Charles by the elbow. “The last time you came, I believe you mentioned that you had been looking for a young crossing-sweep?”

  “The lad from Newton Street? What of it?”

  “And I believe you said that this lad—if you could find him—might be able to help you discover who had murdered an innocent woman?”

  “Two innocent women. I think the same man this lad saw has also killed at least one other woman since, and probably set that fire in Bell Yard as well, which killed a dozen more.”

  “But if you were to find him, I’m sure you would not wish this lad any harm, or hand him over to those as might wish to harass him or move him on.”

  Charles frowns. “That is not in my nature, as I hope you would know.”

  The trooper bows. “Right enough, sir, so I do. But it is a delicate matter and I’m sure as you’ll understand my method of proceeding soon enough. You see, the lad is here.”

  “Here? How on earth did he come to be here, of all places?”

  The trooper gestures briefly towards the back of the room. “He were brought here by that young gentleman. A surgeon by trade. Seems he found the boy in the rookeries. Seems he knew him—or of him. There be some sort of connexion between them, that I do know, though neither has said what it is. Anyhow, this young doctor took pity on the lad, and brought him, by a rather roundabout route that need not trouble you, to me. He has been here two days now, and Phil and I have been doing our best to care for him. Having been found, when a baby, in the gutter, Phil naturally takes an interest in the poor neglected creature.”

  Charles stares at the trooper, then starts eagerly towards the cabin, but the man holds him back. “The lad is clean now, and fed, and as comfortable as we can make him, but he is quite worn out with all that has befallen him, and not long for this world, I should say. Go gently with him, sir, and keep the doctor by.”

  The little cabin at the back is dim and cramped but it’s clean, and the mattress is provided with sheets that have been lately washed, albeit a little worn. There’s a small shelf of medicines on one side of the bed, and on the other the figure, hunched now, of the young doctor. He looks up when Charles enters and motions silently to a place by his side.

  “He is sleeping. Rest can do more for him now than I can.”

  He reaches across and lays a hand gently on his patient’s heart. The boy murmurs at the touch and his bony chest heaves and rattles. His eyelids flutter, but there is no ignoring the deep hollows under his eyes, or the thin fingers clutching at the bedclothes.

  “How long has he been like this?” asks Charles softly.

  “When I found him he was the most abject figure you can possibly imagine—all in rags and cowering against a wall, with a hand over his face as if the only things life has ever dealt him are blows. Which is probably not so very far from the truth. Not so much a human being as a rat, or a stray dog.”

  There’s a bitter ring to the doctor’s voice at this, and the lad stirs and opens his eyes. He sees the doctor’s face, and huge tears well up and spill onto his emaciated cheeks. “You’s not angry wiv me agin, are you, Mr Woodcot? I is wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and I never went fur to do it, and I wos a-hoping as you’d be able to forgive me in your mind.”

  “No, Jo,” says the doctor, though his tears are falling too, “I’m not angry with you. You had a reason for what you did, and you could not have known what consequences it was to have. And I know the young lady forgives you too.”

  “What’s he talking about?” whispers Charles.

  “Oh,” says the doctor, passing a hand across his eyes, “it is—another matter. Unconnected with your own.”

  He takes the lad by the hand and bends over him. “Now, Jo,” he says kindly, “there is a gentleman to see you. He wishes to ask you some questions—”

  “He ain’t the police, Mr Woodcot?” cries the boy, his eyes flaring with terror.

  “No, Jo,” says the doctor soothingly. “He is not the police. But if you can tell him what he needs to know, you’d be helping to catch a very bad man, and that would go well with you, would it not?”

  “I’ll do anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it’s good.”

  “Very well then.”

  The doctor motions Charles closer, and he crouches close to the little feverish face.

  “I want to ask you about a woman, Jo. A woman you saw once, in the street.”

  “Not the lady in a wale and the bonnet and the gownd as sed she wos a servant?” The boy is suddenly distressed again, and catches at the doctor’s hand. “Not the lady at the berryin’-ground! Don’t as make me talk about that, Mr Woodcot! I sed—it is her and it an’t her and I don’t know nothink more about it.”

  Charles looks bewildered but the doctor gently interjects, “No, Jo. Not that lady, another one. Mr Maddox here will explain.”

  He nods to Charles. “Go on.”

  “I think this woman was dead when you found her, Jo,” says Charles. “Do you remember that? It was something over a year ago. Do you recall seeing a woman lying dead in the street around that time?”

  The boy nods slowly. “It were near the berryin’-ground. It warn’t the lady in the wale but it war nigh the same place. She war lying on her back, wiv her legs up. And there were blood. Lots of blood. Running like water, it wos, like wen it rains bad and my broom ain’t enough to kip the mud away.”

  “Did you touch her, Jo? Did you take anything from her?”

  The boy looks fearfully from one face to the other. “It warn’t me as killed her, Mr Woodcot!”

  “We know that, Jo,” says the doctor. “Mr Maddox is just trying to make sure that the woman he’s concerned about is the same woman you saw.”

  The boy looks away. “I knew it war wery bad and I deserve to be punished and serve me right, but I wos wery hungry and poor and ill, I wos, and they warn’t no use to her no more.”

  “What weren’t, Jo?”

  “Them pretty rings. Bright gold they wos, and shining,” he mumbles. “Only not a bit like the sparkling one wot t’other lady had—her as wos and yit as warn’t the t’other lady—her wiv the wale and the bonnet and the gownd. Can’t have been, cos they only gave me five bob for all three on ’em.”

  Charles nods quietly, and edges closer to the boy; already the rank smell of death hangs heavy about him.

  “This next question is very important, Jo. Did you see a man nearabouts where the woman was? The man who might have killed her?”

  The boy’s eyes widen, and he looks back at the doctor imploringly. “I told you, Mr Woodcot, I dustn’t. I would but I dustn’t.”

  “But that was about—the other matter.” A spasm of pain crosses the doctor’s face. “This is something quite different, Jo.”

  “No,” whispers the boy, his voice breaking. “No, it’s all the same—all on it. He ses to me, ‘Hook it! Nobody wants you here. You move on, or you’ll repent it.’ And I am, Mr Woodcot, I am!”

  The doctor turns to Charles. “I am afraid he is still confusing the two occasions. I happen to know that what he is saying is the truth—he was indeed told to move on, but that was in relation to the other matter, and the two things cannot possibly be connected.”

  Charles shakes his head. “I’m not so sure. Is it possible that the real reason the boy was told to move on was because he saw something that night that certain people did not wish to come
to light? Because he witnessed a murder?”

  “That’s an extraordinary theory, Mr Maddox—”

  But Charles has already turned back to the boy on the bed. “Who was it, Jo? Who told you to move on?”

  “I dustn’t name him,” says Jo. “I dustn’t do it, sir.”

  “You may trust me, Jo, just as you trust the doctor here.”

  “Ah, but he may hear,” replies Jo, shaking his head in distress. “He is everywheres, all at wanst. I dustn’t give his name!”

  “I know who it is he speaks of,” the doctor tells Charles in a low voice. “There is no need to alarm him further.”

  Charles swallows hard, then reaches out and places his hand on the boy’s damp forehead. “Don’t think about that now. Just think about that night. When you saw the woman dead. Do you remember the man you saw? Think carefully, Jo, and tell me the truth. You know, don’t you, that it’s wicked to tell a lie?”

  But that was clearly the wrong thing to say: Jo’s eyes are now round with terror. “I don’t know nothink. It war wery dark, sir, that it wos, and I niver saw his face or nothink. I wish as I’d never gone a-nigh her—don’t let them took me away agin, Mr Woodcot!”

  “Don’t worry, Jo. You’re quite safe here. I’m not leaving you now.”

  Charles reproaches himself silently; he tries another tack.

  “If you didn’t see what he looked like, did you perhaps see what he was wearing?”

  Jo thinks for a moment, then nods warily. “I remember there wos a hat and a coat. Long and dark it wos.”

  “And was he tall? Taller than the doctor, for example?”

  Jo shakes his head, but his eyes are losing their focus. “I’ve been a-chivied and a-worried and a-chivied but now I is moved on as fur as ever I can go and can’t move on no furder. It’s time fur me to go down to that there berryin’-ground, Mr Woodcot”—he falters—“and put along with him as wos so good to me. Let me lay there quiet wiv him and not be chivied no more.”

  It takes him a long time to say this and they have to stoop to hear much of it, but he slips, finally, into sleep, and the doctor gestures to Charles that the interview is over. The trooper has been standing silently in the doorway all this while, and the three of them leave the cabin and return to the table, where Phil is cleaning his tools.

  “I do not know if that was any use to you, Mr Maddox,” says the doctor with a sigh, “but I fear you will get little more. His heart has very nearly given up, and will labour but a little further.”

  It’s only now, in the full light streaming from the windows overhead, that he notices Charles’s hand.

  “May I?” he says, gesturing to the dressing.

  Charles nods. It may not be such a bad idea, after all, for a professional to take a look.

  “Has a surgeon seen this?” says the doctor with a frown, echoing Charles’s thought.

  Charles shakes his head, watching the bandage removed by a practised and skilful hand. As the last strip of cloth lifts from the wound he winces, then shakes his head again as the doctor eyes him with concern. “It’s nothing.”

  “On the contrary. This is a serious injury. It must be very painful, even now.”

  He lifts the hand so he can examine it more closely, then touches here and there, but gently, so as not to cause unnecessary pain.

  “You have had a good nurse,” he concludes eventually. “I see no sign of infection at present, but you must remain vigilant. You risk losing the hand, if not worse.”

  He asks Phil for a basin of water, then cleans the hand again and dries it, and binds it up in a new dressing. And as he does so he asks, with what is perhaps a rather artificial nonchalance, “I have had occasion recently to treat a number of people wounded in a wreck at sea, but this injury does not resemble any of them. The cut is too clean, too expert. This was no accident, was it? Someone attacked you.”

  Charles smiles bitterly. “I found out to my cost, that if one approaches too near the knuckle with the likes of Mr Tulkinghorn, one risks having the metaphor turn to reality in the most unpleasant fashion.”

  He sees the trooper start at this, and a look flashes between him and the doctor.

  “I see you know the name,” says Charles, his interest aroused.

  “As I said to the doctor only yesterday, Mr Maddox, I know the name. Aye, I know the name, but only to my sorrow.” The trooper rubs his large hand over the back of his neck, sending his thick hair standing on end. “You have gathered, no doubt, that I am in difficulties just at present. It is this man, this Tulkinghorn, who is at the root of it. He has the power to turn me out of this place neck and crop, if he chooses, but he does not choose. He threatens, and then he withdraws. Even when I have money to give him, he passes me from here to there, refusing to see me, keeping me hanging on until it fair maddens my mind to fury.”

  The trooper’s face is by now, as red as the soiled bandage cast aside on the table and he heaves a heavy sigh, as if fearful of what else he might say.

  “And you say this Tulkinghorn is responsible for your injury?” the doctor asks Charles, stopping for a moment in his bandaging.

  “Not directly, of course,” replies Charles. “He would not dirty his hands with such disagreeable matters, even if he had the heart and stomach to undertake them.”

  “Aye,” agrees the trooper, “as I said to the doctor here, I wish I had the chance of setting spurs to my horse and riding at that bloodless old man in a fair field. For if I had that chance, he’d be the one to go down, I can promise you that!”

  “And the police?” asks the doctor calmly, still intent on the dressing.

  Charles shrugs. “I have no proof. And even if I had, I suspect Mr Tulkinghorn’s word would weigh more heavily with certain officers at Bow Street, than even the strongest and most incontrovertible evidence.”

  It is the doctor’s turn to glance up now, and his face is troubled.

  “I told you a few minutes ago,” he says slowly, “that I did not believe there could be any connexion between the crime you are investigating and the callous moving-on of this poor lad. I am not so sure of that now. Indeed,” he continues, “I always found it odd that such a man should have taken so much time and trouble to pursue and harry that pitiful creature—a proceeding which has unquestionably brought the boy directly to the sad state into which he has now descended. To track him as far out of London as the house in which he was found”—and here the shadow passes again across his face—“and then have him taken away in the dead of night. What was there to be gained from it? Whom could it possibly benefit?”

  “I think you know the answer now, sir,” says the trooper, his face grim. “It is this Tulkinghorn—this man who hoards the private secrets of a hundred noble families, and whose sole concern is to preserve them from prying eyes and common tongues. You have a dangerous enemy, Mr Maddox, and his reach is long.”

  Charles looks from the trooper to the doctor, who takes up his thought again. “Indeed, this would seem to be the only explanation for another otherwise inexplicable aspect of the affair. The fact that the boy remains—as you saw—in a quite irrational terror of the person who ordered him to keep out of the way. He still believes this person to be everywhere, and to know everything.”

  “I know to my own cost,” returns the trooper, shaking his head, “that this person he speaks of is undoubtedly a rum customer—and a deep one. The boy is right about that, in every particular. I never saw a man with such an outward appearance of candour, and yet so secretive a way of going on. Nor did I ever meet a man who seems so clearly to be marching straight ahead, only to veer off, at the last moment, in another course entirely.”

  “Of course,” says Charles slowly, as the final recognition dawns. “Inspector Bucket.”

  TWENTY

  Hester’s Narrative

  AND NOW I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly indeed, and for which I was all unprepared. It was some months after Clara had been ill, and yet I felt still that th
ere was some strange and inexplicable shadow between us, and yet in every other way my life was just as it had always been. Until that day—oh, that terrible day!—when I first felt myself unwell. My dreams the night before had been unusually tangled and hectic, and when I woke the room was still dark and I could not free myself from the impression that something had happened during the night, though I did not know what it was, that had left me with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too large altogether. I made myself a little tea, and sat down heavily before the dying fire. And as the room grew gradually colder and colder I found I was shivering from head to foot, and yet I was growing all the while not more wakeful but more somnolent, and my thoughts soon became so confused that I began to lose a sense of who I was—now the girl in the room was me, and now she was Clara, and now she was poor confused Miss Flint, distraught and tormented, and crying aloud in fear in the darkness.

  I do not know how long it was that I remained there, but my next recollection is of the grey light of morning stealing between the curtains, which I must have left open. I rose, somewhat stiffly, and went to close them. It was still very early, and the sky overcast and drab, but I was sure I could see figures in the garden. I believe—I am sure I caught a glimpse of white—that one of them was Anne, the boarder I think I referred to once before. She was walking on the farther side of the lawn, accompanied by one of the maids and another woman I had never seen. I should have remembered if I had, for though her figure was comely and her manner elegant, I could see even from my window that her face was ugly. I am not being unkind, I assure you—her skin was swarthy, her forehead low, and her features almost masculine. I had no looking-glass to compliment my own looks but I could not help feeling a most pleasant satisfaction with them—such as they are. Looking back at what I have just written, I realise that I have omitted to mention that Anne had recently returned to our company after an absence of some months. To my mind, she seemed rather changed from when I had last seen her, but my Guardian said she had been very ill and the slight changes to her appearance were no doubt due to the effects of that illness. Did not my own darling pet look rather different now than once she did? And no doubt he was right, in this as in all things.