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

by Lynn Shepherd

  An hour later he came to a halt under a lamp-post on the corner of a road running parallel with the new Waterloo railway line. A grimy noisy unprepossessing neighbourhood, but notable in 1850 for a very different reason: This was one of Victorian London’s most infamous red-light districts. All along the road the ground-floor windows were uncurtained and fully lit, the dazzle of gas turning each front-room into a cheap peep-show. From where Charles was standing he could see three women lolling in chairs in one room, their breasts completely exposed despite the cold; two more were hanging out of the next-door window calling rowdily to passing men, and in a third room a girl who looked little more than thirteen had her skirt yanked up about her waist and was peeing ostentatiously into a chamber pot, to the whoops and cat-calls of a crowd of young men on the pavement. Another girl—probably her sister, so alike they looked—took a coin from one of them and bent coquettishly towards him over the windowsill, so he could stare down her chemise and have a private panorama of her naked thighs and pubic hair. The house Charles was looking for was two doors farther down, and—unusually for the place and the time—both shuttered and dark. He tried the front door, then went down the narrow passage to the paved court at the back, where the two-storey houses backed directly onto the station shunting yard. The air was thick with soot and raucous with metal and wheels. But someone was listening, all the same, and his first knock brought a movement to an upstairs window, and the sound of feet on the stairs. Then the door opened, but only a crack.

  “Who is it?” A girl’s voice.

  “Charles Maddox. I had a message to come here.”

  “ ’Ave you got it wiv yer? So I knows you’re genuine.”

  Charles took out the letter and slid it through the gap. A moment later the door edged open and the girl appeared. She, like Lizzie, was tiny—less than five feet—and huddled in a thin woollen shawl. Her face was very pale, and her hair brashly and unnaturally blonde.

  “Was you followed?” she whispered.

  “I don’t think so. I took care.”

  “I don’t want no-one knowing you was ’ere. I don’t want to end up cut to pieces like poor Liz.”

  She beckoned him down the hall to a tiny back room, which was clearly her place of work as well as rest. There was a brass bed in the corner, draped in cheap embroidered moreen coverings evidently designed to look luxurious. The rest of the room was bare, apart from a table and chair in one corner, and a small armoire hung with a pale-coloured peignoir trimmed with feathers. The curtains were drawn and a lamp on a table in the corner threw shadows across white walls blotched here and there with damp. The only decoration was the mantel-shelf, which carried a choice collection of copper-plate impressions from the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, showing society ladies in a sequence of stylish gowns and equally stylish attitudes. It’s not a species that has ever excited much interest for Charles (though its subtle variations of plumage, habitat, and courtship ritual are as complex a taxonomic challenge, in their way, as anything presented to the Royal Geographical Society), but even at that distance he could recognise Lady Dedlock, she who occupies so central a place in the fashionable world, posed on a terrace, with her fur-lined shawl draped over a stone urn and a heavy gold bracelet on her arm.

  The girl stooped and turned the lamp up a little, and Charles saw for the first time that one cheek was swollen and badly bruised. Seeing his glance she turned away and put her hand to her face.

  “Who did that to you—it wasn’t—”

  She shook her head. “No, it were just Arnie. Just a little knock to keep me in my place. He means it kindly, mostly.”

  Charles has seen it many times before, but still doesn’t understand it—the way these girls cling to their pimps, taking any sort of bad treatment as no more than they deserve and considering it a mark of character to bear pain without protesting. And it’s not just the prostitutes either; he once caught one of the coster-lads beating his girl almost senseless, merely for talking to another man, but the girl refused to complain, saying she liked it when he larruped her—’cause it proved he still cared.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “You don’t need to know that. Best you don’t. I know who you are. That’s what matters. And more to the point, Liz said I could trust yer. I saw ’er that night. It was the last time I ever did.”

  “So you know what I was asking her about.”

  She nodded. “She said you was all right, and I could talk to yer. Said it wouldn’t come back on me. But that was before someone took a carving knife to ’er. Poor cow.” She folded her arms. “So what I want to know is, what are you goin’ to do to make sure that don’t ’appen to me?”

  “I can’t make you any promises—”

  “So why the hell should—”

  They had raised their voices and Charles was suddenly aware of a noise in the adjoining room. A whine at first, rising to a howl. The girl threw him an angry look then crossed quickly to the far door. He heard her hush the child, and the creak of a rocked cradle. A few moments later she appeared again, and closed the door behind her.

  “Look.” Charles moved towards her. “I think you may already be in danger—whatever it is you know, it makes you a threat to this man, whether you talk to me or not. But if you do, I will at least have some chance of bringing him to justice.” He took a step closer. She barely reached his shoulder and he could smell the fear on her now, sharpening the cheap scent.

  “It would be for Lizzie,” he said softly. “Justice for Lizzie.”

  She opened her mouth, but then stopped. Living the life she did, she probably had a pretty good idea of her chances and they weren’t good.

  “I could give you some money,” he said, reading what he thought might be crossing her mind. “You could get out of London for a while. Take the child to the seaside—”

  “Her. It’s a little gel. And anyway, Arnie wouldn’t like it.”

  Charles nodded slowly, wondering whether that was what she really feared or whether she was more concerned she might lose the only real protector she’d ever had, even if he did beat her half senseless on a weekly basis.

  The conversation was going nowhere; it was a risk, but he didn’t feel he had much to lose. He took the now dog-eared sheet of newsprint from his pocket and held it out to her. “This is a likeness of Sir Julius Cremorne.”

  The girl looked, then turned her face quickly away.

  “You recognise him.”

  She swallowed. The moment hung in the balance: She could go either way and he wasn’t at all sure which it would be. But then—

  “Neither Liz nor me ever knew ’is real name. None of the girls do. All we know is ’e’s a bastard. A bloody disgusting vicious bastard.”

  The loathing in her voice reverberated like a curse in the narrow room, and the child whimpered and stirred beyond the door. Charles looked at her. “Is he really so much worse than all the rest?”

  Her venom shifted suddenly to scorn. “Oh yeah, much worse. Shows you what the likes of you know about it. I’ve been raped and buggered and belted more times than I can count, but nothing, nothing like what he done to me. And what makes it worse is that your Sir Julius bloody Cremorne is only interested in little girls—or those of us as can pass ourselves off as such. Same type every time. Always blondes. And the younger the better. Ten, eleven—one of the pounceys even found him a girl of six once. I can look younger than I am ’cause I’m little, but I still ’ad to dress up like I was straight out of the nursery. Ribbons, ringlets, pink dress, the whole friggin’ farrago. He even gave me a bloody doll to hold while he was on top of me. Couldn’t seem to get it up otherwise. And never took ’is clothes off the ’ole time, not even ’is gloves. Then afterwards ’e makes me take the ’ole lot off and watches me take a bath. Even then I thought it was bloody weird. Then when I got out and turned round ’e was holding this ’orrible-looking knife—Christ, I thought me last hour ’ad come. But it turned out all ’e wanted was a curl of hair. Y
ou know—from down there. For ’is collection, ’e says.”

  By now the girl had started shivering uncontrollably. “State I were in by then, I didn’t care what ’e took as long as ’e left and didn’t come back. I burned everything ’e made me wear soon as I shut the door. Bastard pays well though, I’ll give ’im that. Coupl’a sovs if you’re lucky—but then again ’e ain’t got much choice. I couldn’t work for a week after. God knows what state that six-year-old was in when he’d done wiv ’er. Poor little cow.”

  She lifted her head, defiant. “So now you know—who ’e is and what ’e done. So my question is—Will it ’elp? ’Elp find whoever it was did them terrible things to Liz?”

  Her eyes were huge now in the half-light. Huge with fear and pleading.

  “Men as high as him are hard to bring low,” answered Charles. “But if I can make him pay, I will, I promise you that. Lizzie was my friend too. I’m going to miss her.”

  There must have been something in his voice at this, because the girl looked at him for a moment, then nodded and took a step back. Charles turned to go, but she wasn’t finished. Not quite.

  “One more thing. It ain’t just what ’appened to Liz. One of the pimps was found in the street wiv ’is throat cut after a run-in wiv Cremorne, if that really is ’is name. ’E ain’t ’ad no trouble since—everyone’s too scared. So if it’s ’im you’re getting tangled up wiv, then watch yer back.”

  Charles held up his bandaged hand. “I know. To my cost. But it’s not me you should be concerning yourself about.”

  He slid a coin into her hand. It was gold, and he saw her eyes widen.

  “Think again about that holiday, will you? And you know where to find me if—well, if you need to.”

  Back out on the street Charles took a deep breath and let it out in raw gasps. There was a pain in his chest like a dead-weight. He knew—anyone in the police knew—that there were literally thousands of young girls being prostituted in London every night, as often as not by their own families, and in their own homes. And most of what Sir Julius Cremorne was doing was—in the strict sense of the term—perfectly legal, since the age of consent in 1850 was twelve, not sixteen, and as Maddox had already observed, the girls were doing it, most of them, of their own free will. All the same, even to someone as case-hardened as Charles, there was something particularly perverted, something pitilessly brutal, about a man who set his sights on children as young as six. And who did so in a way that could terrify even such a girl as this. Charles couldn’t imagine what Cremorne must have done to her, and yet he knew that her word alone was nowhere near enough to bring a viable case against the man, and none of it—yet—explained Tulkinghorn, or Boscawen, or Abigail Cass. But there was a link, somewhere, of that he was quite sure. He had only to find the flaw in the fabric, the treacherous loose thread, and wind it slowly backwards to its grim and hidden source.

  So now perhaps you understand why, when we saw him at Jo’s funeral, there was a new hardness in his face that we have not seen before. And why, as even Bucket has now perceived, a flint and arid rage has settled on his soul.

  And now we watch as he is taken up the stairs and through the Bow Street station-house, Wheeler at his side and a constable at his heels, and it is obvious that this seething anger has not abated one jot. But once at the front desk, the sergeant seems rather more concerned to be ordering Bucket a carriage than finding the key to the cuffs on Charles’s wrists.

  “You there,” the sergeant calls to Percy Walsh, who is nervously avoiding Charles’s eye and making it quite obvious thereby, to anyone who cares to look, that the two of them have met before. “Get your sorry arse outside and hail a hansom. Inspector Bucket has another appointment in Belgravia, and he won’t want to be kept waiting.”

  Wheeler grins as Walsh shuffles unwillingly out into the freezing air. The weather has turned cold again, and the evening clouds are yellowish with unfallen snow.

  “Poor old Walsh. He’s spent half his shift the last couple of days out in the street looking for cabs. Seems to me Bucket might just as well move in with bloody Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if he’s going to spend so much time there—”

  The rather premature end to this sentence can be accounted for by the abrupt appearance of one of the persons referred to in it; in fact, the aforesaid Bucket rather prides himself on his ability to appear and disappear at will, in an almost supernatural manner. It may, indeed, be at the root of the Inspector’s otherwise unaccountable ability to know facts to which he has no right, and no other conceivable access. Wheeler’s face is red to the ears with embarrassment but Bucket affects not to notice, merely scouts about in his plethora of pockets for the key to the handcuffs. But when Charles turns to the desk sergeant to retrieve his coat and gun he finds the latter, at least, is not forthcoming. Seeing the look on his face, Bucket takes him aside.

  “I’ve been mulling over what you said earlier, my lad. On the subject of bullets and such like, and whether or not the shot was fired up close. My interest has been piqued, that’s the truth of it, and when a man in my line of business finds himself in such a position it’s as well for him to follow his nose, that’s my view. And seeing as that’s the case, I would like, with your agreement, to undertake a few little experiments of my own.”

  There is a moment’s hesitation on Charles’s part, but Bucket reads the thought in his usual unerring and unsettling fashion. “Don’t you be afraid that this might turn back upon you. It’s all right as far as you’re concerned. It ain’t your gun I’m interested in, in so far as it belongs to you. Only as a comparison, if you take my meaning. I promise you, as a man and as a Detective, that you shall have the gun back in your hands tomorrow, and no more said about it. Now, that seems perfectly fair and reasonable to me, in the interests of justice and the solving of a crime. Don’t you see?”

  What Charles sees, like so many before him, is that Bucket has inveigled him into an impossible position. He’s on the point of saying as much, when a movement by the door catches his eye and he looks up to see two other officers bringing in the trooper, just as he himself was brought in only a few short hours before. He’s about to start forwards when Bucket takes him by the arm and whispers softly in his ear.

  “Now, my lad, just you be remembering your promise, and don’t be doing anything rash.”

  “But—”

  “Like I said, you will have to trust me. I knows what I’m doing, whether you believe that or not. So you pretend not to have seen the trooper there and come quietly along with me to the back door, there’s a good lad. And remember—as I said to you before, things may not always be as they first appear.”

  Left to himself on the back steps, Charles reflects on those last words and on the number of times in the last few days he’s heard—or read—something similar. As a proposition, the idea that appearances can be deceptive is hardly radical, so why does it strike him so forcibly now? Why is he so convinced, suddenly, that there’s something he’s missing? That for all his scientific theory and practical experience there’s a connexion somewhere that he’s overlooked? But as we already know, he thinks better when he’s walking, so it’s no surprise to see him turn up his collar and head purposefully down towards the Strand. It’s such a short step to Buckingham Street that he has little time to collect his thoughts, which are at best rather ragged after so little sleep. So much so that it’s only the swift intervention of two passers-by that saves him from being knocked down, as a large carriage careers to a halt outside the grand stucco-fronted town house that hosts one of London’s most exclusive gambling clubs. Charles is about to thank the two men who stepped forward to help him—one of them with a high forehead and slightly wild dark hair under his tall silk hat, the other plumper, bookish-looking, with small metal-rimmed glasses—when he realises he’s seen the carriage before. It’s the one he saw in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—the one that bears the arms of the black swan. He watches as a man comes out of the club and stands for a moment, gatherin
g his cloak about him. It’s the man with the scarred hand—the same man Jacky Jackson described drinking and gambling with Cremorne at the Argyll Rooms, the same man Charles might have seen that day some two weeks ago, going into Tulkinghorn’s house, had he been looking—or lucky. But if chance deserted him then it’s on his side this time, for the man is suddenly seized with a dry hacking cough that forces him to stop under the gas-lights at the door, and when he puts his hand to his mouth you can see the red scar as clearly as if it were broad day. But in the time it takes Charles to register this—to make the link, and realise what it means—the man has moved swiftly down the steps and into his carriage, and the coachman is spurring the horses away. Charles looks back at the building. He knows the place well enough to be sure he will gain neither entry nor assistance there, but there is a source of information this man cannot conceal—one that, on the contrary, he is flaunting even now for all to see. Because even though the carriage has already turned into the Strand, Charles looked at it more closely this time, and has seen something he did not notice before. The arms on the panelled door bear a small but unmistakable badge on the canton of the shield. And while he may not know the name of the man whose equipage this is, he knows exactly what is signified by such a sinister hand appaumy Gules. It’s the red hand of Ulster. The man is a baronet.

  A baronet.

  And while the ‘Sir’ of a baronet may look the same, and sound the same, as the ‘Sir’ of a knight, they are as dissimilar, as species, as a mythical unicorn and a Common Eland. Indeed why else should Bucket keep repeating the Baronet in Sir Leicester’s name, if not to emphasise the immeasurable distance between that great county family and those who may use the same designation before their name, but can lay claim to neither the same ancestral lands nor the same ancient lineage? And what was it Mrs O’Driscoll overheard Abigail Cass say? That a girl had been cruelly used, and cruelly wronged, and all the noble rank and money in London would not be enough to conceal it. Now as Charles is well aware, a mere baronet does not—on the most scrupulous technicality—actually qualify for the ranks of the nobility, but a woman like Abigail Cass is unlikely to have known that. What she would most definitely have known, on the other hand, is that despite the enormous fortune amassed by the Cremornes—rumoured to exceed even the Dedlocks’—there is an invisible but adamantine barrier impeding Sir Julius that not even an alliance with an earl will ever entirely do away: Unlike Sir Leicester, who owes the title before his name to nothing more than accident of birth, Sir Julius has earned his money in trade, and achieved his knighthood by dint of his own toil.