by M. J. Tjia
“Too much champagne, as usual,” she says. “I do not know when you will learn.”
Shut yer mouth, shut yer mouth, shut yer mouth churns through my mind, but I don’t have the energy to utter the words. There’s the tinkle of a silver teaspoon against china. Amah’s preparing a cup of hot, sweet tea for me, but I’m only enticed from the depths of my swansdown pillow by the smell of toast.
When she sees my face she pretends to look frightened and then laughs heartily, covering her mouth as she chuckles. “Ah. You look like the warrior god, Zhong Kui, with his beady, red eyes and ferocious frown.”
I grimace at her and take a sip of tea. “Hush your mouth, or I’ll hack up all over the carpet and you’ll have to clean it up.”
Amah cheerfully butters the toast and hands a thin slice to me. “Monsieur Agneau made your favourite eggs, so make sure you eat them up. You know what he’s like,” she says of my cook. “You leave a morsel and he’ll be offended.”
I slump back against my pillows. “Can’t you eat them for me? I can’t face it.”
Amah places a fork between my slack fingers. “You eat them. You’ll feel better for it,” she says, firmly.
“Between you and Monsieur Agneau I get no peace. I’ll be as large as a sow at this rate,” I grumble. “I need a little puppy so that it can eat what I don’t want.”
“Except I’ll be the one left looking after it,” says Amah, as she moves towards the dressing room to prepare my wardrobe for the day.
I nibble at the toast, licking the butter from my bottom lip. I feel up to trying a few mouthfuls of the fluffy eggs, and the herbs are tantalising, reviving. How I’ve missed Monsieur Agneau’s cooking.
I watch as the rain drizzles against the window. It dampens my spirits to think that I have to return to Waterloo. Hell, it dampens my spirits that I have to leave my cosy bed.
Amah returns with a jewellery case, in which she deposits my diamonds. She glances sideways at me and smirks. “I know why you’re so grumpy today. You don’t want to return to that mouldy house in Waterloo.”
I lick egg from the fork and shrug. “Do you think we could just send Taff to pick up Eleanor and the rest of my clothing? Bring her here?”
Amah places my dratted corset and petticoats upon the foot of the bed. “Well, it depends on what you have planned for the girl. I don’t know what you and Sir Thomas have arranged.”
“Nothing yet.” I rub my face and turn onto my side, almost upsetting the plate of eggs. What to do with Eleanor? It’s true that I’ve received no further word from Sir Thomas or Mr Carter as to the young woman’s fate, and Eleanor can’t stay under my wing indefinitely, after all. I roll onto my back and drape my arm across my eyes, to think. What to do with a pregnant girl? I’ve a great many acquaintances and friends, and even quite powerful connections, yet I don’t have any contacts in the field of good works, who would be of use in this matter – I don’t know any Christian, charity workers or benefactors who could find a home and employment for a young woman such as Eleanor. And what of her? Do I really want to deliver her into a world of condemned drudgery for the rest of her life? The only community that I can think of which would be likely to take on a young woman in Eleanor’s plight is the type to be found in houses such as Mme Silvestre’s. I know of many women from nice households such as Eleanor’s, who had fallen – through financial necessity, rape, seduction or ignorance – into the brothel trap. I myself had been much younger than Eleanor when I’d first stumbled into this way of life. But, damn it, I didn’t have a father who could pay my way like little Eleanor does.
And what of the child? Either way, Eleanor will not be able to keep the baby.
I think of Blain’s words, how he was revolted at the idea of Eleanor residing with me. Bastard. It will serve him right if I keep young Eleanor, here, in my den of immorality. Yes, and it will also serve as a slap in Mr Carter’s face, to have his fair daughter traipsing around town on Heloise Chancey’s arm. Hasn’t Hatterleigh mentioned time and again that I need to have a chaperone? And the baby. I think I’d quite like having the pink, chubby creature in the house. Oh, how that’ll show all those bloody bastards.
“What are you grinning about under there?” asks Amah, her voice suspicious.
I sit up, purposefully pushing the covers from my knees. “I’ve decided what is best for Eleanor,” I announce.
She puts her hands on her hips. “And what is that, Heloise?”
“She will stay with me. She will be my companion and we will hire a nursemaid to look after the child.”
Amah’s silent for a few moments, her mouth agape. “Have you finally lost all your sense, girl?” she gasps.
I don’t know what’s twisted her garter. I know she’s fond of Eleanor and I’d been sure she would agree wholeheartedly with my plan. “But it’s a perfect plan, Amah. Can’t you see?”
“You’re thinking of the baby, aren’t you? You think it will be all sweetness and joy to have the little beast in the house.”
I plonk myself down in front of the dresser mirror and tug the brush through my tangled hair. “And what of that? Poor Eleanor will not be able to keep the child any other way, Amah.”
“And what if you grow tired of her company?”
I cock my head to the side, considering. “If that time comes I’ll think of something else, no doubt.”
“She’s not a pet monkey to bandy around, Heloise,” Amah says, her tone abrupt. “What are you going to do? Pass her on to a friend when you become tired of her like you did with the parrot Sir Winsome brought you from the Americas?”
I purse my lips together and glare at her. Amah’s always known just how to sting me like a noisome mosquito.
“Thankfully, this is my household, so I may do exactly as I please.” I have the satisfaction of seeing Amah’s mouth twist in anger.
Bundle opens the front door just as my carriage arrives. The pair of chestnut horses toss their heads against the steady trickle of the rain. A whiff of earthy peat rises from the pavers as I stand in the doorway, waiting for Amah to fix her black hat and veil over her head.
“I don’t know why you persevere with the veil, Amah,” I say. I watch as the older woman pulls black gloves over her hands and a black cape around her shoulders. “You look like a villainous, black moth.”
“If you were stared at as much as I am,” she replies, “for all the wrong reasons, you too would find solace behind cover.”
We lift our skirts and trip across the neat path and with Taff’s help, climb into the carriage. The journey back to Waterloo isn’t too arduous since it’s the middle of the morning. The houses become decreasingly elegant the further we travel.
“You have not changed your mind about Eleanor?” asks Amah. She doesn’t turn to face me but rather stares out her side window as she speaks.
“No. No, I haven’t.” I too gaze out my own window at the buildings, coaches and people we rumble pass. I’m still miffed with her, so I can’t admit that since her words of warning I’ve experienced doubts about my plan. But I honestly can’t think of anything else I can do with Eleanor.
The roads have turned to mud from the incessant rain so I start to place pattens over my kid shoes. The carriage bumps its way along Frazier Street and just as it pulls into the side of the road, Chat hurtles out through the front door of my Waterloo abode. His face is the colour of curd and his mouth hangs open in a distressed maw. He stumbles down the path, grasping unsteadily at bushes and the fence. He glances at the carriage but I don’t think he recognises me, and then he runs off down the street.
“What’s happening here?” I cast the pattens to the floor of the carriage and leap to the wet ground before Taff can help me alight. I hurry through deep puddles of water, drenching both my shoes and the hem of my gown in the process. The front door is ajar.
The house feels as cold and barren as that first night I’d arrived. No warmth from the fireplaces, no aroma of tea or cookery. Dread tickles down my backbo
ne and I pause in the hallway.
“Check the kitchen, Heloise,” whispers Amah, from behind. “I will check upstairs.”
Taff and I rush into the kitchen. Upon the table is a loaf of bread, the knife sticking out from it awkwardly, where it’s been left, mid-slice. One of two teacups is upset, the dark liquid spilt across the table cloth. The fire is out in the blackened range, and dirty water and plates fill the sink. I push a chair aside and sprawled across the floor, behind the kitchen table, lies Agnes. Blood, as sticky and rich as toffee, mats her hair. We both crouch over her body, but even before Taff presses his ear to her chest and then shakes his head slowly, I know from the chalkiness of the girl’s skin and the blue tinge around her mouth that she’s dead.
I pinch at my bottom lip, aghast, and then spring up so quickly my head spins for a moment. “Eleanor.”
I hurry up the stairs and hear a short moan from the bedroom. At first I’m glad for the noise because it means Eleanor is alive, but then, bile rising in my stomach, I realise the moan comes from Amah.
“Amah, Amah,” I call. My voice is hoarse. “What’s happened?”
Amah tries to bar my way at the bedroom door. “No, Heloise, no. You must not see her.”
But I’m taller than her. Peering over her head, I can see Eleanor’s body laid out across the bed. I push Amah aside and slowly approach what is left of my young ward.
Eleanor’s face is so waxen it appears to be a mask of her true self, except for the marks of faint bruising around her mouth. A rosy blush no longer tinges her cheeks, and her bloodless lips are barely discernible against the glaucous pallor of her skin. There are rags twisted through some of her hair but she will never see the ringlets unfold. Her tiny body is hidden beneath the white sheet which is pulled up to her chin, but at the tips of the slight mounds that were her breasts, crimson blood is etched into the fabric, the blood’s stain accentuating its weave.
I can’t breathe. My fingers pluck at my bodice, trying to loosen it. Amah mutters in a foreign language behind me. I lean over the girl’s body and lift the sheet near the top of her thighs to reveal a pool of blood under her pelvis, resinous rivulets seeping down the side of the mattress. My knees give way.
I squeeze my head with strong, hurtful fingertips as if I can purge the ghastly image from my mind. “Horrible. Horrible.” The intimate stench of blood and another, almost familiar, sweet smell, makes me gag. Amah grips me by the upper arm and yanks me to my feet.
We stagger to the landing, and I take in two long breaths and sink down upon the top step. Taff starts up the staircase but I shake my head. “Just fetch the police, Taff. Go now.”
I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets until it’s too painful. Poor, poor Eleanor. I know I’ll never be able to erase the image of the girl’s mutilated body from my mind, and nausea fills my mouth with saliva, and my breakfast eggs roil in my stomach.
“That boy couldn’t have done this, could he?” asks Amah.
“Of course not,” I say, my voice choking. “The monster who’s been cutting up prostitutes did this.” I punch the stair railings with my fist until the skin on my knuckles split open.
“Stop that,” says Amah, holding my wrist. “What will that achieve?”
“It’ll stop me from screaming, at least.” I allow myself one long groan. I then get to my feet, holding onto the bannister to steady myself. “I must find Chat. I must find out what he knows.”
“But the police will be here soon, Heloise,” says Amah, also standing. “What am I to tell them?”
“Tell them I will return shortly.” I rub my forehead. “I’m not sure what to tell them yet. You can just act like you don’t speak much English.”
I run down the stairs and out onto the street, turning left towards the goat-shed the boy had shown me on our night of adventure. I crouch low and pull aside the ragged material that functions as a doorway. Chat is seated cross-legged on the ground, his grubby face blank. He glances at me and then looks away.
I shuffle into the small shed as far as my skirts will allow, but I can still feel the wind and rain brush against my hind quarters.
“Chat?”
He turns his head more to the side and doesn’t answer. I reach over and gently take hold of his frozen, stubby fingers. “Chat? What happened?”
Still the boy says nothing.
“Won’t you talk to me, Chat?”
The boy gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
“But you must, my dear. Aren’t we friends, after all?”
“I don’ wanna talk ‘bout it,” he mumbles. His bottom lip trembles.
We sit silently for a minute, until I finally say, “What did you see, Chat? Please tell me. You might be able to help.”
“I seen her dead on your kitchin floor. She ‘ad blood on ‘er ‘ead.”
“Did you see anything else?”
“Nah. I scarpered when I seen ‘er. You saw me.”
“Did you see who did it, Chat? Who killed her?” I hope, desperately, that he can identify the girls’ attacker. But Chat just shakes his head again.
“I didn’ see nuthin,” he says. “’cept that chargirl of yors dead on the floor.”
“But what made you enter my house?”
“The door was open, wasn’ it?” he answers. He stares down at his knee and picks at a dry scab until a dot of blood appears. “I wondered why your front door was wide open, so’s I went and called fer you but got no answer.”
“So you went in?”
He nods. “Wish I ‘ad’nt now.” He scowls. “You probably think I wanted to nab yer stuff, but I didn’. I wouldn’ nab from you. I was just checkin’.”
I pat him on shoulder. “I know, Chat. I know.” I watch him and then say, “You’re a brave boy, Chat.”
He straightens his skinny shoulders. “Well, it’s not the first dead body I seen, is it? There’s always a dead ‘orse or dog by the side of the road. Sometimes I’ve even seen dirty, old codgers lyin’ dead for anyone to sees.” He shrugs and says, loudly, “I was just shook up, is all, when I seen ‘er lying dead in your ‘ouse. There was so much blood on ‘er ‘ead.” His eyes dim again.
“I wasn’t at home all last evening, so I don’t have any idea what happened. You didn’t notice anyone going into or out of my house?”
He thinks for a moment. “Nah. It was a quiet night. My da’ left before dawn to beg for work at the tannery, and the only thing I saw was a cart go past. Nothing else.”
“What sort of cart, Chat? Was it coming from the direction of my house?”
“Yes. It was a ‘orse an’ cart like those at the markets.”
“Did you see who drove it?”
“Nah. A man, though.”
It’s not much to go on.
“But I seen a man yesterday walking up and down the street, staring at your ‘ouse.”
“Really? What did he look like?”
“Skinny. Dressed like a toff. Looks like the vicar what gives us free food late at night if he gets to feel your ballocks at the same time. But this toff ‘ad bigger ears.”
Anger tightens my chest. Amah was right. What the hell was Mr Priestly doing here the day before? “Is that right?”
Chat nods. “That’s all I seen out of the or’inary.”
“Well, like I said, you’re very brave.”
His eyes are still bright with distress, but there’s a sternness about his mouth.
“You do have a lot to deal with, don’t you? Do you ever cry, Chat?” I ask.
“Nah,” he says. With his thumb he smears the smudge of blood from the scab into his skin. “What’s the use?”
LI LEEN
As I sit in this desolate house waiting for Heloise’s return, I realise the heaviness of sorrow I feel for poor, dead Eleanor is half borrowed from the recollection of another’s death.
I woke well before dawn on that terrible day, when the evening buds of the sedap malam flowers were most fragrant. I was still young then,
still foolish. I sat at the kitchen table and helped myself to a bowl of sweetened black rice, adding coconut milk for its saltiness. I had eaten most of it when my mother’s maid ran into the kitchen, fell to the floor, and wrapped her arms around my legs.
“She is dead. She is dead,” she wailed.
Mother had placed her Chinese gods in a circle on the floor and had hanged herself so that they were watching over her. I vomited up all the black porridge, a torrent of sorrow and regret and vileness. I gagged on my sobs, and my eyes grew so swollen I couldn’t see for days. My mother, my mother, had left me behind. She had written me a short note. I am sorry, daughter. The shame is too great. The shame of what? I did not know what she meant.
After that I moved into Mother’s room, and I didn’t bathe and rarely ate, just as Mother had behaved in her last few weeks. I hoped her meaning would become clearer to me if I lived like her. But as I watched myself in the mirror I realised I was a half white-ghost, and I wasn’t sure if her gods, still gathered around her tiny shrine, would respond to me. Her maid brushed my hair, just as she had brushed Mother’s hair, and whispered in my ear of devils and ghosts and vengeance. I was too numb to listen, too weak to respond.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When I get back to the Frazier Street house there are uniformed police in the garden, in the living areas and upon the stairs leading to the bedroom. I find Amah seated in the sitting room, a monstrously tall constable standing to attention close by.
“He’s guarding me – he’s making sure I don’t escape,” she says, with that twist of her mouth. “Your policeman friend thinks I am the best suspect so far.”
“How foolish.” I reply.
Bill enters the room. I’m relieved to see him. “Do you really imagine that my maid had something to do with this… butchery?”
He takes me by the elbow and draws me to a quiet part of the hallway where we can’t be overheard. He holds me by the upper arms and shakes me slightly.
