A Fatal Likeness

by Lynn Shepherd

  Such surveillance is always the most tiresome aspect of his chosen profession, and the one to which Charles is least suited, being—as we know—both restless and impatient. So it is perhaps fortunate that he does not have much longer to wait before the door does indeed open, and a servant emerges onto the step. She’s dressed for shopping, with a wicker basket over one arm, and she stands a moment wrestling with a large black umbrella. But then there’s a sudden shout from farther down the street and Charles turns to see two young boys racing towards him through the puddles. There’s no sign of a mother or a nursemaid, but these are clearly no urchins, even if their white stockings are now spattered to the knees with mud. They come hurtling towards Charles, whooping and yelling, and now the older is gaining yard by yard on the smaller boy, who turns to see where his brother is behind, slips, loses his footing, and lands heavily on his face in a gutter choked with dead leaves and dog-shit. Blood is running down the white stocking now, but Charles checks any urge he might have had to rush forward to the boy’s assistance, which turns out to be the right decision—professionally speaking—because there’s a quick movement at the window of the house opposite, and the door swings open almost at once.

  Charles cannot see the figure now in the doorway, but an instruction has clearly been given, because the maid moves quickly down to the street and bends over the sobbing child, then takes his hand and leads both boys up the step and into the house. Which is food for thought, at least for Charles, who folds his paper and walks pensively away.

  When we next see him it’s on an altogether different street, in an altogether different part of London, but one where some of you may have followed him once before. A stretch of grim grey houses running along the back of the new Waterloo railway. Strident with the shriek of engines by day, and by night every bit as explicit as Soho once was in its display of naked human merchandise. When it comes to a reputation for sin, St John’s Wood may have got it but it doesn’t flaunt it, which is a subtlety you could never lay at any door in Granby Street. But at this hour the curtains are closed and the gas unlit, and there’s no sign yet of the usual crush of bloods, idle browsers, and men of the town. Charles makes his way to a small house towards the end of the street and goes round to knock at the door at the back. It’s a while before there are sounds of life inside, but then again, its occupant works the night shift and it’s not yet four. At length he hears the scrape of a bolt drawing back, and the door edges open an inch. The girl looks up at him, suspicious at first, until recognition dawns and the door opens a little more. Her face still bears the trace of last night’s make-up, and he can see her nightgown under the blowsy white peignoir.

  “Maddox, ain’t it? What you doin’ ’ere?”

  “I should have come before. To tell you what happened.”

  The girl crosses her arms. “No need. It were all over the ’aymarket in a coupla hours. You got ’im, dincha, like you promised. That bastard as done for our Liz.”

  Charles shakes his head. “Not the one directly responsible, I’m afraid—he was too clever for us. But the man who hired him will be made to pay. The police will see to that.”

  The girl sniffs and considers him, but in the end she must have decided that his pledge has been redeemed, because the next time she speaks her voice has lost its bitter edge.

  “You didn’t needta come all this way to tell me that. Could ’ave sent that boy of yours wiv a message.”

  “Yes I could,” he says, though he’s not at all sure he’d trust the cheery but rather feckless Billy anywhere near a place like Granby Street. “But I have a job I need doing, and I think you could do it.”

  The girl’s eyes narrow. “Want me to shag someone, do yer? Can’t believe you’d fink of me if it were anyfing else.”

  Charles’ gaze is steady. “No. It’s nothing like that. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name—”

  “That’s ’cause I never told yer. Me name is Nancy. Nancy Dyer.”

  “Nancy, then. If you’ll let me in I can explain.”

  The room is as he remembered it, though daylight does it no favours. What had looked suggestive, if rather shabby by lamplight, now looks the latter only. The carpet is worn to the threads in places, and there’s a scattering of coal dust across some of the walls. Cheap wine mingles cloyingly with the girl’s thin scent. She hurries to remove her discarded underclothes from the bed, then balances against the back of one of the chairs, too tense, it seems, to sit down.

  “So what is it then?”

  Charles looks round, then takes a seat at what he hopes will be a reassuring distance.

  “Lizzie used to do jobs for me sometimes. Like getting information. Asking questions I couldn’t ask. She was good at it, too.”

  The girl’s face is half disbelieving, half disdainful. “So she were your snitch? When you was a rozzer?”

  Charles shifts a little uneasily in his seat. “We had an agreement—I only asked her if I was absolutely sure that what she was doing would help to right a wrong. And only if it involved powerful men who would otherwise never be caught. I swear to you, I never asked her to inform on her own, however terrible their crimes.”

  “So only men like what ’ad her killed?”

  “Exactly. Men like that. Men with all the weight of money and position to protect them.”

  The girl raises an eyebrow. “Bet she still ’ad to shag ’em. Best place to get a man to spill’s always in bed.”

  Charles blushes, despite himself. “Sometimes, yes. But I always paid Lizzie well over her usual rate. And I was always nearby. I made sure she never got hurt.”

  The girl makes a face. “More than I can say of my Arnie. ’E don’t give a damn what ’appens to me. As long as I’m openin’ me legs and earnin’ ’im money to piss away on gin.”

  Charles leans forwards. “And in any case I don’t want you to do that. Not this time—it’s much simpler—”

  There’s a creak then, and Charles looks round to see a little girl standing in the doorway. Her feet bare, her small face smudged from sleep, and a tattered doll gripped tight in one hand. She sways slightly, her eyes huge with uncertainty, and puts a finger into her mouth. Charles’ heart catches in his chest. Remembering that same gesture, those same green eyes, that same golden head of curls. Remembering a girl child who’d clung as this one does, but to something that should have comforted her as no doll could ever do—her older brother’s hand. His hand. He can feel the warmth of her fingers even now—all these years later—as he unwound them one by one from his own and turned away, embarrassed to be seen with her, and shamed as only a ten-year-old boy can be by a sister’s tears. And that was when it happened. In the busy insignificant moment before his mother looked back from the other side of the street and saw her daughter gone. He couldn’t have known—couldn’t possibly have looked into the dark forwards and abyss of time, and seen all the consequences of a moment of such childish carelessness. But that is his curse. Now and always. He cannot forgive himself, because he cannot put it right. A sister missing, and a mother lost forever to the madness of an irreparable grief.

  Meanwhile this little girl has been eyeing him shyly, and now makes a tiny hesitant move in his direction. Charles flinches, despite himself, and as the little girl’s face crumples into a wail Nancy rushes forward and scoops her child away.

  “Come ’ere, sweet’eart,” she whispers. “Don’t think the gen’leman’s used to the likes of you.”

  “What’s her name?” asks Charles, his throat taut.

  “Lizbeth,” she says softly. “For Liz. She were ’er godmother. Well, unofficial like. But I calls ’er Betsy.”

  She’s rocking the child gently to and fro, and only now catches sight of his face. “Sorry, I know you cared about ’er too.”

  “It’s not that. Elizabeth is—was—my sister’s name.”

  The girl nods, as alert as Charles himself would have been to that shift in tense.

  They’re silent for a moment, and then the lit
tle girl starts to fidget. Her mother gets to her feet. “I’ll give ’er somefing to eat and put ’er down, and then you can tell me what this is all about. It don’t concern ’er after all.”

  “Actually,” says Charles slowly, “I think you’ll find it does.”

  The rain has stopped by the time he leaves, and the first lights are coming on in the adjoining houses. As he walks back up towards Waterloo Road one of the curtains sweeps back and he can see into a narrow front room where three whores are preparing for evening business. A girl in a gauzy chemise and striped drawers is lacing another’s corset, and a third has her foot up on a chair as she rolls a stocking up over her thigh. Charles slows, struck by a composition as perfect, in its way, as a Dutch master. They’re oblivious to his observation, and despite the sordid nature of their trade there is laughter, and—for now at least—there is affection in this tawdry little room. Charles watches a moment and then, as he starts to move slowly on his way, the girl in the chemise lifts her friend’s ringlets gently away and kisses her lightly on her bare shoulder.

  The windows of Buckingham Street, by contrast, unveil no intimacy, but Charles has scarcely opened the door when he is set upon by Abel, who has clearly been watching for his return and seizes Charles’ arm excitedly. “I think I found it, Mr Charles—the file—the one ye were looking for.”

  Charles takes off his coat and heaps it on the hall table as Billy emerges at the top of the kitchen stairs. “Excellent work, Abel. I’ll come up with you straightaway. And hang this up, will you, Billy?”

  As the two of them make their way up to the office, Billy picks up the coat and wipes the damp from the polished wood with his sleeve. Then he stands for a moment, his face in shadow, watching the two figures slowly ascend the stairs and round the corner out of sight.

  The file is lying open on the desk, the oil lamp brought beside it. The writing is the poised and assertive hand of Maddox in his prime, but that’s not the first thing Charles notices. Because unlike all the other case-books ranged on shelves in this office, this one has had a section removed. And not just one or two leaves either—thirty pages or more are gone near the end of the book. Even Maddox’s account of the Ratcliffe Highway murders—perhaps the most notorious crime of the nineteenth century—merited only half as many pages as are missing here.

  “It’s the file for 1816, Mr Charles,” says Abel breathlessly as Charles goes over to the book and draws the lamp closer. “I knew it mustae been when I were away. I’d a remembered it else.”

  Charles barely registers the old man’s relief that his memory has not betrayed him, so intently is he scanning the page before him. The paper is discoloured and the lines immediately after the missing section have been heavily inked through, but immediately below them Charles can make out the name William Godwin, Esquire, and underneath

  For services rendered, the amount of 30/-

  And then—rare indeed in these books, as Charles well knows—a single word, added in different ink at a later date:

  Unpaid.

  Charles looks up. “Does that mean anything to you, Abel?”

  Abel looks blank. “Nay, Mr Charles, I cannae say that it do. And I’ve never known the boss to cut pages from his files either, that I can tell ’ee. Allus took pride in having everythin’ noted and all the details in order.”

  Charles nods, disquieted. Maddox was always punctilious to a fault as to what he revealed publicly of his clients’ affairs, but made it a point of honour neither to prevaricate nor falsify in the privacy of his own records. Charles has read reports in those files that would, even now, change our view of many of his most celebrated contemporaries—cases involving prime ministers, captains of industry, peers of the realm. And yet all this material Maddox has allowed to remain intact, so why make such an extraordinary exception in this particular case? What was it about the work Maddox did for Godwin that made it so imperative to eradicate all trace of it?

  “And he never let anyone see these books,” continues Abel. “Except you, a’course. He allus intended ye would have ’em one day.”

  Which is not, in the circumstances, an especially comforting thought. Charles looks again at where the pages have been cut out and runs his thumb down the paper. The edges are soft: Whatever it was that Maddox removed, he had clearly done it some time ago. Charles opens the book out and holds the page against the light, but the scored-through lines are still obscured.

  “I tried that me’sen,” says Abel with a sigh. “I couldnae make out any of it.”

  Charles puts the book down and gets to his feet. “There may be a way,” he says as he goes to the door and calls for Billy. “It’s a risk, with paper this old, but it might work.”

  Five minutes later the boy is back down from his errand to the attic, carrying a wooden box, closed with a lock. It looks for all the world like a doctor’s case, and when Charles opens the lid Abel can see a row of small glass bottles, each one carefully labelled.

  “What might these be, Mr Charles?” asks Abel, reaching to the nearest phial, only to have Charles quickly restrain his hand.

  “Have a care, Abel. Some of these bottles contain acid. Or poison.”

  Abel backs off at once, and eases his old body down slowly into the spare chair. Charles, meanwhile, has pulled on a pair of large leather gloves and poured a quantity of clear liquid into a small porcelain basin. This he dilutes with water, and then applies to the ink with a stiff white feather. Slowly, carefully, stroke by stroke. His task done, he sits back, waits a moment as the chemicals bubble on the page, then takes a piece of cloth from the case and dabs the liquid away. Abel gets creaking to his feet, and comes to stand over Charles’ shoulder. The acid has burned through here and there, and the words that remain have bleached to sepia brown. But they are legible, they are legible.

  Charles is scarcely breathing, his heart beating hard, suddenly, in his ears. Ever since the day he returned to this house to find Sir Percy’s card, and his uncle sunk in a stupor only death can deepen, he has wondered. Wondered how the mere sight of the Shelley name could have precipitated such a terrible seizure. Could these words be the answer to that question, or at least the beginnings of one? For what Charles has here is not only an allegation of murder, but what amounts to a confession of complicity in Maddox’s own hand. Was it the memory of another’s guilt that came back to Maddox with such horrifying force that day? Or the consciousness of his own?

  “Do you know what this means, Abel?”

  But he already knows from his face that the old man is as disturbed by what they have just found as Charles is himself.

  “Would Fraser know? Was he in London then?”

  Abel nods slowly. “He were. His memory isnae allus what it was, Mr Charles. But I could write and ask him.”

  “Do that,” says Charles thoughtfully, after a moment. “And have a look, would you, for where these missing pages might be. Get Billy to help you. It’s possible they may still be somewhere in the house.”

  By the time he leaves Buckingham Street the following morning Charles has made a decision. He’s not naïve, and he understands the risks: He knows that what he has discovered threatens to reveal something about his uncle’s past that the old man himself has done all in his power to destroy. But he also knows—or suspects—that it’s connected in some way with Sir Percy Shelley’s decision to employ him, and he has no intention of colluding, even thirty years later, with the concealment of a murder. And all the less so if the victim was a woman or a child, for surely that must be what the words ‘innocent creature’ meant. Whatever task it was that Maddox undertook for William Godwin it was clearly no minor legal matter, whatever Sir Percy may have wished him to believe, and what Charles needs now is a rather more objective source of information than the philosopher’s own grand-son. Indeed he’s struggling to imagine how a man like Godwin ever came to need the services of a thief taker in the first place, and if there are other people yet living who have the answer to that question, Charles has
no idea how to go about finding them. But an account of Godwin’s life might—just—hold a clue, and this it is that Charles is now in quest of. It’s early—too early for Mr Bond (and as for Mr Nattali, he has been ‘late’ these five years and more), so Charles kills time with bread-and-butter and a mug of coffee from a stall on the Strand, and watches the fruit and vegetable carts heaving up towards Covent Garden, pursued by shabby urchins hopeful of a tumbling orange, but sharp enough to stay beyond the costers’ whips.

  The blinds of the bookshop are finally raised a quarter of an hour later, but Charles has to loiter another slow five minutes before the door opens to reveal the elegant, rather sardonic features of Archibald Bond. He is dressed, as always, in an impeccable ensemble of discreet greys, accompanied by a pair of white cotton gloves as immaculate as his stock. His hair is smoothed glassily against his head, and there is an unobtrusive but unmistakable odour of pomade.

  “Ah, Mr Maddox,” he says with a careful smile, as he recognises his client and holds the door open for him to enter. “I am afraid I have no news for you as yet.”