by Jon Clinch
* * *
The wreckage of the house is barely a stone’s throw from the chapel, and on this damp and sunless day the smell of burning penetrates the air. Everything stinks of ash and ruin.
Marley lingers in the chapel yard, damp and cold and inadequately sheltered by an overhang. He breathes and he coughs and he sniffs at the fabric of his coat, savoring the smell of fire. He shall bear it upon his person into the days and months ahead, and it will serve as a reminder of the great transformative work by which he has granted himself the liberty to pursue all such business and personal interests as might please him.
The mourners file out and filter away down the streets and lanes, and when they are gone the family leaves the chapel in the company of the pastor. Leaning upon one another they creep toward a hired carriage and a curtained hearse hitched to a mare as black and wild-eyed as Death. Only little Freddy seems fully under his own motive power, and he breaks away and skips ahead to admire the horse. She has no patience for him, and with a snort and a shudder and a stamp of one great hoof she sends him on his way.
Marley peels himself from the shadow of the chapel and aims his gaze downward and starts toward the street, plotting a course that should permit at least one member of the party to catch sight of him.
Surely enough: “Mr. Marley!” comes Mother Scrooge’s voice, clotted thick with emotion.
He lifts toward her a look both abstracted and disconsolate.
“Oh, Mr. Marley!” She waves a handkerchief in the direction of the carriage. “Won’t you accompany us to the cemetery?”
“I should be honored,” he says, as if this is the first time he has thought of it.
The pastor joins the driver on the box, and the others arrange themselves within the carriage. As they shudder away from the curb, Marley takes a moment to embroider his position. “I hardly deserve a place with the family,” he says, “but it is my honor to support you all as best I can in this painful time.”
“Just this past week,” says Fan, marveling, “Harry mentioned something about wanting to treat you—yes, Jacob, you—as if you were in fact a member of the family. And to think that I balked.”
“Now, now,” says Marley. “Harry was a fine man. One of a kind, really—a naval hero and an upright leader of men and a Christian of the highest order. There is no reason to curse ourselves for not living up to his standard.”
Sighs and murmurs all around. The carriage bounces, sways, rights itself.
Marley goes on. “Nonetheless each of us—you and I included, Fan—must permit ourselves to be led by his example in the future.”
“And may God strengthen us for the effort,” says the brother.
“Amen,” says Marley.
“Amen,” say one and all.
The carriage rounds a corner and rattles on toward the graveyard.
1820–1825
Thirty-One
“Mr. McCullough’s been arrested,” she says, “but ye’d know all about that.” The lady arches her eyebrows and gives Inspector Bucket a smile that has within it no trace of the sweet or the seductive or even the sincere.
“I’ve heard,” extemporizes the ready inspector.
“Ye’ll be springing him soon, I expect?”
“Oh, very soon,” says the inspector. “You can rely upon that.”
She winks. “I should hope there’ll be some restitution in it for the poor dear.”
“Restitution?”
“For time spent. He’s been off the resurrection trade since they hauled him in.”
“It’s not my business that he got caught.”
She leans in. “What is your business is that he ain’t confessed. Nor named the man what hired him.”
“Would you be threatening me, Mrs. McCullough?”
“I’d be reminding you, Inspector Bucket. Reminding you, is all. That we’re in this nasty business together.”
“Do you suppose he’ll be believed if he says that I of all people hired him for such wicked work? Do you further suppose that even if he were believed, my fellows in the constabulary would not protect me?”
“Honor among thieves is it, Inspector?”
“Honor? Never. These matters have to do with power—and if not power, then leverage. I happen to have great quantities of both, as you can imagine.”
“So there’ll be nothing in it for Mr. McCullough?”
“I didn’t say that. He shall be fairly compensated, I assure you. He shall receive everything he deserves.”
“But not a penny more, Inspector.” She laughs her troubling laugh. “Not if I know you!”
“You might not know me as well as you think.”
Mrs. McCullough’s look suggests otherwise.
“Now,” he reconfigures. “Is Madeline occupied?”
“Madeline?” says the lady, with a pathetic tilt of her head. “Why, Madeline’s gone to join the angels.”
Marley gives her a look that’s doubtful and disappointed at once.
“Cupid’s Disease,” she explains. “Runs in the trade, you know.”
“Understood. But—”
“I do my best for my girls, Inspector. And for my customers likewise. You know that.”
“I do.”
“I run a clean house…”
“But Madeline? I had no idea.”
“She’d been poorly. You knew that.”
“I did.”
“Not so many good days, toward the end.”
“I should think not.”
“A pity, really.”
“Yes,” says the stymied inspector. “A pity.”
“There’s other girls, though,” offers Mrs. McCullough. “Plenty of other girls.”
“No, thank you,” says the inspector. “Not today.”
* * *
An individual as competent and versatile as rough Reagh McCullough—petty thief, snatcher of corpses, steady hand for bloody work of all varieties—deserves better treatment than this. But justice is hard to find within the great cruel crucible of London, and thus in the courts and in the newspapers and in the arena of public opinion the gentleman is being reduced to a laughingstock.
“Inspector Bucket?” cries the magistrate in a most unseemly display. “Inspector Bucket?” he cries again, hammering upon the bench with the flat of his hand and laughing until jolly tears roll down his cheeks. “If you are going to invent a story, Mr. McCullough, you will have to do better than that. I am well-acquainted with the brave and true gentlemen of the London police, and I can assure you that there is no such individual in their employ.”
A quick general polling of the courtroom confirms the magistrate’s opinion.
“But I swear,” says McCullough. “It was Bucket put me up to it. Paid me well enough, too. In advance.”
“You are doing yourself no kindness…” says the magistrate.
“Great powerful bloke he is, sir. Smooth in his way but a ruffian underneath. He ain’t the sort to be trifled with.”
The magistrate rolls his eyes.
“Not that murder’s his usual trade, mind you. Generally he’s concerned more with your knocking-shops and such.”
The magistrate shows interest. “That would be his specialty then, this Bucket? Prostitution?”
“Oh, yes, sir. He’s keen on the subject. And not strictly from the legal point of view, neither.”
“I see. How, then, did this knocking-shop expert come to hire you for murder and arson?”
McCullough swallows.
“That seems a bit removed from his usual, does it not?”
“It does, sir.”
“Well, then?”
“We have friends in common, sir.”
“Friends.”
“Friends. Yes, sir.”
“Would you care to elaborate? Perhaps those friends could help us track down this elusive inspector of yours.”
“I’d rather not say, sir. Not if I ain’t required.”
“You’ve said quite enough,” says the magis
trate, nodding. “You’ve said enough to guarantee your hanging, in fact.”
And so he has.
* * *
Marley observes the trial from a safe distance, and it is with mingled anticipation and delight that he scans the news each day for the latest report. He takes a private and professional satisfaction in how beautifully his masquerade as a member of the constabulary has isolated him from this most grievous crime. Inspector Bucket indeed. The name itself is an absurdity. He can no longer recall how he came up with it or why in the world he imagined that it would succeed. Credit a rich imagination.
He is, however, saddened that he must abandon the role for good. What a useful, flexible, and profitable creation the inspector was! Although at first nothing more than a device for obtaining the services of expensive women at no charge, the gentleman brilliantly expanded his horizons as need and opportunity required. Imagine, making off with both pleasure and money upon each visit to the bawdy house! No one could do it! Not even Marley himself! And yet the inspector managed the feat. Marley can no more recall the inspiration for the fellow’s sham financial arrangements—alleged payments to other authorities, assurances of protection from their lawful predations—than he can recall the source of that ridiculous name, but the profits were genuine and reliable. And never mind extortion! Before he was through, dear old Bucket had not only facilitated the murder of that meddling Balfour but kept Marley’s own name clear of the transaction.
Jolly old Bucket! Useful old Bucket! Delightful old Bucket! Marley wonders how he shall ever get along without him.
In fact, he despairs at the prospect. So well known is the inspector to the denizens of every knocking-shop in London that he dares not show his face in a single one of them. He could of course go farther afield in search of his sport, but the girls get around. It would be just his luck to invent some new identity and travel as far as Gravesend or Brighton only to find himself fingered as the long-lost inspector, brought back to pay the price for McCullough’s wrongful conviction.
Such a fate would never do. He shall have to get by without, unless he can chart some other course. In the meantime he keeps his own company and heaps up his wealth and confines his pleasures to the port wine he steals from the tenant in his basement. The solitude is good for his peace of mind and the acquisition is good for his soul and the tawny port is good for dulling the pain of a certain sore spot he’s been developing on the inside of his lower lip. He holds the rich red liquid there until it burns away the sting. No doctor or apothecary could devise a superior treatment.
Thirty-Two
How like the old days it is, back home in her mother’s small but tidy apartments, back home in the poky little bedroom where she spent her youth and young womanhood, back home with the only alteration in circumstance the exchange of her brother for her son.
She detests it.
The world has stalled. The dependable clockwork universe, which gave a stutter when Ebenezer and Belle went their separate ways, ground utterly to a halt when fate took her beloved Harry. He was drunk, people whispered. Drunk and alone and bent over a bottle, oblivious to the fire erupting around him. Such is the way with navy men, or so the world believes. She knows it to be an errant lie, yet she cannot dispute it. And even if she could, what would be the use? Harry is in the ground. Belle is wed to Arthur. Her brother and she are alone once more, Ebenezer with his ledgers and she with her fatherless son.
It could be worse. Minus Harry’s small pension and Ebenezer’s occasional begrudging contributions to the family purse, they would be in the poorhouse—the whole wretched lot of them thrown into Marshalsea for debts they could never repay, with only poor young Freddy released each morning to spend his hours blacking the boots of more fortunate individuals.
Mother Scrooge advises her that she ought to be happy. They have each other. She has indelible memories of Harry. The time has come to cease living in the past. Why, even Freddy, may God bless him, is finding new playmates and taking a little pleasure in his altered circumstances.
“Freddy has his entire life ahead of him,” says Fan. “It’s only right that he should.”
“You have yours ahead of you as well.”
“No.”
“Fan.”
“I do not.”
“Fan.”
“I did, though. Once I did.”
“Yes. And you were happy then, my dear. Even before Harry, I mean.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I do.”
“I didn’t know what happiness was.”
“And you still don’t know what happiness might lie ahead.”
“Happiness,” says Fan. “Happiness is humbug, and I’ve had my fill of it.”
* * *
For all he stirs from his desk, Scrooge may as well be a mushroom in the shape of a man. He lurks there hour after hour in the comfortable dark and the customary damp, scratching away at his ledgers, consuming ink by the potful as an ordinary man might consume tea.
Visitors he bars outright unless they bear money or offer profitable terms. Merely raising his head to acknowledge a man’s presence gives him pain, for pushing his eyeglasses up the slope of his nose and refocusing his vision away from his work costs precious seconds that could otherwise be spent upon calculation. His watery eyes are dim with strain and his long hands are spattered with ink and his tight pigtail is prematurely salted with worry, yet each day he advances, moving forward and accruing additional wealth bit by bit. Perhaps it is only a shilling or two, perhaps it is a hundred or even a thousand times that, but it is all progress and it is all for the better.
Precisely what goal he may be inching toward is now unnamable, since Belle is pursuing life without him and the God of Christianity has not shone His countenance upon Scrooge since the day she broke off their engagement. He has not so much as seen her in the ten years since her father’s death. Fan mentions her in his presence now and again, generally in a tone of voice that suggests a lingering jealousy over her friend possessing a husband who continues to dwell among the living. Arthur Cope is no Harry Balfour, not by Fan’s lights, but he does have the advantage of remaining above the ground.
* * *
“I couldn’t,” says Mother Scrooge.
“You must,” says Marley.
“Ebenezer does his part,” the old woman reassures him.
“I’m certain that he does. He’s a kindly soul.”
She stifles a laugh.
“Be that as it may,” says Marley, “even Ebenezer can’t desire to see his mother and sister in the poorhouse.”
“No.”
“Or innocent little Freddy, for that matter.”
“Oh, definitely not. Definitely not Freddy.”
“What a cruel fate that would be!” says Marley, perhaps imagining it. “And yet, even now, the poor child could do with an additional pleasure or two.”
“Well…” hesitates Mother Scrooge.
Marley extracts an envelope from his waistcoat and leans it against Mother Scrooge’s teapot. The envelope is fat, fatter by far than Freddy, and the old woman looks upon it in the flesh as she would look upon the gift of another grandchild.
“You are altogether too kind,” she says.
“Fan doesn’t need to know,” he says as he rises to leave, certain that Mother Scrooge will tell her anyhow, and at the earliest opportunity.
* * *
Surely enough, Mother Scrooge does exactly that. And the very next morning Fan arrives at the offices of Scrooge & Marley, powered by a full head of steam, looking for her benefactor and learning that he is elsewhere as usual. She very nearly leaves the money with her brother, but the light that rises in his eye at the prospect puts her off.
She seeks Marley at home instead. She passes through the gates and climbs the rough path to his door and employs the knocker with a vengeance. For a few moments the house yields up no more than distant sounds of hammering from the wine merchants in the cellar, but she persists until Marle
y himself finally creeps down the stair and opens the latch and tugs the great stubborn door open the slightest crack. The action seems to leave him winded.
“Fan!” he says, a trifle unmanned by the weight of the door and uncharacteristically self-conscious. He leans against the frame and, despite the hour, gathers the folds of a dressing gown around his neck. The dank atmosphere of the stairwell seems to have cast a chill over him.
“Mr. Marley.” She makes no move to come in, but stands gazing upon him as if she has never truly seen him before. He looks to her diminished.
“To what do I owe…?”
“You owe nothing,” she spits back, “at least not to me,” for the pathways of her brain have been firing at a furious pace all morning and there is not a thing in all the world that he could have said that would not have provoked a similarly cutting answer. She thrusts the fat envelope through the crack and when he does not take it she lets it fall, spilling out notes as it tumbles toward his feet.
He does not bend to collect them. He does not so much as acknowledge that they have fallen. Money, says the look upon his face, means nothing to him. She, by contrast, means everything.
There is something more in his look, too: a hollowed-out longing, a soul-wrenching pain, a wordless depth of regret and rue. She sees it as his dry lips part to whisper “Forgive me,” and she sees it as he removes his hand from the neck of his garment and begins to press the door shut.
“Wait,” she says.
“I would not make you unhappy for the world.”
She puts her own hand on the door, not pushing back but just resting it there as a sign. “Jacob,” she says. “You and I were doomed at the start. We remain so.”
“You misjudge me.”
“No.”
His voice cracks. “You underestimate me.”
“We have done all this before.”
He shrugs. “Very well,” he says, in the tones of a condemned man. He turns and looks off up the dim stairway. “Should you require me at some future date…” But his thought turns into a mumble and the mumble turns into a cough and the cough dies a long slow death.
