A Mortal Likeness

by Laura Joh Rowland

  #

  I’d hoped that the end of the investigation would give Barrett and me a second chance, but it’s distressingly clear that Barrett doesn’t intend for us to reconcile.

  Mick and I trudge down the road away from Mariner House, I carrying my satchel, outcasts not worthy of a ride to town. A few gas lamps dimly light our way. I’m glad we’re going home, but when I think of Hugh and wonder what he’s doing and feeling, my spirits sink lower. I fear for him, and I wonder if our friendship is another casualty of our investigation.

  A shrill cry accompanies a pattering of footsteps behind us. “Mick! Wait!”

  I turn to see Lottie running and waving. I stop, but Mick walks faster. Lottie hurries past me and trots beside Mick. “I have to talk to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.” Mick jams his hands into his pockets and scowls at the ground. “You lied for Lady Alexandra.”

  “I didn’t have a choice! If I hadn’t gone along with her, she’d have fired me.”

  “Yeah? Well, now that Robin’s dead, you’re out of a job anyway.”

  Lottie pants as she explains, “My mother was in an omnibus accident. She’s paralyzed. I’m supporting her and my two younger sisters. If Lady Alexandra gives me a bad reference, I’ll never get another job.”

  As I catch up with them, Mick halts and faces Lottie. They’re standing in the light from a gas lamp, and I see the anger in his expression give way to sympathy. “Oh. Well. I get it.”

  Lottie sighs with relief. “I’m so glad you’re not mad.”

  I feel sorry for her because it’s obvious that Mick means more to her than vice versa.

  “But I think Lady Alexandra killed Robin, and you helped her get away with it and pin it on Tabitha and Mr. DeQuincey,” Mick says.

  Tears glisten in Lottie’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “‘Sorry’ don’t make up for the fact that Mr. DeQuincey’s gonna be hanged while the real killer gets off scot free.” Mick’s voice is gentle but reproachful.

  “Oh, no!” Lottie clasps her throat as she weeps. “I like Mr. DeQuincey. He was kind to me. So was Miss Tabitha. This is all my fault!”

  “No, it isn’t.” Since I myself deserve much of the blame for these circumstances, I can’t let Lottie accept the burden of guilt. “And we don’t know for sure that Lady Alexandra has done anything wrong besides lying about where she was when Robin was kidnapped.”

  “I’m sure,” Mick says.

  “We have no proof,” I remind him, “and we can’t be certain Tabitha was murdered.”

  Lottie smiles with tentative relief, but Mick frowns. “Well, somebody did Robin in, and you and I both think Tabitha didn’t off herself. But now that Sir Gerald’s dumped us, and the coppers won’t listen to us—what do we do?”

  “We find out who killed Robin and Tabitha, and we bring evidence to Inspector Reid. He’ll have to listen to us then.”

  “So how are we gonna do that?”

  Without access to Mariner House and the suspects, it does seem impossible.

  “I’ll help you if I can,” Lottie says, eager to make amends.

  I feel suddenly light-headed and disoriented, as though time has spun backward. Suddenly it feels as if it’s my first morning at Mariner House, and the only clue I’ve discovered is a photograph of a mother and child. “Perhaps you can help,” I say to Lottie, “by telling us about Robin.”

  Lottie touches her fingers to her lips; her eyes grow round with fear. “But Sir Gerald and Lady Alexandra—”

  “They don’t have to know you talked,” Mick says. “We won’t rat on you.”

  “Well, all right.” Lottie still looks uncomfortable with breaking her employers’ rule. She seems more desirous of getting herself back in Mick’s good graces than of preventing a miscarriage of justice, but I can’t afford to care about her motives. “Robin was”—she searches for words—“not normal.”

  “‘Not normal,’ how?” Mick asks.

  “He was limp, like a rag doll. He couldn’t sit up, and his body would jerk and tremble. He couldn’t walk; he couldn’t even crawl. When I fed him, I had to hold his head so he could eat and drink. Most babies start talking by that age, but Robin only made noises like an animal, and he didn’t seem to understand anything you said to him.” Lottie shakes her head sadly. “The poor little boy.”

  So the photograph didn’t lie, and there was something seriously wrong with Robin, which included mental retardation. “Is that why he was kept out of sight and the nurses were ordered not to talk about him?” I ask.

  “Yes. I think Sir Gerald and Lady Alexandra were ashamed of him. I heard them talking one night in Robin’s room when they didn’t know I was there. He said he couldn’t have anyone know his son wasn’t normal, and she was afraid people would blame her for Robin’s problems. They said it would’ve been better if Robin had never been born.”

  “See?” Mick says with grim triumph. “I told you Lady A didn’t want him.”

  “But that goes for Sir Gerald too.” My heart sinks as my suspicion of Tristan, Olivia, and John Pierce weakens and the evidence against Robin’s parents burgeons. Did Sir Gerald or Lady Alexandra fake a kidnapping and drown Robin, like lions killing a defective cub? Who is the monster?

  “Maybe they were in on it together,” Mick says.

  The idea that both parents conspired to kill their child seems even more atrocious than if one of them acted alone. “When did Robin’s problems start?”

  “I started working for the Mariners when he was a week old. He was already limp and shaky. I knew something was wrong because I’ve taken care of other babies. But it didn’t show that much until he got older.”

  “That explains why there were no recent photographs of Robin,” I say. His parents stopped having him photographed when his condition became obvious. “Could nothing have been done for him? Did Sir Gerald and Lady Alexandra ever consult a physician?”

  “Oh, yes. Sir Gerald brought in one from the hospital in Bolshover Street. Dr. Kirkland, his name was.” Lottie smiles briefly, as if at a pleasant memory. “I was there while Dr. Kirkland examined Robin.”

  “What did the doc say was wrong with Robin?” Mick asks.

  “I don’t know. Lady Alexandra sent me away before Dr. Kirkland told her and Sir Gerald.”

  “What treatment did Dr. Kirkland prescribe?” I ask.

  “None, as far as I know.”

  “Robin’s condition must have been incurable.” My heart sinks deeper. “That would be all the more reason for Sir Gerald and Lady Alexandra to get rid of him.”

  Lottie looks dismayed at the thought. “But they’re important, respectable people! They wouldn’t drown their baby!”

  I think of the guards patrolling the Mariner estate. “Sir Gerald must have people to do his dirty work.”

  “So what if Sir G or Lady A killed Robin? We can’t prove it,” Mick says morosely. “We can’t even tell anybody why we think they did.”

  Lottie bows her head, taking Mick’s words as a reproach for putting her family ahead of justice for Robin. I hasten to say, “It’s all right, Lottie. Even if we did tell, it probably wouldn’t do any good. Sir Gerald is so powerful that he and Lady Alexandra could get away with murder even if they’d been caught red-handed.” I’m afraid it’s true, and I can’t reproach Lottie while I’m putting my father ahead of justice for Ellen Casey, protecting him even though he’s probably a rapist and murderer.

  Lottie licks tears that have trickled onto her lips. “Well, I’d better get back to the house. Lady Alexandra will be wondering where I am.” She turns to Mick. “Will I ever see you again?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Mick says, looking uncomfortable. He only cultivated her to get information, and it’s clear that he’s just realized she has feelings for him. As we walk toward the gates, he says, “When we get home, we’ll ask Hugh how to solve Robin’s murder. He always has good ideas.”

  But I don’t know if Hugh will want to help. The only thing
I know for sure is that although the police’s investigation of Robin’s death may be over, ours is beginning anew.

  26

  It’s past eleven o’clock at night when our train grinds to a weary halt at St. Pancras station. On the platform, Mick and I meet a lone newsboy hawking papers. “Read the latest about the Robin Mariner murder! The funeral is at St. Paul’s tomorrow at two o’clock!”

  “The press won’t have heard that the murder is officially solved,” I say to Mick.

  “When they do, the papers will be full o’ lies.”

  I’m more certain than ever that Tabitha and DeQuincey are innocent, but Tabitha’s reputation will be ruined posthumously, and how can DeQuincey get a fair trial in court after he’s deemed guilty by the public?

  At the house, Fitzmorris lets us in. “Where have you been?” he asks, glancing anxiously behind us. “Is Hugh with you?”

  “No.” Apprehension stabs me.

  “We thought he was here,” Mick says.

  “He came back this afternoon,” Fitzmorris says. “He was in a terrible state—coughing, pale and shaky, and smelling of smoke. I asked him what had happened, but he refused to tell me. After he changed his clothes, he went out. He wouldn’t say where.”

  I think of the other times when Hugh has gone out alone, and I fear for his safety. What evils might he fall prey to at the hands of unscrupulous men who would take advantage of him in his vulnerable condition?

  Fitzmorris notices Mick’s and my bedraggled appearance, and the worry lines on his face deepen. “What’s happened to you? Sarah, what’s going on?”

  He asks if we’re hungry, and when Mick admits we’ve not eaten today, he cooks us supper. In the kitchen, we gratefully devour fried sausages and bread, washed down with hot tea while we talk. When we’re finished explaining, Fitzmorris is shocked into grave silence, and I feel guiltier than ever on Hugh’s account.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I never should have let Hugh get involved with the kidnapping case.” Fitzmorris has worked for the Staunton family for thirty years; he’s as much an older brother to Hugh as a valet, and there’s nobody who loves him more. “I should have told Sir Gerald no.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Fitzmorris says with a wry smile. “When Lord Hugh sets his mind on something, wild horses can’t stop him.”

  Knowing that about Hugh doesn’t ease my guilt. Nor does remembering that Tabitha Jenkins is dead because giving my information to the police likely drove Robin’s murderer to poison Tabitha and fake her suicide. And Raphael DeQuincey must be in prison now, awaiting his trial, which will surely and wrongfully end in a death sentence.

  Mick pushes his chair back from the table. “I’ll go look for Hugh. I know some places he might be.”

  Although nighttime London is dangerous even for a former street urchin who knows it well, I don’t try to stop Mick and neither does Fitzmorris. We all want Hugh found before he comes to harm.

  #

  After a sounder sleep than I expected, I awake at eight o’clock in the morning. I feel refreshed, invigorated, and filled with new hope. As I wash and dress, my problems don’t seem as impossible to solve. I hurry to Hugh’s room, certain he must have returned.

  But his room is empty, the bed not slept in, and when I go downstairs, I find Fitzmorris alone in the kitchen. “Lord Hugh isn’t back,” he says as he pours tea for me. “Neither is Mick.”

  Now I’m afraid for both of them, and if I’m to find out who killed Robin and Tabitha and save DeQuincey from a wrongful execution, I shall have to begin on my own.

  #

  The hospital in Bolshover Street is near Regent’s Park, about a mile from Argyle Square. It’s a large redbrick building, and a plaque over the entrance reads, “Royal Orthopedic Hospital.” Two relief sculptures flank the window above the plaque—a boy leaning on a cricket bat and a girl holding a bouquet of flowers. When I pass through the door, I find myself in a large, marble-walled hall like a waiting room at a train station. Patients or visitors sit on benches. I approach the desk, where a nurse in a white uniform and cap sits.

  “I’m here to see Dr. Kirkland.”

  “Have you an appointment?”

  “No,” I say, then lie, “Sir Gerald Mariner sent me.” I feel bad about going behind his back, but I must discover the truth even if it’s detrimental to him.

  Another nurse escorts me to the second floor, along a wide corridor past wards filled with patients—all children, many with casts on their legs, lying in the rows of beds. Nurses and doctors massage crippled limbs or exercise them with weights. I pity the children. If Robin had lived, would this have been his fate?

  I hear laughter, shouts, and a clattering racket in the distance. A man in a wheelchair zooms around the corner and straight toward me. “Catch me if you can!” he calls over his shoulder. Two little boys, also in wheelchairs, laugh with glee as they follow close behind him, trailed by children hobbling on crutches or braces.

  The nurse with me cries, “Look out!” We jump out of the way before we’re run over.

  The man speeds past me. Tall and lanky, he has fluffy white mutton-chop whiskers. His head is bald except for a fringe of red hair. The boys overtake him and startle a nurse who’s carrying a tray of medicines. She shrieks and drops the tray. The man narrowly avoids hitting an orderly pushing a cart. One boy reaches the far end of the passage and yells, “I won!”

  The man and the other boy coast to a stop as the other children cheer. My escort leads me to the man and says in a fond, amused tone, “Dr. Kirkland, you really shouldn’t encourage them to make mischief.”

  He’s the doctor that Sir Gerald consulted about Robin. He smiles and says, “Sometimes mischief is the best medicine.” His long, mobile face is only slightly wrinkled; he’s younger than I first thought—in his fifties, perhaps. With his white beard, red bow tie, striped vest, and old-fashioned gray frock coat, he looks like a character from Mr. Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” the nurse says and introduces me. “Miss Bain was referred to you by Sir Gerald Mariner.”

  Dr. Kirkland looks up at me. The expression in the blue eyes beneath his fluffy white brows is intelligent, friendly, and surprised. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Bain.” He shakes my hand without rising from the wheelchair, and I realize with a shock that he wasn’t using it just for play; he’s crippled. “We can talk after I finish making my rounds.”

  I accompany him as he wheels himself down the corridor and visits the patients in the wards. Even the most afflicted children brighten when he approaches them, and those who are mobile follow him as if he’s a kindly Pied Piper. Now I understand why Lottie smiled when she mentioned him. When we’re seated in his office, a small room where stuffed animals sit on the shelves with medical books and the paper-strewn desk holds a jar of penny candy, Dr. Kirkland says, “Who is the patient? Your child or a young relation?”

  He thinks I’m here to obtain treatment for someone. I can’t lie to this nice man. “There’s no patient. I came to ask you for information about Robin Mariner.”

  Dr. Kirkland’s expression turns grave at the mention of his patient who’d been kidnapped and murdered. “I’m sorry, but I can’t discuss my patients.” He seems a man who rarely gets angry, but his good humor toward me has lessened. “Exactly what is your connection to Sir Gerald?”

  “I’m a private detective. Sir Gerald hired me and my partner to find Robin.” I hurry to explain myself before Dr. Kirkland orders me to leave. “The police think Tabitha Jenkins—Robin’s aunt—and her friend Raphael DeQuincey were in on the kidnapping together and they killed Robin. Tabitha is dead. She was poisoned. Mr. DeQuincey has been arrested.”

  Dr. Kirkland regards me with astonishment and disbelief. “I’ve heard nothing of this. It wasn’t in the newspapers.”

  “It just happened last night. But I don’t think Tabitha and Mr. DeQuincey killed Robin. I want to find out who did.”

 
Mystified, Dr. Kirkland shakes his head. “What significance can Robin’s medical condition have?”

  “Maybe none. I’m grasping at straws. Robin’s condition is a secret that never came to light during the police’s investigation. There may be others. If I can uncover them all and put them together, perhaps they’ll reveal the truth about his murder.”

  Dr. Kirkland’s fluffy brows draw together in a skeptical frown. “Does Sir Gerald know you’re here and why?”

  “No.”

  “How did you learn that Robin was a patient of mine?”

  To protect Lottie, I say, “I heard talk at Mariner House,” and then confess, “I’m no longer working for Sir Gerald. But I can’t wash my hands of this while a man’s life is at stake. And I believe that whoever killed Robin also poisoned Tabitha Jenkins.” Desperation makes me lean forward and ask what I’ve no right to ask. “What was wrong with Robin?”

  Disconcerted by my intensity, Dr. Kirkland leans back from me. “Surely you see how this looks: a stranger walks in off the street and asks me for information about a patient—information that’s confidential, I must add. Why should I believe what you say? Why should I even believe you’re who you say you are?”

  “You don’t have to believe me. But if you keep silent, an innocent man may be hanged while the real murderer goes unpunished. Are you willing to risk the chance?”

  Dr. Kirkland strokes his whiskers and frowns. “I suppose not. And you already seem to know something of Robin’s condition.” He hesitates while I twist my hands in a fever of suspense. “Robin had Little’s Disease. Have you ever heard of it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Little’s Disease was named for William James Little, the surgeon who founded the Royal Orthopedic Hospital. I studied under him.” As I wonder whether Dr. Kirkland took up this particular field of study because he’s crippled himself, he explains, “It seems to be a disorder of the brain. There’s no way to ascertain what kind. Despite the advances in science, the brain is still a mystery.” Dr. Kirkland taps his finger against his bald pate. “The symptoms usually appear within the first two years of life. They range from involuntary movements, flaccid or stiff limbs, and seizures to blindness, deafness, and mental impairment.”