by Anne Perry
“What about what you’ve told the police?” Emily asked.
Rose shrugged. “Don’t matter. I in’t said anythin’ in court yet. They can’t do me fer it. I didn’t swear ter nuthin’. It were just me and one rozzer in an ’ansom. I thought it were ’im, now I’m not sure. Nan in’t sure anyway, so I’m only goin’ wi’ ’er.”
Tallulah let out her breath in a long, silent sigh. At last her shoulders relaxed a little, although her back was still stiff and her feet rooted to the spot.
“Thank you,” she said with passionate sincerity. “Thank you very much.”
When they were outside again they walked rapidly back along Old Montague Street without speaking, or even looking at each other, until they reached the corner of Osborn Street and turned down towards the Whitechapel Road. Then Tallulah stopped abruptly.
“We did it,” she said almost in a squeak. “We did it!” She threw her arms around Emily impulsively and hugged her so fiercely that for a moment Emily could not draw breath. “Thank you! Thank you more than I can say! Not just for helping me to defend Fin, but for showing that it wasn’t really evidence against him.” She let go and stepped back a bit, her eyes bright with tears. She sniffed. “If you hadn’t had the courage, I’d still be at home pacing the floor, or out at some wretched party, pretending to enjoy myself, and all the time worried sick he’d never prove he was innocent.”
“Then let us go and address the next problem,” Emily said resolutely. “If Finlay is not involved, and there is no charge brought against him, then your father will have you married to the next suitable person whose admiration you attract. Are you prepared for that to happen?”
“I shall probably have to be,” Tallulah replied, the happiness draining out of her. “Jago really does despise me. I’m not being falsely modest, you know.”
“Then we must change that,” Emily declared, too elated with her victory to consider defeat in anything. “Or at least we must try.” She started walking again towards the church of St. Mary’s and Tallulah followed reluctantly.
They reached it just as the Reverend Jago Jones came out and almost strode past them, so intent was he upon his errand. It was only that Emily stopped and let out a cry that drew his attention. He swung on his heel and stared at her.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked with concern puckering his brow.
She was startled by his face, then instantly knew she should not have been. She had expected something blander, handsomer, less urgently alive. She had expected someone she could manipulate and outwit. Instead she faced a man whose intelligence she knew instinctively and whose will would not easily be subverted by flattery or irrelevance. Now that she had drawn his attention, what could she possibly say?
“Yes … thank you.” She made it almost an apology. “We were in the area … because …”
He glanced at Tallulah and did not recognize her. He looked back at Emily, waiting for her to continue.
“Because of the death of poor Ada McKinley …” Emily went on desperately. “It touches us closely … because …”
“Because my brother is suspected of the crime,” Tallulah finished.
“I don’t think …” he began, then frowned, studying her face in the light. “Tallulah?” His voice was high-pitched with incredulity. Even as he said it he could not completely believe. It was a question rather than a statement.
“Hello, Jago.” Her voice was rough with emotion. “Did you not know they suspected Finlay?”
“Yes. Yes, I did know, but I can’t believe he’s guilty. It’s too …” He did not finish. Whatever he had been going to say, he changed his mind. His face hardened, the pity or the tenderness forced out of it. “There really isn’t anything you can do here. You had better go home before it gets dark. I’m going ’round to Coke Street to serve out soup, but I’ll walk with you up to a place where you can get a hansom first. Come on.”
“We’ll help you with the soup,” Tallulah offered.
He dismissed the idea contemptuously. “Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t belong here. You’ll get dirty, your feet will hurt standing, and the people will smell and it will offend you. You’ll be tired and bored.” Anger hardened in his eyes and his mouth. “Those people’s hunger is not entertaining. They are real, with feelings and dignity, not something for you to come to look at so you can tell your friends.”
Emily felt as if she had been slapped. Tallulah had not exaggerated his scorn of her.
“Why do you imagine you are the only person who can wish to help from a genuine desire, Mr. Jones?” Emily said tartly. “Is compassion solely your preserve?”
Tallulah’s mouth dropped.
Jago drew in his breath sharply and the skin tightened across his cheeks. It was too dark to see if he blushed.
“No, Miss …”
“Radley,” Emily supplied. “Mrs. Radley.”
“No, Mrs. Radley, of course not. I have known Miss FitzJames for several years. But I had no right to judge you by her past nature. I apologize.”
“I accept your apology,” Emily said with considerable condescension. “But you should extend it to Tallulah as well. It was she who offered to help. Now, if you would lead the way, we shall come with you. I am sure more hands would make the task easier.”
Jago smiled in spite of himself, and obeyed, moving to the outside of the narrow footpath and walking beside them towards Coke Street.
He was right. The work was hard. Emily’s feet hurt, her arms ached and her shoulders and back felt as if they would never adjust to their natural position again. The people were noisy and the smell of hot, unwashed bodies and stale clothes was at times almost sickening. But far more than that she was oppressed by the hunger, the hollow eyes in the lamplight, the spindly limbs and skin pitted and dark with ingrained dirt. She saw tired women with sickly children and no hope. She looked across at Tallulah and saw the shock in her eyes. In the space of a couple of hours, poverty had become a word with a whole realm of meaning. It was reality, pain, people of flesh and blood who loved and had dreams, who got frightened and tired just as she did, only it was most of the time, not merely once or twice a year.
And Jago Jones had become different also, not an idealization but a man of flesh and spirit who also felt, who was occasionally clumsy and dropped things, whose knuckles bled when he scraped them against the wall while maneuvering the cart that carried the soup, who laughed at a child’s silly joke and who turned away to hide his grief when he was told of a woman’s miscarrying her baby.
Emily watched him and saw his contempt for Tallulah slowly soften as she worked to help, stifling her disgust at the smell of dirt and stale sweat, and smiling back at people with blackened or missing teeth, at first with an effort, at the end almost naturally, forgetting the gulf between them.
When the last person was fed they tidied away the empty churns and began slowly to push the cart back to the house where it was kept and the food was cooked. It all came from donations, sometimes from wealthy people, sometimes people with little more themselves.
At quarter past nine, in the dark, they walked side by side to the church. Then Jago insisted on accompanying them until they should find a hansom.
“Why did you really come to Whitechapel?” he asked Tallulah. They were passing under a gas lamp, and in the pool of light his expression was innocent. There was no guile in him, or expectation of a particular answer. Emily was interested that he had no thought that she might have come to see him. She liked him even better for his modesty.
“I wanted to help Finlay,” Tallulah answered after only a moment.
Emily longed to tell her to be quiet. Jago Jones would not approve of their going to see Rose Burke about her testimony. She pretended to trip, and caught hold of Tallulah’s sleeve, jerking her hard.
“Are you all right?” Jago said quickly, putting out his hand to steady her.
“Yes, thank you.” She stood upright again, smiling, although they were past the lamp now. �
�It wasn’t a very clever idea really. There isn’t anything we can do. But we thought if we saw the place, we might think of something.”
Jago shook his head but forbore from comment. He could be tactful when he chose.
Tallulah glanced at Emily as they moved under the next light. She seemed to have understood the hint.
Jago found them a hansom on Commercial Road, and after helping them in, bade them good-bye and thanked them with a wry smile, then turned and walked away without looking back.
Tallulah swiveled to face Emily, although they could barely see each other in the darkness inside the cab.
“I know even less than I did before,” she said, her voice tight with confusion and weariness. “I know I love Jago, but I don’t think I could live here. It smells so awful! Everything is so … dirty! Who could I even talk to? How can he bear it?”
Emily did not answer, because there really was nothing to say, nothing to argue about or rationalize. There was only the decision to be made, and no one could help with that.
Emily collected the new Hellfire Club badge and met Tallulah, by arrangement, at a dog show held by the members of the Ladies’ Kennel Club. It was somewhere they could both go quite comfortably without comment, and meet and compare notes, as if on the scores of dogs of every breed and color and size. Tallulah was in a gorgeous gown of daisy-patterned muslin with white satin ribbon trim. No one would have recognized her as the woman who had helped ladle soup in Coke Street the previous evening. She looked carefree, full of laughter and grace, until she saw Emily. Then she excused herself from her friends and came over, her hand held out, her face tense and shadows of unhappiness in her eyes.
Without comment Emily put her hand into Tallulah’s and passed over the badge, then as quickly withdrew. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Has something new happened?”
“No. I …” Tallulah shook her head. “I just love this dog show. Look at them all. Aren’t they beautiful and intelligent?”
“The people or the dogs?”
“The dogs, of course!” She brushed her fingers against the soft fabric of her skirt. “And I love this dress.”
“You look wonderful in it,” Emily said honestly.
“Can you see me wearing it in Whitechapel? It probably cost more than Jago makes in a year. Maybe two years.”
“Nobody can decide for you,” Emily replied under her breath, smiling and nodding to the wife of another member of Parliament who walked by leading a Great Dane and trying to look as if it were not leading her. “The one thing you must never do is blame someone else because you have chosen the wrong way. Be honest with yourself. If you want your life as it is, with money, fashion, a husband you may not love, then take it.” She smiled and lifted her hand in a gesture of acknowledgment to the wife of a cabinet minister she loathed. “But if you want Jago, with all that that means, don’t attempt to change him or blame him for being what he is.”
“Don’t you expect to change a husband a little?” Tallulah said reasonably. “Why should I be the one to make all the accommodations?”
“Because that way doesn’t work,” Emily said with eminent practicality. “It is no good dealing with what you think is fair, only with what is real. Anyhow, would you want Jago to accommodate you by changing his beliefs? What would that make of him?”
“I thought marriage was supposed to improve men, at least a little,” Tallulah protested. “Are we not meant to be a gentler and civilizing influence? Isn’t that what we are for? To have children and to provide an island of peace and purity and high ideals away from the clamor and conflict of the world?”
Emily bit her tongue so she did not reply too savagely.
“Did you ever know a man who wished to be civilized and improved?”
“No,” Tallulah said with some surprise. “All the men I know wish to be supported, admired and obeyed. That is certainly what Papa wants and insists on. In return he provides for us, advises us and, on occasion, protects us.”
“Of course,” Emily countered with a smile. “Sometimes we may behave in such a way as to cause a man to wish to civilize and improve himself. But that is a different proposal altogether. It is one thing to ask for something, it is quite different to accept when offered it.”
Tallulah was prevented from continuing the discussion by the intervention of a group of ladies who came across to them, leading two spaniels and a setter. The conversation was turned over to dogs.
Emily remained only another ten minutes or so, then excused herself and went to her carriage. It was agreed that Tallulah would place the badge immediately on her return home. Now it was necessary for someone to provoke Pitt into searching again, in order for it to be found. She gave her coachman Charlotte’s address in Bloomsbury and sat back to compose some sensible way of introducing such a suggestion into a conversation. Naturally she would not tell Charlotte why; that would place too great a strain on her loyalties, and Emily had no wish for Pitt to be told. At this point it could defeat everything.
It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and still with that mellow tone of sunshine one gets only in the late summer, a sort of gold in the air, a heavy perfume of flowers, and the knowledge that in a month’s time the first leaves would yellow, but would ripen and the nights begin to chill, and to darken earlier.
Charlotte was in the garden inspecting the young chrysanthemum plants and admiring the asters in bloom, great shaggy heads of purple and magenta. “It’s perfectly beautiful,” Emily said sincerely.
Charlotte looked at her skeptically. “Is that what you came to say?”
“No, of course not.” She wondered for an instant if picking a quarrel might divert Charlotte’s attention from what she had come to say, and decided it would not. It was extremely difficult to think of a way of having Charlotte persuade Pitt to search again for the badge without Charlotte’s realizing exactly what Emily was doing, and why.
“I’ve just come from the dog show,” she said tentatively. “I saw Tallulah FitzJames there. She looks terribly worried. I feel so helpless to know what to say to her. Does Thomas really think her brother is guilty? Did you mention …” She stopped.
“That we went to Beaufort Street?” Charlotte said with wide eyes. “No, of course I didn’t! What could I say? That Finlay’s sister says she saw him at a party, but she can’t remember who else was there because nobody remembers anything about the whole event, except where it was held, and when?”
“I suppose it wouldn’t help,” Emily agreed unhappily.
They walked side by side very gently down the lawn towards the apple tree and past the honeysuckle, which was still in bloom. The late afternoon began to send a heavy sweetness into the air.
“All it would really do,” Charlotte said gently, “is show that Tallulah is a loyal sister.”
“It’s the badge, isn’t it?” Emily seized her opportunity. “That’s what makes it look so bad for him. How could it be there if he wasn’t?”
They had reached the end of the lawn and stood together in the sheltered sun.
“If he’s not guilty,” Emily continued, as though thinking aloud, “then either this is a most hideous mischance or he has a terrible enemy. And from what Tallulah says, that is not impossible. At least,” she hurried on to prevent Charlotte from interrupting, “they are Augustus’s enemies.”
“You think they stole his badge, murdered someone, and left it at the scene?” Charlotte asked with incredulity. “Isn’t that a terrible risk to take with your own life, simply to injure someone else? What if they were caught and hanged themselves?”
Emily drew in her breath and let it out slowly.
“Someone so very arrogant is probably quite sure in their own minds that they will not be caught. And I hadn’t thought of their stealing Finlay’s badge … why not simply have another one made? It wouldn’t be very difficult. Then leave that one there.”
“But what if the police found the original? Or Finlay did himself?” Charlotte reasoned.
“The club disbanded years ago. He probably hasn’t any idea even when he last had it, let alone where.”
“But they looked for it…. Thomas did.”
“Did he look for it himself?” Emily pressed. “Or did he simply have a constable do it, thinking that if Finlay knew where it was he would produce it quickly enough?”
“Perhaps a constable, I don’t know.”
Late swallows dipped and darted after tiny flies. The light was lengthening and turning gold, casting heavy shadows from the apple tree.
“Well, ask him,” Emily said, trying not to sound desperate. “After all, if he found another badge, it would make things much easier, wouldn’t it? For Thomas, I mean. Then he wouldn’t have any real evidence against Finlay, and he wouldn’t be in the wretched position of having to charge him! He wouldn’t be caught between the pressure from the establishment and the Home Office, and it would stop the newspapers suggesting that he is letting Finlay off because of who he is. I know the sort of thing they will say.”
“I suppose you might be right,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “I’ll mention it to him.”
Emily linked her arm in Charlotte’s and they began to walk back up the lawn towards the house. She did not trust herself to say anything further.
6
WHILE EMILY was involved with helping Tallulah, Pitt had been searching further into the character and associations of the FitzJames family. He had sent Tellman to learn what he could to add to their knowledge of the history of the other members of the Hellfire Club, as being those most likely to have had the badge, either intentionally or by accident. In spite of their appearance of a life far removed from frequenting the brothels of Whitechapel, it was quite possible that they did so. Married men of Helliwell’s status had been known to. Thirlstone was certainly not beyond suspicion.
And much as Pitt would like to have believed that Jago Jones was all he proclaimed, he might have all too human weaknesses, and if he gave in to them, where better to turn than to a prostitute whose company would be so natural in his pastoral labors; no one would question it. He could explain it even to himself. He would be far from the first man of the cloth to find his relationship with a beautiful and intelligent parishioner slipping helplessly beyond the bounds of propriety into a physical hunger which he had not denied. He lived an abstemious life, lonely and full of hardship and self-discipline. It was not difficult to understand. He had been a man of both appetite and indulgence in his Hellfire days. What had changed him, and so completely?
