Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Now, the helmsman of all his businesses, he sits in his leather chair, reading glasses perched on his nose, studying documents by the light of a lamp suspended over his massive wooden desk. The telescope on the windowsill points toward a view of the city’s rooftops as they vanish in the fog. Business isn’t the only thing that keeps him at his desk long after dark. Hugh tells me that Sir Gerald is devastated because his son Tristan fled to Switzerland. After Tristan quit the priesthood, Sir Gerald had put him to work at the bank, intending for him to learn the ropes at all the Mariner businesses and prepare to take charge after his father’s retirement. Tristan’s departure has dashed Sir Gerald’s dearest hopes as well as broken Hugh’s heart. Sir Gerald doesn’t want to go home and face his loss.

  Now, as Mick and I hover outside his door, Sir Gerald says, “Come in.”

  His face betrays none of his suffering. I see him note that Hugh is absent, but he doesn’t inquire after him. Hugh also tells me that Sir Gerald blames him for “corrupting” Tristan; Sir Gerald wrongly thinks Tristan didn’t become a homosexual until he met Hugh. Sir Gerald bears a grudge against Hugh for dashing his other hope—that Tristan would marry a woman and sire the next heir to the Mariner business empire. I want to ask Sir Gerald if he’s heard from Tristan; I’ve seen Hugh search the post every day for a letter that never comes. But Sir Gerald rarely welcomes personal discussions.

  “What’ve you got?” Having seen the photograph in my hands, he cuts right to the chase.

  I lay the photograph on his desk. Sir Gerald’s eyebrows rise. His finger jabs at the pale shape. “Are you telling me that this is a ghost stabbing Charles Firth?”

  “I think it’s a person wearing white,” I say.

  “People have heard that the church is haunted,” Mick says. “The killer coulda dressed up as a ghost, for a disguise.”

  Chin in hand, studying the photograph, Sir Gerald says, “Now that the Sleeping Beauty case is wrapped up, we need another big story.”

  The Sleeping Beauty case involved a woman found unconscious by the river, her face slashed. Barrett, my friends, and I identified her and her would-be killer. The ache in my shoulder reminds me of the consequences.

  “I’ll run it on the front page tomorrow,” Sir Gerald says, “with the headline ‘Murder by a Ghost?’ ”

  He means to publish the story ahead of whatever facts the investigation turns up. I hesitate to challenge him; he’s not only powerful but dangerous. I know of at least one instance where he killed, with his own hands, someone who ran afoul of him. Still, I feel obligated to speak up, and I think that the experiences we have in common—and the secrets we share—give me the right.

  “But there’s no proof that it’s true,” I say.

  Sir Gerald responds with a sly smile; he’s unpredictable, and sometimes, rather than taking umbrage when people stand up to him, he likes it. “When has that ever stopped a newspaper from publishing a story?”

  Mick nods; we all know that newspaper articles are often as much fiction as fact. But I have to say, “A story that says there’s a murderous ghost at large could bring in false tips.”

  “It could also bring in genuine leads,” Sir Gerald points out. “At any rate, that’s why I’ll put the question mark in the headline—so that if it turns out the killer’s an ordinary human, I won’t be laughed out of town for publishing nonsense.”

  I note the word if in his statement. “So you think it could be a ghost?” I’m surprised that a worldly, practical man like him could entertain the possibility.

  “I’m not ruling it out.” Sir Gerald narrows his eyes at me. “You’re obviously a disbeliever, Mrs. Barrett.”

  It’s his first acknowledgment that he attended my wedding today. For the first time I wonder what effect my marriage will have on my job. I’m beginning to feel pulled in different directions—between Sir Gerald, who expects me to photograph crime scenes at all hours of the day and night, and Barrett’s mother, who expects a conventional daughter-in-law. Intimidated by Sir Gerald’s critical tone, I’m also compelled to poke the wolf.

  “I think ghosts are imaginary.”

  Sir Gerald shrugs, taking no offense. “You’ve a right to your opinion.”

  I recall once hearing him say, “I didn’t get where I am by listening only to people who agree with me.” I respect him for that, along with his strength and ruthlessness, which I also fear.

  “But in my travels around the world, I’ve seen a man killed by a witch’s curse, and I’ve seen the dead come back to life. So although I’ve never seen ghosts, I’m willing to consider the possibility that they’re real. You should keep an open mind.”

  His words are a reminder that although he takes dissenting opinions into account, he brooks no opposition when he thinks he’s right. He hands me the photograph. “Tell the engravers to have this ready for the morning paper. Oh, and I’m taking you and Mick and Lord Hugh off crime scene duty so you can investigate the murder.”

  It’s a mixed blessing. My friends and I will have time to hunt Charles Firth’s killer, but Sir Gerald also didn’t get where he is by keeping people on his payroll who don’t deliver results. Moreover, he’s invested a fortune in his growing newspaper empire and staked his reputation on it. Sometimes I feel sorry for this rich, powerful man upon whom my livelihood depends. Fortune and reputation are all he has left now that he’s lost his son, his stake in the future.

  “Keep me posted,” Sir Gerald says. “I want to be the first to know if there’s anything to the ghost angle.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Mick unlocks the door to our studio, in a row of eighteenth-century shop buildings on Whitechapel high street, and I smile with pride at the sign, painted in gold letters over the display window: S. BAIN PHOTOGRAPHER & CO.

  By day, this is the respectable part of Whitechapel. Now, at night, when the shops are closed, the traffic diminished, and most of the buildings dark, it embodies Whitechapel’s reputation as the hunting ground of Jack the Ripper. Beneath the gas lamps whose yellow glow diffuses in the cold fog, streetwalkers from the nearby slums wander into the Angel, White Hart, and Red Lion public houses. They come out accompanied by men. The couples duck into alleys for amorous congress. Drunken laughter punctuates the rumble of trains, and the fetid stench from the slaughterhouses drifts through the smoke and chemical fumes. But this is home, and the knowledge that I’ll be leaving soon brings tears to my eyes.

  Inside the studio, Mick puts the photography equipment away. The tears blur my view of the room that he and Hugh helped me furnish. With its Turkey carpet, crystal gas chandelier, and carved furniture, it could be an elegant parlor if not for the cameras on tripods, the rolled backdrops on a stand, and the gallery of my photographs on the wall near the door to the darkroom. After I move, I can return to use the studio and visit my friends, but it won’t be the same.

  “I’m goin’ back to Bethnal Green to look for witnesses,” Mick says.

  “Don’t you have school at the Working Lads Institute?” I say.

  His formal education has been sporadic since he began living on the streets at age eight. It consisted of stints at an orphanage, from which he repeatedly ran away, and at a local school. He hates sitting still in class, being treated like a child. My attempts to persuade him that he needed an education went nowhere until after his quarrel with Catherine. Then he decided that an education would help him become a man of means, compete with her other suitors, and win her hand. Now he attends the Working Lads Institute, which provides classes that employed youths can fit into their spare time. It aims to draw the boys away from the evils of the streets and qualify them for better jobs.

  “I’m takin’ the night off,” Mick says.

  We go upstairs, and he opens the drawer in the table in the parlor. There lie four identical pistols—one each for Mick, Hugh, Barrett, and me. Barrett keeps his here because police don’t carry guns and he hasn’t a secure place to store his at the barracks. Mick removes his, loads it, and tucks i
t in his pocket. The gunshot wound in my shoulder suddenly aches.

  “Education is still important.” I’m afraid he’ll quit school now that he’s given up on Catherine.

  “One night off ain’t gonna make a difference.” He stalks out, closing the door so hard that the bell jangles.

  I sigh and tell myself that I should stop trying to act as a parent to Mick, who’s an adult by circumstance if not age, but I care about him, and I know he wants to rise within the ranks of Sir Gerald’s employ, and for that he needs an education. I also don’t like him roaming the city armed with a gun, spoiling for trouble.

  I go upstairs, wondering if things will look different now that I’m married. But there’s the chaise longue that I rarely get to enjoy because Mick and Hugh monopolize it, the fireplace that warms us while we drink our cocoa on winter nights, and the other furnishings that we’ve acquired mostly from junk shops. No matter that I’m eager to establish a home with my husband, how can I bear to leave?

  Fitzmorris comes out of the kitchen, dishcloth in hand. He and I share the chores. Mick pitches in, but Hugh is useless at domestic tasks, and soon Fitzmorris will have to shoulder the major burden alone. His family has served Hugh’s for generations. Fitzmorris’s parents died when he was a child, and after the Stauntons gave him and his siblings a home, education, and affection, he repaid them with devotion to Hugh, whom he loves as a younger brother. His devotion extends to Mick and me. He’s a bachelor with no children, and the three of us are his family. I’ll miss him, but I can count on him to look after Mick and Hugh when I’m gone.

  “Where is Hugh?” I say.

  Fitzmorris points upward. “Sleeping it off.”

  I haven’t the heart to criticize Hugh for his overindulgence. I never liked or trusted Tristan—I thought him rigid and standoffish—but he was Hugh’s beloved, the only relationship that had been serious enough to last for more than a few encounters. And I can’t deny that Tristan had sacrificed much for love of Hugh. He’d given up the Church and attempted a new, disliked career in Sir Gerald’s business empire so that he and Hugh could be together. Eventually Tristan crumbled under the pressure from social disapproval and his own conscience. That the relationship was doomed from the start doesn’t mean its end is any less painful for Hugh.

  “Barrett stopped by and left you a note.” Fitzmorris gestures at the dining room table.

  I read the note: Broke the news to C. F.’s wife. Went to the morgue at St. George’s for the autopsy. Meet me at the hotel. B. I smile. It’s my husband’s first letter to me. How romantic.

  I go to my small, cramped room on the top floor. Its attic ceiling slants low; it’s cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and noisy from the traffic on the street; but it’s dear to me. After my father disappeared, I lived with my coldhearted mother in a series of cheap, comfortless lodgings. Then came boarding school, her death, and living on my own. This is, since the age of ten, my first real home, where I’m loved.

  When I take off my wedding dress, I find a brown acid spot on the skirt, from the photographic chemicals. I sponge the spot with water, hang up the dress, and put on a dark-blue wool frock. Instead of traveling to the hotel by myself, I decide to meet Barrett at the morgue. I go downstairs and hesitate in the parlor, torn between the need for protection and reluctance to bring my gun. St. George’s Church is less than half a mile away, but even though the Ripper no longer stalks the streets, Whitechapel is dangerous by night, especially for a woman alone. My wounded shoulder twinges. I leave the gun in the drawer.

  Outside, I hail a cab that conveys me to St. George’s. The ornate Baroque church, surrounded by dark tenements, looks as inviting as a mausoleum. In the flickering light from the streetlamps, trees cast spooky shadows on its white stone walls. The fog is so thick that I can’t see the boundaries of the churchyard, and I don’t know where the morgue is. Starting down a path, I hear footsteps but can’t tell if someone is following me or they’re echoes of my own. Foliage drips water on me, cold moisture veils my face, and I shiver. Then I see a weird glow in the distance. I pass old gravestones tilted at odd angles. It’s said that the veil between the realms of the living and the dead is thinnest at Halloween, but it’s not Halloween yet, and I don’t believe there are ghosts in this cemetery or anyplace else. The glow emanates from the windows and open door of a small brick building amid high shrubs that seem intended to hide it from view.

  “Barrett?” I call.

  He appears in the doorway, much to my relief. “Sarah? What are you doing here?”

  “I came to meet you. Is the autopsy finished?”

  “No. It’s just about to start.”

  I peer into the morgue and see a blanket-covered figure lying on a table while a man in a gray smock removes instruments from a cabinet and arranges them on the work top. I think of the time I visited a morgue and photographed the dissected corpse of Annie Chapman, the Ripper’s third victim.

  “You came alone?” Barrett looks around for Hugh and Mick, my usual companions in nighttime expeditions. “That was dangerous.”

  I feel a little hurt because he’s not pleased to see me. “I made it all right.”

  “I told you to meet me at the hotel. Or didn’t you get my note?”

  “Yes, but I thought that if I came here, we could go together.”

  “You can go now. I’ll walk you to the train station.”

  “Since I’m here, I may as well watch the autopsy.” I don’t really want to, but his peremptory manner rouses my stubborn streak.

  Barrett frowns. “You can’t. It’s against procedure.”

  “Remember Sir Gerald’s deal with the police.”

  Sir Gerald and the top police brass agreed that his reporters would have access to investigations, and the Daily World would give the police good publicity and help them solve cases by encouraging readers with information to come forward.

  “Never mind Sir Gerald’s deal.” Barrett draws me farther from the morgue and lowers his voice. “Didn’t you promise to obey me?”

  I pause, confused, before I recall our wedding vows. I laugh because I think he’s making a joke. “Well, I didn’t mean it so literally.”

  He’s not laughing. “Why not?”

  “Surely you don’t think you can order me around, and I should do whatever you say, just because we’re married now?”

  I’ve seen his father order his mother around, and many other husbands doing the same with their wives, but although Barrett has often disapproved of my actions, he’s always respected my independence. I thought he found it attractive and indeed liked having a woman who was adventurous instead of domestic, wayward instead of meek. We stare at each other, stunned by the realization that marriage has already changed things between us.

  I take a step toward the morgue. He puts out his hand to stop me. We both freeze.

  Barrett drops his hand. “You can watch.”

  “No, I’ll go.” I feel the same simultaneous reluctance to give in and eagerness to please as I hear in his voice. We both perceive that something bigger than winning this argument is at stake.

  The morgue is no place to hash it out. We walk to the door, and he stands aside so I can enter first. Confronted with the doctor, his grisly array of sharp tools, and the shrouded corpse, my heart starts to pound. The discolored white plaster walls and the stone floor exude smells of absorbed decay that the cold air from the open door and windows doesn’t alleviate. I begin to wish I had obeyed Barrett.

  Barrett introduces me to the doctor—George Phillips, the police surgeon. In his fifties, with muttonchop whiskers and wearing a high-collared white shirt and black stock tie under his smock, he looks as if he stepped out of a portrait from the previous century. Barrett explains that I’m his wife and a reporter for the Daily World, with official permission to observe the autopsy.

  Dr. Phillips smiles, and benevolent lines crease his face. “Well, this is a first for me—a lovely lady to watch me at work. But are you certain you wan
t to, Mrs. Barrett? Postmortem examinations are not for the faint of heart.”

  “I’m certain.”

  My heart didn’t fail me when I saw Annie Chapman with all her organs removed, but I’ve never watched the actual cutting and eviscerating. As Barrett and I join Dr. Phillips at the table, we look at each other. He doesn’t seem squeamish; he’s watched autopsies before. We share wan smiles, and I can tell that he’s thinking what I’m thinking: how bizarre to find ourselves standing together at an autopsy table as we did at the altar this morning. It feels right, even though I imagine it would seem wrong to other people.

  Dr. Phillips dons rubber gloves and peels the blanket off the body. Charles Firth looks shrunken, his skin gray; death has extinguished his personality, reduced him to a mass of decaying flesh. I breathe shallowly but still catch a sweet, rotten whiff of the dried blood on his clothes. When Dr. Phillips unbuttons and opens the white shirt, it sticks to the skin underneath.

  “I don’t think we need an internal examination.” Dr. Phillips studies the narrow cut between Charles Firth’s upper ribs. “The cause of death is obvious. You’re in luck.” His wry smile at me says he knows I dreaded watching the cutting.

  It’s not only the cutting that would have distressed me; it’s also the posthumous violation of a man I knew and liked, to whom I owe my good fortune.

  “The crime scene was the first I’ve ever seen at which the victim was killed during a photographic session,” Dr. Phillips says. “What was he trying to photograph?”

  “Ghosts,” Barrett and I say in unison.

  Dr. Phillips raises his bushy white eyebrows at us. Barrett explains about the supposedly haunted church.

  “A murdered ghost hunter; how peculiar,” Dr. Phillips says. “I must confess, I think photographs of that sort are an abominable hoax.”