Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “It’s just a little cut,” he says. “This’ll dull the pain and prevent festering.” He doses my lip with medicine from a dropper.

  My lip goes numb. Mick asks Quayle, “Did you know we was coming and those blokes was gonna attack us?”

  “If I had, I would’ve stopped them before it happened.” His expression remains inscrutable as he puts away the medicine. “What’s the murder at St. Pete’s got to do with me?”

  “You were seen goin’ in the church that night,” Mick says.

  Quayle’s eyes flash briefly with emotion—surprise, alarm, anger? “Who says?”

  I don’t want to name the witness lest Quayle retaliate against him. “Someone who happened to be outside the church.”

  “Oh, you must mean Andy Coburn.” Quayle smirks at my surprise. “He dosses down in the bushes by the front door. You believed him?”

  “He seemed quite certain,” I say.

  “It weren’t me. His brain’s pickled by drink. He wouldn’t recognize his own mum.”

  I remember Mr. Coburn’s liquor bottles and inebriated state, but I’m not ready to believe Quayle. Mick says, “Why would he finger you?”

  “When I was a lad, I robbed people sleeping in the streets.” Quayle speaks without shame or regret, as if he’s talking about merely a job to earn pocket money. Perhaps his childhood was similar to Mick’s and he did whatever was necessary to survive. “Old Andy was one of them. He ratted on me to the coppers. Sent me to jail. He’ll do me dirty again if he can.”

  “Then where was you?” Mick says.

  “Here. In the women’s ward. Deliverin’ a baby.”

  “Can anyone vouch for you?” I say.

  “The baby’s too young, but his ma were there,” Quayle says. “And the night nurses.”

  “We’ll need to talk to them.” But judging from what I’ve seen, everyone in the workhouse would lie for fear of Quayle.

  “Somebody else besides ‘Old Andy’ might’ve seen you at the church,” Mick says. “If you had an innocent reason for bein’ there, you’d best come clean now, before the coppers get onto you.”

  “I never go near St. Pete’s after dark. It’s haunted.”

  At first I think he’s making a joke, so I’m surprised by the fear in his eyes.

  “Don’t tell me you’re scared o’ ghosts,” Mick jeers.

  “You would be too if you’d seen what I seen. One night last year, I’m passing by St. Pete’s, and I hear wailing in the churchyard. I look around, and there’s a woman standing by a tombstone. She’s all white—her hair, her dress, her skin. She reaches out her arms, like she wants to pull me into the grave.” Quayle shudders. “I got out of there, fast as I could.”

  Maybe the power of suggestion is strong enough to play tricks on the mind of a tough, practical man like Quayle. But I think he’s clever enough to invent the most original alibi I’ve ever heard—a ghost story.

  “Were you acquainted with Charles Firth?” I say.

  “No. I never heard of him until after he were murdered.”

  “That so?” Mick says. “If there’s a connection between you and him, we’re gonna find out.”

  “There ain’t none,” Quayle says, impatient now. “And if I wanted to kill somebody, I’d do it someplace else other than St. Pete’s.”

  * * *

  Mick and I retrieve our equipment from the workhouse porter’s lodge. The porter won’t look at us, which suggests that he suspects, but doesn’t want to know, that the inmates did something bad to us. Mick and I travel home by omnibus, in open-air seats on its roof. The evening fog descends around us, a swirling, wind-blown murk of soot, cold moisture, and chemical fumes. The streetlamps and shop windows are bright, blurry streaks, and I can’t see beyond the driver atop the cab in front of us. A din of voices is all I can perceive of the people on the sidewalks. When the omnibus stops, Mick and I haul our equipment down the staircase and join the crowds trudging along the Whitechapel high street. Outside our house, I see Barrett, in uniform, striding toward us.

  We halt ten steps from each other. I’m glad he came back, and after what I’ve gone through, the sight of him is a relief, but the anger and hurt from last night rekindle in me. The shadow of Jane looms between us, like a spell his mother cast to drive us apart.

  “Hullo, Barrett,” Mick says. He unlocks the door, carries in the photography equipment, and runs upstairs.

  “Can I come in?” Barrett says.

  “Please do.” My manner is stiff, formal.

  In the studio, I take my time closing and locking the door and lighting the gas lamp. Barrett sets his helmet on the table, and we stand in silence, neither wanting to speak first. The room is cold, the air permeated with our apprehension.

  “I stopped by my mother’s today,” Barrett says.

  “Oh.” On top of everything that’s happened today, I’m ill equipped to cope with more trouble from Mrs. Barrett.

  “She said to tell you she’s sorry if she upset you.”

  There’s something not quite right about that apology, but I still hope we can settle our differences. “Tell her I said thank you.”

  “I will.” Barrett brightens, encouraged by this progress toward harmony between his mother and his wife. “She wants us to come for dinner Wednesday.”

  Perish the thought, but even a hint that I don’t want to go will hurt Barrett’s feelings. “All right. How nice.”

  Barrett puts his arms around me, cautiously, as though I’m a cat that might scratch him. I lean into him, his presence a comfort after my ordeal. Pent-up, unfulfilled desire swells in me, and his kiss is like a lit match thrown on smoldering embers. Then his mouth presses against the cut inside my lip. A hiss of pain escapes me as I flinch.

  Barrett immediately releases me. “I’m sorry.”

  He must think I spurned him because of last night, and I hurry to explain, “No, it’s just this.” I pull my lip down to show him the cut.

  His eyebrows rise; it must look worse than it feels. “How did that happen?”

  Here’s another problem to stir into our pot of troubles, and there’s no way to sugarcoat it. I tell him about the witness Mick and I found outside St. Peter’s, the ambush at the workhouse, and our close call.

  Barrett huffs and stomps around the room, his fists clenched as if he wants to beat up the men responsible. I can’t help feeling a certain feminine satisfaction; his anger is proof that he cares about me. “How could you and Mick go in there by yourselves?” he demands. “Everybody knows it’s dangerous inside workhouses.”

  A needle of annoyance pierces my satisfaction. “So you’re blaming us?”

  “Of course not. I’m just saying you need to be more careful. My God, you could have been killed!”

  I involuntarily clasp the tender gunshot wound on my shoulder. “I wasn’t seriously harmed.” But I remember those cruel men, and my terror and helplessness.

  Barrett rakes his hands through his hair. “I hate it when you just shrug off things like that, as if they were all in a day’s work.”

  I’m hurt because he doesn’t understand my feelings; I somehow think he should, even though I haven’t explained them to him, and I could wish for a little sympathy. “It was a good day’s work. Mick and I turned up some new suspects.” I describe Dr. Lodge, Anjali, and the Society for Psychical Studies. After mentioning their upcoming ghost-hunting expedition, I describe our encounters with Daniel and Lucie Thornton, the vicar, and Nat Quayle.

  Barrett nods, reluctantly impressed. “So maybe you’re a few steps closer to solving the murder. But I don’t see what reason Nat Quayle could have had for wanting Charles Firth dead.”

  “Neither do I,” I have to admit.

  “And the investigation isn’t worth your life.”

  “I never said it was!” We’ve had so many arguments since the wedding, and I’m suddenly frightened. Shouldn’t marriage unite us rather than pit us against each other? What’s wrong with us?

  “Well, yo
u act as if it is. You’re so reckless.” Barrett holds his head. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  I can’t deny the justice of his words, but I’m the same person I’ve always been, and my being attacked in the line of duty isn’t rare, so why does he mind more now? “I’ll be more careful next time.”

  “You always say so, but you never are. You could have asked me to go to the workhouse with you, but you didn’t. I promised to protect you, but how can I, if you won’t let me?”

  Our arguments these days always seem to circle back to our wedding vows. In my desperation, I try to joke him back into good humor. “If you had gone with me, we both might have been killed and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Barrett glowers. “What else happened today?”

  I hesitate.

  “Sarah …” His warning tone reminds me that my keeping secrets from him is another sore point.

  If I don’t tell him, he’ll hear it from someone else, and there will be hell to pay. I sigh, then describe my run-in with Inspector Reid.

  Barrett’s eyes flare, and his jaw tightens with the anger that he’s hard-pressed to control whenever Reid crops up in conversation or in person. “As long as you keep working for the Daily World, you won’t be able to stay out of his way. Your investigations will keep pitting you and him against each other. You’ll never be safe from him.”

  “I know.” Nobody associated with me, including my father, will ever be safe, either, as long as there’s so much bad blood between Reid and me.

  “Sometimes I think—” Barrett stops, as though he’s caught himself on the verge of saying too much.

  “You think what?” I experience an ominous sensation as I imagine the ways in which he could end that sentence.

  Barrett shakes his head. “Never mind.” He moves toward the door.

  I don’t want him to leave while we’re at odds. “Where are you going?”

  “To storm the Bethnal Green Workhouse with an army of constables and arrest those rotters.”

  My knight in shining armor, out to avenge me! But my thrill of excitement quails before my fear for his safety. “Please be careful.”

  “You’re telling me?” Barrett laughs with sardonic mirth. “If you’re going to that ghost-hunting expedition, I’m going with you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The next morning, Hugh still hasn’t returned. Fitzmorris volunteers to track down people Hugh knows, who might have seen him. While Mick attempts to verify the murder suspects’ alibis, I visit other places where my mother and I lived. One house has been demolished; at others, I find strangers who never knew my mother. I save Isleworth for last.

  At four thirty in the afternoon, a cab carries me from the train station toward the center of Isleworth. I look out the window and see, through mist and drizzle, the buildings and smokestacks of the Pears soap factory. My mother worked there, and the soap’s floral fragrance permeated her clothes, her hair, and our lodgings. I never use Pears soap because a mere whiff catapults me back to that time. Today I hold my breath, but I can’t hold it long enough. Inhaling the fragrance, I relive the day I made this journey in June 1874, when I’d finished school and come home for good. I hadn’t seen my mother since Christmas, and she hadn’t told me about the cancer, so I was shocked by how weak and emaciated she was. I took care of her for the grueling eighteen months until she died.

  Fifteen years have passed since I last saw Isleworth, but today it still strikes me as more a small town than a part of London. Situated near the River Thames, the town center covers less than a square mile. Our house is shabbier but still there, in a terrace of undistinguished brick houses near the convent school. I stand outside, gazing at the windows of the second-floor flat. All those days and nights by my mother’s bedside, I waited for her to speak one loving word to me. She never did. She could have told me the truth about my father, Lucas, and Ellen Casey’s murder, but she kept silent until the end. When she took her last breath, she left me alone to face the consequences of her lies.

  Ten minutes pass before I summon the courage to knock on the door. A woman answers. She’s shrunken with age, her face as white and puckered as the cap she wears. I’m startled to recognize my former neighbor.

  “Mrs. Yates?” I say.

  I thought her ancient then; she must be over eighty now. I suddenly remember the Christmas I was sixteen. I’d come home from school, and on the train, a thief had stolen the valise that contained, along with my clothes, the scarf I’d knitted as a present for my mother. Our door was locked when I arrived; she wasn’t home. Cold, tired, hungry, and desolate, I sat on the stairs and cried. Mrs. Yates found me and took me into her flat. She gave me tea and a fried-egg sandwich and chatted with me until my mother returned. I forgot her kindness until now.

  She squints at me and says, “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Sarah Bain. Do you remember me?”

  “What? I’m afraid my eyesight isn’t very good, nor my hearing.”

  When I step closer and repeat my name, Mrs. Yates blinks in amazement. “You and your mum used to live upstairs.”

  “Yes.” I’m so glad to find someone who remembers us.

  “I never thought I’d see you again. I’m sorry about your mum.”

  I’m suddenly as tearful as I was that day she found me sitting on the stairs like a stray dog.

  “There, there, dear.” Mrs. Yates pats my shoulder. “You’d better come in.”

  Inside her small, warm, cluttered flat, she serves me tea and biscuits. I recognize the teapot shaped like a hen. I recall that Mrs. Yates was a seamstress, a widow with two sons. I envied the cheerful bustle of their household. Now she tells me that both boys work at the soap factory and are married with children of their own.

  “What brings you back, dear?” she says.

  “It’s about my mother.” The lump in my throat chokes off my impulse to confide the terrible story.

  “You were missing her, of course.”

  “Yes.” I gratefully accept her sweet, simple explanation. “I thought that if I came here, I might find people who knew her and they could share their memories of her with me.”

  “Well, I can’t say I knew her.” Mrs. Yates’s manner cools. “She didn’t want people around.”

  Another memory resurfaces. When my mother returned that day, she scolded Mrs. Yates for taking me in without her permission. She dragged me into our flat and slammed the door.

  “Was there anyone my mother might have been close to?”

  “Well, there was her gentleman friend.”

  I choke on a sip of tea. “Gentleman friend?” After my father left, I never saw my mother look at another man. That she had a suitor is the last thing I expected to learn.

  “I saw him when he came calling once,” Mrs. Yates says.

  In my shock and disbelief, I search for an alternate reason for a man to visit my mother. “He was probably just a salesman.”

  “A salesman wouldn’t have brought her flowers, would he, dear? Or stayed three hours?”

  This must have happened while I was away at school. He was another secret she kept from me.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, dear,” Mrs. Yates says, misinterpreting my reaction. “A woman gets lonely on her own. If I’d had a suitor after Mr. Yates died, I wouldn’t have said no.” She squeezes my hand, feels my wedding ring, and smiles. “Ah, you’re married. I’m glad you found a husband.”

  “What was the gentleman’s name?” Now I’m excited; perhaps he has information I need.

  “Callahan, I believe he said.”

  The name is completely unfamiliar. “Do you know where I might find him?”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m nosy, but one day I saw him on the street. I was curious, so I followed him home.”

  * * *

  The Northumberland Arms is a public house on Lower Square Street. I peer in through the window of the white stucco building and see an old man sitting at a table with ot
her customers, who laugh as he tells a story. With his full head of pomaded white hair and the red carnation stuck in the buttonhole of his gray coat, he fits the description given me by the landlady at the lodging house to which Mrs. Yates followed him some eighteen years ago. Mrs. Yates’s memory has proven accurate in all but one respect: his surname is Cullen, not Callahan. Fortunately, his house is still existent, and he’s still a lodger. John Cullen is well preserved and handsome for a man who must be in his seventies, and I can see why an older woman would have been attracted to him. But what on earth attracted him to my plain, dour mother?

  Upon my entering the pub, the chatter and laughter fade as the party at the table behold me, a stranger. “Well, hello, there,” John Cullen says. His voice is jovial, his accent common. “Why don’t you pull up a chair and join us?”

  He seems the kind of man who flirts with anyone female. Then he takes a second look at me, and his jaw sags; his ruddy complexion blanches; his eyes pop. He brings to mind Ebenezer Scrooge seeing Jacob Marley’s ghost. I’m as much of a shock to him as his relationship with my mother was to me. To him, I am a ghost—the ghost of a mistress past.

  “Say, Johnny, you all right?” the publican says.

  Mr. Cullen nods, then says to his friends, “Can you give a fellow a little privacy?”

  They move to the bar, casting curious glances at me. I sit beside Mr. Cullen and say, “You know who I am, don’t you?”

  He gulps ale from his glass, and the color seeps back into his face. “You must be related to Mary Bain.”

  “I’m her daughter.”

  His shock turns to suspicion. “Mary didn’t have a daughter. Who are you really?”

  I’m not surprised that my mother kept secrets from him too. “I was away at school when she lived in Isleworth. I only came home for holidays.”

  “Well.” Mr. Cullen regains a semblance of his jovial, flirtatious manner. “How about a drink for a young lady who’s as beautiful as her mother?”