Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  I fling open the door and light the gas lamps. The room is a mess, at odds with the vicar’s dignified, respectable character. Papers are piled high on the desk, books leaning against one another on the shelves and stacked untidily on a carpet littered with dirty teacups and plates, crumbs and mouse droppings. There’s a musty, stale, rotten smell. The room would be a good hiding place for anything he doesn’t want found. I start with the desk drawers. The upper ones are chock-full of pens and wipers, sealing wax wafers, ink bottles that have leaked, and old letters and stationery.

  Mrs. Thornton whimpers, “Don’t touch his things. He’ll be cross.”

  From the bottom drawer, from behind some old parish magazines, I lift out a narrow bundle wrapped in a white tea towel. My heart thuds as I unwrap the towel and see dark-brown stains on it. The object inside is a folding knife, the curved blade half concealed in the wooden handle. It looks old, the wood smooth and darkened. Blade and handle are coated with dried blood. This has to be the knife with which Charles Firth was stabbed; I can’t see any other explanation for the blood or for the fact of its concealment. Sorrow infuses my satisfaction. The blood is a vestige of my flawed but ultimately kind patron and, indeed, my friend. Loath to touch the murder weapon with my bare hands, I turn it over in the towel. Carved crudely on the handle are the initials D. T.

  Douglas Thornton, the vicar.

  I don’t need the initials to tell me that this knife, hidden in his private study, belongs to him. My gaze falls to the papers on the desk, which are inked with scribbled black handwriting: Have mercy on me, God; in your plentiful compassion, expunge my transgressions. Cleanse away my guilt, and of my sin absolve me.

  Barrett and Hugh burst into the room. They stare, incredulous, at the weapon in my hands. Hugh says, “Sarah, you found it?”

  I show them the initials. “The vicar is the killer. He’s the person Eva Piper saw.” I look around for his wife. She’s gone. “Where’s Mrs. Thornton?”

  “Never mind her,” Barrett says. “We know where the vicar and the children are.”

  “In the church,” Hugh says. “We saw lights in the windows.”

  “Keep the knife. It’s evidence,” Barrett says.

  I rewrap the knife in the towel and cram it in my pocketbook as we rush out the front door. Distant voices sing, “Please, good missus, a soul cake.” The church’s stained-glass windows glow dimly, like watercolor paint smeared in the fog and acrid bonfire smoke. We rush around the corner to the main entrance.

  Hugh tries the doorknob. “Damn, it’s locked. I wish Mick were here.”

  I search my pocketbook and dig out the picklocks. Barrett lights a match and holds it near the lock so I can see while I work. Ten matches burn out and my hands are clammy with sweat before the tumblers click into place. Hugh cautiously opens the door, which emits a loud creak that makes us all jump. An instant later, the light in the church goes out.

  “They heard us,” I whisper. Fear keens through me like an icy gale as I remember other dark places to which we’ve tracked murderers.

  Hugh draws the gun from his pocket and steps through the door. In the vestibule, Barrett finds a box of candles by a holder and coin box. He lights one for each of us. We extend our candles toward the entrance to the sanctuary. Their flames waver in a cold draft that smells of incense and dying flowers. The aisle down which Hugh walked me last week leads to the altar where Barrett and I were joined in holy matrimony by the man who, unbeknown to us, had committed murder the previous night. We stand still, alert. Only the skittering of mice interrupts the sinister quiet. Then I hear a faint moan. My heart lurches. I clutch at Barrett and Hugh. They turn quizzical glances to me; they didn’t hear the noise. I put my finger to my lips.

  Several long, tense minutes pass.

  The moan comes again, from above us, louder.

  We lift our gazes toward the ceiling. At first I think the sound is wind gusting through the church’s tower, directly above us. Then I sense in it a human quality that raises cold prickles on my skin. It must be the sound heard by people who claim the church is haunted. Hugh points to the right side of the vestibule. His candle illuminates an open door, beyond which a stairway leads upward. He’s through the door, climbing the stairs before I can warn him to be careful. I hurry after him, as usual aware that there’s no point in my being safe if he isn’t. Barrett curses under his breath as he follows us.

  The stairway ascends in a tight spiral within the tower. There’s no banister, the steps are slippery stone, and as I mount them, I clutch the walls to keep from falling. I tell myself I’m afraid the vicar, Daniel, or Lucie is luring us into a trap. I don’t think a ghost is up there; of course I don’t. The confined space increases the anxiety that squeezes my rib cage. Dizzy from going around the spiral, I concentrate on Hugh’s legs, a few stairs above me. Barrett’s presence behind me provides some comfort. So does the fact that the moans have stopped. At the first landing, light from the street shines dimly through a window. At the second, Hugh, Barrett, and I pause at a closed door. I wheeze, catching my breath, as we draw our guns. I’m praying that we won’t need to use them when I hear a moan from the door’s other side.

  We all jump. Hugh mutters, “Christ!”

  This time the moan is unmistakably human. Redolent with pain and suffering, it ends in a throaty, viscous gurgle. I can’t help but imagine the ghost of a long-dead cholera victim trapped in the tower, waiting for someone to let it out so that it can wreak unholy havoc upon the world. I stand back as Hugh tries the door.

  CHAPTER 29

  The door screeches open. Out pours an awful sickroom odor of soiled bedding, bitter medicine, and sweet, fetid decay. Hands full with candles and guns, Barrett, Hugh, and I fling up our arms to cover our noses. Hugh gags, but to me the stench is oddly reassuring—it is of this world, not supernatural. I hold my candle over the threshold.

  The room is small, octagonal, with round windows on four sides. Its height lifts my eyes upward to the ceiling’s wooden beams, to the hollow cone that forms the tower’s spire. At the center of the room is a bed with wooden rails on its sides. In the bed, covered by piled quilts, lies a woman with long, matted brown hair that straggles out of her knitted pink woolen nightcap. As Barrett, Hugh, and I move toward her, I breathe shallowly, but the stench of her infiltrates my nostrils, my mouth. Her emaciated face is a patchwork of gauze pads and sticking plaster, the visible skin mottled red and gray. She wriggles to pull her hands from beneath the heavy quilts. Her skeletal wrists are tied with cords to the bed railings. She feebly turns from side to side. Hollow eyes, so obscured by yellowish film that I can’t discern their color, shine in the candlelight.

  Not a ghostly victim of some terrible illness, but a live one.

  Hugh speaks in a tone of utter disbelief. “The vicar is not only a murderer, but he’s holding this woman prisoner in the church?”

  Barrett rubs his head, as perplexed as I am. “It looks that way.”

  “But why?” I can’t imagine for what purpose Reverend Thornton would do such a thing. I can’t tell if the woman can see us; maybe she’s blind. Her mouth opens. Most of her teeth are missing. Her gums and chapped lips are coated with thick, greenish mucus. She moans and shudders, her suffering terrible to behold. She gurgles on the mucus and drools it onto her pillow and quilts, which are already stiff and reeking with it. Her filmy eyes roll.

  “This changes things,” Barrett says.

  I nod. Reverend Thornton is a murderer and apparently a kidnapper; he and his grandchildren are still at large; and Mick is still facing trial for a crime he didn’t commit. But … “We can’t walk away from this poor sick woman and go about our business.”

  “That would be cold,” Hugh says.

  Justice for her is as important as justice for Charles Firth.

  “Ma’am, you’re safe now,” Barrett says to her.

  “We’ll take you to London Hospital so you’ll be cared for,” Hugh says. “I’ll pop over there and fetch
an ambulance.” He hurries down the stairs.

  “What’s your name?” I ask the woman.

  She grunts, and I can’t tell whether she heard me, whether she’s trying to speak or uttering sounds of distress. Barrett pockets his gun, and I replace mine in my pocketbook. We stand our candles in an empty glass on the bedside table, which is cluttered with medicine bottles, measuring cups and spoons, boxes of bandages, a pitcher, and a washbasin. Reverend Thornton must be doctoring his prisoner. While Barrett attempts to untie the cords that bind her wrists to the bed, I discover other cords tied to the rails and covered by the quilts: her ankles are bound too. The knots are tight, strong.

  “It would be faster to cut them,” Barrett says. “Is there a knife, or scissors?”

  Seeing none on the table, I reach in my pocket, bring out the wrapped knife, and unwind the stained towel. “But it’s evidence in Charles Firth’s murder. If we cut the cords, the blood will rub off the blade. There might not be enough proof that the vicar is guilty.”

  “You don’t need proof that I’m guilty.”

  Startled, Barrett and I turn to the door. There stands a man in an old brown tweed coat with patched elbows, his face unshaven. It takes me a moment to recognize the vicar. Stripped of his clerical trappings, he looks a different person, a stranger.

  “That’s my fishing knife. It belonged to my father.” A sad smile curves his mouth. “You can arrest me, Detective Barrett. I’m turning myself in.”

  Barrett and I are speechless with astonishment. We can’t believe it’s as easy as this. For a moment I can’t think of anything to do but rewrap the knife and put it in my pocketbook for safekeeping.

  “I killed Charles Firth.” Reverend Thornton’s voice is hoarse, his face creased with pain, as though his shame is a razor blade in his throat. “It was unconscionable of me to try to get away with it. I’m sorry for the trouble to which I put you. Now I’m ready to accept the punishment for my crime, and my sin.”

  I blurt the foremost of my many questions. “Why did you kill him?” Anger boils up in me. “What did he ever do to you?”

  Barrett shakes his head, motions me to wait, then points at the woman in the bed. “Reverend Thornton, who is this?”

  The vicar expels a breath replete with sorrow. “She’s my daughter, Alice.”

  I’m confused. “Daniel and Lucie’s mother? I thought she was deceased.”

  “No.” The vicar gently tucks Alice’s skeletal hands under the quilt. “But it won’t be long now.”

  I comprehend that the woman’s restless motions are death throes. Barrett opens his mouth, hesitates, and closes it as if he can’t decide which question to ask next. Then he says, “Why are you keeping her here? She should be in a hospital.”

  “I couldn’t take her to a hospital.”

  “Why not at the vicarage? It would be more comfortable than here.”

  Reverend Thornton caresses Alice’s mottled forehead. “For the same reason I couldn’t take her to the hospital—I couldn’t let anyone see her or know what ails her. It would bring disgrace upon not only her but our entire family.”

  “What’s so disgraceful about tuberculosis?” Barrett asks. It’s a horrible disease, often fatal, but common and not kept under wraps.

  “She doesn’t have tuberculosis.” Reverend Thornton bows his head over his daughter and lowers his voice. “It’s syphilis.”

  Syphilis, the disease that is contracted via carnal relations and causes skin lesions, blindness, paralysis, and insanity, among other ills, in its advanced stages. The disease that polite society talks about in whispers, that brands the afflicted as pariahs—and, if the afflicted is female, a whore. Alice must have caught syphilis from one of her lovers in Paris. Now the situation begins to make a twisted sense.

  “When you brought her back to England, you hid her in the church,” I say to Reverend Thornton. “That’s why you keep the church locked, not because of thieves. That’s why you didn’t want me poking around—you were afraid I would find her. And the children know she’s here. They tried to scare me away.”

  “Yes. I couldn’t let you talk to them because they might let the secret slip.”

  Barrett’s face shows dawning, appalled enlightenment. “So she’s the ghost. Do you carry her around the church at night? Did your curate catch you?”

  The vicar nods. “I give her laudanum to make her sleep and ease the pain. But when she wasn’t as sick, sometimes she would wake up and go wandering. Once or twice she managed to get outdoors. She thought she was lost in Paris, trying to find her way home.”

  It was Alice whom Nat Quayle saw in the graveyard. I remember Anjali describing her vision of a woman wearing white. Had she seen Alice Thornton in the crypt?

  “Now she’s in danger of falling out of bed and hurting herself.” The vicar touches the cords. “I’ve had no choice but to restrain her.”

  “What happened that night?” I’m satisfied with his explanation of the prisoner in the tower, less so with his confession, which sounded too pat.

  “I came to check on Alice,” the vicar says.

  Andrew Coburn didn’t mention seeing him; if the vagrant was outside the church that night, he could have been asleep, or too drunk to notice or recall anything.

  “I take care of her,” the vicar explains. “The children can’t, and Mrs. Thornton doesn’t know she’s here.”

  I thought myself incapable of being surprised by anything else he said, but I was wrong. “The children know she’s alive, but you’ve kept your wife in the dark?”

  “The children know because Alice came home with us on the boat from France. But I couldn’t tell Mrs. Thornton. She’s a highly virtuous woman, and if she learned that Alice is afflicted with a disease born of sin, she would be devastated. It seemed better to let her think Alice was safe with God.” Misery shrouds the vicar’s face as he contemplates Alice. She gasps for breath as her body’s restless movements grow feebler. “She will be soon enough.”

  And I thought my family’s scenario—a murder, a living relative presumed dead, and a conspiracy to hide the truth—was too extraordinary to encounter more than once in a lifetime.

  “Alice had soiled herself,” the vicar says. “I undressed her, and while I was washing her, she started moaning. Mr. Firth must have heard. He came and found us.”

  I picture Alice naked on the bed, the vicar with his hands on her, and Mr. Firth’s shock.

  The vicar speaks slowly, with long pauses between sentences spoken in a voice that grows hoarser by the moment. “He said, ‘Who is she? Who are you, and what have you done to her?’ I was alarmed to see a stranger when I’d thought no one else was in the church. I was horrified because he’d seen Alice and me, and I knew how it must have looked. I said, ‘I’m the vicar of this church. Who are you, and how did you get in?’ He introduced himself and said the curate had given him the key so that he could take spirit photographs. He pointed to Alice and said, ‘So she’s the ghost.’ ”

  How disappointed Mr. Firth must have been to discover the sad truth about the supernatural phenomena at the church.

  “Then he pushed me away from Alice. He covered her with her quilt and started untying the cords around her wrists. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m rescuing her.’ I said, ‘This isn’t what it appears to be.’ He said, ‘That’s what all criminals say when they’re caught. You’re a man of God, and you’re keeping this woman drugged and tied up for your own filthy pleasure. I won’t let you get away with it.’ ”

  Barrett presses his fingers against his temples, as if trying to stimulate his brain into comprehending the incomprehensible. “Why didn’t you tell him that she’s your sick daughter and you were taking care of her?”

  “I thought that if he made it public, there would be a scandal, and everyone would know about Alice. Including Mrs. Thornton.”

  “Is that when you killed him?” I’m grieved to realize that Charles Firth died not because of his fraudulent spirit photo
graphs or because he’d made enemies, but because he’d followed his characteristic impulse to help someone in need.

  “No. I grabbed him.” The vicar pauses, longer this time. “We fought. We fell onto Alice, and she began to scream. She didn’t understand what was happening, and she was terrified.”

  I remember the slimy substance Dr. Phillips found on Charles Firth’s clothes at the morgue—not ectoplasm but Alice’s drool, its scent redolent of chemicals from her medicines. It must have gotten on them during the fight.

  The vicar clears his throat, and his gaze turns inward, as if he’s watching the events unfold in his memory. “Then he stood back and said, ‘I’m going to fetch the police. They’ll see that she gets home safely, and they’ll put you in jail so you can’t hurt other women.’ He hurried down to the crypt. I went after him, to the chamber where he’d left his cameras. He started packing up his things to take with him. I begged him not to tell the police. He said he was damned if he would cover up for me.” The vicar’s voice shrinks to a raspy whisper; he seems to be losing it. He clears his throat twice more before he says, “That’s when I stabbed him.” Drawing a deep breath, he rolls his shoulders, as if confessing has relieved him of a heavy weight.

  I picture Eva hiding and listening while the final, fatal confrontation took place. I can’t believe this is the same man who officiated at my wedding, who epitomized the sanctity of the church. He looks like a downtrodden, careworn laborer I might see on the streets of Whitechapel. I wonder if the chaos in his study is a manifestation of a mental breakdown caused by the stress of bringing his ill daughter home from Paris, sneaking her into the church, and caring for her while keeping her presence a secret from everyone but the children.

  “Then I went back to the tower. I put clean clothes on Alice, gave her more laudanum, and tucked her in for the night.” Reverend Thornton’s raspy speech alternates with pauses and throat clearing. “I went home, hid the knife, and went to bed. By that time, the whole thing seemed like a bad dream. I half convinced myself that it hadn’t happened. But when I woke up in the morning, I knew that it was all too real. I had killed a man. I realized that my only hope of protecting myself and my family was to deny any knowledge of the murder.”