Season of Darkness

by Cora Harrison

  ‘A will!’ Now I was quite astonished. One did not expect to hear of a will in connection with someone who had been a street girl, a jailbird when Dickens had offered her a place in Urania Cottage.

  ‘That’s right, Mr Collins, would you believe it! The letter from the attorney said that Andrew Gordon, on the death of his wife, had made a will leaving all that she possessed, a half share in his property in Lumpkin and a half share in his property in Atlanta, and all of the money that he had in the bank in Atlanta. And Isabella didn’t have a brother, Mr Collins. The will said that. I remember it distinctly. It said: “I leave all that I die possessed of to my daughter and only child, Isabella Anne Gordon.” Those were the words, written down there. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like Oliver Twist when he turned out to have a rich grandfather after all. I went to find if she was still with us but then when I looked up the records, it had “runaway” written beneath her name.’

  ‘And so you put it with the things left for Isabella by her mother.’

  ‘I thought that was the right thing to do. And when I found out a few months later that I should have returned it, well, I was frightened to say a word about it. I was only fourteen years old, Mr Collins. I was ashamed of myself. I thought I’d be blamed for it. And I thought I would lose the job because of steaming off the stamp and reading the letter. And I made a bad job of gluing it together again, when I looked at again, I could see where I had torn it when I was trying to peel it off. I told myself that they’d never find the girl anyway.’

  ‘You didn’t think to tell Isabella about what was in the letter, did you? When she turned up that time?’ I tried to keep any blame out of my voice, but she flushed a rosy red.

  ‘I never even connected her up with that letter, Mr Collins, didn’t remember it at all. We were busy that day. I just told her to come back when Mrs Peters would be here.’ She avoided my eye.

  I thought about this. So, no Yorkshire, no brother. An inkling of the truth began to come to me as I pondered over the information that we, myself and Dickens, had been considering. There was one more question that I had to put to Pauline before I got the boat back to London, but first I had to reassure her. She was looking at me like an anxious dog who is not sure of a reaction and I felt sorry for her and quite protective.

  ‘What a marvellous memory you have, Pauline,’ I said. ‘Wills are fascinating, aren’t they? I thought of an idea for a story the other day and it would all be based on a will, a will that gave the most terrible shock to two sisters.’

  ‘You are going to be like Mr Dickens, Wilkie,’ she said, using my name for the first time, although I had proffered it a few times over lunch.

  ‘Well, that’s my ambition,’ I said confidingly. ‘My father wanted me to be a lawyer when I couldn’t stand the apprenticeship to the tea importers. I thought that I would like it in the beginning, but the law is dry stuff, you know, Pauline, once you start to study it. But all those court cases and all those wills, well they’ve got the material for a great story in them.’ I was leading up to my question and it was important not to worry her or to allow her to start feeling guilty again. ‘For instance, one of the things that I learned is that a lawyer always makes you look to “what happens if?” when you make a will. And, I suppose in this case, the will would say what happened if Isabella had died. Lots did, of course, didn’t they? Even the best cared-for children die. Our friend Dickens lost his little daughter not long ago.’

  That was a mistake. ‘Oh, poor, poor Mr Dickens! When I think how I cried over the death of little Nell! And poor little Paul Dombey! What a terrible thing for him.’

  ‘Yes, it must have been,’ I said. ‘It was before I met him, but it was a terrible shock, I think. So, of course, Isabella’s father would have been reminded by the lawyer to make provision for another inheritor of his wealth.’ A half share in two properties, all monies in my bank; an extraordinary fortune for a girl who lived most of her life on the streets of London and in its prisons. ‘I suppose,’ I said aloud, ‘it would be worded something like this: “In the event of the death of the said Isabella Anne Gordon …”’ I allowed my voice to tail away and looked at her eagerly.

  ‘That’s right, Mr Collins, Wilkie, that’s right. You’ve reminded me now. It was the partner. His partner was to get it all, because he had no other living relation.’

  I held my breath and stared at her hopefully. ‘His partner,’ I prompted.

  She nodded. ‘That’s right, his partner.’ She smiled at me in a pleased fashion.

  ‘What was his name?’ The words shot from me, but it was no good. She was shaking her head.

  ‘I knew that you’d ask me that,’ she said rather satisfied with her own insight. ‘Yes, I said to myself, just as I was telling you about the will, I said to myself, Now, Pauline, what was the name of the partner? But do you know, Wilkie, I just don’t remember, funny name, strange, remember that all right, but can I think of the name? No, I can’t, it’s gone right out of my head, head like a sieve, but I do remember that it was all to go to his partner in the event of the death of the said Isabella. These were the words; now that you said them, I remembered them well.’

  ‘And you can’t remember the name of the bank, where it was, or anything like that?’

  She shook her head, sorry to disappoint me. It had, after all, been almost twenty years ago, I supposed. ‘I just remember that it came from a place called “Oxford” that’s all,’ she said hopelessly.

  ‘Oxford!’ I echoed. Mrs Peters had said that also. ‘But you said it was an American stamp.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, nodding her head.

  NINETEEN

  For a moment Sesina thought that the fellow was just up to the usual, trapping her behind the closed door of the coalhouse, looking for a kiss and a fumble, but then when she saw his face for a moment under the gas lamp she knew the truth. And a second later he had slammed shut the door behind him and she was locked in there with him. She had made a terrible mistake. She had got it wrong. It had not been the schoolmaster. She had sent the letter to the wrong man and he had handed it over. In a second she understood all.

  She had made a mess of it. Now he had come to kill her.

  And she knew there was no way that she could get past him.

  With all of her strength, Sesina flung the empty coal scuttle at him, aiming directly between his eyes. She heard the bang when metal met bone, but she didn’t wait.

  But there was a second way out of this place.

  There was a stir from the floor, a crumbling of coal lumps. He was getting to his feet. Big, tall man, she hadn’t a chance against him.

  Knee them in the balls; that stops them for a while. The words came to her as clearly as if they had been spoken in her ear. That had been Isabella’s piece of advice. Not much good her screaming, she told herself as she brought her knee up with every scrap of muscle that she possessed. And it worked. He collapsed, screaming, groaning, clutching his groin, retching with the pain.

  Ahead of her the small, round lumps of coal formed a ten-foot-high hill and she scrambled up it. For a few seconds sheer terror gave her the impetus to get off the ground. Frantically she clawed at the moving mass, scrambled up, hands clawing, knees desperately seeking to move up sliding chunks. She could see it now. Above her, ten foot up, a faint circle of light. Would she, could she, get to it before he grabbed an ankle? But for how long more would he be coughing and retching?

  Now she was just below the coal hatch. Once a week, on a Monday morning, the coal man prised it open and emptied sack after sack of coal down through it. The mountain of coal was never allowed to get low. There was a brick protruding from the wall just below it, and she reached up to grasp it, clung on and levered herself up. On her feet, now, and her two fists were pushing against the heavy metal, her mind whirring.

  There was no point in regretting that mistake now, thought Sesina, as she heaved with all her strength against the coal hatch. No more beating her brains to
find out the truth. She had thought it through. She had thought about the birth certificate, about the fortune that Isabella had expected. Had weighed up each man and then moved on to someone new. And she had been wrong, wrong, wrong! She knew it the moment that she had seen him behind her. She had seen the flash in his eyes. Fury. Terror. Yes, she had been wrong, but now she might be about to die because she had not been clever enough. She had backed the wrong man. No more weighing up the rival attractions of ten pounds or twenty pounds. Now there was only one issue. Was she going to escape alive? Yes, she had been stupid, she thought, and now she would pay for it. Why did she write a letter to that schoolmaster, yesterday? He must have handed it over. Wanted to get her sacked. She had thought herself to be so clever, had thought that he would appoint a meeting place, had thought that she could pick and choose, could appoint a safe place. And it hadn’t been him after all!

  Isabella had tricked her, had kept her secret. But, of course, it now all made sense.

  And now, perhaps, she was going to meet Isabella’s fate.

  Fear gave her extra energy and she clawed desperately at the metal edge of the coal-hole. She felt blood trickle down from her fingertips. The coalman opened it from the top, had an iron lever, enormous muscles and was a very big man. She was barely five feet tall, muscular, but thin and light. And she was shut into this coal-hole. She held her breath until her face swelled and her arms seemed to lengthen and then she made another effort. One side shifted, definitely shifted. She heard a shriek, a woman’s scream. Someone under the Adelphi Arches. Some poor bastard. She pushed again.

  Now she had got one side of the metal plate lifted, but the other would not rise. Something was stopping the hatch from opening. It was jammed. She knew in a flash that she would have to take a risk, to allow it to fall back again. And then to push again from the centre. And then she had to get out, to climb through that hole. Lucky she was small and thin. But did she have enough strength left to lever herself up?

  He was vomiting again. Thanks be! She had put quite some strength behind that upward jerk of the knee. Nearly felt like singing one of them hymns. Praise the Lord!

  Now, listening to him retching, she could take her time, position herself a little more steadily, raise both arms and keep a steady pressure on both sides of the circular piece of metal.

  He vomited again. Third time. Good. That would keep him busy. Another effort. If only she was a bit taller!

  And then the metal plate gave way. Just at the same moment that he stopped vomiting. He spat out a stream of abuse, but she didn’t care. She had her elbows on the metal rim and she began to lever herself up. The woman in the distance still screamed, a horrible, almost inhuman sound. And then, almost more appalling, complete silence.

  Nothing for a moment.

  And then success.

  She had wriggled her shoulders through.

  But from behind her, the vomiting had completely stopped. A sound of coal sliding, crumbling under him. Would he scale the coal mound? But he didn’t.

  The light flooded into the coal house. He had opened its door. And then the door slammed shut. The light was gone. For a second she hesitated, even slid a little, and then heard the click of a lock. He had turned the key on her. Now she redoubled her efforts, working intelligently now, scrabbling with her hand, sweeping the coal down, trying to create a platform, a place where she could kneel, and then stand.

  As she got through the coal-hole on to the street, she heard the slam of the basement door from the house. He would be out within seconds. It was a race between them. And for both of them the prize was safety and to lose meant death. Death on the end of a noose for him and strangulation in the corner of a dark alley for her.

  TWENTY

  Wilkie Collins, Basil:

  The sense of bewilderment and oppression grew heavier and heavier on my brain.

  ‘Not the schoolmaster.’ I had a feeling that my head was going to burst if I thought about the matter for much longer. I put my feet up on the upholstered stool and then took them down again hastily as I glimpsed Greenwich mud on their soles. Dickens was a meticulous man. There was not one mote of dust in his study, not a cushion ever lolled out of place. He was pacing up and down, now. In a moment he would suggest going for a walk.

  I would be sorry to leave the comfort of Tavistock House, sorry to leave the brightly-burning fire and the soft cushioned chairs. Dickens was a man whose mind worked in unison with his legs, but I myself thought more effectively when my body was comfortable. My mind was still full of the schoolmaster. That brutal face, that angry scar, I couldn’t banish them from my mind. And why did Isabella draw such a clear picture of him if she had not believed that he was the man whom she could blackmail? In any case, I had an instinct that the fellow who had beaten and strangled Isabella had been a rough, hard, man, used to violence. But if not the schoolmaster, then who? Could it be the lawyer? That lawyer, weakened by constant abuse of opium, effete, refined, gentlemanly; I could not believe that it could have been he who had savagely beaten the girl. Still he had a connection with abroad …

  ‘Not the schoolmaster, Wilkie. He can’t have anything to do with it. It’s a different story entirely.’ Dickens got up from his chair, walked across the room, straightened a mirror and then continued restlessly to pace the room. ‘A brute of a fellow, Cartwright, but I don’t think that he fits in. You don’t think so yourself. That was the first thing you said to me when you came through the door five minutes ago. Even before you told me what those two women in Greenwich had to say to you.’

  ‘But Isabella wrote about him, wrote about Cartwright – that scar, don’t you remember, Dick? Said she had discovered something. And what about those cards? The notes that Isabella was keeping to write a book about the affair.’ I frowned over my nails while I thought of the matter.

  ‘Not Isabella.’ Dickens’ face was grim.

  ‘Not Isabella!’ I felt confused. Nothing to do with Yorkshire, nothing to do with schoolmasters, nothing to do with a murdered boy or a lost brother; I had accepted that after my conversation with Pauline, but it was all still rather confusing. ‘But Isabella went to the Saracen’s Head; enquired about the schoolmaster,’ I said aloud.

  ‘But did she, Wilkie? You heard the man, you heard the coachman yourself. He was unsure. And yet that sketch of yours was like her. A living likeness. Best thing that you have ever done. But the man was unsure when he examined it. He agreed, just to please us, but I’d swear that he didn’t think that it was Isabella.’

  Dickens walked up and down, his lower lip caught between his teeth, his eyes wide and unseeing. ‘Sesina!’ he exclaimed. ‘It was Sesina who went there! I remember now that the coachman at Saracen’s Hill called her “little”. But Isabella wasn’t what you would call “little” and the man himself was a small man. No, Isabella was quite a tall girl; I remember thinking that she might have been well-fed as a baby.’ My friend’s face was very grim and I knew that he was thinking of the well-fed and well cared-for child who had been left at the Greenwich workhouse. What had happened after that?

  ‘But why?’ I said, more to myself than to him. ‘Why did Sesina go there? Why go to the Saracen’s Head? Isabella was still alive then; she must have been. The man would have said if it were only last week.’

  Dickens shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’d say that Sesina knew Isabella had a secret. That would be the way with these girls. Would tease each other, keep secrets, tell a few things and then say no more. They used to drive poor Mrs Morson mad with these sorts of games. Sesina may have guessed that Isabella had a secret, may have known that Isabella wanted to blackmail someone, but didn’t know the name. She’d want to be in on it, if I know Miss Anna Maria Sisini. She’d keep pestering for information, and Isabella would drop a few hints, false ones, probably. But I do believe that Sesina never knew the whole story and what she didn’t know, well, she just made up. Well, well, well.’ A slight smile dawned on his face and his eyes glinted.

  ‘We
were led astray,’ I said. The whole thing was so unbelievable that I, also, felt a smile pucker my lips.

  ‘And the cards, the clues, all that finding of them in that damp little bedroom. The titles for the booklets, she made it all up,’ mused Dickens. ‘Why, bless my soul, she’s an inventive little thing, isn’t she? Decided to go in for a little blackmail on her own account. As long as she kept barking up the wrong tree, otherwise …’ His voice tailed out as we looked apprehensively at each other. It was now getting very urgent to sort the truth from the lies.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sesina heard the back door open as soon as she scrambled up from her hands and knees. Over the years it had sunk down upon its hinge and now it scraped over the flagstone with a distinctive sound when it was pulled open. She heard him shut it after him, also. A careful man. Heavy footsteps. Not going down towards the river. Coming her way. For a moment she despaired, but then some instinct of survival seemed to take over and, almost before she knew what she was doing, she was running hard towards the darkness of the arches. Some women were sheltering there, but she knew better than to appeal to them for help. There was no energy left in these poor wretches. They would stare at her and she would just lose valuable time. She plunged into the darkness beyond the archway and then turned sharply. There had been some damage there, she remembered. Yes, it was on that side of the archway, just where the wheels of a brewer’s cart, heavily laden with wooden beer barrels, had skidded on the wet cobbles one morning. A trace had broken, the horse had fallen to the ground and the cart had knocked some bricks from the corner. By a miracle it had not been mended yet. Rapidly she put her foot into a space. It was very dark, but her instinct seemed to guide her feet to the protruding bricks as she climbed a few feet and then she wedged herself into the hollow space. Only a few feet above the ground, but if she stayed very still, he might pass without seeing her.