by Anna Elliott
It is not even that he thinks me a criminal.
For simplicity’s sake—and because I did not trust him not to throw me into the station holding cell—we did not mention to Sergeant Mallows the details surrounding my loss of memory. He knows only that I visited Dr. Everett in hopes of finding answers to my condition—and was nearly drugged and abducted as a result.
“I am certain that that is the place,” I tell him.
Sergeant Mallows gives me a withering glance and a second grunt that speaks volumes as to his belief in my ability to find an address again.
Without saying anything, Constable Kelly hands over the card I gave him, and Sergeant Mallows squints at it.
“Well, it looks like the address on the card all right. But—look at it.” He waves a hand.
Now that we’re nearer, I can see what the sergeant means.
The bay window at the front of Dr. Everett’s address is uncurtained and empty. And tacked to the front door is a large, hand-lettered sign, reading, To Let.
I stop short, staring—feeling as though the ground I’m standing on has suddenly given way to empty air.
“But—that’s not possible.” My voice sounds strange, hollow in my own ears. “They were here—”
Sergeant Mallows spares me another disdainful glance and a huff of irritation. “Well, we’re here now. May as well take a look around.”
He leads the way up the front steps and puts a hand to the doorknob—which turns easily, the door swinging open under his hand.
Constable Kelly follows the sergeant inside. I can’t tell what the constable is thinking at all. His face is a carefully neutral blank.
I enter through the front door last—and then stop, gaping in astonishment all over again.
Everything is gone. The chairs, the carpets, the cheerful fire, the handsome desk where Mrs. Bartholomew sat welcoming patients in …
The door to the inner consulting room is open—and through it, I can see that the space is just as empty as the outer room. The comfortable upholstered couches, the Egyptian antiquities on the mantle—they’ve all vanished, as though at a wave of some stage magician’s magic wand.
If I hadn’t seen the number on the front door positively as we came through, I would double back in order to check that we were at the right address.
“Is this your idea of some sort of joke?” Sergeant Mallows growls at Constable Kelly.
Constable Kelly’s eyes are fixed straight ahead. “No, sir.”
Muscles bulge in the sergeant’s jaw, his face growing an even deeper shade of red. There’s an ugly look in his small, pale-blue eyes that makes me suspect that Sergeant Mallow is a dangerous man to cross.
“Because if it is, I’m warning you—”
I interrupt. I can’t let Constable Kelly get into trouble on my account. “Constable Kelly is not to blame. He knows only what I’ve told him. He would never have come here if it weren’t for me.”
While I’m speaking, I have the odd impression that Sergeant Mallows’s attention is fixed elsewhere—at some point behind my back, I’m almost sure. But when I glance over my shoulder, I can’t see anything there.
“And you.” The sergeant’s watery eyes fix on me and he heaves his bulk more fully upright. “I don’t know what game you’re playing at, if you’re mad or just no better than you should be. But the next time you want to go spinning wild stories, I’ll thank you not to waste my officer’s time with them.”
He dismisses me with another snort of disgust and then turns back to Constable Kelly. “And you ought to know better than to believe such wild tarradiddles.” Sergeant Mallows shakes his head, making the jowls on his cheeks tremble. “I took a chance on you, Kelly. There aren’t a lot of men would hire someone with your background. But I told the Superintendent you were a good man and deserved a chance to make something of yourself.” The sergeant leans forwards, lowering his voice. “Prove me wrong, and you won’t like what follows. Do we understand each other?”
Constable Kelly’s eyes are still fixed straight ahead, his face still impassive. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Sergeant Mallows jerks his chin at the door. “Get this baggage out of here while I see to closing up.”
By baggage, he means me. I open my mouth—but then close it again.
I can see in Sergeant Mallows’s face that absolutely nothing is to be gained by arguing with him or trying to persuade him that I’m not out of my mind.
I’m not even sure that I’m not out of my mind.
The doubt slices into me, keen as a knife-blade between my ribs. I was absolutely certain that everything happened here just as I told Constable Kelly—my meeting with Dr. Everett, Frances Ferrars, and everything else.
But the wards of Bedlam are probably full of patients equally convinced that their own delusions are real—and I am not exactly in a position to boast of my own clear-headedness, considering I still do not even know my own name.
Numbly, I turn to follow Constable Kelly out of the door and down the front steps. The constable stops there, and I draw to a halt beside him.
“What do you think?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
Constable Kelly is frowning—but not at me. He’s staring back up at the doorway of number twenty-nine. His face is grimmer than I’ve yet seen, his dark eyes hard.
“I think I’d like to know what caught the sergeant’s attention in there—and why he was so anxious to hustle us out of the door just now.”
For the second time today, I feel nearly faint with relief.
“You noticed that, too? I thought he was staring at something. But I couldn’t be sure.”
“I noticed.” Still watching the front door, Constable Kelly dips his head. “I’d give a lot to know what exactly he’s doing in there right now.”
“You could ask him.”
Constable Kelly exhales a humorless laugh. “Right, I’ll ask him. How far do you think that’d get me?”
“Probably thrown out of the station—and possibly off the police force completely.” I remember the ugly, threatening look in the sergeant’s eyes.
I look up at Constable Kelly. “You don’t like Sergeant Mallows?”
Constable Kelly’s eyebrows quirk up. “You’ve known him for what—a good half an hour, now? How do you feel about him?”
I suppose he has a point. “I thought maybe he improved on further acquaintance?”
I break off as I see a shadow moving behind the front window. “I think he’s coming out.”
Constable Kelly and I seem to have the same instincts. Without even needing to talk about it, we both dive towards the mouth of the nearest alley.
It is late afternoon—which means that since it is autumn, evening is already starting to fall. The sky is darkening to a dusky gray, and shadows cloak the alleyway.
Sergeant Mallows does not even glance in our direction as he stalks past on the opposite side of the road. He is absorbed in studying something that he holds in one hand. A coin? A medallion?
He slips whatever it is into his pocket before I can get a good enough look to be sure.
I wait until the sergeant has marched past and is well out of earshot before I ask, “Should we follow him?”
Constable Kelly considers for a second. “The sergeant’s not stupid. There’s too much risk he’d spot us. And he’s probably just heading back to the station house.”
The sergeant is turning back in the direction we came from.
“Now what?” I ask.
Constable Kelly looks at me—then he glances around at the thickly falling shadows. A lamp lighter is making his way down the street, bringing the row of gaslights to life.
“Do you want to come home with me?”
I feel my mouth drop open. Maybe the cautious trust I placed in Constable Kelly was misguided after all.
It’s almost frightening how much that thought makes my stomach clench up.
I don’t want to depend on John Kelly’s chivalry. I don’t think I can af
ford to depend on anyone, except for myself.
But before I can manage to say a word in reply, the constable himself appears to hear how his own words sound.
“I don’t—sorry. I’m not very good at this kind of thing.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean anything improper, I swear.”
He’s almost flustered—which for a young man so capable and self-assured is cause enough to make me stare.
“I just thought you probably don’t have anywhere to go tonight.” The east London accent is more pronounced in his voice—and it’s too dark to be certain, but I think there might be a flush of embarrassment on his cheeks.
It’s oddly endearing.
“You can try a church’s aid society, of course. I’ll help you find one, if that’s what you want. But they get a rough lot in there, and I don’t know that you’ll be safe. If you want—and if you don’t mind sharing a room with my sister—we can offer you a place to sleep, anyway. I don’t think there’s a lot more we’re going to do for tonight.”
I hesitate, studying him. “For tonight?” I emphasize. “Do you mean that you are going to do something more at a later time?”
Constable Kelly’s eyes narrow as he looks past me towards the street where Sergeant Mallows vanished from sight.
The twilight deepens the shadows around his eyes, making him look grim and almost dangerous. He may not bluster or storm like the sergeant—but I don’t think that John Kelly is a man I’d want to cross, either.
“I don’t have any idea what this is all about. But I don’t like being lied to,” he says. His voice is quiet, but laced with enough steely determination that I almost shiver. “So yes, I’m going to do something. Even if right now I don’t know what.”
He stops. Just as before in the tea shop, he doesn’t say anything to try to influence my decision one way or the other. He just stands quiet, watching me, while the silence rests between us for a second.
“So, I was right about your sister?” I finally ask. It should not perhaps be high up on my list of worries right now—but there is a small satisfaction in knowing that my deductions about the constable were correct.
“You were right about a lot of things.”
I hesitate for another second. I am suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of my own exhaustion. All I want is to sit down somewhere quiet and rest. No, that is not quite true. All I want is to sit down somewhere I know I’ll be safe.
Rightly or wrongly, I do feel safe with Constable Kelly.
“Won’t your neighbors—or your landlady—think it peculiar, your bringing me home?” I ask.
Or scandalous. Even with only the most proper of intentions, a young unmarried man bringing a young unmarried woman home to his place of residence for the night is simply not done.
I may not have all my memories, but I do recall that much.
“Trust me.” Constable Kelly looks tired for a second, and then his lips curve in an expression that’s half grimace, half smile. “Where Becky and I live, no one’s going to bat an eyelash.”
11. INTRODUCTIONS
I try to stay alert, but I am weary enough—and my head is aching enough—that the majority of our journey passes in something of a blur.
But then we turn onto Great Russell Street, and from there onto Dyott Street—and from there, we enter what feels like a maze of narrow, crumbling lanes and alleyways, all crowded with buildings so dilapidated that they look like rows of jagged broken teeth against the night sky.
The warm yellow light from a nearby chestnut seller’s fire illuminates the grimace that crosses John Kelly’s face.
“Welcome to the holy land,” he says. “Otherwise known as Saint Giles.”
Have I heard of Saint Giles before? I feel as though the name might possibly be familiar—but I can’t chase the memory down.
I follow Constable Kelly down streets so narrow I could reach out my two hands and touch the buildings on either side.
There is trash—and worse, no doubt—everywhere, clogging the gutters, running in a foul river through the middle of the streets. If there are cobblestones here, they’re too deeply buried in muck for anyone to see them.
At first, the smell is so overpoweringly vile that it feels as though the very air is trying to claw its way down the back of my throat. Then my nose simply goes numb.
I haven’t said a single word, but Constable Kelly gives me a brief glance. “Unmarried officers are supposed to live in the divisional section house. But since I have Becky living with me, I have special permission to rent a place here. Which is all I can afford and still be close enough to the station house.”
I can tell by the taut, braced set of his shoulders and the way his eyes are constantly scanning the road up ahead that he thinks it possible that we will be attacked. I cannot discount the possibility myself.
At one point, we pass by a pair of teenage boys, snarling and pummeling each other and rolling on the ground like wild dogs.
“I’m hoping in a year or so we can move to better—”
The constable breaks off abruptly at sight of a commotion in the street up ahead. There is some sort of public house on the corner, and in the light of the lantern hanging over its door, I can see a small boy in tattered trousers and a cloth cap racing towards us, running for all that he is worth.
The reason for his flight is instantly obvious: on the boy’s heels is a huge, bald-headed man with a fiery red mustache.
The bald man is keeping up remarkably well considering his bulk—and he is waving what looks like a meat cleaver over his head.
Putting on a burst of speed, the boy closes the last few feet between us and dives behind Constable Kelly with a terrified gasp.
Constable Kelly stops walking and faces the other man. “You’re Reg, from The Old Mitre, isn’t that right?”
He looks amazingly calm, considering that the bald man is even taller than he is—and still holding the cleaver.
“Is there a problem?”
Reg bares his teeth at the small boy, who’s still cowering behind Constable Kelly’s legs.
“The problem is this young devil’s been sneaking into my bar room and trying to monkey around with my piano,” Reg growls. “Could damage a valuable instrument.”
Constable Kelly keeps his expression affable. Neutral, but polite. “Sorry about that. Here. This should cover any damage done.”
He digs into the pocket of his uniform trousers and comes out with a few sixpenny pieces.
Instead of looking mollified by the offering, though, Reg’s scowl deepens. He takes a step forwards, slapping the flat side of the cleaver against his palm.
“Think you’re better than all the rest of us, don’t you? Now that you’re a bloody blue bottle.”
Constable Kelly’s expression doesn’t change—but his posture shifts, slightly, falling into a loose, easy stance that tells me as clearly as words that he is expecting trouble.
I feel my own muscles stiffen. For the first time since I came back to consciousness this morning, I’m glad that I seem to be accustomed to violence and know how to defend myself.
The small boy behind him looks as if he’s going to say something, but Constable Kelly shushes him with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“I wouldn’t say that.” His voice is still pleasant, but he never takes his eyes off of Reg.
The big man’s face twists in a sneer as he looks Constable Kelly up and down. “They say you used to run with the Sloggers.”
Constable Kelly doesn’t move. He doesn’t even tense—but he somehow goes completely, utterly still, in a way that’s almost eerily peaceful.
“I did.” He spares a brief glance at me—clearly checking on where I am—and then asks, “You want to know what I learned while I was with them?”
Reg’s gaze fixes on John Kelly’s blue uniform. “Some rubbish about how it’s better to be on the side of the law?”
Constable Kelly smiles. “Yeah, not exactly.”
And then finally, he
steps forwards—so fast that he’s almost a blur of motion. I don’t even see what exactly he does—but when he is finished, Reg is sitting on the ground, clutching his throat and wheezing for breath.
Constable Kelly doesn’t even look at the tavern owner. Instead, he scowls down at the small boy, his expression fierce and at the same time almost resigned.
“Well? What have you got to say for yourself?”
The boy looks as though he’s trying to make up his mind whether to be defiant or tearfully repentant. His chin is quivering, but his eyes—they’re very bright blue in the lantern light—are hard.
“I didn’t do his rotten piano any harm! I was just bored, and I thought maybe I could pick out a tune—”
Constable Kelly’s scowl deepens. “What have I told you about going out on your own at night?”
The boy’s eyes drop to the ground. “I had a plan,” he mutters.
“I see. And this plan of yours—did it include not getting yourself hacked apart with a meat cleaver?”
He glances back at Reg, who’s still wheezing and fighting for air on the ground, his face an unhealthy grayish purple color.
The boy doesn’t answer, except with a sniffle.
Constable Kelly sighs and puts an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Look, I’m just trying to keep you from getting hurt. You didn’t even bring Prince with you.”
“I know. I’m sorry!” The boy suddenly bursts into a torrent of sobs. “I’m sorry, Jack, really I am.”
He throws his arms around the constable’s waist, burying his face against Constable Kelly’s blue uniform. The dirty cloth cap is knocked off, revealing two long blond braids that flop down over the boy’s—girl’s, rather—thin shoulders.
With another sigh, Constable Kelly gently turns her around to face me. “Sorry. I didn’t introduce you yet. This”—he glances down at the small, woebegone figure beside him—“is my sister, Becky.”
12. BUY A FLOWER?
Becky stares up at me with wide, red-rimmed eyes. She appears to be about eight or nine years old, I would guess—and looks absolutely nothing like her brother. She is as fair as her brother is dark, with a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her upturned nose. Her mouth is too wide to be strictly-speaking pretty now—but I think she will be quite lovely when she’s older.
