The Quickening and the Dead

by J C Briggs

  THE QUICKENING AND THE DEAD

  Charles Dickens Investigations

  Book Four

  J C Briggs

  Table of Contents

  THE PAST

  October 1840

  October 1850

  THE PRESENT

  November 1850

  Chapter 1: Lost Girls

  Chapter 2: In Newgate

  Chapter 3: A December Vision

  Chapter 4: A Life Thrown Away

  Chapter 5: The Death of Innocence

  Chapter 6: Fever in the Blood

  Chapter 7: The Morgue

  Chapter 8: The Hard Woman

  Chapter 9: The Invisible Worm

  Chapter 10: Superintendent Jones Takes the Case

  Chapter 11: In Bones Alley

  Chapter 12: Portrait of a Doctor

  Chapter 13: Mr Thackeray’s Advice

  Chapter 14: Plain Clothes

  Chapter 15: The Haunted Man

  Chapter 16: Something Remembered

  Chapter 17: A Fiend in Human Shape

  Chapter 18: Brimstone and Treacle

  Chapter 19: Wherefore to Dover?

  Chapter 20: Mother Hubbard

  Chapter 21: Until Death Us Do Part

  Chapter 22: A Long Black Nose

  Chapter 23: A Shadow As Yet

  Chapter 24: Written in Blood

  Chapter 25: Labyrinth

  Chapter 26: Satan

  Chapter 27: Conversation with a Philosopher

  Chapter 28: Mog Chips

  Chapter 29: The Italian School

  Chapter 30: Enter a Partner

  Chapter 31: Mother and Son

  Chapter 32: Trapped

  Chapter 33: The Voice of Old Time

  Chapter 34: The River Rises

  Chapter 36: The Stars Make No Sign

  Chapter 36: A Bonnet with a Blue Ribbon

  Chapter 37: Devil’s Acre

  Chapter 38: Confession

  Chapter 39: Opium

  Chapter 40: Star Witness

  Chapter 41: Towards the Future

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  ALSO BY J C BRIGGS

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  THE PAST

  October 1840

  The Burial of the Dead

  This was the marsh country, a flat, desolate wilderness, dark under the shifting clouds from behind which the moon appeared fitfully like the face of a corpse in its winding sheet. The thin wind was from the east, slicing, blade-sharp, making its eerie hissing through wind thorn and reed. Somewhere out of sight, a night bird gave a harsh cry and the two men heard the leathery flap of its wings in the sedges. Away in the distance by the river were the faint lights of the Hulks; at another distance were the lime kilns where the gleam of the banked fires lent a lurid low-lying light. Nearer lay the squat form of a church and the outline of the castle’s bulk. They had walked there one summer. The church was a cheerless grey structure, its tower a lonely beacon on the level marshes. The churchyard they had found bleak, with its curious cylindrical graves looking just like coffins awaiting burial. But they remembered the bleakness and the isolation the next winter.

  The two men stood still for a while, waiting for the silence to settle again. The moon came out, silvering the edge of the spade as the heavier of the two took it from the cart and began to dig. The other slighter man, held the horse’s head, soothing it with low words for it had whinnied nervously at the sound of the bird. He made himself keep his eyes fixed on the horse and his hands on the warm head. He felt frozen to his very bones.

  The man dug on as best he could; the ground was clay, slime and swamp. They had chosen a spot within the reeds. No one would come there. The first man shuddered as he heard the slip and suck of the mud, and he heard the breathing of his partner, hot and heavy, as he struggled with the spade. There was the smell of sodden grass and mud — the smell of the grave. Neither man spoke.

  A low whistle. Someone? A wild fowler? The digger stopped, holding his breath. They waited again, straining to hear. But there was only the wind rattling the reeds, the rushes murmuring their reply and the fluting whistle of the oozing mud as though the ground were a live, breathing mass. The smaller man glanced at the form which lay in rough sacking ready for burial. It couldn’t be done, he thought, terrified, but they couldn’t take it back. Then, to his horror, he saw that the sacking had fallen away to reveal the white face staring up at its twin, the dead moon. He made to cover that dreadful face, but the other threw down the spade.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said tersely. ‘I’ve done my share.’ He took a flask from his pocket and drank, but did not offer it to his companion.

  The slight man said nothing, only took the spade and began. It was hard work. It was horrible work for he could not forget its purpose. He had seen burials before. He had watched his mother first, and then his father, go to their graves. Not in a landscape like this; not on a night like this; not brought on a rough cart like butcher’s meat. It had been a bright spring day when they buried his mother. She had died in childbed and the child, a brother he had never seen, had been buried with her, and his father had sickened of grief. But there had been mourners: his uncles, their wives, cousins, friends. There had been ceremony. They had not been buried hugger-mugger in the dead of night, bereft of family and friends, bundled into a black hole by those who had a duty to take care of this dead one. Even the unknown drowned pulled from the river had shelter in the charnel house by the old church.

  He stopped to get his breath and looked involuntarily up towards the lights from the Hulks; he thought of the prisoners there, men he had seen in the town, shackled together with irons on their legs, men degraded in their coarse suits of grey and broken shoes, men lost to the civilised world, men lost to hope and ambition. He began to dig again with a strength he had not known he had. They could not lose everything.

  ‘Enough,’ said his companion. ‘Let’s do it.’

  The heavy man rolled the corpse more tightly in the sacking, covering the dead face, and securing the bundle with a rope round the feet and another round the neck. Sickened by that, the other helped him shove the sacking into the hole. It was light enough, light enough for a child. Only the head in its sack hood with the rope round its neck remained visible, flopped to one side. Like a hanged man, he thought, like a man hanged for a crime he had not committed. The heavy man used the spade to press the head down. The mud sucked it in. The other turned away.

  They climbed into the cart. The slight man found he was sweating. Sickness came over him in waves. His companion stared ahead, his face carved stone.

  ‘It’ll not be found?’ the sick man asked. He felt the dread of that, now it was done.

  ‘Never,’ said the other. ‘If it’s not deep enough, the flood will take it.’

  Sure enough, the rain came; they heard the wind rising and rushing now, sounding like the winter water that would surge with the swelling river and take the dead to the sea. They rode away in the empty cart, the storm rack pursuing them through the thickening dark.

  October 1850

  The woman hurrying through the midnight street carried a parcel wrapped in brown paper. She turned off abruptly into an alley, arched like a tunnel, black as ink. No expected light showing. She stopped and seemed to stagger, leaning against the wall which dripped with water and slime. She was breathless after her long walk, and afraid. What if he wasn’t there? She clutched the parcel more tightly to her breast.

  As she waited, peering into the darkness, a flickering light showed at the end where a figure stood by an iron gate which was half open. He raised the lantern and she saw the stooped, elderly man she expected. She walked on to meet him. The man raised his lantern again to look at th
e woman’s face. The face was white and drawn in the yellow lamplight. She looked ill, he thought, hoping she wouldn’t collapse before it was done. A sick woman on his hands was the last thing he wanted. He nodded his recognition and let her through the gate.

  There was a freshly dug grave away in the north corner. The woman followed the old man across the wet grass, past the angels, their stone eyes blind to her going. A weeping cherub looked down. At the grave, she peered into the open hole and saw a smaller hole dug in the centre.

  ‘It’s deep enough,’ the man said gruffly.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I puts the parcel down there in the little ’ole and I covers it with the earth and tomorrow the coffin’s ter be lowered and it’ll rest on top. Nobody’s the wiser. There’ll be no more burials ’ere. Tomorrer’ll be the last one.’

  ‘Who is to be buried there?’ asked the young woman, staring down into the gaping blackness. It smelt of rain and something darker; something bitter caught at her throat. She drew back, but asked again, ‘Who?’

  She wanted to know who would lie with her dead child.

  He was not baptised, though she had given him a name. She could not afford a grave for him, but this was consecrated ground. That’s something, and when prayers are said tomorrow, they can be as much for her dead child as for whoever will lie here. Prayers can be for anyone. Jesus won’t mind, surely, who suffered the little children. She remembered that from Sunday school.

  It is better that he is buried in secret. Then she can go home, away to where they cannot find her. She won’t tell. No one will ever know. She can find a job, earn some money, and come back sometimes, just so he will not be forgotten. Poor little thing. She hadn’t wanted him. She had felt only terror and shame, but when she had felt the quickening in her belly, she had known that she could not do what they had planned, and he had looked so fragile when he was born that a great feeling of pity had swept over her. She would have loved him. She did love him, even in death.

  ‘Yer don’t ’ave ter know that. Yer can’t be comin’ back. Folk might wonder.’

  ‘I must come sometimes. I’ll be careful. I won’t come near the grave if anyone else is here. I beg you, please.’

  He saw the tears on the gaunt face glistening in the lamplight. Half-starved, he thought. She seemed to sway as if she might faint. Wouldn’t matter if she knew. The next grave she visited would be her own.

  ‘An ol’ woman,’ he said. ‘Mrs Martin. That’s all I’m sayin’. Now, let me get on.’

  ‘A good woman?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, o’ course. Nice ol’ body.’ She might have been. He never thought much about his clients. Good or bad, he had no interest. The grave held no terror for him. He climbed nimbly down a wooden ladder. He was like a gnome, she thought, a wicked elf from a story. She wanted to run, but then she thought of the good woman with her boy.

  Look after him, Mrs Martin. She uncovered a bit of the brown paper to reveal the waxen forehead and kissed the little head. ‘God bless,’ she whispered, and handed him to the sexton, never taking her eyes off her son while the sexton placed the parcel in the small hole and covered it with the rotten-smelling earth.

  He brought nothing into this world. She tore a ragged little cloth flower from her bonnet and threw it down. The sexton shook his head. Her eyes pleaded in the lamplight. He placed it on the mound.

  When it was done, she paid him the five shillings. It was all she had. He watched her walk away. Her gait was that of one exhausted. She paused to touch the hand of an angel. Its stone trumpet pointed heavenward. He felt anxious then, but she moved on, not looking back, making her stumbling way towards the passage, shrinking to a shadow as she went. Then she was gone, swallowed by the dark.

  The sexton went back to the grave. He climbed down the ladder again, picked up the artificial flower and put it in his pocket. Risky to leave it. Then he flattened the earth, ready for the new occupant. He climbed back out, ready to make his way to the inn he knew would be open. Thirsty work all that digging. And she’d paid him. It was a nice little extra. He’d done it before. Others had. Pity, the graveyard was closing.

  Rain came in the early hours, filling the gutters, streaming along the tunnel, swirling round the tombs, soaking the rank grasses, flooding an open grave.

  And the dead shall be raised.

  THE PRESENT

  November 1850

  On a smoking, sulphurous early evening in November, when wisps of fog wreathed round gas lamps and traffic slowed, and voices seemed to come at him from distant regions, Charles Dickens made his way home from the office of Household Words in Wellington Street. He was thinking about the oddities of life, how curiously ill-matched things were sometimes jostled together as if some providential hand were making a joke. What, for instance, was a notice for Madame Tussaud’s, advertising the exhibition of the waxworks of that murderous pair, Maria Manning and her husband, Frederick, doing, nestled up against advertisements for the The Wood Nymph’s Polka, flexible hose pipes and grey goose feathers which could be bought, apparently, for one shilling and sixpence? And the new fish carving knives could be had from the appropriately named Savory and company who respectfully informed the public… Madame Tussaud did not respectfully inform her customers that the murderers could be viewed for a shilling. She did promise a plaster head of the Mannings’ victim, Patrick O’Connor, and, if that were not ghoulish enough, a plan of the kitchen wherein he was murdered. The head on a plate? Macabre thought.

  Dickens stopped suddenly. Murder and carving knives had brought him unaccountably out of his way. Instead of turning into Devonshire Street from Portland Place, he had taken the earlier turning into Weymouth Street. The fog — and wayward thoughts. But then again, perhaps not, for this was the street in which, only the other day, a doctor had been stabbed to death — fish knife? He thought not. He could have turned round, but he went on to walk past the house. It was perfectly ordinary — well, except for the fact that a man had been murdered there. He remembered seeing Stanfield Hall, the scene of the murder of Isaac Jermy and his son — he had thought it had a murderous look that seemed to invite such a crime, but number 34 Weymouth Street looked innocent enough. And the street was perfectly ordinary, too, apart from a slight ghostliness supplied by the descending fog. There was a cab stopping opposite; a nurse with a little girl hurried by; the sound of a piano could be heard, the sweet notes dissolving into the misty green air; a boy with a little barrel-organ stood on the pavement.

  An Italian boy looked up at Dickens, who saw a pair of wide brown eyes in a face of the kind that reminded him of his stay in Genoa, but there were plenty of Italian boys plying their trades in London: the barrel-organ players like this one; the ones with white mice to show; the ones selling artificial flowers, wax pictures; the harpists and flute players, all so often under the control of some gang master who put them to work and beat them.

  The face that looked up at him was delicate, a sweet face, hopeful and innocent. And poignant, somehow, because of a little birthmark shaped like a tear under the left eye. Dickens gave him a sixpence and walked on. When he looked back, the boy was still standing, staring at the house with the drawn blinds. He was not playing his barrel-organ. But someone else had stopped — a tall, dark figure bending over the child. He had an impression of a long coat and low-crowned, dark hat, and the blur of a face looking at him for a moment. Another sixpence, Dickens hoped. Then they were lost in the fog.

  Chapter 1: Lost Girls

  First: Annie

  ‘Get undressed.’

  The voice was not unkind, just impatient. The speaker gave the girl a little shake, but there was no response. The girl simply stood, passive, her head bowed.

  ‘Yer need ter get undressed — now.’ The woman spoke more loudly, more slowly. Deaf, p’raps, she thought. Dumb, mebbe, or just simple. Yer got them all the time — poor simple girls knowin’ nothin’, jest scrapin’ their way in the streets till they stole somethin’ ’cos they w
as starving, or ’cos a man telled ’em ter.

  ‘Wot’s she on remand fer?’ The words were directed to a large, tallow-faced woman who stood at the door of the room which contained a boiler with a furnace and a large stone bath where tepid water waited for the girl who must be washed and searched before she was taken to her cell. Remanded for two weeks before her trial.

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘Niver — she don’t look as if she’d ’urt a fly. She don’t seem all there ter me. Don’t seem ter understand.’

  ‘Policeman said. She killed a doctor — stabbed ’im. They found ’er not far away. Blood on ’er ’ands, it seems, an’ a five pound note in ’er pocket. Where’d a girl like that get a fiver? Still, not our business. Jenny, you’ll ’ave ter get ’er undressed if she won’t do it. Can’t wait all day.’

  Jenny, more kindly disposed to the prisoner, tried again. ‘Take yer dress off, will yer.’

  The girl heard the words, but they had no meaning. She understood them as individual sounds, like stones dropping one by one down a well, a well in which she was at the bottom, looking up to a circle of light. She knew that the cover would be put on, that the circle would shrink like the moon being covered by cloud. Then she would be in the dark. It was what she wanted — the dark.

  She had been brought by the policeman from the court. He hadn’t been rough, and she had walked, putting one foot in front of the other, watching her feet taking her along a passageway lined with heavy walls, sheer and black as cliffs. There were iron gates, gratings, locks, bolts, spikes, barred doors, opening and shutting, each slam of a door or gate a drumbeat taking her to the cell where she must wait for her trial. Voices came down the maze of passages, shouts reverberating off the stone walls, but they seemed far away, coming from a distant place.

  Jenny Ince, a prisoner herself, but who had earned her position as a wardswoman, began to undo the buttons at the back of the girl’s drab dress while the other woman, the Matron of the female remand ward, stood looking on, unmoved by the sight of the prisoner’s starved frame emerging from the folds of the dress. Jenny helped the naked girl into the stone bath. The sight of the bony shoulders hunched over, and the way the girl flinched at her touch, made her gentle. Jenny noticed the dried blood on her inner thighs. She thought she knew where the blood on the hands, and what looked like a blood stain on the dress, had come from. But she said nothing, only watched as the water turned a faint, rusty red.