35

THWARTED and impatient, Harry insists on returning to the city several hours earlier than Jordan had anticipated. This pleases the driver, who is even more delighted when Harry sinks into one of his sullen moods. His usual chatter has been replaced by a brooding silence. Jordan is also confident now that Brassac will buy the Champion. When he factors in the American’s wife, it feels like two sales in one day.

Brassac’s indifference to deadlines and the continuing problems with his flying machine are not the only reasons for Harry’s discontent. He is still puzzled by the scene outside the hotel early in the morning. He feels certain he hadn’t imagined seeing somebody. But where had this person gone? And might it have been a woman?

Another disturbed night and its aftermath have left him battling a deep fatigue close to nausea. Watching the passing bushes and dead trees as the Darracq heads back to the Melbourne road, his only consolation is that he thinks he knows now what is causing his malaise. And there is something he must do to resolve it.

So Harry requests a detour as the motor car approaches the city.

‘Queen’s Wharf?’ Jordan replies. ‘Why do you want to be let off there?’

‘Something to attend to, that’s all.’

‘You want me to wait?’

‘No. I’ll find a cab later. Or walk if I must. It’s not far, is it?’

‘Bit of a hike. Nothing you couldn’t manage.’

His curiosity is outweighed by relief at the prospect of an early finish. The American can do what he likes if it means he can shoot through himself. Harry stays silent as Jordan guides his car through town, travelling alongside the sluggish brown river instead of turning off for the hotel.

‘Here we are,’ Jordan says at last. ‘Though there’s not much to it.’

Harry scans his surrounds. A low parapet overlooking the water; a group of youths in caps and grubby shirts who pause their conversation to gawp at the clattering Darracq; a woman with a tatty bonnet who steps forward when the car stops; a building of dark red bricks, squat and uninviting.

‘Okay then,’ Harry says, easing himself out. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

He walks away, waving an arm dismissively when Jordan reminds him about payment for the Champion, not even glancing back as he heads towards the parapet. Jordan is intrigued to see what he does – wonders if it’s a girl he’s after – but the prospect of getting home, removing his boots, and downing some ale has more appeal. So the driver eases his car around.

HARRY waits until he can no longer hear the engine noise. Then he turns away from the river, where some boats are moored at a rickety timber jetty. He ignores the shameless stares of the youths, who pass comments one to another as he approaches the red-brick building, and also the entreaties of the woman in the bonnet, who tries to draw close to him as he walks away from her.

‘Mister,’ she says. ‘Hey mister – don’t you want to talk to me?’ She thinks it odd that the man with curly hair doesn’t even give her an appraising look.

This has to be it, Harry tells himself, though there is no sign over the timber door. Queen’s Wharf, Rickards had said. Harry tries the handle, but it is locked. Damn. He knocks on the door, politely at first, then, when there is no response, more insistently. He hears the scraping sound of a bolt being pulled back. The door opens away from Harry, but the man who faces him – short, with a pale complexion made to appear more sallow by a pair of bushy side-whiskers – scans him quickly then looks beyond him. He appears puzzled when he sees that this visitor is unaccompanied.

‘No delivery?’ he asks.

‘No. I’m alone.’

The whiskered man considers him again, up and down.

‘What’s your business here?’

‘This is the dead house – the city morgue?’

‘It is. But we don’t welcome strangers here. Especially live ones.’

An empty space between uneven teeth, stained yellow, when he grins.

‘Of course,’ Harry replies, feeling in his vest pocket for one of his cards. ‘I understand. But I was hoping you might indulge me with a small favour.’

‘Why would I do that?’

Stale tobacco on his breath.

‘You don’t know who I am?’

A cursory glance before shaking his head.

‘I am Houdini. Here.’

The man takes Harry’s card with one grubby hand, but is much less impressed by the raised lettering spelling out the name and a New York address than the five-pound note Harry has slipped behind it.

‘Best you come in, then.’ He stands aside, leaving room for Harry to enter. The bolt is drawn back behind him.

The gloom contrasts with the late-afternoon light outside. There are shallow windows, set high into the walls, too dirty or too small to be effective. But to Harry the most striking feature is the smell of oil-burning lanterns and damp air. Also something cloying and sweet.

‘Well?’

The fellow is awaiting further information, leaning against a table on which Harry can make out some papers, a flask, and a loaf of bread; gnawed inwards from one side. Harry almost gags at the thought of eating in such a place. But he tries to assume a blithe manner as he continues. He rehearsed this conversation during the drive. Thought he might befriend any attendant, talk about escapes he has made from prison cells and also the Paris morgue, then suggest he was contemplating something similar here. But he senses already that this man would be unimpressed by tales of past exploits. So he cuts straight to the point.

‘I was hoping you could help me.’

The man fingers the note he has been given. Leans forward. Sniffs.

‘Thing is, well, help can be expensive … ah, much obliged. So …?’

‘I read in the newspaper about an unfortunate woman who died in the river at the weekend.’

‘Yeah. Heard about her. A young mother. But she’s not here.’

He tucks his money into a trouser pocket, concerned now that the visitor might want some of it back.

‘But what if someone is not identified, not claimed?’ Harry is pacing around. ‘A young woman, perhaps. From the river.’

‘We get our share of them, for sure. Poor things, treated bad. In shame. With nobody to help out – so off a bridge they go.’

‘Do you have anyone like that now?’

The man with whiskers senses his bargaining power increase again.

‘Well, I might … Thank you, sir. We have Lily.’

Harry steps forward. ‘So you know who she is?’

‘That’s just what I call her. Lily. Like in water-lilies. For where she was found, see? We’ve had her a few weeks now. No-one has come for her.’

He laughs. A ghastly rasping wheezing sound.

Something bitter rises up in Harry’s throat, but he forces himself to appear unconcerned.

‘I need to view her body. If I may.’

He is confronted by a curious look. A mix of incredulity and suspicion.

‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘I think I may have a personal connection with this individual.’

A gap-toothed leer.

‘I may be able to identify her.’

‘I reckon not.’

He wheezes again. Continues, enjoying Harry’s look of uncertainty.

‘Not much to identify. Couldn’t go by the colour of her eyes, for instance.’

A surface like soap. Emptiness where eyes should be.

Harry finds another note, which he folds between the fingers of his right hand and extends as if he were an animal-house keeper feeding a beast that bites.

‘I must see her,’ he says. ‘And my reasons are entirely honourable.’

‘Course they are. Always are,’ the man replies, taking the note then wiping his nose with the back of the same hand. ‘There’s no shortage of honourable men, many of whom end up here, all as silent as the cemetery.’

He turns and shuffles to a stone stairway near the corner of the room, carrying a smoking lantern. The steps are narrow and turn in upon themselves as they go down. Harry must put his hands out for balance: the rough walls are cold and moist. He counts twenty-three steps as he descends, and with every step the dank smell becomes more overpowering. His guide is waiting at the bottom. Harry cannot suppress a shudder.

‘It’s cold down here,’ he says.

‘Course it is. There’s ice piled in the vaults, and we’re close to river level. Below it, in fact, whenever it floods or there’s a king tide in the bay. Useful way to flush things out.’

Harry’s eyes have grown accustomed to the light from the single lantern. They confirm what his feet have sensed: the floor is made of uneven stones and slopes slightly from all sides towards the centre, where there is a zinc-topped table with surgical instruments arranged in rows at one end and, directly beneath it, a hole covered by a circular grating. The room itself resembles a cellar, with several thick timber uprights supporting the ceiling, but instead of barrels or bottles of wine stacked against the walls there are deep shelves, and on every one a shrouded shape. Harry knows at once what they are. Yet he is reminded of a school dormitory, iron bunk beds three and four high, and in each a child asleep. Yet no dormitory ever smelled like this: an animal stink as thick as a foul fog.

Harry presses his handkerchief to his face. His guide is amused by his discomfort, which he increases by crossing the room with the lantern.

‘They reckon we’ll get electrics before long,’ he says. ‘But there’s no hurry. I’ve had no complaints from the dead. Only from the surgeons who have to do their work under gaslight. I’d get one of them lights going, but I reckon you won’t be long. Mind out for rats – there’s hundreds down here.’

Harry follows his guide’s voice and the shadows cast by his lantern. Hears the fellow grunt with effort. He has stopped by one of the shelves, which must be on hinges or rollers of some kind, as he is able to move it out from the wall. Then he raises his arm, so that the weak yellow light falls on a prone shape, which appears to be covered one end to another with thick sacking. There is a scratching, scuttling sound from somewhere nearby.

‘Sorry to wake you. A gentleman caller for you, Lily.’ The attendant uses his left hand, the one not holding the lantern, to lift back the sacking.

A miasma is released – an essence of foetid water and river mud.

Yet still there is a sheet or cloth clinging to the top portion of the body. That’s what it seems like in the dancing light, for instead of something resembling a human face, there is only the shape of it. Resembling a waxwork model melted by fire. A single strand of long hair remains fixed to the skull, lending a pathetic semblance of humanity.

‘It’s not right,’ Harry says, turning away.

‘What isn’t?’

‘Her being abandoned. Left alone like this.’

‘Alone? Nah. She’s got plenty of company. All around. In neat rows.’

Shadows dance as he gestures with the lantern at the other shapes. In these shadows Harry sees Rabbi Weiss describing Jewish burial practices. Pressing his fingers together, the Rabbi stresses the importance of treating a deceased person with appropriate respect and in a timely manner.

This is why Harry has come.

He has to try to make his peace with this forsaken woman mouldering alone in darkness; with nobody observing shemira, watching over her. Is it the one he disturbed in the river? He cannot be sure. There were no witnesses. Nobody to confirm what he is convinced he experienced. But the unrest that has tormented him since the river leap, the discombobulating dreams, cannot be denied. And what he has found here, what he can smell here, is real. He could touch her with his own hands if he dared.

If he was the one who interrupted her slumber, it is understandable she has haunted him ever since. She has been clutching on to him with her limbs twisted like tree branches, holding him down. She is the one who will not let him sleep. The one who conjures elusive phantoms to unsettle him. The one who has stymied his plans for the flying machine. If he can just sit with her and recite such snippets of the Jewish prayers for the dead as he recalls, then perhaps she will leave him be …

He moves closer. Then recoils.

‘Her arms. What happened to her arms?’

His guide, who has been hoping that a rat might venture close enough for him to kick it, hears the hoarseness in Harry’s voice.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Weren’t her arms extended? These are lying flat.’

He cannot see the indifferent shrug.

‘Probably knocked down, mate. Or broken for ease of handling, and so she don’t take up too much space. Lily could have had some of her stems snapped. An axe-handle usually does the job.’ With his free hand he makes a violent, swinging motion. ‘Gotta be careful nothing comes clean off.’

Harry gags. He knows now he has made a dreadful mistake. He cannot stay. He turns and staggers off. But the attendant remains with the lantern. Harry’s left foot slips on something soft. He must extend both arms, one of which still clutches his handkerchief, to keep his balance as he lurches to the steps on the darker side of the room. From behind he hears a voice.

‘Leaving so soon?’

A derisive cackle.

‘Your gent has scarpered, Lily. No ball for you tonight.’

Stumbling up the steps, Harry scrapes the knuckles of his left hand on the wall, though he doesn’t notice. Once again he is rising up from the river bottom, holding his breath, trying to escape. But this time he is counting steps, not seconds.

Twenty; twenty-one; twenty-two …

He is at the door, tugging at the bolt, when he hears her anguished call to him. There is a sigh, an exhalation of breath, and he dare not turn around.

Again.

The sound of rats. Or the attendant laughing in the room below.