I DON’T know how long I stayed that way, seated in a corner of the filthy kitchen with Maggs’s body lying in front of me on the floor. During that time, it seemed that I fell in and out of my earlier life—no, not life but lives, for in each one was a different man: a son, a husband, a father, a soldier, a patient, and now a soul adrift. I felt and heard again the broom handle striking Maggs’s flesh, and then it was no longer a broom handle but a rifle, and the bayonet at its tip was lodged so hard in the breastbone of the man in the mud before me that I had to place my right foot on his chest in order to pull it free. I was crouched down at Crucifix Corner, beside the pitted figure of the tortured Christ, High Wood in the distance, Death Valley before me, with the shelling, the endless shelling. I was standing over a crater on a September morning, watching as the first of forty-seven men from the London battalions was interred in the gray mud, which enveloped their forms so that they became part of it, presaging the greater decay to come.
And then I was broken, and the world itself became a fragmented place.
Craiglockhart: a nurse was wheeling me into a small private room where a chaplain and a brother officer were waiting, and someone was whispering the impossible to me, tales of a raid by Gotha bombers on 13 June, of a woman, a girl, and a boy buried in rubble.
Finally, I was standing by another hole in the ground, and more bodies were being lowered into it. I had not been permitted to see their remains before the coffin lids were screwed down, as though I had never before seen human beings reduced to raw meat and shattered bone by bombs, as though what I imagined could be any worse than the reality of the damage done to them.
IF I am not a husband, not a father, not a soldier, then what am I?
Who am I?
I SHOULD have called the police, but common sense prevailed. Maggs’s face was terribly damaged, and I was responsible. The dead creature on the floor had finally cooled. As it did so it turned to a dried husk, and when I touched it with my shoe it fell apart as though it were made from ashes. The one lodged in Maggs’s throat had disintegrated in a similar fashion, coating the dead man’s mouth and gullet with flakes of dark matter. If the police came, I did not doubt that I would be charged with the mutilation and murder of the book scout. I remembered the girl who had directed me to his rooms. She did not know my name, but she would be able to describe me without any trouble, and I didn’t believe that I had paid her enough to buy her silence. Maggs was a scrawny man, and, were we in a more isolated place, I could have carried his body from the house and disposed of it, but I could hardly walk through the streets of Spitalfields and Whitechapel with Maggs’s remains hanging over my shoulder.
There came a knocking on Maggs’s door. I ignored it, but it came again, and I heard a woman’s voice, a familiar voice, calling out from the other side.
“Sir? Sir? Are you all right?”
It was the girl from the laneway.
“Sir?” she said again.
I got to my feet. If I ignored her, she might well take it upon herself to call the police. I had no choice but to answer the door.
I opened it about halfway: just enough to let her know that I was safe while preventing her from seeing into the rooms behind me. She looked both relieved and puzzled.
“I was worried,” she said. “Mr. Maggs—”
“Has a reputation,” I finished for her. “Undeserved, I might add, or no longer applicable.”
“Is he all right?” she asked. “You didn’t have to hurt him, did you?”
“No. Actually, he’s a little the worse for wear.”
I made a gesture of drinking, for I had seen the empty bottles of cheap gin piled up in a corner by Maggs’s bed. The girl nodded in understanding.
“That’d be him,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s better with or without it. It’s as little as makes no difference.”
“Well, I’ll put him in his bed, and turn him on his side so that he doesn’t choke in the night, and then I’ll be on my way,” I said.
“You look ill,” she said. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right yourself?”
“Now that you mention it . . . ”
There was sweat on my face. I could taste it on my lips.
“Why don’t you come down to the Ten Bells,” she said. “A whisky will sort you out. It’ll be on me, for your kindness earlier.”
I was tempted to refuse, to get as far away from there as quickly as I could, but a drink sounded good, and not the poor stuff that Maggs was in the habit of imbibing. Neither did I want to look in any way suspicious by fleeing the scene.
“You know, I’ll take that drink,” I said. “Just let me see that Maggs is fixed, and I’ll be with you shortly.”
“Do you want some help?”
“No, I can manage.”
“Right then. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
I smiled and closed the door. I returned to the kitchen and looked at Maggs. There was nothing to be done about him for now, but we were not far from the river. If I waited until the city was quiet, I could perhaps carry him to the bank under the pretext of his being the worse for drink, as long as I kept his face covered, and then dump him in the Thames. It might be days before he was found, and there was the possibility of the damage to his face being ascribed to his time in the water, or the propeller of a boat. In the meantime, I took the envelope of money from the table and placed it in my pocket.
In case you take me for a thief, let me say that I intended not to keep it but to pass it on to Quayle for safekeeping. It was Lionel Maulding’s money—of that much I was certain—and, if it were left in these rooms, it would eventually find its way into the pockets of another. Quayle would look after it. Quayle would know what to do. For a moment, I was almost tempted to seek his help, to tell him of what had transpired in Maggs’s kitchen, but I feared that he would not believe me and might even hand me over to the police.
Quayle was cunning and careful, but he was not actively dishonest, or certainly not when it came to the possibility of a killing. I believed it would pain him to turn me in (“He was never the same after the war, poor fellow”), and he might even act on my behalf if it came to a trial, but he would not shelter me if he thought me guilty of murder.
I went downstairs and joined the girl, who told me her name was Sally. I walked with her to the Ten Bells on Commercial Street. The bar enjoyed a certain notoriety for its associations with Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly, two victims of Jack the Ripper, although any number of such establishments might have boasted of a similar connection. It didn’t seem appropriate to discuss the murders with Sally, and she didn’t bring them up. We talked instead of her life, steering clear of her profession, and I told her a little of myself, but not too much, and I did not give her my true name. After an hour, some women of her acquaintance appeared, and I made my excuses.
By then, Sally was tipsy. She tried to kiss me as I left, and asked me to return to her rooms with her. I declined but promised I would seek her out on another night. She saw the lie, though, and the hurt in her face pained me. She was a good girl, and I had not been with a woman in so very long, not since my other life.
I left money at the bar and ordered a round for her and her friends. She watched me leave, watched me with dark, wounded eyes. I wonder now what became of her, but it is too late. It is too late for all of us.