London, 1890s
Daisy had told Madame she was going to visit Pa.
‘Visit him?’ said Madame, staring at her in disbelief. ‘Daisy, you can’t. You mustn’t. In any case, I don’t think it’d be allowed. He did get taken to The Thrawl, you know, and The Thrawl is—’
‘One of the tunnel houses. I know.’
‘But it must be five – no, more like seven – years now.’
‘I know,’ said Daisy again. ‘But I’ve been thinking about him for a long time. I have dreams about him. Like he might be calling out to me,’ she said, in an ashamed mumble. ‘Like he might need help. I got to know he’s all right. I know he was a vicious evil monster, but—’
‘I understand.’ Madame frowned, then said, ‘I don’t think I can ask Charles to help with arranging a visit. Or even to make any kind of check for you. I can’t involve him again. But I wonder if we simply turned up at The Thrawl and asked to be admitted …’
‘Could we?’
‘We could try. Would I need to look prosperous, I wonder – Lady Bountiful; in which case I’d want the velvet cloak and the feather boa? Or would it be better to be a bit shabby and hoping to visit a relative? No, I don’t like that idea. But I might be thinking of consigning a poor witless relative to the place, in which case I could have a veil and dab my eyes sadly and use that white face powder that Rhun said made me look like a corpse. Or—’
‘Lady Bountiful,’ said Daisy, before Madame could get too carried away. ‘That’s the one to be. It’d look as if you’re there to help them.’
‘You’re right.’
‘When could we go?’ said Daisy.
‘Well, on Saturday afternoon the twins will be with the Thumbprints for their music session,’ said Madame. ‘That means we don’t need to worry about leaving them for a couple of hours. Saturday afternoon it shall be. Lay out the velvet cloak, will you, Daisy – oh, and that bonnet with crimson plumes. I’ll use my most refined voice, and I’ll be inspecting the place to see if it’s deserving of an endowment – that’ll do it if anything will. Money,’ said Madame, sagely, ‘will open almost any door in the world. All you need is the confidence. Walk in as if you own the place, and the odds are that most people will think you do.’
Daisy had never really visualized driving up to the gates of The Thrawl in a hansom cab, grasping the twisted iron bell pull and hearing it ring dolefully inside the terrible place.
At first it seemed as if no one was going to respond, then a small, inset door was pushed open to no more than six inches, and a rheumy eye peered suspiciously out. A gravelly voice demanded to know their business.
Daisy’s heart bumped with nervousness, but Madame, very haughty, said something about a tour of inspection, and the promise of a donation – making it seem, thought Daisy admiringly, as if the arrangement had already been made, and as if they were expected.
‘And we realize it will be putting you to considerable trouble,’ she said, grandly, ‘so perhaps …’
There was the chink of a coin, and a hand came out to seize the proffered half-sovereign. Even through the narrow gap in the door, Daisy saw the doorkeeper perform the classic gesture of biting on the coin to make sure it was genuine. Then he nodded, pocketed it, and opened the door wider for them to enter.
Daisy hesitated, because after all this was the place of all those childhood tales – this was the ogre’s castle, the giant’s larder, the place built over the devil’s own dungeons. But Madame, who would probably be able to defy a dozen ogres if the situation required it, swirled her velvet cloak around her ankles with a flourish, and stepped through, so Daisy followed.
The doorkeeper clanged the door shut, observing that there was a shocking cold wind out there, and it got into folks’ tubes something chronic. This was followed by the rather revolting clearing of his throat, after which he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then crooked a grimy finger at them, indicating that they were to follow him. In the dull light of the stone hall, Daisy saw that he was very stunted, barely coming up to her shoulder, and that one of his shoulders was higher than the other. His face made her think of old, gnarled tree-trunks.
But at least he had not questioned their right to be here, although the half-sovereign probably had a good deal to do with that. Scuttling along, he led them down a dank corridor, thick with the stench of dirt and despair. A kind of dark heaviness lay on the air, and Daisy almost felt it pressing down on her head. At intervals, gas flares sent out a dispirited light, and Daisy began to feel as if the grotesque people of those old stories might suddenly appear and gibber at them from the shadows.
The walls of the corridor were dark and scarred and running with damp, and they had to step over puddles that might have been caused by the dripping of water from above, but that might be other fluids. They reached an intersection, where three corridors converged, when from somewhere within the building, a harsh, loud bell sounded.
‘That means dinner,’ said their guide, at once. ‘I got to go. Y’can see what you want, though. Over there – and there.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of the corridors. ‘Come back to the main door when you’re ready. If I ain’t there, someone’ll be around to unlock it for you.’
‘But can’t you show us where—’
‘I ain’t missing my dinner, not for you, nor the Queen of England,’ he said, at once. ‘You go where you want, I ain’t bothered, and nobody else will be, neither.’
He sped off, leaving them staring after him. Then Madame seemed to stand up a little straighter, as if squaring her shoulders, and said, ‘Pity about that, but at least we’re inside, and we’ve been told we can go wherever we want. Let’s start with this corridor.’
‘There’s a door just along there,’ said Daisy, in a whisper.
‘It’ll probably be locked, but still …’
But the door was not locked. It opened outwards, and as Madame pulled it, a thick stench came at them, causing Daisy to flinch and clap a hand over her mouth.
‘Daisy, if you’re going to be sick, go and do it in that corner as quietly as you can manage.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Good.’ But Madame, too, had flinched, and she closed the door quickly, and stepped back. ‘No need to go in there,’ she said, a bit sharply. ‘Paupers’ Ward. He won’t be there – I made an arrangement, remember? Let’s try these other corridors.’
The left-hand corridor was lit by more of the gas jets, and several doors opened off it. Each had a tiny grille.
‘They’ll be locked,’ said Madame, but she tapped on each door. ‘Daisy, call out that we’re visitors. If your Pa’s in any of the rooms, he’ll know your voice.’
Several times the person in the room cried out in response to Daisy’s voice, but the words did not make any sense. Twice there were eerie wails and screams, and Daisy shivered.
‘Are they answering us? Or do they wail like that anyway?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s just try this last one,’ said Madame.
‘Yes.’
As Madame reached out to tap on the surface, a voice from within the room, ‘Daise? That you out there, gel? That my little murdering bitch of a daughter, is it? It is, isn’t it? I’d reckernize your voice anywhere, you vicious little shrew.’
There was a movement from beyond the grille, and hands came up to curl around the thin bars. Eyes, angry and filled with hatred, glared out.
‘Pa,’ said Daisy, torn between relief and fear. ‘Yes, it’s me. We came to make sure you was all right.’
‘Course I ain’t fucking all right, stupid bitch. Shut up in here all this time, is it likely I’m all right? Come to gloat, have you?’
‘No, we’ve come to make sure you’re getting reasonable treatment,’ said Madame. There was no trace of nervousness or fear in her voice. She said, ‘Daisy was worried about you. You know, you might be shut away in here, but you’re lucky not to be in Newgate.’
‘Might’s well be,’ he said, sullenly. ‘Might’s well be hanging from Jack Ketch’s rope. That’s where she should be,’ he said, jabbing a finger at Daisy. ‘Bleedin’ murderer, that one.’
‘No, she isn’t,’ said Madame, as Daisy flinched. ‘And we’re not here to gloat – we’re here to make sure you’re being treated properly. You’re supposed to have food and exercise and things you want within reason. Are you?’
‘Might be.’ There was the impression of a sullen shrug.
Daisy said, ‘Do they – um – let you out of this room sometimes?’ Because it was unbearable to think of him – to think of any human being – locked away like this all day and all night. She glanced along the corridor, and had the impression that a shadow moved behind one of the grilles.
‘Well?’ Madame was saying. ‘Do they let you out?’
‘They might do,’ he said, grudgingly. ‘Yes, all right, I come out for dinner and tea every day. Bit of a walk round the yard, too. They let me work a bit in the gardens some days. See the others then. See the women.’ Incredibly, there was a leery glint from beyond the grille. ‘And we all got to go to church service on Sundays. You should hear the chains of them paupers clanking then. Vicar got to shout to make hisself heard sometimes. They got to chain some of them, see, ’cos they’re wild and mad.’
Again, Daisy caught the movement from the far room. Like someone whisking back out of sight, not wanting to be seen.
‘I don’t get chained, though,’ Pa was saying, and now there was a dreadful kind of pride. ‘I ain’t mad, see, so they don’t do that. But I shouldn’t be in here at all.’
Daisy said, a bit desperately, ‘It won’t be for ever. It really isn’t meant to be for ever.’
‘I ain’t been a saint,’ he said. ‘But I might change. Vicar, he’s talked about that. He helps folk change their ways.’ There was a wheedling note in his voice now.
Daisy said, ‘We could see if—’
But Madame’s hand came down warningly, and she stopped.
‘We got to go now,’ said Daisy. ‘But we’ll see what might be done. Talk to the vicar, maybe. No promises, though.’
‘Never were none. But you see about it, gel,’ he said.
‘I wish I hadn’t come,’ said Daisy, softly, as she and Madame walked back along the dim passage. The cries of the men and women in the locked rooms still echoed around them, bouncing off the old stones.
‘Later on, you’ll be glad you did come,’ said Madame. ‘You saw for yourself that he’s not being treated so very badly. He’s not with the really mad ones, and he told you himself that he comes out for meals and a bit of work in the gardens. And there’s some companionship.’
‘I know, but …’
Daisy stopped, because the cries from within the rooms suddenly sounded different. She turned to look back, and saw that Madame had done the same.
‘Daisy – d’you hear that?’ she said. ‘It’s not shouting voices any longer, it’s as if—’
Daisy said, in a whisper, ‘It’s as if someone’s singing.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s coming from that room at the end. I thought someone was standing at the grille, trying to peer out to see us – trying to listen to us …’
They stood very still, and Daisy thought they were both trying to think that there was nothing so very unusual about hearing tuneless singing inside a place like The Thrawl. Most of the people who were locked away in here were poor helpless souls whose senses had become warped and distorted, or whose minds had gone astray. A good many of them might very well hum to themselves, or sing wordlessly. There might be comfort for them in such a thing.
But this was not humming, and this was not wordless singing.
This was the song written by Rhun using the long-ago composer’s music. Somewhere inside The Thrawl someone was singing ‘Listen for the Killer’.
It seemed to Daisy that the two of them stood frozen and unable to move or speak, while the whispering echoes of The Thrawl’s strangeness swirled and eddied around them. And lying on top of those echoes …
As the final lines of the song faded, Daisy drew in a shaky breath, then said, ‘That was the whole thing. The entire song that Rhun wrote.’
‘Yes. But it doesn’t mean anything,’ said Madame, a bit too firmly. ‘It’s not so many years since we taught people that music and those words. There’s nothing to say there isn’t someone in here who learned it then.’
Daisy was about to say this could be true, when the singing started again, and this time – oh, dear God, although the tune was the same, now the singer was using words that neither of them had ever heard – words that Rhun had certainly never written. And now it was not ‘Listen’, it was ‘Harken’.
‘Harken to the killer for he’s here, just out of sight.
Harken to my footsteps when it’s very late at night.
At pallid church and bishop’s head,
With eager hands and furtive tread,
By midnight’s knell you’ll hear the prowl,
And then you’ll hear the victim’s howl.
And then you’ll know the killer stalks
With needle and knife and butcher hooks –
You’ll know that I still walk.’
‘It is that room,’ said Daisy, after a moment. ‘He’s in there.’
They both stared at the door – Daisy thought they were both trying to find the courage to go up to it and peer through the grille, but before either of them could move, there was a patter of footsteps, and the doorkeeper appeared.
‘Seen what you wanted?’ he said.
‘Some things.’ Madame pointed to the end door. ‘The man there—’
‘Oh, that one,’ said the doorkeeper. ‘Heard him, have you? Real mad, that one.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Don’t think anyone knows. Don’t think he knows, either. One story is he was found wandering in them old dried-out rivers underground. Ghost rivers, they call them. They say he lost his wits down there in the dark. Enough to make anyone lose their wits, ain’t it, being down there in the dark?’
Cold sick horror was washing over Daisy. She thought: it is him. It really is. Because of course he’d get out of the tunnel – I should have known he’d get out.
‘But another story says the high-ups put him in here so’s he wouldn’t have to stand his trial and end up being hanged,’ said the doorkeeper. ‘I reckon that happens more’n folks know. British justice, huh.’ He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the room. ‘Sings like he done just now some of the time. Other times you hear him kind of chanting to himself.’
‘Chanting what?’
‘Odd, it is. Names of streets,’ said the doorkeeper. ‘Knows the East End like you wouldn’t believe. Whitechapel, Spitalfields. All the streets and the little alleyways – Hanbury Street, Dorset Street, Miller’s Court – he chants them all, over and over. Even parts of the City. Mitre Square, and the like. It’s like as if he’s saying a prayer to himself. I hear some things in this place, but that one … Gives you the shivering creeps.’ He turned to lope back down the passageway, turning to make sure they were following.
‘Had my dinner,’ he said. ‘I’ll unlock the door for you, then I’ll be off to my own bit of room. I got a twist of baccy and a nice drop o’ whiskey to warm me. Last a few nights to come, that will, thanks to your jimmy o’goblin.’
As Daisy and Madame walked across Fossan’s Yard, Daisy said, ‘That song – that other verse he sang. I didn’t understand that line—’
‘The one about “At pallid church and bishop’s head”?’
‘Yes. What did it mean?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. Pallid church – I should think would be Whitechapel,’ said Madame. ‘And bishop’s head would be Mitre Square, most likely.’ She glanced at Daisy.
Daisy said slowly, ‘And those places the doorkeeper said he chants to himself – Hanbury Street, Miller’s Court. They were all—’
‘All places where the Ripper’s victims were found,’ said Madame.