17

AS I STRODE OUT of Waterloo Station and into the familiar tumult of London, I couldn’t remember a time I had felt less uplifted about coming home. I loitered on the corner by the church, watching smoke rise from a tray of chestnuts, wishing I had a penny to spend on lunch.

Above me on the wall, a poster read: Visit Sunny Southsea and be Amazed. Miss La La at Quinton’s New Hippodrome. The picture was of Miss Brown hanging upside down from a trapeze, holding a rope in her mouth from which another woman was dangling, her arms balletically outstretched. Natalia La Blanche, I presumed. Born to fly.

I felt a surge of pity for her. I should be there, solving her murder, instead of here, trying to repair what I had broken. I slung my sack over my shoulder and set off.

I imagined ripping out my heart and laying it, still beating, on Rosie’s doorstep. How ridiculous that was. How romantically ridiculous. No more self-indulgence. I scraped the sack against the soft skin of my neck as punishment.

Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.

What had I been before I met her? I looked back on that man with a kind of shame. He was a woodlouse on its back, legs in the air, wiggling and curling, unable to right itself.

I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t met Rosie.

I stopped on Waterloo Bridge, watching the river churn below me, imagining the rush of cold through my skin as I hit it, pouring between my bones, soaking into my organs, dispersing my cells and atoms until I was part of the current and then the sea. My name waited for me still, scratched into the paintwork beneath the guard rail, a promise I had made to myself. Jump, if you need to, if you choose to. You can always jump.

More self-indulgence. This wasn’t even the same bridge.

I crossed over and looked south along the river, and there it was, grey and hazy in the smoke and steam: Westminster Bridge, where I had once spent half a night in the rain, wondering if I wanted to live or die.

But then: Rosie.

She never had any time for such nonsense. Morbid thoughts don’t get the kids up in the morning or the pastry rolled out, do they? She made me forget about my name scratched into the paintwork. I’d crossed over the river a hundred times since and had rarely given it a thought.

Without her, would I be that man again?

I turned right at the Strand, around St Clement’s church, which hulked in the middle of the thoroughfare like a frigate caught at low tide, and onwards to Fleet Street. My first stop was my newspaper office. I’d written a letter to my editor, J. T. Whitford, explaining that I needed another day or two before returning and was prepared to take it unpaid, which was the equivalent of stealing something from him and then offering it back as a gift.

I pushed the envelope through the letterbox, wishing I had time for a beer with Harry. His irrepressible bonhomie would pass the time quite nicely. But instead, I hurried away with my face kept low, almost in my collar, hoping no one would take a second look at a hangdog fellow with a half-filled sack over one shoulder.

I was not far from our home. Just a little further, and I would almost see it. But she’d asked for time, hadn’t she? She could have all time in the world, but I wished I knew whether, at the end of that time, she anticipated an outcome in my favour. What she saw as the odds, either way. The pros and cons of me.

I also wished that Peregrine was in London, and that we were on speaking terms. I missed my friend and his terrible advice. On an occasion of a previous argument with Rosie, he had advised me not to be too hasty. Take your time, he said. Send her a letter first, that she can read and reread, clutching it to her breast as the tears fall. Can she ever forgive you? She will, of course, moved by your abjectness and your pathetic entreaties. Later, you go to her saying you can stay away no longer and must have her answer. Does she still love you as you love her? Of course she does. A smile, a kiss and the curtain falls. The audience leaps to their feet in wild applause.

But Rosie was not the heartsick heroine of one of Peregrine’s plays. She was, at heart, a practical person. What would move her would be … something else. An apology. An explanation. A way to fit what I had done into a future we could share.

I pinched myself hard under my armpit where my binding met the weals on my skin. The pain shot through me. The balls of my fingers and the soles of my feet throbbed with it. Thus refreshed, I took a deep breath, straightened my hat and walked back the way I’d come.

The nearest of my two friends’ houses was Jacob’s. He and Lilya lived above his jewellery repair shop, not ten minutes’ walk away on Shoe Lane. He would welcome me with a glass of some foul brew, and Lilya would make us a late lunch, slicing mutton and mashing swede as expertly as any chef, though she was blind. It was a tempting option. But they would ask questions, and questions and more questions, and make a fuss, and give me counsel that was well meant but ill aimed. And anyway, though I cared for them greatly, their house had never been my home.

No, I needed somewhere less bothersome.

My old landlord Alfie Smith had moved his pharmacy business to Hanover Square since I lodged with him, but I knew he’d find a space for me to sleep. Better still, he’d pour us a couple of glasses of decent whisky and sit beside me in silence. I set off for Hanover Square, almost sniffing the whisky in the air like a dog.

Of course, there was still one impediment to be dealt with: Alfie’s daughter, Constance.

‘Good afternoon, Leo,’ said Constance. She had taken to calling me by my Christian name since turning fourteen, and it still sounded strange to my ears. ‘I thought you were on holiday by the sea. I’ve never seen the sea.’

She was standing behind the main counter of the pharmacy, which was busy with five customers, one of whom, a lady with a grand hat, was looking at me fiercely, clearly surmising I was about to jump the queue.

‘I was working, young Constance. Investigating two murders.’

The lady looked aghast, but Constance digested the information with equanimity. ‘Did you solve them?’

‘Not yet.’

I confess, my own answer surprised me.

‘I see you have a sack.’

‘I have. You are as observant as ever. I believe it was once used to hold potatoes. Where’s Alfie?’

Anyone overhearing us could be excused for thinking Constance and I disliked each other, that we were enemies or harboured simmering resentments, but nothing could be further from the truth. She was like a favourite niece to me. But neither of us was inclined towards outbursts of sentiment, so this verbal fencing was our only means of showing affection.

She blinked at me twice and cocked her head the merest fraction, all the while continuing to serve her customer, a rotund fellow in severe need of a salve.

‘How is Mrs Stanhope? I would love to see her.’

‘Rosie’s not here.’

She glanced briefly at the sack and raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, please give her my regards. Tell her I’ve been practising making hop yeast like she told me, and I’m improving with every batch.’

I doubted this very much. Constance cooked food the way surgeons sawed off limbs: hastily and with unpleasant results.

‘Constance, I beg of you please, tell me where your father is.’

She thumbed over her shoulder. ‘Stock room, avoiding Edith.’

Alfie and Edith had married the previous year. I didn’t doubt that he was enjoying some time alone, but Constance’s assessment of his motivation was biased. She maintained a persistent mistrust of her stepmother for no other reason, as far as I could tell, than habit. Poor Alfie suffered the sporadic battles between his wife and daughter like a hillock which is of strategic importance but possesses no armaments of its own.

He was indeed in the stock room, sitting on a pile of crates and smoking a cigar.

‘Leo! Weren’t you on holiday somewhere? Brighton, was it?’

‘Portsmouth, and I was working. Why does everyone think I was on holiday? Anyway, I’m back now.’

‘Yes, I can see that. What’s in the sack? If you have a couple of Rosie’s pies in there, I may fall at your feet in gratitude.’

When I’d first met Alfie, he was as lean as a weasel, but of late he’d grown somewhat portly, perhaps because his new wife’s cooking was less unappetising than Constance’s. Whatever the reason, the crates were bowing and creaking under his weight.

‘No pies, I’m afraid. I was wondering if I could stay with you?’

‘Oh? … Oh.’ He gave me a sympathetic expression. ‘Sorry, old man. Would you like a glass of whisky?’

That was the marvellous thing about Alfie: he would neither pry nor dwell. I had long since reached the conclusion that the loss of his beloved first wife and, before that, his time in the army had dulled his fears and anxieties on any topic, save one.

‘Did Constance seem well to you?’ he asked, leading the way up the stairs.

‘Yes, I think so. Do you have cause for concern?’

He paused and half turned. ‘I’m the father of a daughter.’

Their sitting room faced over the Square. I took a seat by the hearth while Alfie poured the drinks. The familiarity made me feel peculiar, as if the past year hadn’t been real, and I was still living with Alfie and Constance. I might go to Rosie’s shop tomorrow and she would welcome me with a frown, give me a pie in a paper bag and tell me about her day. For all the intervening months, I would have said our lives were better now than then: to be married, to spend time together, to read stories to the children at night. Nothing had ever made me happier. And yet today, I would give anything for all of that to have been a dream.

We drank in silence, dusk falling outside. Edith came in with some much-needed bread and cheese, and she and I talked about the martins that had nested under the eaves at the back of the building. All the chicks had hatched and flown. When she bustled out, her hand brushed Alfie’s shoulder.

‘You two seem very happy,’ I told him.

He nodded, narrowing his eyes. ‘We have our arguments as well. Marriages can be difficult. Go to Rosie tomorrow and apologise.’

‘What makes you think I did something wrong?’

He drained his whisky. ‘It’s obvious.’ He chuckled at my expression. ‘Your wife’s no fool, Leo, and she adores you. If you’re here rather than there, she has good reason to be annoyed.’ He poured two more large glasses. ‘We have a lodger, but there are two beds in his room. You can take the other.’

I was almost certain he thought of me exactly as I appeared: a slim fellow with a strong inclination towards privacy. Almost certain. I’d wanted to tell him the truth more often than I could count, but how does one drop such a thing into the conversation? Especially now, after, what, five years or more? No, it was too late.

‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll sleep in the stock room, if you don’t mind. I hope this will only be short term.’

That night, I slept badly. Alfie had dragged a straw mattress downstairs and Edith provided blankets, but the room was a lean-to at the back of the shop, so was draughty and filled with strange noises: whistling wind, scratching rats and lamps creaking on their chains. The crates were stacked high, and in the half light, I imagined them to be all sorts of horrors; at one moment an old woman holding a douche, and at another a door being pushed from the other side, and at yet another, Stephan sitting in an armchair amidst a cacophony of birds.

I awoke to the rattle of the shutters being raised on the shop windows. Such a familiar noise, I could almost think I was home, except Rosie’s pie shop had only one window and Alfie’s grander establishment had two, one either side of the central door.

I dimly recalled making a rush outside the previous night as my stomach contents lurched upwards. It was as well the door to the back yard was close by.

In the shop, Constance was polishing the counter while Huffam the dog ate noisily from his bowl.

‘Salicin,’ I growled, my throat like sandpaper.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Father is similarly afflicted,’ she said.

When she had mixed the medicine, and I’d thrown it down my throat to avoid tasting it, she sat on the stool opposite me and folded her arms.

‘Would you like breakfast?’

‘My goodness, no.’ I doubted my stomach would take any further abuse. ‘Constance, are you aware of the effects of opium?’

This may sound a strange question to ask a young woman of fourteen, but she had an ambition to be a surgeon and was often to be found with her nose in a book about physiology or chemistry, such that Alfie had ceased trying to dissuade her. She knew more about the workings of the male anatomy than I did, and a few weeks previously had confided to me that she was exchanging correspondence with Mrs Garrett Anderson at the women’s hospital, who had been most encouraging.

‘It’s a sedative,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘It relaxes the bowels. Is that why you need it?’

‘No. My question isn’t on my own behalf.’

‘Oh. A newspaper article? How interesting.’ She started ticking off the points with her fingers. ‘It’s an anaesthetic and, taken externally, an anodyne. And an intoxicant, of course. What more do you wish to know?’

‘Would it have any permanent effect? Would it make an otherwise rational person believe something that wasn’t true?’

‘Such as?’

‘That an object, a very valuable object, has magical powers.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘While intoxicated, a patient may have severe dreams, including grotesque and impossible things. But these effects are temporary. They quickly give way to depressive thoughts and sopor.’

I sensed that she was quoting one of her books. She knew them off by heart.

I stood up, moving my head as minimally as possible.

‘Thank you, Constance.’

‘Good luck with Mrs Stanhope, Leo.’

My feet wanted to go to Rosie’s shop, but I would not let them. She had asked for time, and knew I had to provide it. And yet I could not stop thinking about her. I needed a distraction.

Consider the Blood Flower, I thought.

If it wasn’t the effects of opium that had made Alice think the Blood Flower possessed magical properties, then perhaps the stone itself held the solution. Not magic, obviously, but something. And I knew a man who was an expert on jewels, though extracting information from him often came at a price.

The walk was long, and my binding, still damp from the previous night’s terrors, quickly set about scouring my flesh, sending trickles of blood down the inside of my shirt. I would need to find a way to do my laundry. I thanked the Lord I was still two weeks away from my monthly curse, though in truth, such thanks were ill-deserved. It was His fault I had to endure it at all.

I reached Shoe Lane and knocked on Jacob’s door. It was Jacob himself who answered, which I took to be an encouraging sign. It meant he had risen from his bed.

‘Ah, Leo, I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were on holiday. Is it Thursday already?’

That was our regular day for chess.

‘No. I was passing.’

He beckoned me inside and we picked our way through his workshop. I was sure most men in his profession were fastidious, keeping their tools in neat cases and drawers, but that had never been Jacob’s way. His benches were covered with the apparatus and particulars of his jewellery trade: tweezers, pliers, brass wire and settings, all manner of hooks and rings.

He led me up the stairs, one sparrow-claw hand gripping the banister and the other on his cane.

‘What’s the news? Are the Irish blowing things up again? Not that I blame them.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘They’re young. When I was their age, we fought for weeks on end, rebelling against the Pale. The settlements, you know.’ He waggled his beard, a straggly thing that hung from his chin like cobwebs. ‘We pushed the Politsiya out of the docks with nothing but our fists and the bricks we pulled out of the pavement.’

I was never certain whether his stories of youthful daring and heroism in Nicolaev were true or not.

‘Perhaps you had good cause to fight.’

‘We wanted freedom, like all young men.’ As he spoke, his eyes became vague, as though he were seeing the events all over again in his mind. These days, he lived more in the past than the present. ‘Many of us died. Too many. And all for nothing. Going to war to gain freedom is like leaping off a building to gain flight.’

Even for him, it was too early for alcohol. Lilya made a pot of mint tea and brought it to us, feeling her way with the expertise of a cat in the dark.

‘For your head,’ she said, though I had not told her I was feeling poorly. ‘Why do you visit us, Leo? Always, you’re welcome, but today, in the morning, it is unusual, no?’

‘I have a question for Jacob. And I wanted to check on our chess game. The one we’ve been playing by telegram.’

His board was laid out on the table, but the pieces were not in positions corresponding to the moves we’d made. The white queen had been advanced and black had two knights on threatening squares.

Jacob licked his lips. ‘I’m winning, I think.’

‘But this isn’t our game.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘No, it isn’t. Look here, the sides have made several moves each. Six or seven at least. But I’ve only sent you four telegrams.’

Jacob frowned and I could see he was at risk of losing his temper. When I’d first met him, that was a rare occurrence. He would harangue and argue, but always with a glint of mischief in his eye. Now, the slightest thing would send him into a rage.

‘You hate to lose, don’t you? And to an old man too. The shame of it.’

I sat back, feeling tears well up in my eyes. First Peregrine, then Rosie and now Jacob? It was too much.

‘Of course not. I’m mistaken. I apologise. We can play from here.’

I searched in my pocket for my notebook, so I could make a note of the board. One of my knights was about to be taken by a white bishop and at least two of my pawns were vulnerable.

‘No, no, if you accuse me of cheating, I concede.’ He flicked a forefinger, knocking over his king. ‘There. You’ve won. Congratulations. I hope you’re happy.’

Lilya rapped her knuckles on the table. ‘You foolish man. We have spoken of this.’ She rattled off a number of sentences in Russian which I didn’t understand, but seemed very likely, from her tone and demeanour, to be an expansion on the theme of his foolishness. When she’d finished, she nodded firmly. ‘I explained to my husband. I do dusting and maybe I move around the pieces. I don’t know. I don’t understand what they do, the horse and the castle and all the little ones. I put them back wrong.’

I sipped my tea in silence, certain that it wasn’t Lilya who had ruined our game. I could imagine Jacob examining the board and playing a few moves ahead, seeing what would happen, and getting sidetracked or starting on another bottle, and forgetting what he’d done.

Truly, he was not the man he had once been.

Lilya poured me another cup of tea. ‘Rosie was here.’

I closed my eyes. Of course, how could I have been this stupid? Lilya and Jacob had been looking after Robbie while we were in away, so the boy could continue his schooling.

‘How did she seem?’

Lilya moved her head from side to side. ‘She did not stay. She came for Robert, and they left. Two minutes, no longer.’

‘I see.’

Lilya gazed towards me with her blank eyes. ‘What was your question?’

‘What?’

‘You said you had a question for Jacob.’

‘Ah yes.’ I leaned forward. ‘Rubies are very valuable, aren’t they?’

Jacob shrugged, still simmering. ‘Of course. And snow is cold, and acorns fall in the autumn. What of it?’

‘If a ruby was very large, say the size of a nut … ’ At his expression, I paused. ‘I know that would make it immensely rare, but if it were that size, would it be able to attract things and people? Or repel them? For example, could a ruby that size break a gold chain due to, I don’t know, a build-up of static electricity? Something of that nature.’

He snorted, and I saw that glint reappear in his eye. ‘Ah, Leo, you ask this only to amuse me. Having offered insult you wish to return to my … what it is? My good books, as if I’m one of your priests keeping a record of your sins.’

‘So, the answer is no.’

‘Can a ruby repel itself from a chain? This is what you’re asking? Of course it is no. Rubies are stones. They are inert.’

‘You’re certain of this?’

He banged his cane on the floor. ‘You don’t believe me? I work with these materials all my life.’

‘Of course I believe you. Thank you, Jacob.’

As I was leaving, Lilya caught my wrist. ‘What did you do, Leo? All this with rubies and science, and yet you ask us how is your wife? This is a question we should be asking you.’

‘I know. I’ll try to … make it better with Rosie.’

She uttered something in Russian and clouted me on the shoulder. ‘You are also a very foolish man.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You don’t know what is in your own hand.’ She took my palm and opened it up. ‘My sweet, silly boy. Always you reach for the thing you cannot get, that is too far away. And you miss what is right here. Right here. It is the whole world. Everything.’

Back at the pharmacy, Constance was spinning on a stool while their new lodger leaned on the counter and talked about declensions, whatever they were. He was a handsome young fellow with a well-groomed accent, the very quintessence of a student at the University College.

Constance didn’t so much as glance in my direction. ‘There are eggs if you’re hungry.’

‘Thank you.’

Since I had moved out a year previously, she’d generally treated me as a favoured uncle and my visits as something akin to an event. She would follow me upstairs and remain until her father insisted that she should leave, whereupon she would reappear at intervals to offer refreshments, each time remaining until told, with increasing firmness, to go to her room. I didn’t seek out such attention – indeed, I was glad she was growing up and becoming more independent – but I hadn’t expected it to happen this quickly. I felt oddly displaced.

Huffam followed me into the kitchen and watched as I cooked and ate three scrambled eggs, his hungry eyes following my spoon to my mouth and back to my plate as if he hadn’t eaten for a month. When I cut myself two pieces of bread and smeared them with dripping, he started to whimper.

‘Don’t give him any,’ said Alfie, coming in. ‘He’s getting fat. And don’t look at me that way either.’ He patted his own stomach. ‘I’m not fat, I’m comfortable.’

‘Very comfortable, some might say.’

He grinned, rolling up his shirtsleeves. ‘I hope you’re enjoying our eggs. Look, if you want to make yourself useful, in lieu of rent and board, you can sort out the stock room. It’s getting out of control.’

‘Certainly. Some manual labour would suit me very well. Will you show me what you want where?’

He gave me a glum expression. ‘Not really. I have a customer any minute who wants six teeth taken out, and the truth is, we’ve never had a system. Just make of it what you can.’

In the light of day, the stock room was chaotic. Crates and boxes were piled up with their labels facing every which way, bicarb on top of face powder, pessaries muddled with linctuses. I set about creating some form of order, opting for an alphabetical approach, starting with arsenic.

The lean-to had become greenhouse-hot, and I was sweating like a navvy when I came across a square box containing four brown bottles. I checked the label: laudanum. My first thought was that it should go next to the iodine, but then I stopped.

The principal ingredient of laudanum was opium. I held one of the bottles up to the light, watching the liquid inside twinkle and dance.

One quick sniff, what harm could it do?

It was a wild, bitter smell, reminding me of dandelion leaves broken between my fingers. Such power in this little bottle. I sniffed it again, finding this time a tenderness, a memory of our kitchen long ago in the vicarage: our maid Bridget bustling from stove to pantry, talking and talking, to me, to the food, to her apron. ‘Look at you! Covered in flour! I shall have to launder you all over again.’ Broccoli boiling on the hob. I could never stand the stuff; it stank of old boots. And yet now, I would give anything to taste Bridget’s food and hear her voice again. Perhaps if I drank this, I would.

I held the bottle to my lips, feeling a reckless despair. Whatever I’d once had to lose, was already gone. But what next? Some of the opium smokers at Papaver had been insensible, scattered across the floor like jellyfish at low tide. Would I want Alfie or Constance to find me in such a state?

I replaced the stopper and put the bottle back in its box.

That evening, after a dinner of mutton and potatoes, Alfie told me he was feeling too delicate to stay up with me again, adding that he was out of practice at drinking and these days was usually in bed early. This implication – that he had been the innocent victim of my malign influence – was for the benefit of Edith, who smiled approvingly. I noticed she’d left a pamphlet for the Temperance Society next to our empty bottle. Not half an hour later, I heard his snores rumbling through the shop like the bilge pump of an especially leaky barge.

I sat on my own in the pharmacy, listening to the rattle of traffic in the Square and watching the patterns of light form and fade in the gaps between the shutters. The lives of other people, hurrying along the pavement, calling across the street, pushing a handcart with a squeaky wheel. I generally thought of myself as a man with a secret, but their lives were as closed to me as mine was to them. What do any of us know of the mind of another?

The lamp had been turned down to its lowest level, almost guttering, and I could scarcely see the liquid in the laudanum bottle. I unscrewed the top again, breathing it in. This time, I was not returned to my childhood, but to a more recent time, a descent into black water teeming with fishes with bright eyes, silver carapaces and teeth like fork tines. Two men with wolves’ heads were staring down at me from above, flies circling and landing in their fur. Their faces wavered on the surface of the water, and I could hear the muffled sound of someone humming. And that noise – jangle, thump, jangle, thump, jangle, thump – like a dog pulling its chain, like a child being pushed on a swing, like metal shutters blowing in the wind. The taste of salt on my tongue, the light slanting against an attic ceiling. Would I never be rid of it?

Rosie had saved me before, but she wasn’t here now.

I put the bottle to my lips and closed my eyes.

A knock on the front door interrupted me: bang, bang, bang. I almost ignored it. A visitor for Alfie was no business of mine, and I didn’t want to go through the whole rigmarole with the bottle again. I was set on my path and wanted no distractions. But there was something about that knock. It was neither loud nor quiet, neither hurried nor languid. It contained a firmness, a determination. I recognised it.

I put down the bottle and ran to the door, feeling my fingers shaking with excitement as I pulled it open.

‘Rosie!’

My smile quickly faded.

She was standing in the doorway with her hands clutched in front of her and a look on her face of utter blankness, as though she was feeling every emotion at once and they’d cancelled each other out.

‘Leo,’ she said. ‘You have to come with me tomorrow morning.’

‘To where?’

‘To Portsmouth. Bill’s been murdered and the house ransacked. Viola’s lost her mind with grief. There’s no choice now. We have to go back.’