When Charles opens his eyes the following morning, he can tell at once that the weather has changed. He already loves this room – the way river reflections play across the ceiling on sunny days, flickering chains of light into bright geometric shapes. But not today. This morning the room is filled with that off-white over-white glow that means only one thing: snow. He dislodges a heavy and very sleepy cat from the counterpane and goes to the window to look out over the roof-tops. The flakes are coming down in huge clumps, slow and steady, and the skylight overhead is gradually layering with translucent grey. There’s a perfect inch of snow on the parapet, and on the ledge, a track of large, fastidious pad-prints to show where Thunder beat a tactical retreat sometime during the night.
The house is suddenly very cold, and Charles gets dressed quickly among his heaps of boxes; he really must find time to arrange his collection properly, now he finally has the space to do it. He slides a hand, half-automatically, down the side of one of the cases to reassure himself his pistol-case is still where he left it. And if you’re surprised to find he owns such a thing, it is not, after all, so very unusual that he should: just like any other young man brought up in the country in the first half of the nineteenth century, he learned to handle a rifle hunting rabbits as a boy, and thinks no more of owning a gun than of taking laudanum when he has a tooth-ache, though both would brand him a dangerous delinquent now. He is, by the way, rather good at shooting, and keeps his hand in at a little rundown gallery he knows near Leicester Square. He is also – as you have just seen – assiduous to ensure that the pistol is always safely stowed. But for all his precautions, and all his care, this gun of his may still prove to be his undoing.
The only person up and about downstairs is Molly, who’s on her knees raking out the hearth in the drawing-room. He stops on the stairs a moment, then takes a step or two into the room.
‘It’s cold today.’
She tilts her head slightly towards him, as if to show she’s heard, but does not look up; there is no break in the slow, methodical movement of her large rough hands across the sooty tiles. He wonders if she’s seen snow before; wonders, in fact, how long she’s been in England, and whether the unforgiving sunlight of her native land – wherever that is – might not now be stranger to her than the dank grey London streets. He eats what he can find in the kitchen (bread and butter only, since the bacon is still frying), and then trudges through the thickening snow to the Strand, a flurry of white flakes settling on his eyelashes and his hair and his coat (though this time, at least, he has retrieved his muffler).
There’s an even longer queue than usual for the omnibus, and Charles can barely feel his feet by the time it arrives. He has to change twice more before he’s finally heading south towards the river, the gritty, partly frozen snow churning under the wheels like gravel and the horses slithering on the icy stones. It’s not the best day for such a journey, but now he has both a genuine lead and a point to prove, and not just to his client, but to himself: the next time he and Tulkinghorn meet, he wants it to be at his request, not the lawyer’s. And given that knowledge is power – especially when it comes to a man like Tulkinghorn – if there is indeed something about this case the old man is concealing, Charles wants to find out what that is, so he can decide for himself what information to give, and what to keep. All of which makes perfect sense, of course, but since as far as we know he’s had no new information, how is it that he’s suddenly so sure of where he should be going? And where – for that matter – is he going? That question, at least, is easy enough to answer. Maddox told him he’s looking for a tanner, and that being the case, even a half-competent London detective would know where to start: Bermondsey. This densely packed district barely one mile across holds more tanners, curriers, fellmongers, parchment-makers, wool-staplers, leather-dressers, and glue-makers than the rest of the country put together. Dyeing they do here too, though dying has been more prevalent of late – over six thousand were killed by cholera in the last year, so overcrowded is this strip of land hard by the Thames, and so hard the subsistence for those who live here. As the ’bus hauls slowly over London Bridge, the footways on both sides are thronged with people, some workers, some tradesmen, and some poor stitchers from south of the river, carrying huge canvas bags made for the wealthy wool-merchants on the other side. The snow is too thick to see far in either direction, but Charles can make out the dark wharves and wherries of Shad Thames, and further away still, the dim outline of Jacob’s Island, with its warehouses, docks, bridges, and alleys, bristling with the masts of ships. Less lethal now than once it was, but still an infamous slum, the houses clustered thick and the rooms cramped and stinking, overhanging water that clogs with refuse, and sewage that empties hourly into open ditches.
It will not surprise you to find that this part of London is not much frequented by the idly inquisitive (though Charles Dickens himself will make almost exactly this journey in a few months’ time). Nor is it an area that Charles knows well, so when he swings down from the ’bus at Tooley Street, he asks the driver what he suggests.
‘Start with the Skin Depository, guv. Up ahead off Bermondsey Street. On yer right.’
The quadrangle of buildings proves surprisingly elegant for such a down and dirty trade, but there’s no disguising what’s really being bought and sold here. Men with stained hands and soiled aprons press close against him, and laden carts push at him through the throng, leaving a trail of dark, viscous slime matted with hanks of animal hair. Inside the Depository there are stacks of hides and wet skins piled in bays on every side of the courtyard, horns still dangling from slices of skull, and while the buyers do their rounds in their black coats and tall hats, picking over the merchandise and questioning its quality, a horde of bedraggled little boys follows them from carcase to carcase, stripping them of any flesh still edible, however rotten it smells. Charles suddenly feels rather ill. The air is sickly with blood, and the snow is treading red into the mud under his feet. He’s wearing the wrong boots for this. He takes as deep a breath as the evil air will allow, and heads for one of the more respectable-looking fellmongers. A slight little man with a thin, nasal whine. He’s courteous enough to start with, but lapses into indifference when it becomes clear Charles has not come with money to spend. He claims to know nothing of the tanneries, and even less of the men who work there. In any case, there are scores of them – hundreds even. But if Charles is intent on such a hopeless quest, he should probably start by enquiring in Long Lane. There must be a good twenty establishments there.
*
And so it proves. Charles has never really thought much about leather production before, and even though Maddox’s words should have prepared him for something of what he’s about to find, the reality still comes as a shock. If the smell was rank in the market, it’s ten times worse here. The first tannery he finds has a narrow entrance under two overhead gangways, and when he reaches the inner yard he finds a group of men stripping a cartload of new hides of their last scraps of bone before loading them into one of a score of lime pits. Another heavier man has a wet hide slung over a wooden frame, and is deftly stripping the hair and spongy white fat with a two-handled blade. In the corner, a coil of steam rises slowly from a bating tank of pale, cloudy water; there are brown sticky clods floating on the surface, and believe me, it’s only too horribly obvious what they are. Looking at the man at work on the carcase, Charles no longer questions how the letter sent to Sir Julius Cremorne gained its distinctive smell – it must be next to impossible to rid their hands of the stink; though what strange thread it is that connects two men from such disparate strata of London society is even more obscure to him now than it was before. He makes his way carefully across the yard towards the man; the snow has all but stopped but the whole area is an inch deep in slop and grease, and most of the workers are splashed to the knees.
‘Could I talk to you for a moment?’
The man looks up, then back at his work. ‘I’m busy. What are you – police, or what?’
Charles shakes his head. ‘No, not police. But I am looking for someone.’
The man looks up again, for longer this time, but says nothing.
‘I’m trying to find a man who does a job like yours.’
‘Thinking of openin’ a tanner’s, are you? Nah, I didn’t think so somehow. Look, I don’t know who you are or what you’re after, but I’m not about to get some other poor bugger into trouble. ’Cause trouble’s all that can be comin’ from a face like yours.’
Charles wants to deny it but knows he can’t. Lying is the one tool of his trade he’s never really mastered. He tries another tack. ‘Sounds to me like you come from round here.’
The man eyes him guardedly. ‘What’s that to you?’
‘I assume most of the men who work here are Bermondsey boys?’
The man puts the knife down and looks Charles full in the face. He’s a big man, and thickly built, with a shaven head and a dark indistinct tattoo on the side of his neck. ‘Bermondsey boys?’ he echoes, his voice barely able to contain his contempt. ‘What are you, some kind of bloody nancy? Looking for a bit of local rough and ready?’ This last is accompanied by a particularly lewd gesture, and before Charles can react, he’s reached out a hand dripping with fat and taken him by the chin like a girl, to the coarse amusement of the rest of the yard. ‘Well we might just be able to help you there, what do you think, lads?’
Something flickers red in Charles’ brain, and though he’s barely half the man’s weight, he seizes his thick wrist and tries to force his fingers away. ‘Get your stinking hands off me.’
The man comes closer and brings his face within a kiss of Charles’. ‘Oh really?’ he says softly. ‘So you don’t like the way I smell? Well in that case, why don’t you take your pretty face and your fancy voice, and hook it. We don’t take to the likes of you round ’ere, and we look after our own. Am I makin’ myself clear?’
The man puts both hands on Charles’ chest and pushes him roughly away. He stumbles, landing flat on his back in the muck, and only just misses drowning himself in the bating trough. The viscous white filth is clinging to his face, and he wipes it away in furious disgust. He gets to his feet and retreats across the yard with as much dignity as he can manage. One or two of them grab at his backside as he leaves, and when he reaches the gate, the yard behind him, the air is raucous with laughter and strident whistling.
He made a complete mess of it, he knows that. Well-spoken stranger asking leading questions; small wonder the man was wary. He should have known better. At the building next door he adopts different tactics, and opts to speak to the manager, not the men, but it doesn’t get him much further. The man is harassed and only half-listens, but he claims he doesn’t know of anyone from Cornwall working in the area. And nor, indeed, does anyone else Charles asks. One owner thinks he recalls a man who might have been from those parts, but it was months ago and he can’t remember his name; another can only think of a young lad who had ‘a strange accent – thick as soup – we could hardly make out what he was saying half the time’, and a third refuses to speak to him at all, all the while eyeing Charles’ filthy trousers with obvious suspicion. By the time he reaches the end of the street, he’s beginning to wonder if he’s wasting his time. He considers for a moment asking in the Fellmongers’ Arms, but a glance through the window at the group of silent men smoking together in the gloomy taproom convinces him otherwise. He’s not sure he would even want to drink in there. And in any case, it’s getting late. He’s had enough.
The journey back is very uncomfortable. It’s not that he’s wet through from shirt to feet (though he is), or even that once the Bermondsey smell abates somewhat he finds he’s ravenously hungry (though he’s that too), it’s the looks of those around him that make him shift in his seat and look determinedly out of the window. The ’buses are more and more crowded the closer he gets to home, but even though the last one up the Strand is packed full, the only person willing to take the seat next to Charles is the smallest son of a large and alarming lady with spectacles and a prominent nose sitting opposite, who flaps her handkerchief in front of her face and says, ‘Oh, dear me, this is most trying, most trying!’ very loudly indeed, to no one in particular, for a whole slow half a mile. The child looks absolutely ferocious with discontent, and glowers at Charles’ reeking trousers as if he can never forgive the injury being done to his olfactory nerves. By the time Charles gets to Buckingham Street he wants to tear his clothes off and dump them in the nearest ditch, and as soon as he reaches the house he rushes down the back-stairs to the kitchen, looking for Molly and hot water.
Both of which he finds.
She’s standing before the kitchen grate, stripped to the waist, a bowl before her and a wash-cloth in her right hand. He’s never seen her without her starched white cap, and her hair is cut so close to her head that he can see the exquisite curve of her skull, the delicate hollow at the nape of her neck. He’s seen naked girls many times, but never one so unadorned. Her breasts are as flat as a boy’s, the nipples erect and tender in the cold air. The dark skin, the white cloth, the cool milky light from the kitchen window; it is as perfect, and as motionless, as a Vermeer. How long he stares at her, he could not have said; it’s only when she lifts her face to his, and meets his eyes for the first time in that house, that he shifts his gaze and turns away, his cheeks burning.
‘I – I wanted some hot water. To wash.’
She drops her eyes and nods, then pulls her chemise up about her shoulders.
He turns, and leaves the room.
Halfway up the stairs he hears a noise behind him, and sees Stornaway emerge on to the landing beneath.
‘Mr Charles!’ he calls. ‘Someone here to see ye.’
‘I need to change my clothes before I see anyone. Who is it – can they wait?’
‘A Mr Chadwick, it is.’
Charles stops. ‘I see. Please give him my apologies, and say I will be down without delay.’
He’s been dreading this interview; dreading it, and putting it off. But now he has to think of something to say, and quick. He peels off his revolting clothes and kicks them into a pile by the bed, then upends the cat from his next-cleanest shirt, there being no time to unearth a new one from the (still half-unpacked) trunk. He keeps his back purposefully to the door, so that when the girl comes with the water he does not see her. Ten minutes later he is almost fit for decent company; five minutes more and he is downstairs.
Mr Chadwick has appropriated the only chair in the office, though Charles can hardly begrudge it to him. He’s a frail old gentleman, neat and well-dressed, with a little grey head and a bearing that would have been stately but for a trembling in one of his hands and a certain rigidity in his limbs that makes it difficult for him to sit comfortably in his seat, and reduces him to moving in quick small shuffling steps.
When Charles opens the door, his visitor is rather ostentatiously consulting his pocket-watch.
‘Mr Chadwick, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well.’
The old man puts up his watch and looks at Charles over his gold eye-glasses. ‘I should be a great deal better if I had not chased around town half the morning looking for you. Could you not have informed me that you had removed here? A mere two lines would have sufficed, but instead of that, I not only had to waste both time and money being carried to your former lodgings, but then endure the indignity of being forced to enquire for your landlady at a common – and, I may say, most insalubrious – public-house.’
Monday, thinks Charles. Mrs Stacey’s Linen Box committee day.
‘I am very sorry you were inconvenienced, sir.’
He wants to suggest going for a second chair, but feels that in his client’s eyes he has not yet earned the right to sit down.
‘Well, sir? What have you to say for yourself?’
‘I apologize for my oversight, sir. My great-uncle was taken ill, and I had no alternative but to—’
The old man waves his hand impatiently. ‘Not that, not that. The investigation. Have you, or have you not, made any progress in discovering my grand-child?’
‘I have, as you know, interviewed the beadle in charge of the workhouse where your daughter died—’
‘Where they told me she died. There were no records, you know, no grave.’
Charles looks rueful. ‘I doubt there are many workhouse inmates who are accorded the dignity of an individual resting-place. As for the lack of proper records, it was, was it not, some time later that you first enquired?’
Chadwick starts to rub his left thumb and forefinger together; it is a tic he has, which usually indicates he is becoming anxious.
‘You know very well, Mr Maddox, that my wife and myself had been estranged from our daughter for some months before her death, and you know very well the reason why—’
‘You discovered she was with child.’
The old man is now somewhat flushed about the face; the trembling in his hand is noticeably worse.
‘I never could comprehend how such a calamity could have come upon us. Not seventeen years of age, brought up piously in a devout home, watched over day and night, schooled in the strictest observance of her religion, and ever mindful of her duty to a God who is both watchful and avenging—’
‘But merciful too, surely?’
Chadwick looks at him sharply. ‘That is not for us to say, and certainly no business of yours. I may tell you, Mr Maddox, that even in the face of such a terrible blow, I took no hasty step. I searched my conscience, I consulted members of our families, I spoke to my brother-in-law, and I sought spiritual advice from our minister, a most exemplary man, held in the highest esteem, and a most ardent speaker whose sermons draw attendance from many miles around. And there was not a dissenting opinion among them: it was our duty, as Christians, to cast her out.’ His voice falters slightly. ‘They all agreed, I tell you. Cast her out.’
‘But you changed your mind,’ says Charles quietly.
‘My wife became ill. She had argued, from the first, for leniency.’
There is a silence. The old man is breathing rather heavily.
‘Constance made me promise, on her death-bed, that I would do everything in my power to find our daughter and the child, and forgive her. I have taken that as a sacred trust. This is why I persist in this unhappy pursuit. Even after all these years. Even against my own better judgement, and the express advice of my family, who consider the venture doomed to failure.’
Charles clears his throat. ‘As I said, I have interviewed the workhouse beadle, Mr Henderson, and he has confirmed that there are no useful records remaining from that period. However, after a good deal of prompting, and a certain amount of financial inducement, he did finally remember that a Miss Jellicoe, who was then on the staff, might still be living. He promised to obtain her address for me, but I have not, as yet, heard from him. She would be very old now, but she may remember something.’
Chadwick nods; the trembling in his hand has not abated.
‘I have also,’ continues Charles, ‘seen the superintendent of the orphanage. They, like the workhouse, seem to have either mislaid the relevant papers or never kept them in the first place. However, the superintendent did recall his predecessor telling him of an outbreak of smallpox, which he believes was probably around the time in question. I am afraid we must prepare ourselves for the possibility that your grand-child fell victim to that terrible disease, when still barely a few months old.’
Chadwick nods again, more stiffly this time. ‘Anything else?’
‘I have talked to some of my former colleagues in the Detective. They have promised to inform me if they come upon anything that might assist us. I will, of course, maintain regular contact with them on this matter on your behalf.’
‘See that you do,’ says Chadwick. His moment of weakness has passed, and his voice has regained some of its former irritability. ‘And see that you keep me informed of your progress. And rather more frequently than you have hitherto, if you please. Good day to you.’
The visit has, on the whole, gone as well as Charles could have hoped, but he still feels shamefaced enough to sit down and write a second time to Henderson, to enquire whether he has yet succeeded in discovering an address for Eleanor Jellicoe. That done, and a late lunch eaten, he allows himself the indulgence of an hour or two at the British Museum. He needs to decide what to do next in the Cremorne case, and he has, as yet, no clear idea. But he thinks best when he walks, and it’s a good step to Bloomsbury, even though the weather has closed in again, and the snow is starting to fall. Outside in the street, a thin track of muddy wet paving has emerged between the frozen heaps of blackened slush, and every now and then a slab of compacted snow slips with a dull thud from the summit of one of the neighbouring roofs. Charles has left the house and is heading carefully towards the Strand when he hears his own name. It’s Tulkinghorn’s clerk, coming slowly towards him through the swirling flakes. There’s a carriage waiting at the top of the street.
‘A package for you, Mr Maddox. Those envelopes you were wanting.’
Charles thanks him and opens the packet. There are three of them. All post-marked from the Charing Cross sorting office, but all collected at different receiving-houses – receiving-houses, moreover, that are at least a mile distant from one another. He sighs. He’d been hoping they would turn out to have been posted in the same place. That would have narrowed the task down to a manageable margin. But it had always been a bit of a long shot: even the most dunder-headed criminal would have known to take that elementary precaution. He tucks them inside his coat and sets off again, more quickly this time. He thinks best when he’s walking.
The carriage pulls slowly away, and overtakes Charles a few yards further on, though he barely registers its passing, so thick is the air with the darkness of the day and the density of the snow. And so it is that he walks the length of the Strand without being in the least aware that his footsteps are being followed, and all his movements as closely watched as if he, too, were a prize specimen – one no less worthy of scrupulous surveillance, but far more vulnerable to an observing but unobserved eye. As Charles will, in due course, discover.