The Devil's Ribbon (19 page)

SEVENTEEN

HIGHGATE

She was sitting in the garden on a bench under the shadow of a willow tree, all tousled hair and girlish grace reading a book, her lips mouthing words which might have been a prayer. Hatton couldn’t tell, but what I wouldn’t give, he thought. One night of bliss with a girl like her? Was it the languid air? The blackbirds calling each other across the garden, heady with desire? Or simply the rays bouncing off a brooch, clipped on her glistening mourning silks, so that as he walked up the long gravel path, he was blinded by her and his eyes rested where they shouldn’t have.

There were long shadows in the lawn, the shifting shapes of a late summer evening. A coppery grey bird flitted at her feet and as he watched her, unnoticed, she took a handful of seeds from her pocket
to feed it. He hesitated, because for just a second he wanted to stay like this, watching her, hidden by an overgrown rose, but she must have heard the gate swing or the crunch of his boots on the gravel that snaked up to the door of White Lodge. She looked up from her book, blushed, a spreading colour across milk-white cheeks. He stepped out from the bower of the roses and tipped his hat.

‘Do you bring news of my husband?’

Hatton took his derby off, sweaty in his hands, slicked his hair back a little, but her clear voice – ‘Well, Professor?’ – strengthening his resolve that he was right to come here. But that he must tread carefully. This was a murder case, after all. In any other situation, he would have wooed her, brought a little present, a spray of freesias, and not talked of death, as he knew he must. But death was what brought them together. An intimate space, which shifted between them.

‘May I?’ He gestured to the bench.

‘Please,’ she said, tucking unruly locks back up into an unkempt chignon, composing herself. He didn’t take his eyes off her for a minute.

‘Lemonade?’

‘Please, Mrs McCarthy, don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account.’

But the widow was insistent and rang the servants’ bell.

‘So,’ she said with concern on her face.

He leant down and opened his medical bag, catching a brief sight of ankles nestled in lace. She cleared her throat. So he shifted his eyes away from their sharp, jutting shape and found his notebook. He deliberately sat at the far end of the bench.

‘I’m sorry to be so blunt, Mrs McCarthy, but I think, under the
circumstances, straight talking is the only way. Another is dead, and we have reason to believe it was the same people who murdered your husband.’

‘But why hasn’t the Inspector called on me? He hasn’t told me anything.’

‘There’s been a riot in Limehouse, Irish agitators, a factory owner murdered and …’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘News travels fast and I’m truly sorry about the factory owner, God rest his soul, but I also heard that children were butchered like dogs and that the soldiers used cannons, guns, anything they could do to quell men armed with only placards and cudgels. Without the mill, those men will starve, Professor.’

Hatton looked briefly to the ground, unable to offer an answer, because what words could express the butchery he’d witnessed?

‘My God,’ she said, ‘were you there? Did you actually see it?’

‘A child was dead. Another man died in my arms. A third, I tried to save but all I had was some morphine, some splints …’ He felt his eyes smart, he swallowed hard. She didn’t take her eyes off him for one minute, as Hatton, determined, pressed on. ‘What happened was a disgrace, but the man who was murdered at the mill today, a Mr Hecker, bought land in Ardara and knew your husband, madam, and that is why I came.’

‘I see.’ She stood up and walked away from him towards a small, ornamental lily pond.

He followed her with, ‘Well, Mrs McCarthy?’

She turned. ‘Well what, Professor?’ She had tears in her eyes.

‘I’m sorry if this pains you, but the man who died bought four
hundred acres of Donegal coastline from your late husband, back in ’47. The deed of sale was witnessed by another man who’s missing, possibly dead, name of Gustave Pomeroy. Did you know these men?’

She looked astonished. ‘As God is my witness, I’ve never heard these names before.’

‘Gustave Pomeroy lived in Spitalfields, has been missing ten days or more, and was like you, madam, a Catholic. He was known to politicians like your husband, and by all accounts was extremely devout. There’s only one Catholic church of any note in this city and that’s the Sacred Heart. Are you sure you haven’t heard of him?’

She looked him straight in the eyes. ‘Believe me when I tell you, I never met him. The congregation in St Giles is large, and like much of Soho, mainly foreign. Spanish traders, Italian entertainers, the French from Spitalfields, and my people, of course. When my husband refound his faith, he insisted on attending the evening mass and chefs work late, don’t they?’

‘Very.’

‘Well, there’s your answer. He probably went to mass in the morning and that’s why I never met him. And if you want to know about the details of the estate, you must ask my brother-in-law. My late husband was twenty years older than me. He told me little on matters pertaining to business. My country was devastated. Land was cheap. All I know is my husband ran a works committee, trying to build roads, giving handouts and selling off land; he only tried to help people.’

‘By selling off land? I’m not sure I follow.’

She sighed. ‘It’s complicated, truly it is.’

She sat down on the edge of the lily pond.

Hatton stood next to her, looking at the orange petals on the surface of the water. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

She swished the petals away. ‘The estate is a creature with its own heart and its own lungs, Professor. My husband’s family bequeathed its management way back when. Nobody really knows who owns the land. Some long-dead English nobleman? But Gabriel knew his duty. By selling off the land, he raised capital to try and help feed the starving tenants with imported Indian corn. These were desperate times and Gabriel did his best.’ She ran her hand through the glassy water.

Hatton sat next to her, the air thick and cloying. ‘Did he save people?’ he asked, as she took her hand from the water glistening wet, her skin the colour of a pearl, he thought. Without another word, he took a calico cloth from his medical bag. She gave him her hand as he dabbed, twisting her body around to face him.

‘Perhaps you’ve heard of Peel’s Brimstone?’ she said, with a strength of voice he hadn’t heard before. She left her hand in his. ‘Bright yellow,’ she said. ‘Your old prime minister, Robert Peel, bought cheap Indian corn from America to try and placate the troublesome Irish. He bought too little, far too late, and anyway, it was rough, too rough for milling. People shattered their teeth on it, trying to make it into bread. The corn gave us bellyaches and worse than that, those babies that were fed it were poisoned. That’s why we called it brimstone, for after the first few deaths, no one would touch it.’ Her eyes were suddenly full of tears again. ‘There were riots then, too. Women screaming for food they couldn’t even eat, men wailing like animals driven mad by the hunger,
having buried their entire families, but why am I telling you this? I don’t even know you. But I think you love children? You saw a boy die. I can see in your face, you feel responsibility, don’t you?’

‘I’m a doctor. I took a Hippocratic oath to save lives, not be part of a bloodbath.’

She shifted closer. ‘But I thought you only dealt with death?’

He looked deep in her eyes and saw that look, that look when a couple knows, and felt himself falling, but also, at the same time, angry, misjudged. If she asked such naive questions, then he would have to teach her. ‘Pathologists deal with life, madam.
Mortui vivos docent
? It means the dead teach the living. These last few months I have worked on nothing but cholera. I’ve chopped up countless bodies and it’s a simple medical fact that we all have to die. But what makes me angry is when I see children who have had no life at all. The boy I saw at Limehouse was nine years old. No words can describe what I felt.’

‘I know of death, too. But it doesn’t seem right to speak of these terrible things and call you
Professor
.’ She shifted closer still. ‘Tell me who you are, who you
really
are?’

‘Adolphus,’ he said, feeling the warmth of her hand, now firmly in his.

She hesitated, sighed, and then took her hand away with the merest press of her fingers. ‘My hand is dry. My tears, too. See?’ She brushed her skirt down and stood up from the edge of the pond saying, ‘I was reading a book when you came. Happy tales told by one of my cousins, who now resides in Canada. Such wonderful stories of log cabins, black bears, wolves, endless winters along the mighty Lawrence. It sounds like a harsh life but an honest one. To grow your own food, to till your own land, to have freedom?’

‘Freedom? It’s a nice word.’

She smiled. ‘In Ireland we say
Saoirse
. It’s something all Irish dream of. Have you travelled much, Adolphus?’

He shook his head, relieved to change the subject away from the dead but not a jot sorry for his outburst. People needed to know that only by studying death did truth unfold for the living.

‘I studied in Scotland. I became a surgeon there and then a pathologist. And for reasons of my own, had an interest in crime, which led me to forensics, but tell me …’ He hesitated. ‘That word you just said? I’ve heard it before … what does it
really
mean?’

She looked delighted to know something he didn’t know. ‘
Saoirse
? It means freedom, as I said, but it can also mean, “let go of me, give me liberty.”’

He laughed, of course. ‘That’s why she had said the word over and over again. My God, all this time and now at last I know.’

She inclined her head. ‘She? So who were you imprisoning?’

‘A girl.’ He laughed.

She smiled. ‘A girl? A girl you captured?’

‘I think I must have done.’

‘Was she your sweetheart? Do you think I’m very bold for asking?’

He reddened. ‘No, no. Not at all.’

He was wishing he could hold her hand again and was just about to tell her what an enigma she was, when the maid appeared with a tray, a cut-glass jug, and a curt, ‘Lemonade, madam?’

‘Thank you, Florrie.’ But the maid didn’t go away. ‘Are you all right, Florrie? You are terribly flushed.’

Florrie kept looking over her shoulder. ‘No, I am not all right,’ said
the maid, slightly hopping from one foot to the other. ‘I’m all of a dither, as you can see, madam, and the damn servant’s privy is …’

‘Florrie! I won’t have such language …’

‘Can’t help it, madam. But if I tell the truth, I’ll only go and ruin it.’

‘Ruin what? You speak in riddles. What is it?’

The maid blushed, twisted her foot in the gravel like a wilful child. ‘Just …’

Hatton intervened. ‘Come along now, Florrie. Tell us.’

‘You’ll laugh …’

‘Nobody’s going to laugh. Just say it.’

‘I’ll not say it in front of the gentleman, madam …’

Sorcha tilted her head and said with an audible sigh, ‘Very well?’ The maid duly whispered in her ear and Sorcha looked cross. ‘Stuff and nonsense. And on the eve of your master’s funeral? Your head’s away with them, Florrie, that’s for sure. You need to rest, to sit down in the cool a little. Fairies? Really, Florrie!’

‘Well, you can think what you like, madam, but I saw them. Maybe they’re wood sprites come to see the master off, drifting on the air like pollen, and you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face when the clock strikes midnight and the spooks come out of their graves in the Necropolis and …’

Hatton grabbed the maid. ‘Tell me what you saw? Precisely what you saw? And more to the point,
where
?’

Sorcha started to talk, but Hatton held his hand to the mistress to stop, as the maid said, ‘At first I thought they were dust motes, but I cleaned that privy. The servant’s privy, sir, the one beyond the coppice of hazels? Light was streaming in through the slit window, the air full
of spangles, so I says to myself, what’s all this? For I was, excuse me, sir, squatting and looking up, but then, there was such flittering and I’m sure I heard one of them whisper and I was so overcome with excitement, well, I didn’t even wipe myself …’

‘Florrie!’

‘Gentleman doesn’t seem to mind. Sure look at his face, madam, he’s lapping it up …’

‘Stay right put! Both of you …’ yelled Hatton as he ran towards the privy, spotlessly clean last time he saw it. The servants’ privy doubling up as a kind of store cupboard for garden tools, rat traps, mothballs, seedlings.

‘What is it?’ The widow hadn’t stayed put, but hovered directly behind him in the lime-washed privy. He turned to her, gesturing at his medical bag, which she quickly passed to him.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, scraping up the tiniest trace of silver. ‘But who has keys for this place?’

‘Florrie, of course, not that we ever lock it, and oh, yes, Damien. He keeps his tools here as you can see – the rat traps and fertiliser for the flowers.’ She put her hand to her throat, her fingers on the edge of the diamond brooch. ‘He’s not in any trouble is he?’ Her eyes were grey in this light, lunar like the moon, an odd sheen to her face, her voice strained.