The Devil's Breath (14 page)

T
he Oxford Chapel in de Vere Street was but a five-minute walk from Seymour Street. Shortly before the appointed hour of ten o’clock a carriage carrying Thomas, Lydia, and Eliza drew up outside the church. All three of them remained inside, watching and waiting for the maid, too tense to talk. Now and again a deep sob took hold of Eliza at the memory of her dead sister and she shook like a rag poppet. Lydia placed a comforting arm around her, although she, too, was fighting back her own tears. It had been agreed not to reveal the news of Agnes’s death to the maid, Maddie, until she had divulged the information she deemed so important.

The light was almost gone, but the glow of the street lamps illuminated the church steps where three beggars huddled in the Doric porch. A young couple strolled past, followed by an older man with a limp. A landau rattled along and off toward Oxford Street. The clock struck ten, but the thoroughfare was deserted.

“She’s not coming,” said Lydia.

Thomas remained calm. “She will come,” he told her. “We must be patient.”

A stray mongrel trotted into view, cocked its leg on the corner of a pillar, and went on its way. It was then that Thomas spotted a rustling in the bushes next to the church. A slight figure, its head bent, emerged from the shadows and mounted the steps.

“There she is,” he said softly. “I shall go first, then signal to you both.”

Gently, and without wishing to draw attention to his presence, he opened the carriage door and made his way up the steps of the church. He could see the young woman clearly now as she stood in the weak pool of light cast by a lantern in the porch. She wore a brown hooded cape that half covered her face, casting her freckled nose in shadow. She stood her ground as Thomas approached.

“Good evening, miss,” said Thomas, touching his tricorn respectfully.

The maid gave a short curtsy. “Sir,” she replied.

“There is something you wish to tell me about Agnes Appleton?”

She looked about her in a circumspect manner. “First I need to know why you want to find her.”

Thomas understood the maid’s wish to protect Agnes from any unwanted attentions. “That is simple,” he replied. “I have here Agnes’s sister and the mother of the boy in her charge. They are both anxious to know what has become of them.” He spun ’round and gave the signal for Lydia and Eliza to approach. The girl also turned to see the coachman helping the two women alight from the carriage.

At the sight of the lady and her maid, Maddie’s eyes narrowed as she studied them both closely, her eyes darting from Eliza to Lydia. “She spoke of her sister,” she said softly, her look set on Eliza. “There is much likeness, sir,” she added, shaking her head.

“So you knew Agnes?” Thomas knew he had to tread carefully with his questions. She was risking her own livelihood by meeting them.

“Yes, sir,” replied the maid, watching mistress and maid mount the steps toward them. As they drew level, he could see the girl was scrutinizing their faces closely.

“You have Agnes’s mouth,” she said, addressing Eliza. But it was to Lydia that she directed her most forthright remarks. “The likeness!” she exclaimed as she studied her.

“Likeness to whom?” intervened Thomas.

“To Master Richard, of course,” replied the maid. “The same eyes, the same hair . . .”

At her words Lydia could control her emotions no longer. She rushed forward and grasped the maid’s hands. “Do you know where he is? Please tell me.”

Thomas put his arms about Lydia’s shoulders and gently drew her away from the girl, who was shocked and overwhelmed by her reaction.

“Her ladyship has not seen her son for six years,” Thomas explained.

Maddie composed herself. “I was told Mr. Crick was a widower and that Master Rich and his nursemaid, that were Agnes, would be staying with us for a while. All I know is Agnes was a good friend to me, sir, and when my mistress turned her and the boy out the house, it were a bad day.”

“How long ago was that?” pressed Thomas.

The maid lifted a finger to her freckled face in thought. “More than a year ago, sir. That’s why I was fair taken by surprise when she came the other day.”

Thomas and Lydia shot glances at each other. “You saw Agnes recently?” asked the doctor.

“Why yes, sir. Came to the house. In a right state she were. Looked all wan, she did.”

“Do you know why? Was my son with her?” Lydia was growing more agitated.

The maid shook her head. “No, madam,” she replied, delving into the folds of her cape. “But she did leave me this.” In her small hand she clutched a folded piece of paper. “Agnes asked me to see that Master Richard got it.” She held the letter on the palm of her hand for a moment, tantalizingly close to Lydia. Thomas was afraid she might snatch it, but she did not. Under the boy’s name, he could make out an address.

“We will see that it is delivered safely to Master Richard,” Thomas assured her. He held out his hand slowly to receive the letter.

For a second the maid paused, shook her head, and withdrew the letter back into the folds of her cape. “Agnes said I was only to give it to him if something bad happened to her.”

Thomas stiffened, but his expression gave him away. The maid’s eyes darted to Lydia’s, then Eliza’s.

“She’s in trouble, isn’t she?” The color was draining away from her dappled cheeks as she spoke.

Thomas nodded. “I am afraid so.”

“Dead?”

Although none of them replied immediately, Eliza’s tears that suddenly welled up and broke forth, spoke volumes.

The maid shook her head. “Did she . . .?”

“They pulled her body from the river this morning,” answered Thomas.

Raising her eyes heavenward, the girl sighed deeply and retrieved the letter. “I was afraid she might do something like that,” she murmured, handing Thomas the missive. “Maybe this will tell you why.”

 

As soon as she saw her son’s name written on the paper, Lydia’s hands had flown to her face. “He’s alive,” she had exclaimed. “He must be!” But her joy was tempered when next she read the address:
Care of Mr. Benjamin Faulks, Chimney Sweep, Bermondsey.

The letter remained unopened on Lydia’s lap on the journey back to Hollen Street. She stared at it as if it were some talisman that was mesmerizing her. It was not until they were all seated around the table in the dining room that Thomas handed her the paper knife to break the seal.

With a trembling hand, Lydia took the knife, but could not bring herself to slice through the red wax. She fumbled for a moment, then dropped the knife, sending it clattering on the table. Thomas retrieved it and, without ceremony, slit the seal and unfolded the paper to reveal a page of script written in a light hand. He cleared his throat and began to read out loud:

Thomas looked up to see tears rolling down Eliza’s cheeks. Her mistress put a comforting arm around her, even though she, too, was close to breaking down.

Lydia gazed expressionless into the distance. “He is a pipe boy,” she said softly. “She sold him to a sweep.”

Thomas looked up at her. “He is alive,” he cried. “Richard is alive.” At least for the time being, he thought to himself. So many pipe boys only lasted a few months. If they did not die stuck up a chimney, a fatal respiratory disease or testicular cancer would finish many of them off. Either those ills or a beating from their cruel task masters nearly always cut short their young lives. Master Richard’s chances of survival were now severely curtailed in light of Agnes’s letter. But he could not let his fears show. He also knew Lydia would have to be convinced that this was good news. He forced a smile, and she responded.

“Yes, he is alive,” she conceded. “We must thank God for that.”

 

Thomas obtained special permission from the Westminster coroner, Sir Peregrine Crisp, to handle Agnes Appleton’s corpse. Normally a postmortem would not be deemed necessary in such a case. Londoners were as used to seeing bodies dragged out of the Thames as they were teeth in a barber’s shop. But Thomas had promised Eliza that her sister would receive a decent burial and would not be consigned to a pauper’s grave or, worse still, buried at a crossroads, the fate accorded to most suicides.

As she lay on the marble dissecting slab in his laboratory, he recalled how she had appeared on the landing stage by the stairs. There had been fine foam around her lips and when he had pressed her chest, more had appeared. He knew that if Agnes had been alive when she entered the river, water would have entered her air passages, along with inspired air. It would have been mixed with mucus and churned in the windpipe, like soap produces froth in a copper. He pressed her chest once again. More foam trickled out. There was no doubt she had been alive when she hit the water.

Next he inspected her hands. They had seen work, but they remained young. Turning them over, he examined her fingers. They were wrinkled but her palms were still smooth, suggesting to him that she had been in the water for fewer than twenty-four hours. Moving down her body to her legs, Thomas saw that one, her left, appeared broken. He felt the shin bone. It was fractured just below the knee. He felt the other leg. There was a similar fracture there, too, suggesting that she had cracked both limbs when she hit the water. Furthermore, there was no sign of a struggle or a beating. All the evidence pointed to the fact that she jumped off a bridge. The weight of her clothes pulled her down and the tide had dragged her a few hundred yards downstream. Yet it was not so much how Agnes Appleton died that troubled Thomas, but why. Just what had made her do such a thing?

Reluctantly he decided to conduct an intimate examination. The large round sores confirmed his fears. Agnes was suffering from the early stages of syphilis. She had, in all likelihood, been forced into prostitution, like so many young women who fell on hard times. He folded the cloth back over her face. How like Eliza she was, he thought to himself, but the body was beginning to turn in the heat and there was no time for sentimentality.

It was growing late and he found Lydia sitting alone in the drawing room, staring forlornly at the topaz earring the woman at the workhouse in Hungerford had given her.

“We shall look for this Mr. Faulks first thing tomorrow,” he assured her, settling himself beside her. “We
will
find Richard.”

D
eath was beginning to visit the parish of Brandwick so regularly that the Reverend Lightfoot rarely left the church during what few hours of daylight there were. He found himself either in the vestry, writing up the register of deaths—there were very few baptisms and no marriages at all—or conducting funeral services in the nave. Only yesterday he had buried two more men and a child not four years old. Joseph Makepeace had asked for an extra pair of hands to help him turn the graveyard sods. In fact, the vicar was coming to regard funerals as rather mundane. They were neither celebrations of lives lived well, nor mournful services for those tragically cut short in their prime. They were mere formalities.

He looked at the miniature of Margaret that he kept on his desk in the study. How he missed her guiding hand in everything he did. He still found himself asking for her opinion on matters, then turning to find no one there. So often he had told those recently bereaved that their loved ones had only passed to the other side. They were still present, albeit invisible. Only now he was coming to realize that this was not as simple as it sounded—it may even be a falsehood. When he spoke to her she never replied and soon, he feared, he would forget her voice, the way she walked, even her smile.

The sun’s angry face had been screened behind the fog yet again, so he had worked by candlelight. The study door was open and, as he gazed at the little portrait, he heard his maid’s footsteps coming along the corridor. There was a knock.

“You have a visitor, sir,” she told him. “Mistress Kidd.”

For a moment he froze.

“Shall I show her in, sir?”

“Yes. Yes,” he said slowly, as if in two minds about receiving her. A moment later, Susannah appeared at the threshold.

“Mistress Kidd. What brings you here?” he asked, rising from his chair. She walked in slowly, carrying a basket.

“I have come to thank you, sir,” she replied.

“For what?” His manner was strangely abrupt.

“For the funeral service, sir.”

He nodded his head.

“And to say sorry, sir,” she continued.

“Sorry?”

She lifted her gaze. “For the way I . . .”

His body grew rigid at the recollection of the moment in the cottage; how a thousand volts of electricity had surged through his frame at this woman’s touch, as if he had been struck by lightning.

“Very well,” he said, not daring to look at her.

There was an awkward silence until she stepped forward. “I brought you this,” she said, removing a cloth from her basket to reveal a pie. “ ’Tis apple,” she told him with a smile. “From my own orchard.” He did not look at it as she placed the pie dish on his desk, but kept his eyes lowered.

“Thank you,” he said.

Another difficult pause followed before the widow took her leave.

“I best be on my way, sir,” she told him, giving a shallow curtsy.

“Very well,” he said. Then he instructed the maid: “Show Mistress Kidd out, if you please.”

The girl did as she was told, bade the visitor a good day, and returned to the study. “Is there anything else you need, sir?”

The vicar shook his head. “No, thank you,” he replied. But just as she was heading toward the door again, he called her back. “There is one more thing.”

“Yes, sir?”

He pointed to the apple pie on his desk. “Take that and feed it to the pigs.”

 

Gabriel Lawson lived in a comfortable estate house that had once been inhabited by the late, and not-at-all lamented, lawyer James Lavington, who had died at the hands of Francis Crick. It lay overlooking Plover’s Lake on the Boughton estate. He had been given a small staff and a reasonable living, even though he found it necessary to supplement his income by other means on occasion. His gambling habits were proving a little costly and he had resorted to what he called “borrowing” a few pounds a month from the estate’s accounts to cover his expenses.

That evening he had poured himself a brandy and was sitting by the fire awaiting his supper when there was a knock. A moment later his housekeeper appeared and exhorted him to come to the back door. There stood Ned Perkins in the half light of a murky evening. He was fingering his hat and looking troubled.

“What is it?” asked Lawson.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I thought you needed to know he’s back.”

Lawson sighed. “The knife-grinder?”

The foreman nodded sheepishly. “He be talking to the men now, by the threshing barns. Stirring things, he is.”

Without a word, Lawson brushed past Perkins and marched over to the stables. Saddling up his horse, he rode out of the yard. “I’ll soon put paid to that troublemaker,” he said, galloping off toward the barns about a mile down the track.

The steward found Joshua Pike standing on a bale of hay, addressing at least two score men. The light was dim and a few carried flaming torches. Lawson could see some of their faces in the half glow, men like Jack Budd and Tim Blackwell, men who were good workers. He was disturbed that they had allowed their heads to be turned by this rabble-rouser. Even more worrying was the fact that here were others, too, whom he did not recognize. Strangers, workers from nearby estates, he guessed.

As he approached he could hear some of Pike’s words.

“Every day this poison fog lingers you are risking your lives, and for what?” he cried, his arm rising and falling as he spoke.

Some of the men cried “Aye,” in response. He was confident, belligerent, confrontational in his manner. If he wanted a fight, Gabriel Lawson told himself, he was ready for one.

Skirting ’round the crowd, he guided his horse up to the bale where Pike was standing and loomed over him. Yet instead of falling silent, the young man, without bothering to look at the steward, pointed at him and cried out: “See, you are not free men. They would keep you in chains!”

Incensed, Lawson nudged his horse closer to the knife-grinder, so that the animal’s breath wreathed his head. “You are trespassing, Pike,” he snarled. “This is private land.”

But the troublemaker ignored Lawson’s words. Instead, he carried on addressing the men. “Have you no right to the land you work, brothers?”

The steward felt his blood begin to boil. Such insolence. Such effrontery. He surveyed the men below. Some of them had directed their gaze toward him. Budd and Blackwell and a few others wore worried frowns. They started to retreat into the shadows. Seeing their wavering, Lawson decided to take advantage.

“Have you not been given scarves and gloves to protect you from the fog while you work?” he cried. A few men mumbled in reply. “Have your hours not been lessened?” They were turning. He could see it in their gestures. Some of them muttered to each other. “Go home to your families and no more will be said,” he told them.

The workers began to peel off in twos and threes, despite the knife-grinder’s exhortations. “We will win, brothers!” he called. “Be strong!” But his appeals were now falling on deaf ears, as more and more turned their backs on him and melted away into the murky darkness, Perkins among them.

Now Lawson bent low from his horse down toward the bale, so that his face was level with Pike’s. Finally the young man turned; his tanned features bathed in the glow from a sconce that blazed nearby. He was smiling insolently.

“If I catch you on this land again, I’ll see that you swing,” hissed Lawson.

Still smiling, Pike shook his red-swathed head. “Your men may give you no choice,” he said. “If this fog kills many more, you’ll have to up their wages.”

Lawson was minded to wipe the brazen smirk from his face with the back of his hand, but he restrained himself. The law was on his side. “Get out of my sight and never come back here again,” he growled through clenched teeth.

The knife-grinder nodded, but he knew he had scored another small victory. He jumped down from the bale, strode over to his mule, and mounted it.

“You should never underestimate the power of your men, Mr. Lawson,” he called as he turned and headed down the track.

The steward shook his fist at him as he watched the mule carrying this thorn in his side back down the lane. That was the problem, he told himself. He knew only too well the sort of things his men were capable of.