The Incendiary's Trail (12 page)

Once a great beauty, she had lured many a man to the tempestuous seas of her rooms, her fiery red tresses and that pale bosom being the rocks upon which many a bark had foundered. It was said
that she had been courted by men of rank and power. Now she was fat. Her soft fingers were gaudy with jewels and her second chin glistened stickily with strawberry juice. True, there might have
been traces of hair about her upper lip, and that slender waist may have ballooned, but she was still a true voluptuary: a living embodiment of the shameless and always dubious pleasures of her
Night Rooms.

‘More champagne!’ she shouted, as the last sluiced down her throat. ‘More champagne, my boys! More strawberries!’

Her attendants scuttled to fetch more treats for their mistress, leaving her momentarily alone in the room. It was a shrine to her conquests: over-spilling boxes of
billets-doux
,
jewellery lying carelessly on the mantel, and calling cards from countless men – most of them ignored. It was said that she held more secrets than anyone in London and that, as long as she
lived, there would be men all over the city who would continue to seek her favour. She was an illustrious lover, but not a woman to have as an enemy. Who can forget the case of the young doctor who
attempted to blackmail her over an alleged indiscretion? His dead body, pulled black and bloated from the river, was a warning to any who would slight her.

As she reached for the last of the strawberries, the handle began to rattle on the door leading to a rear courtyard: a heavy oaken door which was bolted and seldom used (and known to the
cognoscenti
as the ‘lovers’ door’). Indeed, a full-length mirror hung upon its back, half-disguising its existence. That mirror wobbled now as Mary shouted back at her own
reflection.

‘Use the front entrance, dear! This one is bolted. We don’t use it.’

The door stopped rattling. Then a tremendous kick ripped the bolt and lock from the jamb. A man carrying a black canvas bag entered, pushing the splintered door closed behind him.

‘Good evening, Mary.’

‘You can’t come kicking my f— door in!’ replied Ms Chatterton in characteristically salty terms. ‘Who are you, blackguard, to come bashing into my private parlour?
I should box your ears!’

The man, who had a scarf pulled over his face and a hat worn low, stepped briskly towards her and slapped her hard across the face with the back of his gloved hand.

‘Why, you —! I’ll not be hit in my own f— Rooms!’ she expostulated, struggling to haul her bulk to a standing position.

He hit her again, this time rocking her back into the chair. A trickle of blood emerged from her already fruit-reddened lips. Her eyes burned with humiliation and loathing: ‘You —!
Were I a man, I would rip out your eyes and fry them!’

And again he hit her, so that the tears in her eyes were those of pain rather than mere outrage. After this, he unbuttoned his coat and pulled a chair over to sit before her. She snivelled and
mopped her bleeding lip with a silk handkerchief. He extracted a razor from an inner pocket.

‘Now Mary, there is no need for theatricals. I want to talk to you. I trust that you will not call out further, or I will be obliged to cut your throat with this weapon and ruin that
delightful dress with your blood.’

‘Show your face, you cur, so that I might spit on it.’

‘I have been watching you, Mary. They say you know many secrets about many powerful people. They say that if you were inclined, you could blackmail half of London with the pillow-whispered
truths of your career.’

‘I am sworn to secrecy. On my honour.’

‘Your “honour”? That is amusing. They say that the greatest secrets are the ones you keep about yourself, Mary.’

‘So, you are a blackmailer. You have no information about me, d— you. My boys will soon return to find you here – then you shall see my wrath!’

‘No, they will hear a man’s voice in here as they have so many times before and they will retire until morning, when they imagine your “visiter” will leave by this
discreet door here. We will be quite undisturbed. Am I correct?’

‘Blackguard! What are you, then? Come to blackmail me? Take some jewellery and leave, you petty criminal. You shall be found later and beaten beyond recognition.’

‘I see I have not yet garnered your full attention. Perhaps you need something to focus on. Have you seen this before?’

At this, the man – who, by now, I am sure the reader has correctly identified as the ‘General’ who met Mr Bradford in the marine store – extracted Eliza-Beth’s
locket from his coat and held it before Mary’s eyes. It twirled in the gaslight.

She became rigid in her throne and paled even further. She looked behind her to the other door, hoping vainly, perhaps, that a rescuer would enter.

‘Ah,
now
I have your full attention!’ he continued. ‘Where have you seen this trinket before, Ms Chatterton?’

‘I . . . I have never seen it. It looks too cheap to be of my possession.’

‘Your expression says otherwise. Have you been to Lambeth recently, or to see the shows at Vauxhall Gardens?’

‘I have not.’ Her lower lip began to quiver.

‘Must I strike you again? I know that you have been to both.’

‘Vauxhall is a pleasant place. Why wouldn’t I go there for the music and the dancing?’

‘Or to see “Dr Zwigoff’s Anatomical Wonders”, perhaps? No answer? Mary Chatterton lost for words? You have been there on three occasions, one of them being a private
viewing of the wonders. And you have also visited the freaks at home—’

‘They are not freaks!’

‘No matter what the appellation, you have been to that boarding house in Lambeth. Tell me, have you been following the newspapers in the last couple of days?’

‘I don’t bother myself with the latest events in China, or the price of coal.’

‘Yes, you are a queen in this tiny kingdom of yours. Nothing beyond its gaiety and popping corks exists. Gossip and rumour is your only news. Still, there can be few who have not already
heard the news. Must I be the one to inform you of young Eliza-Beth?’

‘What? What of her?’

‘I perceive your concern. She is dead – most likely being boiled for her skeleton as we speak, her throat opened by a ruffian’s razor—’

‘
Liar!
’ Fat tears swelled from those once beguiling eyes and her lips crumpled. ‘Liar! She is alive! She must be alive.’

‘No, she is dead. Murdered.’

‘O! . . . I . . . I cannot bear it!’

He opened the locket and extracted the lock of red hair. He stood and held it next to Mary’s head so that the strands became quite indistinguishable from her hair.

‘A perfect match. I was curious, Mary, why you might have such an interest in the girl. When I met her for myself, the resemblance was striking. The locket merely confirmed my assumptions
– it and the letter.’

‘You have my letter?’

‘
Your
letter? No, but I have hers. She made reference to a striking similarity that she shared with her anonymous parent. She believed she knew your identity.’

‘My Eliza-Beth! . . . Show me the letter. Please.’

‘Alas, it is in a poor condition. I have it in a secure place.’

‘And now you will use it against me, is that right? Are you her murderer?’

‘Tell me the story.’

‘Why should I? Did you kill her?’

‘The girl is dead. Only you and I and perhaps the father need know the truth. I have enough to blackmail you, if that was my purpose. Was it the shame that made you forsake her?’

‘I was young and beautiful. I might have had London at my feet, but my lover – Love! What a dream! – filled my head with tales of houses and children. I was ready to settle:
the mother hen. Can you imagine? He was a good man; perhaps he would have cared for me. But I did not want one man. One man could not buy enough jewellery or champagne for one as empty as I. One
man could not supply the attention that I needed. A queen needs more than a king – she needs a country.

‘He was away when I gave birth to the monster, that punishment from Heaven for my sin. I could not accept the child . . . nor could I bear to live with it. I told him it was stillborn . .
. I left him also. All I had was my beauty and my dreams . . . and now . . . look what I have become. I am unworthy of the man and the child.’

‘So you abandoned her. I would have done the same.’

‘It is easy for you to say that! You are a man. You feel no guilt or emotion or connection with a child. She came from inside me!’

‘And you abandoned her.’

‘B—!’

‘Indeed I am. Why did you try to contact your abandoned child now, after all these years?’

‘You would not understand.’

‘Guilt? Redemption? Or was it business? I have heard that the girl was quite—’

‘Have you no soul? Have you no pity?’

‘Maybe once, but I found such things superfluous, and then dangerous. What I am interested in at present, however, is the identity of the father. I have my suspicions, and you will confirm
or deny them. Information is my currency, Ms Chatterton. I would have difficulty blackmailing one such as you, who has greater currency than I in the guilty secrets of important people, and whose
character is as blackened as can be. The father may be a different matter. I suspect he has much to lose from these revelations.’

‘Never!’

‘Have you contacted him as you have contacted Eliza-Beth? Do you now aim to pursue that family life you once eschewed?’

‘Ha! What man would acknowledge such a creature as Eliza-Beth as his own? What man would accept me, knowing what all of London knows about
my
reputation? I have not spoken to him
for years. He may be dead for all I know, or living on the other side of the world.’

‘Why do you protect him? You have no love for him now.’

‘The love I had for him was the only love I ever truly gave a man. I will take it to the grave, if only to spite you. You callous, heartless—’

‘I anticipated such an answer. And if it is the grave you seek, you will find it soon enough – but not before you tell me what I require.’

‘You will not get the better of me, you —!’

‘We will see.’ He stood and opened his black canvas bag, extracting a coil of rope from within. Then he took a silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket. ‘I am going to put this
in your mouth, Mary, and secure it in place. I can’t have you screaming all night. You will speak when you are ready to speak. Do not be alarmed – it is clean.’

Naturally, she struggled as he tied her. But her cries were soon stifled and she was broken in body and in spirit. That was when he reached for the poker and began to stoke the coals so that an
eruption of sparks reflected in his eager eyes.

TEN

Mr Williamson had just taken a carriage to Haymarket and was turning over the facts of the case in his head as he rattled across the night-time city. Who had delivered the
letter to Eliza-Beth? And did that have anything to do with her murder? Since there was little apparent motivation for the crime, those few visiters were his only routes of investigation. Mr
Coggins had listed the clergyman, the writer, Mary Chatterton and the doctor as callers during the current run at Vauxhall. Reverend Archer had already been filed in the detective’s mind as a
dubious case; Dr Cole was in Edinburgh and would not return for some days; Mary Chatter-ton, however, was the greatest anomaly in his mind.

This notorious woman of pleasure was famous for hardly ever leaving her Rooms, not least because of her unwieldy size and inability to be too distant from a bottle of champagne. She was a rare
and gaudy flower that flourished only in the unique climate of her kingdom. And, in retrospect, the letter
had
had a vaguely feminine stroke, its letters just a little more rounded and its
downward strokes more truncated than one might find in a man’s writing.

Haymarket had passed the zenith of its revels as he stepped from the cab. The streets were less populous and the gaiety had transformed into surfeit. He pursed his lips in distaste as a young
girl hanging from the neck of her beau vomited forth the large quantities of brandy and water she had consumed that evening. Someone else was singing drunkenly unseen, no doubt having emerged from
the penny gaff with its bawdy songs fresh in his gin-addled mind. Mr Williamson made for the passage that led to Mary’s Night Rooms.

‘There is an admission to be paid.’ A thickset man barred the detective’s way with a beefy arm.

‘I am Sergeant Williamson of the Detective Force. I am not a customer.’

‘It don’t matter nothing to me. All who enters pays.’

‘I know you. You are “Fancy” Harry. If I am not mistaken, you have spent some time in gaol for your violent temper. Are you committing a violent act upon me now?’

‘I am not.’

‘I fear that heavy arm of yours has done me some damage. I will be forced to arrest you—’

‘I didn’t touch you!’

‘I’m sure there is a constable hereabouts who will aid me in your arrest . . .’

‘All right! Enter! You police are—’

‘Contain that thought in the limited drawers of your mind, Harry.’