Tom All-Alone's (31 page)

Charles stoops down, and puts his arm about Alice's shoulders. And then, with the gentlest of gentle hands, he puts the long dank hair aside and touches Hester's cold scarred face.

N
oon, Waterloo Bridge.

From where we stand we can look up towards Whitehall and Westminster, and down towards the City, where the lines of barges and lug-boats are advancing slowly up from the Essex marshes, laden with timber and coal and barrels of porter. The river moves sluggishly beneath us as if filmed with oil, but the wind is starting to get up now, scattering the stench of excrement and whirling the gulls upwards in sharp gusts. Down among the gravel and the black sand a group of mud-larks are wading about up to their naked thighs in the freezing water, aprons tied about their waists, looking for iron, copper nails, discarded junk, pieces of rope – anything as might earn a few coins to eat by. The sound of their voices floats up to us in fits and starts – a curse, a cry of success, even, once or twice, laughter. On either side of the bridge we can see crowds of people going about their ordinary business – street-traders and hawkers, patterers and pedlars – but it is a cold day and few are choosing to eat their midday meal in the open air. Fewer still have either the leisure or the inclination to do what we're doing, and merely stand and stare. But there are exceptions. A few hundred yards away, on Salisbury Stairs, there are two men sitting together in what seems to be a companionable silence.

And I can tell you, moreover, that they've already been there for some time. The one tall, young, blue-eyed; the other small, black-suited, thoughtful.

‘So she will live,' says Charles eventually.

Bucket glances at him, then nods. ‘She was very cold and she had lost a deal of blood, but Woodcourt says that with proper care, she has a chance. Though even if her body heals he is not sure he has the medicines that can mend her mind. But if there's a doctor in London who can do it, I'll wager it is Woodcourt. And who knows, mayhap she will find that there is love in this world that is not cruel and disfigured, and that will help bring her back.'

‘And what happens now?'

Bucket rubs his forefinger against the side of his nose. ‘I will pursue Mann, if I can. But my guess is the evidence will not be strong enough. What he boasts of to
you
, he will not confess to
me
, and I fear he will simply disappear back into the slums of Whitechapel whence he came. But you have no need to fear – for yourself, or those about you. I will keep my eye on him, as long as I have breath, and as long as I am Mr Bucket of the Detective. He shall not stir, shall do no harm to so much as a street dog, without my a-knowing of it. Let London look to itself thereafter, for I dare not predict what savagery that young villain might be capable of, or what cruelty he is willing to inflict.'

A cloud passes across the sun and the gulls whirl suddenly upwards in a shrieking spiral of wings and claws and razor beaks.

‘And the others?'

‘We have enough to pursue Alexander Jarvis. Fortunately for us, he was not as cautious in his record-keeping as his paymaster in the Fields. I suspect we will find plenty enough
paper-work at the asylum to bring charges against Cremorne and his associates. Though one of them is already being held to account at a far higher court than I could bring him to. I have just got word that Sir Percival Glyde has been killed in a fire in Hampshire. What the circumstances of this fire be – accident or arson – is not yet clear.'

Charles turns to him with a bleak look on his face. ‘How many of them were there?'

‘The young girls? There is some mystery surrounding Anne Catherick that I have not yet got to the bottom of, and that I fear may not be unconnected with that young wife of Glyde's so lately dead, and that fortune of hers so greatly wanted. There is more to Anne Catherick's confinement in that asylum than an obligation to an old servant, you mark my words. And when I hear tell that the second time she was brought to that abominable place she seemed quite different and strangely changed, I prick up my ears and I ask myself why, and I wonder how it is that she is not there still. But all that,' he sighs, ‘will have to wait for another day. What I do know is that Woodcourt found three more young women like her in the other wing of the asylum, and Jarvis' records show there have been many more over the years, some of whom seem to have stayed there only a few short weeks. I fear we will discover that they too had been dishonoured and betrayed by uncles and fathers and men of like kind, and it was Tulkinghorn who arranged for 'em to brought to the asylum, so as to keep the men's secret, and dispose of its consequences. Who knows how much innocent blood he had on his hands, by the end.'

Charles looks away, sick at heart. ‘And Miss Adams?'

‘I am making arrangements for her to be placed in Lady Cremorne's care, with the strong recommendation that she removes with her to her own family's seat in Derbyshire. The
girl went to live at Curzon Street for a time, they tell me, after her parents died. She had hitherto been a mild and peaceable child but grew capricious and unsettled almost at once. Suffered badly with her nerves and became altogether ungovernable. It was about this same time that Lady Cremorne suffered her unfortunate accident. And as you may remember from your time in the Detective, I am no great believer in coincidences.'

‘You mean, she
knew
?'

‘Did the fall not take place in the middle of the night? When the rest of the household were a-sleeping? And was it not impossible to account afterwards for what she was doing there? My guess, my lad, is that she discovered the two of 'em together – her husband and his niece. Discovered it and either ran away in terror, or took issue with the man and paid the price. But I would lay a hundred pound that she will never tell. It seems that all this time she has believed the girl had been placed in a distant asylum, far from London and beyond her husband's reach. Though it appears she has been making efforts to find the child of late. But why now, after such a stretch of years—'

‘The letters,' says Charles quickly. ‘The anonymous letters.
She
must have known what they referred to all along, even if she didn't know who was sending them.'

Bucket nods; even he has not made this last connection. ‘That would explain it, I grant you. And it would likewise explain why she has been writing so many letters herself in recent weeks – enquiring discreetly of all her acquaintances about establishments where the girl might be found.'

‘But how could she have agreed to have a mere child committed to a lunatic asylum in the first place – even if it was meant to protect her?'

Bucket is silent a long time, twisting the great mourning ring on his little finger, but finally he turns to Charles. ‘Not all
Jarvis' patients were put there by Edward Tulkinghorn. Some were entrusted to him by their own families – well-meaning people, most of 'em. The young lad Cawston, for instance, was the apple of his family's eye. A fine young fellow he was once, and full of promise, but he became so fixed in his habits, and so prey to monomania, they could no longer manage him. The grandmother who brought him up sincerely believed she was doing the right thing – that Jarvis would effect a cure. In my experience, people are more often committed to such places out of love than wickedness. Love and ignorance. The mind is a singular thing, Charles, a singular thing, and it has depths that even your finest science has not yet fathomed. I have known women,' and his face is drawn now with the memory of an old and unhealed pain, ‘who have so longed for a child that they can think of little else, and sink into such a pit of melancholy that there is no recovering them. And what can even the most loving of husbands do at such a pass but follow the advice the doctors give? There is no solving such cases, no knowledge of the heart that can bring back a mind so clouded and astray.'

Charles thinks of his own mother, driven from her reason by the loss of a child, and of the sister he knows he will never find, and it is a long, long moment before he remembers that the present Mrs Bucket was not the first. And that even now, Bucket has no children of his own.

They sit in silence again, and it is Bucket, in the end, who breaks that silence first.

‘I must be away soon, to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and to the funeral, but before I do, I should tell you what I found there this morning. It's why I suggested we took a stroll down here. Open air, my lad, is best for evil deeds.'

He turns his eyes again to the river. ‘There were secrets in Tulkinghorn's house, my friend, that even you did not discover. Like a wall hung with priceless pictures that turned out to be no more than a wooden partition. Like a little brass clasp that unlocked that partition, and allowed it to swing open. Like another set of pictures, hung inside, of an obscenity such as I have never seen in all my years in the Detective. Images of children, mostly, as would wring your heart and incite you to a blistering vengeance had you laid your eyes upon them. And were that not enough, there was a little parlour hidden behind, in the heart of the spider's web, where I found the last and worst of all Tulkinghorn's secrets. There was a box of papers there that chilled the very blood in my veins. Seems that this young Hester was
his
daughter. Secreted away, all these years, where no one would think to look. Seems he styled himself her ‘Guardian', and never revealed, even to Jarvis, that he was the father. Not even when he got her with child – that same child that even now lies mouldering away in the foul earth of Tom-All-Alone's. Seems Hester's mother was his own niece, whom he ruined when she was still little more than a girl herself, and then traced to the workhouse when she was turned out of doors, for bringing such disgrace on the family credit.'

Charles turns to him, his face aghast. ‘What was the girl's name – the mother?'

Bucket eyes him a moment, then nods. ‘So you are there, now, are you? I wondered how long it would take for you to marry it all together. You see, now, why I am in hopes that this bruised and wounded girl may yet find love in the bosom of her own proper family. For your guess is right, my lad, and your case is solved against all expectation. The name of Hester's mother was Honoria. Honoria Chadwick.'

Half an hour later Charles is walking the short step back to Buckingham Street. The thin sun is warming his back and despite all he has witnessed, and all he has undergone, for the first time in weeks his mind is at rest. He parted with Bucket at the top of the steps, where the inspector turned to him and took him by the hand. ‘If you ever see your way to returning to the Detective, then you have only—'

Charles smiled but shook his head. ‘It is a kind offer, but I think not. And now I must get back to the house. My uncle will be missing me.'

‘Give him my compliments, my lad. And my best respects. And Charles—' he said, as he made to go, ‘a piece of advice. Given in a spirit of kindliness. You may take it, or not, as you think fit. But if I were in your place, I would make peace with my father. And once that is done, go with him to see your mother. I know what you are a-feared of, but not all asylums are as wretched as Jarvis'. You may take my word on that.'

Charles looked at him, then nodded, and started to turn away, before recollecting something and turning back. ‘And the trooper? You don't still believe—'

‘Ah,' said Bucket with a smile, his fat forefinger again in evidence, ‘he's all right. Before this day is done, he'll be discharged with no stain on his character. You may take my word for that. I can tell you now that I no more believed it was George as done the deed as I believed you capable of it, but there was evidence against him, as there was against you, and that being the case I had no choice but to take him in under guard, while I concluded my investigation. But as things stand now I know the truth of it, and I will soon have all the proof I need for an arrest.'

And with that Mr Bucket buttoned himself up and went quietly on his way towards the Strand, looking steadily before him as if he already had the face of his culprit before his eye.

The house is hushed and still when Charles opens the door and pauses for a moment in the empty hall. It is so quiet he can hear the faint ticking of his uncle's clock, and the sound of sheets cracking and whipping like sails in the yard at the back. Laundry, he thinks, abstractedly. Molly must have done the laundry. There is a visiting card on the hall-stand which he picks up without really looking at it, before climbing the stairs slowly one by one, aware, for the first time, how much his body aches and how much he wants a hot bath. But first he must look in on his uncle, and tell him what has passed.

The drawing-room curtains are still half-closed, and Charles waits as his eyes adjust to the dim light, breathing in the scent of a wood fire burning low in the grate and the faint aroma of port from the glass at his uncle's side. Maddox's eyes are closed, his mouth slightly open, and his sombre and motionless face gives no hint of the dreams within. He must have fallen asleep in his chair, for his pillow has been carefully tucked behind his head, and a blanket drawn up over his lap. A lap where, as Charles now sees, the black cat is curled and sleeping, his ears twitching every now and then at the tiny crackles from the subsiding fire. Thunder has never sat with Maddox before, and Charles is smiling as he tiptoes over to the chair and bends to give the cat a quick caress before reaching to his uncle's hand. But while the cat has warmed in the fire's glow, the old man's fingers are chill; and though Thunder stirs now and stretches at his master's touch, Maddox lies rigid still, and does not wake.

And as he sees this – and as his heart lurches to what it means – there's a sudden catch in Charles' throat that has him
kneeling quickly by Maddox's side and pushing the hair gently from his uncle's brow – an echo – all unconscious – of what the old man used to do when he was a boy – little enough in itself, but a gauge of deep affection in an age uncomfortable with intimacy, and a family chary of love.