The Shape of Darkness Page 19

  It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell Myrtle about the doctor and the jawbone but something holds her back. She’s in enough trouble already, without mentioning medicine.

  Seeing Pearl isn’t going to answer, Myrtle starts to mutter to herself. ‘I didn’t think you could do this. Didn’t think you even capable of … I messed up. What did I do wrong?’

  This stings worst of all. Myrtle’s not just mad, she’s ashamed of her; thinks she’s raised a thankless wretch, but Pearl was never trying to hurt her sister – was she?

  Leaning against the wall, she starts to cry.

  ‘Save me the waterworks,’ Myrtle tuts.

  She can’t. She’s too weak and ill, and still so hot.

  It’s all right for Agnes, who can just peg it and get away. All Pearl’s ever known is contained inside this house. Father and Myrtle. That’s it. All she’s got. One’s dying, and the other one hates her.

  ‘You wouldn’t …’ she sobs. The words don’t want to come out. ‘I never would have … But you wouldn’t … help … me.’

  ‘What are you on about now?’

  ‘Mother!’ she bursts out.

  The fetid, stale air rings with her cry.

  Myrtle grabs her wrist and pulls her away from the wall. ‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘I only … did it because she … she promised me … She said we could try and … talk to … Mother.’

  Myrtle’s face twists into something cruel. ‘And did you, Pearl? Did you and your little friend manage to call her back?’

  Pearl catches her breath. She shakes her head miserably. ‘We had to do her ghosts first. Both times. She never let me.’

  ‘But you found the murderer, right?’

  ‘No … I don’t think so. She wanted to talk to some sailor.’

  Myrtle scoffs. ‘Oh, I bet she did. Don’t you see? That woman is trouble. She used you, you dolt.’

  It bursts upon her like Mr Collins’s powder: the same agonising flash.

  Agnes only talked about her sister, her papa, and the man who gave her the ring. She brushed off Pearl’s concerns about Father tonight and got all snotty when she mentioned the killer.

  Agnes was never going to help anyone. It was all lies.

  At last, her weak legs give out. Myrtle catches her, lets her sob against her nightgown.

  Berries. She still smells of berries and violets.

  ‘I told you,’ Myrtle speaks hoarsely into her ear. ‘You can’t trust no one. Got it?’

  Her head hurts too much to nod.

  She’s such an idiot. How could she ever think she knew better than Myrtle, strong Myrtle who lifts her up and carries her all the way to her room?

  The curtains are still open from where Agnes climbed in. The carpet bag and shirt lie on the floor. Myrtle kicks them out of the way.

  ‘Get some sleep.’ She plonks Pearl ungracefully on the bed. ‘You’ve got more work to do tomorrow. Proper work.’

  The pillow is blissfully cool against her hot face. She feels like she could sleep for years. Never venture out of this bed or her place again.

  Myrtle turns her back on her and crosses the small room. For a minute Pearl thinks she’s going to close the curtains and save her from the glare of the street lamp, but she doesn’t; she picks up the pair of green glasses, which Pearl had taken off when it got dark.

  ‘You’ll get these back when you deserve them,’ she says.

  Then she leaves Pearl all alone.

  CHAPTER 28

  ‘Slow down, Miss Darken. Tell me again who is at risk?’

  Simon spreads his hands on his desk and leans towards her. Agnes finds herself regarding him anew, after Montague’s words. He was never handsome, even in his youth, but he does have a trustworthy, open face and real solicitude in his gaze.

  She cannot see his blue eyes without calling to mind those of Constance. Hers were fringed with long lashes, intelligent in expression but cruel, savouring another’s misery. Simon’s could not be more different. They are lighter and small, yet there is a depth to them that few people possess.

  ‘I have made such a muddle of everything,’ she confesses. ‘Worse than that. I have caused harm to others. But you see, I was not thinking straight. How could I, over these last few months?’

  ‘Never mind that. I know better than anyone how severely you have been tried. Just tell me what happened. You know you can always talk to me.’

  There is not much left of his brown hair. A belly protrudes beneath his waistcoat, but she must admit that both these signs of age rather suit him. She has altered physically, and he has never treated her the slightest bit differently.

  ‘I am afraid you will be displeased with me.’

  ‘I could never truly be displeased with you, Miss Darken.’

  Dear Simon. Montague seemed to imply that he was the proper match for her. Can it be true? Simon is not the type of man she envisaged for herself, but perhaps real love is not all romance; perhaps it is friendship and a dogged devotion that stands the test of time.

  ‘You are kind to say so, but I am conscious of doing wrong. You advised me as a physician and a friend, and I deliberately went against you.’

  Despite his assurances of forgiveness, annoyance flits across his face. Perhaps annoyance is too strong a word; it is more like a shifting: Simon making room for some new disappointment he must deal with.

  What an irritant she has been to him. She irritates herself, with her caprices and violent mood swings. Truly, this man has been a saint to endure her for so long.

  ‘I am sorry, Simon. The uncertainty ate away at me. I needed to be doing something, and I … I called upon a spirit medium.’

  Rather than brave his gaze, she concentrates on the dark brown and beige damask on the walls. Under consideration, it is not so very dull a pattern; there is a stolid respectability to it, much like the occupant himself.

  Simon’s breath pours out. Morpheus, who is keeping aloof today, grunts from the corner.

  ‘I see. I …’ Simon picks up a dry pen and fiddles nervously with it. She wonders if he is remembering those plundered Edinburgh graves. ‘I advised you against that practice for some very specific reasons,’ he says in his professional voice. ‘Foremost, I consider it a trick, but that is not my only objection. It is the … exposing of the mind, if you will. Those women give themselves over to a suspension of common sense. They encourage nervous agitation. No doubt there is a feeling of freedom to it all, but surrender of conscious control is not … something I would wish for you. Your health has never recovered from the pneumonia. It should not be tested in any fashion.’

  She considers telling him what she has seen at the séances and decides it is better not to. It is one of those phenomena a person must experience for themselves.

  ‘You had my best interests at heart, as you always do, Simon. The elder of the women involved is indeed a grasping, mercenary thing, full of affectation. But the medium herself … She’s a child, an innocent child, and I have caused her such trouble.’

  ‘How so?’

  Her cheeks warm to recount the circumstances. She will exclude the part where she climbed in through the window, if she possibly can. ‘Oh, Simon. You will hardly credit how foolish I have been. I could not afford the fee for a séance, but I thought I might get some clue, something to help me find Cedric … So I persuaded the little medium to see me in private without her sister’s knowledge. We were caught and I am so afraid that the girl will be treated unkindly for my error.’

  ‘I see.’ Simon turns the pen in his fingers. ‘That is most … regrettable. Yet I suppose the child did disobey her guardian, and must be punished as she sees fit. Distasteful to the feelings as it is, we have no right to interfere …’

  ‘The sister is not her legal guardian, though. The child has a father living. Do you recall me mentioning a man with phossy jaw?’

  His forehead wrinkles. ‘We … spoke around the topic, I believe.’

  ‘And that is another blunder I h
ave made.’ She makes a steeple of her hands and leans her nose against it. This whole conversation is an exercise in mortification. ‘Forgive me, Simon. It is not only strangers I have caught up in this mess. I may have implied that … you … might operate upon him … in return for the child’s services.’

  Simon presses his lips firmly together.

  ‘It was rash of me, I know. I cannot defend it, Simon, I can only apologise. There are times when I am not … collected. How can I be? The police do nothing, they have not even caught Mr Boyle’s killer yet, and I am expected to trust them with finding poor Cedric! I hear of such clever detectives in London, but here they do not see what is right before their eyes. I am being watched, Simon. Just the other day I stumbled upon the funeral for another one of my clients.’

  ‘No.’ Simon shakes his head, lays the pen back on the desk. ‘That is not being investigated as murder. The police believe Mrs Campbell tripped and fell onto the railway tracks in front of a train. There is no evidence of anyone pushing her.’ Seeing her astonishment, he goes on: ‘I have been watching you, Miss Darken. Whatever you might think, I did take your claims seriously. I heard through a patient of mine that Mrs Campbell intended to have her silhouette painted by you, and I have made sure to keep an eye on the Campbell family ever since.’ He folds one leg over the other, making his leather chair squeak. ‘The police are not quite as dull as you esteem them. I have spent a good deal of time answering their questions on your behalf. The crime scenes were evidently left by a person of some intelligence. Sergeant Redmayne believes the culprit may have had practise with this sort of thing – concealing the time and method of death, and so on.’

  ‘But the police do not know the full extent of my involvement: we never told them of my connection to Ned or Commander Hargreaves. They have no idea I took both men’s silhouettes.’

  ‘True. And it is advisable to keep them in ignorance. That information cannot reflect well upon you.’

  She throws up her hands in frustration. ‘But they might be able to discover why this killer targets people close to me, and why on earth they would take Cedric! I have thought it over and over and it makes no sense. The only possible person with a claim on him is … well, you told me yourself, he is deceased. So unless we are proposing that a ghost is behind this … Are you sure I should not give the sergeant the notes I came across?’

  Simon bites a fingernail. ‘No. No, I believe those notes may have been old, immaterial scraps that turned up by coincidence. You said that you found one in Cedric’s coat?’

  ‘You know I did, I showed it to you.’

  ‘Yes. Well. The writing that I saw … on the note you showed me … That belonged to someone else. Someone we both knew, Miss Darken.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It was the hand of … my wife.’

  Constance.

  He is right. Memory dawns on her, sickening but irrefutable. That is why she recognised the writing. Constance has been gone so long, she did not think to associate the notes with her. ‘But how—’

  ‘There was not much love lost between the pair, I grant you, but Constance was Cedric’s mother. Do you not consider it feasible that he might have chosen to keep a small memento of her about his person?’

  It seems unlikely. Cedric was mainly frightened of his mother. But then Agnes had suspected him of playing with her papers on the day she found the first scrap. Perhaps there is some vestige of feeling left inside the boy that she cannot understand. It makes more sense than any other explanation.

  Simon is so overwhelmingly reasonable.

  Yet Simon does not know about the writing in the dust at Walcot Street. Too late. Was that from Constance, too?

  She shivers the thought away. Does not want to face the possibility that in trying to contact other spirits, she might have accidently let her sister back into her life.

  Simon’s theory is far more comforting.

  ‘Yes,’ she says forcefully. ‘Cedric might have kept a token. Yes. I am sure everything is … just as you say it is, Simon.’

  ‘Then that is settled.’ He musters a hairbreadth smile. ‘Nothing more to trouble the police with for the present. Now, will you stay for dinner, or shall I walk you home?’

  ‘You have done so much for me already. For all of us. It pains me to beg another favour, but do you think that you could take a look at this man? The one with phossy jaw?’

  He hesitates.

  ‘Please. I have failed to protect my nephew. It would be so nice to help just one young person, to put something right. I do not want the medium girl to be orphaned. When I think of what it cost me to lose my own father, I—’

  Morpheus sits up and yawns. He is ready to leave the room; he seems to know what his master will decide to do.

  ‘This man is not under the treatment of another physician?’ Simon asks.

  ‘No! The elder sister will not allow it. The poor soul is being kept from all aid.’

  Simon gives a single nod.

  She does love him then: his goodness and his justice, even his silly dog, who is regarding her judgementally.

  ‘Just promise me,’ he says as he stands, ‘that this will be an end of your spiritual adventures. Have a care for your health. Stay away from newfangled concepts that you do not understand.’

  Remembering Constance’s writing in the dust, it is not hard to make the pledge.

  ‘I will, Simon. I will do whatever you tell me to.’

  He offers her his arm and they walk out of the consulting room together with Morpheus trailing behind them.

  Rain lashes the pavements. A couple of young ladies without an umbrella shriek and run for the cover of the nearest awning. Morpheus stops on the doorstep, takes one look at the drops bouncing off the puddles and turns tail back inside.

  ‘A wise choice, I think,’ says Simon, closing the door on his dog. He erects their umbrella – one of the old sort, with cane ribs.

  Agnes lifts her skirts from the damp. Cedric must be out here, somewhere. Is he sheltered and dry? She worries that her stitches in his coat might not hold, and if he gets wet, he will not be able to change his shoes and hose before a fire. He could catch pneumonia like she did.

  She searches for his face under every dripping hat and in every saturated alley.

  They walk slowly beneath their shared dome, the patter of rain upon oiled silk making up all their conversation. Simon takes the side of the pavement nearest the road and moves heavily, a man burdened with other people’s secrets, while dray carts swish down Broad Street and splatter his leg with mud. Still, it is better to take this longer, more crowded route than brave the slippery hill.

  The damp resurrects Agnes’s old aches and pains. She will not, she must not think of the Accident. She squeezes Simon’s arm – the same arm that lifted her from the river, all those years ago.

  As they round St Michael’s church and turn into Walcot Street, the fresh, moist smell of the rain takes its last breath. Here, the odour of hops rules the air.

  Commerce does not stop for the weather. A determined organ grinder turns his crank, playing the shanty ‘Little Billie’. Agnes pulls Simon towards a chemist’s shop. The windows have steamed and the prices chalked on the slate board outside are washing away.

  ‘It may be prudent to wait for the sister to leave the house,’ she advises him, although she does not relish the prospect of waiting in the rain.

  ‘How do you know she has not gone already?’

  Agnes gestures to the waistcoat pocket in which Simon keeps his fob watch. He produces it, shows her the time. She shakes her head. She has observed this house, knows its routines.

  ‘It needs some ten minutes more,’ she decides.

  Simon peers through the misty windows at the array of glass bottles the chemist has on offer. ‘Perhaps I will call inside. If this man is as bad as you say, he will need something to alleviate his pain.’

  Resisting his entreaties to join him, Agnes takes charge of the umbrella and keeps surv
eillance on the house.

  From this distance it looks pedestrian, blending in seamlessly amongst its limestone companions. No passer-by would suspect that ghouls swarm inside. It is a kind of ossuary, she thinks, holding captive the bones of an albino child and a man with phossy jaw. This is what her beautiful city has come to: the beau monde and the dandies have fled, leaving only the spinsters, the soot and the ghosts behind.

  She tucks a damp strand of hair behind her ear, and notices with a jolt that her left hand is bare of all jewellery. Of course, Montague’s ring must still be on the floor where it fell in the upstairs room; she did not have time to collect it before Miss West threw her out. She has worn the ring on her finger for all these years; it seems strange that she did not miss it until now. Perhaps hearing Montague’s voice at the séance is finally helping her to move on. But she would feel better if she knew what had made his spirit so afraid. Or who. What were his last words? She’s coming. Was he referring to Miss West, on the stairs? Or was he trying to tell her that the killer is in fact a female?

  Agnes cannot ask him now. She has promised Simon.

  Finally, the front door opens. Agnes turns to the side, letting her bonnet shield her face, and dips the umbrella a little lower. She is right to do so. Miss West leans out, casting her suspicious eyes up and down the street.

  Satisfied, she calls over her shoulder – probably a warning to Pearl – and leaves the house. But then she performs an action Agnes has not noticed her take before: she turns and locks the door behind her.

  ‘Chestnuts all hot, penny a score!’

  Miss West walks straight past the man hollering his wares and weaves effortlessly around a costermonger’s barrow. She has only a bonnet to cover her, but she does not bow her head under the rain. This is a woman who knows where she is going and will not let anything stop her from getting there.

  Agnes watches her stride off towards Cornwell Buildings, where she is swallowed in a forest of umbrellas.

  The shop bell jangles behind her. Simon emerges from the chemist’s with a bottle and a brown-paper parcel.