Beloved Poison (22 page)

‘Madam—’ Will began to protest.

At our back, I heard the creak of a chair. Mr Jobber was sitting behind the parlour door. It was unusual to see him out of his cubby-hole in the hall and I had not heard him come in. His waistcoat bore the signs of a recent breakfast: a drool of egg yolk and a gleaming circle of bacon fat. He cracked his knuckles with a sound like marbles rattling in a sack. Will and I reached into our pockets.

Without her covering of powder and rouge, Lily looked no more than eighteen years old. She pulled a shawl about her thin shoulders. ‘Not two at once,’ she said. ‘Not at this time of day.’ Then she noticed the red splash across my eyes and she opened the door wide. ‘You’re Dr Bain’s friend.’

I nodded. ‘And this is Mr Quartermain.’

Will took off his hat and held out his hand. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Lily.’

The shadow of a smile passed across her face. ‘Show me that card trick? The girls have been doing it ever since you showed it to ’em, but I can’t work it out.’

‘It’s the ace,’ said Will. ‘Keep your eye on it.’

Lily sat on the bed wrapped in her shawl. Her knees were drawn up to her chin, her thick yellow hair about her shoulders. Her room was the master bedroom of Mrs Roseplucker’s seedy old town house, furnished with only a bed, a washstand, a wardrobe and a screen. It depressed me more than I could say. How could she bear to spend her life inside that room, reamed and rogered over and over again by a succession of strangers? Will had pulled out a pack of cards and was amazing her with his ‘magical bending card’ trick. Lily’s eyes sparkled. She clapped her hands like a child.

‘You’re clever,’ she said. ‘Can you teach me?’

‘You know Dr Bain’s dead,’ I said.

She shrugged. ‘Course I know.’

‘He left something for me.’

‘Yes,’ said Lily. ‘Ain’t you got it? I didn’t want it here. Horrible thing. He said I weren’t to look at it, but o’ course I did. It were like a doll in a box. A coffin.’

‘Have you seen anything like it before?’

‘No. Why would I?’

‘What did Dr Bain think of it?’

‘Don’t know.’ Lily shuffled Will’s cards. ‘Didn’t say much. Seemed a bit worried about something. Scared almost. He gave it me wrapped in a sack, and said I was to keep it hid till he came back. Then I heard he was dead. Course, when I knew one of the other girls was going to see you, I just gave it to her. I weren’t wanting to go out and it didn’t seem to matter. It were only an old box and Dr Bain dead so not likely to say much.’

‘Dr Bain was a good man,’ I said.

Lily sighed. ‘P’raps he was. He din’t deserve to die. Some of them I’d wish dead a hundred times over. But Dr Bain, he weren’t so bad. Treated me nice. Normal. You know.’

I was glad to hear that Dr Bain was ‘normal’. I wondered what the opposite might be. I shut my mind to thoughts of outsized cocks, screaming mouths and violent, wrenching hands. ‘What was he like last time you saw him? What did he say and do?’

‘Not much,’ said Lily.

‘Come on, Lily.’ I began to feel exasperated. ‘Can’t you tell us anything? He’s not just “dead”, you know. Someone killed him.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ said Lily. She pointed to a threadbare armchair in front of the fire. ‘He sat on that chair. Looked rather untidy, considering how smart he usually was. Didn’t say much to me, not really. Kept running his hands through his hair and muttering to himself.’

‘Muttering? Muttering what?’

‘“Not again. Not this again.” At least that’s what it sounded like.’

‘Not what again?’ I said.

‘Didn’t say what.’

‘Did you ask?’

‘Why should I care what it was?’

‘Well was there anything else?’

‘Nuffink.’

‘But what did you talk about? What exactly did he say? Did he give you the coffin and walk away? Did you have . . . congress?’

‘Did we have what?’ Lily grinned.

‘You know what I mean.’ I glanced up. Will was watching me, his expression unreadable in the dismal afternoon light. All at once I wanted to get out of the place. It was so hot, and the smell – the stink of sweat and hot chafing bodies, of skin and hair, was thick and heavy about us. I could only assume that the men who came here were so intoxicated with lust that their olfactory senses were dulled to the point of uselessness.

Lily sighed. ‘Dr Bain came back about an hour, an hour and a half after you’d left the first time. He seemed – different.’

‘How “different”? Agitated? Anxious? Afraid?’

‘All those things. I never seen him like it before. Usually he din’t seem bothered about nothing. He sat in that chair and said “Not this again,” and I said “What?” and he shook his head and said “Never mind what.” Then he went all silent and just stared at the fire. Well, I wondered what were the matter. It were a bit peculiar. So I gets up and I goes to the window and looks out at the fog and just to be sayin’
somethin’
I says “Look how thick its getting! Mrs R says it’s a night for the Abbot when it’s like this,” an’ ain’t I glad not to have to go out to look for trade on such a night—’

‘You told him a tall story?’ I said.

‘It ain’t a story,’ said Lily, ‘it’s the truth. And
I
didn’t tell it. It’s Mrs Roseplucker’s story and
she
told it. She remembers it. Just you ask her. She’ll tell you. She were
there
, back then when the Abbot was abroad.’

‘What’s this got to do with Dr Bain?’ I snapped.

‘That’s what I’m tellin’ you,’ said Lily sulkily. ‘I’m tellin’ you what I said to Dr Bain. I happened to mention the Abbot—’

‘And did Dr Bain ask?’ said Will. ‘Did he ask about the Abbot too?’

‘Seemed mighty interested,’ said Lily. ‘Asked me all about it. But I said it was for Mrs Roseplucker to tell, not me. Then he gives me the coffin and says “Look after this for me. Keep it hid and don’t show it to no one till I come back for it. Unless anythin’ happens to me.”’

‘Like what?’ I said. ‘Did he say what he was expecting to happen?’

‘No. Just said that I were to give it to “young Mr Jem at St Saviour’s Apothecary”.’ She shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘I thought it were a bit peculiar like, but there’s many a gentleman what’s odd in his ways. It’s best not to ask ’em too many questions, so I just smiles and says “Yes, sir, o’course I will, sir.”’ She got off the bed and crossed the room to fling another lump of greasy coal onto the fire. ‘P’raps he thought the Abbot were after him, too.’

Lily turned to me. ‘Look, I know he were your friend, and it’s sad to lose friends.’ She smiled, but her expression was bitter. ‘I should know. There’s not many what lasts long in this game. If the pox don’t get you first there’s only the streets once you’re too old for a house like this. So I’m sorry he’s dead – sorry for you.’

I nodded. But they were just words, and Dr Bain simply another customer. ‘Did he pay you to look after the coffin?’ I said.

‘A thick ’un,’ said Lily with a grin. She plunged a hand into her pocket and drew out a sovereign. ‘I’d not do nothing for nobody otherwise.’ I nodded, and handed her a shilling. It was all I had left in my pocket. Lily looked at it in disgust. ‘P’raps you ought to save
that
for Joe Silks.’

‘Joe Silks?’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘He’s got the other one.’

I frowned. ‘What other one?’

‘The other box. There were two. Dr Bain said the other one was with Joe Silks. Lives in Prior’s Rents—’

‘I know where he lives,’ I said.

‘Well then,’ said Lily. She turned her back, her expression sulky. ‘You know where to go then, don’t you?’

As patrons of Mrs Roseplucker’s, we were supposed to leave by the back door. But I was not yet ready to go, and I led Will back towards the parlour. The place was warmer than ever. The virgins had appeared and were sitting side by side, slumped on the ragged brocade sofa in poses that suggested a complete absence of stays. Their legs were parted sloppily beneath their skirts, and their expressions were bored. Both held a pamphlet. One had folded hers into the shape of a bird, the other, the girl who had brought the coffin to the apothecary, was using hers to fan her face. It was one of Mrs Magorian’s favourites: WHAT IS WOMANHOOD?

‘Has Mrs Magorian been here?’ I asked.

‘You mean that interfering doctor’s wife?’ said Mrs Roseplucker, staring at me accusingly over the top of her penny blood. ‘She was here all right. Her and her little troupe of ladies. Telling me how to run my own house.’ She shook her head. ‘They should come in the evening and hand out them leaflets to the gentlemen upstairs. They might find they knows one or two of ’em quite well.’

‘And Eliza? Was Eliza with her?’

‘That pretty girl? The young one?’ Mrs Roseplucker’s horrible old lips parted in a leer. ‘Worried what she might say if she knew
you
was here?’

How glad I was that Will and I had been upstairs. Eliza thought well of me, she trusted me and loved me like a brother. Imagine if she had found me in a brothel! I would appear brutish and hypocritical, no better than any other man she knew. And yet I was not like them. I was not like any of them. All at once I wanted to shout it out, to declare myself to anyone who would listen – but I didn’t.

‘Eliza. That her name, is it?’ Mrs Roseplucker frowned, and put down her dog-eared copy of
The Vampyre Returns
. ‘Looked just like one o’ Mrs Goldberg’s girls,’ she said. ‘I never forget a face, though there’s been many what’s paid me to pretend otherwise. Fanny Bishop, that’s it! Mrs Goldberg died a long time ago and I don’t know where young Fanny ended up but she looked just like your Eliza.’ She laughed, a peculiar rasping sound, like the scratching of a yard brush. Then she added, ‘She’ll never have
you,
you know.’

‘I know that,’ I muttered. ‘And she’s not
my
Eliza. She’s not anyone’s.’

‘
Ain’t
she?’ said the old madam. ‘That’s what
you
think. She’s bin plucked, that one, you can tell it a mile off! Din’t you know?’ She leered. ‘You ain’t as clever as all that then, are you?’ She sat back, shaking her head. ‘Fanny Bishop,’ she murmured. ‘Why, I ain’t thought about her in years. Pretty girl. Leastways she was till she got her teeth bashed in one night. Mrs Goldberg weren’t quite so partic’lar as I am about what sort o’ gen’lemen she let into her house.’

‘Perhaps it was the Abbot,’ I said.

‘The Abbot?’ Mrs Roseplucker turned her watery eyes upon me. ‘Well now, why’d you go and mention
him
, I wonder?’

‘Can you tell us about him?’ said Will.

‘Oh, yes, tell us about the Abbot,’ cried one of the virgins, sitting up. ‘There’s nothing else to do and you tell such a good story, Mrs R. Go on. Please.’

‘It makes me shiver,’ said the other. ‘Even if I’ve heard it a dozen times. Tell us again.’

Mr Jobber, who had been sitting motionless behind the parlour door, clapped his hands like some gigantic village idiot. The girls pulled their chairs closer.

‘Ten shillings,’ said Mrs Roseplucker.

‘Ten shillings?’ I said. ‘For a story?’

‘It was worth that much to your dead man.’ Mrs Roseplucker looked at me and grinned. Her wig, that tangled nest of ringlets, had slipped back. The scabs on her scalp matched her scarlet dress. ‘And you wants to know what I told him, don’t you?’

‘Well, it’s not worth ten shillings to me,’ I said.

‘Ain’t it then?’ Mrs Roseplucker licked her lips. ‘Don’t you be so sure o’ that,
Mister
Jem.’

She leaned forward in her chair, and waited; her scarlet skirts smouldering in the heat of the fire. Silence fell. No one sniffed or coughed, no one fidgeted. All eyes were fixed upon her. In the grate, a lump of coal shifted and a belch of yellowish smoke rolled out. I had no money at all, other than the shilling Lily had refused. I turned to Will. He was already rummaging in his pockets.

Mrs Roseplucker grabbed at Will’s half-sovereign, stowing it away in some secret nest beneath the tattered frills and flounces of her dress. ‘It was a long time ago now, my dears,’ she said, settling back on her cushions. ‘But no one knows better than I what terror the Abbot brought to St Saviour’s parish. They said he was a ghost, a spirit tormented by the wretchedness that had come to these once-proud streets; streets that ladies and gentlemen had once walked down and where fine carriages had passed; where orchards and gardens and fields had been laid out, as rich and green as Eden itself.

‘But those places had vanished beneath the city. They were rendered foul and pestilent, filled with stench and decay, the residents given over to lust and greed. The Abbot of St Saviour’s, so they said, turned in his grave to see his beautiful grounds so despoiled, and he rose up from his tomb to walk the earth, weeping for those lost and innocent times.’

Mrs Roseplucker’s small moist eyes were fixed upon me. She spoke to the room, but I knew she was telling her story to me. And she had chosen that time and place, that audience, for a reason. After all, she could quite easily have refused to say anything.

‘What was he looking for, this ghostly abbot? Some said he was driven by sorrow to walk the parish until he found innocence and truth.’ Mrs Roseplucker gave a grin, and a gentle wheezing laugh. ‘Well, my dears, he’d be looking a long time before he found much of that around here. And those who thought it were fools.’ Her voice grew harsh. ‘For the Abbot of St Saviour’s was as wicked as the rest of them, and he was lookin’ for a young girl to slake his appetites. Yes, missy, you might well gasp, though I know you’ve heard it a hundred times. For the Abbot was no more a ghost than you or I, though it suited him well enough to let others think so. An’ sure enough he seemed like a ghost to those what saw him. Fast, he was. Flittin’ through the fog without a sound, silent as the night itself.’