The Tiger in the Well (30 page)

They left Sally alone to say good-bye to Harriet. The child was sleepy and no longer curious about the towels that swathed her mother's head.

"Good night, my little sweet one," Sally whispered. "Remember what Mama said about being brave.^"

"Tigers," said Harriet.

"That's right. Even if you can't see Mama, she won't be far away. Now close your eyes, my baby. Be a good girl and a brave girl ..."

She kissed her forehead, and then her cheeks, and then hugged her close. As she laid her down, tears fell on the pillow beside her; but Harriet didn't notice.

And then downstairs again, and the towels came off, and there was her hair, dark red, cropped. She didn't recognize herself in the little looking glass Mrs. Katz held up for her,

"Thank you," she said. "That's . . . well, it's just what I wanted."

''Die Augenbrauenr said Rebecca. "The eyebrows—they should be darker. Your eyes are dark already—that's strange, isn't it.'* Eyes so dark with hair so fair. But the eyebrows ought to match."

Leah found a pencil, and Sally licked it and darkened her eyebrows. Now she was completely someone else. She realized she needed another name.

"Louisa Kemp," she said. "That's what I'll call myself.

I'm ... a maid-of-all-work. Or something. Thank you all for what you're doing."

"Sally, you mustn't forget, he's dangerous. He kills people," said Rebecca.

"How long shall we leave it before coming in to get you.'*" said Leah.

"I'll get a message to you somehow. If I don't ..."

"And what about Mr. Goldberg.?"

Sally hesitated, and then shrugged. "If he turns up . . .1 don't know. Tell him I've seen a lawyer. . . . Look after Harriet."

"She'll be safe," whispered Rebecca.

They kissed. Sally wrapped her cloak around her, put on her bonnet, and left.

BOOK

THREE

I

The Valet

It had begun to rain.

It came down steadily and heavily. There was a depression over the whole of southern England; clouds hung low over London, their heavy bellies turning into mist where they touched the high points of Crouch Hill, Streatham Hill, Hampstead, and Highgate, and discharging themselves copiously and endlessly into the drains, the gutters, the soil.

The new sewers under London had been designed to cope with exceptional rainfall. When there was too much water for the main interceptory sewers, it flowed over weirs into storm relief sewers and thence into the Thames. These weirs were on the courses of the old rivers that laced subterraneanly through London: the Fleet, Stamford Brook, the Walbrook, the Tyburn, and so on. Most of these rivers were known and mapped and accounted for, though few of the pedestrians and drivers and passengers who moved about above them had any idea they were there.

But in the older parts of the city there were dozens of springs and streams that had been completely forgotten. Not more than trickles, for the most part, but some of them carried substantial volumes of water—much more after a rainfall, when the water had had time to soak into the soil. And along with the springs and rivers, there were hundreds—maybe thousands—of ancient sewers, some blocked and crumbling, others still just flowing, but all of them crusted with filth and slime and alive with frogs and rats and eels.

One of these lost rivers had been called the Blackbourne.

It rose deep in the ground under a spot in Hackney where there had once been a monastery, but which by Sally's time was occupied by a pickle factory. It flowed meanderingly south and eventually slouched into the Thames somewhere near the Tower of London. By the thirteenth century it was already an open sewer, flowing not only with household wastes and dead dogs but also with the by-products of paper mills, tanneries, and soap boilers along the banks, so that Blackbourne water became a synonym for unspeakable fil-thiness. By the seventeenth century it had been built over and lost, but it still flowed on, and in 1646 a heavy rainfall caused three houses to collapse into it. Fifteen people were drowned, and three more never found at all in the putrid swamp. Soon after that it was built over again and forgotten.

But it still ran. The forgotten sewers still emptied their filth into it; and the various abominations that had trickled into it since then had made it no sweeter. All kinds of things contributed. A leaking drain under a slaughterhouse in Stepney allowed vast quantities of blood to seep into an ancient culvert running below it, and thence into the Blackbourne. A dye works in Shoreditch discharged all its waste chemicals into a convenient pit in the yard behind, which absorbed them gratefully and conveyed them through various channels into the river. The brick wall built roughly in 1665 to shore up the side of a plague pit had begun to crumble, and the Blackbourne was leaching out the essences of several dozen long-dead plague victims to add to the mixture. All in all, it was a powerful brew, and when it moved sluggishly in dry weather, it released gouts of nauseating stink through crumbling bricks and loose flagstones into a hundred cellars; and little by little, it scoured away ancient mortar and lime and cement when it was swollen after a storm.

And if you were below ground, you could hear it.

"What's that noise, Charlie.'*" said a painter and decorator to his mate as they cleared up after a job.

Charlie listened.

"Sort o' rumbling," he said. "It's them hydraulics." He

jerked his thumb at the new pipework bearing high-pressure water from the London Hydrauhc Company to power the lift in the corner of the basement they were working in. "I don't trust 'em."

"No, it ain't," said the first man. "It's coming from down under the floor. Listen ..."

He knelt laboriously and applied his ear to the parquet flooring.

There was a clatter as the iron cage of the lift rattled open, and Herr Winterhalter, the Tzaddik's secretary, got out. He looked at the kneeling workman.

"Have you finished.?" he said stiffly.

"Oh, yeah—sorry, guv. Thought I heard a noise."

The workman got to his feet as the newcomer handed both of them some coins.

"That, I believe, is the sum we agreed," he said. "You seem to have completed the work satisfactorily. When will the paint be dry.''"

"Best give it thirty-six hours," said Charlie. "Not much ventilation down here. All them doors want keeping open."

They gathered their tools and went up by the narrow staircase, the lift evidently being out of bounds to tradesmen. So was the front door, so they left by the area steps.

Sally watched them from the shelter of a cab rank across the square. The house was full of activity; every window was lighted, with servants passing to and fro carrying things or adjusting curtains. Soon she would have to make a move.

Clutching her basket, she gathered the cloak about her and ran through the teeming rain to the area steps. Was her story ready.'' Then down.

The kitchen window lit up the little sunken area, but it was streaming with moisture both inside and out, and no one looked through as she knocked at the door.

Before anyone could stop her, she opened it and stepped inside, and stood blinking the rain out of her eyes.

"Here—"

A portly woman was looking up from the saucepan she was

holding over the range. A maidservant stopped in midstride, holding a tray of dirty plates, and a footman stared from the door, where he was about to take out a large covered silver dish.

''Remuez! Remuezr' came in a sharp voice from the fourth person, a dark-featured man in a cook's white hat. He was cracking eggs into a bowl and watching the stout woman's saucepan. She looked at him blankly. "Stir it! Stir it!"

She turned back, but it was too late; the sauce boiled over and hissed on the range, and the smell of burning came to Sally's nostrils.

The French cook released a volley of curses, but he couldn't move for the eggs in both hands. It was Sally's chance. She saw a dishcloth nearby and darted forward to mop up the mess, letting the stout woman turn and shout back at the Frenchman.

The maid carried her dishes through to the scullery, the footman went out, and the moment passed. The stout woman took back the saucepan from Sally and said, "Ta, love. I'll see to it. Blooming fancy rubbish—I can't understand what he's on about. You the girl from the agency.^"

Sally had only a second to think. "Yes," she said.

"Put down your basket there for now, then. We'll get your uniform sorted out later. See if you can give Monsewer a hand; I don't know what he wants."

"If you please, ma'am, I speak a little French. There was a French cook at my last situation—"

For some reason, her voice came out slightly Yorkshire. She let it, happy to go with the flow of events while they were favorable.

"Thank Gawd for that. I can't understand him . . . stupid man."

Throwing off her cloak and bonnet, Sally hastened to speak to the cook. Within five minutes she had become indispensable, relaying brisk orders to the stout woman (who, she learned, was the cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson) and the kitchenmaid. It was the busiest time of the evening; appar-

ently there were some important guests, and dinner was in progress upstairs. The cook, M. Ponsot, fussed over sauces and pastries in a lordly, arrogant way that made Mrs. Wilson fume with irritation, and Sally exchanged little sympathetic glances with her. What a piece of extraordinary luck, to come in just now; could she use it.'* And what was this agency.?

Little by little, in between the translating and the whisking and the heating and the grinding coffee, she tried to find out more about what they assumed her to be.

"When did you send to the agency, Mrs. Wilson.?" she said during a lull.

"Only this morning. We had to dismiss the other girl. She drank."

"Oh, dear."

"That's why I was surprised to see you. We wasn't expecting anyone till tomorrow."

That was a relief. There wouldn't be a genuine claimant turning up for a few hours yet, then.

"Er, no," Sally said. "It just happened that I was there at the time, sort of thing."

"Where d'you come from.?"

Sally was glad her voice had decided to be Yorkshire; any deficiencies in her accent wouldn't be spotted so quickly by Londoners. Again she had to think quickly.

"From Bradford. But I was in service with a lady and gentleman who did a lot of traveling, and I spent some time abroad, one way or another."

"Lady's maid.?" said Mrs. Wilson. "We sent for a general housemaid."

"I was a lady's maid, yes. But I'm happier with the general work."

"Good thing. No ladies in this house."

"Oh.?" Sally thought she might realistically be a little curious now. "Who's the master.?"

"A gentleman called Mr. Lee. Ever so wealthy. Paralyzed, you know. He can't move a muscle."

"Really.? How awful."

"And there's two sorts of servants here, you'll find. There's us, under Mr. Clegg, the butler, and there's the master's own personal servants. His valet, especially. Mr. Michelet. He attends the master everywhere."

Her voice was noncommittal, but her dislike of the valet was easy to read. Sally thought it sounded like a fine recipe for resentment and discord.

She was about to probe a little deeper when the kitchen door opened and an austere-looking man came in. He had an expression of distaste that seemed to be built into the bones of his face. From his clothes she took him to be the butler, and if her interpretation of things was correct, he would be feeling as put out by the influx of new, superior servants as Mrs. Wilson was.

"So you're the new girl. Name.'"'

"Louisa Kemp, Mr. Clegg."

"Character.?"

Sally was ready for this. No servant could get a situation without a character, which was a reference from her previous employer.

"My last situation was with Lord and Lady Islip, and if the master here was to write, I'm sure they'd supply a copy, Mr. Clegg. It's my own fault, I'm sure, but all my things was in a fire. It was only 'cause I'd been with the agency before and they knew me, and when this come up . . ."

"Lord and Lady Islip," he said, making a note. "Address.?"

Sally told him. Lord Islip was the older brother of Charles Bertram, Webster Garland's partner; Sally knew he'd cooperate, but it meant writing—or telegraphing—to him first thing tomorrow. Solve that problem when the time came; for the moment, be modest and helpful.

Mrs. Wilson was telling the butler about Sally's command of French, and Mr. Clegg nodded.

"Could be useful," he said. "All right, you're here now. Foster there"—nodding to the kitchenmaid—"will take you up to your room after supper. Supper, by the way, we take

after the master's personal servants have had theirs. So we all have to wait. No doubt it's good for the soul. Rules: Most importantly, you never go near the master, not unless he sends for you personally. All his wants are seen to by Mr. Michelet, his valet. So everything that needs doing—cleaning and suchlike—has to be done while he's nowhere near. If you're sent for, if you answer a bell or some such, you don't knock and enter, you knock and wait. Mr. Michelet will tell you more about that, I daresay. Remember, the master don't want to see you. He's a gentleman with a huge burden—Mrs. Wilson will have told you, I expect. He suffers considerably. Don't add to it."

Sally nodded, trying to look respectful and humble.

"And you can speak French, eh.'' Well, that'll be useful. I daresay Mr. Michelet will enjoy having a conversation with you."

She couldn't interpret that remark; she took it to be another example of the tension between the household and the court, as she thought of them.

Supper was a brisk, plain meal, which was served to them by the kitchenmaid and the youngest footman. There were eleven servants altogether. She thought that although they were a little formal and distant with her, they all seemed honest enough. They knew nothing, or said nothing, about their employer's business; all she could gather was that he did a lot of traveling and was in this house about one month in three.

Little by little the relationship between these servants and the others became clear. While Mr. Lee was in residence, his valet took over the use of Mr. Clegg's private sitting room, so the butler had to sit with the lower servants in the kitchen. That, she thought, was the source of their stiffness; he was the sort of frowning, austere man no one can relax with, even when he's trying to be friendly. The other housemaid whispered to Sally that he had a ferocious temper, and she'd have to mind how she spoke to him.