The Vice Society (16 page)

He had much to report to his sponsor ‘J.S.’, though the thought of seeing the man again was one that perturbed him somewhat. Indeed, he was thinking just of that purulent breath when a carriage stopped outside the shop and the liveried driver beckoned to him. It was the same fellow who had delivered the earlier letter. Eusebius nodded to him in acknowledgement and ascended into the carriage, which was empty.

But it was not to the gentleman’s house that they travelled. Rather, it was to the address of a physician at Berkley-square. A sombre-suited gentleman was waiting for him at the door and, with wordless deference, showed Eusebius through a corridor smelling of unfamiliar medicaments to a treatment room, where his senses were further assaulted.

Lying on his back upon a table in the centre of the room was ‘J.S.’. He was covered in a white sheet, under which he seemed to be naked – ‘seemed’ because, although the shape of his body beneath showed the familiar contours of an unclothed male form, it also exhibited a multitude of small bulges in places where none should be. As Eusebius stared transfixed, it appeared almost as if these bulges were animated with the slightest pulse of their own.

‘Do not be afraid, Eusebius,’ said ‘J.S.’, turning his head to face the visiter. His wig was not in place today and his scaly, ruined scalp glistened with soothing oils. ‘Today is a day when I must undergo a rather tiresome procedure that need not interrupt our business. I know you are a broad-minded fellow.’

‘Yes, sir.’ His eyes would not detach from those aberrant bulges.

‘Tell me everything, Eusebius. What have our detectives been detecting?’

‘Sir. They visited a man called Jessop, a bookbinder of King-street. I spoke to the man afterwards and he was quite open about it: he had been at Colliver’s the night of the incident and had been rudely awoken in his sleep by an unknown assailant who threatened to murder him if he spoke of anything he had heard. I led him to believe I was a member of the press.’

‘Fine work, my boy. Let us hope the policemen will be aided by that information.’

‘They also visited the brother and sister of Mr Sampson, but they both declined to speak to me, whatever lies I manufactured.’

‘People can be impolite. I suspect they have their reasons.’

‘Yes, sir. The detectives also visited the deceased’s home and place of work. I am afraid I do not know what they saw or heard there.’

‘You are a good boy. Is there more?’

‘Inspector Newsome has, alone, made enquiries at Mr Sampson’s club, the Continental, though he has not so far gained admittance.’

‘And will very likely not succeed in doing so.’

‘Sir?’

‘Never mind. Tell me, Eusebius – you have seen much: what do you make of the two detectives on this case?’

‘The older of the two, Mr Newsome, is a shrewd investigator. He is not like many senior policemen; I mean, he does not seem much like a gentleman. I believe there is more of the street than the library in his character. I would not underestimate him. The other man, Cullen, is a lower policeman. I cannot understand why he is in the Detective Force at all.’

‘Has either man noticed your presence?’

‘I am sure they have not.’

‘Good. How you would feel if
you
were to have the opportunity to work alongside Inspector Newsome on this case, Eusebius?’

‘I do not believe that would happen, sir.’

‘Do not tell me what could happen or not happen. Would you like to work with the police on this case? To attend each interview, hear each word, follow each new development, and be my eyes as the story unfolds?’

‘I think I would enjoy that.’

‘As I thought. You are a good boy.’

A door opened and a man entered: the physician. He looked at Eusebius and then at the recumbent form of ‘J.S.’, who nodded in approbation. Whatever was to take place, the spy would be a witness to it.

‘I have an unfortunate condition, Eusebius. I come here twice a month to see the doctor and he attempts to purge me of the poison in my blood. Do not be embarrassed – I feel no shame.’

The doctor lifted the sheet from the legs and Eusebius beheld the fat, black leeches feasting upon the pimply flesh. Each one was glistening and gorged on blood.

‘It is not a fashionable treatment, but it is one with a long and illustrious history,’ said ‘J.S.’ as the doctor applied a dull edge to detach each one.

With each audible de-suction, Eusebius felt hot bile rise in his throat.

‘I understand that you were collected by my carriage on Holywell-street near Poppleton’s bookshop, Eusebius. Perhaps you will tell me all that you witnessed there,’ said ‘J.S.’.

Half mesmerized and half nauseated by the procedure taking place before him, Eusebius Bean narrated all he had seen in a tone that wavered only when the sheet was raised above the waist, revealing things for which not even
my
pen would deign to find vocabulary.

ELEVEN

Mr Williamson looked at the figures printed in Dr Mullond’s
Diseases of Venery
and beheld a series of faces deformed horribly by self-inflicted sinfulness. Eyes stared madly and mouths flapped open like those of idiots. He crossed his legs, rubbed his eyes in the dim light of his fireside chair, and placed the book on the table beside him. He had not slept. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw images of Charlotte that enraged his blood.

Distractedly, he looked again at the letters he had received that morning after his affecting Golden-square experience. One was from the Secretary of the Mendicity Society asking, in subtly urgent tones, when he might expect Mr Williamson back at his desk in Red Lion-square to address the accumulating cases of letter fraud. The other was from his erstwhile colleague Harold Jute, who was highly enthusiastic about pursuing ‘Mr Mann’ and who had been thinking of ways they might, together, pursue the fakement writer. Neither letter could distract him from the other thoughts that occupied the investigative part of his brain.

One singular fact of that otherwise disastrous meeting with the young magdalene would not leave him: her mention of the curious deaths by prussic acid. As a policeman, and later as a detective, he had smelled the bitter-almond smell often enough to recognize it. And he had smelled it on the mouth of his dead wife.

Now it seemed there were other notable cases of the poison being cited as the cause of death in suspicious suicides. There had, of course, been hundreds of straightforward prussic acid suicides in the intervening years – wasn’t the substance available in every apothecary? – but these were not just any deaths. One had occurred on the same street and on the same morning of the murder that was supposed to be linked to his wife’s, while the other was also connected to a prostitute.

For at least a year after Katherine’s death, Mr Williamson had excised columns of the
Police Gazette
and
the Times
relating to poisoning suicides, though no pattern or hint had emerged from his private enquiries. That evening after returning from Charlotte’s room, he had spent further hours going through his collection of past editions of the
Gazette
, hoping to find something – anything – to verify what the girl had told him.

And Charlotte had been telling the truth. At least, he had found mention of the women she had described, Kate and Mary, but the detail had been perfunctory, as it often was when prostitutes died. The logical next step would be to pursue the link and talk to all of those unfortunate women (and perhaps the men) who had known the dead prostitutes. Perhaps they would also know the elderly benefactor of Lou, or the final days before her false suicide.

And yet, though this might have been his only opportunity to prove or disprove ‘Persephone’s’ letter, it was a line of investigation he would rather not have pursued. These women were treacherous, and he knew he lacked the skills to defend himself against them. His rigid moral architecture found itself on foundations of sand in their presence, especially when, like Charlotte, they were such expert manipulators of men.

A woman – any woman, he reflected – could dissimulate with a greater facility than the most accomplished male criminal. A woman could keep a secret so securely that the greatest detective would never discern that it was hidden – at least, not a man like Mr Williamson, to whom virtuous women were idealized creatures seldom found in reality.

Further thought on the subject was interrupted by a knock at the door, which he attended only to find the step outside empty. A folded piece of paper at the foot of the door, however, was quite clear in its instructions:

Mr Williamson looked at his pocket watch and immediately reached for his coat and hat.

Is there another monument in our city as illustrious as Temple Bar? No doubt some will point to St Paul’s, which indubitably has the advantage of height and grandeur. Others might put Somerset House in the pre-eminent position, while those of an architectural tendency may argue for the new Parliament buildings. They are all fine structures in their way, but none has the historic romance of Temple Bar.

‘Romance?’ I hear the reader challenge. ‘Where is the romance in severed heads displayed on poles from the apex of that Portland stone edifice? Where is the romance of almost two centuries of thunderous traffic, both human and equine, passing ceaselessly through its three arches? Where is the romance in a mere city
gate
?’

I reply that the romance lies exactly in those things. There is not another monument in this, the largest and greatest city in the world, that so many have passed
through
. Like the slender neck of the hourglass, it has channelled multitudinous grains of existence. It is the needle eye through which innumerable threads of destiny have slipped. Who has
not
walked or driven beneath it? Kings, queens, poets, playwrights, beggars, murderers and saints – all have come this way on their individual paths to fame, posterity, notoriety or oblivion.

And yet . . . and yet is it not also in some way invisible in the way that a doorway can be invisible among the walls around it? We move from one side to another without pausing to stop in that central nowhere – for why would we? Our origin lies behind and our destination beyond – in the middle is a limbo: not east, not west. There is only movement here.

It was at Temple Bar, then, that Mr Williamson was waiting at twelve that same day. Only, it made for a highly imprecise
rendezvous
as an actual address
.
‘Temple Bar’ commonly referred to all of the businesses and thoroughfares thereabouts, so the only solution was stand conspicuously beneath one or other of the pedestrian arches under the gate itself. This might have been easy at two o’clock in the morning, but the flood of humanity at midday was such that Mr Williamson was jostled and tossed like driftwood upon the spume.

By ten past twelve, his composure had quite fractured and there was no sign of anyone else waiting. He decided to visit a coffee house on the Strand (from where to observe the gate) and walked through the arch to the west side . . . whereupon he noticed the door built into the wall left of the arch. Here, the masonry of Temple Bar continued into the adjoining building, but the door seemed to be part of the arch itself. No doubt he had seen this door on uncountable occasions, yet only now did he think of it as a possible access to the mysterious upper room above the arches.

He looked around and saw that he might well have been invisible to the rushing crowds entering and exiting the arches in a blur of urban purposefulness. It was as if that door and the small space before it were little more than shadows to the human flow. Suddenly he understood, and he knocked.

The door was opened immediately with a rattle of the lock. He could see nobody in the relative dimness within, but he stepped in regardless. The door closed. And a figure behind the now closing door caused him to take a sharp intake of breath.

The man was an unnaturally tall Negro with a face to frighten anyone who did not know him. Even in the poor light, Mr Williamson was able to discern the flat nose and scarred temples that spoke of the prize ring, and a terrible left eye that was covered entirely with a milky membrane. In that musty vestibule echoing with the reverberating throb of the traffic all around, Mr Williamson could not quite see the hideous scar about the Negro’s neck, although he knew of its existence.

‘Benjamin – you startled me. I am glad to meet you again,’ said Mr Williamson, watching his own palm disappear into the meaty paw and smiling, despite himself, at the other man’s broad white grin. ‘Is he here?’

Benjamin nodded, pointing upwards, and the two men ascended past a grimy circular window and then outside onto a leaded shoulder of the edifice so that they were standing atop the pedestrian arch of Temple Bar itself. Mr Williamson paused for a moment to look on the torrent of London passing beneath his feet: hundreds of faces and dozens of carriages charging along, but with not a single face upturned to see his gaze. It was a curious and beguiling perspective that captivated even this most austere of men.