The Vice Society (39 page)

. . . And there she was, sitting at her looking glass.

We will pause there for a moment, though I admit some readers may find the momentary halt infuriating. Much as I would like to continue with the remarkable discoveries made by Mr Williamson in the company of that incomparable woman of pleasure, I have a responsibility to another pertinent thread of my story, namely, that of Noah Dyson.

He had told Mr Newsome that he was going to pursue his own investigations while trying to remain unseen, which is precisely what he was doing. We find him in a cab on his way to a location already familiar to us on Albert-road, his mind working through the previous day’s meeting with the inspector.

Mr Newsome was not to be trusted. He might be genuine in his attempts to capture the villains behind the Holywell-street case, but his attitude to his temporary accomplices was a matter of far less certainty. Mr Cullen had betrayed him, Mr Williamson had always been the better detective, and Noah himself was considered something of a threat. Such things could not be discounted in the sly machinations of that policeman’s mind.

The cab stopped outside the asylum of Doctor Norwood . . . and Noah immediately sensed that something was amiss. Though the house itself looked unchanged, there was an unearthly sound emanating from the garden at the rear: something like a babble of conversation, but with the fraught inflection of utter derangement.

He walked briskly around to the garden and found his view blocked by the tall, thick hedge that had been cultivated there. The odd sound was louder: human voices but somehow changed, somehow disconnected. Undeterred, he parted its heavy frondage, snapping twigs aside until he could gain a view of what was taking place beyond.

And what he saw through that leafy portal was a piteous fracturing of the delicate structure of sanity that Doctor Norwood had worked so hard and so long to build. Immediately to Noah’s right, a young man was in the process of haranguing a shrub that had evidently caused him offence, striking it blows with one hand while holding on to its twigs with another as if to prevent its escape. His eyes were quite expressionless.

In another place, a gentleman was attending to a painting on an easel while conducting a sing-song monologue with himself. He was facing the house, but what appeared on the canvas was merely an angry effusion of red – an accumulation of paint so thick that it dripped on to the grass, and applied with such force that the paintbrush had lost all of its bristles and scored through the canvas to leave a ragged hole in the centre.

Yet another figure sat on the bench so recently occupied by Noah himself. This one merely rocked back and forth with his arms wrapped around himself in a cold and loveless embrace. He intoned some kind of repeated phrase that Noah could not discern with any clarity. A thin strand of spittle hung from his chin.

Aubrey Alsthom was nowhere to be seen.

At that moment, Doctor Norwood emerged from the house in a state of obvious distraction, looked around the garden and wiped his brow.

‘Doctor! Here – I am at the hedge!’ shouted Noah.

‘Mr Dyson? Is it you? O, there has been a terrible tragedy. Aubrey has been shot!’

‘Admit me at the street door!’

Noah raced back to Albert-road and up the stairs just as the door was opened.

‘What happened, doctor?’

‘He was in the garden, just doing his whittling . . . a series on the philosophers, you know . . . and there was a loud report . . . I was not there at the time but . . . Mr Josephson, an obsessive . . .’

‘Slowly, doctor. Take a breath. You say there was a loud report. What happened?’

‘He was shot through the hedge. They must have pushed the pistol through and fired without anyone seeing them. Aubrey was hit in the abdomen.’

‘Who did this? Was anyone else injured? Did anyone see anything? When did this happen?’

‘Only Aubrey. Only Aubrey. Nobody saw anything . . . the hedge, you see: it is very thick ... It occurred last evening just before the gentlemen retired. O, it has quite undone the others. They sense the anguish, you know. It is a quite catastrophic reverse in their treatment, quite catastrophic’

‘Is Aubrey still alive?’

‘He is upstairs. The physician has said that nothing can be done with the wound. He has lost a lot of blood and is quite weak . . .’

‘Take me to him – now!’

Noah followed Doctor Norwood upstairs and along the corridor to Aubrey’s room. The young man was lying in bed with a bloodied bandage wrapped around his middle. His face was a pale, wax-like mask and his closed eyelids fluttered. The smell of blood was quite oppressive.

‘Can he speak?’ said Noah.

‘I advise against it,’ said the physician gravely. He was a kindly-looking old man who had obviously seen enough deaths to accept them, respectfully, as they came.

At Noah’s voice, Aubrey’s eyes had blinked open.

‘Can you hear me, Aubrey?’ asked Noah.

‘The man . . . who asked me all the . . . questions.’ The voice was a mere breath.

‘Yes, it is I. You have quite the collection,’ said Noah, gesturing at a shelf of whittled philosophers. ‘I recognize Plato there. And Socrates, of course. That must be Aristotle. Who is the one on the left?’

‘Py . . . Pythagoras.’

‘Of course. I am sorry to see you in such a condition, Aubrey.’

‘Have . . . have you . . . come to ask me . . . more questions.’

‘If you would not mind.’

Aubrey turned his head slowly to where Doctor Norwood stood.

‘It is your choice, Aubrey. I no longer tell you what to do,’ said the doctor sombrely.

There was a blink of the eyes where no energy existed for a nod.

‘Search for . . . “Sir John Smythe”.’

Aubrey’s eyes partially closed, showing only the whites. His mouth opened slightly. Noah leaned close to hear the whispered response:

‘“. . . also at the Epsom Spring Meeting were Sir John Smythe . . . shooting at Glenfiddich were Archibald Harlow, Donald MacCaggan, Sir John Smythe . . . The Royal dinner party at the castle this evening included Lady Harriet Hereford, Sir John Smythe . . . Secretary of the Church Extension Fund will be Sir John Smythe . . .”’

‘Stop. I think that is enough. One more question, Aubrey: when is the last entry on Sir John?’

‘It was . . . 1843 ... in a court circular.’

‘Thank you. I will trouble you no more.’

‘It has . . . been . . . my pleasure.’

The figure on the bed was paler than ever. The breathing was laboured and shallow. Noah looked at the bloody bandages about his middle and wished that he could take hold of the one who had wielded the pistol. Had it been the taciturn James Tattershall?

‘Noah ... I wonder if perhaps . . .’ Doctor Norwood let his question hang above the dying young man.

Noah caught the inflection, discerned the thought, and nodded. He reached inside his coat and extracted a phial of the finest distillate of opium.

‘You might want to leave us now,’ said Doctor Norwood to the elderly physician, who had immediately ascertained what was to happen and was already reaching for his hat and bag. He left silently with just a nod to each of the gentlemen.

‘Aubrey – can you hear me?’ said Doctor Norwood. ‘I am about to administer something that will ease your suffering. You will drift into a state of warmth and comfort. May you . . . may you rest in peace.’

Noah watched. Never had he seen a passing so gentle.

‘You
will
catch the fellows that did this?’ said the doctor after Aubrey’s breathing had diminished into silence.

‘You may have my word, doctor. And their ends will not be nearly so placid.’

TWENTY-FIVE

The reader has waited long enough. I will prolong it no further.

Her real name – the name she was born with – was Mary Wright. Young Mary was the daughter of a Clerkenwell clock-maker: a moderately educated man and an artisan of some local standing. Like her father, she had a quick wit and an enquiring mind, but she would never be a clockmaker. Rather she was required to bring money into the house by that most favoured of professions among families of limited means: the milliner’s girl.

Was it a sin that she was such a pretty thing and instinctively knew it at a tender age? Was it a sin if certain gentlemen asked to walk with her before or after her hours at the shop? Was it a sin to offer them a kiss in return for money to save for nicer stockings or a ribbon for her bonnet? Very likely it was – but it was not long before she realized the opportunities of her power. By that time her destiny was inevitable.

Who knows what route she took from there? Not I. Perhaps she was seen dollymopping around by a procuress and offered a more certain income. Perhaps she spent some time in a brothel. It must have been the briefest periods, because she was soon visiting the supper rooms as an independent girl, now calling herself Marianne. She was better dressed, better educated and with far, far higher expectations.

And young Marianne had learned enough from the world of commerce and shop windows to know how she should be perceived. At those dancing places and sophisticated
soirées,
she made herself an object of desire that men could neither ignore nor resist. Her beauty attracted them, and her indifference made them mad with the obsessive need to possess her. She was a prize that all wanted, but she would yield only to the one who met her simple criterion: that the gentleman in question be both limitlessly rich and boundlessly generous.

In return, that lucky man would rise above his peers as her possessor and boast of having a woman to shame all others with her grace, beauty and learning. For let us not imagine for a moment that her only talent was an artful lasciviousness commensurate with the appetite of a male (though Marianne, now called Anna, was assuredly expert in this) – no, she was also expected to be a reliable foil in conversation: as adept with her Voltaire and Seneca as any club man, and as quick with a Shakespearean pun as any author. She was, in short, a woman self-created by the dreams of men: a cigar-smoking, champagne-drinking, morality-eschewing, Latin-quoting phantasy Venus.

Few could afford her. For all her attributes and attainments, she deserved a box at the opera, an apartment with a view of the park, stables, a carriage and footmen of her own, girls to dress her and enough incomparable dresses and jewellery to keep her the envy of every female eye in the city. Even then, it would have been foolish to expect that she would be loyal to one alone, though she would at least be dutifully discreet in her appointments with others who might ruin themselves to afford an hour of her time.

And there she was before Mr Williamson and Mr Cullen . . . She did not turn, but looked at them in the reflection of her looking glass.

‘Mr Williamson – I did wonder if you would visit. You may enter, but your man will wait outside if you please.’

If she was surprised to see two men walk into her room early that morning, she did not show it. Indeed, her expression was one of mild amusement rather than fear or consternation.

Her voice betrayed no geographical origin, but was an exemplar of intelligent enunciation. She was beautiful, certainly, but in quite a different way from the beauty Mr Williamson thought he had seen in Charlotte. That had been the mere freshness of youth allied with an unsullied, untamed animal sensuality. No, this woman seemed somehow preternaturally beautiful, as if she were a painting rather than a breathing entity. Her hair, free from headwear, was long and dark; her black eyes seemed to bore into him – and her form was silhouetted to affecting effect in a dress that – if he had known of such things – Mr Williamson would have recognized as costing more than Mr Cullen had been paid annually as a constable.

‘Mr Cullen – will you wait outside and see we are not disturbed,’ said Mr Williamson with a dry throat.

‘We will not be disturbed,’ she said with a wry smile, turning now to examine her visiter with a gaze that, it seemed to him, emptied his very pockets and counted the stitches in his coat.

‘You know my name, madam. What should I call you?’

‘You may call me Mary.’

‘Is it your real name?’

‘What
is
my real name? Does it matter? Mary? Marianne? Anna? Courtesan? Prostitute? Whore?’

‘Persephone?’

‘Shall we be seated?’ Mary gestured towards the balcony window and a pair of handsome-looking chairs decorated with gilt and scarlet velvet.

Mr Williamson sat and placed his hat beside him on a table inlaid exquisitely with fine marquetry. He looked around the room and his eyes settled on a selection of fruit arrayed on a scalloped silver tray: strawberries, plums, grapes, a pineapple and pomegranates – none of which had been cultivated on these shores. The air smelled of some exotic perfume and there was a glass vase full of visiting cards above the fireplace. Were they the cards, he wondered, of men who had been accepted, or rejected?

Mary made to sit across from him, moving with a grace that denied she was executing anything as quotidian as actual steps. Barely a moment of the last decade had passed without her being an object of rapt attention, and she had made herself a work of art. Arranging her dress about her, she maintained a cool gaze that simultaneously mocked him and made him feel that he was the only man who had ever interested her. Fortunately, the interest seemed entirely cerebral.