A Metropolitan Murder (14 page)

Clara frowns.

The questioner has melted away and, as often happens in the unconscious hours after midnight, she finds herself standing outside a house by the river, upon the first floor, her grandmother's house in Wapping. It is an old dilapidated place. Once it was the home of some prosperous merchant. No more. Now it is ‘dry lodgings'.

It changes again.

She looks through the window. Outside, in the courtyard where she stood, the river water has risen to ankle-deep. The water is rich in silted London mud, the primitive sludge of the river-bed, intermingled with the refuse of the residents of the surrounding buildings, and much worse besides.

How did this happen? she thinks to herself. Ah, yes. Grandmother refused to leave. Mother is shouting at her. ‘Now we'll all be drowned and damned together.'

She watches the water. It comes in earnest, but not in raging torrents. It seeps in, steady and stealthy, drooling between cracks in the brick-work, up the old landings and steps. Gradually, it becomes so deep that the current flows steadily between buildings, and, piece by piece, washes the detritus of daily life out along the Thames. Chairs, tables, pots, pans. A skirt, a dress, a copy of the
Daily News
. Everything flows away.

But it is an awkward cleansing. She knows there is never cause for celebration when the tide subsides. How long does it take? She is not sure. None the less, in every house, and in all the warehouses and store-rooms that line the quays, the ousted inhabitants return to find that the river has left an indelible mark, signifying the limits of water's ambition. And everywhere Clara herself looks there is mud, a grimy syrup that adheres to the walls, inside and out, a filthy black sludge that must be thanklessly scraped and scrubbed away.

It stinks of dirt and decay, and Clara's mother cries. She does not often cry.

Outside, she can hear her little sister screaming.

‘Lizzie?'

‘What? Clara, wake up.'

‘Lizzie?'

‘Clara, wake up, you're dreaming.'

Clara White turns over, looking at the sloping ceiling of the attic, recalling the room and the voice of Alice the kitchen-maid, who lies beside her in the bed.

‘You were dreaming about your sister, weren't you?'

‘I'm sorry. Did I say something?'

‘You were calling her name.'

Clara pauses, as if trying to recall her thoughts. ‘She came yesterday, and saw my mother.'

‘You said. What's wrong with that?'

‘I thought she'd fallen out with her.'

‘What for?'

‘It don't matter. She ran off with someone, a man what we used to know, and we haven't heard anything of her, not for a twelvemonth.'

‘Who was he then, this someone?'

‘Tom Hunt.'

‘That it?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘What was he? Butcher? Baker? Good-looking? Thin? Fat?'

‘Tom? He's no good to anyone. Lord knows how she's fixed, or what she's doing.'

On the rise of Saffron Hill, Lizzie Hunt stands, glum-faced and bare-headed in the clammy night air, clapping her arms to her sides to keep warm, peering
through the fog. A figure approaches her, indistinct at first, then becoming more visible, walking with a hesitant gait; he is a rough-looking man, with bushy unkempt whiskers and the familiar hint of gin on his breath.

‘Can we go somewhere? Will two bob do it? I ain't got no more.'

She nods. ‘I know a good little place, if you like. It's not far.'

She takes hold of his arm, and leads him away, turning towards Victoria Street.

M
ORNING
.

The fog has lifted a little, but there is still a perceptible black-brown mist that dogs the streets, occluding roads and alley. Moreover, during the night, the outside atmosphere has crept into private homes, a stealthy intruder through letter-boxes and ill-fitting sash windows, and the smell of it clings to cloth and curtains. Indeed, as breakfast appears upon the diningtables of the metropolis, so omnipresent is the residual stench of the night's ‘London particular', that the pleasant aromas of the kitchen are generally mingled with an all-too-familiar scent of coal-dust and sulphur.

In the dining-room of the Harris household, however, Clara White is too preoccupied to give the ravages of the fog a second thought. Instead, she frowns in concentration as she strategically lays out the morning's copy of
The Times
upon the dining-table, aligning it precisely with the toast rack, a fine example of Sheffield plate, which takes pride of place amongst the Harrises' pre-prandial silverware. She only leaves the paper alone when she is quite sure that its positioning will not interfere with Dr. Harris's enjoyment of his breakfast, nor prevent him from casually perusing its pages. She then positions a tea service, also of burnished silver, to the left of the paper, in
accordance with the household usage, with space remaining for an arrangement of plates and cutlery. If the teapot lid rattles somewhat as Clara deposits it upon the damask tablecloth, it is only because her worthy mistress, unlike the good doctor, has already come in and sat down at table. Mrs. Harris, in fact, observes her maid-servant's movements with the same critical attention that a lesser woman might reserve for discussing the talents of the Opera House's
corps de ballet
, and it comes as no surprise to Clara, therefore, when she learns that the position of the knives is ‘altogether wrong', and her situation of the anchovy paste ‘utterly remarkable'. Indeed, the pronouncement of such discerning judgements is an almost daily occurrence in the Harris household, and the prospect of such scrutiny fills Clara with dread every morning. It is only the sound of Dr. Harris upon the stairs, and his appearance in the doorway in his navy-blue dressing gown, that signals the end of her ordeal. A curt nod from her mistress, and Clara is dismissed, in order that she might hurry down to the kitchen, to retrieve the morning's boiled eggs, bacon and cold cuts.

Clara performs this task with admirable speed, such that, as she comes back into the parlour, the bacon still sizzles from its scorching, and the eggs still steam from the pan. And yet she does not get a word of thanks from her mistress, whose attention has turned to perfecting the drapery of her dress's pagoda sleeves, which are of sufficient breadth to be in danger of trailing over the toast rack. Clara's only encouragement is, rather, a smile from the cherubic doctor, who regards his prospective repast with satisfaction, and remarks with relish, ‘Eggs!'

This simple and heartfelt comment is sufficient to send her back downstairs marginally more cheerful. The clock in the hall chimes nine o'clock as she
descends the steps, and she smiles pleasantly at Cook as she enters the kitchen.

‘Any bacon left?'

Cook looks at her with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction, and dabs her salty lips with a dish-rag.

‘Sorry, dear, no.'

As in any house, there are chores to be done after breakfast, and it is past ten o'clock before Clara White, wrapped in her winter shawl, can excuse herself, under pretence of pursuing Dr. Harris's missing book. Indeed, she climbs the area steps and sets off briskly along Doughty Street with a sigh of relief, thinking all the while of her mother.

Outside, the fog has nearly lifted. There are still a few office boys and copy-clerks on their way to Gray's Inn, but it is past time for them to be at their desks; the streets, in fact, are quite empty but for these occasional stragglers, and the odd delivery man on his rounds. There is still, of course, the constant rumble of traffic, the endless reverberation of iron-shod wheels in neighbouring streets, and it is not long before Clara hears the far-off shout of some itinerant street hawker, in the business of selling and mending old clothes. None the less, there is no-one to impede her as she goes along Jockey's Fields, the old mews that leads down by the high stone wall of Gray's Inn, and thence to Lincoln's Inn Fields. She walks quickly and, in her apron pocket, hidden beneath her woollen wrap, she keeps one hand carefully protecting the bottle she purchased for her mother.