Fingersmith (71 page)

'No,'I said.'No, no!'

Mrs Sucksby gripped Gentleman's arm. Take your hand away,' she said. He still clutched his stomach.

'I can't.'

'Take your hand away!'

She wanted to see how deep the wound went. He grimaced, then drew off his fingers. There came, from a gash in his waistcoat, a bubble—like a bubble of soap, but swirling red—and then a spurt of blood, that fell and struck the floor with a splash—an ordinary splash, like water or soup would make.

Dainty shrieked again. The light wobbled. '
Fuck
!
Fuck
!' said John.

'Set him down in a chair,' said Mrs Sucksby. 'Fetch a cloth, for the cut. Fetch something to catch this blood. Fetch something, anything—'

'Help me,' said Gentleman. 'Help me. Oh, Christ!'

They moved him, awkwardly, with grunts and sighs. They sat him on a hard-backed chair. I stood and looked on, while they did it—held still, I suppose, by horror; though I am ashamed now, that I did nothing. Mr Ibbs plucked a towel from a hook on the wall and Mrs Sucksby knelt at Gentleman's side and held it against the wound. Each time he moved or took his hand from his stomach, the blood spurted. 'Fetch a bucket or a pot,' she said again; and finally Dainty ran to the door, caught up the chamber-pot that had been left there, and brought it and set it down beside the chair. The sound of the blood striking the china—and the sight of the red of it, against the white, and against that great dark eye—was worse than anything. Gentleman heard it and grew frightened.

'Oh, Christ!' he said again. 'Oh, Christ, I'm dying!' In between the words, he moaned—a shuddering, chattering moan, that he could not help or stop. 'Oh, Jesus, save me!'

'There now,' said Mrs Sucksby, touching his face. 'There now. Be brave. I've seen women lose blood like this, from a baby; and live to tell of it.'

'Not like this!' he said. 'Not like this! I'm cut. How badly am I cut? Oh, Christ! I need a surgeon. Do I?'

'Bring him liquor,' said Mrs Sucksby, to Dainty; but he shook his head.

'No liquor. A smoke, though. In my pocket, here.'

He dipped his chin to his waistcoat, and John fished in the folds and brought out a packet of cigarettes, and another of matches. Half of the cigarettes were soaked with blood, but he found one that was dry, lit it at his own mouth, then put it in Gentleman's.

'Good boy,' said Gentleman, coughing. But he winced, and the cigarette fell. John caught it up in trembling fingers and set it back between his lips. He coughed again. More blood oozed up between his hands. Mrs Sucksby took the towel away and wrung it—wrung it, as if it were filled with water. Gentleman began to shake.

'How did this happen?' he said. I looked at Maud. She had not moved since stepping from him as he began to fall. She had kept still as me, her eyes upon his face. 'How can this be?' He looked wildly about him—at John, at Mr Ibbs, at me. 'Why do you stand and watch me? Bring a doctor. Bring a surgeon!'

I think Dainty took a step. Mr Ibbs caught her arm.

'No surgeons here,' he said firmly. 'No men like that, to this house.'

'No men like that?' cried Gentleman. The cigarette fell. 'What are you saying? Look at me! Christ! Don't you know a crooked man? Look at me! I'm dying! Mrs Sucksby, you love me. Bring a man, I beg you.'

'Dear boy, be still,' she said, still pressing the towel to the cut. He cried out in pain and fear.

'Damn you!' he said. 'You bitches! John—'

John put down the lamp and raised his hand to his eyes. He was weeping and trying to hide it.

'John, go for a surgeon! Johnny! I'll pay you!
Fuck
!' The blood spurted again. Now his face was white, his whiskers black but matted, here and there, with red, his cheek gleaming like lard.

John shook his head. 'I can't! Don't ask me!'

Gentleman turned to me. 'Suky!' he said. 'Suky, they've killed me—'

'No surgeons,' said Mr Ibbs again, when I looked at him. 'Bring a man like that, and we're done for.'

'Take him to the street,' I said. 'Can't you? Call a doctor to the street.'

'He is cut too bad. Look at him. It would bring them here. There is too much blood.'

There was. It now almost filled the china pot. Gentleman's moans had begun to grow fainter.

'Damn you!' he said softly. He had begun to cry. 'Who is there who'll help me? I've money, I swear it. Who is there? Maud?'

Her cheek was almost as pale as his, her lip quite white.

'Maud? Maud?' he said.

She shook her head. Then she said, in a whisper: 'I am sorry. I am sorry.'

'God damn you! Help me!
Oh
!' He coughed. There came, in the spittle at his mouth, a thread of crimson; and then, a moment later, a gush of blood. He raised a feeble hand to it—saw the fresh red upon his fingers—and his look grew wild. He reached, out of the circle of lamp-light, and began to struggle, as if to raise himself from the chair. He reached for Charles. 'Charley?' he said, the blood bubbling and bursting about the word. He clutched at Charles's coat and made to draw him closer. But Charles would not come. He had stood all this time in the shadows, a look of fixed and awful terror on his face. Now he saw the bubbles at Gentleman's lips and whiskers, Gentleman's red and slippery hand gripping the coarse blue collar of his jacket, and he twitched like a hare. He turned and ran. He ran, the way I had brought him— along the passage to Mr Ibbs's shop. And before we could call to him or go to him to make him stop, we heard him tear open the door then shriek, like a girl, into Lant Street:

'Murder! Help! Help! Murder!'

At that we all, save Mrs Sucksby and Maud, sprang back. John made for the shop.—'Too late!' said Mr Ibbs. 'Too late.' He held up his hand. John stood and listened. There had come a swirl of hot wind from the open shop-door and it carried with it what I thought at first was the echo of Charles's cry; then the sound grew stronger, and I understood it was an answering shout, perhaps from the window of a house nearby. In a second it was joined by another. Then it was joined by this—the worst sound of all, to us—the sound of a rattle, rising and falling on the gusting wind; and drawing nearer.

'The blues!' said John. He turned, and came to Dainty. 'Dainty, run!' he said. She stood for a second, then went—the back way—tearing the bolts from their cradles.—'Go on!' he said, when she looked back. But he did not go with her. Instead, he went to Gentleman's side.

'We might take him,' he said to Mrs Sucksby. He looked at me, and then at Maud. 'We might take him between us, if we are quick.'

Mrs Sucksby shook her head. Gentleman's own head hung low upon his breast. The blood still bubbled at his lip; burst, and bubbled again.

'Save yourself,' she said to John. 'Take Sue.'

But he did not go; and I knew—and know, still—that I wouldn't have followed, if he had. I was held there, as if by a charm. I looked at Mr Ibbs. He had run to the wall beside his brazier and, as I watched, he drew out one of the bricks. I only found out later that he kept money there, privately, in an old cigarette box. He put the box inside his waistcoat. Then he began to look about him, at the china, the knives and forks, the ornaments on the shelves: he was looking to see what there might be, that he could be done for. He did not look at Gentleman or Mrs Sucksby. He did not look at me—once he came near me, and thrust me aside, to reach past me for a porcelain cup; and when he had got it he dashed it to the floor. When Charley Wag rose up and gave a strangled sort of bark, he kicked him.

Meanwhile, the sound of shouts and rattles grew close. Gentleman lifted his head. There was blood on his beard, on his cheek, at the corner of his eye.

'Do you hear that?' he said weakly.

'Dear boy, I do,' said Mrs Sucksby. She still knelt at his side.

'What sound is it?'

She put her red hands over his. 'The sound of Fortune,' she said.

She looked at me, and then at Maud. 'You might run.'

I said nothing. Maud shook her head. 'Not from this,' she answered. 'Not now.'

'You know what follows?'

She nodded. Mrs Sucksby glanced again at me, and then again at Maud, then closed her eyes. She sighed, as if weary.

'To have lost you once, dear girl,' she said. 'And now, to lose you again—'

'You shall not lose me!' I cried; and her eyes flew open, and she held my gaze for a second, as if not understanding. Then she looked at John. He had tilted his head.

'Here they come!' he said.

Mr Ibbs heard him, and ran; but he got no further than that dark little court at the back of the house before a policeman picked him up and brought him back again; and by then, two more policemen had made their way into the kitchen by the shop. They looked at Gentleman, and at the chamber-pot of blood, and—what we had not thought to look for or to hide—at the knife, which had got kicked into the shadows and had blood upon it; and they shook their heads.—As policemen tend to do when they see things like that, in the Borough.

'This is nasty work, ain't it?' they said. This is very bad. Let's see how bad.'

They took hold of Gentleman's hair and drew back his head, and felt for the pulse at his neck; and then they said,

'This is filthy murder. Now, who done it?'

Maud moved, or took a step. But John moved quicker.

'She done it,' he said, without a hesitation. His cheek was darker than ever, where he had been struck before. He lifted his arm and pointed. 'She done it. I saw her.'

He pointed at Mrs Sucksby.

I saw him, and heard him, but could not act. I only said, 'What—?' and Maud, I think, also cried out, 'What—?' or 'Wait—!'

But Mrs Sucksby rose from Gentleman's side. Her taffeta dress was soaked in his blood, the brooch of diamonds at her bosom turned to a brooch of rubies. Her hands were crimson, from fingertip to wrist. She looked like the picture of a murderess from one of the penny papers.

'I done it,' she said. 'Lord knows, I'm sorry for it now; but I done it. And these girls here are innocent girls, and know nothing at all about it; and have harmed no-one.'

M
y name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. Now those days all came to an end.

The police took every one of us, save Dainty. They took us, and kept us in gaol while they tore up the Lant Street kitchen, looking for clues, for stashes of money and poke. They kept us in separate cells, and every day they came and asked the same set of questions.

'What was the murdered man, to you?'

I said he was a friend of Mrs Sucksby's.

'Been long, at Lant Street?'

I said I was born there.

'What did you see, on the night of the crime?'

Here, however, I always stumbled. Sometimes it seemed to me that I had seen Maud take up the knife; sometimes I even seemed to remember seeing her use it. I know I saw her touch the table-top, I know I saw the glitter of the blade. I know she stepped away as Gentleman started to stagger. But Mrs Sucksby had been there too, she had moved as quick as anyone; and sometimes I thought it was
her
hand I remembered seeing dart and flash… At last I told the simple truth: that I did not know what I had seen. It didn't matter, anyway. They had John Vroom's word, and Mrs Sucksby's own confession. They didn't need me. On the fourth day after they took us, they let me go.

The others they kept longer.

Mr Ibbs was brought before the magistrate first. His trial lasted half-an-hour. He was done, after all, not on account of the poke left lying about the kitchen—he was too good at taking the seals and stampings off, for that—but for the sake of some of the notes in his cigarette box. They were marked ones. The police, it turned out, had been watching the business at Mr Ibbs's shop, for more .than a month; and in the end they had got Phil—who, you might remember, had sworn he'd never do another term in gaol, at any cost—to plant the marked notes on him. Mr Ibbs was found to have handled stolen goods: he was sent to Pentonville. Of course, he knew many of the men in there, and might be supposed to have had an easy time among them—except that, here was a funny thing: the fingersmiths and cracksmen who had been so grateful to get an extra shilling from him on the outside, now quite turned against him; and I think his time was very miserable. I went to visit him, a week after he went in. He saw me, and put his hands before his face, and was in general so changed and so brought down, and looked at me so queerly, I could not bear it. I didn't go again.

His sister, poor thing, was found by the police in her bed at Lant Street, while they were going through the house. We had all forgotten her. She was put on the ward of a parish hospital. The move, however, was too great a shock for her; and she died.

John Vroom could not be pinned to any crime, save—through his coat— to that old one of dog-stealing. He was let off with six nights in Tothill Fields, and a flogging. They say he was so disliked in his gaol, the keepers played cards for who should be the one to flog him; that they flung in one or two extras above his twelve, for fun; and that after, he cried like a baby. Dainty met him at the prison gate, and he punched her and blacked her eye. It was thanks to him, though, that she had got clean off from Lant Street.