Tom All-Alone's (5 page)

Stornaway, meanwhile, is nodding. ‘Aye, that's what's I thought me'sen. Mrs McLeod, who comes in twice a week to do
for us, her husband is in the same declinin' way. More a little chiel than an old man she says. If that's all it were, I could manage. But these last few days, things have changed.'

He is, all unconsciously, rubbing his left arm and Charles leans forward and pushes the sleeve gently back. Stornaway does not resist and that, more than anything else, tells Charles that something is seriously wrong. There's a livid bruise from elbow to wrist and darker marks where fingernails have dug into the flesh.

‘Did he do this to you?'

Charles has never seen tears in Stornaway's eyes before, but he sees them now.

‘He dinna mean it. I was just trying to help him get his'sen dressed – you know how partic'lar he is about such things. Everythin' has to be just so – coat, shirt, stock, wesscit.' He shakes his head. ‘He accused me of attackin' him. Tryin' to rob him. Told me to get oot and nae come back.'

Looking at his companion now, Charles is prepared to bet that harder words than this were thrown at him and the memory of those words is far more distressing than any pain he feels from the wounds to his arm.

‘Was that the only time it happened?'

Stornaway shakes his head. ‘Nay. It happened again this mornin'. Only this time it were Mrs McLeod as bore the brunt. She's an old lady her'sen, Mr Charles, and canna be expected to suffer ill-treatment. That's when I realized som'at had to be done. And I thought a ye.'

Charles nods slowly, then drains his mug and puts it on the table.

‘You did the right thing. I'm glad you came.'

Stornaway is in no state for more nocturnal wandering, so Charles picks up a hackney cab at the stand in Tottenham
Court Road, and hands over – without any compunction whatsoever – one of the new-minted shillings Knox advanced him only yesterday. It's a very short hop by four wheels and the two of them are soon set down outside a tall and elegant house in one of the smart Georgian streets on the south side of the Strand. It is – and always was – an excellent location for a man in Maddox's line of work. Not fifty yards from the river in one direction, and a brisk walk from Bow Street in the other.

There are lights burning in the first-floor windows, as there are all along the facade. By comparison with the hectic jumbled streets further north, the architecture here seems to exude its own atmosphere: you can hear the roar of the traffic on the Strand, but it is curiously remote. Here, all is harmony, order and proportion. Or so it appears outside; inside, as Charles soon finds out, it's a very different story. The moment Stornaway opens the door, they hear the sound of voices. A man's raised in rage, the words shrill and incoherent; a woman's, pleading and anxious; and a third that carries on steadily all the while: the unmistakable emollience of a professional at work. Charles sees a flicker of apprehension on Stornaway's face and hurries ahead of him up the stairs. He knows and loves this house but he's never seen the drawing-room in this state. There are papers and books flung in all directions, a windowpane broken, a chair overturned, and a plate and dish-cover upended on the floor. An elderly woman is on her knees, trying – rather ineffectually – to stop a large serving of veal and gravy seeping into the Turkey carpet. The man at the centre of all the sound and fury is his great-uncle, but Charles barely recognizes him. When he last saw Maddox, he still retained all the fine presence of his middle age – the same energy, the same acuity, and the same resonant voice he used to such trenchant effect with patron and perpetrator alike. The scar above his eye had
softened a little with time, but in every other respect he was still, in essence, the Maddox of Charles' childhood. The man before him now is a meagre shadow of that former self, his face sunken and his back bowed, and his old red silk dressing-gown is gaping open over a white night-shirt that – Charles sees with horror – is soiled, and still wet. His hair is well-cut but grown out ragged, and his whiskers need trimming. There's a long rope of spittle hanging from one side of his mouth. Knowing who and what this man once was, it is a pitiful sight, and the worst of it is that Maddox himself seems more aware of it than any of them. He calls out to Charles as the corpulent doctor struggles to trammel his flailing arms and get him back into a chair.

‘I've told this fat scoundrel he can take that filthy stuff back where he found it – they're trying to poison me, you know, him and that crabbed old witch – eh? Eh? You hear me?' Maddox strains towards the woman on the floor and aims a kick in her direction. He's too far away to harm her but the woman cowers in terror all the same. ‘Ha! Lost your tongue now, have you? You can't pull the wool over
my
eyes, you shrivelled old hag!'

‘Come, come, sir,' says the doctor, the beads of perspiration standing out on his brow. ‘Just a few drops of this medicine and I guarantee you'll feel better in a trice. Ah! You there, whoever you are,' he says, catching sight of Charles in the doorway, ‘give me a hand here, would you, the old fellow is quite raving.'

Charles is quick to oblige, but not quite in the way the doctor expected. He seizes the man forcibly by the shoulders and pulls him away, then encircles his great-uncle in his arms and sets him gently on the sofa, feeling, for the first time, just how gaunt and thin he's become. The old man's anger vanishes like a summer storm. He's suddenly as meek as a kitten, staring up at his great-nephew nervously, his shoulders huddled as if it's
only now that he feels the icy draught slicing through the room. Charles kneels before him, smoothes back his rough grey hair, and pulls his dressing-gown closer about him. It isn't much better, but it is something. He stands up and turns to the doctor.

‘Thank you, Mr—'

‘Boswell. Lawrence Boswell, of Devereux Court, the Strand. Mrs McLeod was—'

‘Well-meaning, but ill-advised. We will have no more need of your services tonight.' He turns to Stornaway, who has appeared now in the doorway. ‘Abel, do you still keep the keys to Mr Maddox's strong-box?'

Stornaway nods.

‘In that case,' says Charles, returning to the doctor, ‘if you call tomorrow with your bill, I shall see that it is paid without delay.'

But the doctor is not so easily dismissed. He has been asked for an opinion and he intends to give it.

‘Are you a physician, then, sir?'

‘No. I have some knowledge in that field, but—'

‘But not qualified? Not a practitioner?'

‘No, sir. I am not.'

‘May I then venture to suggest that this old man—'

‘Mr Maddox,' says Charles softly. ‘His
name
is
Mr Maddox
.'

‘That Mr Maddox is clearly in need of more considered medical attendance than you can possibly give him. This infirmity of his requires such constant care and surveillance as only a—'

‘No,' says Charles. ‘Out of the question.'

‘I could recommend a most reputable establishment.'

Charles moves a little closer to him, his voice even lower now. ‘Did you not hear me?
I said, no
.'

There is something in the young man's blue stare that gives the doctor pause. And it is not merely the ferocity of his determination.

‘Is there,' he begins, more hesitantly – the young man is still standing very close – ‘any history of, shall we say, similarly distressing disturbances of mind in Mr Maddox's near relations?'

‘Absolutely not.' The response is as quick as a reflex. If there is something – a half-memory, half-suppressed – then Charles gives no sign. He turns again to Stornaway. ‘Abel, would you mind seeing Mr Boswell out, please? And Mrs McLeod, perhaps I could speak to you for a moment?'

The old lady has been standing by the window, twisting the dish-cloth in her hands, but now she grips the arm of one of the elbow-chairs and sits down heavily, glancing fearfully every now and then at Maddox, who has started to whimper to himself. Charles may be angry with her for meddling, but he cannot deny that she should never have been expected to handle his uncle alone. A few moments later Stornaway reappears, rather out of breath.

‘I'm so sorry, Mrs McLeod. I had nae idea. He'd seemed biddable enough when I left.'

Mrs McLeod shakes her head fretfully. ‘He took against the veal. Heaven only knows why, he always liked it well enough before. I had it sent in special from that chophouse he's so partial to. It's a crying shame he never married,' she continues, ‘then he'd a'had someone to care for him in his old age. Or mebbe a son or daughter of his own.'

Charles is not so sure; he remembers Maddox saying on more than one occasion that most of the people he knew would have done far better to leave marriage alone, and yet when his other long-serving assistant had married – rather late in life – he
bought the couple a little cottage with a plot of garden, and sent George Fraser off to a happy if rather dull retirement in Walworth. He was always nothing if not generous to those he cared for. And it's remembering that which decides Charles now.

He goes over and sits down next to her. ‘Mrs McLeod,' he says kindly, ‘I'm sincerely grateful for everything you've done for my great-uncle, and very much aware that I should have been here more often myself, these last weeks. But that, at least, is going to change. That officious doctor was right about one thing: Mr Maddox needs constant care, and I cannot possibly ask you to undertake such a heavy task – I gather from Stornaway that you have troubles enough of your own.'

A nod here, and the glisten of a tear.

‘So, this is what I propose. Tomorrow morning I will give notice at my lodgings and have my belongings sent here. There's a perfectly adequate suite of rooms upstairs which will do very well for me, with a little soap and water.'

‘Oh, I can do that for you, Mr Charles,' she says quickly.

He smiles. ‘That would be very kind, but I would be even more grateful if you could help me find a valet for Mr Maddox, and a maid-of-all-work to cook and clean. There's plenty of room in the servants' quarters downstairs, and that way there will always be someone at hand if Mr Maddox should feel unwell.'

He is, he knows, descending to as much euphemism as the wretched doctor did, but he cannot really see any alternative.

‘I've never had a servant, so I haven't the faintest idea how to go about hiring one, but I'm sure you'll know exactly what to look for. And I would be extremely appreciative, needless to say,' he adds hurriedly, hoping she understands what he means.

Mrs McLeod seems to be regaining her composure; her hands finally stop their nervous fluttering and she folds the dish-cloth and lays it neatly in her lap.

‘I'd be happy to do anything as will help put things to rights, Mr Charles.'

One problem solved, then, but Charles now has another, though it's at least a full minute before he notices it. It's only when he glances across at Stornaway, fidgeting by the door, that he realizes that what has come as a relief to Mrs McLeod has had quite the opposite effect on the old man. Of
course
– he lives in one of those very rooms downstairs that Charles has just been casually disposing of. Charles quickly gets to his feet and moves towards him. ‘I do hope you'll stay too, Abel,' he says, putting his hand on Stornaway's arm. ‘It may take my uncle a while to get used to so many new faces, and having you here will be a great comfort. And not only to him. To me, as well.'

The old man smiles, showing the gap in his front teeth that he's had for all the years that Charles has known him. ‘Whatever ye say, Mr Charles, whatever ye say.'

A little less than two miles away, as the London crows fly, in an immense but dreary house, in a dull but elegant street, a great lady is bored to death. My Lady Dedlock may partake of the finest entertainment London affords, by night or by day, but finds not the least diversion in any of it. This boredom of hers is a chronic condition, and has been much magnified this evening by a correspondence that will insist on obtruding on her notice. She sits by the fire in her boudoir, glancing wearily at the letter in her hand. Having acquired a great quantity of relations on the occasion of her marriage, and mostly of the poor variety, she has, it must be admitted, very little consideration to spare for those belonging to her acquaintance, and finds it incomprehensible that she should even be applied to on such an ineffably tedious subject.

There is a knock at the door. The footman. Mr Tulkinghorn is downstairs, my Lady. Mr Tulkinghorn, would, if it please my Lady, be grateful for a few minutes' conversation. Will my Lady receive him, if the time is convenient? It would appear that it is not, for she heaves a silent sigh, and for a moment it seems that the request will be refused. But it is not. She will see him.

She gives this acquiescence in her usual haughty and careless manner, but when the door closes, there is an expression on her face that is unaccountable in one so high, so admired, and holding so unassailable a position at the centre of the fashionable world. But so it is. And so it is, also, that when the insignificant little man in the old-fashioned black waistcoat is ushered into the room a few moments later and stands before her, her lips are white and her voice, for a moment, falters. For a moment only, but this man has a practised eye in such matters. He sees, moreover, that the letter she was reading – whose handwriting is, perhaps, familiar to him – lies now on her dressing-table, discarded and forgotten. These are, in themselves, but the smallest of signs and tokens, but Mr Tulkinghorn can reckon their value, and to the last farthing.

M
oving Charles' paraphernalia of personal effects proves to be a rather larger job than can be accomplished in a single morning. Thunder the cat likewise takes a good deal of persuading to leave his comfortable and accustomed billet and suffer the ignominy of being carried in a wicker basket halfway across town, banging every stride against his master's knee. But by early evening a stack of boxes and trunks has finally been hauled up the stairs in Buckingham Street to the large bare resounding room at the top of the house, which Mrs McLeod has spent much of the day cleaning. And when she hasn't been scrubbing and washing she's been at the nearby hiring-office, picking out two candidates for Charles to inspect. The lad, Billy, seems both sensible and sturdy, with an open
good-natured
face and a ready grin. The girl could hardly be more different. She is small, almost too fragile for the heavy chores she will have to do daily, up and down four flights of stairs. But she is capable and accustomed to hard work – or so the manager of the hiring-office insists.

‘I know that's what they always claim,' says Mrs McLeod, conciliatory, ‘but I took one look at her hands, and I could see she's a good worker. You don't get calluses like that from arranging the flowers, you can take that from me. She does have one drawback though – but maybe you won't see it as
such. She don't speak. They couldn't tell me if she can't, or just won't, but I suppose the end result is much the same.'

There's something else I have not yet mentioned, and nor, for that matter, has Mrs McLeod. In her defence, the point is so obvious that Charles can see it for himself. I do not have her excuse and you, of course, can only see what I allow you to see. So here it is: the girl is beautiful, and she is black.

‘What do you think, Mr Charles?' says Mrs McLeod, an anxious note creeping into her voice at his prolonged silence. ‘There weren't many to choose from, I have to say, but she has good references and at least she won't be gossiping with tradesmen all day long.'

Charles is still looking at the girl, demure and self-contained in her apron and white cap, her eyes down, her hands motionless. As motionless, in fact, as all those drawings in his books and maps upstairs, but those crude sketches could never have prepared him for the delicacy of these features, the gleam of this perfect skin. So if he stares now it's because he's struggling to reconcile what he thought he knew with what he can actually see. It's not the first time such a thing has happened, of course – he's a scientist, after all – but in the past, the specimens have invariably been either invertebrate, or inanimate.

‘They weren't sure of her real name,' says Mrs McLeod, breaking into his thoughts. ‘Something long and fiddlesome in her own language, they thought. But she will answer to Molly.'

‘Molly it is then,' he says, making an effort. ‘Thank you, Mrs McLeod. I'm sure they will both do very nicely.'

And so they do. So much so, in fact, that before two days are out, it's hardly possible to remember living any other way. The drawing-room is put to rights, the broken window mended, the newcomers installed. Thunder takes the longest to adjust of all
of them, but once he's learned to avoid the loud and erratic old human on the first floor, he soon becomes reconciled to his new home, especially after he's had his way with the rats in the basement, and discovered a route out of Charles' eyrie on to the leads, where he can king it over the feral felines and prowl the chimney tops by starlight. Up at the top of the house the boxes and trunks start, slowly, to be unpacked and placed on the attic shelves, but when a sheaf of Chadwick documents slips from the atlas where Charles has stashed them and spill all over the floor, the thought occurs to him that it might be useful to have somewhere more professional to keep his working papers. Followed swiftly by the recollection that there is a small but serviceable room down on the ground floor where Maddox used to receive his clients, and where Charles might now receive his. If his ego is flattered by the idea of following so literally in his great-uncle's footsteps, he has the good grace to acknowledge it. And it's not as if Maddox will need it again; in the last two days he's been by turns rambling and raging, but the man Charles once knew has not returned.

Tucking the papers back in the box for the time being, he makes his way downstairs and pushes open the office door. It clearly hasn't been used for some time. There's a smell of damp, and a spider's web sagging from the (rather dirty) windowpane. As for furniture, there's a hard spindle-backed chair, a small walnut desk, and a wall of shelves. Nothing more. The upper levels are stacked with boxes, most coated with grey dust; the lower ones are largely empty, though the marks on the wood suggest they once contained the books now ranged in the
drawing-room
above. But it's what remains that attracts Charles' eye: a line of leather-bound memorandum books. His uncle's case files.

He is, suddenly, a small boy again. Standing at the entrance of this same room, summer sunlight glancing through the
half-closed
shutters. No damp in the air then, but the delicious aroma of baking drifting up from a kitchen that boasted not only a cook but two kitchen maids and a scullion: in those days it was Maddox's business to know and be known, and some of the most eminent men in the land would eat regularly at his table, and count themselves privileged in the invitation. Charles remembers being surprised at finding this door open, and pausing at the threshold, tentative and fearful, knowing he shouldn't be there. Then catching sight of the book open on the table and creeping forwards to look at it. Struggling at first with the handwriting, but making out a word here and there, and so engrossed in doing so he never heard his uncle's tread.

‘And what, exactly, do you think you're doing, young man?'

Maddox's face – when Charles summoned the courage to look up at it – was unsmiling but not unkind.

‘Prying into my papers, I'll wager, or so it would seem.'

Charles can remember, even now, the hot flush of shame, and the lurch of his stomach as Maddox laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.

‘Do you not recall what I told you?'

A nod, then another, quicker.

‘And what was that?'

‘That all that passes between a detective and his client is confi— confi—'

‘Confidential,' said Maddox, with emphasis. ‘Quite so. And what does confidential mean?'

‘Secret.'

‘Exactly so. Secret, and not to be shared with anyone, however small, and however inquisitive.'

Maddox had sat down on the chair then, and lifted Charles on his knee, the wood creaking beneath their weight. ‘One day,' he said, touching him lightly on the brow, and smoothing
his hair, ‘one day, young Charles, when you are older, and the people in these files dead and gone, I will let you read about these crimes, and show you how I resolved them. But not today. Today I am too occupied, and you are still too young. So run along now, and have Cook give you a glass of milk. But ask politely, mind.'

Charles moves now towards the shelf and works back along the spines, wondering if he can find that same book, and read the pages he read that day, such a long time ago. He pulls out the volume for 1834 and is struck for a moment by the coincidence: it was this same year that Chadwick's grand-child went missing from the Convent of the Faithful Virgin orphanage. Not that he expects to find anything so commonplace here. Here it is all forgery, and coining, and housebreaking, and theft. Profitable investigations, as the neatly noted fee receipts demonstrate, but rather lacklustre, from a purely professional point of view. He closes the book and pulls another at random from the shelf: 1811. Now this, it seems was quite another story. He spends half an hour enthralled by an extraordinary murder case at a Northamptonshire mansion, only to turn the page at the end and find himself confronted by what will prove to be one of the most infamous crimes of the nineteenth century: the Ratcliffe Highway murders. Charles already knows the bones of this story – the savage and apparently inexplicable murder of Timothy Marr and his family in their East End draper's shop, followed twelve days later by a second equally brutal killing spree, which left the landlord of the nearby King's Arms with his throat cut, and his wife and maidservant likewise. Charles – like most of his contemporaries – has always thought the man arrested for these murders was in all likelihood the one who committed them, even if he killed himself in jail before he could be tried. But as he winds deeper and deeper into
Maddox's notes, he finds inconsistency after inconsistency in the evidence, and failure after failure in the official police investigation – inconsistencies and failures that are amply and fascinatingly described, by the way, in a more modern account of exactly the same events by one of our most revered crime novelists (though the Baroness of Holland Park does not come to quite the same conclusions as the master thief-taker of Buckingham Street once did). By the time Charles is a dozen pages into Maddox's notes, he's already questioning whether the same lone killer can possibly have committed all these crimes, and is starting to wonder how on earth his uncle got drawn in—

‘The Home Secretary asked for my help.'

He looks up, just as he looked up all those years ago, only the man in the doorway now is bent and grey and leaning heavily on a stick. Though Billy's good offices are clearly in evidence, for his hair is brushed, and his dressing-gown newly washed.

‘That was indeed what you were thinking, was it not?' says Maddox, coming slowly into the room. ‘How I came to be involved in the Ratcliffe Highway case?'

Charles starts forward and helps Maddox to the chair. ‘Are you sure you should be on your feet, Uncle?'

Maddox waves his hand dismissively. ‘Don't fuss, boy. You're as bad as that damn Stornaway – man's turned into an old mother hen. Show me the book.'

Charles slides the volume towards him, and the old man looks at it for a moment, turns back a few pages, reads a paragraph here and there, then returns to where Charles left off.

‘So what have you concluded thus far?'

Charles scarcely knows what to say, caught between his bewilderment at this utter and unlooked-for change in his uncle's demeanour, and a dizzying sense of being still that
same little nine-year-old boy, frantic to gain his great-uncle's good opinion but never quite measuring up to the task.

‘Well, I—' He hesitates. ‘From what I've read, I think it likely that the second murders were the work of other hands.'

‘The latter plural was, I take it, intentional?'

‘There were two men seen running from the inn soon after the attack.'

‘Indeed. Go on.'

Maddox's tone is cool, non-committal; Charles can't tell whether he agrees with him or not. He swallows, and plunges on.

‘I think the first murder was a robbery that went wrong, probably committed by someone with a grudge against Marr. That's the only way I can account for the degree of violence involved. I also think this man must have been involved in some way with the Marrs' servant girl – she was rather too conveniently out of the way when it happened, and seems to have behaved rather suspiciously thereafter.'

Maddox nods. ‘And the second murders?'

‘Made to look like the Marr killings, and in that respect almost entirely successful. But this crime was far more methodical in its execution, and seems to have been driven by something quite other than passion or revenge.'

‘Or robbery,' says Maddox. ‘The only item missing was the landlord's watch, which would have been next to impossible to sell, since it bore an engraving of a man's name. Bravo, my lad, you've made noteworthy progress since I saw you last. Indeed you seem to be applying my principles with no small success. After all, there is no problem, however intractable, that cannot be resolved by the steady application of—'

‘Logic and observation,' finishes Charles with a smile. ‘I can still remember the very first time you told me that. I was six years old, and you were visiting us in Berkshire. I'd found a
broken window in the stable-block, and came rushing back in to tell you we'd had a burglary in our midst.'

Maddox, too, is smiling now. ‘But having conducted a thorough inspection of the scene, we were able to determine that the glass had fallen
out
side the building, not
in
, and the breakage was therefore far more likely to be down to a stable-boy's carelessness than a determined assault on your father's property.'

He sits back in the chair. ‘I recall we undertook a number of similar “investigations” that Christmas – the Strange Death of the Vagabond in the Ditch being one of them. Though I seem to remember we concluded he had merely had the misfortune to become intoxicated and fall asleep on the high road on an unexpectedly cold night. Did I not set you to write me an account of that?'

Charles grins. ‘Indeed you did. I have it even now. It took me a whole week – I was so desperate to impress you.'

‘As you did. As you do still.'

Charles flushes, just as he did when his uncle caught him in his office all those years ago, but now it is from pleasure, not guilt. They sit in silence for a moment, feeling the old relationship returning, the old closeness reinstating.

‘So was I right?' says Charles at length. ‘About the Ratcliffe Highway murders?'

Maddox sighs. ‘As correct as my own conclusions at the time, and just as likely to be disregarded. If you had finished reading my account, you would have found that I was unable to persuade the authorities to pursue my theory of the case, and after the hapless Williams was found dead in his cell, they were only too eager to draw a line under the whole unfortunate episode.'