Walking in Pimlico (34 page)

James Yates – Lower Marlpool-street

M
rs Strong went out every afternoon at two and returned at half past four. She washed pots and floors at the Great Turk public house and was paid fourpence for her labours (the landlord, Mr Minton, was a generous man). In the evening, at eight o’clock, she returned, washed more pots and floors, and remained until ten, receiving a further fourpence. Eightpence per day, six days per week. On the seventh she rested. Her daughter, taken very bad a while ago, was listened for by neighbours. If the weather was fine she sat out in the afternoon. If it was not, she sat in. She was put to bed early and never wakened. If anyone thought to, they called in and saw that she was not wanting.

It was easy to discover anything with a pocket full of pennies and a charming manner. So I lingered in the not-so-salubrious district of Lower Marlpool-street, keeping as inconspicuous as a gent could, until Mrs Strong’s figure disappeared into the Great Turk. Then, trying not to seem in a hurry, I arrived in Duchess-court just as a cheerful little woman was coming out, and without any hesitation or even surprise, she pointed me to the right house and even offered to open the door! The sun struggled through a murky sky and there were a few drops of rain in the air as I rattled
the latch and took off my hat, to dip under the lintel of a very low door.

If it was a shabby place without, once past the door the interior was surprising. There was a thick green curtain ready to be pulled across the door where there were gaps and holes in the wood. A plush cloth covered the table and, in the centre, stood a glass lamp ready to be lit. In the corner of the room, by the wall, was a bed with a substantial brass frame and a gay coverlet. There was bread on a board, and a tin for tea, a cheese dish, a meat safe. The coal scuttle was full, the grate black-leaded, the mantelpiece had requisite busts of Victoria and Albert. Mrs Strong’s eightpence per day went a long way!

When I grew accustomed to the gloom of the small room – for the curtains were half drawn and the lamp not yet lit – it took little searching to discover my quarry, in a sturdy chair by the fire. She was carefully propped up with cushions, but to prevent her from falling out of it, a thick leather belt, extended by cords on each end, was around her waist and tied at the back of the chair. As helpless as a baby, she was strapped into her seat until Mrs Strong returned. Here was the beautiful Lucy Fitch, the toast of soldier heroes, widows and baby farmers the length and breadth of the country, reduced to a bundle of shawls and blankets!

She must have been sleeping when I opened the door, for the noise caused her to jump and, with an effort, she turned her head towards me. In the gloom she could not make me out, but I stepped, like the leading man I felt, into a little pool of sunlight for her benefit, and took in her reaction. Do I need to set it all down? The wide eyes; the constant mouthing suddenly arrested; the string of drool which shimmered like silver thread as it unwrapped itself from the corner of her mouth; the claw hands frozen in mid-tremor; the paddling feet stilled. It was as though she had been cast in stone, and only the delicate movement of strands of hair, caught in a draught, disclosed that she was flesh and blood.

But for my part, I too could have remained in that rapt pose for hours, so equally engrossing was the terrible change I had wrought upon her. I pulled out a chair, wiped it carefully with my handkerchief and sat down to contemplate my handiwork, not merely to revel in it. I wondered whether she could, if pressed, speak, but the painful moan that began to sound in her throat was all the evidence I needed. She was harmless. What could she possibly say or do, trapped as she was in her frozen body? How could she communicate? Even Mrs Strong, her closest confidante, could not decipher her grunts and moans beyond their raw emotion. That she was distressed was clear: tears began to well in her eyes and her chest heaved. Her hands clenched and unclenched and her feet drummed rhythmically. How shocking that her body should be reduced to such useless activity!

‘I am sorry to see you like this, Lucy,’ I said at last, ‘for you know I had a deal of respect for your acuteness in the business of deception. Your games with the gullible were very smart, and even though the Captain Hawkers of this world deserve to be hoodwinked, you did it with great skill and invention. I will applaud you.’ And indeed I did. I clapped until my hands began to sting.

Here was a speech worthy of Mr Macready, I thought, and I was of a mind to continue, since I had a captive audience. But then I reminded myself that the purpose of my errand was to be assured that Lucy Fitch was indeed as incapable as I had been told. Certainly, she was immobile, she was speechless and, who knows, an imbecile. But Sage’s mission had not been to confirm whether she had made any disclosure of what she saw that afternoon in Burdon Oaks when she came upon me with James Yates’s clothes. I was as certain looking at her shattered body as I had been looking into her surprised face that she had seen in that moment the murderer of Bessie Spooner. My task was to discover what she had done with her knowledge.

‘You’re a very clever young woman, Lucy Fitch,’ I mused, thinking aloud, ‘and I do wonder what you know and if you told anyone. I rather think you didn’t, or I would have heard of it by now. But when we said our goodbyes outside the Live and Let Live at Burdon Oaks you were very eager to leave, so I think we both know what – who – you saw.’

Her eyes followed me, though her head lolled on one shoulder.

‘But did you tell anyone? Your mother perhaps? Or your sister?’

Perhaps she attempted to speak, for she gargled and choked. I wondered how much she understood of what I said and whether she had some premonition of my intentions. For, I reasoned, even if she had not told Mrs Strong that Mrs Collette and James Yates were the same being, and that she had seen Yates murder her friend in the yard of the Constellation Concert Room, I could not believe that she had not told someone. Perhaps before she took the ‘medicine’ I had provided, or in the grips of it. She could have written it down, though I doubted her ability on that score given the unschooled quality of her letters to me, and anyway it seemed rather histrionic for such as her. Nevertheless I was caught in a dilemma here which detracted from my enjoyment of the moment.

It was an awkward silence, broken only by Lucy’s involuntary noises and the tapping of her slipper against the leg of the chair. No conversation, no locking horns here. Not even the adversarial challenge presented by the odious Halls, who at least needed toppling from his presumptions. I was disappointed and struggled, for the first time, to know what to do, for Lucy was no contest. She was pliable. Even Tippy the pug-dog tried to save itself. But Lucy Fitch simply sat and slavered. And watched.

There was nothing more to be done, and I rose and opened the door. The draught blew in and a piece of paper fluttered down from the mantelshelf and came to rest at Lucy’s feet. She saw it, as I did,
watched it float to the floor and deliberately (if clumsily) covered it with her slippered foot. The action gave me pause, and I closed the door again and retrieved the note. In an uneducated hand was written:

Yor frend Corney Sage. Mind your eye, Lucy
The Vine Concert Hall, New Clay

So Corney Sage was not just a friend, but a good friend! One who visited and sat at this table and left his forwarding address! A confidant, perhaps. Now I realized that, of course, his report about visiting poor Lucy was guarded, incomplete, that he looked at me, Mrs Marsh, with very different eyes, that there was, there must have been, discussion about Yates. No matter that Lucy’s mouth was stopped up, in their hugger-mugger meeting with Mrs Strong or sister Kitty, they had solved the puzzle of Yates, and even now the police were alerted, upon the doorstep even, with the red-haired comedian behind, smiling and pointing out the murderer of Bessie Spooner! I had been blind even to the most obvious dissembling! To have admired Lucy Fitch’s consummate skills, when I was so easily taken in, displayed the worst kind of ignorance!

I brought my fist down upon the table with a bang that upset the lamp and sent it crashing to the floor. Lucy cried out. Not a thick and grizzling murmur, but a scream, dragged from her belly, that must surely alert her neighbours. I stopped her mouth quickly with my hand, and then saw, in slices of time, the locket she wore around her neck.

On a thin black ribbon.

A thin gold frame.

A picture of a golden-haired angel set against a blue background.

Helen. My Helen.

Hung around this whore’s neck, warmed by her flesh.

She is clawing at my sleeves, but I am stronger and I wrench at the locket, snapping the ribbon as if it was thread. The picture tumbles through the air, glances off the hearth and breaks apart. Glass. Metal. Picture. A tiny scrap of paper. I am overcome, outraged at the blasphemy of my Helen slung about this creature’s breast, and I grind my heel into the glass, the picture, everything, until it is utterly destroyed.

Lucy has stopped screaming, but her mouth still makes the shape, anticipating the next roar, so I step to the bed, grasp the pillow and press it down upon her face with all my weight. Her nails graze my cheeks and clutch at my hair, sliding through the sticky macassar oil and then grasping again. Her legs kick out feebly and her body, pinned fast by the belt and cords, writhes against me. Harder and harder I push the pillow into her face, feeling the dulled contours of brow and cheekbone beneath my hands. And still she fights, sinking back as if she has surrendered, and then summoning her strength again to clutch at me, to thrust me away.

There was no satisfaction in this and I wanted to have the business done and to be gone. I was worried that I might be disturbed, that neighbours might have heard her scream and come to investigate, and indeed a noise in the court was enough for me to drop the pillow and hurry away. No one challenged me, though, and the noise was perhaps a child playing or crying, or some domestic row, but I did not pause, not even to glance at myself in a shop window, until I was within yards of my new lodgings, courtesy of Roscius Soloman, showman and exhibitor of my Fairy Child.

Mrs Marsh – Birmingham

I
t had become a matter of some urgency that I left the confines of the circus. As my health improved, Mr Chittick’s plans became increasingly apparent. One morning he cornered me, told me I must leave the caravan for they were shortly moving on for the tenting season. He would take the kid, he said, but not me. He would give me five shillings for the kid, and a decent funeral, all paid, when it died. Which, he said, it would indeed.

I was no more prepared to share my fortunes (or my Fairy Child) with Mr Chittick than I had been with Mr Halls, and remembering a conversation with Corney Sage and his Negro friend about a showman and a penny exhibition, I threw caution away in favour of independence – and money. When I arrived with the child at the New-street establishment (a former undertaker’s shop) and made the acquaintance of Mr Soloman, I think he was surprised, but not inclined to show it. If he had expressed any astonishment at my suddenly appearing on his doorstep, I would not have reproached him, for I was unannounced and had little luggage (only a bag containing some of Yates’s clothes). But he made no comment, merely looked keenly at me and thus our unspoken agreement that explanations were not necessary was instituted.

From the first, it was his businesslike detachment that impressed me, and I believe I impressed him with my attention to the detail of our contract, upon which we agreed within an hour of my arrival. One shilling per day, all found, the showman to provide shop and lodgings, a crib and stage for the child, and a wet-nurse on hand as required. Hearing its hungry cries, he immediately sent for a woman in a neighbouring show, one whose faculties were dulled by a lifetime of gin and exposure, but whose condition (like Blind Sally’s from the workhouse) gave her a seemingly perpetual supply of milk.

Soloman was a smart fellow, with his bristling moustache and unblemished skin (suggesting a daily regime at the barber-shop), a man careful of his public appearance, and impenetrable. In all the time I was in his company, that quality of businesslike affability never changed. His bright blue eyes were at first startling, and a little disconcerting, giving an impression of deep interrogation, but our conversations were always to the point, and he never betrayed any emotion, nor gave any indication of what he might be thinking. When I held up the child to him, and he opened the blankets and scrutinized the creature within, his face was a perfect mask, displaying neither horror nor repulsion, nor even great interest. However, within the day, a large and many-coloured poster magically appeared outside the show depicting a tiny and beautiful child with gossamer wings flying above a field of flowers, and in his smart coat and top hat he was already spinning a fable about the Fairy Child of such alarming fantasy that I almost expected the assembled crowd to laugh and walk away. And, since the child’s exhibition would not open until ten o’clock that evening, perhaps never to return! I misjudged him – and them – completely, for by nine o’clock the street was thronged with people waiting to see the show, and neighbouring shopkeepers were grumbling about the noise and confusion, while their trade trebled.