The Fiend in Human Read online

‘So many stories, Mrs Ogylvie. All with a ring of truth to them. Who’s to know?’

  ‘It is your nerves, Cora. It is not an easy thing, to settle in one’s mind to that Chokee Bill is nibbed.’

  ‘True for you, Mrs Ogylvie, you’re right. Like Dark Anza, he stalks the quarter still.’

  6

  Plant’s Inn

  The walnut panels that cover the room from floor to ceiling seem in their advanced age to be fraught with confused memories. In a reverie (such as is commonly evoked by hot spiced gin), in the cold, dusty light from the front window, one can discern the outlines of faces, row after row of them, seemingly etched or branded in the wood grain – ancient correspondents perhaps, long dead of dissipation and worry, their newsworthy exploits long forgotten, their criminals and informants and disgraced aristocrats long consigned to Fleet or Marshalsea or the family churchyard.

  Yet despite these spectral reminders of past degeneration, the establishment itself, though scarcely bigger than a hackney coach, draws living journalists to its bosom as eagerly as the sight of their Mum, here to situate themselves near a warm fire, surrounded by plump casks, fragrant nets of lemon and tobacco, jewel-like bottles glowing in the most friendly shades of amber and red and green, courteous beer-pulls nodding agreement with everything they say.

  ‘A healer of hot gin and water if you please, Humphrey, and a large soda-water as well. Quickly, for I’m unwell.’

  Glimpsed through a fog of cigar- and pipe-smoke, distorted by what Whitty suspects might be a slight fever, the barkeeper’s face frowns over the counter more in sorrow than in anger; a weary man with a lifetime of overheard secrets stored in sacks beneath his eyes, Humphrey has seen and heard too much to be surprised ever again.

  Inexplicably, he places before him only soda-water. ‘Afraid your money’s no good, Mr Whitty, Sir. Mrs Plant has declared you out of order.’

  ‘Out of order in what way, Humphrey?’

  ‘In a serious way, I should think. Madam has a fondness for you, Sir, which is not necessarily an advantage.’

  ‘How so, Sir?’

  ‘She holds you to a higher standard than the regular custom.’

  ‘I see.’ Whitty adjusts his whiskers in the mirror, then turns in the direction of the snug by the fire with the small table within – its crisp, white cloth perpetually laid, sheltered from the rough world by a glass partition etched with the outlines of angels, from which position the proprietor and manager customarily exercises control.

  Empty, for the moment.

  What has he said or done? Nothing unredeemable, hopes the correspondent, for he has begun to experience an unprofessional fondness for the proprietor.

  In any case, a customer would have to be utterly maddened with absinthe to initiate a quarrel with Abigail Plant – which she claims as her married name, although her origins (and the identity and fate of Mr Plant – she claims widowhood) are anything but distinct. Rumour has it that she is ruined Irish gentry; something about the clarity of her gaze, her unaffected, direct demeanour, and above all her spirited firmness when angered, inspire men to instinctively uncover their heads, though barely in condition to locate their hats.

  Whitty turns back to the bar, massaging his temples, for both sides of his head are pounding now, the effect of this morning’s medicament having diminished long before he left the offices of The Falcon. He suspects this difficulty with his publican to have something to do with the mysterious injuries to his cheek and trousers. (Blackouts are a damnable business.)

  ‘Refresh my recollection please, Humphrey. What do I have to apologize for?’

  ‘Begging your pardon, Sir, but Madam made it clear that an apology will not suffice in this case.’

  ‘Oh, come now. Surely you will at least give me a hint.’

  The barkeeper leans forward after glancing toward the entrance furtively, as though at serious risk simply by continuing.

  ‘Evidently at some point last evening, a suggestion or request was made.’

  ‘What sort of request?’

  ‘Of an objectionable nature, I’m led to understand. One to which Madam took extreme exception if I may say so, Mr Whitty.’

  ‘Whatever the misunderstanding, I’m certain it can be cleared up. Where is the good woman at present?’

  ‘Not on the premises, Sir. I believe she has gone to Confession.’

  ‘I see. Then surely there can be no harm in slipping me a hot gin and water in the meantime.’ Whitty is desperate. His vision is beginning to tunnel. ‘Surely you cannot be expected to make note of every face in the establishment.’

  ‘I have specific orders not to take your money, Sir. However, I notice Mr Fraser holding forth in the back snug, in the company of some others of your profession. Were it another gentleman’s money involved in the transaction, a hot gin and water might be served to whomever.’

  ‘An excellent suggestion, Humphrey. And we will clear up our misunderstanding with Mrs Plant immediately upon her arrival.’

  ‘I doubt it will be as simple as that. As you know, once Madam makes up her mind there is little that will shift it. My employer is a woman of character.’

  Past Crocker of the Spectator and Stubbs of the People’s Friend, Whitty passes through a low door into a small room shaped like a three-cornered hat, into which no ray of sun or moon penetrates, a room regarded by journalists as their private sanctuary; here, seated around the deal table at its centre, affairs of state are decided by better minds than presently occupy the House.

  Prominent among the company is Alasdair Fraser, columnist for Dodd’s, whose genial, avuncular exterior and Lowland sociability belie a heart that longs for a return to the Bloody Code – not for the utility of hanging in reducing theft, but for the salutary effect of death as a general social tonic. In Fraser’s mind, regular public executions, whatever their pretext, provide an object lesson for the lower classes, whereas a dearth of hanging invites misbehaviour.

  Fraser sits rooted at the head of the table, a compact party with tiny, shrewd eyes and no neck to speak of; Banning and Cobb are seated on one side and Hicks on the other; the former operatives contribute criticism to the pages of The Illustrated London News, while Hicks writes occasional social accounts for Lloyd’s. One might wonder how each manages to produce the number of narratives appearing under his name; Banning and Hicks are rarely spotted outside these panelled walls, while it has been several years since Cobb favoured high society in his perpetually drunken state, having offended everyone who matters.

  ‘Ah, Whitty, just the man. Good show.’ Fraser makes an attempt at civilized English vowels, yet the savage burr of his heathen ancestors slips through none the less.

  ‘You seem in a boisterous mood, Mr Fraser. Has someone been killed?’

  ‘Good cut! Humphrey, fetch a hot gin for the gentleman, he looks like he could use it.’

  ‘Certainly, Sir. A hot gin for one of the gentlemen present.’

  ‘Whitty, sit down and give us the benefit of your thoughts on the Stork proposal.’

  Whitty sighs inwardly, knowing that any discussion with Fraser is a contribution to Fraser’s column. It is a high price to pay for a drink.

  In a widely circulated pamphlet entitled A Proposal for Disbursement of the Surplus Female Population, Sir Henry Stork argues for the establishment of camp facilities for single, unmarriageable women, wherein Britain’s unplucked flowers might exercise their maternal instincts on foundlings and orphans. Sir Henry proposes thereby to kill two birds with one stone, providing aid to the impoverished while circumventing the unfulfilled woman’s natural tendency to duplicity and malice. Predictably, the scheme has considerable support among back-benchers in the Conservative rump, for whom Overpopulation has become code for the swelling ranks of the destitute.

  Whitty considers the matter over his gin. ‘It seems as if we already possess a number of the matronly establishments suggested by Sir Henry. If I am not mistaken, they are called brothels.’

  Banning,
Cobb and Hicks chuckle into their cigars and look to Fraser for a reply, notebooks and pencils poised beneath the table.

  ‘Surely you don’t suggest that all unmarried women are potential prostitutes, Sir. That would be a Calvinist position indeed – hardly the Whiggish way.’

  Another chuckle from Banning and Cobb, who repeat the words ‘Whiggish way’ as though this mundane alliteration were a rhetorical gem. Whitty drains his gin and holds the glass up for another as the price of a response. Fraser, with characteristic thrift, signals the barkeeper to charge it to Marshal, who is too groggy to notice.

  ‘Give it time, Alasdair,’ continues Whitty. ‘Even Stork will be hard pressed to keep up with the growth in the supply and demand for matronly services. It doesn’t require genius to see a profitable connection between the surplus female population, the bastard population, and the moneyed population. I believe it is called poverty and license, the fastest growing industries in London.’

  The pencils of Banning, Cobb and Hicks scratch away, all having heard the rumour that Fraser has illegitimate offspring in Aberdeen, for which he pays a small pension to the former governess of a niece.

  ‘Poverty is intrinsic to the human condition, Edmund. It is the cane of discipline in the school of life. About this, the demented Mr Darwin is correct. Natural selection is the key to progress, and we inhabit an age of unprecedented progress. The poor are its necessary by-products. The dilemma Stork is attempting to address, which seems to have eluded you, if I may say so, Edmund, is nothing other than the spread of disease – of infection both moral and physical, to which women are self-evidently prone when wandering about the streets on their own. In their insatiable time of the month they are capable of infecting men in frightening numbers.’

  ‘I bow to your superior expertise, Sir. Now let us examine Mr Stork’s plan – another gin if you don’t mind, Hicks – and savour its beauty. Envisage the encampments of fallen women, these municipal wetnurses, infected or not as the case may be. What sort of structure does Stork plan to erect? A prison? An army barracks? A devil’s island, or perhaps a ship – like the reeking prison hulks at anchor within sight of Waterloo Bridge? Is that where we would raise these fortunate innocents, the future guardians of England? And what should we do with them upon graduation? Send them all to Cambridge?’

  ‘The problem with you, Whitty, is that you lose yourself in detail and cancel yourself out. It is the story of your life. You have no principles and no faith.’

  ‘Most of all I lack your vision. I swear, Alasdair, you will not be satisfied until you have every Briton in prison or in transportation – leaving yourself and a few associates to run the realm.’

  Pencils on either side of him scratch busily, then pause, in the expectation that Fraser is about to launch another version of the social infection theme which has sustained his column for three years now. It is only a matter of time before he brings up the dowager who died of consumption because the infected slop-worker who made her evening gown slept in it; a complete cock without a doubt, yet the issue of its truth is outweighed by its instructive intent.

  Whitty signals for another gin, large this time, sponsored by Cobb. In looking to catch a glimpse of the barkeeper he notices a young woman – or, rather, two young women, one luminously pale and somewhat solemn, the other more developed. Both young women wear long dresses fashioned of pieces from several other dresses; poor as mice surely, yet they appear surprisingly pretty. They have been watching him – assessing him, rather; whatever can it mean?

  Prostitutes? Seemingly not, for they return his look with a simultaneous, barely perceptible curtsey, then disappear.

  Very strange.

  Dorcas and Phoebe emerge from the establishment in a businesslike manner, climb the stone steps to the walkway and squeeze past two young swells climbing into a hansom on their way to an evening at Café Royale. Dorcas, the more extravagantly endowed of the two, stops to flirt with one, while Phoebe slips into her sleeve the silk handkerchief she just nicked from his coat pocket; now she lifts her skirts and darts across the street to the shadow of a doorway, where a man in a crooked hat and corduroy suit leans against a pillar.

  ‘Still accounted for, my girl? Hasn’t slipped out the back drum, has he?’

  ‘Still there, Father. Drinking gin and shooting off his mouth with some other gentlemen of the press.’

  ‘And who is buying for him, I wonder? Not himself, that’s a certainty. By the way he conducted his affairs today, our man is dreadful short of cash. Counted his shillings like they was his own teeth.’

  ‘At present his credit is stood for by the party from Dodd’s with conservative views.’

  ‘Well observed, my angel. No doubt his credit will run dry with the discussion. Then he will stagger forth and then we will see.’

  Dorcas joins them now, and Phoebe sees the frown pass over her father’s brow, a slight wince, like the pain of a bad knee or some other injury as she smiles her sweetest smile.

  ‘When he comes out, Henry, do you wish that I hits him with the cosh? I shall ask him the time o’day, then make a few remarks in the way of a gay proposition, and when he bends over to speak to me I stuns him cold.’

  He holds a blunt forefinger before her face for emphasis: ‘Never you mind the cosh, Dorcas. Nor do I approve of that kind of smutty talk.’

  ‘It was only in jest, Father,’ says Phoebe.

  ‘What is done in jest is done in mind, and what is done in mind is soon or late done in deed.’

  ‘That may be so, Henry, but still he should get a good coshing after what he done to you. Deserves to be served out proper for it, he does.’

  ‘That may be so, child, yet I will not see you stun the man. For in truth it is not so simply done and you could as easily kill him. Besides which, from what I seen of him there will be no need – by the time he finds his way out of his booze-ken, he’ll have stunned himself.’

  7

  The Haymarket

  Having dined on beef pie, duck and sherry, Reginald Harewood alights from a coach at the corner at Orange Street and the Haymarket, followed by Walter Sewell, both men in a state of high excitement, albeit for different reasons.

  Sewell watches his friend, as he often does, with a kind of wonder: tailored to perfection, fragrant as a lily, inhaling the unwholesome night-time miasma as though it were country air. (For his part, Sewell expects to come down with a fever at any moment.)

  Harewood drinks deeply from his silver flask, replaces the stopper, smoothes his impeccable whiskers with the back of a chamois glove and turns to his friend, eyes sparkling with that merry light that draws women like insects.

  ‘She walks in beauty like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies … How’s that for a turn of phrase?’

  ‘It was Byron, actually.’ Indeed, Sewell can imagine his friend as George Gordon, seducer of Europe, which impression is enhanced by Harewood’s slight limp, the consequence of a rugby injury of which he is very proud; excepting that his friend is not a poet so much as he is a man about whom poems are written; to Sewell, it is his friend who walks in beauty like the night.

  ‘Can you feel it, Roo? The frisson in the air – a quivering of creatures of the night, begging to be worshipped and ravished?’

  ‘Your frisson is misplaced, Reggie. I do not know how you can find such excitement in the prospect of an intimate association with a fallen woman.’

  ‘You do have a rum way of expressing yourself sometimes.’

  ‘They are not the cleanest creatures on earth, nor are they the most discreet. Does that not worry you? I certainly worry on your behalf.’

  ‘The devil take your hygiene, Roo. We’ll find some romance in you yet.’

  Near Leicester Square is an angular street, unilluminated by gaslight, where whores retreat to relieve their bladders. (Peelers ignore this trifle as long as it is not done in the main thoroughfare.) They retire in twos for this necessary process, so that one woman will act as a screen, standin
g alongside until her companion is finished, then taking her turn. In this convenient setting the two Oxonians join a queue of merry gentlemen, alone or in pairs, waiting to select their companions of the evening.

  ‘How do you maintain an appetite, Reggie? Imagine if this were a dining-room.’

  ‘Dash it Roo, you’re a fountain of unpleasant imagery. Very well, to the square – though the selection there is not half so convenient.’

  Crossing Oxendon Street they sidle their way between slowly moving hansoms and grinders, avoiding hooves, wheels, and manure. Regretting the absence of a sweeper, Sewell employs the edge of the opposite kerb to scrape the shite from the sole of his boot, then hurries down a narrow lane after his friend, whose fawn-coloured boots reveal not a speck of muck. Sewell watches his friend’s back in its triangular elegance, walking-stick swinging in a brisk arc, the other gloved hand holding a cigar, whistling beneath his whiskers, his slightly uneven gait seemingly in rhythm with the melody. Sewell notes as well the contrasting glances of passers-by, of welcome or envy depending upon the gender, and the moment is sufficient for him, he needs no more, he would happily return to his rooms off Bruton Street and spend the rest of the evening with a book.

  Past the Comedy Theatre on Panton Street, the preponderance of female traffic increases, until by Leicester Square they face an ample array of women of every description, examining shop windows with curious intensity, their reflections in the glass exchanging seemingly accidental looks with the men walking by.

  ‘Not to be a prig, Reggie, but what do these ladies possess that your cousin lacks?’

  ‘Upon my word, Roo, a fellow cannot be always asking himself why he does things. Takes the fun out of life.’

  As they stroll around Leicester Square, Sewell does his utmost to avoid the implied invitation of an array of physical types:

  A brunette with sturdy shoulders and a noticeable moustache simpers coquettishly from within her bonnet, followed by a woman who bears a slight resemblance to a bulldog, with compressed features, little close-set eyes and separated teeth. A prospective paramour with the little nibbling face of a mouse bats her little black eyes at him. Now he hurries past a long, white, slug-like creature with a head like a little ball and a small dark nose like the ace of spades …