The Fiend in Human Read online

  ‘I accept your estimation, Sir, that the issues of which you speak are of unexampled gravity.’

  The poet laughs ruefully. ‘I fear that the damage to your reputation will put you in the manure business yourself, Henry.’

  ‘If not the workhouse, Jeremy. And what’s to become of the young women in my care? As I am known to say, Sir, life goes on – whether we like it or not. You what has noted those wretched female carcasses in the courtyard, I leave you to your conclusions as to my fears.’

  Thinks Whitty: Clearly for wretches such as these, the great fear is not death so much as the cruelty of survival, the consequent suffering when ‘life goes on’.

  Cautions the poet: ‘While your agitation is not without reason, Henry, reason also suggests that you give thought to the disposition of your daughter. A girl of exceptional character if I may say so, I who know her as well as if she were my own.’

  ‘That is true, Jeremy. Both Phoebe and Dorcas will endure cold and wet and starvation before applying to the Union and winding up in the workhouse.’

  ‘It is not right, young girls breaking stones and picking oakum like convicts.’

  ‘Not to mention the attentions of the porter. It don’t bear thinking, Sir.’

  ‘The workhouse is for girls who have only their virginity to sell.’

  ‘True for you, Jeremy. Do you agree, Mr Whitty?’

  The correspondent nods back and forth, wearing an agreeable, serious expression. It is not a pleasant business to encounter someone who faces ruin as a result of a thing one has written, and is now in a position to do the writer harm in return.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Owler, but I hope you will accord me the assumption of honest intent. I had no wish to do you harm.’

  ‘I assume so, Sir, and in that spirit I shall therefore undertake to prove you wrong. Should I be successful, I trust that you will do the honourable thing and return a man’s reputation to him. Does that seem the right course, Sir?’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Owler. Wholeheartedly. If I were proven to be in error, professional ethics require a prompt correction.’ Not necessarily true, thinks Whitty, but this is no time for hair-splitting.

  ‘May I have your word on that, Sir? As a gentleman?’ Owler puts out his hand, which the correspondent grasps as required. The patterer’s palm is like wood to the touch.

  ‘Indeed, Sir, you have my word as a gentleman.’

  (In actual fact, the correspondent has reason to doubt both his status as a gentleman and the likelihood of persuading The Falcon to retract, it being general policy not to do so unless under threat of a lawsuit, a parliamentary hearing or the imminent removal of the correspondent’s kneecaps.)

  Owler’s face reassumes that open aspect which Whitty finds so troublesome, for there is nothing more mortifying than honest gullibility. ‘Now that we have resolved the measure to our mutual satisfaction, Mr Whitty, I propose some wictuals. Well, Gentlemen? Some material sustenance to sustain the wital organs?’

  ‘With pleasure, Henry,’ replies Mr Hollow, nearly in tears at the prospect.

  ‘Absolutely delighted,’ adds the correspondent, relighting his stub of a cigar against the smells to come.

  Appropriating three of the correspondent’s coppers, the patterer approaches the stove at the far end of the room and places them into the open hand of the keeper of the stove, a sharp-eyed crone in a brown night-gown, who ladles out three bowls of a thick, steaming substance from an enormous iron pot. Now Whitty stares into the battered tin vessel before him, as blackened and grease-encrusted as the stove itself, wherein lies a thick grey liquid, with a curious lump of something like tripe floating upon its surface.

  Owler speaks confidentially: ‘In this establishment, Mr Whitty, it is the custom for a patron to supply his own utensils. Your bowl is come courtesy of Mr Elkin there.’

  Whitty glances in the direction indicated: seated by the stove, the gentleman in the deteriorated shooting-jacket (with what looks like a small goitre on the side of his neck) waves magnanimously. The correspondent waves a queasy thank-you in return.

  In the meanwhile, across the table Mr Hollow sips the precious liquid, delicately at first, then with real urgency, now turning his bowl upside-down so that a long greenish tongue can lick the surface dry, followed by a thorough wiping with a forefinger, to be licked dry as well.

  The patterer regards the correspondent’s untouched meal. ‘Were the wictuals amiss, Mr Whitty? Service not as accustomed?’

  ‘Not so, Mr Owler. My stomach is not constant, is all.’ Discreetly he pushes his bowl across the table to Mr Hollow, who accepts with relish, repeats the ritual of the first, then places his head against the wall and falls into a swoon, his mouth pursed in a silent, rhapsodic oh.

  Taking advantage of the ensuing pause to pack and light his pipe, Owler returns to the topic at hand.

  ‘I’ll warrant that, thanks be to Jeremy here and to good fortune, I have well and truly interviewed William Ryan and have endeavoured to obtain his various particulars …’ The pipe gets going, cloaking the table in an acrid haze. ‘I am prepared to furnish such evidence as to prove my adherence to – and I quote yourself, Sir – “the most fundamental principles of journalistic veracity” in my methods and sources.’ Owler glares at Whitty, blowing out smoke at such a rate as to appear almost diabolical. ‘Will that satisfy you?’

  ‘Indeed, Sir, if you can furnish such evidence, I can scarcely refuse.’

  ‘If in so doing I must reveal certain trade secrets in confidence, might we shake on that as well?’

  ‘You may rely on my discretion, Sir.’ Once again Whitty grasps the thick, dry hand of the patterer.

  Owler reverts again to a trusting frame of mind, although how such a disposition remains possible in this environment is quite beyond the correspondent.

  ‘As my first item, I offer you my work in progress, what has a seminal bearing on the matters what lay before us. From the warious facts our man has let slip from time to time over the past weeks, I have assembled a narrative which I believe is not far from the truth of the matter, though I would give much to hear it werified by the party in question.’ So saying, Owler produces from within his coat a piece of folded foolscap, upon which is written the following document, smudged with ink and tortuously revised:

  The Sorrowful Lamentation

  of

  William Ryan

  Known as Chokee Bill, the Fiend in Human Form

  by

  Henry Owler, Esq.

  O you who claim a Christian name,

  Now hear my story true;

  O do not shun the face of one

  More wretched far than you;

  Harken to these words of mine,

  My dreadful tale to tell;

  My life to end, my soul to spend

  Eternity in Hell.

  O once I knew a love so true,

  Our hearts we freely gave;

  Though she was of a class above,

  My station she forgave;

  But family ties will oft belie

  The purest of the pure:

  I, in her sight, a shining knight,

  In father’s sight, a boor.

  Corrupt and mean, a libertine,

  Ancient, bald and stout;

  A suitor from a class above -

  For him I was cast out;

  And in my wrath then from the path

  I stumbled and I fell,

  While in her pride, my would-be bride

  Did sell her soul as well.

  By chance I passed a wayward lass,

  I cast a wanton eye,

  And promised I would pay her well

  If she with me would lie;

  While in the act I made a pact

  With Satan, curse the day,

  The evil shade did me persuade

  To take her life away.

  In front of me on bended knee

  She did for mercy cry,

  For heaven do not murder me

  I am
not fit to die;

  But I to look no pity took

  I choked away her breath,

  Till with her eye still asking why

  She stared at me in death.

  From the first the Devil’s curse

  Did urge me more to sin,

  The gates of Hell did open up,

  And I did enter in;

  I killed a second woman then,

  My cursèd soul to thrill;

  As though to soothe my broken heart

  I father’d Chokee Bill.

  Thus with the gore of three, then four

  My hands were deeply dyed,

  The Devil had received my vow,

  No more my sin to hide;

  Then I killed as Chokee Bill

  A woman whom I knew;

  Though stoutly I did it deny,

  Suspicion round me grew.

  Though on the murders at the first

  The jury did divide,

  Then the judge did bade the verdict made,

  And all twelve ‘Guilty’ cried;

  With fetters ’round was I then bound,

  And shin-boltèd was I,

  Now I’m fast in gaol at last,

  No more can I deny.

  Death to serve I do deserve

  My crime it is so base,

  I chose to show to women low

  No pity and no grace;

  And so I win no grace, although

  Of one I’m innocent

  And so I from this wicked world

  Most shamefully am sent.

  You disappointed lovers, whom

  The stars refuse to bless,

  O do not hate, nor curse your fate,

  Nor sink to wickedness;

  But look to prayer for strength to bear

  The heavy hand of fate;

  You may rejoice, you have the choice,

  For me it is too late.

  ‘That concludes the werses part of my Sorrowful Lamentation, Sir. I beg you take them, I have made a copy. Though the rhymes within has proved too much for me from time to time, I warrant it is up to standard and ready to be followed with the printed text of his Last Confession word for word, when Mr Ryan takes me into his confidence.’

  ‘By which you mean when and if your verses prove to be true.’

  ‘It is my best connection of the awailable facts, Sir.’

  ‘And a plausible tale to be sure. But as I understand it, the man claims complete innocence.’

  ‘It is not to be thought of. The party has been convicted in an English court of law. There is no question of his guilt. Time is running short for such speculation, Sir. I have wagered my all in stirring anticipation of a Last Confession on the day of the hanging. Werses to whet the appetite is crucial, and I have sold them all over London.’

  ‘Now you, a newspaperman, has coopered me in advance! What remains, even should the wile murderer unburden his conscience, now that you have informed the public that anything I record is a flam?’ The patterer pauses to collect himself. ‘Excuse me, I beg you, for I am in a nervous state. I worry, Mr Whitty. I worry all the time.’

  ‘I understand you, Mr Owler,’ replies the correspondent, thinking that the narrative recounted in Owler’s doggerel bears a strangely familiar scent (albeit, his memory is far from foolproof these days). ‘I have nothing but good wishes for the success of your project.’

  ‘Cold comfort, Sir, when you have done more to cooper it than anyone.’

  To which Whitty has nothing to say.

  9

  Near Waterloo Bridge

  Having made their exit onto Covent Garden through a lane (a crack between two buildings really) at the southern edge of the Holy Land, Dorcas and Phoebe proceed south past Temple Bar and across the bridge to Waterloo Road, a row of brokers’ shops which they have not visited in several weeks and where they have identified a firm prospect.

  They slow down to a dignified pace, assuming the demeanour of two proper young women on a shopping excursion, passing an assortment of household items – ornamental cupboards, fire-screens, copper kettles – as well as an array of heavy carpenters’ tools on tables, without showing the slightest interest; such large objects are best left to teams of wiry rogues of seven or eight, in ragged trousers held up by one brace, who travel in swarms, thereby to speedily transport objects of astonishing size and heaviness, over the objections of the most well-armed shopman.

  ‘Shall we tarry here and there, Miss Phoebe, or shall we proceed to the objective direct?’ Dorcas has adopted the quality accent they assume occasionally, as an ongoing mockery of the upper orders, as a kind of code, and as a rehearsal for what they hope to one day become; for what girl does not like to imagine herself a great lady, swishing across the best carpets in London?

  ‘Let us take our time, Miss Dorcas. It is a long way to travel for a single purpose. Efficiency is the key to progress, my father says.’

  ‘Oh quite, Miss Phoebe, you does put things in perspective as to the way of it.’

  One shop presents a most promising picture – a deal table stocked with cheeses of various kinds and eggs on shelves; rashers of bacon of fair quality lie in piles in the sunlit open window, ticketed variously as ‘Fine Flavour’ and ‘Fresh From the Country’. The grocer standing guard thinks much of his own appearance, to judge by the care given to the curl of his side-whiskers. Propitiously, his eye has fixed upon Dorcas.

  ‘Good-day to you, Sir,’ says Dorcas to the grocer, producing her most affectionate smile to test the waters.

  ‘And a good-day to you, Miss,’ replies the shopkeeper with a wink, grooming one side-whisker with thumb and finger, much distracted by this comely young lady. ‘And how may I help you on this fine afternoon?’

  Dorcas crinkles her eyes at the shopman, as though thinking about something pleasant yet unmentionable. Her eyes hold his momentarily. Phoebe does not approve of this method of distraction, but cannot fault its efficacy, as she swiftly and neatly scoops six nice rashers into a concealed pocket sewn into the folds of her patchwork skirts.

  Moving on to the milliner’s shop next door, they pause to admire the crinolines hung on wooden rods and swinging in the wind, not to mention the table stocked with boxes of feathers of every tint, and the bodice-fronts of various styles.

  ‘Doesn’t you admire the notions, Miss Phoebe?’

  ‘Indeed I so admire them, Miss Dorcas,’ Phoebe replies, scanning the display, and the surrounding area. ‘However, methinks we might discover that the pins to the right are sharper than we might prefer.’

  Dorcas casts a casual glance in the direction indicated, where a sharp-featured young woman under the awning has stopped her knitting and watches their every move.

  ‘Quite, Miss Phoebe. I agrees entirely.’ And they move on to the next shopkeeper. (It is a rule when working the shops that the women are not nearly such fools as the men.)

  A greengrocer, by contrast, is good for three fresh apples during an interval when Dorcas stoops low to examine some pears, thereby causing her unbuttoned bodice to open further than usual. As for the idle young shopkeeper presiding over the furnitureware room, with its gilt mirrors and parrot cages, it will be many hours before he notes the absence of the brass door-knocker in the shape of a lion – good for a shilling at least, a high price for a glance at her creamy softness.

  ‘How much did you show him?’ demands Phoebe, painfully aware that she could unbutton her own bodice down to the waist without causing a fuss.

  ‘Just enough, my dear. I hears in the most fashionable circles, it is said that the throat extends to the nipple.’

  ‘That was Miss Menkin, who appeared naked on a wild horse. In a public market, the throat stops well short of the nipple I should think.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Phoebe, you’re so stricter avec la bodice.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Dorcas, you’re so insouciant avec la décolletage.’

  In truth, Phoebe worries that her friend’s bosom may prove a fickle ally, the sort of attribute that a
ttracts the wrong sort. Yet she says nothing, for it would spoil the fun.

  Continuing in this mock-sophisticated fashion, our two criminals pass by a row of costermongers selling fruit, fish and tin objects, for they don’t steal from costermongers. Their keen eyes scan the street for Peelers on their rounds, in tail coats and high hats, as well as the detectives with their quiet, smooth movements and cautious aspect. Such care is necessary in a city where crimes of property are vastly more serious than crimes of violence, where one will spend many more years in transportation for stealing a man’s boots than for crippling him with a club.

  Next to a Cheap John selling cutlery from Sheffield stands the object of their expedition: a second-hand clothing store fronted by a series of iron rods containing trousers and coats of all patterns and sizes, fluttering in the wind, their empty arms beckoning passers-by to take them home. Past a row of headless dummies with their coats buttoned up, they stop beside a bottle-green corduroy garment with velvet sleeves and brass buttons, in excellent condition. Phoebe examines the coat as though inspecting the integrity of its seams, while Dorcas strolls over to the shopkeeper, smiling in a friendly way, and bends down to inspect a pair of boots. In an instant, Phoebe deftly unbuttons the coat, glances to the left and right, slips it off the dummy’s shoulders, picks up her skirts and glides into the general pedestrian traffic.

  An hour hence, in a leavings shop off St Giles High Street, Mrs Ealing accepts the corduroy coat, which is exactly the coat requested by her customer, who had seen it the previous day; she cheerfully pays the two girls about a tenth of its value, along with a measure of spiced gin – of which Dorcas, in Phoebe’s opinion, is overly fond. Mrs Ealing enquires as to its acquisition, not from moral fastidiousness but because it gives her pleasure to hear of such exploits, for they remind her of her youth. As Dorcas and Phoebe relate the incident, Mrs Ealing laughs with delight, her enormous breasts quivering over their bodice like bowls of blancmange.