‘But how can any of this point to a motive in the death of the young lord?’
‘I have no idea. But, as you know, it has always been my contention that it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. I intend to discover more about this Parsons, or whatever his real name is. Once we have a clearer idea of his social interactions, then we might be able to deduce his intentions.’
He stood up from the table.
‘Where are you going? I asked.
‘There is a back way from this pub. I can slip out unnoticed if you can keep our spy occupied for a while. Clerkenwell, I believe, is where most of Garibaldi’s Italians have settled. I intend to make some inquiries there. Meet me at my place tomorrow at noon.’
Marx was already entertaining a visitor when I called upon him the next day, a young lady in mourning weeds. She was so shrouded in black that her face, revealed as it was beneath a veiled bonnet, seemed a half-mask of white. I do not think that I have ever seen such a deadly paleness in a woman’s face. Her eyes were speckled grey like flint, her lips a blood-crimson pout. I could not help but frown when I looked from her to my friend. Marx gave a little shrug.
‘This is Miss Elizabeth Cardew,’ he explained. ‘She was the fiancée of the young Lord Beckworth.’
‘I have been informed,’ she said to me, ‘that yourself and your esteemed colleague here were among the last people to see my beloved alive.’
‘The butler Parsons must have been the last,’ I reasoned.
‘That damnable fellow!’ she exclaimed.
My friend and I were shocked at such an outburst and Miss Cardew’s pallor was all at once infused by a rosy flush that bloomed in her cheeks. She quickly sought to regain her composure.
‘I must apologise, gentlemen,’ she explained. ‘I’m sorry, but the enmity that I feel towards the man known as Parsons is so strong that I find it hard to moderate myself.’ She sighed. ‘I do believe that he had some kind of diabolical hold over my betrothed. He certainly is not the person he presents himself as.’
‘Indeed not,’ my colleague concurred. ‘The man employed by your husband-to-be as Gilbert Parsons was, in fact, one Gilberto Pasero, a Piedmontese fighter in Garibaldi’s “Thousand”, forced into exile in London. He worked for a while at the Telegraph Office in Cleveland Street, then after meeting with Lord Beckworth at a Radical meeting in Finsbury, was engaged in service as his gentleman’s gentleman.’
Something like fear flashed in the expressive eyes of Miss Cardew.
‘How did you know…?’ she began.
‘I have been conducting my own investigation. Now, you say that Parsons, or rather, Pasero, had some kind of hold over Lord Beckworth. What do you mean by that?’
‘We had just become engaged when he took up with this dubious manservant.’
‘When was this?’ I interjected.
‘Oh,’ she thought for a moment. ‘It was over two years ago.’
‘A long engagement?’ I suggested.
‘Yes,’ she sighed, mournfully. ‘It was the curse, you see. My betrothed was terrified of it, but even more fearful of passing it on. He could not countenance the continuation of his family’s bane. He had a horror that,’ she gave a little sob, ‘in consummating our love we might pass on something so wicked and damnable.’
She took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes that were now filmy with tears.
‘He always sought to try to understand his fate,’ she went on. ‘This led him to unconventional ideas, radical ones even. The love that I offered him seemed no consolation to his desperate temperament. Instead he seemed ever more drawn to that awful butler of his. He was enthralled in some way and I am sure that Parsons, or whatever this creature is really called, was responsible for my fiancé’s death.’
‘Have you informed the authorities of your suspicion?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, but it seems that they are following procedure without much effect. This wicked manservant must be found before it is too late.’
‘But where can he be?’ I demanded.
‘I think that I might know the answer to that,’ claimed Marx.
The young lady looked as astonished as I felt.
‘What?’ I began.
‘Just say that my contacts among the revolutionary émigrés in Little Italy have borne much strange fruit. Now,’ he said to Miss Cardew, ‘you go home. I feel sure that we will have news of this Pasero fellow this very evening.’
My friend saw the young lady out and then came back into his study.
‘Now Marx,’ I reproved him. ‘What are you up to?’
He merely pulled out a slip of paper from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to me. Daubed with red printer’s ink on the heading were indecipherable Chinese characters and, in black copperplate below, an address in Limehouse.
We took a hansom with a good horse down to the Docks that night. A skull-like moon hung low above the river, casting a jaundiced shimmer on the dark and filthy waters below. Gaslight grew thinner, the streets more narrow, as we came closer to our appointed address. We passed gloomy brick-fields, their kilns emitting a sickly light in the dripping mist. The public houses were just closing, befuddled men and women clustered in disorderly groups around the doorways. There were shrieks of awful laughter, loud oaths and raucous outbursts of brawling and disorder.
We rattled over rough-paven streets. The roads were clogged with muck and grime. The stench of putrescence hung in the air, a wraith of dreadful contagion. Most of the windows were dark, but here and there fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some dreary lamplight like magic-lantern shows of penury and degradation. Here dwelled the sordid secrets of the Great City.
‘My God, Engels!’ Marx exclaimed. ‘Such squalor!’
I was somewhat surprised that he should be so shocked at the appalling poverty we witnessed that night. But then it always amazed me that, despite my friend’s prowess in commentary and observations of conditions, his lucid approach to theoretical social analysis, he could, for the most part, be strangely inattentive and unmindful of the actual destitution that surrounds us. His detachment of thought, however, did not impair a particular attentiveness of his, no doubt born out of his many years of exile, intrigue and subterfuge, and he confided to me that he had noticed another carriage on the same trail as ours and consequently it was likely that we were once more being followed.
The hansom drew up with a start at the top of a dark lane, nearly at the waterside. The black masts of ships rose over the squatting rooftops of the low hovels. We got out and made our way towards the quayside along a slimy pavement and found a shabby house with a flickering oil lamp above the door that illuminated the same Oriental characters that were printed on the slip of paper that Marx had shown me earlier that day.
We knocked and were greeted by a sallow Chinaman who showed us into a long room, heavy with the sickly odour of opium, and edged with low wooden berths, like the forecast of an emigrant ship. The low flare of gaslights glowed feebly, their scant illumination diffused by the miasma of the foul-smelling drug. A group of Malays were hunched around a stove, clattering ivory tokens on a small table. Our attendant offered each of us a pipe. Hastily we demurred and proceeded to search amongst the stupefied occupants of the bunks on either side of us.
We were watched with suspicion by the more sober patrons of that den. Harsh oaths were uttered as we moved through the room; one of the Malays looked up from the game in our direction and hissed something to his fellows in their alien tongue. I began to feel a concern for our safety, though Marx seemed quite oblivious to any danger, driven as always by his relentless curiosity.