‘As I have said before, I work in a private capacity for the Senior Partner.’
‘You will forgive me, Eddie, if I say that your answer seems a little evasive.’
‘Dearest, you must understand that there are professional confidences involved, which do not permit me to say more. But I assure you that the firm is highly respected, and that my duties there – purely of an advisory nature – can have no bearing on the present matter.’
‘But how can you be sure?’
Her persistence gave me the opportunity that I had been looking for. I got up and began to walk around, as if gripped by some sudden realization.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ I said at last. ‘It may be that I have overlooked the possibility of some antagonism arising from my work.’
I continued to pace the floor, until at last she came over to where I was standing.
‘Eddie, what is the matter? You look so strangely.’
She gripped my hand imploringly.
It was cruel of me to let her suffer in this way; but as I could not tell her the truth, I had no choice but to let her think that the cause of the note lay in some matter connected with my employment. And so I resorted to the lie direct.
‘There is a man,’ I said at last, ‘a client of the firm’s, who blames me for the failure of a case he has recently brought, on which the firm advised.’
‘And do you think this man could have written the note?’
‘It is possible.’
‘But for what purpose? And the note itself – why was it sent to me? And why does it say that you are not what you seem?’
I told her that the man I suspected of writing the note was rich and powerful, but of notorious reputation; that he might have no other design than to sow discord between us, to pay me back for my perceived part in the failure of his suit. She considered this for a moment, and then shook her head.
‘It was sent to me! How did he know about me, or where I lived?’
‘Perhaps he has set someone to follow me,’ I ventured. At this, her whole body stiffened, and she gave a little gasp.
‘Am I in danger, then?’
This, I said, was very unlikely, though I begged her not to go out again without the protection of Mr Braithwaite.
We continued to talk, as midnight came and went. I promised Bella that I would find out the truth and, if my suspicions proved correct, bring charges against the man, assuring her over and over that the implications of the note were false. But she remained visibly agitated, and it was plain that I had succeeded only in making the situation worse by my clumsy fabrication. We lay together on the bed, fully clothed, for an hour or so, saying nothing. Then, just before first light, she asked me to take her back to St John’s Wood.
We slipped out of the side door of the Clarendon into a bitter yellow fog, walking through the almost deserted streets in silence, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts.
Arriving at Blithe Lodge, I asked whether I might call on Sunday.
‘If you wish,’ she said flatly, taking out a key from her reticule and opening the door.
She did not turn to kiss me.
*[‘From the cradle’. Ed.]
†[In Bond Street. Ed.]
*[James Ussher (1581–1656), archbishop of Armagh. He is best known for his Annale veteris testamenti (1650–4), in which he established a long-accepted chronology of Scripture and in which he computed the date of the Creation as occurring on 23 October 4004 bc. Ed.]
*[A former gold English coin worth twenty shillings (i.e. one pound sterling). It is notoriously difficult to estimate comparative values; but using the indexes and formulas provided by J. O’Donoghue, L. Goulding, and G. Allen in Consumer Price Inflation Since 1750 (Office for National Statistics, 2004), in 1832 the value of the two hundred coins was roughly equivalent to £14,000 in today’s money. The coins would have carried the head of William IV (d. 1837). Ed.]
*[Saducismus Triumphatus; or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions, by Joseph Glanvill (1636–80), an attempt to convince sceptics that such things were real. It was in fact an enlarged and posthumous edition (with additions by Henry More) of Glanvill’s A Philosophical Endeavour Towards a Defence of the Being of Witches and Apparitions, published in 1666, most of the copies of which were destroyed in the Great Fire of London. Glanvill’s position was that disbelief in demons and witches would inevitably lead to disbelief in God and the immortality of the soul. It is now regarded as one of the most important and influential of all English works on the subject. The first edition of Saducismus Triumphatus was published for S. Lownds in 1681. Ed.]
*[‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Hamlet, I.v. 174–5. Ed.]
5
Mors certa*
I returned to Temple-street, but could not settle. Sleep was impossible; and I had no taste for reading, or for anything else for that matter. I could not even bring myself to take down my much-thumbed copy of Donne’s sermons, which, like a cold bath, would usually invigorate my faculties and set me back on the path of action. I simply sat, sunk in gloomy reflection, before the empty fireplace.
I deeply regretted lying to Bella; but deceit had become a constant companion. I had already betrayed her in fact, and continued to do so in my heart. I lived for another, hungered for another, dreamed only of possessing another, though she was now lost to me beyond recall. How, then, could I tell Bella the truth? I could only lie to her. It was the lesser evil.
By the faint gleam of the stair-case lamp below my window, I could see the fog clinging and oozing against the glass. A dreary mood slid into me irresistibly, like a knife. Harder, deeper, it bit. I knew where it would end. I tried, as always, to hold it at bay, but to no avail. The blood began to thump in my temples until I could stand it no more; and so, submitting to my demons, I threw on my great-coat again and descended the stairs. Great Leviathan’s unsleeping, inviting maw beckoned.
I found her where I knew I would, where they could always be found while a fragment of night remained – returning home from the West-end.
I caught up with her on the corner of Mount-street. A few words, and the bargain was secured.
The house was kept by a Jewess, who even at this late hour opened the door to the girl’s knock, and stood regarding us suspiciously as we ascended three cramped flights of stairs to a long low chamber on the third floor.
The place was sparsely but decently furnished, and moderately clean. At the far end of the room, beneath a boarded-up window, a ginger kitten slept in a box festooned with bright red ribbons and with his name, ‘Tyger’, written in crude letters on the side; on a table close by lay a pile of unfinished needlework, the arm of a thick velvet dress hanging down towards the floor like a dead thing. At the other end of the room, alongside a half-curtained window that gave onto the street, stood a single French bed-stead draped with a patched and faded cover, too short for concealing the unemptied chamber-pot beneath.
‘Do you have a name?’ she asked.
‘Geddington,’ I replied, smiling. ‘Ernest Geddington. General footman. And what do they call you?’
‘You may call me Lady Jane,’ came her answer, in a tone of strained jocularity. ‘And now, Mr Ernest Geddington, general footman, I suppose you must be ready to judge the quality of the goods on offer.’
She was a slight, auburn-haired girl of about twenty years of age, and spoke with a quiet Cockney intonation roughened by her life in smoke-filled places. Her attempt at levity was hollow. Her eyes were tired, the smile forced. I noticed her red knuckles, her thin white legs, and that she coughed quietly every few seconds. Swaying uneasily on her tired and swollen feet, she began undressing until she stood before me, shivering slightly, in just her chemise and drawers.