The Blood: What secrets lie aboard? (Jem Flockhart Book 3) Read online

  Dr Graves eyed the naked feet of the girl hungrily. ‘Well. Well,’ he said. ‘As long as I have a corpse before me and a knife in my hand, I don’t much care where I do it or who looks on. But it will be two guineas each. Two guineas from each one of these students.’

  ‘And you will divide the fee between us equally?’ said Dr Cole.

  ‘I take half,’ replied Dr Graves. ‘I have come all the way from St Saviour’s, after all, and there is the matter of my reputation and experience. I take half, and the other half you share between the two of you.’

  The girl lay pale and still, the water from Deadman’s Basin pooling around her cold dead limbs. The mortuary echoed with the sound of men’s voices, and the rattle of coins exchanging hands, and I wondered whether her body had been worth so much to anyone when she was alive. His pockets full at last, Dr Graves produced his box of knives, and the students gathered round.

  Confession of Mary Mercer on arriving at Siren House

  My name is Mary Mercer. I am twenty years old. I don’t have much to tell you about my life, sir. I am not sure that I should tell you anything for it’s a shameful story, I do know that much. The other girls here – some of them – they don’t know anything else but being on the streets. I don’t know whether that’s better or worse, that I have known a life that is not miserable and degraded, or that they are unaware that goodness and kindness exist and so hold out no expectation of it.

  I came to my current state by sorry means, through my own weakness. I can read and write, sir, and could write down my own confession if you’d prefer it, though I would rather not see it set out on the page. My father and mother worked at a big house outside London. I’ll not say where it is, for I’ll not bring further disgrace upon them. They believe me to be dead, and so I am to them. I will not tell you their names, only that they are good people, my father a gamekeeper and my mother a cook. The master had a son and a daughter, and I was well known to the daughter of the house for we were of the same age, born on the same day, and liked to consider ourselves twins, though we looked nothing at all alike.

  We were good friends as children, as far as it’s possible for such a friendship to be encouraged when one comes from below stairs and the other is the jewel of her father’s eye. But friends we were, and I was permitted to attend her lessons with her for it was a lonely business in the school room with only the governess, for her brother was older and away from home and her mother dead. It was a solitary life and her father was happy enough for me to be her companion. Those summers we had together, I can hardly describe for they seem to me like heaven itself. But they lasted no time at all, for childhood is gone in an instant, and she was to be a lady as I was to be her maid. She was my darling, sir, nothing much to look at, being pale and wan, and not like her mother, so I was told, who had been a great beauty.

  But my girl was sick. She had a cough – we all knew what it meant, and we pretended she would get well again soon enough, though she never did. In time I became her nurse. I wheeled her about the park; I read to her; I warmed her limbs with my own during the night. I loved her, sir, and I did all I could to keep her alive and safe. The doctor knew I was careful and he entrusted me with her medicines. I grew adept at changing her sheets in the night when she woke sweating, and I was careful with her laudanum for I knew how stupid it made her feel. I hid the blood in her handkerchief, as the sight of it made her afraid.

  The doctors came all the time. The bleedings they inflicted upon that poor girl, sir. I could hardly bear it – carrying away bowls full of her precious blood, watching her grow paler and paler, though there was nothing that would get rid of those fierce red spots of colour on her cheeks. The glitter of her eye and the red on her handkerchief were all the more startling and fierce for she was so thin and white.

  And then one day they took her away. The summer had ended and the doctor thought she would not be able to bear another English winter, so she was bundled up and sent abroad. I begged that I might go with her. She begged that I might come too, but no one listened to either of us. The doctor said she wanted a proper nurse, though she needed no such thing, for no one knew her as well as I did, no one cared for her as I did, and the woman they employed was cold and hard and pinch-faced, and would have the rings from her fingers before she was even in her grave.

  I learned later that she had died before they even got to Switzerland. That was four years ago now, though it still grieves me every day. And then my darling’s brother came home. How like her he was to look at, for he was slim and golden haired, as she had been. I know now that he hardly knew his sister, no matter that he pretended that he did, and that he understood my grief. Rather, he did not know her at all, and cared nothing for her. He was so much older and had rarely been home when she was growing up. He had been trained by his father in the ways of men. Selfishness, indifference, arrogance and guile were in his blood, and he believed, like his father, that women were put onto God’s earth for two reasons only – for breeding, and for sport. And if one used women of one’s own class for the first of these, one used all others for the second. And yet I could not see it. Not then. He was so like her to look at, I could not believe that he would not also be like her in his heart. But he was not. He took what he wanted, and then he left me with his child growing inside me. A girl, I hoped. I would call her Marianna, after my darling, for I liked to think of my baby as hers, not his.

  Well, sir, I knew they would take her away from me if they knew, and so I concealed my condition. My mother called the doctor, who looked at me and asked whether I was pregnant and I said ‘no, sir’, but it was just that I had got fatter, and was feeling unwell, and it was nothing that some castor oil wouldn’t solve. My mother asked me the same question and I said ‘no’ to her, though I knew I was, and I still did not know what I would do when my time came. But come it did, one afternoon in August when everyone was about their business as the harvest was being brought in. I felt the pains and I crept away to my tiny room at the top of the house. It was in the middle of the day when the maids’ rooms were empty, and I bit down on a leather strap I had taken from the tack room to stifle my cries.

  I hardly knew what I should do when the baby came. I thought I could manage it alone, but I could not. The pain all but drove me mad, and I ripped the cord with my bare hands. The baby – a boy – was not moving. There was blood everywhere. I tried to clear it up, but I was weak and in pain and I could hardly move, and more of the stuff was pouring out of me. The baby was dead, I could see that, and so I put it in the coal scuttle and closed the lid. And then I lay down again.

  Oh, sir, I can hardly say what happened next. My mother came looking for me and found me where I was. The doctor came and a bloody trail showed where my baby was hidden. After that I went quite mad. Puerperal insanity, they say, and I was taken to an asylum and kept there for days until I was quiet. I almost died, sir, and I wished I had for what awaited me now but the assizes?

  Because I had hidden my condition from everyone, and had put the dead child in the coal scuttle, I was charged with concealment of pregnancy. They told me I would be convicted, but that I should be glad I was not charged with murder, for so I would have been had the doctor not agreed that my baby was already dead when I put it in the coal scuttle, for murder is a capital offence and I should surely have hanged for it.

  I was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. My mother and father refused to see me again, so disgraced were they by my actions. I had told the magistrate who the father was and my master was furious to have his family shamed in so public a place as a criminal court. Worse still, I had confessed all – how I had shared my beloved’s bed, how I had cared for her in the most intimate of ways. How vile and unnatural I seemed, to love a woman and seduce her brother and hide his dead baby in the coal. That I was young and grieving for my mistress was no one’s concern.

  And so I came to prison. I saw your pamphlet, sir. And yet I didn’t take it. Not at first, for I was not ready for red
emption. Instead, I was filled with pain and sorrow. My love for Marianna had been held up to ridicule and scrutiny as a vile and corrupt thing that had likely sent the poor girl into an early grave. I walked for miles, though I could not escape my thoughts. I stayed in cheap lodging houses, though I had little money and pawned what clothes and possessions I had. And then one night when a man approached me in the street I went with him. I bought some laudanum with the money he gave me. The taste of it reminded me of her lips, and after that it was much easier.

  Chapter Four

  By the time we left the evening had drawn in. The setting sun was no more than a bloody smear against the western sky and the lanes we now walked down were dark and filled with shadows. On either side of us the walls were stained and streaked with damp. One moment the air was heavy with the stink of wet leather and boiled bones, the next it was fragrant with spices and coffee, the sharp salty tang of fried fish followed by the damp earthiness of spilled beer. I had not realised how many public houses there were when we had walked down the same streets earlier that day, but now every other door seemed to lead into a drinking den – cave-like places, dimly lit and full of lurching shadows and rough voices. On all sides of us men flowed up from the waterfront. One step away from prison or the workhouse, the docks were the only place in London where a man’s character, or his past, was of concern to no one. All that mattered was whether he could lift and haul, whether he could tramp the tread wheels that worked the lifting gear in the dockside warehouses, or carry burdens on his shoulders all day.

  As the night crept up from the east, so did the fog, the air about us taking on a familiar gritty feel. Overhead, crooked chimneys poked the sky from sagging roofs, each of them trailing a ribbon of black smoke. Lanterns hanging outside public houses, chandlers and pawn shops glowed. We walked in silence, Will and I, shoulder to shoulder, the streets too clamorous for conversation.

  At length the thoroughfare broadened out and grew less crowded. We turned left, and then right. The lamps had been lit along Barnaby Street, a dingy thoroughfare by anyone’s estimation but which seemed a vision of air and brightness compared to the lanes and courts we had passed through that day. Our strides lengthened now, heading, though neither of us mentioned it, to Sorley’s chop house.

  Sorley’s was crowded. The cold weather, the darkness and the rising fog had driven men inside, and the whole supper room was filled with a warm smoky fug. The smell of hot chops and pork fat made my mouth water. I asked Sorley to send a pheasant pie and two bottles of porter down to the apothecary. I hoped the food would do something to mollify Gabriel before we got back. I ordered two plates of cutlets and some oysters to have with our beer, and we pushed our way through to a booth near the fireplace.

  We drank our ale in silence while we waited for our food. ‘You think the Inspector is wrong?’ said Will.

  ‘Undoubtedly. Don’t you?’

  ‘His seems the most likely explanation.’

  ‘But one which hardly fits with the facts we have before us: a girl in her underclothes—’

  ‘A prostitute—’

  ‘Former prostitute,’ I said.

  ‘Former? And therefore unlikely to be with a man?’

  ‘Less likely. If she was no longer on the streets, then what was she doing on the streets?’

  ‘She must have come from nearby. And a girl in her underclothes would surely attract attention.’

  ‘Unless it was dark, which it would surely have to be if he were to get her into the water.’

  ‘He?’ said Will.

  ‘You’re quite right. To get her into the water, to hide her, I think strength would be necessary, but it would be wrong to assume a man. One man, or two men, or a man and a woman, two or more women – there are a number of possibilities. And yet men are more likely to commit crimes of violence. The girl would have come from the nearby streets, certainly, or the nearby houses. Perhaps she came from Siren House itself. And anyone – any man – might stagger along the footpath through Tulip’s Basin with their arms around a dead girl. To any passers-by she would simply appear drunk – especially in these streets. Drunk women are ten a penny on the riverside.’

  ‘And the oilskin?’

  ‘Quite possibly the oilskin was already there,’ I said. ‘A new tarpaulin would have been dragged out by scavengers, though it can hardly have been an accident that she was covered.’

  ‘Though it might have been an accident that she drowned. Water was found in her lungs, Jem, we both heard Dr Graves say so.’

  We had stayed for the post-mortem, though as I had refused to hand Dr Graves two guineas for the privilege I had been obliged to stand at the back. I had seen the girl’s lungs for myself, for they had been put into a bowl and set to one side and I had sneaked round to take a look. They had definitely been full of water. And yet—

  ‘What about the marks? The cuts upon her collar bones, her feet, the bruises on her arms?’ I said.

  ‘She lived a dangerous life. Cuts, punctures, bruises, all might easily have been sustained hours, perhaps even days, before she drowned. Perhaps as she fell into the water.’

  ‘And you think they are merely the marks of a brutal life?’

  ‘It is quite plausible.’

  I said nothing. It was possible. Equally, it might be evidence of something else entirely. Something far more sinister. And those cuts were too regular to be anything but incisions – clean, deliberate, precise.

  ‘What about your missing friend?’ Will tossed a picked-clean bone to Sorley’s dog, which lay panting beneath the table.

  ‘Aberlady? What about him?’

  ‘Is it like him to disappear for a week without saying anything to anyone?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Then added rather sulkily, ‘Though you were determined earlier to imply that I hardly know the man. As such his habits are quite mysterious to me.’

  Will grinned. ‘So I did. Did you notice that those on board the Blood seemed rather disinclined to speak well of him?’

  I had noticed and I did not know what to make of it. Aberlady had always commanded the respect of his colleagues, or so I had thought. I took a deep draught of beer.

  ‘And their remarks about his opium habit,’ continued Will. ‘You knew he was a slave to the stuff?’

  ‘I . . . I knew he depended on laudanum for . . . for his own peace of mind,’ I said. ‘It did not affect his work.’ I shrugged. ‘There’s barely a man in the land who has not used laudanum.’

  ‘Though not everyone progresses to the opium houses of the waterfront.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘That I had not realised.’

  ‘And that ship!’ continued Will. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Why on earth did he choose to work there?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Where else might he make study of the diseases that afflict the world? The Blood is a hospital like no other.’

  ‘That’s certainly true.’ Will wiped his lips, and tossed his napkin onto his empty plate. But I had not eaten, for as soon as our food had been brought over, I had found I was not hungry. I pushed my plate to the side. ‘You think there’s some connection between the note from Aberlady and that dead girl?’ he said.

  ‘We have no evidence of a connection,’ I replied. ‘I’m reluctant to jump to conclusions.’

  Will pulled open his bag and drew out a map of London. Every street and court, every lane and alley was marked, though as the city was growing and changing with every month that passed it would not be long before a good many of the thoroughfares we looked at now would no longer exist, the map before us becoming nothing more than a ghostly reminder of what had once been. Tulip’s Basin was one such place. Soon to vanish from the face of the earth altogether, and yet there it was, marked on the map as a cramped square adjacent to the river.

  Will laid a finger on it. ‘Tulip’s Basin – colloquially know as Deadman’s Basin.’ He moved his hand towards the river. ‘Here’s where the Blood is moored,’ and back towards where we w
ere, north of the basin on the road to Prior’s Rents. ‘Here’s Siren House. They are not far from each other, and all on an easy route – Deadman’s Passage, Cat’s Hole, Bishop’s Entry, Cuttlefish Lane—’

  Will put his map away and produced his sketch book. He flipped the pages until he came to the drawing he had made of Deadman’s Basin. He had captured the place well – the lock gates, the boarded-up villa, the warehouses looming behind, their thickly barred windows as black as scabs against the damp walls. He had drawn the waters of the basin with an ominous oily sheen, and the tumbled buildings that surrounded the place seemed lonelier and more derelict than ever – the hovel in which Dick Tulip had lived and died, the crooked pier on its rotten timber legs, the half-submerged barge. Against the skyline a tenement reared, smoke trickling from crooked chimney pots. A crow sat hunched on the finial of a rotten gable-end, and a face peered out from the gloom of a top floor window. Beside the water he had drawn a tall, slim figure in a stovepipe hat. Even in so simple a drawing Will had captured the slight swagger to the fellow’s stance: the pose was confident, head back as if he were looking down his nose at the scene before him, hands in pockets and hat slightly to one side. It was me. And in the corner, where the greasy flagstones vanished into a dark gash between the walls known as Bishop’s Entry, was another figure.

  ‘Who’s this?’ I said.

  Will peered at the drawing. ‘I don’t know. There was someone standing there the whole time – I’d quite forgotten about it. I didn’t think much of it at the time, the place is a thoroughfare after all—’

  ‘How long was he there?’

  ‘Long enough for me to draw him. Most of the time, I think.’