Ghosts by Gaslight (46 page)

“If you please,” she said, turning on her side, facing away from me. “Leave the lamp on when you come to bed.”

I
N THE MORNING
I went to stand in the entranceway of the house to take the air, cold and noxious though it was, perfumed by the ripe scents of Rose Street. A cart passed me by, raising a clatter like an enormous sack of bones and pulled by a moribund horse, its ribs showing through its loose skin, urged along by a driver so muffled in rags that I saw of him nothing apart from steaming breath and reddened cheeks and tufted white eyebrows. Urchins screeched and squealed and whistled to one another, running pell-mell, their flights as erratic as those of birds frightened from their roosts. Ungainly wives lumbered from doorways to empty basins of slops into the gray, gluey mud of the street, disappearing back into the many-eyed oblivions of their black brick homes. Yet all this was given a gloss by the glorious night I had spent with Jane and had for me the quaint charm of a scene from one of Mr. Dickens’s gentler tales. I allowed myself to entertain fantasies about a life with Jane, imagining a cottage on the sea, a child or two who would appear only after a ten-year honeymoon, sojourns in the Italian Alps and the like.

Giddy with these delusions, I headed to the kitchen, intending to cut a slab of cheese and some bread to take upstairs with me, and discovered Richmond eating his breakfast. His face was drawn, the lines around his eyes deepened by fatigue. I wished him a good morning—he gave a curt nod, muttered something I could not make out, and attacked his eggs and sausage with ferocity.

“How goes your work?” I asked, dragging up a stool. “Well, I hope.”

He swallowed, nodded.

“May I inquire what it is that you are working on?”

He sucked at a particle of food trapped between his teeth—his poor table manners were often made the butt of jokes at the Inventors’ Club.

“I am completing a fifth machine,” he said. “I intend to install it soon.”

I started to speak but he held up a hand to stay me.

“I recognize that your investigation will be of some duration,” he said. “I do not plan to replace the machine that summons Christine. Not yet. If I finish before your work is done, I will forbear replacing it or else replace another machine.” He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I have left you a check with Dorothea that should suffice for your immediate expenses. Let me know if you need more. I will be busy at the factory for two weeks—I doubt we will see much of each other during that time. If you have business elsewhere, patients to treat, the coach will be at your disposal. And, of course, the house is yours to use as you see fit.”

I must admit that this discomfited me—it seemed an abdication of responsibility, implying that he did not actually care about Christine and that whatever concern he felt was perfunctory and had been satisfied by the act of hiring an alienist.

“Would you care to learn what progress I have made?” I asked.

He looked at me, expectant, chewing a mouthful of food.

“Progress may be too optimistic a word,” I said. “But I have a theory regarding your sister’s . . . promiscuity.”

He swallowed. “Yes?”

“I believe she may have been interfered with while still a child.”

I had thought he would display some adverse reaction, but he did not. He had a bite of sausage, chewed, and said, “Hmm.”

“An incident of the sort I envision often leads the child to have an unhealthy view of sexuality. She might, for instance, be prone to use sex as a means of gaining approval.”

He continued eating.

“It might be helpful if I could speak to your father,” I said. “He may recall . . .”

“That would be pointless. These days he is like an infant who must be dressed and diapered. His memory is nearly gone, and when frustrated he comes easily to anger. It would be an unnecessary trial for the both of you.”

“Is there anyone else with whom I might speak? A nanny or another relative.”

“Only myself,” said Richmond. “I am occupied today and will be, I anticipate, for the remainder of the week. Next week I can spare a few minutes, though I can’t think it will be helpful. Christine and I were brought up more or less separately. Summers I traveled the length and breadth of England and Wales with my father, assisting him with one or another of his engineering projects. The remainder of the year I was away at school. All the while Christine stayed home. We had the occasion to spend time together, of course, but our relationship was based on holidays and a weekend here and there. We were more cousins than brother and sister.”

I found this a telling disclaimer and was inclined to press him on the matter; yet I did not think it was the moment to reveal that I suspected him of having had an incestuous encounter with Christine—it would have seemed accusatory and my purpose was to define the problem, not to cast aspersions. I thought to tell him about Christine’s masked client, wanting to learn whether or not it would elicit a strong reaction, for I believed that Richmond was capable of such a deception; but I decided that this, too, would have been premature. I made a packet of bread and cheese, wished him good day, and went about my business.

The weeks that followed saw me make little progress. I had a lengthy conversation with Richmond concerning Christine, but it was, as he had promised, unrewarding. My observations of her shade yielded nothing new, though she manifested for longer periods of time, as if she were becoming accustomed to my presence. Isolated with her for up to an hour, sitting for hours more beside the chamber, cataloguing the motley spirits that materialized in her absence, I imagined that I was being watched, studied by a malefic spirit, and I took to carrying a crucifix for protection. Other suspicions plagued me, prominent among them the idea that this practice brought me closer to death each day. Every so often, that dark, dervish creature appeared in the chamber. Although I had become used to it popping in from the afterlife and announcing itself with a distant, many-voiced roar, I came to assign it a demonic value; yet I did not fear it as much as I feared for my mental stability.

Then one morning as I sat at the bench fronting the chamber, searching my pockets for a pen, Christine appeared beside me wearing her plum pajamas (this had been the uniform of the house during its heyday) and asked in a wispy, genteel voice, one rendered nearly inaudible by the rumbling of the machines, if I would care for a glass of wine.

“No, thank you,” I said upon recovering my poise. “Your company is more than sufficient stimulation.”

A handful of seconds elapsed before she spoke again, looking off to my right and at a point above my shoulder. “Shall I call the ladies in for your inspection?”

“I think not,” I said. “I would prefer to spend my time with you.”

After another brief delay, she let out a peal of laughter, as though delighted by my response; but she said nothing more, only continued looking above me and to the right. I wondered if she could hear me—judging by her attentive expression, she might have been listening to another voice.

“My name is Samuel,” I said. “Samuel Prothero.”

The delay again and then she said, “Yes! Of course! I know your father.”

My father, as far as I knew, had never been to London and was so conservative in nature that the idea of visiting Saint Nichol would have given him palpitations. I began to doubt that Christine was responding to me. Yet if, as Richmond suggested, a ghost was a scrap of life left behind after death, a fragment caught on a metaphysical nail, and not a faded version of the person entire, these oblique statements might be the only responses of which she was capable and she could be trying to communicate, unable to express herself more fluently than a tourist in a foreign land armed with phrases from a guidebook. I decided to risk a direct approach.

“Christine,” I said. “Tell me about the night you were murdered.”

Following an interval of twenty or thirty seconds during which she appeared to be frozen, she vanished. Soon thereafter I apprehended a chill presence behind me. I did not want to see her in that bloody guise and kept my head lowered until the feeling of cold dissipated.

That night Jane came to my room with an excellent bottle of pinot noir, and as we sat by the fire, which had gone to embers, I asked her to tell me more about Christine. What had she been like in her unguarded moments? Did she maintain any friendships outside the brothel? Did she spend much time away from it? If so, how did she spend that time?

“I wouldn’t know about friends outside the house,” said Jane. “She couldn’t have had many . . . if any at all. What time she didn’t spend here, she was at one music hall or another, or at the theater. She’d tell us about what she saw, all the people and what the ladies wore and such, but she never mentioned anyone specific. And I think she would have. We were her employees, but we were also her confidantes. Like us, she was trapped here, unhappy and on the lookout for something that would make her happy. If she found it, I don’t believe she could have kept it to herself.”

Light from the hearth ruddied her pale skin. She leaned forward to caress my cheek.

“You’ll see again her soon enough,” she said. “Stop thinking about her.”

“I know. It’s just . . .”

“Tell me.”

“I’m beginning to feel that my efforts are wasted here.”

“But you said you had broken through to her.”

“I did, but in retrospect it was the kind of moment that persuades me that what I’m doing here is worthless. I don’t believe I will ever be able to communicate with her.”

She mulled this over. “Dorothea says that Christine seems to enjoy her singing.”

“Dorothea’s singing?”

“Yes.”

“What does she sing?”

“Popular tunes. ‘Pretty Polly Perkins from Paddington Green’ and that sort of thing. She says they seem to make her happy. It causes her to hang about longer, she says, but she’s not so horrid looking.” Jane held up her glass so that the fire added ruby highlights to the wine. “It makes me nervous, her hanging about, so I pretend not to see her and let nature take its course.”

“Was ‘Pretty Polly Perkins’ her favorite song?”

“I don’t know as she had a favorite. Oh, wait now! She used to go larking about here singing snatches from ‘Champagne Charlie.’ If she had a favorite, I reckon that was it.”

She had a sip of wine, the voluptuous, vaguely predatory curve of her upper lip kissing the glass. Though she was of Christine’s type, her features were so delicate and fine that I no longer thought of Christine when I looked at her, but saw a beauty entirely her own. And it was not just her beauty that moved me. During our time together she had told me of her life, less a life than an escape route, a flight from one brutal circumstance to another. Despite this, some central essence had come through undamaged, a core of strength and sweetness unaffected by this maltreatment. She had a temper, and when something she held dear was threatened, she would defend it with an unladylike ferocity; but these storms passed swiftly.

“You know,” I said. “If it were not for you, I would have given up weeks ago.”

“I’m glad I can be a comfort for you.”

“You’re more than a comfort, Jane. Without you to shore me up, I would have been overwhelmed by the morbidity of this enterprise. I can only hope my presence here has meant something to you.”

“I think . . .” She bit her lip and fixed her gaze on the hearth.

“Please! Tell me!”

She sighed and, without lifting her eyes from the hearth, said in a small voice, “I think you know my heart. I think you have always known it.”

I took her hand and the warmth of the fire, her warmth, went all through me—it was as though our physical contact had created a bubble of time and space apart from the world. I wanted to say more, but was at a loss for words, not knowing what there was to say. Our stations in life were at such a great remove one from the other, it was unlikely we could ever have a lasting connection.

She withdrew her hand from mine and, as though she knew my thoughts, said, “It might be best not to invest too hastily in our relationship . . . or too deeply. I care for you, Samuel, but the situation is difficult. I have divided loyalties, you see. And you, well . . . you have your own difficulties to overcome.”

Despite the irresolution of that night, or rather because, irresolute or not, that singular moment had moved our relationship forward, I set about my work with renewed energy. Predicated upon our conversation, I began singing “Champagne Charlie” whenever Christine materialized. As Jane had said, her mood became genial and there were times when she did not revert to her bloody, chemise-clad state prior to vanishing. Initially those were the only changes I observed, but before long I noticed that when I sang a particular verse, allowing for the apparent delay between my singing and her reaction to the song, she grew more aggressive in her behavior, coming close to me, staring intently (although her stares were not always directed toward me), and betraying signs of anxiety. The verse went as follows:

The way I gained my title is by a hobby which I’ve got

Of never letting others pay no matter how long the shot.

Whoever drinks with me are treated all the same,

From Dukes and Lords and Cabmen down,

    I make them drink champagne.

By the time I finished the chorus (“Oh, Champagne Charlie is my name . . . etc.”), she would have returned to normal, but for the span of perhaps half a minute her eyes widened, her bosom rose and fell as though her breathing had quickened, and on one occasion she laid her hand on my forearm. I was stunned, stricken. Rather than jumping back, I held perfectly still, imprisoned by that slight weight upon my shirtsleeve. I was startled to find that her hand had any weight whatsoever, and she too may have been startled, for she snatched her hand away and disappeared. I retreated to the elevator and thence to my room and tried to understand what had happened. Her touch had been light, yet no lighter than the casual caress of a real woman, and there had been no spectral association, no chill. Upon regaining my composure, I ascended once again to the sixth floor. Christine was nowhere to be seen and did not return for the better part of a day, but from that point on she contrived to brush against me whenever possible—I imagined that these intimacies were reminiscent of her vital days and gave her pleasure. For my part, I experienced a mild anxiety, less than I might have when a strange cat unexpectedly rubbed against my leg, and thus I permitted the touches to continue.