Murder (3 page)

‘He’s starting to look just like his father,’ Charles said, adding with a smile, ‘and he seems well.’

From under his hat, blond curls sprang around the child’s face and for once his pale cheeks were glowing from both excitement and the fresh air.

‘He’s got Mother’s eyes,’ Juliana said, and squeezed her father’s arm. Mary Hebbert had been taken from them two summers before, the victim of a sudden fever. It was a swift death as her heart gave out, and although they had both grieved deeply, that had gradually transformed into fond remembrances rather than bouts of anguish. ‘And he is gentle, like her.’

‘And clever like his own mother,’ Charles added, his eyes twinkling. ‘A fine combination.’

I did not join in with their talk of the boy, for whatever I said would sound stilted and awkward. Instead, I hung back a few paces and let them continue. I had never been able
to bond with little James. The similarities with his father and the memories he engendered in Juliana comforted her, but for me they were darker triggers. James had his father’s weak chest, and he had nearly killed Juliana arriving into this world; even throughout her pregnancy he had made her terribly ill, and I could not help but wonder if some of his father’s wickedness had passed into his unborn son. More than anything I loathed the child’s fascination with the river. Juliana refused to let him on the water, despite their waterfront property – I wondered how she could bear to look out at the Thames, knowing that her husband had been pulled out of it, but I supposed in some way it allowed her to feel closer to him. For my own part I still could not look upon the river without a mild sense of dread.

‘He’s nearly six. He should be in school,’ I heard Charles say, ‘and mixing with boys his own age. It would be good for his chest to spend more time playing sports, and good for him to be around others.’

‘I prefer to school him myself,’ Juliana said, her tone abrupt, ‘until I know he is completely well.’

Charles, to his credit, did not push her. It was Christmas Day and not the time to broach her controlling parenting.

‘Look, Mother! Look!’ The boy was pointing out to a flurry of gulls wheeling and diving into the water.

‘Don’t lean over too far!’ Juliana hurried forward, and Charles and I followed.

‘But look!’

As their beaks nipped eagerly, the volume of gulls made the water foam and churn, but at their centre I could just make out a dark hunk of something being tugged this way and that.

‘It’s a dead thing!’ James squealed excitedly. ‘They’re eating a dead thing!’

We turned away from the water after that.

*

Walter Andrews arrived in time for Christmas dinner, laden with parcels and a bottle of fine port, and by the time we had all eaten our fill and little James was playing with his new toys we were truly a festive gathering. Crackers had been pulled and nuts had been cracked, and then Juliana played the piano and we sang carols. Outside, as if in a fine salute to the day, the temperature dropped and the first snowflakes of the winter began to fall. I could not have wished for a more perfect Christmas.

‘Say goodnight to Uncle Thomas and Inspector Andrews,’ Juliana said, ushering the sleepy child towards us. ‘And thank them for their presents.’

‘Just Mr Andrews these days,’ Walter said, ruffling the boy’s angelic curls. ‘Good night, young Master James.’

‘Thank you for the cricket bat,’ the boy murmured.

‘We shall have you at the crease come summer.’ Andrews winked at him.

Little James turned to me and came in closer to where I sat so he could wrap his thin arms around me in a hug.

‘Merry Christmas, Uncle Thomas,’ he said. I returned the embrace, but I felt stiff and awkward. I tried to like the boy, I truly did. It was not that he was an unpleasant child – that was not the case. He was quieter than most boys of his age, and somewhat reserved and clingy with his mother, but he was not spiteful, nor mean. It was merely that he was the child of a monster, conceived at the height of his father’s murdering madness, and I could not help but wonder whether the sins of
his father somehow lurked in his soul. And when those wide blue eyes were fixed on me, studious and sombre, I found I could not help but believe it.

‘Thank you for my books. And my train.’ He kept his arms round my neck and kissed my cheek, and knowing that Juliana was watching with fondness I patted his back and forced a smile, though I could not bring myself to return the kiss.

‘You’re very welcome, young man,’ I said instead. He pulled back and stared at me for a moment, then returned to his mother’s side.

‘I shall come and read you one of those new stories with your mother,’ Charles said as he got up from his seat. ‘How would you like that?’

‘Thank you, Grandfather,’ he said politely as Charles swept him up in his arms and groaned as if the slight boy was far too much weight. He pretended to stagger slightly under the load and little James laughed, a gentle giggle, and I felt a moment of sadness at my inability to like him.

‘Goodnight, Uncle Thomas,’ he said again.

‘We’ll be down shortly,’ Juliana said and smiled at me. ‘Now come along, both of you.’

When we were alone, Andrews poured me another glass of port and then added some coal to the fire before we went to the window and looked out at the snow and the gaslights flickering in the houses along the curved street. I thought of all the families who had decorated their trees and opened their presents and I hoped they had enjoyed as happy a day as we had.

‘The boy is very fond of you,’ Andrews said. ‘I think he wanted you to read his story to him rather than Charles.’

‘Oh, I think not.’ I was surprised by his words – the child was as awkward with me as I was with him, and I had presumed that was apparent to all.

‘You’re the closest person to a father he has.’ Andrews sipped his port. In a house further up someone drew the curtains closed. Christmas was coming to an end for another year, which made me think of the speed of my own passing years; the Yule season would be here again quickly enough.

‘You’re not getting any younger,’ Andrews said, as if reading my mind. ‘When are you going to pull yourself together and propose to her?’

Heat burned in my cheeks. It was true that I often talked of Juliana to Walter during our dinners, but I had never mentioned my feelings for her. I thought I had spoken like a guardian would, rather than a man in love.

‘Oh come on, Thomas.’

I busied myself with closing the drapes rather than face the gentle humour in his eyes. ‘It’s clear that you are both very fond of each other.’

‘I’m nearly thirty years older than her,’ I said, hoping my tone was indignant, but when I heard my oft-thought words spoken aloud I felt some shame that I had ever even considered that she might think of me and marriage. It was ridiculous. ‘I’m older than Charles,’ I added.

‘Age is irrelevant in these matters.’ He sat by the fire, where the flames were crackling merrily. ‘And Juliana is wise beyond her years. Her illness and her grief have matured her.’

I wished he would be quiet, but at the same time I found some hope in his words. If a man like Walter Andrews didn’t find the idea entirely preposterous, then perhaps I would one
day find the bravery to say out loud the words I had so often voiced silently.

‘You’ve helped her through all of it – and her affection for you is obvious. You were close friends before poor Harrington’s murder, and you have been resolutely by her side since. If she were to marry again, who else would she choose?’

‘She still grieves for her husband,’ I said softly. I did not think of the headless baby’s corpse in Harrington’s trunk. I did not think of the glass in my hand gouging his throat.

‘She grieves less with each month that passes. Life is short, Thomas. Harrington is gone, Charles’ Mary is gone. My own Amy is gone. If you have the opportunity for happiness then you should at the very least try to take it.’

‘Perhaps I shall,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I shall.’ I smiled at him. ‘You should have just written that down as a Christmas gift for me and saved yourself the cost of those expensive riding boots.’

‘You’re right,’ he declared, reaching once again for the port bottle. ‘I shall return them tomorrow.’

‘Ah, but you did not write it down.’ I held my glass out to him. ‘The boots remain mine.’

By the time Juliana and Charles returned we were laughing, and soon Juliana was too. It was a good sound, and there had not been enough of it in recent years. Perhaps things were changing for all of us. I looked at her and felt my fierce love tighten my heart.
Maybe this year
, I thought.
Let Christmas be over and the new year start properly
. Maybe then I’d ask her.

… my secretary, James Barker (a rather earnest man who my father trusted implicitly with his business dealings, and I am, when my mind is my own, of a mind to agree with his judgement), seemed confused by my suggestion and then told me that I alone had the key to that warehouse and that I had told him specifically that it was not to be used. As soon as he spoke the memory of it came back to me, but I could not place why I would have said such a thing. Of course I made light of it, but I admit it plagues me. I can find no record of what I am storing there, and the windows have been painted black
.

I have hours missing. My nights are sometimes a blur, and it is always when I’m weak with this terrible fever that fills me with dread. I
start
by working late, going through my father’s paperwork to understand the systems he has in place, but then there are black spaces, and fragmented images I do not want to dwell on, and I wake – if that is the right word, for I am far from sleeping during these episodes – in places where I have no right to be at
.

I know what you would say – and I still hope to get replies from you even though my writing is becoming a cathartic process of its own. You would say, ‘See a doctor.’ I would, Edward. But I cannot.

I came out of one such fugue several weeks ago and found myself in Westminster, near the site of the new Scotland Yard building site. I
had no idea what I was doing there, but my arms and back ached and I was filled with exhaustion – and yet at the same time the weakening fever was gone and my face was suddenly clear of the hot red blotches that are the mark of my recurring illness. I was afraid, as any man would be suddenly finding himself so far from home and with no recollection of how he got there.

Yesterday, they found something inside the new building: part of a dead woman’s body. It was headless and brutally dismembered, and had been wrapped in the pages of a newspaper that I myself have delivered. I know these things because Juliana’s father is working with the police. I can almost hear you laugh, dismissing the two events as unconnected, but there is yet more strangeness here. When I hear them talk of this poor dead woman, I see her in my mind’s eye: a tall girl, full-bodied. I see her walking in the sunshine, and then I see her in the dark, staring at me in such fear. I know that she is foreign and I know that something terrible happened to her.

There are other memories too: memories of
feelings:
power, hunger, and a lust such as I have never known
.

I am afraid for Juliana. I am afraid for Elizabeth, the girl who was the cause of my travels abroad. I am afraid for myself.

I feel as if I am two men, and the one whose deeds I cannot fully remember is the stronger.

And always
, always,
there is this terrible weight on my back, of something just out of sight – something that I cannot shake free. Something that is driving me mad
.

I know I need to look in that locked warehouse – the one apparently only I have the key for. The one I protect so much from Barker and the other workers. The answers lie in the warehouse, and that is what gives me pause. What will I find in there? Nothing? Therefore proving that I am suffering some madness?

I fear that I will find something worse: that I am not mad.

That I am a monster …

James had been right about London: it was, like New York, a vibrant and exciting city, and like his own home, had many areas of filth and excessive poverty. But London was actually more like Paris: the air was thick with history and its streets filled with secrets so old that even the worn stone had begun to forget them. But the more he saw, the more he realised that neither was it entirely like Paris. The French capital’s recent history might be bloodier, but it was nonetheless a city that oozed seduction. London was all grime and grit and labour. There was no romance here. In London even the river worked. In fact, London was like all the great cities of the world, Edward Kane concluded, entirely unique.

He checked his watch as the waiter poured him some more coffee, then drank it black as his eyes scanned the newspaper without really reading it. He left the delicate sandwiches and cakes on the fine porcelain stands untouched. Fresh tea would arrive when his guest did; he would eat then. She was due at any moment – if she came, of course. He was surprisingly nervous. He glanced out of the sparkling windows into the darkening busy afternoon, following the hubbub and imagining the hundreds of tiny stories wrapped up in each warm body as they hurried past. He’d been at the Dorchester for almost a week now. In between the meetings with bankers and railwaymen, he had gone to the address
on James Harrington’s letters, hoping to find him recovered and well, and perhaps a little embarrassed at everything he had poured out onto so many pages all those years ago – but instead, he had discovered his friend’s death, pulled out of the Thames as a bloated corpse with a slashed throat, and how his poor young widow had nearly died in childbirth shortly afterwards.

He had decided it might be best not to go to the new house, but instead to send a message, leaving it up to her to decide if she wanted to see a man who had known her husband only briefly, and in their youth.

‘Mr Kane?’