Person or Persons Unknown (27 page)

“Yes, Jimmie Bunkins, what have you to say?”

“A question, sir: What if the cull’s got a knife?”

“A very sensible question it is, for them who attack from behind often has them, for it is a coward’s weapon. One thing I will say, first of all, about knives is that most who have them don’t know how to use them. But to your question, if attacked from behind with a knife, you’ll either be stabbed in the back, in which situation all you can do is hope it didn’t hit your vitals, get turned around, and meet him head on. It ain’t well known, but Constable Brede took a knife in the back, got loose, and subdued the villain with his club. With the knife still in his back, he marched him to Bow Street, then went to a surgeon to have the thing taken out.”

Wide-eyed, Bunkins and I exchanged looks without comment.

“Then there’s them who would cut your throat. But to do that your man’s got to get at it. So the first rule: tuck in your chin. Next: bite like hell, hit with the elbows, and try to break his foot. Do whatever you can to get loose and face him.”

“But he’s still got his knife, ain’t he?” put in Bunkins. “What can you do if you ain’t got one, too?”

“The best defense against a knife ain’t another knife but a good club and a pair of nimble feet. We’ll go into that later, but just now I must wash up and dress for duty. Jim-mie Bunkins, you’re welcome to come along whenever you like at this hour.”

On the day of the dinner planned for Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. Donnelly, we trudged a good way across London, Annie Oakum and I, to Smithfield Market to purchase meat for the occasion. We two, and Lady Fielding as well, had looked forward to the occasion as one sure to rouse Sir John from his lethargic silence. And so a great feast had been planned. A great feast demands a great piece of meat, and Mr. Tolliver being yet mysteriously absent from Cov-ent Garden, we had no choice but to make the journey to Smithfield.

Annie and I had become great chums. Though she did not deign to discuss it, her heart belonged still to Lady Fielding’s son by her earlier marriage, Tom Durham. For near a month after Tom sailed as a midshipman on the H.M.S. Leviathan, she moped about, neglecting all but her grand cooking. In that she did ever take pride. Gradually, her good spirits returned, in spite of the fact that in the year that he had been away there had been no letter to her. He wrote often to his mother, twice to Sir John, and once even to me. To give him the benefit of the doubt, since Annie was illiterate, he may have supposed there was no point in writing her a personal letter which would have to be read to her impersonally by another. He did include little personal messages to her in his letters to us — tell Annie this, tell Annie that — about the exotic foods he had eaten in Egypt or Greece, or some other distant land. Nevertheless, I knew that she longed for some direct communication from him she held so dear. Yet as he became more distant, she and I grew closer as chums and confidants. She became for me what I had never before had nor known: she became for me a sister.

So it was only natural that sometime on that long walk to the Smithfield Market I should open my heart to her and tell her of Mariah. I told her all: how I had first glimpsed her as an acrobat when first I came to London; how, when her family returned to Italy, she had been seduced into staying and then sold into prostitution; how she had then been returned to Jackie Carver and turned out onto the streets; and finally, that he had offered to “sell” her to me for ten guineas.

Telling the tale complete took near a mile. Annie had listened carefully saying not a word, only throwing me a glance now and then on two occasions when, choking back a sob, I found that for a moment I could not continue. Finally, hearing no more from me, she rightly assumed I had concluded. Then did she face me square.

“Jeremy,” said she, “tell me true. Do you love her?”

“I believe I feel for her exactly as you feel for Tom. Is that not love?”

She looked away; her face took on a most serious cast. After a moment’s hesitation, she spoke: “I ain’t sure of that.”

Of a sudden, our nostrils were assaulted by the foul, bloody smell of the Smithfield Market, wherein animals of every size and description were slaughtered, butchered, and sold. There could be no doubt that we were close, and there, just ahead on Gilt-Spur Street, lay the entrance to the market.

“We’ve a job to do here,” said she to me then. “Let me think on what you told me while we’re about it. We’ll talk on it more on our return. Will that suit you?”

“As you wish, Annie.”

I took her to the stall where I had lately been buying for the household in Mr. Tolliver’s absence. There I was recognized and greeted. But Annie made it clear to the butcher that it was she who had to be pleased that day. She asked to see what he had of beef for roasting. He showed her, and as he did, he extolled the tenderness and taste of the meat. Pouting out her lower lip, she examined it skeptically and asked the price of it. When he put it at five shillings, she pulled back and gave him a hard look.

“We’ll search round a bit more,” said she. “Come along, Jeremy.”

As we left, the butcher threw me a hurt look. But in no wise did I attempt to contradict or persuade her. She was indeed the cook and was to be put to the test that night. The decision would be hers.

“That was quite a large piece,” said I, thinking that incontestable.

“More than we need,” said she, “nor was it fresh-butchered.”

Annie proved hard to please. We spent the better part of an hour wandering through the market, looking at the offerings of one and another, until at last we came to a stall hard by one of the slaughtering tents from which a great stink arose. Because of the stink, there were not so many customers about; and when Annie inquired after beef for roasting, the butcher waved his hand at the sides of beef hanging behind him. He invited her back to take a look, just as Mr. Tolliver might have done. They came to an immediate agreement on the size and cut but haggled a bit on the price; both seemed to enjoy it. At last they agreed on a price, which was five shillings for a chunk about the same size as had been offered to her by the first butcher. I wondered at that. And when, as we were leaving (I, with a good ten pounds of wrapped meat and bone under my arm), I called it to her attention, she gave me the same sharp look I had seen her level at the butchers we had visited.

“Jeremy,” said she, “that first chunk was too big because it wouldn’t keep. There was green on it he was trying to cover with his hand. What we bought will keep for days after tonight. You’re carrying fresh-slaughtered meat; still oozin’ blood.”

No doubt feeling she had acquitted herself well against the best that Smithfield had to offer, Annie set a lively pace on our return to Bow Street. She whistled a tune as she stretched her legs. In such a mood, she surprised me by immediately taking up again the matter I had painfully presented whilst we were on our way to market.

“I done what I said Td do,” said she most abrupt.

“Pardon?” said I, not really understanding what she meant. “You mean getting the meat for tonight?”

“No, Jeremy, as we was wandering about there in the market, I thought hard upon you and that Italian moll.”

“Oh? And what did you think?”

“Well, first of all, you must give no money at all to her pimp.”

“I have no money to give.”

“Right so! Right you are! And there is but one place you could get such, and you must not even think of that — not for a minute.”

“I agree,” said I, though I had thought of it for just about that length of time.

“And don’t I know Jackie’s kind from my time on the streets! He’ll never let go of her till she’s wore out, sick with the pox, or dead.”

Those possibilities had occurred to me, but to hear them stated so coldly did bring tears to my eyes.

“Oh now, Jeremy, get a hold on yourself,” she scolded. “You must face what’s real.”

“But you’re saying there’s nothing I can do to help her.”

“Yes, that’s true. Only she can do to help herself. She’s the one must save herself.”

“But how?”

“Let her get a job in service, as I did. Those grand ladies and gents do think it fine to have French and Italian serving girls about.”

“She would have no notion how to go about it.”

“She dresses proper and goes knocking on doors in St. James Street, Bloomsbury, wherever there are grand houses. The butler will answer, and it’s to him she would apply. Once hired, her pimp cannot then touch her.”

Annie’s mention of St. James Street set me thinking. Perhaps Mr. Bilbo might find a place for Mariah.

“And at the very least,” she continued, “she can go into the Magdalene Home. Half the girls in there went in to escape one such as that Jackie fella. None who don’t belong can get past that old shrew at the door.”

But of course! There was a way out for her under my very nose. Yet what was it had been lately said about the Magdalene?

“But,” I objected, “did not Lady Fielding say that the Home is fast filling up due to these monstrous murders?”

“She said the same to me. But if you can convince this little molly — what is her name again?”

“Mariah.”

“Right enough — I’ll fix it in my mind. If you can convince Mariah to go to the Magdalene, I’ll tell Lady Fielding she’s a friend of mine who wishes to change her ways. Room will be made for her then, I promise.”

“Thank you, Annie,” said I, most sincere.

“But, Jeremy, it’s she must help herself. It’s her who must decide. Bawds are lazy, most of them. They may not like the life, but they lack the will to leave it. Don’t I know? I hated it, I did, and it took me near a year to change.”

In the event, the festive dinner held that night to bring Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. Donnelly together proved both a stunning success and an awful failure.

Annie quite outdid herself with that piece of beef she had chosen so carefully at Smithfield. She cooked it in wine with slivers of garlic and plenty of pepper and salt — even tried a bit of that red spice, paprika, she’d been saving for the right occasion. There were four bottles of claret for the six of us, spiced vegetables to please all, and a tasty tart for dessert. After toasting host and hostess, Mr. Donnelly declared himself quite overcome by Annie’s artistry and raised his glass to her. Mr. Goldsmith said he had never eaten better — and it was well known that he had been guest at many of the grandest houses in London. It was indeed a triumph for dear Annie.

And how the conversation at table did bubble that night; and the twin springs which fed it gushed joyfully and ceaselessly to their own amusement, yet most assuredly to ours. We were an audience to a magnificent entertainment staged in great Irish style. Two true-born Irishmen they were, one Catholic and one Protestant, yet both with the same wit and love of laughter. They sat across the table one from the other, telling story after story, each seeking to best the other. If in truth they did compete, I could not name the winner. Indeed we were the winners as they told outlandish tales of their medical education — one of them rather indelicate, to which Lady Fielding signaled her displeasure (after laughing heartily) by clearing her throat and raising her eyebrows. Taking note but undaunted, Mr. Donnelly launched into a series of less questionable but equally comic reminiscences of his several Viennese landlords (for it was in Vienna that he attended medical college); Mr. Goldsmith countered with stories of the French, for which he was well known (as I later learned); then did Mr. Donnelly return with further experiences from his stay in Lancashire (Annie later told me that not one of them had been repeated from his earlier recital in our kitchen). And so it went, moving from one topic to the next, on and on, through the dessert course, and, with the wine exhausted, into the brandy. We did all agree the next day that we had never laughed so long nor so hard at any other occasion in memory.

And Sir John with us all. He did chuckle and guffaw, and as a good master of ceremonies, prompt his performers with an occasional question or a jibe of his own. Yet after, in the beginning, praising Mr. Goldsmith’s broadsheet and declining to answer his questions regarding the Covent Garden murders, he remained, for the most part, out of the swift swirl of conversation. He remained, to put it otherwise, as politely silent as was possible under the circumstances. In that way then did the dinner fail dismally, for we in his household had hoped that in such lively company he might be drawn in and participate in a more active manner. That he declined to do. He left the field to his guests. Next day he was as withdrawn and silent as ever before, which vexed Lady Fielding greatly, as she feared he was descending into melancholia. I, however, had seen him in such a state before, and it came to me that he might indeed be forming a plan of action.

One matter, however, does remain in my mind from that evening. Near midnight it was when our guests rose reluctantly from the table and gave their thanks to host, hostess, and cook. Lady Fielding then thanked them “for a most cheerful and spirited evening,” which Sir John seconded. He then asked me to accompany the two gentlemen to the street, which of course I did most gladly.

On Bow Street, Mr. Donnelly and Mr. Goldsmith remained a bit in conversation, as they discovered they would be parting there. I remained attentively as they exchanged cards, and listened as Mr. Goldsmith broached the topic that Sir John had declined to discuss at table.

“Tell me, Mr. Donnelly,” said he, in a tone more serious than he had sounded in the last hours, “was the corpus in King Street in the ghastly condition that I have heard bruited on the street?”

“Indescribable,” said Mr. Donnelly, then of course proceeded to describe it: “The trunk was cut open and two great flaps of skin removed. Organs were taken out — the heart was in the fireplace and partly burnt, liver, womb, pancreas, and others had been cast about the room.”

“It sounds to be the work of a butcher.”

“Perhaps quite literally that, for one in Covent Garden is suspect. He has disappeared.”

My heart fell. Sir John had never named Mr. Tolliver as such to me.