The Crystal Cage (36 page)

I tabbed down the article. It was coy on detail, but it seemed that Renville’s hold on his business had slipped drastically over the years, and from a highly successful concern, the firm had gradually withered. The collapse of a bank—and there were plenty of those in the 1860s—holding the firm’s few remaining assets, had been the last straw. It seemed that over the years Renville had gradually crumbled and this was his final dissolution. Had his wife’s death set him on that disastrous path? If so, what had he to do with it? Whatever his role, it appeared that he had been unable to continue life as normal and had paid the price. His daughters, too. The very last sentence of the brief account read:
Miss Florence and Miss Georgina Renville are to devote their lives to the poorer inhabitants of our city. They will go as schoolteachers in the district of Bethnal Green.

I stopped reading. Florence? Georgina? Bells were ringing very loudly. Two sisters, two teachers, Bethnal Green—Silver Street, I thought. The dates were spot on—their ages and the time they had served at the school matched exactly Leo Merrick’s ghosts. But Villiers? They had changed their name; that was the explanation. Renville was no longer a name they could bear with pride and they had gone to teach as Florence and Georgina Villiers. And then they had hung themselves less than two miles from the place their mother had died. She must have been in their hearts as they taught through every long day. The handkerchief! The handkerchief with the delicately embroidered letter A, still lying in the pocket of my coat. It had been their mother’s, I was as certain as I could be. It had been Alessia’s.

They had chosen a school that before its move to Silver Street had originated in Raine Street itself. And they had chosen a life devoted to working with the poor. Twin impulses I could well understand in the light of their mother’s death, but why, after only nine months, had they abandoned their grand plan and opted for death themselves? It was a shocking act and their extreme youth made it even more so. There must have been a trigger.

And there was. The Register of Deaths recorded that Edward Renville had died in the Queen’s Bench prison from bronchial pneumonia in May 1866, a month before his daughters took their own lives. What must they have felt on hearing that news? How much more could they suffer? Not much, it seemed. As children, their young mother had died a pauper’s death, ill and friendless; their father had become disaffected, retreating ever more into himself and away from them; the comfortable home they had known had gradually disintegrated. And then Renville’s ultimate fall from grace, his imprisonment for debt. They had struggled bravely, no doubt true daughters of Alessia, struggled to free themselves of a scandal that was not theirs, but their attempts to make a different life under a different name had faltered and failed. When Edward Renville breathed his last as a prisoner, it had been the final full stop in an endless paean of sorrow.

For a long time I sat and thought on my discovery. Was it coincidental that I’d simultaneously taken on two apparently disconnected searches? It was certainly odd that a haunted schoolhouse in the East End and a missing set of plans for the Great Exhibition should be so intimately tied together. But somehow I didn’t think it a coincidence that both projects had landed in my lap at the very same time. It was as though I was meant to be involved, that my future demanded it. I had discovered a group of long-dead people and a little of their story, but I suspected that it might be my story, too.

How and why was still unclear, but I was sure that Alessia was the key. Since I’d discovered her shocking fate, I’d thought of her every day, unable to shake off the sadness, unable to let go of her entirely. Months ago I’d started out eager to follow Lucas Royde’s story, to find out what lay behind the mysterious gaps we’d uncovered: the absent blue plaque, the name excised from the Exhibition Catalogue, the missing man in the family photographs. But slowly Royde’s story had faded into the background and Alessia had stepped into the spotlight. For me she had become the most important actor.

The workhouse records had given no details of her burial but the only graveyard in the East End likely to have had room for a pauper was Tower Hamlets. It was one of the 1841 cemeteries authorised by Parliament because burial conditions in London had become so deplorable. The workhouse would probably have had a contract with Tower Hamlets for the burial of its inmates. I closed down my laptop. Today was a day for decisions and my first was to visit Alessia’s grave.

The weather had suddenly turned and autumn was most definitely in the air as I walked from Mile End station to Southern Grove and the main gates of Tower Hamlets cemetery. The sky was overcast and a stiff breeze was swirling fallen leaves along the kerbside. It was a suitably sombre day for my pilgrimage. I had never before been to the burial ground, but even from the road I could see that it was huge and must have covered nearly thirty acres. From experience I knew that the paupers’ graves would be found in its farthest corner.

I strolled down the main walk, past the ranks of elaborate monuments to the Victorian dead, until leaving the winged angels and over plump cherubs behind, I turned onto one of several narrow footpaths. Gradually the size of the grave plots grew smaller, plinths assumed more modest dimensions and crosses became less pretentious. Once again I turned off, this time onto an even narrower track with grass growing untidily on either side, and made my way towards the farthest reaches of the cemetery. The headstones here were battered, listing at a drunken angle and largely illegible. But I was looking for a space that lacked headstones, a space where the dead registered as mere bumps in the ground, and coming towards a broken wall and a cluster of overhanging trees, I found it.

I wandered in among the small hillocks of grass and earth, the resting place of so many seeming like a battlefield at the close of combat. The sky was now leaden, threatening but not yet delivering rain. The breeze had stiffened further and the dried reeds lining the small stream just beyond the boundary wall began to chime in harmony. The light shifted, quite subtly, but enough to highlight one solitary stone in the midst of this desolation. I walked towards it, my heart beating somewhere in my throat. The dark rectangle of the grave was stark and unadorned, discoloured by time and by the ivy that wound its rapacious path through the entire graveyard. As I drew nearer I could see the commemorative stone tilting a little to one side and partly covered in lichen but still clearly elegant: slim, beautiful and made of shining granite. I knew it was Alessia’s. I went up to it and put out my hand to clear the lichen. It was damp in this part of the cemetery and the lichen moved easily. I bent down and peered at the inscription, tracing the faded gilt with one finger. There it was; instinct had not lied.

Alessia
(no Renville I noted)

1823–1851

Then a line of Italian,
Nessun Altro Amore
. No Other Love.

Not for the dead woman certainly, extinguished years before her time and perhaps because of that very love. I would never truly know why Alessia had left her home. I could only guess at an illicit affair: Victorian depictions of the fallen woman came graphically to mind. And it was an open question who had erected the stone. A penitent husband who had cast her out? Unlikely. He would have had her removed from this unhappy resting place and reburied in the family plot. Instead he had locked himself within his four walls and slowly been eaten thin by remorse. An immigrant Italian then, who felt sorry for his countrywoman? Even less likely. Or an architect who spoke Italian? I was as certain as I could be that Lucas Royde had erected the headstone. But if Royde had been her lover, why had he not rescued her from the shadows that threatened, why had he allowed her to die in such miserable circumstances? They were questions that would go unanswered. If Royde had belatedly searched for his lost love, he had found her not on the fetid streets of London, but here in this weeping graveyard. He had stood on this very spot and tasted the bitterness that was death.

The plans for the Great Exhibition would never be found since I was sure their architect had destroyed them. He and Alessia had worked on the Renville pavilion together. They had been partners in all senses of the word, I guessed, and after her death he must have distanced himself from any happiness he’d known, distanced himself from his entire life in London. That was why there was no blue plaque on the wall of number eight Red Lion Square, why there was no mention of de Vere’s as contributing architects to the Exhibition. Royde must have used his later great influence to obliterate his connection to the Crystal Palace. It would not have been that difficult. If the Renville pavilion had been a late entrant, it would not have been listed in the official Catalogue. And from his exalted position, Royde could have engineered the disappearance from print of any mention of his work in 1851. That was more than possible since the newspapers of the time were nothing if not deferential. He’d needed to erase every memory because he could not bear to think of the woman he had loved and lost. I wondered how well he had succeeded. Not greatly, it seemed. He had never married and biographies contained little of a personal life. ‘No other love’ had turned out to be a mantra for him as well as for the woman for whom he grieved.

The breeze was blowing even more strongly now, forcing the reeds into an angry jostle, their voices strident as though exhorting the paupers to rise in revenge from their forlorn rest. I shivered; I was becoming fanciful and it was time to go. But Alessia’s spirit called to me so strongly that I felt pain leaving her behind. I knew her for a woman who had reached out for the life she wanted, a woman who had shown immense courage in forsaking the security of marriage, immense fortitude in entrusting her fate and that of her children to the man she loved. I would never forget her. How could I when I’d been on the same journey, for we shared more than a perfume, it seemed. The realisation came sharp and clear. Standing by her deserted grave, I knew why I had been chosen to uncover her story. I knew why I’d felt such delight in her necklace—the lapis lazuli was almost certainly hers—why I’d felt impelled to lift the lid of that school room desk, why I’d had to keep searching until I’d found her. She and I were bound together. She had died because she could not find a way through the walls of glass that held her prisoner. She’d fought valiantly but fallen on their broken shards. If I were brave enough, I could find that way. Alessia’s quest was over, but mine was not: I had choices that she could never have imagined.

I knew what I had to do. I didn’t want to stay, I didn’t want to marry Nick. He had come into my life at the right time, a catalyst for the changes I needed to make. But I wasn’t in love with him; I never had been. And I wanted this baby. Alessia had been forced into an impossible choice, I was sure, and in doing so had lost her beloved girls forever. They had been sacrificed, she had been sacrificed, to one man’s pride, no doubt, and another’s ambition. But
my
daughter—and I was as certain as I could be that she was a daughter—would live and breathe free. My years of scrabbling for security were shed; the desperate search for approval was over. Nick would always be a friend and welcome in my home whenever he cared to visit. But I knew now that I was strong enough to carve my own path through life. And I was eager to get on with it.

I took out my phone to take a picture of the gravestone, a sole keepsake, and the letter I’d been carrying with me for days fell from my pocket. It was an invitation, a very special invitation, and it came from my sister. It seemed that Verity was still living in the family home, still single, still alone, but hoping for a visit from the only relative she had in the world. How remarkable that she wanted to see me. Remarkable, too, that I wanted so much to see her and the house I had once fled. I would be going home and I liked the sound of the phrase. And from there, who knew? Like Alessia, I was ready to walk through the glass, but unlike her, I was about to walk into a world of my own making.

Merryn Allingham was born into an army family and spent her childhood moving around the U.K. and abroad. Unsurprisingly, it gave her itchy feet, and in her twenties she escaped from an unloved secretarial career to work as cabin crew and see the world.

The arrival of marriage, children and cats meant a more settled life in the south of England, where she has lived ever since. It also gave her the opportunity to go back to “school” and eventually teach at university. Merryn has always loved historical fiction, so when she plucked up the courage to begin writing herself, her novels had to be historical. She has written six Regency romances under the name of Isabelle Goddard, and
The Crystal Cage
is her first historical mystery, writing as Merryn Allingham.

Please visit her on the web and discover some great reads at
www.isabellegoddard.com
and
www.merrynallingham.com
.

eISBN: 978-1-4603-3836-0

THE CRYSTAL CAGE

Copyright © 2014 by Merryn Allingham

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