The Trial of Elizabeth Cree (16 page)

“Do you know what a golem is, sir?”

“It is a mythical creature. Something like a vampire, I believe.” He was no longer surprised by anything which was happening
to him, and answered as naturally as if he had been in a schoolroom.

“Exactly so. And we are not men to believe in mythical creatures, are we?”

“I hope not. May I ask your name? It would make our conversation so much easier.”

“My name is Kildare, Mr. Gissing. You were born in Wakefield, were you not?”

“I was.”

“Yet you retain no trace of your native accent.”

“I am an educated man, sir.”

“Quite. Your wife”—there seemed to Gissing to be no particular emphasis upon the word—“tells us that you have written a book.”

“Yes. I have written a novel.”

“Would I have seen it? What is its title?”

“
Workers in the Dawn
.”

Kildare looked at him more sharply. “Are you a socialist, then? Or a member of the International?” The police inspector had glimpsed some fatal connection between Karl Marx and George Gissing and, even in that moment, contemplated the possibilities of an insurrectionary conspiracy.

“By no means am I a socialist. I am a realist.”

“But your title has such a ring to it.”

“I am no more a socialist than Hogarth or Cruikshank.”

“I know of these men, of course, but—”

“They were artists, like myself.”

“Ah, I see. But there are not many artists who can boast that they have been to prison.” Gissing felt that he ought to have anticipated their knowledge of his crime but, even so, he could not meet the man’s eyes. “You served one month’s hard labor in Manchester, Mr. Gissing. You were convicted of theft.”

He had thought it forgotten, erased from every memory
except his own; when he had moved to London with Nell, he even began to experience what he was later to describe as “a time of extraordinary mental growth, of great spiritual activity.” It may seem odd to talk of “spiritual activity” within the dark city, but Gissing knew well enough that it has always been the home of visionaries. He had already written down some words of William Blake, which had been quoted in Swinburne’s recent study of that poet, “the spiritual Four-fold London eternal.” But now George Gissing sat with his head bowed before a police detective. “Can you please tell me why I am here?” Chief Inspector Kildare took something out of his pocket, and handed it to him. It was a piece of notepaper, stained with blood; on it was written Gissing’s name and address. “This is my hand,” he said quietly. “I gave it to her.”

“So we supposed.”

“I had been looking for my wife.” He realized, at last, exactly why he was being questioned. “Surely you cannot believe that I am in any way connected with her death? It is absurd.”

“Not absurd, sir. Nothing to do with such a crime is absurd.”

“But do I seem to you to be a murderer?”

“In my experience, prison hardens a man considerably.”

“You must have learned some flash tricks.” This was another voice, coming from behind him; there has been a second policeman in the room throughout this interview. For Gissing, their suggestions were unendurable. He knew well enough that, in the idiom of the day, he was suspected of being a “moral degenerate” who was living with a prostitute and whose first taste of crime and punishment must inevitably lead to more and more outrageous assaults upon virtue and good order. It might even result in murder.

“The dead woman was a good friend to your wife,” Kildare
was saying. “And I expect you knew her very well. Am I correct in supposing that?”

“I had never seen her before. I knew nothing of her.”

“Don’t you like to meet your wife’s friends?”

“Of course not.” He could stand this no longer. “You know very well what kind of woman my wife is. But you do not understand what kind of man I am. I am a gentleman.” He looked so defiant, and yet so frail, in the glare of the gas that even these two policemen might have been inclined to believe him. “At what time, precisely, was she killed?”

Kildare hesitated, unsure whether he should volunteer such information. “We cannot be certain, but she was found at midnight by one of her trade.”

“Then I am not your man. Go to the chophouse on the corner of Berners Street, and inquire about me. I sat at a table there until after midnight. Ask Vincent, the waiter, if he remembers Mr. Gissing.”

Kildare leaned back in his chair with an expression of consternation. “You told my officers that you were working.”

“And so I was. I was working in the chophouse. In all the sudden alarm and confusion I quite forgot that I had been there last night. It is one of my habitual places.”

There was a knock upon the door, which so startled Gissing that he rose from his chair for a moment. A policeman came in, and whispered to Kildare; Gissing could not hear him, but in fact he was providing further exoneration. No blood had been found upon the novelist’s clothing in Hanway Street, and the knives were all clean. This was truly disappointing to Kildare, who believed that he was at last on the track of the Limehouse Golem. What better suspect could there be than the husband of a shameless prostitute—a former convict—who found himself being endlessly compromised by her and by her associates? What kind
of vengeance might such a man seek? He left the room with the police officer who had conducted the search of the lodgings, and instructed him to visit the chophouse which Gissing had mentioned. He would have been less agreeable if he had known that the same officer had enjoyed sexual congress with Nell Gissing only an hour before—on the very same bed where Gissing had lain last night and dreamed of the Analytical Engine. The policeman had given her a shilling, and she had gone immediately to a gin shop in the Seven Dials.

Gissing sat perfectly still, and in the silence became aware once again of the corpse which lay only a few yards away. Since childhood he had entertained fantasies of suicide—particularly of death by drowning—and for a moment he tried to imagine that it was he who was lying upon the wooden table. He had always believed that his purpose was to endure life with as little suffering as possible, and to think of death with affection—but now, as he sat in this police office, he was also beginning to realize that the shape of his destiny might not lie within his own power. Here, in the course of one day, he had gone from the wonderful seclusion of his books in the British Museum to the degradation of arrest and the possibility of a criminal’s death by hanging. And on what action had these events turned? A casual meeting in Whitecross Street, and the chance decision to write down his name and address in the search for Nell. And yes, of course, there was a more enduring reason for his present suffering—his wife had brought him to this. He would never have encountered the dead woman if Nell had not led him that way; he would never have been suspected, if he had not already been branded as a convict and an outcast because of her. What a thing it was, to be bound from head to foot by another person!

Bryden tapped him on the shoulder (he flinched, because at that moment he had been contemplating the possibility of Nell’s
own sudden death) and led him out of the room towards a flight of stone steps. He descended into a basement corridor, and found himself being taken into a small cell. “Am I to be kept here?” he murmured, almost to himself.

“Just for this night.”

There was a piece of flat stone projecting from the wall, and Gissing sat down upon it slowly. He had trained himself to think, and to analyze his sensations, in moments of solitude; but he could contemplate nothing now except the stone wall in front of him. It had been painted light green.

The hero of
Workers in the Dawn
was described by Gissing as “one of those men whose lives seem to have little result for the world save as a useful illustration of the force of circumstances.” Now, in the police cell, sat another prey of “circumstances” trapped in a narrative over which he had no control. There was a bucket in the corner, to be used by the prisoners, and for a moment he considered putting it over his head and beginning to moan. But then his thoughts took another turn. He had read in a recent copy of the
Weekly Digest
that part of the ancient city of London had been found during the building of certain warehouses by Shadwell Reach. Some stone walls had been uncovered, and it occurred to Gissing that this cell might have been constructed from the remnants of them. Perhaps the old buried city extended as far as Limehouse with the Analytical Engine as its god or
genius loci
. So now he might be its sacrifice, waiting in an antechamber for the doom prepared. And was that the secret of the golem which the police detective had mentioned? Perhaps Charles Babbage’s creation was the true Limehouse Golem, draining away the life and spirit of those who approached it. Perhaps the digits and the numbers were little chattering souls trapped in the mechanism, and its webs of iron no less than the web of mortality itself. What monstrous creation might it bring
forth in years to come? What had begun in Limehouse might then spread over the entire world. But these were only Gissing’s disordered thoughts as he sat, exhausted, in his prison cell.

He was released the following morning, after the policeman had confirmed that he had indeed sat in the Berners Street chophouse until after midnight. Vincent, the young waiter, had been particularly forceful; he alluded to Gissing sitting there “all the bleeding night” while doing nothing but “doodling,” and accused him of being “stuck up” despite the fact that “he don’t have sixpence.” A customer also remembered seeing him that evening, and corroborated Vincent’s other testimony by describing Gissing as “shabby genteel.” This was a popular expression but one less than just to the novelist; he always tried to dress well, and his gentility was not of manner but of mind.

He came out of the courtyard of the police office, and stood uncertainly in the Limehouse air. He had resigned himself to a long process of investigation and humiliation, but his unexpected release did not afford him any real sense of freedom. Certainly he had experienced an exhilarating moment of relief when he finally left the building of dull yellow brick, but that was followed by a more persistent sense of threat. His whole existence in the world had been suddenly and quickly called into question. If he had not visited the chophouse he might well have been convicted and executed; it was as if his life were now revealed as a paltry and tenuous thing which the slightest misfortune might destroy. He blamed his wife for his situation, as we have seen, but up to this time she had never threatened his very survival. That was a new consideration. His night in the cell had revealed to him that he had no real protection against her, or against the world.

He walked home by way of Whitechapel and the City, although
he knew well enough that he was returning to no “home” at all. He was like a condemned man going back to his cell. He could hear the argument as soon as he turned into Hanway Street: Nell was leaning down from the first-floor window and screaming at the landlady who stood in the street below. “Such things,” Mrs. Irving was shouting, “such as should not happen in this ’ere ’ouse.” Nell replied with a volley of foul words, at which the landlady accused her of being a “dirty ’ore.” His wife disappeared for a moment and then returned with a chamber pot, the contents of which she directed at Mrs. Irving’s head. Gissing could bear no more of this. Neither woman had seen him, so he retreated quickly down the Tottenham Court Road and made his way to the British Museum. If there was to be rest for him anywhere in this world, it was among his books.

W
ithin two years I had become a seasoned performer, and Little Victor’s Daughter had developed a life and a history which I quite believed when I went upon the stage. Of course I had my
modèles
, as Uncle used to say. I had watched Miss Emma Marriott in
Gin and Limelight
and had heard “Lady Agatha” (alias Joan Birtwhistle, a most unpleasant party) singing “Get Back to Your Pudding, Marianne,” and I took a little inflection from both of them. There was another seriocomic lady, Betty Williams, who had started as a big-boot dancer but had developed into a real artiste with her rendering of “It’s a Bit of Comfort to a Poor Old Maid.” She had a certain way of tilting herself, so that she always seemed to be on the deck of a ship or struggling in a high wind—I borrowed that effect, too, for a number of my own entitled “Don’t Stick It Out So Much.” How they roared, even when I was at my most genteel. Little Victor’s Daughter was the young virgin who said quite innocent things—how could she help it if she was open to misconstruction? Dan thought I was getting too blue and I became truly indignant with him—could I be blamed for all the chaff and the laughter in the gallery? I didn’t think her history deserved it. Here she was, having been brought up by Little Victor after her parents had perished in a fire in a sausage shop; of course she had to earn her keep as a maid in Pimlico, and what was she to do if all the men in the house kept on giving her presents? As she used to sing, “What’s a Girl Supposed to Say?” What a performance it was!

It was not until my third year on the stage, with all the usual
hurry from hall to hall, that I grew sick of Little Victor’s Daughter. She was just too sweet, and I longed to kill her off by some violent action. When she was on the stage now I used to beat her about a bit—“I’ll give you the biggest scratch on the face,” the cook would say to me, and then I would land myself such a thump that I was almost knocked over. (Of course I played the cook as well, since it was part of what Dan called my “monypolylogue.”) But she was no longer the right girl for me. So I was sitting in the green room one weekday evening, feeling pretty sorry for myself “at my time of life,” when I noticed that Dan had dropped one of his costumes on a chair. It was not his way to be untidy, so out of old habit I picked up the duds and began dusting them down. He had left a battered beaver hat, an old green topcoat, check trousers, boots and a choker; I was about to fold them away, when suddenly it struck me as quite a funny thing to try them on. There was a tall mirror propped against the wall, by the makeup basket, and I dressed as quickly as I could. The hat was a little too big and came over my eyes, so I tilted it on the back of my head like a coster; the trousers and coat fitted me perfectly, and I realized that I would be able to swagger in them ever so well. But what a picture I made in the mirror—I had become a man, from tip to toe, and there might have been a slangster comedian standing there; it was a perfect piece of business and, even then, I think I began to consider ways of getting up a new act.