Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

Collins swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘It is pure wickedness.’

‘Indeed. I hold that a woman is free to sell herself, just as a man is free to buy. That is the way of the world, and has been throughout history. But when all that the woman earns goes to the harridan who keeps her in thrall… Well, emboldened by drink, I decided that I must do something. This young woman might only be one of a thousand dress lodgers in this city, but I vowed to myself that I would set her free.’

‘But you knew nothing of her.’

‘Only what I had seen in her lovely, wistful face. Yet it was enough, Wilkie. I decided to bide my time and when the watcher succumbed to a call of nature, I approached the girl. I urged her to come with me and escape from her guard while she had the chance. But she was terrified and suspected a trap. I could see in her eyes that she yearned to believe that I was offering her a chance to start a new life, but her fear of Jack Wells and his mistress was stronger than the faith she could muster in the words of a complete stranger. Within a minute I realised it was no good. I had time merely to ask her name and where she lived.’

‘Bella, from Mrs Jugg’s lodging, the House of the Red Candle in Greenwich,’ Collins murmured.

‘Precisely. Even as she gave me those few details, a look of panic crossed her face, and I realised that Jack Wells was returning to take charge of her. I made myself scarce – but not without whispering a promise that I would see her again and set her free.’

‘Hence tonight?’

‘Hence tonight.’ Dickens sighed. ‘I had not reckoned that Fate would intervene in the sordid shape of her regular client, the Honourable Thaddeus Whiteacre.’

‘I suppose he abused her terribly.’

‘No doubt,’ Dickens said softly. ‘Yet Bella does not lack spirit. She did not trust a stranger in a tavern to rescue her, but she was prepared to save herself. So she conceived an audacious scheme of her own, to kill Whiteacre and escape with all the funds he kept in his wallet.’

‘You are sure that she did murder him?’

Dickens gave him a pitying look. ‘Who else?’

‘Indeed. But how?’

‘There, my dear Wilkie, I can only speculate.’

‘For the Lord’s sake, Dickens, you can’t leave it at that!’

For a moment Dickens eyed his friend, scarcely able to contain his amusement. ‘Very well. If you wish to hear my theory, then I shall be glad to share it with you. I make just one condition.’

‘Name it.’

‘That, after tonight, we never speak of this matter again. No matter what the circumstances. Can I trust your discretion?’

‘Naturally,’ Collins said in a stiff voice.

‘I mean it, Wilkie. We must hold our tongues forever. Two lives depend upon it.’

‘Two?’

‘Those of Bella and the maidservant Nellie Brown.’

Collins frowned. ‘It was hardly the maid’s fault that she led Whiteacre to his death and that Bella contrived to flee from the House of the Red Candle. If indeed she did escape.’

‘Oh, I think she did.’

‘But how?’

Dickens finished his ale and put the tankard down on the table. ‘I helped her to escape.’

‘We have been together all evening,’ Collins said. ‘How could you have done so?’

Dickens grinned. ‘When I saw the chance for her to get away, I whispered that she should seize it. My fear was that she might be overcome by remorse at the enormity of her crime and confess her guilt to the madam. I do not condone the taking of life, but tonight I am tempted to make an exception.’

‘But I don’t -’

‘She masqueraded as Nellie Brown,’ Dickens interrupted. ‘You saw the real maidservant yourself. She was waiting at the Rope and Anchor for her friend. Remember how the drunken women mocked her, and all because of the scar on her cheek?’

‘That was Nellie?’

‘I am sure of it. Bella had borrowed her clothes, so as to fool Mrs Jugg. I suppose they slipped out of the house while Mrs Jugg was dozing and under cover of the fog sliding in from the Thames, Bella put Nellie’s garments on under her own dress. Once she was back in the upstairs room, she reversed the outfits. She must have strapped her bosom down – I recall that she was quite formidably endowed, Wilkie! – and used cosmetic preparations to mimic the scar on her friend’s cheek. She is a couple of inches taller than Nellie, and she needed to stoop and kept her head bent so as to avoid close scrutiny. She was relying on Mrs Jugg’s poor eyesight and Jack Wells’s lack of imaginative intelligence. When, in Nellie’s character, she showed Whiteacre into the room and then revealed herself as Bella, no doubt he was amused by the impersonation, perhaps even excited by it. We can speculate as to the inducement she offered to persuade him not only to strip for her but to allow her to tie him up. When he was at her mercy, she stabbed him, but with insufficient force to kill him straight away. Then she stole his money. Knowing Whiteacre’s penchant for heavy spending, I suspect she found enough to keep her and Nellie out of the brothels forever and a day. She committed a wicked crime, but I cannot find it in my heart to condemn her for it.’

‘She must have been trying to escape when we saw her coming down the stairs.’

‘One can scarcely imagine her feelings when she was forced to take us back to the room,’ Dickens said softly.

‘And when she heard her victim’s dying words. No wonder she vomited when faced with the horror of his corpse. But how did you guess what had happened?’

‘Guess?’ Dickens raised his eyebrows in amusement ‘The scar was my clue. It bore such an uncanny resemblance to that which disfigured the woman in the Rope and Anchor that the whole scheme revealed itself to me. But Bella made one mistake.’

‘Which was?’

‘When she put on the make-up, she forgot that she was applying it to an image in a looking-glass. And so her scar ran down the right cheek. But Nellie’s was on the left.’

‘Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth, I heard many things in hell.’

– Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’

One night, many years ago, I found myself wandering in an unfamiliar part of the city. The river looked like an oil slick twisting languidly in the cold moonlight, and on the opposite bank the towering metal skeletons of factories gleamed silver. Steam hissed from tubes, formed abstract shapes in the air, and faded into the night. Every now and then a gush of orange flame leapt into the sky from a funnel-shaped chimney.

I was lost, I know now. The bar where I had played my last gig was miles behind me, and the path I had taken was crooked and dark. The river lay at my right, and to the left, across the narrow, cobbled street, tall empty warehouses loomed over me, all crumbling, soot-covered bricks and caved-in roofs. Through the broken windows small fires burned, and I fancied I could see ragged figures bent over the flames for warmth. Ahead of me, just beyond the cross-roads, the path continued into a monstrous junkyard, where the rusted hulks of cars and piles of scrap metal towered over me.

Out of nowhere, it seemed, I began to hear snatches of melody: a light, romantic, jazzy air underpinned by wondrous, heartrending chords, some of which I could swear I had never heard before. I stopped in my tracks and tried to discern where the music was coming from. It was a piano, no doubt about that, and though it was slightly out of tune, that didn’t diminish the power of the melody or the skill of the player. I wanted desperately to find him, to get closer to the music.