Will Thomas - The Limehouse Text

I learned something that night: it is not easy to prepare a meal one-handed. A one-armed man has difficulty cutting a loaf of bread or setting a table. Luckily, Etienne Dummolard was a genius at creating meals that could be served without much preparation. As Barker’s chef, he had been coming here for years, commanding the kitchen in the mornings and leaving meals for us the rest of the day while he worked at his restaurant, Le Toison d’Or. At six thirty, when I called the Guv down for dinner, the table was full of silver, steaming dishes, and a good cobwebby bottle of vin rouge I found in the cellar. Barker chewed his way through the meal without comment. He ate the bread I’d cut, he drank the wine I’d opened and poured, and he ate the meal I’d slaved over as placidly as a Guernsey cow would chew his evening cud. After that, he left the room without a word. I was beginning to think Mac’s position a little more difficult than I had been led to believe. The other thing I hadn’t counted on was that I would be cleaning up afterward, with only one good arm.

When I was finally done, I locked up for the night and turned down the gas. I went upstairs and changed into my night attire, then I lay back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling with its rows of alternating beams and plaster. I was done in and it wasn’t even eight thirty. I picked up my Mencius, which was such a sleep-inducing agent it might have been used on Mac instead of the laudanum. The next I knew, there was another commotion downstairs.

I jumped from the bed again. An hour and a half had elapsed, according to my clock. I looked about for some weapon and realized there was nothing in my room that would serve. Perhaps an irate assistant would be enough. I went downstairs.

“Thomas!” Etienne Dummolard greeted me from the back door. Four large suitcases stood at his feet.

“Etienne! What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like I’m doing here, imbecile. I’m moving in!”

I had never felt so relieved in my life. Dummolard could take over Mac’s duties. I wouldn’t have to cook another blighted meal.

“But what of the restaurant?” I asked. “What of Madame Dummolard?”

“She is here with me, of course!”

The back door flew open and in stepped Madame Dummolard, in a traveling cloak and hat, six feet in height and suitably proportioned.

“Mon petit chou!” she cried, and surged forward to plant a kiss on both of my cheeks. I might have restrained her, if only for the sour look Etienne gave me during the demonstration, but Madame is unable to be restrained. She prattled on in a stream of French so quick I only caught every tenth word, and fussed over the state of my arm.

“It is good to see you again, madame, but why are you here?” I managed to get in.

“Ah, Thomas, when M’sieur Dummolard told me the grievous state of affairs, I said, ‘Mireille, you must go and do what you can, you and your big, strong husband.’” The latter was directed to Etienne with a caress on his stubbly chin, which cheered his mood somewhat.

“This is the domain of M’sieur Mac?” she asked, reaching the front hall, with me still in her clutches.

“Yes, but I don’t think-”

She pushed open the door and walked to the bed where Mac lay, still in his suit and insensible from the opium. She clucked her tongue at the poor fellow’s injuries. Then she summed up.

“I am ready,” she announced. “I believe I can do good work here.”

“What kind of work is that, madame?” I asked.

“Ozkippur,” she announced solemnly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I will be your ozkippur. ”

“Oh, I see. I don’t know if Mr. Barker wants a housekeeper, but I am sure-”

“They arrive tomorrow morning.”

“Who does?”

“My girls, of course. A maid, a nurse, and a char. I can get more if we need them.”

“But Mr. Barker must first agree to it. I mean, who shall be paying for it?”

“That does not matter at all. Etienne will pay for it all,” she said breezily.

“What?” Dummolard demanded behind me, and before I could move I was being buffeted between the two of them as they commenced a rapid flurry of French like volleys of gunfire. Barker must have been able to hear all this two floors up but was too sage to come down. The fight ended as abruptly as it had begun, though I wasn’t sure who won the argument.

“Our room, it is up on the first floor, no?”

“We have a guest bedroom there, yes. It is at the end of the hall.”

“Take me there. Etienne, stop standing there looking sour. Make yourself useful. Carry the luggage.”

I led Madame Dummolard to the guest room, down the hall from my own. It was clean and serviceable, but it was obvious that it lacked a woman’s touch.

“It will do,” she pronounced. “We have had worse, have we not, Etienne? I shall bring some things to make this room pretty. Put the first of the suitcases down there, Etienne. Non, non, not there, cheri. Over here.”

I left them to it and fled the room. I made it all of about two steps, for in order to return to my room I must pass the staircase that led to Barker’s aerie. There was a pair of slippers on the stairs, slippers with feet in them. The rest of my employer was cloaked in shadow. I made out his form, sitting on one of the steps with his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers knit together in front of his face.

“Lad.”

I came up a few steps. “Yes, sir?”

“Is that she?”

“Madame Dummolard? Yes, sir.”

“What is she doing here?”

I explained what I took to be the situation. Afterward he sat for almost a full minute in thought.

“I suppose it solves the situation, after a fashion,” he said, “though it is not without problems of its own. I do not have time to interview servants. We shall try it for now. I do hope Madame is not talkative in the mornings. I detest vivacity in the morning. Good night.”

As it turned out, we saw nothing of her during breakfast. Three servants arrived that morning, one to look after Mac, one to clean the house, and the third to wait upon us. The char was a stout and hardworking Irish girl, and the nurse was English, but the maid was very French. I waited for the impending disaster, but she served breakfast without a word and Barker could not fault her anything. When he went out to look at his garden, Madame emerged from the kitchen and spoke to the maid in whispered French. Then they disappeared before the Guv returned. We struggled into our coats and left, like any other morning.

“Lad,” Barker said from behind his desk once we were seated, “I need you to go to Fleet Street this morning. Visit the General Register Office and take down whatever information you can on all deaths occurring around early January 1884. See if there are any unusual deaths in the days before and after New Year’s. Go to The Times and compare your facts to the reports in the back issues. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” I said stolidly, but inside, I felt it was the best possible news I could hear.

“Have yourself some lunch while you’re out,” he said, crossing to his smoking cabinet for the first pipe of the day. “We cannot have you digging among all those musty records on an empty stomach.”

Outside, I hailed a hansom cab, glad to quit the office. Employment and employers are good things on the whole, but there’s nothing better than to slip the knot and get away for a while on some errand or other.

A half hour later I was settled in a room inside that large pile of graying stones they call the Register Office, which contained the information of every birth, death, and marriage in the great capital of the empire. Here, in this impersonal hall, one’s entrance into the world was carefully recorded, as well as one’s exit. Here one’s joining in marriage was noted, and generations of Londoners can trace their ancestry through the aging pages of endless record books here, shelf after shelf and row upon row. I could see why some people would find this boring, going over dull records with their officious jargon, but I couldn’t help seeing what was really recorded: the miracle of birth, the mystical union of two people, and the eternal mystery of death.