Devoured (Hatton & Roumande) Read online

  Hatton answered quickly, before she changed her mind, ‘Tea would be good. Thank you, Cook.’

  ‘I’ll send a maid up with it. The morning room is one door along.’

  He found the room easily, opened the curtains, and looked about the place. Bills and an appointment book on the desk, dressmakers’ patterns left piled high. A mannequin for alterations, and to his left, positioned on its own embossed cherrywood table, a magnificent globe. He pushed his finger hard along the curve, admiring its spherical richness. Hatton smiled to himself, and was just about to look at the place chosen for him by the spinning orb when presto, there was a rap at the door.

  He cleared his throat with a stern, ‘Enter.’

  The maid was rickets-crooked with poxy skin. She begged his pardon and set the tea tray down clumsily and asked if he wanted milk with it. And as she poured, she sniffled to such an extent that there was nothing to do but to offer her a handkerchief, and tell her to blow. ‘Thank you, sir. I’m not myself and this is not usual my work. Cook told me to do it cos the housemaid, her name’s Emma, she’s off polishing the drawing room …’ And at once the sobbing started. Hatton could do without this interruption to his work, but ordered her to sit down for a bit, saying that he was a doctor and she was to do as she was told.

  ‘I’m fine now, sir. Really I am. Cook will want me back in the scullery. I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Very well, so long as you are completely composed. Tell her to give you some tea with two sugars in it. You’re very pale, my dear. Tell Cook I insist on it. Do you have a name, child?’

  The girl looked at him, her big eyes swelling again. ‘Yes, sir. I have a name, sir.’

  Hatton was not without humanity. ‘Well, my dear, what is it?’

  ‘My name is Violet, sir. Violet. I don’t really have a second name, but when Cook took me in, well, I am like a daughter to her she says, so she’s given me hers. She calls me Violet Jennings, cos she says it’s no way for a girl like me to be without a family name even if you’ve got none, so to speak. She says, Nightingale House is my family now, sir.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Hatton was bemused by this broken creature. ‘And the other maid, Violet. Was she like a daughter, too? The maid who has fled?’

  The maid’s eyes widened. ‘Flora ain’t like me. She’s regular educated and was Madam’s favourite. And before you asks me, I don’t know where she’s gone.’

  The Professor smiled, and touched her arm, but she pulled it back, embarrassed. ‘But I ain’t no snitch. She ain’t so bad. She took me to a museum once. But now she’s gone, and I must work twice as hard. It ain’t considerate of her.’

  ‘So you don’t think Flora ran away, then? You don’t think there’s a connection with what’s happened here? There’re no valuables gone. Do you think anything’s missing, Violet? I bet you’re a really clever girl who notices everything.’

  The maid moved towards the door, but not before saying, ‘Flora’s a good girl, sir, just a bit la-di-dah, with her gloves and her ladylike manners, but that ain’t a crime, is it? Flora came and went as she pleased. Cook says Madam indulged her. But I’m not supposed to discuss nothing with no one, ’cept the coppers. I told them everything, which is nothing, sir.’

  The maid gone, Hatton took what other traces of wax he could find about the place and then, leaving the house, hailed a carriage back to St Bart’s thinking, so Violet must have been the one that found the body and who he heard sobbing last night. What a shock for her. No wonder she was pale.

  When Hatton arrived at the mortuary, Roumande was writing, muttering French expletives.

  ‘Is something bothering you, Albert?’

  ‘I have damned well put the wrong detail down on this bit of the form.’ He crossed out a line with something sounding like a snort.

  ‘Is that Lady Bessingham’s autopsy report?’

  ‘No, Professor. No, this is the little girl’s.’ He flicked his quill over to the smaller cadaver.

  ‘No one asked you to do that, Albert. Why in heaven’s name do you bother?’ Hatton despaired of Roumande’s overzealousness. An autopsy report for a pauper?

  ‘Well, I understand you are going to Cambridge, Professor,’ Roumande replied curtly. ‘Would it be too much trouble to give this to him?’

  ‘Give it to Inspector Adams, you mean?’

  ‘Is the little girl’s murder really worth less of our time than Lady Bessingham’s? Of course, it’s meant for Scotland Yard. It’s his responsibility, and Inspector Adams, it’s coming back to me now, I’m sure he worked in the slums before he become so celebrated.’ His lips curled round the word. ‘It’s the least we can do for the child. And I shall pay to bury her. She’s not going in the incinerator. I’ll not stand for it.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Albert. Please, I don’t disagree with you. We’ll go halves. We’ll have a proper burial, a lined coffin, we’ll do her hair, we’ll lace her shroud, I’ll visit the grave myself …’

  ‘Thank you, Adolphus. I’m overwhelmed a little.’ Roumande gestured at the huge pile of work on their desk. ‘There’s never any end to it, is there?’

  ‘Work is work, Albert. Don’t let it get on top of you.’

  ‘That’s easy to say, Adolphus, but you forget it’s my responsibility to make ends meet here. There is so little response to our pleas, so little interest.’

  Hatton was sick of the subject. Money, or the lack of it. ‘Send another letter, Albert. You managed to get the saw, didn’t you? And the microscope? There are people out there who want to support us. Just keep going. Leave the letters on my desk and I’ll sign them when I get back. I need to drop in on The Yard.’

  ‘With all due respect, Professor …’

  Hatton rolled his eyes. He knew what was coming. ‘Then sign them yourself, Albert. For heaven’s sake man, you’ve done it before. Just write the damn letters.’

  SIX

  BLOOMSBURY

  Flora James pulled the blanket up over her lap, shivering a little. She still wasn’t convinced they hadn’t been followed. Moving shadows, when they first came here, looming out on the street and odd noises down the stairwell. Whatever Dr Canning had said to comfort her, it didn’t matter. She was still afraid.

  ‘Miss James, you’re imagining it. Is it any wonder that your mind should play tricks on you, after all that has happened? Don’t forget that I’ve barely left your side. But you cannot hide in this room forever. I think the sooner we go to the police and explain everything, the better.’ Dr Canning looked at the girl, who was instantly a mass of heaving sobs again.

  ‘Don’t start up again, please, Miss James. I’m expected back at the museum for a lecture, but I’ll see to it that the doors are securely locked behind me. And tonight I’ll do what your mistress would have wanted. I’ll get the letters to Babbage.’ Canning patted the scroll of letters and smiled. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  They were five flights up in a flat-fronted terraced house in Gordon Square. Flora stood up and moved towards the mantel, taking the invitation down again. It was black rimmed.

  ‘I don’t even have any mourning clothes, Dr Canning. No crepe. Not even a veil.’ Flora put the funeral invitation, which was addressed to Dr John Canning of 10 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, back in its place. It had arrived today in the morning post. The funeral was to be held in a few days time. She would make do with her fawn dress and her drab winter coat. Perhaps Violet or Cook would have something for her when she got to Ashbourne, a sash or a swathe of sombre bombazine, because go there she would, invited or not.

  Dr Canning shut the door firmly behind him, and she listened to his brisk footstep disappearing like a fading echo. She poured herself a little drop of porter and thought of him, this man she barely knew. Her position in his lodging house was not appropriate.

  She had tapped on the door that morning in the British Museum, two days ago now, and he’d looked up and smiled, sending the porter away. What a wreck she must have looked. But he didn’t seem to notic
e and welcomed her in and she had told him everything her mistress had said.

  ‘Please, Miss James. Sit yourself down because I’ve been expecting you.’

  She had rambled a little about what her mistress had said needed checking, which sections needed verifying, before the letters could go to their real destination, the Westminster Review.

  He’d read them initially in silence then suddenly smiling, or sighing or saying out loud, ‘I couldn’t agree with you more’ and then towards the end ringing entire paragraphs. It was beyond her, although Lady Bessingham had warned her that the ideas contained within would cause a storm.

  ‘Just think. Little Flora delivering a sensation, and myself at the centre. What a commotion we’ll cause. I’m glad I’ve finally made my decision to share them. They’re my letters, after all.’ And her mistress had laughed as she had said it, and asked for the green dress with the jet sash.

  Dr Canning’s room at the museum had been crammed with bones, arrows, and masks. The type Flora saw that day she came to the museum as a visitor once. But these artefacts were not for public display, but rather strewn about in corners, or teetering precariously on piles of books.

  There were compasses and strange instruments and pictures on the walls of native people. Savage men with haircuts which looked like the latest gentlemen’s fashion for bowler hats. And those monstrous holes in their lobes. Why did they do that?

  Dr Canning had caught her staring and had asked if she would like to see the pictures better. Had she actually nodded? She had, and he’d taken a book down from one of the shelves. The image that stuck in her mind was a drawing of a young woman covered from head to foot in swirling tattoos. She had a little star and a flower like the one her mistress favoured, but these were not tiny, delicate things. These were enormous, and curled up the young woman’s hip and spread out like branches or creeping ivy across her breasts.

  Flora had shut the book, crimson-faced. She’d forgotten herself. Dr Canning had carried on making notes once again in determined silence and then finally, when he spoke, there was a look on his face, a look of such astonishment it made Flora fear for them both. He shook his head, as if the letters were a burden, but then stood up, ran his hands through his hair, turned to her, and said, ‘They are as I suspected. The ideas in the letters are embryonic but they question all that we know, everything we believe in. She is right. They will set the world on fire, and in the wrong hands could be extremely dangerous. I suspect your mistress wants Mister Babbage to see them as “a shot across the bows” to a bigger debate which must follow. And it will, Miss James, because we’re just the beginning. Tell me, Miss James, there was a publication ten years ago called Vestiges. Perhaps you have heard of it?’

  Flora blushed. She had read it under cover at night, but she knew the penalty for a girl like her reading such seditious material openly. The Church had condemned it, vicars crying from their pulpits that it was the devil’s work. Saying it was the work of an atheist, a radical, someone who wanted to destroy everything, the natural order of things. Nevertheless, its ideas about how the world was made had bewitched her. But Flora said nothing of this to Dr Canning.

  He smiled. ‘Well, Vestiges was nothing, my dear, to the outcry these letters will cause. They will upset the whole apple cart and cause a right old commotion in The House, but it’s just what I would expect from your mistress. I don’t speak ill of her, not at all. I admire her. She’s a fine woman and, it goes without saying, pays for all of this,’ and he’d waved his arms around his pokey little room, as if it was a palace.

  A bigger debate, he’d said. Madam loved debates, and that whole day went by in a whirl of ink, jugs of porter, blotting paper, corrections, and comments. Verification, he called it. And added with a smile, ‘Before I arrange to take these to the Westminster Review, would you like me to read you the letters, Flora? So that you know what they contain? You see, my dear, ideas are a dangerous thing.’ Flora had nodded, terrified, not able to resist. She’d shut her eyes, and felt a breeze rustling through a far-flung forest.

  June 21st, 1855

  My dearest Lady Bessingham,

  I am writing these words upriver, far into the dense jungles of Simunjan. I was hoping that I might have received a word from you on life in England, but alas the mail boat arrived with nothing for me, save a few notes from my father who is such a sparse and unemotive writer. Father, as ever, discussed the current state of play in Westminster. I must confess, being here a million miles away, I find it all, dare I say, irrelevant. I suppose I should pretend to be a little more attuned to the Great Acts of Parliament, but it seems to me that there is more to learn here about the governance of life than is ever found in politics.

  For as I lie here, a thousand tiny creatures go about their infinite work. Ants march in line and the sky seems lost to me. I crane my eyes up above the looming canopy. It glints, a gesture of the world outside the forest. But it’s never peaceful here. It’s deafening. Everywhere I look and listen, I am spellbound, intoxicated, drowned in and drowned out, by the onslaught of Nature.

  We left Sarawak on June 9th, giving us just a few months before the rains are due. Alongside my Dutch companions, my friend Emmerich decided to join us, tempted by the call of rare and undiscovered pitcher plants. Emmerich not only speaks excellent Malay but also, most impressively, some Dayak dialect.

  He is an amusing fellow, both entertaining and highly informative. There’s not a fern, a palm, a root, or a bud that defeats him. He has been in East Asia for five years wandering the islands as far as Aru, collecting only plants. Quite rotund and short, he has a kind face and a gentle, studious manner, as you might perhaps expect a man obsessed with botany. The day I first met him, I was haggling over the price of butterfly nets when he sprang to my aid and secured a price of three shillings for half a dozen. We quickly fell into an animated discussion about where we had come from and where we hoped to go, and after a breakfast of mangosteen and coffee, Emmerich soon had me under his wing.

  Our party numbers five collectors (including myself, the novice) and our native helpers. The boats had been hewn from the enormous tapang trees (Koompassia excelsa), and as we moved along the river, within a day from Sarawak, we were soon in virgin forest. The banks began to slide away and enclosed us in a silent, trickling, half-light place. Nature folded in around us, monkeys hollered, holding sway with fallen trees, branches, roots, and creepers delaying our onward journey. But the helmsmen pushed on through the floating grass and giant lilies till the gullies of tawny water ran like veins.

  Our general servant, Uman, is efficient and helpful. He is a bullseye shot and, like my German friend, speaks the hill tribes’ dialects. His English is faultless and despite his lack of any formal education, he burns with an impressive intellect. I know he is our servant, but there is something in his manner which absolutely confirms him as more than my equal. Uman is aided by a young companion, who I believe is some sort of cousin to his family. This rascally slip of a boy is called San and he cannot be more than nine. His voice flitters round the boat like music. He hops from task to task, and if we do not keep a regular watch on him, is often slurping back the arak that I keep for my specimens, but when we catch him it’s hard to be angry for long. He looks at me, as if to dare a beating, then dives off the boat down to the bottom of the river, his lithe body twisting coppery like weeds. And when he rises up again (we are all with bated breath, for he has been down for far too long), he spits out the water like a little whale and I think to myself, how very like the animals we are!

  This is a tight little community, confined as we are to camping on odd patches of earth between the mangroves, but despite our containment, we are getting along. For example, Mr Banta is a fine fellow. His laugh is infectious and just the slightest quip can set him off. We all laugh with him when this happens, except Ackerman, who seems to find Mr Banta less amusing. He only looks at us with a faint, but just detectable, mocking in his face.

  But Mr Banta is a b
rilliant ornithologist and has won quite a reputation for his cataloguing of hornbills. He and Uman draw great flocks in towards our dugouts with near perfect mimicry. Uman has a little whistle made of reed which he puts to his lips, and when he blows it, the air fills with a flurry of gregarious birds.

  I like to think myself a taxidermist, but the speed at which Uman strips these brilliant feathers is extraordinary. His fingers fly across the bird until the skin is bare. The bones are boiled, dried out, tagged, and boxed. The flesh is cut up into little chunks and skewered in an oily marinade. One thing is for sure. Nothing is wasted here and everything feels connected.

  So on the whole I am very happy in the company of these men, but there’s one, I must confess, who irks me. He is Mr Ackerman, the chess player. I cannot say exactly why, Lady Bessingham, and I am sure you would urge me patience, but something in his nature unsettles me.

  Perhaps I am judging him too harshly, for he’s done nothing to warrant this dislike, but if I was to put him in a category it would be insectile. His classification would be Brunneria borealis. He is like a praying mantis. Bent over, hands clasped together, blank of eye as if waiting for something to happen, for one of us to make a false move, whereupon he can swoop upon us like the predator. He suffers from a heat rash and so his skin is scaly, but he’s stoical and never scratches like the rest of us. He rarely smiles except when playing chess (which is not a time when most men smile), but it is clear to me why Mr Ackerman smiles. He is beating us.

  Ackerman gives little of himself. He seems to be distracted and rarely joins in with our conversations about Nature. His passion is his gun, his Machars whisky, and, it seems to me, his damn ledger, which he forever has his nose in, making copious notes, but he gives nothing away as to its content. I do not know who he really is, or where he’s from. He’s clearly well connected in the world of trade and I understand he even works in England when the promise of money takes him there.