The Jekyll Revelation Page 29

  When her mother did appear—hair tinted the color of the gilt bindings on the books, and wearing an ivory suit that matched her shoes—she wafted down the center aisle, graciously acknowledging the family and friends in attendance, and took her place behind a walnut music stand that was serving as a lectern. Rafe could see where Miranda got her looks. By her mother’s side, a table had been set up, with flowers and silver-framed photos of Gladys Ashcroft at various ages of her life.

  After the general request to turn off any cell phones, which Rafe obligingly did—“Gladys called them the end of civilization,” Mrs. Wright joked, “and sometimes I agree”—he did his best to pay attention, but since all the names and stories and anecdotes meant nothing to him, and the people who stood up to speak were all strangers, his mind wandered off, out over the green lawn—Jesus, he thought, what were her water bills?—and past the brilliant red rosebushes and the bees that buzzed around them. He couldn’t get out of his head what Bentley had said about Lloyd living in nearby Glendale at one time. He was dying to get back to the journal and see what happened next, and in Bentley he thought he might have found someone to advise him on what to do once he decided to come forward and give the journal up.

  When the last eulogy had been made and the guests stood up to mingle again, Miranda was quickly surrounded by some cousins who, judging from the warmth of their greetings, hadn’t seen her in years. Rafe took the opportunity to seek out Bentley again, hoping to find out more. But now he was at his wife’s side, and before Rafe knew it, he was being introduced to Miranda’s mom, who took his hand and gave him a bright, beaming smile.

  “I’m so glad you could join us today,” she said. “Was it Mr. Sandoval?”

  “Salazar. Rafael Salazar.”

  The smile didn’t so much as waver. “Bentley tells me you’re a book lover.”

  “You have a pretty spectacular library.”

  “That we do. My late husband Oscar was a bibliophile.”

  Rafe was beginning to wonder what Miranda was making all the fuss about—her mother seemed perfectly nice to him.

  “I gather you drove Miranda here today.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was so kind of you. How do you know my daughter?”

  “I’m her tenant. In Topanga.”

  “Of course. And do you drive for a living?”

  “Um, no, I don’t. I do environmental work, for the state.”

  Leaning in, Bentley said, “Rafael and Miranda are seeing each other. I told you that.”

  For a second, her eyes went downcast, the smile frozen. Then she looked at Rafe again and said, “I don’t know where my head is at today. You’ll have to forgive me. But I do wish my daughter would share more of her life with me.” Then, hailing a couple on their way out of the garden, she said, “Please excuse me. It’s been lovely to meet you.”

  Bentley tried to make up for the awkwardness of the encounter with a very hearty handshake and a promise to show him around the library. “Either the one here at the house, or the collection at my old stomping grounds, the Huntington, next door. I’m always looking for an excuse.”

  But Rafe knew when he’d been dissed.

  As soon as Miranda had escaped from her cousins, he took hold of her hand, entwining their fingers—Miranda seemed as pleased as she was surprised at the gesture—in the hopes that her mother would spot them leaving together. If she also saw them getting into the purple Land Rover, with the gold flames painted on the door handles, she’d probably faint away on the spot. Truth be told, he’d have kind of liked to see that.

  10 November, 1888

  For weeks now, the city has been like a powder keg, just waiting for Jack to touch a flame to its fuse with another murder. The divide between East and West, between the dismal, impoverished slums of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, where the Ripper has committed his foul deeds, and the West End, where the gentry have so far been spared all but the ominous sense of dread, has never been greater. Leaders of the various social movements—the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabians, the International Working Men’s Educational Society, the Fair Trade League, the Metropolitan Federation of Radical Clubs—have set aside their differences and banded together to call for a mass demonstration in Trafalgar Square, to protest the widespread unemployment and squalid living conditions that foster criminality and have given rise, in their view, to a creature as vile and depraved as Jack. The square was chosen not only because it affords the organizers ample space for the thousands of struggling workers they expect to turn up, but because it is, both symbolically and geographically, the precise point at which the East and West ends met.

  ‘Are you sure you must attend this dinner?’ Fanny said, reaching up to help fasten my silk tie. (Symonds had warned me not to turn up at his club, the very fashionable Athenaeum, in one of my more bohemian costumes.) ‘The streets’, she warned, ‘aren’t safe.’

  ‘I shall be fine,’ I said, with a certainty I did not feel in the slightest. I had never told Fanny, or anyone, about the attack from the man who spoke German—there was enough suspicion hanging about me already—but I had taken from its velvet-lined box a Colt two-shot derringer that I had purchased on impulse from a saloon owner in San Francisco, examined it to make sure it was in perfect working order, and made plans to carry it in the pocket of my suit jacket, under my long overcoat.

  ‘Who else is going to be there?’

  ‘Only Henley.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to dine with Henley?’

  ‘Because Symonds’s essay, which we are celebrating tonight, appeared in the pages of the “National Observer.” Henley paid him handsomely for it.’

  ‘Well, be careful, Louis,’ she advised, smoothing the satin lapels of the jacket. ‘Stick to the main thoroughfares and stay well clear of the rally. They always end in violence.’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ I chided her.

  The fog that had enveloped the city for several nights had lifted, and so I decided to take advantage of the clear weather and walk all the way to Pall Mall. In the precincts of Cavendish Square, all seemed orderly and ordinary, but as I travelled east, I could not fail to notice the occasional storefront that had been boarded up; the Metropolitan Police, who had lost control of the streets in the infamous ‘Bloody Sunday’ demonstrations the year before, had issued a warning to shopkeepers. Loiterers, in more than the usual numbers, were hanging about outside the public houses. One of them complimented me on my fine clothes as I passed by, and though I thanked him, I knew full well the spirit in which the comment had been made. The sound of his friends’ laughter followed me up the street.

  Perhaps that’s why I was especially aware of a footfall behind me, and at the next corner, ducked into a doorway to wait and see who was on my heels. I was becoming quite an adept at this procedure. A moment later, the footfall increased in speed, and a woman, with flaming red hair and carrying a black lace parasol, hurried by, scanning the streets ahead.

  ‘Looking for someone?’ I said, and she whipped around, blushing furiously. I found myself confronting no more frightening an assailant than Constance Wooldridge.

  ‘Oh, I am so embarrassed,’ she said, hiding behind the parasol. ‘I had so hoped to make our encounter appear accidental.’

  ‘Why? It’s a pleasure to see you.’

  ‘And you, too, Mr Stevenson.’

  ‘Louis—call me Louis. Where are you heading?’

  ‘Wherever you are.’

  Now I was truly puzzled.

  ‘I have needed to speak to you,’ she said. ‘I went to your house, but lacked the courage.’

  ‘To knock on my door?’

  ‘I can explain. Shall we walk?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Taking my arm, her eyes downcast, she said, ‘I could not risk it. It might have made the situation only worse.’

  My puzzlement turned to consternation. ‘What situation?’

  As we walked, she began to pour out her heart. ‘I doubt I could have
spoken of this in front of his mother, and if Lloyd had been home, it would have been utterly impossible.’

  ‘If you are going to tell me that you and Lloyd have been keeping company,’ I said, patting the back of her hand, ‘I know all about it.’

  Her face, when she turned it to me, was stricken. ‘Is that what he has told you?’

  ‘More than once. He’s quite proud of himself, as well he should be.’

  She all but groaned. ‘I don’t know how to express it, but your stepson has brought nothing but fear into my life.’

  It was as if she had stabbed me with an ice pick. ‘Fear? How?’

  And so she explained. Lloyd, quite unbidden and, as she assured me repeatedly, with no encouragement, had manufactured a romance where there was none. Had begun to send her love letters two and three times a day. Had sent her lavish gifts (I thought of the bills piling up on the hall table). Had taken to ringing her bell at all hours, and shouting up at her windows. ‘I live with a maiden aunt, and she is quite beside herself. She has spoken to the police, but he is never there when they come round, and she is, to be candid, a somewhat eccentric character herself. I think they find her accounts unreliable.’

  ‘You should have written to me,’ I said.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I never received it.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Lloyd intercepted it and left it crumpled in my post box. He had scrawled on it in red ink, “I love you, and you WILL love me.”’

  The ice pick stabbed again.

  ‘And what about Desmond? Lloyd said you two had had a falling out.’

  ‘Over this, in large measure. Randolph thinks I have instigated it somehow.’

  ‘How could he think such a thing?’

  ‘But he does. And frankly, I think he is afraid of Lloyd.’

  Afraid of Lloyd? I had known people to be annoyed with Lloyd, I had known them to grow bored with his self-admiration, I had even known them to be irked by his arrogance. But afraid? This was altogether new.

  We turned down a side street, and then into a quiet mews. Constance pointed her parasol at a somber town house with a fanlight above the door and barren window boxes. ‘That is my aunt’s house,’ she said, ‘where I live. Lloyd wrote to tell me I should not leave the house today because of the demonstration, and that he would check up on me after it was done. To make sure that I was safely at home.’

  I walked her to the front steps and said, ‘Leave it to me. I will speak to him at the earliest opportunity, and do whatever is necessary to set him straight.’

  To my own embarrassment now, she clutched my hands and, with tears welling in her beautiful green eyes, thanked me. ‘I knew that you would be the one to understand.’ And then she fled up the stairs and into the house so swiftly, I was left wondering if the whole conversation had not been a figment of my own imagination.

  All the way to Pall Mall, I turned it over in my mind, resolving, once the dinner and the contemporaneous demonstration were over, to return and keep watch on her house.

  The avenue on which the prominent and powerful men’s clubs were lined up, shoulder to shoulder like a row of limestone dominoes, was broad and clean, unlike so much of the city. But even in that panoply of rich and aristocratic institutions, the Athenaeum stood out. Known for the Greek frieze, which was based on the Elgin Marbles, that ran like a ribbon below its outside balustrade, as well as for the intellectual rigour of its illustrious membership (Dickens had ended his feud with Thackeray on its grand staircase; Darwin was often seen scratching his beard in the well-stocked library; Michael Faraday had once served as the club’s secretary), the Athenaeum exuded an effortless superiority over its neighbours and peers. The moment I passed under its Doric portico, with its row of twinned columns, I felt myself embraced by its cool and soothing atmosphere. Trafalgar Square could be in turmoil, the streets could be a battlefield, but here . . . peace and civility reign.

  Leaving my hat and coat with the hall porter, I ascended to the Smoking Room, where, through the low burble of men’s voices and wreaths of smoke, I found Symonds and Henley already ensconced in deeply creased leather chairs, glasses of sherry at their elbows.

  ‘What, you’ve left the rally so soon?’ Henley boomed, in a voice that caused several of the other members to glance our way in disapproval. ‘Did your speech whip them up to a frenzy?’

  ‘William, please,’ Symonds admonished him. ‘Your jokes could cost me my membership.’

  ‘For such a small offence?’ Henley countered.

  Before I could draw up a chair, a white-gloved servant had already done so, while also proffering the sherry decanter, which I declined. ‘An Irish whiskey, please.’ And when Henley heard that, he said, ‘Make that two. Sorry, Symonds, but this sherry is like gargling gumdrops.’

  Symonds had the look on his long face of a missionary failing to civilise the natives.

  ‘What’s it like out there?’ Henley asked. ‘I attended the rally for an hour or two, and it was all very merry, but when one of the revellers questioned my note-taking—I think he suspected I was from Scotland Yard—I had the impression that the mob was about to crack me over the head with my own wooden leg.’

  ‘The mobile vulgus,’ Symonds put in, ‘from the Latin for “mob”. Employed to describe the labouring poor. But I think a closer translation might be “movement”, as it also encapsulates the element of protest.’

  ‘Well, when it comes to that, they’ve got good reason,’ Henley said, taking a whiskey from the servant’s silver tray and leaving the other to me. ‘Plenty of it.’

  ‘To John’s essay,’ I said, raising my glass in an effort to divert the conversation into safer channels, ‘a work both bold in conception and brilliant in execution.’ We toasted, Symonds dipped his head in acknowledgement, and then Henley went right on with his disquisition.

  ‘Walk the streets of Whitechapel, as Louis and I did not long ago, and what do you see? An utter indifference to life, of any sort. For amusement, the children cling to the iron railings of the open slaughterhouses and watch the animals having their throats cut. The lack of proper mortuaries means the dead are kept in the kitchen until a shallow grave can be dug somewhere. The water, what there is of it, is filthy and undependable. You’ve got more brothels than you’ve got schools, more pubs than you’ve got shops, and the common lodging houses are nothing but breeding grounds for vice of every stripe.’

  ‘But didn’t the government do what it could, in respect to those lodging houses?’ Symonds said. ‘The Artizans and Labourers Dwellings Improvements Act demolished the worst of the lot, did it not?’

  ‘Oh, that it did,’ Henley said, as if rolling up his sleeves to continue a blistering editorial. ‘It knocked ’em down all right, but what happened to the rest of the scheme? The doss-houses were supposed to be replaced with new housing, along with the brothels that were blown down with the same breath—but were they? They were not. And who do you think wound up living rough on the street as a result? The very women that Jack the Ripper now preys upon.’

  ‘Please,’ Symonds said, leaning forward, ‘lower your voice, Henley, or we’ll all be taken for revolutionaries.’

  Henley signalled the servant for another whiskey, but Symonds forestalled him by recommending we go in to dinner.

  ‘A capital suggestion,’ I remarked, as I had eaten little that day and the walk had been a long one.

  In the dining room, a vast wainscotted room whose walls were adorned, in keeping with the Greek motif and title of the club, with gloomy neoclassical paintings—the one above our table showed Socrates holding aloft the cup of hemlock—we were served bloody roast beef, boiled potatoes, and broiled tomatoes. French windows ran the length of the room, opening onto the balustrade, and through them I could see the tops of the gas lamps flickering. The club had outfitted itself, under the direction of Faraday’s successor, with electric lights only a year or two before, but I still found dining by their harsh illumination uncongenial. A candle
lit chandelier could make the simplest repast appear a banquet, while electricity rendered everything unappetizingly vivid.

  ‘Is it true’, Symonds said over the trifle that followed, ‘that there was some writing on a brick wall not far from the body of the Ripper’s last victim?’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ Henley said, though not, I noted, denying it. ‘And why would you, of all people, take an interest?’

  ‘You mistake me, Henley—I do not live entirely in the Renaissance,’ he said, dabbing at his pale lips with his napkin. ‘And as for where I heard it,’ he added, inclining his head towards a distinguished-looking man at a corner table, ‘Sir Charles Warren. He’s been a member for many years, and he indicated something to that effect over dinner last week.’

  ‘So that’s the bumbling fool,’ Henley said.

  ‘Please,’ Symonds begged again.

  ‘There was chalk writing, presumably in the Ripper’s own hand, on Goulston Street, and, in his capacity as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Warren had it expunged.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ I said, already stowing this information away for Fanny’s delectation. She especially enjoyed tales of professional incompetence.

  ‘Because he thought it might ignite an anti-Semitic riot.’

  ‘What did it say?’ Symonds asked. ‘I was never told.’

  ‘According to PC Alfred Long, one of my more reliable informants, it said, “The Juwes—spelled j-u-w-e-s, incidentally—are not the men who will be blamed for nothing.”’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ I said.

  ‘Be that as it may. The handwriting alone might have proved a clue. Was it the same as the writing on the notecards sent to the news agency? Now we’ll never know.’

  ‘Surely his motives were good,’ Symonds said. ‘The prejudice against the flood of immigrants from Germany and Poland and Russia is already at a fever pitch. Another mention of the Hebrews in this connection and a riot might well indeed have swept the city.’