The Welfare of the Dead Read online

  ‘Really? That is interesting. You do not know the details, I suppose?’ asks Webb.

  ‘That is not really our business, Inspector. We place a mark against our register for all such burials, but no more.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. May I see your records, all the same?’

  ‘Of course – we have them in the chapel – but they will tell you nothing more, I am afraid. They merely confirm the name and year.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I should like to see it,’ continues Webb. ‘And I should like to speak to the gardeners, diggers . . . all your men.’

  ‘That may take some time to arrange. We have business at three.’

  ‘Still, if you please, Mr. Pellegrin,’ replies Webb. ‘Whoever you can muster – we must speak to all of them, whether now or later.’

  ‘But, Inspector, why should someone take a body like this, and after so many years? To break in at night and do such a thing?’

  ‘It must have been at night?’

  ‘Nothing like this could happen during the day, Inspector. They would be noticed.’

  ‘Perhaps there was more than a body, sir?’ suggests Bartleby. ‘Something buried with him, maybe. A family heirloom, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ replies Webb, bending down and looking closely at the coffin lid. He stands up abruptly. ‘In any case, Sergeant, I will go with Mr. Pellegrin and talk to his men. You stay here and see what you can find.’

  Bartleby nods, but as Webb turns away, he stops and looks back at the sergeant.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for, man?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get down there and examine the blasted thing.’

  Bartleby looks into the grave. ‘Down there, sir?’

  ‘If you have any other suggestions, Sergeant, I am happy to listen to them.’

  Bartleby takes a deep breath. ‘No, sir, can’t say as I do.’

  The two policemen stand to one side, hats in hand, as the three o’clock funeral procession rattles down the drive towards Abney Park’s chapel. At its head are the mutes, a pair of stately, bearded men in middle age, bearing long crape-encrusted wands and black sashes about their chests. Then the four coach-horses drawing the glass hearse, their harnesses wrapped in black velvet, their heads plumed with black feathers. Finally the mourners, a dozen gentlemen in solemn mourning, arm-bands and hat-bands in black silk. Mr. Pellegrin brings up the rear, head bowed, hands clasped in contemplation. And yet he steals a nervous look at Webb and Bartleby as he walks past. Webb waits until he is out of earshot before speaking.

  ‘Nothing in the grave, I take it?’

  ‘No, sir,’ mutters Bartleby, ‘not much except dirt. Though I’d say the coffin was well lined. There was a good deal of cambric. Probably very fine in its day.’

  Webb nods. ‘Pellegrin thinks he may be able to find the manufacturer through his catalogues – he will let us know.’

  ‘How about the men, the diggers, sir?’

  ‘Hmm. Neither the gardeners nor diggers had much to say for themselves. Except to confess that they hadn’t cast an eye over that plot for a month or more. Mr. Pellegrin was quite aggrieved about it.’

  ‘You don’t think it was one of them, sir?’

  ‘Maybe; but they would conceal it a trifle better, would they not?’

  ‘Why take a body at all? I mean, sir, let’s be blunt – it’d just be the bones, wouldn’t it? I’m blowed if I understand it.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sergeant,’ says Webb pensively. ‘They bury the suicides at midnight – did you know that?’

  ‘I knew it was after dark, sir, yes.’

  ‘And here, someone comes at night, twenty-five years later, and digs one up.’

  ‘Maybe they wanted to give him a decent burial.’

  Webb shakes his head. ‘A queer way of going about it.’

  ‘Folk are very concerned with the welfare of their dead, sir.’

  Webb looks at the now distant cortège, approaching the tall spire of the chapel and frowns.

  ‘So are we, Sergeant.’

  INTERLUDE

  THAT EVENING? LET me see. The fog had cleared and so I took a walk through the streets. To begin with, I had no particular purpose in mind. I merely needed time to think and I found myself on Drury Lane.

  I expect you do not know it?

  You have heard of the theatre? No. Even the theatre of that name is a couple of hundred yards shy of the road itself; and with good reason. It is an awful street by night, the haunt of beer-soaked Irish and the lowest sort of unfortunate, with a ginnery upon every corner to sustain them. They are the rougher sort of public house, too, with large advertisements for Cream Gin upon the door, and blazing naked jets of gas that spit fire into the street. I expect the landlords despair of decent lamps, even if they might afford them, since they are so easily broken.

  In any case, it was there, as I walked along and watched the drunks and the whores, that it struck me. It is a simple truth that is never acknowledged: a man may do exactly as he likes, in this life at least, as long as he is not caught. You see, all that day, I had had nagging fears of the police, of the prison cell, nay, even the gallows. But there was no detective at my door, nor policeman dogging my steps, nor was there likely to be. A man requires only a little good fortune, courage and intelligence, and he cannot be caught.

  Very well. Then I shall stick to the facts of the matter.

  In short, I walked without stopping until Drury Lane gave way to Holborn, and, quite by chance, I turned eastwards and suddenly came upon the crowded pavement outside the Holborn Casino.

  Yes, indeed, the dance-hall.

  I knew of its ill fame, of course: a magnet for fast young men and loose women eager for their company. And, indeed, that night, there was no doubting the wretched place’s popularity with a certain class of ‘gentleman’. For a seemingly endless row of beetle-black hansoms and clarences lined both sides of the street, whilst unacquainted men and women trotted gaily in, or stumbled drunkenly out, in bunches of two and three. In fact, it was a scene of utter dissipation.

  Then it came to me, what I must do.

  The police? Oh yes; they were there, to ‘keep the peace’. Two of them. But my theory was quite correct. They had their minds fixed upon pickpockets and carriage-sneaks – I was quite safe. I strolled in with a few young gentlemen in evening dress, accompanying a party of ladies in satin gowns and an excess of frills and feathers. An attendant relieved us of our hats, another of our coats. Then we went down a half-dozen steps into the hall.

  What do I recall about the Casino? A good deal of gold leaf and marble. I could make out the band in the gallery, a dozen or more strong, striking up a merry polka; but I could barely see the floor for dancers. The women wore high-heeled boots, the men patent leathers, and both made a riotous noise as they spun this way and that in the large hall.

  The clientele? Ah. The men affected pristine kid gloves and jewelled tie-pins, but I should say they were largely the middling sort, clerks and the like, that seek out such fast entertainments. There were only a handful of true gentlemen, who had quit their clubs and homes for a night on the ‘spree’. They mostly hung back by the tables, smoking cigars, talking amongst themselves.

  The women? I could see that many were demimondaines; they made no secret of it. Others, I found harder to place. Some were most likely shop-girls, who had already gone wrong, in thought if not in deed. A few were the daughters of tradesmen, perhaps; the sisters and cousins of the young men and their friends, who dragged them this way and that across the dance-floor.

  You think so? I do not know. I suppose it is possible that some of them retained their virtue; that they had come in ignorance of the place’s reputation. But I rather doubt it.

  What then? Why, I saw her; I had been strolling around the balcony above the hall. A pretty thing. Dark-brown hair and deep hazel eyes, lace around her neck, and a gold locket that danced about as she danced. She was a graceful creature, though quite free with her
favours; it was not long before I saw her kissing some pimple-faced shop-boy upon the cheek. Then, to my good fortune, her hair became loose and she had to withdraw and spend a minute or two fixing up the pins in her chignon. It was clear she was by herself; there was no beau, nor a particular table to which she retired. I went down and stood near by as the M.C. called up parties for the next set. Then, as we danced, I asked her her name, and if she cared to take a drink with me, so that we might talk.

  What? Oh, I believe it was ‘Kate’, or ‘Kath’ or some such.

  I have found it does not take much to win such a woman’s confidence, not one of that sort; in this case, a glass of champagne was quite sufficient. And I told her she had beautiful eyes; it is always best to say something of that nature. In any case, she was mine, if I wished it; we had but to agree a price. You see how easily virtue is bought and sold in this wretched city? But then the band struck up some wretched Prussian waltz, and she averred it was her favourite song, and ‘didn’t I want another dance?’

  I had the knife. I might have done it there, in that booth under the stairs. No-one would have noticed. But I bided my time and said I would see her again.

  Really? The family said she was not loose? Yes, I do recall that; I thought it odd at the time. I mean to say, why was she there at all?

  CHAPTER NINE

  ANNABEL KROUT SITS at the desk in her bedroom, her dressing-gown wrapped tightly around her. Having lit the brass oil-lamp that sits near by, she takes a notebook, pen, ink and blotting paper from the desk drawer. She opens the book and it is not long before the left-hand page is full of dense lines of neat handwriting, her words sloping strongly to the right, written in haste, as if eager to escape the confines of the page. Indeed, it is five or ten minutes before she stops, pausing for thought, touching the top of her lip with the tip of her pen.

  A knock at the door interrupts her reverie. Before Annabel can contemplate uttering the words ‘come in’, Melissa Woodrow lets herself into the room. Like Annabel, Mrs. Woodrow is still in her night clothes, though her dressing-gown, white silk embroidered with a lotus pattern of oriental flowers, is perhaps a little more striking than her cousin’s somewhat plainer article.

  ‘Good morning, my dear,’ says Mrs. Woodrow. ‘I saw your lamp . . .’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaims Annabel. ‘Did I disturb you? I am so sorry. I tried to keep the light dim.’

  ‘Now, my dear, don’t be so silly – we are not a penitentiary! I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Couldn’t you sleep?’

  ‘No, I mean yes, I slept fine, thank you. I just thought I might write my journal, before breakfast.’

  Mrs. Woodrow smiles indulgently. ‘Oh, your journal? Why, I quite forgot. Your mother told me about your writing – you had some little thing published, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing, cousin, really,’ replies Annabel.

  ‘No, tell me, what was the magazine?’

  ‘The New England Monthly Bazaar,’ replies Annabel, rather shyly.

  ‘Well, true, we don’t take that here, but it was published all the same – how nice for you. You must tell Woodrow you are a “lady journalist”, it will quite thrill him, I am sure. You aren’t writing about us, I hope!’

  Annabel Krout blushes, unconsciously placing a hand over the pages of the book, smudging the ink.

  ‘No, just our visit to the Zoological Gardens,’ she replies.

  ‘Good! I cannot imagine what the New England Monthly Bazaar would make of us!’

  Annabel smiles politely.

  ‘Well,’ continues Mrs. Woodrow, ‘I will see you at breakfast, and we can make our plans for the day. I am sorry I retired so early last night – Lucinda quite exhausts me at times.’

  ‘Mr. Woodrow was so late home, too.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid he was. Oh, now that is some news . . . I made a suggestion, and Woodrow has taken my advice, and we are to have a little dinner party. We can introduce you to all our friends! And I have told him he must invite Mr. Langley – he is such an agreeable gentleman – so there will at least be someone whom you know.’

  ‘Oh, really? That is very thoughtful of you,’ replies Annabel.

  ‘As long as you promise not to put us all in your little book,’ replies Mrs. Woodrow. ‘Now, will I see you at breakfast?’

  Annabel answers in the positive, and Mrs. Woodrow takes her leave, closing the door behind her. As soon as it is shut, Annabel turns hurriedly to her notebook, applying a sheet of blotting paper to the smudged ink. Her hands, however, are worse than the page. She goes to the wash-basin, and tries to remove the ink from her fingers, doing as best she can with the previous night’s cold water and soap. It proves difficult and, resolving to wait for the morning’s supply of hot water to complete the job, she tuts to herself, and dries her hands with a towel.

  Outside, beyond Duncan Terrace, the trundling sound of morning traffic on the City Road can be heard in the distance. She walks over to the window. Pulling her gown close around her neck, she teases back the curtains, and peers into the gas-lit street below. It is not yet dawn, and the sky is itself an inky blue-black, hinting at daylight. Looking out along the street, on the opposite side of the road, she can make out a man, short and stocky in build, wearing a thick winter coat.

  He stops and stares up at her; it is not merely a glance, but a long inquisitive stare. Instinctively, she draws the curtains shut, but then she cannot resist opening them a inch or so, and peering through the gap.

  The man in the street, however, has already moved on.

  Breakfast with the Woodrows passes much as the day before. The same bacon, the same eggs, and the same supplementary cold cuts of ham and pork, elegantly laid out upon a silver platter. In fact, it strikes Annabel Krout that the cold meat on offer is precisely the same, to the very last scrap of fat. But if she wonders about this coincidence of household economy, she is too polite to mention it to her cousin.

  Mr. Woodrow, in turn, retains the same taciturn manner, removing his gaze from the newspaper once to inquire on Annabel’s health, and a second time as to whether the Zoological Gardens were pleasant. He gives no great impression of listening to either reply; he merely nods at suitable intervals. Mrs. Woodrow, on the other hand, supplies any silence with what amounts to a litany of possibilities for travel and exploration in the great metropolis. If Annabel herself expresses a slight preference, it is again to see either of the grand churches, the Abbey or St. Paul’s. She finds it moderately surprising, therefore, that her cousin assures her that she ‘must’ first see Regent Street. And she cannot help but think that, given Melissa Woodrow’s elaborate descriptions of the quality and elegance of millinery and haberdashery on display in said thoroughfare, there is a certain degree of self-interest in Mrs. Woodrow’s eagerness to parade her cousin along the ‘finest street in London’. Moreover, Annabel suspects that, conjoined with the exhortation that she herself must acquire ‘a hat suitable to this season’, there also is something of a hat-shaped yearning in her cousin’s heart.

  Nonetheless, she agrees graciously enough to the proposal, and so finds herself, an hour after breakfast, sitting in the Woodrows’ brougham, together with Melissa Woodrow, as it speeds down Pentonville Hill, towards King’s Cross station. Annabel peers eagerly through the vehicle’s windows, looking for landmarks she might recall from the previous day. Even though their carriage goes at a fast trot, she soon recognises the distinctive domed bell-tower of St. James’s church, Pentonville, as they hasten down the hill. Likewise, the sooty terraces of two- and three-storey shops and houses that line the lower reaches of the road, their rows of chimney pots, puffing smoke into the clear winter sky. The houses, however, rather offend Annabel’s conception of the great city; they seem far too small and packed close together. They appear so cramped and confined that she silently wonders if, each night, they do not impatiently nudge one against the other, and thus quietly descend the slope by a few inches.

  She puts her disappointment wi
th the homes of Pentonville to the back of her mind. For the great shed of St. Pancras station comes into full view, looming above the King’s Cross rooftops, like the beached, upturned hull of some enormous abandoned ship. As they draw closer to the station, and the Gothic extravagance of the Midland Grand Hotel, Annabel presses her face against the window of the brougham. But the window seems determined to make itself disagreeable, rattling with every bump in the road and clattering noisily in its frame. Annabel, therefore, reluctantly sits back in her seat, much to the relief of her cousin who talks ominously of ‘catching a chill’.

  ‘But it’s such a beautiful day,’ exclaims Annabel, regardless. ‘It’s so bright – I wasn’t sure you got such days here, after that terrible fog.’

  ‘Yes, my dear, but it will change just as quickly. And think of the wind – you must keep yourself warm. Your dear mother would never forgive me if I sent you home ill.’

  Annabel reluctantly agrees, making a somewhat token rearrangement of her scarf. And, as Mrs. Woodrow enters into a discourse upon the dangers of the English climate, her American cousin quietly takes in the sights of the Euston Road. From the monumental Greek females adorning St. Pancras Church, to the discreet stone steps leading to Euston Square’s subterranean station, Annabel Krout finds something of interest on every corner. And if, as the brougham turns south, Gower Street’s tedious terraces offer little excitement, there is some satisfaction in the transitory glimpses of everyday life: a woman waving her umbrella frantically at a passing Brompton omnibus, failing to catch its driver’s attention; a boy, in the distinctive red coat and blue cap of the Shoeblack Brigade, who sits mournfully against a lamp-post.

  Annabel contemplates writing an article for the New England Monthly Bazaar entitled ‘London Street Scenes’.

  Melissa Woodrow gently taps her on the arm, as their carriage turns on to New Oxford Street.

  ‘There is the Warehouse, my dear, just down there. We might pay a visit on the way back.’