Things in Jars Read online

  Bridie takes this as a sign.

  Bridie looks down at the man sprawled by the showy tomb of a successful family butcher. Two things strike her as immediately wrong.

  Firstly, the man is deficient of clothing (his wardrobe consisting in its entirety of: a top hat, boots and a pair of drawers).

  Secondly, she can see through the man.

  She is able, with perfect ease, to read the inscription on the tomb that should, by rights, be obscured by the body of the man. She can even see the angels on the decorative stone frieze.

  This is an ingenious trick – like Pepper’s ghost! There will be mirrors, screens certainly, black silk or some such, an illusionist’s contraption, a phantasmagorical contrivance. A rudimentary search of nearby graves turns up nothing.

  Bridie is baffled. If no external explanation for the presence of this transparent, partially clad man is evident, the cause must be internal. She cannot recollect transparent partially clad men being a symptom of the consumption of Prudhoe’s Bronchial Balsam Blend. But the list is long and includes many adverse reactions, from sweating of the eyeballs to sensitivity to accordion music.

  She resolves to inspect this apparition, systematically, from crown to toe.

  A top hat is tipped down over the eyes of its owner. Like its owner the hat is transparent. Despite this, Bridie can see that the hat has known better days. It is dented of body and misshapen of rim. The transparent man is naked to the waist; below the waist he sports close-fitting white drawers, tight at the thighs, sagging at the knees. The boots on his feet are unlaced and his fists are sloppily bound with unravelling bandages, none too clean. He is massive of chest and bicep, strong-shouldered and thick-necked. And tattooed: stern to bow.

  Below the tipped-down hat-rim: a nose that hasn’t gone unbroken, a clean-shaven jaw and a shining black moustache (generous in proportions, expertly waxed, certainly rococo). In the mouth, a pipe lolls. A draw is taken from it, intermittently. The smoke has dwindled to a wisp now and has no discernible scent. On inhalation the tobacco in the pipe bowl glows blue.

  Bridie wonders if the man has a pinch of tobacco to spare and, if so, whether that’s likely to be transparent too.

  The man, perhaps sensing her presence, pushes up his hat idly. His eyes open and meet hers. He springs to his feet in alarm, holding his fists up before him.

  He is nothing short of miraculous.

  The tattoos that adorn his body – how clearly Bridie sees them now – are, in fact, moving. She is put in mind of Monsieur Desvignes’s Mimoscope. A device of cunning construction (a wonder amongst wonders at the Great Exhibition), pictures looped between spools, illuminated by a spark. Bridie, transfixed, saw animals, insects and machinery – static images – flickering to life, to bounce and flutter, slither and winch. Bridie watches this man with the same fascination as, in one continuous motion, an inked anchor drops the length of his bicep. High on his abdomen an empty-eyed skull, a grinning memento mori, chatters its jaw. A mermaid sits on his shoulder holding a looking-glass, combing her blue-black hair. On finding herself observed the mermaid takes fright and swims off under the man’s armpit with a deft beat of her tail. On his left pectoral an ornate heart breaks and reforms over and over again.

  He is a circus to the eye.

  ‘Had a good look?’ he asks.

  Bridie reddens. ‘Forgive me, sir, if I startled you. I was after borrowing a smoke.’ She gestures to her empty pipe.

  The man lowers his fists. ‘Merciful Jesus, it is you. Is it not?’ His expression turns to one of delight. He sweeps off his hat. ‘Oh, darling, do you know me?’

  Bridie stares at him. ‘I do not.’

  ‘Ah now . . .’ He runs a hand over shorn hair, black velvet, dense as a mole’s pelt, and wrinkles his strong square forehead. ‘Your name is Bridget.’

  ‘My name is Bridie.’

  ‘It is.’ The man nods. ‘Your full appellation, if you would be so kind?’

  Bridie hesitates. ‘Mrs Bridie Devine.’

  The man grins. ‘What else would it be, with those eyes divine?’ He pauses. ‘And Devine would be your husband’s name, madam?’

  ‘Late husband, sir,’ corrects Bridie.

  The man bows. ‘My sincere condolences, Mrs Devine.’

  Bridie turns to go. ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir.’

  ‘Won’t you stay, Bridget? We could talk about the old times.’

  Bridie stops. ‘Sir, you are quite mistaken in your belief that you know me—’

  ‘But I do know you: you are Gan Murphy’s girl.’

  Bridie’s eyes widen. ‘He was my gaffer.’

  ‘I know that!’ The man pauses, his expression amused. ‘You don’t remember me at all, do you?’

  Bridie looks at him in desperation, sensing a game that could go on for all eternity. ‘That is not the point, Mr—’

  ‘Doyle.’ He wanders to a grave across the way and gestures down at it. ‘Not a bad spot, is it?’

  Bridie follows him. She reads the headstone:

  THE DECORATED DOYLE

  Here lies RUBY DOYLE

  Tattooed SEAFARER and CHAMPION BOXER,

  Untimely taken, 21 March 1863

  “He felled them with a bow”

  ‘Do you know me now?’ asks the dead man.

  ‘Well, sir, you are a boxer by the name of Ruby Doyle. You have been deceased half a year, and still I do not know you.’

  Ruby Doyle puts his hat back on. ‘Throw your mind back, Bridget.’ He taps his topper down at the crown. ‘Think awhile. I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘If this is some kind of trick, Mr Doyle—’

  ‘Ruby, if you please,’ he says, with a rakish tip of his hat rim. ‘What trick?’

  ‘You being dead.’

  ‘Trick’s on me.’

  ‘I do not believe in ghosts, sir.’

  ‘Neither do I – why do you not?’

  ‘I have a scientific mind. Ghosts are a nonsense.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘A parlour trick.’ Bridie looks at him hard. ‘Smoke and mirrors.’

  Ruby smiles disarmingly. ‘A chance to pull one over?’

  ‘A fashionable flimflam.’

  ‘And what of table-tipping?’ Ruby, who seems to be enjoying this, scans the heavens: ‘Send me a sign, Winifred.’

  ‘Dark, overheated rooms and suggestible types.’

  ‘Half of London is at it!’

  ‘Half of London is duped. To believe in the existence of ghosts, spirits, phantoms – that one can see and converse with them – is deluded.’

  ‘Are you deluded, Bridget?’

  ‘I see you, sir, but I do not believe you exist.’

  Ruby Doyle is crest-fallen.

  Bridie frowns. ‘If you will excuse me, I have work to do.’

  ‘Church-yard work, is it?’ He glances slyly at the bag in her hand. ‘Is there a shovel in there? Let me guess: you’re a resurrectioner, like your old gaffer, Gan?’

  She rounds on him. ‘And I look like a resurrectioner? I help the police.’

  ‘Do you, now. In what way?’

  ‘Working out how people died.’

  ‘How did I die?’

  ‘A heavy blow to the back of the neck.’

  ‘Now that’s clever. But you read about it in the Hue and Cry?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Boxer bested in tavern brawl. I’d survived this fella trying to knock me to pieces, stepped in for a quick celebratory one and then—’

  ‘Ruby, I’m wanted in the crypt. They have found a body there.’

  ‘That’ll be the place for it. Off you go, so. And my compliments to your gaffer – how is Gan?’

  ‘Dead. In jail.’

  Ruby stops smiling. ‘Then I am sorry. Gan was one of those fellas that go on: a long, thin strip of gristle, everlasting. Do you not see him too?’

  Bridie regards the man with desperation. ‘Gan is dead.’

  ‘Then am I the only dead fella you see?’

/>   ‘Appears like it.’

  ‘What about Mr Devine?’

  Bridie looks puzzled.

  ‘Your late husband,’ Ruby prompts. ‘You must see him?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Then I’m peculiar to you. Are you surprised, Bridget? Are you rattled?’

  ‘Nothing surprises or rattles me.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He reflects on this a moment, then: ‘Can I come with you, watch whatever it is that you’re doing in the crypt?’

  ‘You may not.’

  Bridie walks through the gravestones. Ruby ambles alongside her. The boots, unlaced, lend a loose parry to his boxer’s strut.

  At the edge of the path she stops and turns to him. ‘I am hallucinating. You are a waking dream.’ She bites her lip. ‘You see I smoked something a little stimulating earlier . . .’

  Ruby nods sagely. ‘The empty pipe – is it Kubla Khan you’re visiting?’

  Bridie is dumb-founded.

  Ruby gestures at his bandages. ‘Ringside doctor, recited while he patched.’

  When they reach the chapel, Bridie holds out her hand. ‘This is where we part company.’

  Ruby smiles; it’s a charming kind of a smile that gaily remakes the contours of his fabulous moustache. His eyes, in life, would have been a handsome dark-molasses brown. In death, they are still alive with mischievous intent.

  ‘I would shake your hand, Bridget, but—’

  Bridie withdraws her hand. ‘Of course. Good day, Ruby Doyle.’

  She heads into the chapel.

  ‘I’ll wait for you, Bridget,’ calls the dead man. ‘I’ll just be having a smoke for meself.’

  Ruby Doyle watches her walk away. God love her, she hasn’t changed. She’s still captain of herself, you can see that; chin up, shoulders back, a level green-eyed gaze. You’ll look away before she does. She has done well for herself, with the voice and the clothes and the bearing of her.

  If it were not for that irresistible scowl and that unmistakable hair, would he have recognised her? But then, the heart always knows those long ago loved, even when new liveries confuse the eye and new songs confound the ear. Does Ruby know the stories that surround her? That she was an Irish street-rat rescued from the rookery by a gentleman surgeon who held her to be (ah now, this is a stretcher!) as the orphaned daughter of a great Dublin doctor. That despite her respectable appearance (it is rumoured among low company) she wears a dagger strapped to her thigh and keeps poisonous darts in her boot heels. That she speaks as she finds, judges no woman or man better or worse than her, feels deeply the blows dealt to others and can hold both her drink and a tune. Ruby Doyle meanders back to his favourite spot, to muse on all he knows and all he doesn’t know about Bridie Devine, lighting his pipe with the fierce blue flame of the afterlife.

  The curate of Highgate Chapel is battling the locked door to the crypt with his collar pulled up and his hat pulled down. On seeing Bridie his face betrays surprise, which turns to displeasure when she reminds him of her business. The vicar is expecting her in relation to the delicate matter of the walled-up corpse. The curate fixes Bridie with a look of profound begrudgement and, managing to unlock the door, leads her into the crypt.

  The corpse is propped in an alcove behind loose boards. Discovered by workmen clearing up after a flood, now abated. More than a few Highgate residents blame both the flood and the resurrected corpse on Bazalgette’s subterranean rummagings. All well and good creating a sewerage system that will be the envy of the civilised world, but should one really delve into London’s rancid belly? London is like a difficult surgical patient; however cautious the incision anything and everything is liable to burst out. Dig too deep and you’re bound to raise floods and bodies, to say nothing of deadly miasmas and eyeless rats with foot-long teeth. The rational residents of Highgate defend Mr Bazalgette as a first-rate engineer and deny the existence of eyeless rats.

  The corpse had been immured in an alcove; its shackles and wide-socketed expression of terror suggest foul play. This poor soul met this fate an age ago, lessening police interest in the case. This is a bygone crime in a city flooded with new crimes.

  The coppers are up to the hub in it: London is awash with the freshly murdered. Bodies appear hourly, blooming in doorways with their throats cut, prone in alleyways with their heads knocked in. Half-burnt in hearths and garrotted in garrets. Folded into trunks or bobbing about in the Thames, great bloated shoals of them.

  Bridie has a talent for the reading of corpses: the tale of life and death written on every body. Because of this talent Bridie’s old friend, Inspector Valentine Rose of Scotland Yard, passes her the odd case – with the understanding that she stops short of a post-mortem, her unqualified status being a bar to this procedure. The cases usually have two things in common, other than having piqued Rose’s interest: bizarre and inexplicable deaths, and victims drawn from society’s flotsam (pimps, whores, vagrants, petty criminals and the insane). For her considered opinion Bridie receives a stipend (paid, unbeknownst to Bridie, from the pocket of Rose himself) and signs her report with an illegible signature. If anyone asks, her name is Montague Devine. In the event that she is called to give evidence, she’ll give it in a frock coat and collar.

  With the curate’s help Bridie clears the remaining stones from the alcove. The crypt is a grim space, with a vaulted ceiling and flagstone floor. As with many subterranean, lightless places it has the climate of a year-round winter. The recent flood has left a rich, peaty smell not unlike a dug bog.

  The corpse, a woman, Bridie judges, by size and apparel, is well preserved, allowing for her lengthy entombment. A macabre spectacle decked in finery. There is a cruel theatricality to her, costumed as if for a tableau vivant. A tragic heroine, a goddess – an unknown figure from history! Her gown, rotten now, could be Grecian, Roman. Her pale hair, shedding in clumps, falls onto withered shoulders. Bridie divines last moments spent shackled by the neck in the suffocating dark. It is there in the open mouth, stiffened around a howl.

  The curate fusses with the lamp, swearing under his breath. He is a young man with an unfavourable look about him. Slight of stature and large of head, with light-brown hair that cleaves thinly to an ample cranium with bumps and contours enough to astound even a practised phrenologist. His complexion is as wan and floury as an overcooked potato and his mouth was made for sneering. Otherwise, Bridie notes, he is shabbily dressed for a curate and vaguely familiar.

  ‘Sir, have we met?’ she asks.

  The curate regards her blankly. ‘I think not, Miss—’

  ‘Mrs Devine – I didn’t catch your name, sir.’

  ‘Cridge.’

  Bridie resumes the examination. Trying to ignore Mr Cridge straining to see past her.

  The corpse’s injuries (bone-deep lacerations to her right arm, three broken fingers, shattered mandible, fractured orbital) tell a dark story. A shawl hides her left arm. Bridie carefully unwraps it.

  ‘She has a child,’ she says.

  A baby, swaddled, no bigger than a turnip, lies in a sling beneath the folds of its mother’s shawl. Bridie feels a flood of pity. There hadn’t even been space to sit, pressed as they were into a shallow recess, so this woman had died standing and her baby had perished alongside her.

  Mr Cridge leans in nearer and bites his lip, wearing an expression of ghoulish excitement. Bridie is offended on the victims’ behalf.

  ‘If this is at all disturbing for you, Mr Cridge, I suggest you leave me to it.’

  ‘I’m not in the least disturbed. How old is the infant?’

  ‘At death: a few months old. It suckles still on its mother’s finger.’ Bridie peers closer. ‘The baby isn’t suckling the mother’s finger, it’s gnawing it.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ The curate raises his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Apologies.’

  Bridie frowns. ‘The lantern, Mr Cridge, as near as you can, please.’

  Bridie sees the baby’s face, wizened now, its features vague and leathery
. Bridie puts the tip of her finger into the infant’s tiny mouth cavity, gently pushing past the mother’s shrivelled digit.

  ‘They are like pike’s teeth,’ she says, astonished. ‘Irregular needles in the upper and lower jaw, sharp yet.’

  ‘How about that . . .’ murmurs Mr Cridge.

  ‘I will need to remove the corpses for a thorough examination in decent light.’

  ‘That will be impossible,’ says Mr Cridge sourly. ‘At least, not possible today.’

  ‘It must be today; the police will expect my report.’

  ‘The vicar is out.’

  ‘Then I shall wait for him.’

  ‘I will raise this matter with him directly he returns, Mrs Devine.’

  ‘Please make sure that you do, Mr Cridge.’

  The curate turns from the corpse to Bridie with a look of such concentrated enmity she is in no doubt: if he could, he’d shove her into the alcove and wall it up again.

  Mr Cridge closes and locks the gate behind them and pockets the key.

  ‘I would strongly advise you to keep the nature of this discovery to yourselves, Mr Cridge,’ says Bridie. ‘London has a taste for aberrations.’

  ‘I can assure you that this matter will attract the utmost discretion on our part. Good day to you, Mrs Devine.’ The curate puts his hat on, bows resentfully and heads off towards the vicarage.

  Bridie surveys the chapel-yard: it is empty of partially clad, imaginary dead pugilists. Then she catches sight of it, bobbing into view above the top of the wall: a top hat. A hat that has known better days, dented of body, misshapen of rim and transparent. With a firm hold of her case Bridie takes flight, around the side of the chapel and out through the back gate. She continues along the street alone – once or twice glancing back over her shoulder, with a mixture of relief and something approaching disappointment.

  Bridie, crypt-cold to the bone, is glad to be above ground. As she descends Highgate Hill, below her, in the acidulated smoke atmosphere, London glimmers. She follows the hidden Fleet townward, as the sky darkens and street-lamps are lit and the gas-lights are turned up in shops and public houses. Past St Giles, Little Ireland, where the tenements totter and the courts run vile with vice. New Oxford Street marches down the middle. The Irish hop over it and spread out to the north, forming new footholds. They have flooded this town, wave after wave of them, spilling out from their rookeries to perch in all places. On the south side the buildings turn their backs on the main road, leaning inwards, like gaunt conspirators. Change is always drawing near. Innovation waits like an offstage actor, primed and ready in the wings, biting its lip and grinning. Rag-plugged windows and crumbling bricks will give way to open landscapes of stone and sky.