Winter of Despair Read online

  ‘I hope to goodness,’ he said, ‘that I would never have been inveigled into committing one of those sins, that I would not steal, or gamble, or covet my neighbour’s wife, or frequent low dens of iniquity or seduce a very young girl … but if I did and was faced with dishonour and disgrace, well what alternatives would be open to me?’

  I did not answer. I didn’t suppose that I was expected to. I could see that he was trying to put himself into the shoes of one of the subjects of these pictures.

  ‘I suppose,’ he continued, ‘Milton-Hayes’ victims were faced with two alternatives. One, pay the sum of money that he demanded, and so swell the man’s coffers. Or secondly, get rid of the man; kill him.’

  ‘The second would be the surer method,’ I said, trying to sound sagacious. I began to be more cheerful when I thought of the number of people that could have been involved in this blackmail plot. When it came to police suspicions, well, Charley was only one of at least eight people featured in those paintings that we had discovered. ‘There would be no guarantee that he would destroy the picture even if he promised to do so, would there be? Another demand might come a month later,’ I finished.

  ‘Indeed!’ Dickens nodded his head emphatically. ‘And so, my friend, we have a dead body and a slashed painting, though fortunately others were left untouched and despite the blank faces, they may help in the tracing of the person that did this deed. And now let’s make haste out of this fog and into your mother’s hospitable premises. I have a feeling that this is going to prove to be a most interesting evening.’

  I said nothing in reply. Interesting for him, I thought, but for me, with every detail from the painting Taken in Adultery fresh in my mind and above all the picture in my mind of that young man, his arms around the young woman, and him with the very distinctive red-gold hair, so carefully painted that it was the first thing that I noticed.

  And what had struck me would, doubtless, strike the inspector as soon as he met Charley. I didn’t care too much about the death of Milton-Hayes, but I cared intensely for the life of my younger brother.

  SIX

  Sesina was the one that opened the front door to the peremptory double knock. She had been on edge all of the afternoon. All was ready for the party. Mrs Barnett and Dolly were busy in the kitchen, Mrs Collins had retired to her bedroom to get dressed, Mr Wilkie was out and Mr Charles had refused lunch, just had immured himself in his painting room. Sesina had gone in once or twice under the pretext of seeing to the fire, but each time he was just stretched on the sofa, gazing at the ceiling and he would not address a word to her.

  So when the knocker sounded she had the door open in under a minute. A cabbie with a sealed note.

  ‘Mr Charles Collins,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘I’m to wait for an answer.’

  ‘Come in,’ she said. Nice looking young fellow. Might get something out of him.

  ‘Dreadful fog out there,’ he said, removing his hat and shaking the wet from his coat.

  ‘What about your passenger? Is he all right? Doesn’t want to come in, too, does he?’

  ‘It’s a woman,’ he said. ‘She’s all right. Got a roof over her head.’ Hoarse voice. These cabbies were out in all weathers, standing perched up behind their passengers, reins over the roof, all the rain and fog dripping down over them and wet slobber from the streets sloshing up against their legs. She’d never known one that didn’t have a permanent cold in his head. She was tempted to take him downstairs to the kitchen for a warm drink, but she’d better deliver the note first.

  The door to the painting room was locked. It took two knocks before Mr Charles came to the door. She had been on the point of knocking again, but then heard a sound, not words, just a groan which went through her heart. Then he was at the door, paler than ever.

  ‘I’ve a note for you, Mr Charles. A cabbie brought it. There’s a lady waiting in the cab outside.’

  He tore it open, really tore the envelope. Hands shaking, eyes staring. Hair needed brushing. She’d love to have done it for him.

  But then he was running down the stairs. No hat, no coat, not a minute to think. Didn’t even close his door behind him. Running down the stairs as fast as he could go. She followed as quickly as possible, but heard the front door slam as she crossed the drawing-room landing.

  The cabbie was still in the hall when she came down the stairs. Comfortable as you please. Sitting on one of the best chairs with a cushion at his back.

  ‘Your horse will run away if you’re not careful,’ she said. She was dying to open the front door and see who was in the cab, but she didn’t want to seem to be spying.

  ‘Not him,’ said the cabbie. ‘Quietest horse in London. Too old for any capers. Glad of the rest.’

  ‘Better make sure,’ she said and went to the door and opened it a slit, just enough for her to be able to peer out. The horse was still there, his reins tied to the gas pole.

  ‘Looks like your fare is gone, though,’ she said over her shoulder and had the satisfaction of seeing him jump to his feet and join her.

  ‘Nah, not her.’ He was peering over her shoulder. ‘Having a walk, the pair of them, ain’t they?’

  Sesina narrowed her eyes. Hard to tell much from the back view. Had an umbrella too. He had taken it from her – always the gentleman, Mr Charles. Holding it over her, head turned looking down at her. And now they were stopped, standing face to face.

  ‘What’s she like, your fare. Don’t tell me that you didn’t get a good look at her?’ she said to the cabbie.

  ‘Young. Not much more than a girl. Good figure, a bit thin for my taste, but the gentry like them thin,’ he said. ‘Now I’m different. I like ’em small and plump.’ He slipped an arm around her waist and she ignored that for the moment. The two figures had turned and were coming back. Sesina elbowed the cabbie back into the hallway and just allowed a chink between the hall door and its frame. They were definitely returning and she wondered whether Mr Charles had persuaded the girl to come into the house. But no, they stopped just by the back of the cab. He opened the door for her and she handed him something. Sesina strained her eyes, could see nothing for a moment, but then they moved underneath the gas light overhead. A small box, she thought, like a pill box, studded with jewels. She could see them flash as the box was passed from hand to hand. And then the girl got into the cab.

  ‘Better get back. Your fare might make off with your horse.’ Sesina threw open the hall door. She wanted to get Mr Charles back indoors, didn’t want him going off in the fog. Might forget all about the party. She wondered if the lady visitor could be that Mrs Molly French. Ever so romantic, if it was. And she had given him a little present. Sesina was glad that she had put the pair of them sitting side by side for the party tonight. Didn’t want to give him his present then. Her husband would be keeping an eye on her. She’d have a good look at this Mrs Molly when she was serving tonight. In the meantime, she’d get Mr Charles indoors and make sure that he had his hot water in plenty of time to wash and shave and his nice new suit laid out ready to wear.

  ‘Go on, get down there,’ she hissed to the cabbie and hoped he’d have the sense to get off the steps before Mr Charles came up them. She watched anxiously, but it was all right. The cabbie had gone to the back of the cab, untied the reins, and then walked round to the horse’s head and waited there until the young man mounted the steps.

  ‘Nasty fog, Mr Charles,’ she said cheerfully as he came through the door.

  He did not reply, but clenched into his hand was the small, jewel-studded box. Perhaps a present. A ring? Or perhaps some of them new shirt studs. Mr Wilkie had a present of a couple of pairs of them. He had shown them to her, one day.

  Whatever it was, he would probably wear it tonight, as a secret signal between them both.

  For a moment Sesina felt a pang of jealousy. Nice to be rich, to be a lady, to have beautiful clothes. But when it came down to it, Sesina was the one that would save him. This Molly might be having a bit of fun
, but she would stick to her rich husband. Ladies were like that.

  SEVEN

  Wilkie Collins, Hide and Seek, 1854:

  If the rich proprietors of the “mansions” in the “park” could give their grand dinners, and be as prodigal as they pleased with their first-rate champagne, and their rare gastronomic delicacies; the poor tenants of the brick boxes could just as easily enjoy their tea-garden conversazione, and be just as happily and hospitably prodigal, in turn, with their porter-pot, their teapot, their plate of bread-and-butter, and their dish of shrimps. Not so with the moderate incomes: they, in their social moments, shrank absurdly far from the poor people’s porter and shrimps; crawled contemptibly near to the rich people’s rare wines and luxurious dishes; exposed their poverty in imitation by chemical champagne from second-rate wine merchants, by flabby salads and fetid oyster-patties from second-rate pastry-cooks; were, in no one of their festive arrangements, true to their incomes, to their order, or to themselves; and, in very truth, for all these reasons and many more, got no real enjoyment out of their lives, from one year’s end to another.

  My mother was in a bad mood when Dickens and I arrived at home. She greeted Dickens, never a great favourite of hers, in a fairly cursory manner and then launched into a stream of complaints. How she slaved and slaved to please her sons and how neither of them ever lifted a finger to help. One of them went walking around the town and the other shut himself up in his bedroom. Not an offer of help from either of them and then there was all that she had to do and the care that she had taken and how one of the guests, not a woman that she liked or would ever have invited if the guest list had been left to her, that Hermione Gummidge, had the unbelievable nerve to interrupt her preparations and to demand, ‘Yes! Demand!’ said my mother with huge emphasis, that she rearrange the table, undo all of her hard work, just solely in order that the woman’s plain and tongue-tied daughter, Florence, could be moved to sit beside the man of the moment, the man, who unlike her idle sons, made a fortune from his work.

  ‘No, Florence is not tongue-tied; she just never has a chance to get a word in as her mother keeps talking all of the time; just like Charley and myself. We can never get a word in edgewise,’ I said. I had learned by experience that the way to handle my mother, when she’s in one of those moods, is always not to answer any of her real complaints but to seize on some small detail and to set up an argument about it. Dickens had taken himself off and was busy wandering around the table in the dining room, re-adjusting a glass here or there, and coolly picking up the name cards and inspecting them. I took out an imaginary sword, waved it in the air and I prepared to defend my analysis of Florence Gummidge to the bitter death, hoping to trick my mother into laughing, but then something she said earlier suddenly penetrated and I dropped my hands to my sides.

  ‘What’s wrong with Charley, Mamma?’

  My mother might have a hot temper, but she was the soul of loving kindness to her two sons. Now her annoyance had vanished and she stood very still. For a moment she appeared as though she were holding her breath and her fingers opened and closed a couple of times as though she sought for words or for an explanation, or perhaps to capture a feeling or an apprehension.

  ‘I don’t know, Wilkie,’ she said after a minute. ‘Perhaps he’ll tell you.’

  I doubted it. Charley was always very close to his mother, close to both parents, very influenced by them in every respect, but in awe of his father and the baby of his mother. I was the rebel, the one who insisted on going his own way. Nevertheless, I knew that I would try.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll run upstairs in a minute.’ I hesitated for a moment. I had to tell her about Edwin Milton-Hayes and I had to tell her about Inspector Field’s visit, bearing these last works from a dead man. Now I wished that I had come out with it instantly, the minute I had come into the room, instead of having silly conversations about Florence Gummidge and her bumptious mother. This news about Charley shutting himself into his bedroom was bound to connect in her mind with the visit from the police.

  There was a look of apprehension in her eyes. She had picked up something from my expression and her mouth tightened. She had never been easy to deceive. Dickens, who had finished his examination of the table and of the fourteen places named in my mother’s fine Italian hand, turned back to look at us and then strolled across to the window, twitching the Pompeian red curtains into a mathematically exact similitude. My mother did not even look at him and that was most unusual for her. He always annoyed her when he fiddled with mirrors and rearranged furniture.

  ‘What is it?’ she said quietly to me.

  There was nothing I could do, no way of glossing over the facts, no point in trying to break it gently now, no course open to me except to tell the truth.

  ‘Milton-Hayes is dead,’ I said. ‘He has been murdered. Someone murdered him probably with a canvas-cutting knife.’

  ‘Murdered,’ she said. There was an odd note, almost of hysteria in her voice. The sound attracted Dickens’ attention. He turned again and this time he stood very still and kept his eyes on us, but he did not approach, didn’t come to add his words to mine. I looked across at him, looked an appeal, but he did not move and I suppose that he was right. This was a time for family and family only. I turned back to my mother, taking her cold hand in mine. And then, almost as though she had been stunned by the blow of my words, she looked, wide-eyed across at the table and said in a stupefied tone, ‘But I’ve just written a card for him, put him beside me on purpose, well away from Charley …’

  My mother had always wanted to be an actress and at times like these her full histrionic powers came into force. I had to go on, though I hated to do it, hated to spoil her little drama. But she needed to know the full seriousness of the news.

  ‘An inspector of the police, Inspector Field, is coming here tonight, Mamma. Milton-Hayes painted some pictures, very strange pictures, they may depict people we know, show them to their disadvantage; perhaps be food for blackmail. I think he was going to cause trouble when he … if he …’

  ‘Trouble,’ she repeated. ‘Trouble for Charley …’ And then she stopped and when she spoke again, her voice was brisk and assured. ‘Go and change, Wilkie. Mr Dickens and I will go up to the drawing room and prepare to receive the guests. You and Charley come and join us there as soon as you are ready. Make sure that you bring him down with you.’

  And then she swept out of the room, her head held high.

  ‘A tigress in defence of her young,’ murmured Dickens. I went towards the door, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm. ‘What was that fight about, Wilkie?’

  I didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. Everyone in our set had heard about the fight. ‘Charley painted a picture, some years ago, must be in 1850 or 1851,’ I explained. ‘It’s called Thoughts in a Convent Garden. Milton-Hayes made a mockery of it. And, of course, Charley was still sore about the Rossetti girl, Maria Rossetti, going off to be a nun and rejecting him and when …’ I could not go on. Charley with his hands around the man’s throat. I had found it difficult to believe that my gentle, sweet-natured little brother had turned into a savage wolf.

  And now. And now the memory of the terrible slashing wounds across the dead man’s face and neck came to me and the bile rose to my mouth, but I did my best to speak, to try to banish the picture at the back of my mind.

  ‘Charley is incapable of murder. He is a very gentle fellow,’ I said hoarsely, but I did remember how it had taken two of Charley’s friends, Millais and Holman Hunt, to drag him off Milton-Hayes and to unfasten his hands from the man’s neck. I still seemed to see those red marks on that thick neck. Although it had happened so many years ago, I had still been amazed when Charley had not only consented to work for Milton-Hayes, but had even requested my mother to hold a dinner party where the man could show off his latest paintings. Now I began to understand.

  Dickens patted me on the arm. ‘Go to him, Wilkie, get him downstairs; get him to ta
ke his place at the table as though nothing had happened. Tell him to pull himself together. Don’t underestimate Inspector Field. He has a dogged persistence and he will question all who are present here tonight and he will question and re-question until he feels that he has established the truth. Charley needs to have his wits about him.’

  He left me then, springing up the stairs in his sprightly fashion. I heard him open the drawing-room door with some quip to my mother. And then the door closed and the two were in there together.

  And so I went slowly up the stairs after him, not pausing by the drawing room, but continuing on upstairs. I could hear Dickens cheerily teasing my mother about her dinner-table arrangements, reminding her how, when he and Millais had quarrelled over the Millais picture of the Christ Child in his father’s workshop, that she had deliberately put them side by side during a long and merry dinner and they had ended up as good friends. My mother had been very triumphant about that and told half of London about her success and how she had made a menu of twice the usual length, where dish after dish had been served, and how she had chosen food that needed lots of chewing, all so that the two enemies, seated side by side, had eventually ended the long drawn-out dinner as the best of friends.

  I couldn’t raise a smile at the memory, though. Dickens’ last words rang in my ear. Good advice, but my brother Charley never did have his wits about him, never was able to stand up for himself. When we were children he was a gentle, scrupulous, worried boy, four years younger than myself and he had grown into a gentle, scrupulous man who went through torments of self-doubt and agonies of fear for his immortal soul, the sort of person who feared that he might be damned if he stayed out to the small hours of the morning. I had to save him from himself, I decided as I went to find him.

  I knew where he would be.

  My mother, when she had leased this house in Hanover Terrace, had made generous provision for both of her adult sons. I had my study and Charley had his painting room with its north light. And that is where I went.