A Christmas Hope: A Novel Read online

  It was a mild and very pleasant evening, but Claudine was unaware of it. Even had it been snowing and carolers had been at the door, she would have been unable to think of Christmas or any other kind of rejoicing. She decided to occupy her mind with writing letters but found her attention wandering, and what she was saying was far from the kind of happy message people wanted to hear at this time of the year.

  At seven o’clock Wallace returned home. Over dinner he looked down the length of the carved oak table and regarded her with heavy satisfaction.

  “The unfortunate woman died,” he told her. “The beating he gave her must have been more violent than we assumed at the time. I imagine now you will not be so eager to defend him.” He gave no preamble of explanation, as if she would understand exactly what he meant.

  Indeed she did, but his words still seemed to her unnecessarily cold.

  “I know she is dead,” Claudine replied without looking up at him. “I was there when she went.”

  “There? What do you mean?” he said abruptly. “Where?”

  “At the hospital, of course.” She was in no mood to cushion her reply. The situation still felt very raw: the pain, the sheer aloneness of the young woman, as if neither her life nor her leaving of it mattered to anyone.

  “What on earth were you doing at the hospital?” he demanded.

  Her anger was gone, washed away as quickly as it had come. “Visiting her, to see if there was anything I could do for her. I thought it very possible no one else would,” she replied.

  He opened his mouth to say something then changed his mind. He ate several more mouthfuls of roast beef before he spoke again.

  “It changes the matter, of course,” he said, staring down the length of the table at Claudine. “It’s not just assault now, it’s murder.” He waited for her response.

  “She was dying anyway,” she said without looking up at him. “The doctor said she wouldn’t have lived more than another month or two, regardless.”

  “You amaze me sometimes, Claudine,” Wallace said with a wince of pain.

  “Do I? Life on the street is hard. Many such women die young. So what is it exactly that amazes you?”

  “It angers me”—he pronounced the words carefully—“that you, of all people, should say that since the poor woman was ill anyway, it doesn’t matter so much that she was beaten to death a little sooner. I thought you to have some compassion, at least for the fallen ones of your own gender. I’m disappointed that you should be so … so filled with uncharitable judgment.”

  She put down her knife and fork. They rattled on the china from the shaking of her hands. “It matters that we use her,” she said between her teeth. “It matters that we leave her on the streets cold and hungry. It matters that we abuse her, shut her out, that we mock her and strike her and then leave her to die alone in hospital. But it also matters if we charge someone with murdering her when they may well not have been solely responsible for her death. And it matters if we are sufficiently hypocritical to say it is murder if Dai Tregarron struck her, but if it had been Cecil Crostwick or Creighton Foxley who did, we would call it an unfortunate accident.”

  “You omitted mentioning Ernest Halversgate,” he said with an edge of sarcasm. “Had you forgotten his name?”

  “Ernest Halversgate hasn’t the gumption to hit a rice pudding, let alone a living person,” she snapped back at him.

  “A rice pudding?” He looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Hypocrisy. Did I not say so?”

  “I think you had better go and lie down. The strain has been too much for you. You should attempt to do less. You are overtired.”

  She crossed her knife and fork on her plate to signify that she had finished. “I have done nothing at all, except sit with an unconscious woman while she died,” she told him. “Perhaps if I had done a little more I would feel better.”

  Wallace smiled. “You are quite right. I’m glad you perceive that at last. You should busy yourself with the pleasantness of Christmas, keep up with the social acquaintances who matter to us. There will be more parties, the theater, and possibly the opera. It is a season of rejoicing. Perhaps you should see your dressmaker and get one or two more gowns. Something of a warm color would be appropriate. Not vulgar, of course, but perhaps less … less plain than you usually get.

  “This whole matter is best forgotten as soon as possible. I’m sure the police will catch Tregarron sooner or later. The man’s a drunkard. He won’t be hard to find. You won’t be called upon to say anything. The evidence speaks for itself. But if there’s a trial, then no doubt Foxley, and perhaps Gifford, will say all that’s necessary.”

  Claudine could think of nothing to say. He was talking about murder and retribution in the same breath as a new gown for the opera. It stung her like vinegar in an open wound, and yet she sat silent. She despised her own cowardice, but she also realized she had no words to rebut anything he said.

  And who was to say Dai Tregarron was innocent, anyway? She wanted him to be, but she had no evidence of it. She was merely a naïve dreamer, without the courage of a visionary.

  In the morning the newspapers reported that Dai Tregarron was still on the run, hiding from the police and now wanted for murder. They made much of it because his writing was admired by the literary establishment, even if his life was not. His best work, lyrical with his love of the hills and the skies of Wales, was quoted by way of illustrating how a brilliant mind had been destroyed by immorality and the abuse of drink.

  They also pointed out that his flight had not in any way at all helped his case, and pleaded for him to come forward and surrender himself to justice rather than risk being injured—or worse—if captured by force.

  Claudine never read the newspapers in front of Wallace. He had long ago given up attempting to make sure she chose only those parts that were suitable for women. Still, she preferred to read in private rather than under his disapproving eye. Today she was glad he had already departed for the work he did so well and so did not see how deeply the comments distressed her. He would have lectured her on the foolishness of concerning herself with people who were both socially and morally beneath her. He might have added, yet again, that she should occupy herself with suitable preparations for Christmas.

  Even more dangerous was the risk that he would use the intensity of her reactions to this tragedy to end her work at the clinic. She could imagine the satisfaction in his face as he told her it was entirely for her own good.

  She had tried before to tell him how important it was to her, and his incomprehension had wounded her far more than he had realized. It had left her with an awareness that underneath the outward trappings of marriage, the obligations of law and society, they shared almost nothing.

  She despised herself for retreating from him, but it was a matter of preserving herself, keeping the small flame of hope alight inside her.

  And she was afraid for Dai Tregarron. Public opinion had already judged him and found him guilty. If there was any doubt left, then the Foxleys and the Crostwicks would soon put an end to it. With poor Winnie Briggs dead, Tregarron faced the rope.

  For more than two hours Claudine worked on household accounts and petty domestic problems, but her attention was so divided as to make it necessary to do half the jobs again. When she had added a column of figures three times, and obtained three different answers, she finally gave up and admitted to herself that she could not disregard the fact that she did not believe Dai Tregarron was guilty. She must at least attempt to help him. In a sense the die was already cast; she had lied to the police on the morning after the attack, when the case was not murder, although it was certainly assault. She could say she had not believed Tregarron guilty, but that was not an excuse for giving him food and then denying to the police that she had seen him. She could not even claim that she had been afraid for herself. He had been gone by that time, and they would know that as well as
she did. Heaven only knew what motive they might attribute to her! Considering his reputation with women, she preferred not to entertain that train of thought.

  But what could she do for him—and, for that matter, herself? Where could she find active or useful help?

  There were only three people she knew of who could provide any sort of assistance. Ideally, she would’ve liked to go to Hester and her husband, William Monk. However, Monk was head of the Thames River Police at Wapping. He would therefore be obliged to arrest Tregarron if he could find him, and possibly even to charge Claudine with aiding his escape! All of which would also place Hester in an impossible situation.

  Claudine could not do that.

  The only solution was the one she had considered first and decided she could not bring herself to adopt. She must ask Squeaky Robinson for his help. Squeaky was the highly disreputable bookkeeper at the clinic. His past was unspeakable, filled with details even he would no longer discuss. At the time of Monk’s first encounter with him, he had been keeping a large and thriving brothel in the buildings that were now the Portpool Lane Clinic. How he had been duped out of their ownership was a long and complicated story.

  Afterward he had become the bookkeeper to the new enterprise as a means of survival. Monk had given him no alternative, other than losing everything and finding himself on the street, without a roof over his head or a livelihood, painfully vulnerable to his many enemies.

  Squeaky had had responsibility forced upon him, but in spite of his many complaints about it, he had over time become rather fond of it.

  He had originally regarded Claudine as an ugly and useless woman, only accepted as a volunteer in the clinic because Hester hadn’t the steel in her backbone to say no to anyone. Squeaky had learned his mistake in that regard fairly quickly. Hester had nursed soldiers on the battlefields of the Crimea, and he soon found that she had enough steel in her soul to equip an army.

  Claudine he had learned to respect rather more slowly, and with considerable reluctance.

  In turn, she had accepted him as almost human only when a sudden burst of compassion had driven him to rescue her from a rather spectacular piece of foolishness, which he had never given away to the others at the clinic. She had no choice but to be grateful to him for that.

  So it was early in the afternoon of the second day after the unfortunate party, Claudine went to the clinic. This was more or less in keeping with her schedule, and at half past three she found the opportunity to speak to Squeaky Robinson in his office.

  He was older than she, though not by much, but life had used him hard. His long gray hair was a trifle stringy and sat on his collar. His face was cadaverous, snaggletoothed. His clothes were those of a dandy with dubious taste: a very well-worn frock coat, a white shirt cleaner than it used to be before the advent of his new respectability, and a cravat that was definitely more expensive and more elegantly tied than those of many gentlemen of means.

  She closed the door behind her. “I’d like to speak to you, Mr. Robinson,” she said formally. She was feeling awkward already, and she had not even begun.

  “If you’re wanting to ask about the money, it’s all right,” he said defensively. “We aren’t overspent.”

  “Good. But I’m not here about the money,” she answered. How like Squeaky to be off on the wrong foot from the beginning. “I need advice … perhaps help.”

  He looked at her suspiciously. “There’s no money to spare. I can tell you that before you even ask,” he warned.

  Since he was apparently not going to invite her to sit down, she did so anyway, in the chair on the opposite side of the desk from his rather large high-backed seat.

  “I don’t want money,” she replied. “I told you, I need advice.”

  He was still cautious, and rather unhappy. “What’ve you done?”

  She would like to have snapped back at him that she had not done anything, but if she did that, she would only have to retract the words later. As it was, this gave her the opportunity to tell him the truth.

  “I have accidentally become involved in a murder,” she replied, ignoring his horrified expression. His quill pen slid out of his hand and spurted ink over his papers.

  “It appeared to be merely misfortune at the time,” she continued. Now that she had begun, she was determined not to be interrupted. “A fight that became more unpleasant than was intended. However, the poor young woman died, so now the police believe it was murder. Although I think that that is overstating it a bit.”

  Squeaky stared at her as if she had suddenly turned into a monster in front of him. “God help us, woman! What have you done?” he squawked.

  She gulped. “I have helped someone … I helped Dai Tregarron escape from the police, although I didn’t know he would be accused of murder at the time,” she explained.

  “What did you think it was, for God’s sake, if the police were after him?” he accused her.

  She took a deep breath. “I told you, I thought it was just a fight that got rather … out of hand. The girl—Winnie Briggs—she wasn’t dead then,” she added.

  “If she wasn’t dead, why were the police after you … or … whoever?”

  “Because it was a nasty fight, and … and the wrong person was blamed. I think—”

  “You think?” His voice rose higher. “You think! If you had anything in your head to think with you’d have left the whole thing alone and got the hell out of … whatever it was! You didn’t think!”

  She felt angry and vulnerable. She was already perfectly aware that she had not exercised the best judgment. It only made it worse that Squeaky, the one person who might have helped her, had nothing to offer but blame. She responded with the greatest insult she could think of.

  “You sound just like my husband.”

  Squeaky paled. “That’s a terrible thing to say, Mrs. B. I’m cut to the heart!”

  She consolidated her advantage immediately. “Wallace will not even consider that the wrong man is being accused, because the other three who might have done it are all rich, respectable young men. The man accused, Tregarron, he drinks too much, is older, and has a somewhat dubious reputation,” she added for good measure.

  His eyes narrowed. “And why is it you think this drunkard is not guilty?” He knew her opinion of strong drink and those who overindulged in it.

  She was trapped and recognized his awareness of it immediately. She raised her chin in defiance, but finding the words was less easy. “Because he’s a womanizer,” she replied. “He has charm—in fact, he’s notorious for it. Why would he resort to violence? It’s stupid, and it’s unnecessary.”

  “Oh, well,” Squeaky said sarcastically, “nobody ever does anything stupid or unnecessary under the influence of drink. Everybody knows that!”

  “He’s a drinker, so he must be guilty,” she retorted. “I forgot.”

  “There’s no need to be snippy,” he replied. “What did you do, exactly?”

  His tone brought sharp and very unpleasant childhood memories to Claudine’s mind, of standing in her father’s study while he required her to explain her misbehavior and then be appropriately penitent.

  “He escaped from the immediate scene,” she replied stiffly.

  “How?” he asked at once. “I suppose you helped with that, too, did you?”

  “No, I did not! He came as a footman on my carriage, and I had no idea until the following morning …”

  Squeaky’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Do you think I look at footmen’s faces?” she snapped. “It was dark. The coachman didn’t notice, and I certainly didn’t. I ride inside my carriage, not on the footboard!”

  “Then how did you learn of it the following morning? He wasn’t still on the footboard, I presume?”

  Having to be this civil to Squeaky Robinson was a high price to pay for anything. She would rather have told him to mind his manners and be about the job he was paid for. But she simply could not afford to. “One of the maids found him in t
he stable and gave him something to eat,” Claudine explained. “She told me. I went out to see what she was talking about, and I found him. I gave him breakfast and sent him on his way.” She took a deep breath. “When the police came looking for him, sometime after that, I did not tell them I had seen him.”

  “Ah. Who looks after your horses?”

  “I sent the groom off on an errand. If he knew anything about it, either he has already told the police, or he’s not going to.”

  Squeaky pursed his lips. “And where is this drunkard now?”

  “I have no idea—”

  “Good,” he cut across her. “Leave it that way. If you should be asked by the police and they know he was there, say you didn’t recognize him. You can’t be expected to know every tramp by sight. Who the devil do they think you are? You found him sleeping in your stable. You fed him out of charity. You have nothing else to add. That’s my advice.” He smiled with satisfaction and reached for his pen, looking with disgust at its rather bent nib and then at the ink marks on the page he would now have to write again.

  “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “Now I need your advice to know what I can do to help him, to make sure that the police don’t arrest him and convict him, if he is innocent.”

  He raised his eyes slowly. “You have just crawled out of the fire, and now you want to jump back into it?”

  “I don’t want them to hang the wrong man!”

  “They aren’t going to hang anybody until they catch him, and they may not do that if he has any sense.”

  “He can’t live in hiding forever! And he shouldn’t have to, if he’s innocent,” she protested.

  “It shouldn’t rain on my birthday either, but it usually does. There’s nothing you can do about it.” He screwed up one of the ink-stained sheets of paper and threw it into the wastebasket.

  “When’s your birthday?” she asked.

  “February,” he replied. “What are you going to do about it? It always rains in February.”

  “Are you going to help me prove his innocence?”

  “No. I’m going to do something useful, like pay the bills. Leave me alone to get on with it.”