The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë by Laura Joh Rowland Read Free Book Online Page B

Lock of Birmingham. Perhaps he could help you identify her killer.”
    Irritation flushed Constable Dixon’s face. “Perhaps he could, miss; then again, perhaps not.” His expression deemed me a foolish, hysterical female. “The police ’ave enough to do without chasin’ all over England.”
    “Then you won’t investigate Miss White’s death any further?” I said, alarmed by his apparent intention to dismiss the murder as the work of a stranger impossible to locate. Tremors wracked my body, Anne blotted perspiration from my forehead, and I feared I would be sick at any moment.
    “I shall refer the matter to my superiors,” Constable Dixon said pompously, “and if they think any investigatin’ is in order, it shall be done. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Brontë?” He touched the brim of his hat in farewell, adding, “You’d best get yourself to bed. You’re lookin’ a bit poorly.”

    I must interrupt my account of what happened to me after Isabel White’s death and direct attention towards another segment in the tapestry of my story. Reader, look away from poor Charlotte Brontë huddled on her chair, and focus your mind’s eye upon the crowd in Paternoster Row. Do you discern one man who observes the proceedings with particular interest? He is perhaps thirty-five years of age, his lean, strong figure clad in dark coat, trousers, and hat. The features of his lean, swarthy face have the proud sharpness of a falcon’s; they are framed by unruly black hair. Do you see his eyes—a brilliant, crystalline grey in hue—fixed hard upon me?
    I was too preoccupied to notice him and did not learn until later that he was there. His name is John Slade, although some people—including myself—knew him by various other names. Mr. Slade, having listened to the exchange, watched my sister lead me into the Chapter Coffee House. His countenance betrayed no reaction to what he had witnessed. He hurried from Paternoster Row, hailed a hansom cab, and rode along Fleet Street and the bustling Strand, through Covent Garden, and alit in Seven Dials. Along the narrow, tortuous cobbled streets, soot-blackened windows gazed like blind eyes from grimy, crumbling tenements. Deep open gutters reeked of excrement; rats and stray dogs foraged in rubbish tips. Seven Dials is a place of despair, and none live there but the desperate.
    Mr. Slade cast his brilliant grey glance around him. Toothless old women sat on stoops; waifish children swarmed; beggars and vagrants wandered, and a man wheeled a cart full of bones and rags. After ascertaining that no one was watching him, Mr. Slade walked up the steps of a tenement and through the open door. A dim hall stank of urine and cabbage. Rude speech, babies’ cries, and the clatter of crockery emanated from the many rooms. He climbed the rotting stairs to the attic and tried the door. When he found it locked, he took from his pocket a picklock, opened the door, and entered the room, shutting himself inside.
    A sloped, bare-raftered ceiling and stained plaster walls enclosed a bed, a chair, and a dresser. Light seeped through a small, grimy window. Mr. Slade spied a carpetbag patterned with red roses standing on the worn floorboards. He dumped the contents on the bed. He briefly examined, then set aside, a woman’s garments. Wrapped in a fringed, India silk shawl he found a ticket for a ship scheduled to sail for Marseilles the next day. He searched the dresser, then looked under the bed and the mattress and behind the furniture; he scanned the walls and the ceiling for cracks, and he tested the floor for loose boards.
    He found nothing.
    Mr. Slade cursed under his breath. Then he made the bed, replaced the furniture, and repacked the carpetbag. He departed the room, locked the door, hurried outside, and caught another cab to a tavern near Exchange Alley.
    The Five Coins Tavern is a haunt of minor bankers and merchants; it occupies an ancient brick and plaster building with crooked timbers.