A Nemesis in Crinoline: the Eurasian courtesan as sleuth

Mirandi Riwoe Bachelor of Arts (Modern Asian Studies), Graduate Certificate (Creative Writing), Master of Arts (Research)

2016 PhD Creative Industries: Creative Writing and Literary Studies Queensland University of Technology

This thesis was submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the PhD

Abstract

This thesis contextualises and extends representations of the nineteenth-century fictional female detective, by way of creative practice and critical analysis. The practice led research incorporates textual analysis and reflective practice in order to triangulate neo-Victorian studies, crime fiction and the figure of Eurasian courtesan. I argue that aspects of women’s social position in relation to gender and race can be revealed via the craft of neo-Victorian crime writing and the ‘re-scripting’ of the Eurasian courtesan as fictional detective. My research findings not only disrupt depictions of the ‘sinister Oriental’ so popular in traditional crime novels, but also reveal that it was possible for certain working class women, sex- workers included, to have the necessary agency to detect in the Victorian period. The broad framework of transgression studies allows for an examination of genre (crime) and contextual issues of race and gender from the theoretical perspective of neo-Victorian studies. In re- imagining the nineteenth-century Eurasian courtesan in Playing Devil’s Delight the project adopts a creative writing approach to neo-Victorian studies.

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Key words courtesan; female detective; Eurasian/Asian; crime fiction; neo-Victorianism; ventriloquism; transgression; creative writing.

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Statement of Original Authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

QUT Verified Signature

23 October 2016 Mirandi Riwoe

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Acknowledgments

I would particularly like to thank my primary supervisor, Associate Professor Susan Carson, for her patience and guidance over the last few years. I have appreciated her continued support and interest in my work, and the teaching opportunities she has provided me. Thank you to my associate supervisor, Professor Sharyn Pearce, who is always so cheerfully encouraging. I would also like to thank Dr Lesley Hawkes for volunteering her support and advice over the years. Thank you to QUT Creative Industries for granting me an APA scholarship and for the opportunity to attend international conferences. Thank you also to the HDR team who are always so efficient and friendly. To all the other postgraduate students I have worked alongside over the past three years, thank you: Penny Holliday, Laura Elvery, Emma Doolan, Sarah Kanake, Chris Przewloka, Mark Piccini, Stephen Smith, Jo Hartmann, Belinda Eslick, Ben Carey and Madeleine Bendixen. I have learnt from all of you. Thank you to my writers’ groups, but especially to the crime fiction work-shopper extraodinaire, Emma Doolan. Thank you to my papa, a constant inspiration, and to my mum, for her advice and care. To my children for putting up with the cranky bear in the study, and to Dave, for his constant faith in me, especially when mine is at its lowest.

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Contents

Abstract ...... ii Key words ...... iii Statement of Original Authorship ...... iv Acknowledgments ...... v Contents ...... vi Creative Work ...... 1 Exegesis ...... 226 Chapter 1 Introduction...... 227 Exegetical Structure ...... 233 Key concepts ...... 234 Scope ...... 235 Research question ...... 237 Chapter 2 Methodology – Practice led neo-Victorianism ...... 238 Neo-Victorian Studies as Conceptual Framework ...... 238 Chapter 3 Theoretical Approaches ...... 247 Crime Fiction Theory ...... 247 Feminist Theory ...... 248 Transgression Theory...... 249 Chapter 4 Literature Review ...... 254 The Female Detective in Crime Fiction ...... 254 The Exotic Sleuth ...... 264 The Courtesan as neo-Victorian Detective ...... 270 Conclusion ...... 273 Chapter 5 Focus Texts: Analysis of Eleanor’s Victory and Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders ...... 274 Eleanor Vane a nemesis in crinoline ...... 274 Reading for transgressions ...... 275 Braddon and the conclusion of Eleanor’s Victory ...... 279 Braddon’s ethical impulse ...... 281 Kitty Peck the reluctant neo-Victorian detective ...... 282 Reading for transgressions ...... 284 How Kitty Peck informs Heloise – those ‘other Victorians’ ...... 286 Kitty Peck, Eleanor Vane and Orientalism ...... 288 Conclusion ...... 290 Chapter 6 Creative Reflection ...... 291 Playing Devil’s Delight – Crime fiction ...... 291 Creating the neo-Victorian ...... 297 The re-scripted Asian protagonist ...... 299 Heloise Chancey – courtesan detective ...... 304 Conclusion ...... 311 Chapter 7 Conclusion ...... 313

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Bibliography ...... 318

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Creative Work

Playing Devil’s Delight

(70 000 words)

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“Sin changes, you know, like fashion”

Marghanita Laski, The Victorian Chaise-Longue

“A superb Nemesis in crinoline, bent on deeds of darkness and horror”

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Eleanor’s Victory

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Prologue

Pain bursts through Nell’s abdomen, so intense it wrenches her awake. But her eyelids are heavy. She can’t quite open them. The opiates he’d injected into her arm are too strong.

He’s muttering to himself. There’s a jangle of metal.

The stench of vomit is strong, and the back of her thighs are wet. Has she pissed herself?

She watches his shadow through her eyelashes as he moves around the room. She wants to struggle, get away from this awful pain but her wrists are tied to the arms of a chair.

Her feet are bound, wide apart, in stirrups. And a terrible lethargy weighs upon her body.

He positions himself between her legs.

And the piercing agony starts up again.

She wants to scream to him to stop, but she’s too weak. And in any case, there’s something crammed into her mouth, something metallic. Sharp.

He murmurs soft words to her. He tells her he’ll be merciful. Presses a wad of cloth, bathed in something sweet, something acerbic, to her nose, her mouth. As she drifts off she thinks of how kind he is. She’s so thankful.

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Chapter One

The bedroom door closes softly behind him. I then hear the front door close.

Thank Christ. I sit up in bed and rub at the crick in my neck. I’ve been lying in the same decorous pose for some time, pretending to be asleep, conscious of his admiring gaze.

Two hours ago, while it was still dark and he’d snored and farted on his own side of the bed,

I’d taken a pee and chewed on mint washed down with water so my breath was fresh when he woke. I’d reclined, eyes closed, amongst my silk pillows, one arm flung above my head, mouth gently clamped shut. I lay slightly to the side, so that the fullness of my cleavage was accentuated. My sheer night dress fell away to reveal one rosy nipple, which tautened in the crisp morning air and I’d wondered if he would take it into his warm mouth, willed him to, almost squirmed with the anticipation of it, a giggle spiralling up my chest. But I hadn’t initiated anything. I was the sleeping kitten, the sleeping beauty, after all.

My night dress slips to the floor as I step out of bed and I look at my reflection in the dresser’s mirror, tilting my head from one side to the other. I pull my tousled dark hair forward, so that only the lower curve of my breasts are visible. Running my fingers over the small triangle of hair between my legs, I wish it was a shade lighter, so that I could colour it yellow or blue. That would amuse my lovers. I pose for a moment, a cross between the Greek nude I’d sneaked in to see at the Exhibition of ’51, and the girls ironically named ‘Chastity’ and ‘Faith’ in the photographs I keep in the bottom drawer of the nightstand. I pivot around to see the reflection of my pale bottom. I hate it, I’m embarrassed by it, ‘cause it’s small and firm. I will never be a Grande Odalisque. I want it to be rounded and heavy like the base of a vase. I want his fingers to be able to knead it like it’s biscuit dough.

Taking a step closer to the mirror I scrutinise my face. I’m vain, and I am not vain. I know I’m beautiful, but I know my beauty is to be utilised, tended. The winged eyebrows, the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/4 high cheek bones, and the full bottom lip that I pout as I gaze at myself. The colour of my eyes are changeable, depending upon my mood, or maybe even upon how much wine I’d enjoyed the night before; sometimes they’re as dark as a hazelnut, sometimes more green.

They are perfectly set off by my heart-shaped face, so I’m told. “Shimmering pools of melancholy, making thy heart ache” – isn’t that how that ridiculous poet had described my eyes? More like “shimmering pools of colic, making thy middles ache”. I grin, a deep dimple puckering my left cheek. I own my face, but so do others. I’m almost famous, infamous.

When I think of this I feel a flutter of excitement in the pit of my stomach, but I also feel a little sick like I’ve eaten too much custard. I’ve worked towards this for a long time, even before I knew what could be achieved. And of course now I have other strengths to work with besides this beauty. I have more to trade than just my body.

I hurry into my dressing room and tug on the bell pull. Wrenching open the door I call, “Amah, Amah, come help me dress. Sir Thomas will be here soon.” I’m already tying the ribbon on my silk underwear when Amah Li Leen enters. She’s a plump, middle-aged woman from the East. She’s wearing a plain, white blouse and black skirt, and her shiny black hair is coiled into a low bun. I never cease to be irritated by how she dresses. We’ve often argued about it. I want her to dress in colourful sarungs from Malaya or those heavy

Chinese smocks with the mandarin collars. I want her to fit in with the Oriental décor of my house. Furniture and art from the Orient are very much in style at the moment, and many men, especially those in shipping and diplomatic work, admire how I’ve decorated my rooms.

So she could at least look the part if my guests are to catch a glimpse of her. But she won’t.

She says she doesn’t want to stand out, although it’s almost as if her sober raiment accentuates her almond-shaped eyes, her bronzed skin colour.

“What is Sir Thomas visiting for, Heloise?” she asks as she helps me shrug into a sheer chemise. The faint cadence of a Liverpool accent is discernible in her speech.

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“His missive just said something about a number of suspicious deaths in the Waterloo area.”

“Why does he think this would be of interest to you?”

I gasp as she tightens my corset. “I am hoping he wants me to investigate.”

“Ridiculous,” she mutters, helping me step into a voluminous, crinoline hoop. “Nearly as ridiculous as this contraption.”

I wrinkle my nose at her clothing. Amah’s skirt is far narrower than what’s fashionable. “I would be mortified to be seen in your skirt, Amah.”

“Well, I’m used to it, aren’t I?

I laugh. “That’s a lie. If it were not so cold here, you would wear much less.” I look for an answering smile from her but, not receiving one, I shrug and sit down at my dressing table. Tears smart in my eyes as Amah Li Leen brushes and pulls my hair into fashionable loops, tutting that there is no time to curl the ends.

“What will you wear today?” she asks, as she moves to the dressing-room that houses my vast collection of gowns.

Gone are the days of wearing the same gown until it’s stiff with grime and drudgery – that one I had of grey batiste, bought for a song from the Belgian girl grown too large in the belly, that hid stains yet showed sweat under the arms or, later, the blue silk, which was more expensive but acquired the shine of poverty and overuse. I don’t even want to think of the creased, brown sheathes of leather I wore as shoes. The sour reek that wafted from my feet, embarrassing, distracting, as I grimaced with feigned pleasure pressed against a brick wall.

“How about the new lilac one with the orange-blossom trim?”

“I think maybe the dove-grey would be better for a meeting with Sir Thomas,” says

Amah. She comes back to the dressing table carrying the heavy gown across both her forearms and deposits it onto a plush armchair.

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I frown slightly. “I suppose you’re right. But I will wear the crimson petticoat beneath it.” She pulls the petticoat, then the dress, over my body. Although it does not reveal my shoulders, it is cinched in at the waist and cut low over my breasts. I dab perfumed powder across my neck and bosom. “Maybe just a little lace at the front,” I say, smiling. “I don’t need to show so much flesh for the work Sir Thomas offers me.”

I go to add something gay to my apparel, a flower or a feather, but there’s a hard rap on the door knocker and Bundle, my butler, answers the front door on the floor below.

“Hurry, Amah, tie my shoes,” I say, tapping my foot. “I wonder what Sir Thomas wants with me.”

I’m clasping down the sides of my gown to fit through the doorway when I notice the stiff expression on Amah’s face. I squeeze her arm and lean down to kiss her on the cheek.

“One day we’ll be back in the sunlight.”

I’m surprised to find two men in my drawing room. Sir Thomas Avery I know well. He is a man of maybe forty-five years, a little shorter than me, with thick, frizzled mutton chop sideburns. He steps forward and takes my hand in greeting. He then introduces the stranger standing by one of the windows which overlooks the street below.

“This is Mr. Priestly,” he says.

The other man doesn’t approach me but bows his head and says, “Pleased to meet you, Mrs Chancey.” His lips widen a little, but he makes no real effort to smile. A thin frame and large ears preclude Mr Priestly from being a handsome man, but he is well, if soberly, dressed and gentlemanly. His eyes flick over my figure and then, with more leisure, he looks around my drawing room.

His gaze follows the pattern of the Oriental rug, the scrollwork on the mahogany side board and the richly damasked sofas with intricately worked legs. He takes in the assortment

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/7 of Chinese blue and white vases in the dark cabinets and the jade figurines on the mantelpiece. Finally his gaze rests on the large mural that adorns the furthest wall. A painting of a peacock, princely on a sparse tree branch, fills the space. The peacock, a fusion of azure, green and gold leaf with a regal crown of feathers, displays its resplendent train so that the golden eyes of its plumage can be admired. It might be a trick of the light and artistry, but the peacock’s tail feathers seem to quiver and shift.

“How very… exotic,” he says. He moves towards the fireplace and studies the painting in the gilded frame above it. The portrait is of a young woman dressed in Javanese costume. Her hair is pulled into a low bun, silver earrings decorate her lobes, and she holds a white flower behind her back. Richly decorated batik is wrapped around her breasts, and a tight sarong swathes her lower body.

“Is that you?” he asks me, surprise in his voice.

“Yes.” I stand by him and look up at the portrait. “My friend Charles Cunningham lent me the fabric for the sitting. His father brought the lengths of silk and batik back from

Java, after one of his assignments with Raffles. Such beautiful, earthy colours, aren’t they?”

Mr Priestly steps a few feet away from me. “I’m afraid I don’t follow this fashion for aping savages.”

I feel a prick of resentment at the insult to my drawing room and portrait – the insult to me. Bastard. But I learnt long ago to hold my temper in check, I have learnt to behave with decorum, for I no longer work in a Liverpool back-alley. Smiling sweetly as I lower myself and my wide skirts carefully onto the sofa, I say, “Oh, don’t feel bad. Not everyone can be a la mode, can they?”

Sir Thomas clears his throat loudly. “Maybe we should discuss the purpose of our visit, Mrs Chancey.”

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“Yes, let’s do,” I answer, patting the sofa cushion next to mine. “Please have a seat and tell me about it.”

Sir Thomas sits down and looks at Mr Priestly expectantly. However, rather than speak himself, Mr Priestly gestures for Sir Thomas to proceed.

“Well, Mrs Chancey,” says Sir Thomas. “I have come to ask you to do a spot of work for us again.”

“Wonderful. Who will I need to be this time?”

Sir Thomas smiles. “Certainly your prior experience as a stage actress has benefitted us, Mrs Chancey. And it is true. We do need you to do some covert investigating for us.”

One of Sir Thomas’s many businesses includes a private detective agency. Although he has a surfeit of male detectives, he has found it very difficult to find females willing or able to sleuth. Having both the willingness and ability, I’ve worked on and off for Sir Thomas over the last eighteen months. I’ve posed as a sewing woman to gain access to a noble house,

I’ve rouged and revealed myself as a street prostitute in order to spy on a group of young men and I have even performed as a harem dancer in order to reconnoitre at a foreign embassy.

Sir Thomas clears his throat again. “Yes. Well, maybe the task we ask of you this time will not be so enjoyable, I’m afraid.”

He glances at Mr Priestly again, who nods him on.

“As you know, we are investigating the deaths of several women in the Waterloo area.”

“How did they die?” I ask.

Sir Thomas waves his hand. He won’t go on.

Mr Priestly stares hard at me for a few moments. “Sir Thomas assures me I can broach any subject with you, Mrs Chancey.”

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“Of course,” I smile. He means ‘cause I’m a whore, of course, but I won’t let him think his sting has broken skin.

He turns and gazes out the window as he speaks. “It seems that each of these women

– well, really, they were prostitutes – had terminated a pregnancy and died soon after from blood loss and infection.”

I’m puzzled. “Unfortunately that happens far too frequently.”

“That is so, but luckily the body of the last prostitute who died in this manner was taken to the hospital to be used as a specimen, and they found that…” He glances over at me, his eyes appraising.

“What?” I ask.

“They found parts of her body missing.”

“What parts?”

“Her uterus was utterly gone, but so were her other… feminine parts.”

Revulsion curls through my body and a past wound pulses across my perineum. I glance at Sir Thomas whose eyes fall away from mine.

“What makes you think her death is connected to the other deaths in Waterloo?”

“It was the fourth body they had received in this condition in the last seven weeks.”

“What? And was it not reported to the police?” My voice rises in disbelief.

Mr Priestly shrugs. “Well, they were only prostitutes, after all. At first the hospital staff thought they were the victims of amateurish hysterectomies, but when they found that each of the women was also missing…” His ear tips redden.

“Missing…?” I shake my head a little, hoping I’m not about to hear what I think is coming, although a part of me, tucked away beneath the horror, wonders how he’ll describe it.

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Mr Priestly straightens his collar. “Apparently all their sexual organs were missing.

Inside and out. I am positive you know to what I am referring, Mrs Chancey.”

I can’t help but press my knees together. I nod.

“Accordingly, it became apparent that there was a pattern to these deaths,” he continues.

“And what do the police think now?”

“Obviously someone in the area is butchering these unfortunate women – whether accidentally or in spite is uncertain. However – and it’s not surprising – the police don’t want to waste too much time investigating the deaths of prostitutes when the rights of decent, law- abiding Londoners need to be protected.”

Indignation sharpens my thoughts, but I command my body to relax. After all, what else is to be expected? If I’m to mix in polite society I need to mimic their ways. I force a languid smile to my face, eyes narrowed, as I watch Mr Priestly. “So, what on earth do you want to look into these deaths for? If the police are not interested, why should we be?”

“A friend of mine heard of these cases and has become immensely interested. It is on behalf of my friend that I have engaged Sir Thomas’s services.”

“And why has your friend become so interested?”

Mr Priestly takes his time seating himself in an armchair, crossing one leg over the other. He scrutinises my face for a few moments before answering. “My friend has a special concern. It is for this reason we – Sir Thomas and I – ask for your assistance.”

“What is this special concern?”

“My friend is a respectable gentleman, well known to his peers. A short time ago he found out that his daughter was in an unhappy condition. She is not married.” Mr Priestly pauses to let the awful truth of his statement sink in.

“Ah. Poor girl. What did he do?” I ask.

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Mr Priestly frowns. “Naturally he disowned her. He allowed her to pack some of her belongings and had her taken to a convent near Shropshire.”

“Naturally,” I repeat, my voice dry.

“Yes, but she did not make it to Shropshire. She bribed the coachman to take her to a hotel in Charing Cross, and from there she has disappeared.”

“Do you know why she wanted to be left at that hotel?”

“Apparently her… the other party… was staying there. He is a Frenchman.” He nods, as if this fact alone throws light on the cause of her predicament.

“But nobody knows where she is now?”

Sir Thomas takes up the thread of the story. “At first Mr Priestly required my men to look into her activities at the hotel, but upon questioning Monsieur Baudin, we learnt she had left his care most swiftly.”

“He did not want her now she was in trouble?” I guess.

“Something like that, it would seem. Since then he seems to have flown the coop,” says Sir Thomas. “My detectives have since found out that the young lady took a cab to

Waterloo where she spent a little over three weeks in a boarding house before moving into another well-known establishment nearby.”

“What establishment?”

Mr Priestly purses his lips for a moment before saying, “A house of ill-repute, it would seem. She moved to an abode owned by one Madame Silvestre.”

Ah, now I’m interested. I know this Madame Silvestre, although it’s been many years since I have had the pleasure of the old cat’s acquaintance. “The poor girl. Do you need me to fetch her?”

“If only it were that easy. It seems she has since disappeared. Nobody knows where she has gone.”

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I press my hand against my mouth. “Are you concerned that she too has been mutilated?”

“We are not sure what has become of her,” says Sir Thomas. “Madame Silvestre might just be hiding her, or maybe the young lady has moved on to another place. Who knows?”

“Or maybe she is one of the butcher’s victims,” says Mr Priestly. He withdraws a card case from his pocket and carefully takes out a small photograph. He hands this to me.

“Eleanor Carter.”

The likeness is of a very fair, young woman. Her face is small and serious and the bodice of her gown is buttoned tightly to the base of her throat.

“How old is she?” I ask.

“She is only seventeen. She is quite small and pretty – this photograph does not do her justice,” says Mr Priestly. “My friend is worried for her safety.”

“He might have thought of that before he threw her out onto the street,” I say, before I can help myself.

Mr Priestly’s brow lifts as he looks across at me coldly. “Although it is out of the question for her to return to her familial home, naturally my friend is troubled. He would like to see her ensconced safely at the nunnery.”

I glance from Sir Thomas to Mr Priestly. “You want me to find her?”

Sir Thomas sits back into the sofa and extends his legs out before himself. He studies his shoes as he says, “Well, as you now know, I have already had my detectives scouting for information on Miss Carter, but they have failed to find her.”

“And you think my womanly touch might avail?” I ask, amused.

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Sir Thomas resettles himself again. “As simple questioning has not sufficed, we wondered if you could possibly discover Miss Carter’s movements with more covert methods.”

“Such as…?”

Mr Priestly makes an impatient motion with his hand. “You said you could not wait to pick up the mantle of another character again, Mrs Chancey, and that is what we are asking of you. I believe it won’t be too much of a stretch for you, for we would like you to pose as a…” he glances at Sir Thomas, “a ‘gay girl’, I think they’re called.”

I stop breathing for a moment as annoyance flushes through my body. It’s true that I posed as a street prostitute for Sir Thomas, but that was just a lark, and it’s also true that in the dim past I’d worked in many places, both good and bad, but I choose not to think of that now. So, for this absolute pig of a man to refer to me as a mere gay girl makes me bloody angry. I’m no longer a lowly grisette, willing to flatter or implore my way to a few more pennies or ribbons while I try to hide my desperation ‘cause that could drive the price down.

I lift my chin. “You want me to pose as a prostitute?”

“Precisely.”

“At Madame Silvestre’s?”

“If they would have you, certainly,” says Mr Priestly, his voice bland. “What better place for you to be situated in order to find out where Miss Carter is?”

I heave myself up from the sofa and stride to the bay window. My skirt bumps a walnut side table causing a figurine of a Chinese goddess to totter. Go back to work in a brothel, for the sake of a little detection? I don’t think so.

Sir Thomas puts his hands out entreatingly. “Mrs Chancey, not only can you investigate the disappearance of Miss Carter, you can also look into the other deaths. You can try to find more information about the monster who is harming these women.”

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“Who knows?” interrupts Mr Priestly. “You could even pretend to be pregnant and see where that takes you.”

“Be your bait, you mean?” I ask, voice flippant.

“Whatever it takes, Mrs Chancey, whatever it takes.” Mr Priestly slips his fingers into his gloves. “You may put it about that Miss Carter is a young relative of your own, but in no way must her name be connected back to my friend. Sir Thomas will take care of the case from now on. I am sure you will be remunerated…” he glances around my sumptuous drawing room, “as grandly as possible.”

I turn from the window, the smile on my face fixed. “I don’t work for Sir Thomas for the money, Mr Priestly. I have my own independent means. I follow inquiries for Sir Thomas purely for the pleasure of it, and in this I would find no pleasure. I’m afraid I will need to decline your kind offer.”

He stops pulling on his remaining glove and eyes me for a few, long moments. “I must assure you that I do not request you to take this case – I insist you take this case.”

“Insist? You cannot make me take this case, Mr Priestly.”

“Mrs Chancey, I know the local magistrate, Sir Herbert Brimm. I know for a fact that he and others are interested in your mysterious activities in the Limehouse area. One word from me and you will be examined by the local police and the doctor in their employ.”

I can feel anger drain the colour from my cheeks and my fingers quiver with adrenalin. I’ve heard of this movement to examine prostitutes for contagious diseases. He would menace me with this detestable law that terrorises prostitutes and offends even righteous women? He would dare threaten me with a disgusting doctor probing my body for sickness?

“That will never eventuate, Mr Priestly. I know far more important and powerful people than you.”

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“Ah, you must mean your protector,” says Mr Priestly. “Tell me, how would he like an examination of your private life smeared in the newspapers for his wife and esteemed friends to see? Think of his poor children. Be sure, Mrs Chancey, the damage can be done before he is able to assist you.”

I grip my waist, my fingertips digging into the unyielding corset. My popularity with patrons is closely tied to my discretion. It has always been so. But in this trembling moment of rage I have nothing to lose. “Do it then, sir. Do your worst,” I say, my voice low.

Sir Thomas steps between us, his hands raised. “Please, Mr Priestly, there’s no need for these threats.” He turns to me, his voice coaxing. “Mrs Chancey, surely we can come to an agreement on how you can investigate this matter in a manner with which you are comfortable. We really do need your assistance.”

I look into Sir Thomas’s flushed, kind face and then shrug one shoulder. “Allow me to think it over. And if I do decide to proceed,” I glare at Mr Priestly, “I will only deal with

Sir Thomas.”

“That suits me perfectly,” says Mr Priestly. He leaves the room without bidding farewell.

Sir Thomas thanks me profusely and presses my hand goodbye between his clammy ones. “I will be in touch.” He follows Mr Priestly to the front door as swiftly as his short legs will take him.

From the window I watch the men descend the few front steps down to the sidewalk. I make sure to stand a little behind the silk drapes so that they can’t see me. Stopping on the last step Mr Priestly turns to Sir Thomas and says, “What on earth do you think a little dollymop like her can achieve?”

“She’s done some very good work for us…” Sir Thomas protests. The rest of the conversation is drowned out by the arrival of their carriage.

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I stand very still for a few minutes until I sense someone behind me.

“What are you thinking?” asks Amah. “Are you wondering how you will investigate this dreadful affair?”

I turn my head slightly, and meet her eye. “No. I am considering in what way I will repay the precious Mr Priestly for his insults.”

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Li Leen

I watched her through the peacock’s tail again today. She really is beautiful. She stands so tall, so straight and her nose is little, not flat like mine. I used to be beautiful when I was young and lived by the sea in Makassar. Because we were richer than most I had gold bangles that jangled on my wrists and gold rings in my ears. My hair was black then, only black, without the stripes of white that line my hair now. I never pulled my hair back, I allowed it to drape over my left shoulder and rest on my breast as I counted out buttons or weighed the fruit for customers in our produce store. Oh yes, I was beautiful. The men of

Makassar admired me, as did the Dutch men, but no-one ever asked for my hand.

She would find it hard to believe that I once was beautiful too. She only sees me as I am now. People notice her when she walks past. They even follow her sometimes. I am anonymous. Nobody watches me. So I watch her.

Sir Thomas admires her; why else does he continue to employ her in this manner, so that she needs to use the skills she has learnt outside the bed? He is twice her age, yet he blushes when he speaks to her. But that Mr Priestly – Mr Big Ears –I did not like how he looked at her when she was not noticing. He looked at her long and hard, but like he hated her. And when she turned to him again he smiled that sour smile of his. I am not quite sure what he said that made her so angry, but I hope she is careful. He is dangerous, that man.

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Chapter Two

I watch the front of Mme Silvestre’s house from my carriage. It’s a bleak evening, the gas lamps shedding only hazy light. The terraced house looms tall, its exposed, dark bricks gloomier than its painted neighbours. I’m really loath to leave the comfort of my warm carriage to re-enter this world I’d left several years past, but I know I must. It’s the only way forward.

I adjust my bodice to push up the fullness of my bosom. I pat my hair to make sure it is neat, and press a finger lightly to my mouth to ensure the rosy lip rouge is still in place.

Looking once more up at the house I notice the sash curtain on the lower window twitch, allowing a sliver of light to appear. Someone has noticed my presence.

I hop down from the carriage with the help of my coachman. He’s a small, wiry man dressed in the tight-fitting black and red silk livery I’d chosen for him a year beforehand.

“Thank you, Taff,” I say to him as I step over the mud in the street to the sidewalk. I clutch my skirt and petticoats high and stand on tip-toe to keep my slippers from the muck.

“Can you wait for me here with my baggage? I might be a while.”

“Of course, Miss Heloise,” he says, his voice gruff. “I won’t go no further without a word from you, Miss Heloise. These be’m rough parts we are in.”

I pause for a moment and peer into the gloom. I can see why Taff thinks this area is rough. The road is full of dirt, and the stench of horse manure and rotten food is strong. Most of the passers-by are slow and dishevelled, some smelling of gin and piss. The muckers across the way sift through the refuse for anything that can be salvaged or sold. The men, women and children are uniform in the murky light, with their grey, patched clothing and sunken cheeks. They search for scraps with the same dogged determination of hopefuls who

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/19 pan for gold. It’s a different world from my home in Mayfair on the pristine, quiet South

Street. I grin at Taff. “What? Have you forgotten Toxteth Docks, Taff?”

“It’s a long time since we’m been there, Miss Heloise,” he grumbles.

“Yes, I suppose it has been,” I murmur. And thank heavens for that. I step briskly up the path to Mme Silvestre’s front door.

I tap on the door which is almost immediately drawn open by a huge, bald man. He blinks and says, “Well, if it’s not Hell’s Bell.”

I laugh. “Mr Critchley! You still here?”

“Of course. Where else would I be?” He moves back against the corridor wall, but what with his large stomach and my voluminous gown the space is constrained. “You’d better go straight into the drawing room, Hell. Madame Silvestre will be pleased to see you again.”

I admire his optimism. I’ll be very surprised if I’m welcomed warmly, especially as

I’d robbed Silvestre of some very lucrative business when I had left her protection. I push the door open to my right, and a surge of warmth, musky body odour and perfume assail me.

Two large chandeliers light the long room, and numerous candles twinkle from the picture rails and tables. Luxurious rugs the colour of golden straw line the floor and the room is strewn with women in various stages of undress draped over velvet damask sofas and settees.

Despite it being early in the evening, several men, dressed neatly in silk top hats and long coats, already hover over their favourites. As I pick my way slowly through the room, I notice that the bar is manned by a rather robust looking woman with lavish amounts of rouge rubbed into her cheeks and that an old acquaintance of mine, Tilly, is thumping out a tune on the piano which she accompanies in an unmelodious, yet enthusiastic, manner.

At the end of the room on a raised platform, seated in what could only be described as a throne, is Mme Silvestre. She is a very wide woman, and the billowing folds of blue and

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/20 yellow satin that engulf her only make her appear broader. Her vast bosom wobbles close to where her chins finish, and she wears a Chantilly lace cap over her brown hair. In her lap is a white, long-haired cat, also of large proportions. Directly behind her, above the fireplace, is a painting of a sweet, simpering girl clutching a posy of peonies, her chestnut curls cupping her divinely pretty face. This is a portrait of Mme Silvestre in her younger, more innocent, days, before wine, fine food and lovers had spoilt her figure but strengthened her business acumen.

Mme Silvestre’s heavy jowls lift into a smirk when she spies me. “Ah. A compliment, to be sure, Martine,” she drawls in the cat’s ear. “Miss ‘Eloise, come to pay us a call, ‘ave you? Or must we refer to you as Mrs Chancey now?”

Mr Critchley places a spindled back chair next to the throne for my use. “Of course you can always call me Heloise, Madame,” I say politely, as I arrange my gown about myself, and gaze around the room.

Mme Silvestre is actually from Hackney, and has obscured a rather sordid past with a

French background, just as I had done really. Her voice is deep, and with many years’ practice, she has perfected an accent that rounds her speech as if she is sucking on a small plum, the French intonation facilitated by the cockney dropping of aitches, although once in a while a deep-rooted turn of phrase or word is surprised from her painted lips.

I have to speak loudly over the sound of music, women squealing and men laughing.

“I see business is still good.”

“This business will never go out of fashion, my dear,” she says. “But ’ow is the acting going, my dear?”

There is a quizzical cast in the fat woman’s eye. We both know my acting is just a pleasant pastime that takes no real place over my career as a courtesan. “I adore it. Did you see me as Peaseblossom? Not a large role, I must admit, but the costume was divine –

Aspreys leant the diamonds for the gossamer wings, and the fairy dress was so transparent all

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I could see when I looked to the audience were opera-glasses trained upon me.” I grin at the memory. “But I am taking a rest from stage-acting at the moment.”

A look of surprise lengthens Mme Silvestre’s fat face. “You ‘aven’t come ‘ere to ask for your position back, ‘ave you?”

My back stiffens as I look around the room. That’s exactly what I’m here to do, but I can’t bring myself to utter the words. I watch the women working the room. They appear to be enjoying themselves, carousing and playing with the gentlemen, and I realise that, apart from Tilly, I don’t recognise any of them. Unlike me, most of the other ‘older’ women would have had to move on to a less exclusive establishment or maybe even the streets. I’m not sure that I can face the uncertainty of an evening’s quest, the uncertainty of who will share my bed. And how will I have time to carry out my investigations if, like in the past, my whole time is monopolised by Charlies? It’s too haphazard to consider. Damn that Priestly. I’m a good investigator. I don’t need to be flat on my back or flashing my breasts to find this

Eleanor girl. And I don’t relish lying in wait, a sparkling lure on the hook, in order to catch the man mutilating doxies.

I decide upon a new tack.

“No,” I answer, finally.

“No. You’ve been gettin’ along grand without us,” Mme Silvestre says tartly, forgetting her posh accent for the moment.

I ignore the sour tone in the older woman’s voice. “I’m actually here to ask after a friend of mine. Her name is Eleanor Carter and I believe the last time she was seen it was here, with you.”

“Ho! A friend of yours, was she?” Mme Silvestre sneers. “A nice, refined girl like that? Although…” her eyes narrow again. “Although, maybe it was you ‘oo steered her wrong in life, was it?”

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“Listen, Mildred,” I have the satisfaction of seeing Mme Silvestre blink at the sound of her real name. “It doesn’t matter how I know Miss Carter. All I want to know is if you know where she is now?”

“No, I don’t. She was ‘ere for barely a day, so why you all thinks I know where she is, is a mystery to me,” she says crossly, stroking the white cat rather forcefully.

“Why was she here?”

“That stupid Tilly brought her, didn’t she? I give the girls a tip when they bring me a nice piece of muslin. But the squawking your Miss Carter set up when old Mr Bench put ‘is

‘and on ‘er knee was enough to make yer teeth chatter out of yer ‘ed, so she ‘ad to go.”

“Where?”

Mme Silvestre’s head rears back a little. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know. That’s not my concern now, is it? I run a business ’ere, in case you’ve forgotten, Mrs Chancey, not a bloody orphanage.”

I have to clamp my mouth shut in vexation. I’m getting no further than Sir Thomas’s stolid male detectives. I look around again at the other women in the room. There are seven of them, all differing in height, build and colouring. A petite blonde leads a tall man from the room, while a girl with pale orange hair lies back on a couch nearby, offering her pert nipple to a man so young he still has acne rash on his cheeks. I wonder if Sir Thomas’s other detectives had interviewed Mme Silvestre at this productive time of evening and enjoyed the sights.

“Would any of your girls know where she went?” I ask the fat madam.

“You’ll have to ask them yerself,” she says. “All I saw of ‘er was ‘er blotchy face from crying. She ‘ad a ‘ard bump on her belly, so’s one of the girls told me, so’s I expect she was knocked up. And as you know, ‘Eloise, pregnant ladybirds are an absolute nuisance.

They’re of no use to me.”

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I stare hard at Mme Silvestre for a few moments. I remember all too well how Mme

Silvestre manages the sad business of an unwanted pregnancy. “In that case, I am sure you gave her advice on how to take care of her unfortunate situation.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, ‘Eloise,” she snaps at me, placing the cat on the floor with a grunt, fluffing the cat hair from her skirt. “I didn’t know ‘er long enough to spend that sort of capital on ‘er.”

I cast my eyes to the ceiling. “And you don’t know where she went?”

“No. Although if I’d known so many people would be looking for ‘er, I might ‘ave taken some notice,” she says crossly.

Slumping back into my chair, I let out a frustrated sigh. I think for a minute. “She couldn’t have gone far, could she? Surely someone around here must know what became of her.” I really hope that Miss Carter isn’t one of the victims to be found in the hospital morgue. I know that investigating the murdered women must be my next step, but I want to find the girl alive and well before it comes to that. I lean in close to Mme Silvestre and say in a soft tone, “Madam, have you heard about any suspicious deaths of prostitutes lately?”

Mme Silvestre freezes for a moment as she stares into my face then lets out a bellow of laughter that drowns out the girls’ high pitched squealing and talking. “What do you mean by suspicious?” she demands. “’Eloise, you know that prostitutes die off as often as ‘orses in these parts. The only suspicious thing is that so many of them ‘old on for as long as they do.”

She shakes her head, and chortles, although her laughter seems a little forced.

“You haven’t heard anything at all?” I push further.

She rolls her eyes. “If I ‘ear anything, I will let you know,” she says. “Where can I find you?”

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I think wistfully of my well-appointed, beautiful house. As much as I want to return home, I know I need to stay nearby for the duration of this investigation. And I’m also reluctant to reveal my new address to the madam.

“I’m not sure. Can you recommend an inn or hotel close by?”

Mme Silvestre’s mouth widens into a smug smile. “You are very lucky, as my ‘ouse on Frazier St is vacant.” She nods towards her girls, and her mouth tightens with scorn. “I

‘aven’t had a piece of skirt able to fill that ‘ouse for a long while.” Her eyelids lower as she peers at me. “Not all girls are as talented as you were, my dear.”

She’s talking of the house she keeps for any of the girls who manage to become the mistress of a wealthy man. When a gentleman decides he would like the exclusive use of a certain woman, Mme Silvestre hires out the house to them at a very nice rent. In my short time with Mme Silvestre, I’d stayed in that house before moving onto much better things.

“Sounds perfect,” I say, briskly. “What exorbitant rent will you require this time?”

She names her price. I know I’m expected to cavil – that Mme Silvestre has said a price so much above the house’s worth – but I only agree graciously, as the rent is miniscule compared to that paid in the better parts of London and I’m being reimbursed by Sir Thomas in any case.

An annoyed frown forms on Mme Silvestre’s brow and I hope it’s ‘cause the old bitch realises she could have named an even higher price.

“You don’t still have that yellow chink working for you, do you?” she asks, irritably.

“People around ‘ere don’t swallow that sort of thing, you know. That’s something for the tastes of those who frequent the dock areas.”

My eyes narrow and she scoffs, “Ho! ‘Ere we go. ‘Ell’s Bell about to let her steam whistle go.”

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“Who I employ is none of your business, Mildred,” I say as I stand up. “I think I will find a local inn after all.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, as she tries to struggle to her feet. She is unsuccessful and plops back into the throne. “Don’t get so wrought up over a chink, fer God’s sake. See

Mr Critchley on your way out. ‘E will give you the keys to the ‘ouse.”

The air’s chilly and stale when Taff and I enter the small house at the end of the terrace. I light the tallow candles I find on the hall table and direct Taff to the one bedroom up the narrow staircase with my numerous cloak bags and trunk. Taking a candle with me I have a quick glance at the small kitchen, dusty and barren, at the back of the house and then I stand in the middle of the sitting room and look about myself.

Nothing has changed much, but everything seems shabbier, smaller, than I remember.

When I had first come to this house as a very young woman – hell, I was a girl really – I felt so bloody happy. I no longer had to share a filthy room in Liverpool, the pong of the docks seeping in through the window with the icy draught. And I no longer had to snatch sleep in the musty boudoir of Mme Silvestre’s brothel, with its frilly curtains and festoons of red velvet, in which I and my clients alternated ‘pleasure’ time with another girl and her clients.

No amount of lavender or camomile oil had rid the lumpy mattress of its sweet, fetid stench of sweat and semen. I close my eyes and lift my scented wrist to my nose to rid myself of the memories.

That had been the first time in my short life that I’d had a space – a whole house – to call my own, even if it was only for an unforeseeable period, and I can’t help but smile as I think of the young man who’d made it possible for me to move into this house. He was a banker’s son, and handsome, and for many months he imagined himself in love with me.

Very lately, at the opera, I’d espied him again. His handsome face, now meatier and flushed,

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/26 was covered in a stiff beard and moustache and his chest and stomach protruded with self- importance as he ushered his equally rotund wife before him. When he saw me, he froze for a second, and then, to my surprise, he smiled and nodded. I almost had the idea that he would have liked to hail me, to exchange friendly words, but of course he couldn’t.

Taff stands in the doorway. “All your baggage is above, Miss Heloise.”

“Thank you, Taff.” I look at the dry, blackened fireplace. “Do you think you could start the fire for me? Here and in the bedroom? It’s not a very cold evening, but I feel some firelight might make the place more homely.”

I slowly tread up the stairs to the bedroom. I light a few more of the smelly, tallow candles on the dressing table, which only provide a shadowy flicker against the yellow walls and I’m thankful that in my home in Mayfair, bright, gas lighting has lately been installed. As

I pull the heavy gowns from their cases and hang them in the closet, I find that the closet door cannot be closed against their fullness. Taff comes in to light the fire.

“I’m not happy about leaving you’m here, Miss Heloise,” he mumbles from the fireplace.

I try to grin at him. “I know you’re not. But I’ll be fine.” I place a few pairs of pretty shoes against the wall. “Although I wish I had brought Amah after all.”

“Well, why didn’t you’m?”

I cock my head to the side as Taff straightens up from the fireside. “It would not have worked out. You know how she is.” She would interfere, creep around behind me. And she’d stand out, which might make it difficult for me to be discreet.

Taff shrugs and I follow him down to the front door to let him out. After assuring him

I’ll call for him if I’m in need of aid, I return to the sitting room. All is very quiet, except for the crackle and spitting of the fire, and suddenly I’m a little forlorn. At this time of evening

I’m used to company – frivolous, amusing and, sometimes, lascivious company. There’s a

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/27 rattle at the front door, and my heart lifts. Maybe it’s Taff returned, unable to leave me in this place alone. I’ll have him go to the closest public tavern to fetch wine and food and we’ll have a cosy chat. With luck he will clean the kitchen.

But when I reach the door, all I find is a folded note lying on the worn carpet that has been pushed through the mail slot. Opening it, I read – Fornicator! As bitter as poison! Be gone from here.

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Chapter Three

It was well after midnight by the time I fell asleep last night, for I was perplexed by the note.

On reading its contents, I’d pressed my ear to the door, and hearing silence, pulled it open.

Nobody hovered in the tiny courtyard, and on the street itself I could only see two drunkards, arm in arm, weaving their way home and a young boy scraping up the muck from the sidewalk. I’d bolted the door and then checked the kitchen door and windows, ensuring they were as tightly locked as possible. For many hours I lay in bed, wondering who had left the note. Was it for a former tenant of the house, or was it directed specifically at me? It made my skin creep to think that someone on the other side of the front door might feel such malice for me. I’d slept very lightly, each creak of tired timber or the tapping of a moth’s wings waking me with a start.

It’s while I try to have a lie in, wondering what my next move is to be in finding Miss

Carter, when someone knocks lightly at the front door. I pull on a silk robe and, although the morning light has lifted my anxious mood, I call through the closed door, “Who’s there?”

A girlish voice answers, “My name is Agnes. Mme Silvestre sent me over with some food and such for you.”

My visitor is a sturdy looking girl, maybe twelve or thirteen years of age. Her hair, not quite blonde and yet not quite brown, snakes down her back in a long plait and she wears a white pinafore over her blue-stuff dress. She carries a wicker basket, laden with fruit and bread, which she balances on one bent knee.

I lead her to the kitchen, where we deposit the basket on the wooden table.

“Don’t unpack it yet,” I say, grimacing at the dust in the kitchen. “I’ll need to neaten this place up before we can set food in here.”

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With Agnes’s help, I find some rags and water and wipe the kitchen surfaces down.

Between boiling the water for tea, and cleaning the ice box for the milk, I discover that Agnes is a distant cousin of Mme Silvestre’s and has worked in her kitchen for nearly a year. As I see the girl off the premises, I say, “When I visited Mme Silvestre last night, I noticed that my friend Tilly still works there. I need to have a word with her so I will come by again later.

Please let Mme Silvestre know.”

Agnes sniggers. “Well, you’d better come by much later. The dolls are all still asleep.

Last night wus a busy night.”

I watch her march down the front path and wonder if she too is destined to be one of

Mme Silvestre’s dolls in the near future.

Having spent most of the day in a cab, pitching between brothels and inns in the near vicinity asking after Eleanor Carter, I realise I’m getting no further along than the others who searched for her. But there is one place they haven’t yet looked – I must face up to visiting the hospital mortuary where the last prostitute’s savaged body was left. Sir Thomas and

Priestly are right. Maybe she has become the victim of whoever is murdering local women.

She is with child, after all. She might have inadvertently fallen under the butcher’s sway. But

I won’t report my visit to the morgue to Sir Thomas, because then he’ll make me surrender the job up to one of his male detectives and I’m determined to plough on by myself.

I’m as wary of hospitals as most people, so I watch the squat, rectangular building for some time before asking a woman who is emptying a bucket into the gutter if she could point me in the direction of the mortuary.

“It’s down in there,” she answers, nodding towards a double side door, wisps of her iron grey curls falling untidily from her cap. “I works in there on occasion, cleaning and

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/30 sorting out the mess Mr Pike and Mr Wilston makes down there. Do you have a loved one in there?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. I repeat the story I’d been offering all that day. “A cousin of mine has gone missing. We are very afraid something amiss has happened to her. I have had the dreadful thought that I might need to check here...”

“Well, Mr Pike and Mr Wilston have already gone home for the day,” says the cleaner.

“Oh dear.” I bite my bottom lip. I hold out my hand to the other woman. “My name is

Mrs Chancey. And you are…?”

“Mrs Dawkins,” she announces, squeezing my middle finger briefly.

I try to look as beseeching as possible. “Could you show me around?”

But she shakes her head. “No point anyway. We haven’t got any new bodies in there at the moment.”

I’ve reached a bloody dead end again but I’m glad that Eleanor’s body is not to be found there, until Mrs Dawkins continues. “Haven’t had a body in there since they brought in that poor, miserable prossy a few days back.”

“A few days ago? How do you know it was a prostitute and not my young cousin?”

Mrs Dawkins shakes her head again. “Can’t say to the likes of you, Missus. Too delicate.”

I place my hand on the cleaner’s arm. “No, please. Tell me, so I can be sure it’s not my Eleanor.”

The cleaner covers her mouth, but still says, “Well, if you must know, she ha’ bits cut out of her. Lots of prossies lately have been turning up with bits cut out of ‘em.”

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Although I already know this piece of information, I still feel that curl of horror.

“That’s awful. I hope nothing terrible has happened to her.” I search in my reticule and bring out the likeness of Miss Carter. “Could this be her?”

She screws up her eyes and holds the small photograph at arm’s length. “I really couldn’t say, Mrs Chancey. Me eyesight’s not what it was.”

“Oh, I hope it isn’t poor Eleanor.”

“Eleanor. Is that ‘er name?” she asks me. “Funny. All we knew about the last girl was that she was called Nell. That’s short for Eleanor sometimes, isn’t it?”

Genuine dismay flushes my cheeks this time. “I must see this body. It might be poor

Eleanor’s.”

“They’re not going to show a missy like you,” Mrs Dawkins says. “Have you got a man you can brings along to look?”

I shake my head.

“And I’m not even sure if the body is still there, anyhow,” says the cleaner.

I tell Mrs Dawkins my current address and beg her to send word if there is any new information. I actually wring my hands together and endeavour to look as anxious and care- worn as possible. It’s not for nothing that I receive acting roles at The Grecian and The

Gaiety. Mrs Dawkins’ features soften.

“Lookee. Come back tomorrer. Not too early mind! After Mr Pike and Mr Wilston have left for the day. I’ll let you have a peep.”

I stare up at Mme Silvestre’s bagnio and again wish that I had Amah with me, if only to dress and curl my unruly hair. The best I can do with it is a braid and then coil it into a low bun.

The gown I’ve chosen to wear is of a plain hue, for all the gowns I’ve brought with me are of a modest appearance so as to be easily maintained without my maid. My bonnet has pretty

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/32 blue ribbons though, and around my neck I wear a jade and onyx locket which is suspended from a pearl choker. Pressing my fingertips against the locket’s grooves, I’m thankful I’m wearing such a precious piece of frippery, but I still feel frumpy on hearing the squeals and music emanating from Mme Silvestre’s.

Although the evening is already quite dark as Mr Critchley leads me into the establishment, it’s early hours for entertaining gentlemen. The long parlour is as warm and bright as the night before, but custom is slow, with only three men canoodling on the sofas with the half-dressed women. As yet, Mme Silvestre isn’t seated on her throne, so I move to the bar and ask the tall bar attendant I’d seen the night before for a drink.

“What do you want, love?” the bar-attendant asks in a gruff voice.

I stare at the bar-attendant’s face, and clock the slight shadow on the cheeks and the

Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the thickly made up face.

“What do you have?” I ask.

“Gum-tickler. Beer. Gin. We have some Veuve, if you have the blunt.”

“Well I have the blunt, so pour me one of those, please.” I glance around the room.

“Where’s Tilly?”

“She’s with a Charlie. You’ll have to wait a while if you want to meet with her.

Although she was with old Packer, so maybe she won’t be too long.” We smirk at each other.

“My name’s Henry. Are you that Heloise what visited Silvestre last night?” I nod. “Poor

Silvestre thought all her luck was in when you walked through the door. Thought you were here to help her lift business.” The ringlets of his wig sway as he shakes his head.

“Have things been slow?” I watch as a small group of merry middle-aged men enter the room. “I thought it looked as busy as ever here.”

“Her heart’s just not in it,” he says, his ringlets bobbing again. He nods towards the doorway to the back of the house. “There’s Tilly now.”

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I ask him to pour another champagne and carry the two glasses across the room to catch Tilly before she is commandeered by a determined looking young man with tow- coloured hair. We settle onto a Turkish divan at the back of the room. Tilly is wearing a pair of lace drawers and a silk chemise, and her fair hair has been tinted pink.

“I like your hair,” I say, touching one of the pink curls.

“Do you like it?” Tilly cups her hand around her hair. “When I was in Paris I saw

Cora Pearl. Her hair was pink like this, although I’ve since heard that she’s coloured it yellow.”

“When were you in Paris?”

“Oh, two years ago. A rich John took me,” says Tilly. She pouts. “It’s been a long time since I was treated that well. Now I’m just stuck here, all day, every day.”

I take my silver, diamond-point cigarette case from my reticule and offer a cigarette to

Tilly. “Where’s Peg? And Floss?”

“Long gone. Peg died of the gasps, I heard. And I see Floss around sometimes, but she’s set up in Piccadilly now, I think.”

“Still working?”

“Nothing like this. I think she just hires out a room when she needs it.” Tilly shrugs with nonchalance. “What about you though? Everything’s rosy for you, so I’ve heard.”

I smile. “I was lucky.” I don’t want to boast of my good fortune – how a wealthy older son had led to a rich man of business and then to a peer of the realm and ultimately to a state of financial stability – so instead I gossip about well-known Londoners with a fascinated

Tilly.

“Ooh, listen to you with your dandy accent,” says Tilly. “You’ve lost most of your dirty Liverpool lilt.”

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“Well, I had to learn to speak proper English if I was going to be on the stage, Till,” I answer, with dignity. “Bu’ shut yer forkin’ yap, cos I can still tork out of me arse when I wanna.” Forkin’. There’s a word I haven’t managed to mould away from my past, no matter how many elocution lessons I take. Tilly laughs at me, and as Henry re-fills our glasses, she points out a French girl and a Dutch girl working the room. We try out those accents with each other too. I’m good at the French one, having lived with a Frenchman for a year or so in

Paris. We’re talking so loud an older man with whiskers frowns upon us and Tilly pokes her tongue out at him, flashes her fanny.

“What do you think of our Henry?” she asks, pulling her frillies right again.

“Where did he come from?” I glance over at the barman-lady. He puts an apron on over his green gown and touches up his wig. “He could teach me a thing or two regarding hair styles, at any rate,” I grin.

“He just turned up one day,” says Tilly. “He’s Silvestre’s Abbot.”

“No!”

“Yes, he is.”

“How on earth would they both fit in the same bed?” I squint a little as I try to imagine it. “One so stout and one so long.”

“I’d wager he is long too,” snickers Tilly.

We smoke in silence for a few moments. “But you didn’t come here just for a cosy chat with me, Hell,” says Tilly. “Ol’ Silvestre says you’ve been asking about that washy little girl I brought home to her last week.”

I nod as I pick tobacco from my tongue. “Yes. Some people I know have asked me to find her. But I just can’t. Have you any idea where she could be?”

“No idea, Hell. She could be anywhere,” says Tilly.

“Where did you find her in the first place?”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/35

“She was sitting in the park, crying over a cup of coffee. It was Katie Sullivan – you remember her? From the coffee stand down the street? – who pointed her out to me.”

“Do you know where she was staying before she came here?”

“No. She had her valise with her. Been pushed out of her last doss-house for not having enough money, I think. It was difficult to understand her under all the blubbering.”

Tilly lights a fresh cigarette from the last one. “Mind you, one of the girls thought she was pregnant so she might’ve told her where she could be fixed up.”

“Do you know where?”

“The only scraper we use is that Dr Mordaunt.”

I can’t stop myself from grimacing in disgust. “I can’t believe you still use him.”

Hearing his name makes my stomach clench in remembered fear and pain, and I can almost smell the pungent smoke from the cigar that he puffed upon throughout the procedure.

“Just used to him, I suppose,” says Tilly. “’Though there’s a new doc in the area, so

I’ve heard. I don’t know if he’s a scraper though. That Dutch girl over there had to see him about the pox, and she said he’s ever so handsome and young and very sympathetic.”

“Really? I might have to meet him.”

Tilly laughs. “He’ll be too poor for the likes of you, Hell.” She throws the remainder of her cigarette into the fireplace.

I smile but I’m already thinking of other things. “Till, I stayed at Silvestre’s house on

Frazier last night and someone slipped a nasty note under my front door. Have you heard of anything like that happening lately?”

Tilly’s mouth pulls down on each side as she shakes her head. “I mean, sometimes we get spat upon or growled at, but I haven’t heard of notes being sent.”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/36

“It’s just that I don’t know if the note is for me or for a previous tenant of Silvestre’s house.” I look at Tilly. “And I’m a bit worried because apparently horrible things have been happening to the girls around here.”

“What things?”

“Girls being… I don’t know… cut up and suchlike.”

Tilly guffaws. “You’re starting to sound like stupid old Mrs Hawes, rabbiting on about girls dying in pools of blood.”

“Who’s Mrs Hawes?”

“She’s this old cow who runs a few girls in the hovels behind the bridge.” She stares at me, in disbelief. “You’re not going to take her seriously, are you?”

A very high pitched, thin whistle sounds. Mr Critchley throws open the door and clangs a bell. “It’s a raid, it’s a raid. The Brown boys have let off the signal.”

“’Ow far are they oeff?” shouts the French girl.

“Coming down the street right now, pounding their big black boots,” he bellows back as he helps Henry slide open the false backs of the drinks’ cabinets to push the liquor through to their hiding spot. Glass tinkles as the girls shove glasses into pot-plants and china rattles as tables are set with tea things. The gentlemen stand around in the bustle, cheerfully calling out encouragements to the girls, who are pulling gay robes over their scanty underwear. They are all seated in companionable silence, decorously drinking tea when the first of the policemen enters the room.

“I thought alcohol could be served until midnight,” I whisper to Tilly.

“But it’s Sunday – no grog on Sundays. The buggers thought they would catch us with our pants down,” Tilly answers. She takes another one of my cigarettes and lights it, blowing smoke defiantly in the direction of the first policeman to reach the back of the room.

He is a gaunt, fair young man with the pale blue eyes of a crow. He glances at Tilly, and then

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/37 stares a little harder at me, seeming to notice my full, sober raiment as compared to Tilly’s frills. My eyebrows arch as I gaze back at him.

Mme Silvestre stomps into the room at that moment and claps her hands. “What is all this ruckus about?” she asks. “You, police officer.” She points at the oldest constable in the room. “Are you in charge? As you can see, we are ‘aving a quiet, informal evening, with nothing more ‘armful than tea and sandwiches. Why do you ‘ave to burst in like this? It is quite an embarrassment.” She smiles ingratiatingly at some of the gentlemen who are seated quietly around the tea tables.

She watches as the policemen continue to take a cursory glance around the room for alcohol, not moving her bulk when they need to pass. She then escorts them to the door, and discreetly presses a wad of notes into the hand of the leading police officer.

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/38

Li Leen

She has been gone two days. I do not understand why she will not take me when she is doing these ‘investigations’ for Sir Thomas. I do not like it. I am stuck in this large, empty house and the only distractions are the number of gentlemen who knock at the door, asking for the ravishing Mrs Chancey. Bundle turns them away, and from the window I watch them leave slowly, trudging down the front steps, their hopes ruined for the evening. She thinks she has power over these men, that her skills in pleasure and the charms of her body are enough to keep her safe, but when will she realise she has no real power? They hold all the power, over her money, over her body, over her beauty.

Bah. And what do they know of beauty? Her beauty is nothing, it is as sawdust, compared to that of my mother’s beauty. What are her curled tresses compared to Mother’s black, silken hair? And her face, pretty as it is, with the brazen dimple in the cheek, what is it compared to the perfection of my mother’s oval face, with her dewy, porcelain skin?

Grandfather told me that my mother could have had any man she chose. Any man. The rich

Chinese of Makassar, the Dutch, the Malays. They all desired her. But she chose my father. A

British man. A gweilo.

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/39

Chapter Four

The alleys near the bridge are even more inhospitable than the slum area of Liverpool where

I’d spent some of my early years. No rambunctious children, playing and weaving through the crowd; no spruce vendors selling coffee or pickled oysters and whelks. It’s early in the morning and the narrow lanes, crusty with dry mud and manure, are inhabited by only a few emaciated women. I draw my cream, merino shawl close and smile in a friendly manner at the women, who stare past me, the languor of boredom heavy upon their limbs. Spying a girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen years sitting in a doorway, a little away from the other women,

I ask, “Do you know where I can find Mrs Hawes?”

The girl stands up. She is very thin and pale. Her wavy, brown hair is loose and as she speaks, her thin top lip can barely reach over her buckled front teeth. “I’ll take you there,” she offers.

As we walk the girl gazes upon me, and even touches the silk of my gown and the soft wool of the shawl. At the end of the road we enter a building and climb a set of rickety steps.

The stench of cat piss, boiled vegetables and sewerage is overpowering, so much so I cover my mouth and nose with the corner of my shawl. As we approach the first landing, the girl points to a door and then turns around to walk back down the stairs leaving me alone. I knock on the door several times, but receiving no answer, pull a special blade from my reticule and jiggle it in the key lock until I hear it click open – I’ve had a vast and varying education over the years. Turning the handle carefully, I peer into the room. The landing is shadowy, but the windowless room is in almost total darkness.

“Mrs Hawes?” I call lightly, moving towards where I can hear rasped breathing. The room is not overly large and is crammed with furniture. I bump into various tables and cabinets before I grope my way around a bed to the slumbering figure upon it. Although my

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/40 eyes are becoming accustomed to the bleakness of the room, I light the candle on the bedside table and look down at Mrs Hawes by its ghostly light. The old woman is on her back, her mouth wide open, show-casing a mouth missing most of its teeth. Her skin is a sickly, greyish hue, and her hair is tucked into a filthy cap which has slipped to the side in her sleep.

I prod her on the arm a couple of times and call her name again until slowly, grunting and wiping dribble from her chin, the old woman comes around. The stench of stale gin is heavy on her breath as she grumbles, “What the ‘ell you wakin’ me fer? And ‘ow the feck did you get in ‘ere?”

“Mrs Hawes, my name is Heloise Chancey. I’ve come to ask you about the women who have been dying around here lately. I heard you were concerned that someone was harming the girls on purpose.”

The old woman tries to sit up. She places her feet on the floor, but holds her head in her hands and groans. She takes hold of a green bottle on the bedside table and swigs from the spirituous substance, sighs, then breaks into a gagging cough. I step back in case she vomits.

She then stares up me, her eyes bleary and confused. “’Oo are you?”

“I’m Heloise Chancey. I’ve come to ask about the prostitutes who have been dying.”

“Murdered they be,” she says, sucking her cheeks in and nodding slowly.

“Murdered.” She looks around on the floor. “Where’s me pot?”

Reluctantly I glance under the bed, and seeing where the chamber pot is, slowly nudge it towards the old woman with my foot. Mrs Hawes places her feet on either side of it, slides her bottom off the bed, lifts her skirts a fraction and squats over the pot, still leaning against the bed as she relieves herself. I turn away and see that the tables are covered with an assortment of goods, from snuff tins to cheap jewellery to silver utensils. Probably stolen,

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/41 ready to be fenced. Mrs Hawes flops back onto the bed and her foot knocks the chamber pot so that its contents slop over the sides.

“What are you doin’ ‘ere?” Mrs Hawes asks irritably as she lies back onto the bed.

“I’m here to ask you about the girls.”

“What girls?”

“The girls who are dying,” I repeat, exasperated. “You just said they were murdered.”

The other woman looks frightened for a moment and clutches a blanket to her neck.

“So much blood.”

“Whose blood?”

“Countless of ‘em,” she says. “The last one was poor Nell. Poor little Nell.” Her face crumples as if she is going to cry, but then she closes her eyes and falls asleep.

I grab hold of her scrawny arm again, and shake her awake. “Who was Nell?”

Mrs Hawes opens her eyes a fraction. “Nell? She’s dead.”

“Yes, but who was she?”

“Just a poor young thing. They’re all poor young things. Lucky they ‘ave me to watch over ‘em.” The old woman rolls onto her side again and before long she’s snoring.

The young girl who had given me directions giggles from behind.

“She just watches over us to make sure she gets her share of the ready, the old cow.”

“But she said that some of the women around here are being murdered,” I say, leaving the room and closing its filth and stench behind me. I accompany the girl down the stairs. “Is that true?”

The girl shrugs. “I only saw the last girl, that Nell. Mrs Hawes was right, though.

There was a lot of blood.”

“Did you know Nell?”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/42

“Nah. But I don’t know many of the other renters around here. I’ve only been here a short while.”

“Where are you from?”

“Basingstoke,” she answers. A slow blush creeps up her face from her neck.

I feel a pang of compassion for this young girl; I’m still capable of that. I look around at the other women propped up against the wall, gossiping and smoking or drinking from bottles of gin. All of them would have their own unfortunate, particular yet similar, stories to tell. I have one myself.

“So you don’t know of any other women who’ve died like Nell?” I ask the girl.

“No, although some of the others have started talking about it, especially late at night when the streets are empty. They say there’s a devil after us.” She’s thoughtful for a moment.

“I sometimes wonder about a woman I met when I first arrived here. She was nice to me, let me share ‘er bed if I pulled enough Charlies for the night. But she’s gone. Just gone. I don’t know where.”

I take some coins from my reticule and press them into the girl’s hand. “Thank you for your help.” I want to say something encouraging, something to keep the young girl safe, but it’s pointless.

It’s late into the afternoon before I return to the hospital mortuary. I linger by a coffee stall and eat a piece of currant cake, watching for Mrs Dawkins. Finally, not having seen the older woman, I approach the double doors of the mortuary and knock. Before long Mrs Dawkins’ grey head pops around the doorway. Her bright blue eyes glance around the lane quickly before she pulls me into the building.

“Mr Pike has just gone home. I was afraid he might have returned,” she whispers loudly. She picks up her bucket and sponge and guides me down the corridor, and pauses in

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/43 front of a large room. The floor is covered with large white floor tiles, which are slightly discoloured, while smaller tiles, the grout worn and dark, cover the walls. Lining one side of the room is a long sink, its work bench laden with dark bottles and in the middle of the room is a large, rectangular slab of porcelain the height and width of a standard dining table, which has a sink hole in one end. The room smells strange, a mixture of astringent carbolic and the sweetness of a butcher’s shop. The cake shifts and swells in my stomach.

“That’s the room where the gentlemen cut up some of the more interesting bodies.

They cut them open to find out how they died,” Mrs Dawkins says, with a knowledgeable nod. She eyes a small smudge on the surface of the porcelain table and darts forward, scrubbing it with her sponge. She wipes her hands on her damp, grubby apron as she leads me to the next room.

“This is where we keeps the bodies,” she says.

The narrow room is plain and untiled. Four benches line the middle of the space, with only two of them occupied. One bench is taken by a robust looking young man, with dark hair and a moustache, dressed in a dirty white shirt and dark breeches. His arms are stiff and awkward by his chest, his head at an uncomfortable angle. Next to him is an old man, who, besides the blue tinge around his lips, appears to be asleep.

“There’s no female body here,” I say.

Mrs Dawkins shakes her head. “No. Mr Pike and Mr Wilston got rid of her yesterdee.

She had started to go off.”

“Where did they take her?”

“She’d be under the ground now, dearie.” She takes me by the elbow and leads me to a table. “Here’s one of them photographs of your Nell. There’s none of the other women who had bits cut out of them, but by the time this poor girl came along, the police started to take

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/44 some notice. Mind ye, her body is covered with a sheet. Mr Pike keeps the grisly photographs in his desk.”

I gaze down at the dark photograph the older woman places in front of me. There’s a mania for photographs of loved ones who are recently deceased. I’ve actually seen examples of these photographs in which the departed are dressed in his or her finest raiment. They’re positioned in what appears to be a natural pose, sometimes next to a troubled looking sibling or held in the arms of a mournful parent. It’s amazing how life-like the deceased appear to be.

But this young woman looks more like a badly composed wax figure, lifeless and featureless.

Nonetheless, I can see that this photograph of Nell is not of young Eleanor – this poor soul had a longer face, darker hair.

I let out a loud sigh, not realising I’d been holding my breath. “No, that is not my

Eleanor.”

Mrs Dawkins rubs me on the back. “That must be such a relief to you, Mrs Chancey, I must say.”

There’s footfall behind us, and we both turn just as a young man stops in the doorway.

Mrs Dawkins clutches her hand to her chest. “Ooh, you did give me a turn, Mr

Chapman. I thought it was Mr Pike or Mr Wilston returned.”

“No, just me, Mrs Dawkins,” he replies to her, although his eyes are on me.

It only takes me a moment to realise that this is the policeman who had stared at me in the raid at Mrs Silvestre’s brothel. He’s no longer in uniform, but I well remember those pale eyes. He’s not a handsome man, but there is something arresting about the uneven plains of his face, and although his voice is deep and gravelly, he’s well-spoken. A bowler hat tops his fair curls and he’s attired in a sober, brown waistcoat and suit.

His eyes flick around the room. “Have they taken away her poor body, Mrs

Dawkins?”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/45

“Yes, sir, they have. And not a moment too soon, I might add,” she says. “And this young lady here is just glancing at the photograph to make sure her dearly loved cousin is not one of the unknown souls brought along to our hospital here.”

“Is that so?” He watches as I place the photograph of Nell back onto the table. “And there’s nothing new to report, Mrs Dawkins? I see that I have missed Mr Pike.”

The cleaner shakes her head. “No, Mr Chapman. We must thank the Lord that there is nothing new here for you to investigate.”

“The Inspector will be pleased to hear that.”

“Well,” I say, clasping my hands together. “I must leave you to your work, Mrs

Dawkins. I am so relieved to find it’s not my dear Eleanor here. Thank you so much for your assistance.”

She goes to escort me from the building, but Mr Chapman stops her. “No need, Mrs

Dawkins. I will accompany the young lady out onto the street. I rather think there might be some questions I’d like to put to her.” With that he takes my elbow, quite firmly to my annoyance, and leads me back out into the dreary sunlight.

“You’re searching for a cousin, I think Mrs Dawkins said.”

I nod. What business is it of his anyway? I try to pass, but he keeps speaking to me.

“I believe we have met before.”

I pull my gloves more firmly over my wrists. “No, sir, I am sure we have not yet been introduced.”

His eyes narrow. “Ah. But I am sure I have seen you before. Did I not see you at a certain establishment on Pearman St?”

“I don’t think so.”

“At a certain Mme Silvestre’s establishment?”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/46

I pretend a look of mild offence. “Do I look like the kind of lady to be found at a

Mme Silvestre’s establishment?”

His eyes take in my frilled bonnet and the blue silk dress and fur tippet. “No, you don’t,” he says, dryly. “Which is exactly what I thought when I saw you there yesterday.”

I allow my dimple to show. “Well, that’s very generous of you, sir.” I tread along the side-street towards the main thoroughfare. “To tell you the truth, I have been searching and searching for my poor, little cousin, Eleanor Carter. She has gone missing in this area, so I have approached all the inns and boarding houses, and even some… bagnios, as they’re called, in the hope of finding her. That is how you found me in Mme Silvestre’s house. We are but a small family, so it fell upon me to discover her whereabouts.” My eyes search the road for a cab.

“But surely the police could be of assistance, then,” he says. “Why don’t you come to the station with me and report her missing?”

I wave my hand. “We have done that, of course,” I lie. “But nothing has come of it.

And then when I heard of the body of that poor girl in the hospital mortuary I became so afraid that it might have been my Eleanor, I just had to check.”

He regards me for a few moments. I don’t think he believes me. “Look, over there is an eating house. I’ve eaten there numerous times. It’s not the most genteel of places, but the tea is drinkable and the bread is sound. Why don’t you join me in a meal and tell me about your cousin and her plight?”

I contemplate him for a few moments. I don’t like the way he’s watching me but it could be quite useful having a policeman on side, I decide. I demur though. “I don’t know who you are, apart from your name being Mr Chapman.”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/47

“It’s actually Sergeant Chapman,” he explains. “I’m trying to become a Detective

Sergeant, so I’m doing some of the investigations in my own time. Try to impress the boss, and all.”

I put out my hand, which he takes in his briefly. His hand is calloused, scratches my palm slightly. “Mrs Chancey.”

“But where is your husband? Why is he not by your side while you search for your cousin?”

I drop my chin and stare at the ground. This is my sorrowful look. “He died three years ago.” I lift my face again. “It is very sad, but I have learnt to be strong in the meanwhile.”

“No maid?”

“My circumstances don’t extend to that sort of extravagance,” I say, haughtily, trying to tamp his questioning.

He appraises my raiment again. He’s not convinced, I can tell. But what can he say?

We weave our way across the busy road, dodging carriages, dogs and street children until we are safely ensconced at a small, round table in Wheel’s Eating House.

Over a plate of fish paste sandwiches and watery tea, I tell Sergeant Chapman my by now well-rehearsed story of Eleanor Carter. He looks grave when I finish talking.

“So, this French fellow threw her over when he realised she was with child?”

“I’m afraid so. And now she is all alone. I don’t know what she is to do.”

“Are you absolutely sure she is even still in Waterloo?”

“I’m not sure of anything at the moment,” I answer, truthfully. “I will stay on a few more days but then I am afraid I will have to give up the search.”

Tea being finished, I gather up my reticule and tippet. Sgt Chapman accompanies me back out onto the sidewalk.

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/48

“Where do you plan to search next?”

“I might ask some doctors in the area if they have attended Eleanor,” I say, frowning.

“There is one in particular I would be interested in speaking to.”

Sgt Chapman smiles. I like his smile. It’s crooked from where his upper lip is swollen over scar tissue. “I can see you’re quite the sleuth, Mrs Chancey. It’s a pity we don’t have a place for female detectives at the station.”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/49

Chapter Five

This time I find the note on the front doormat as I let Agnes into the house with a basket of food.

“What’s that then?” she asks, as I open it to read.

Disease consumes your body! It will be cut from thee by force. This be a warning to thee.

I crumple it up and shove it into my skirt pocket. “It’s nothing. Just a note from the neighbours. Their cat is missing.”

Leaving Agnes to empty the basket and neaten the kitchen, I return to the bedroom to finish dressing. I take out the note again to re-read. My heart drums so forcefully against my rib cage I can feel it when I press my hand to my chest. What kind of threat is this? Was somebody actually threatening to stab me, slice something from me? There’s something almost churchlike about the language of the note which actually makes me feel worse; the zealots I’ve met who think they’re acting on behalf of God, they’re scarier than anyone, in my opinion. I place the note down on the dresser next to its predecessor. Someone’s clearly watching me. But I won’t be an easy quarry.

I rummage around in my portmanteau until I find a small handgun. It has an ivory handle, cool to the touch, and a pretty filigree pattern is carved into the silver shaft. It’s served me well in the past. I check that it’s armed and then push it down into my reticule.

I walk briskly to a certain lane in Waterloo that I never thought I would have to visit again. The house I’m after is not far from Silvestre’s, enclosed behind a black, wrought iron fence, second from the end of the cramped cul-de-sac. Two women sit on the doorstep of a neighbouring house, watching a near-naked baby play in a puddle and from another doorway a woman throws a bucket of slops into the street. I walk across the cobblestones like I’ve

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/50 done several times in the past, both by myself or leading another dabber, until I reach its pine-green door. A small sign in the window declares that Dr E. Mordaunt, Healer of General

Diseases and Fractures, practices within.

A small bell tinkles above the door as I enter.

A young man finishes writing in a ledger before looking up at me, his face a picture of indifference. His oily, wavy hair is parted in the middle and his suit is made of showy but cheap tan fabric.

“Yes?” he asks.

“Is it possible to see Dr Mordaunt?”

“No,” says the man, in a carefully-practiced, prim voice. “No, the doctor is out at the moment. He won’t be seeing any patients again until tomorrow. Would you like to make an appointment for then?”

I shake my head. “No, I think I will just return another time and hope for the best.”

I leave Dr Mordaunt’s rooms and return to the street, but instead of summoning a cab to take me home, I wait around the corner and nibble on a hot potato I buy from a vendor’s cart. Several people come and go from Mordaunt’s premises, but one man in particular, dark and clean-shaven, catches my eye. There’s something familiar about his frame, his gait, but for the life of me I cannot place where I’ve seen him before. He’s attired in a plaid, brown suit with sturdy black boots on his feet and a derby hat rammed low on his head. He hops onto an omnibus, and I lose sight of him before I can work out who he is.

I don’t have to wait much longer before I see Dr Mordaunt’s prissy assistant walk out onto the main road. Tossing the potato skin into the gutter I creep forward and watch as he trots briskly down the road, before taking a sharp left-hand turn towards the next cross-road. I retrace my steps to Dr Mordaunt’s rooms. I rap on the door and hearing nothing, take out my

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/51 trusty pin and effect a tidy, swift entrance into the reception room. The bell tinkles as it had before, and I stand very still, listening for any sound of life.

Tip-toeing softly down the side corridor, I pause. I want to have a look around Dr

Mordaunt’s office, which is to my left, but at the end of the corridor is a closed door, and I know well what’s behind it. I feel a bit giddy in the stomach and oh, the faint, sweet scent of ether assails my sensitive nostrils and I gag. I’m glad the door’s shut. “I could not stand seeing those forkin’, forkin’ stirrups again,” I whisper. Taking a deep breath I admonish myself to get on with things, and enter the office.

Besides a large, mahogany desk by the window, and two hard-backed chairs, there’s an oak filing cabinet against the wall. I start there, but not really knowing what I’m searching for, besides maybe a file on Miss Carter, I give it up. From what I can see it appears that Dr

Mordaunt keeps records of his more usual medical cases, but not of the operations he performs in the dead of night. I discover the key to his desk drawers on a hook at the back of the desk, and rummaging amongst the paperwork, writing utensils and empty bottles of whisky I finally come across an interesting looking notebook bound in black leather with a marker of red ribbon. Flicking through its pages I find a handwritten passage that begins,

“therefore I followed her by foot…” when I’m distracted by a rattle from the front door and then the tinkle of the bell above it. I can’t hide ‘cause my dratted gown makes it impossible to conceal myself behind anything smaller than an elephant so, shoving the notebook in my pocket, I sit down in a demure fashion on one of the chairs.

I turn innocent eyes upon Dr Mordaunt when he enters the room and reels in shock when he sees me.

“I am extremely sorry, sir, to give you such a fright,” I say. “I have been waiting here for quite a while, for I really need to speak to you upon a very important subject.”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/52

Dr Mordaunt is a tall man with beefy shoulders. His face is clean of any whiskers and a pair of thick spectacles magnify his hard eyes. He wears his hair unfashionably short and his jaw is almost always clenched. In other attire he could be mistaken for a paid street brawler. He frowns angrily. “But how did you get in here, Madam?”

“I came in earlier while you were out. It seems your assistant forgot I was waiting here,” I answer.

He stares at me over his glasses for a moment and takes the seat opposite. “What is this important business you need to discuss with me?”

“It’s my cousin. She’s simply disappeared from this area. She was not well, so I was wondering if she came to see you.”

“What’s her name?”

“Eleanor Carter,” I say, taking her photograph out of my reticule. “Have you seen her?”

Dr Mordaunt hesitates a moment over the likeness of Miss Carter, before turning his frown back onto me. “What was she unwell with?”

I allow my eyelids to droop as I peer at him. “Let’s say she was…unfortunate.”

“How do you think I could help her then?” he asks, his voice terse.

I shrug one shoulder. “I have heard that you can help a woman who is in…distress.”

His face reddens. He leans back in his chair and folds his arms. “I haven’t seen her.

Ever.”

I’m not going to draw any more information from him so I stand up to take my leave.

Just as I reach the doorway, he says, “But you look very familiar.”

I stand stock-still, but don’t turn around. “I doubt you know me, sir.” I return to the cul-de-sac, the bell above the door tinkling behind me.

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/53

“Of course he didn’t recognise you,” laughs Tilly. “He was concentrating on your back end the last time he saw you.”

I smile too, but shudder at the same time. “My breakfast nearly crept up my insides to be back in that place.”

I take a sip from the tumbler of gin, and pull a face, sucking at my tongue. I’ll never like gin, but it’s better than the cheap, fierce brandy the men are knocking back. We’re seated at a tall table in The Old Trout, a tavern not far from Mme Silvestre’s establishment, smoking my elegant French cigarettes. We’re on high stools and our feet dangle below our frilly petticoats, displaying pretty ankles to the appreciative male clientele.

“You’re no closer to finding her then?” asks Tilly.

“No. It’s so frustrating. I’m at a dead end.”

“Ready for a bit of carousing, are you? You best come back to Silvestre’s with me; make a bit of pin money. That’ll take your mind off things.” She throws back the last of her gin and hops off her chair. “That said, I’d better get back or Silvestre will be as mad as a wet hen.”

As we leave the tavern, two men in cloth caps and grubby breeches nudge each other and follow. They’re rollicking drunk, and once out on the sidewalk, they call out to us, between whistles and burps.

“Come an’ gimme a suck, ye tasty tart.”

“Come an’ pull me pipe.”

Tilly turns to fling some choice insults back at them, but I tug her forward and walk her briskly to Mme Silvestre’s. When Mr Critchley opens the door to our strident knocking, he appears half asleep with his collar askew, his trousers loose at the waist.

“Can’t a man have a rest before work?” he moans. “Good evening, Hell.”

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“Good evening to you too, love,” I say. “We’re in a bit of a hurry to come in because we have two loose buffoons on our trail.” I nod towards the men, who hesitate by the front gate.

“Oh, no,” says Tilly. “They’re not coming in, are they? That’d be just my luck to have to entertain them and their small willies.”

One of the men clamps his hand on his crotch and yells, “Come on, I’ll fuck your tight cunny,” while the other doubles over.

“He’s heaving his guts up in Silvestre’s rose bushes,” says Mr Critchley, sternly. “She won’t like that.” He lifts his shoulders, puffs out his chest and storms down the path, growling. The first man turns tail and staggers off but Mr Critchley just reaches them in time to kick the vomiter in the pants.

He returns, satisfied. “We don’t entertain that sort at Mme Silvestre’s. You know that,” he says as he ushers us into the hallway.

I follow them to the back of the house, where we find the other girls in the kitchen. I take a chair next to Tilly and join her in a supper of mutton soup washed down with watery gin. Mostly the women banter with us, although the French woman with the rich, brown curls and the Dutch girl, as pretty as a china doll, keep to themselves, rarely even speaking to each other. It’s not long before I fall into swearing and cheap talk, all my elocution lessons cast away for the moment. And although I would murder someone before I’d be trapped back in a place like this – it makes my blood quicken to realise the truth of this statement – I’d forgotten the fun, the closeness, of working within a group of dabbers. But finally, despite ribald entreaties to stay the course of the evening, I leave, remembering that I have Dr

Mordaunt’s notebook to inspect.

It’s quite dark when I reach the street. I’m a little muddled from the gin, so I look around for a hansom cab. A woman’s selling hot milk from a make-shift stall, while a small

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/55 crowd of workers on their way home swarm around a man selling meat-puddings. In the distance is Katie Sullivan’s coffee stand and directly across the way from me is a glossy, black carriage drawn by sleek, chestnut horses. But there’s no cab.

Walking in the direction of my temporary home, I step deftly over food scraps and manure. A short distance on I get that creepy feeling that someone is watching me, but looking over my shoulder cannot spot anyone who displays the slightest interest in my movements. I hope those two men from earlier haven’t lingered to harass me, and walk a little more briskly, keeping pace with those who are rushing home. I hug my shawl around my upper body so that my pendant is covered.

A grubby girl begs me to buy some onions. Normally I’m pretty nifty at avoiding street vendors but I’m distracted, and when I pause to consider her wares, I notice the black carriage has moved along the street too. The coachman, his top hat shiny in the lamp light, pulls his horses to a halt. I resume walking, and the carriage’s wheels roll again, rumbling along the road behind me. I can’t be sure if I’m imagining that the carriage is following me, so I stop in front of an old lady who crouches on the ground, selling posies of flowers which are spread out on a blanket. I buy a small bunch of impatiens and straightening up, notice that the carriage has stopped again. A tremor of apprehension tickles up my spine as I stare at the red curtains across the windows of the black carriage. Who’s inside? I can almost feel their gaze crawling over my skin.

A knot of anxiety settles in my chest when I reach my street, for the road is quite deserted. No vendors, no coaches, no stragglers. I can just about see the tiny house I need to reach on the next corner, but dread walking the gloomy distance with the carriage in attendance. How forkin’ stupid to be so careless in this area. I’ve become too complacent living in Mayfair, too complacent with my personal safety. I glance back at the carriage.

Maybe it contains the person who’s been leaving me the threatening notes. And what of the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/56 person who’s cutting up prostitutes? Am I to be next? But almost worst of all – what if the carriage contains men waiting to yank me off the sidewalk, ready to force from me what I’m not willing to give? My stomach twists with sick fear. I remember an evening, a very long evening, from years before. The memory of that black night flows and ebbs with every action and thought I ever have. The ripping pain. The smell of blood, their musk and their brutal body odour, the smell of the leather seat my face was rammed into. Most of all I remember the humiliation. I pick up the skirts of my gown and run as fast as my cumbersome petticoats allow.

I’m halfway down the short street when the carriage clumsily turns the corner, and a voice calls out to me from the left. I shy away from it, but a small yet strong hand darts from some bushes and pulls me in. Tripping on the hem of my skirt, I fall onto the hard ground behind a wrought iron fence.

“Lie still.”

I lie as flat as I can but my crinoline hoops pop up above my lower body like a shopfront awning. Possibly because it’s so dark, possibly because my dress blends in with the shadows of the bush, the carriage passes slowly by and disappears around the next corner.

“Cor. You could fecking ‘ide under that thing.”

I’m lying next to the young boy I’ve often seen scraping up litter on Frazier St outside my temporary house. He’s staring with wonder at my billowing skirt.

I stagger to my feet, grasping onto branches of the bush to steady myself. Wiping the dirt from my gown, I say, “Thank you for that.” I scoop up some coins which have slipped from my reticule and offer them to the boy. The fragile, pink petals of the impatiens are quite squashed into the ground. I’d forgotten about my handgun and feel for its reassuring bulk. I should’ve drawn it on the carriage, but really, I would’ve felt forking foolish brandishing a gun like I was a cavalryman or something.

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“You lives in the ladybird’s house on the corner, doncha?” the boy asks.

“What makes you think it’s a ladybird’s house?”

He snorts. “It’s always been a ladybird’s house. Mind yous, you don’t look like a renter, I’ll vouch fer that.”

I drop him a small curtsey. “Thank you, kind sir.”

The boy accompanies me as I walk the rest of the way to the house. My legs are a little wobbly from the run and fright.

“What’s your name?” I ask him.

“Me da’ calls me Chat.”

I open my front door, glancing over the street one last time for the carriage.

“Thank you for your help, Chat,” I say, slipping into the house.

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Li Leen

Wah, it is always cold here, and it is not yet winter. Even though I have gweilo blood running through my body I have never, ever grown accustomed to the constant chill in the air. While she is away I sit by the fireside and the dry air and the heat that crackles from the flames withers my skin. The skin on my arms and on my shins is becoming like a snake’s, but without the shine. It is never this cold from where I come, not even in the early morning when the malkohas first cuckoo and the geckos tut. Here I never feel moist perspiration settle like dew at my hairline or the refreshing trickle of sweat between my bosoms.

My father left Makassar when the Dutch returned and expelled the British for good.

He took my uncle with him on the ship, but left my mother and me behind. I was only an infant, so I do not remember him, but Mother told me that he was a very pale man, and that he had tiny, gingery freckles all over his body. I too have these spots scattered across my nose and cheeks and no amount of pork lard or menthol rub made them disappear.

Not long after my father left us Grandfather insisted my mother marry a local merchant. Grandfather said it was because he was of Chinese blood like we were, but I now wonder if we were sold off to pay his mah-jong debt. Tiri, as I called him, was the wealthiest of the Chinese merchants in Makassar and he controlled all the illegal gaming houses and brothels. Everyone was wary of my step-father. Even the Dutch governor and his staff did not interfere with Tiri.

Being Tiri’s step-daughter meant I had servants of my own – one to chaperone me to the temple and one to sweep my room and wash my clothes and even one to fan me whilst I slept. But that all changed when I was made to leave Makassar and voyage across the world so that I could work in my uncle’s noodle shop in Liverpool. No more the balmy warmth of

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/59 home, just the unpleasant heat of the kitchen as I toiled over the boiling stock made from water and my sweat. And now this chill. Always this chill.

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Chapter Six

“Mrs Chancey, there be a gentleman at the door for you,” Agnes calls from the hallway.

When I pop my head around the bedroom doorway I’m surprised to see that it’s

Sergeant Chapman.

“Good morning, Sgt Chapman. I’m just at my dressing table. I’ll be down in a moment. Please wait in the sitting room.”

What on earth is the sergeant doing in my house? I drop Mordaunt’s notebook on the bed. The evening before I’d only glanced over it for, being shaken by the encounter with the carriage, I’d gulped down several small glasses of wine until my emotions had blurred enough to fall asleep. I’d woken four times during the night, heart racing, night dress drenched in sweat, but apart from flashes of memory – a bloom of poppy red, frayed white linen, dark words I couldn’t decipher –I don’t remember the nightmares.

I feel a bit seedy and two of my fingernails are torn from when I fell over the night before. I’d gingerly bathed away the blood from my knees but my petticoats brush against the scrapes uncomfortably. I can’t help but frown at my reflection in the mirror. My shiny, charcoal grey dress is so boring. The line of the bodice accentuates my trim waist and full bust, and the skirt is satisfyingly full, but it’s really such a drab colour and my white petticoats could do with a wash. I have a sudden, pleasing thought and rifling through all my hatboxes I come across the headpiece for which I’m searching. It’s a black, velvet pork-pie hat of the very latest fashion with a pert plume of purple feathers, and it has yet to be worn. I attach it rakishly at an angle to my head and spray my décolletage and wrists liberally with

Eau de Cologne Impériale.

Sgt Chapman springs up from the sofa as soon as I enter the room. I urge him to sit, and say, “But how did you find me?”

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A small smile hovers under his moustache. “I have my ways. I’m a detective, after all.”

I grin back at him, but I still want to know how he’s tracked me down. I’m accustomed to young men desirous of furthering their acquaintance with me although it is a puzzle that the sergeant has searched me out. “I don’t think that answer is good enough, sir.”

“Actually, you left your directions with Mrs Dawkins. She supplied me with this address.”

“Ah. And why did you feel the need to seek me out?”

His face becomes serious. “Unfortunately I had cause to be at the mortuary again this morning, and happened across Mrs Dawkins there.”

I can only gape at him for a moment, and my voice is deep with dread when I ask,

“Tell me, what was it that made you return to the mortuary?”

“Another body has turned up. Another woman.”

“No,” I breathe. “No. That is terrible.”

“Yes, yes it is.” Sgt Chapman watches me, grim. “I’m afraid it might be your cousin this time, Mrs Chancey.”

I press my fingers against my mouth, mashing my lips until they sting. “How ghastly.” I’ll have to see the body, see for sure if it is Miss Carter, but it’s so horrible I’m paralysed.

“Was she… Was she…?” I cannot form the words. “Like that poor woman at the morgue?”

“I’m afraid so.” Sgt Chapman pauses to let the words sink in. “We are definite that she has come to the same end as the other victims.”

“Terrible.” I wring the tip of each finger on my right hand. They’re icy. “I suppose you need me to identify her?”

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“If you feel up to it, that would be helpful, Mrs Chancey,” he answers. “Her body has been removed to the police station. If you would accompany me there, the Inspector would be very thankful.”

He allows me a little time to collect my reticule and a parasol for a light rain has set in, and he helps me climb into a police buggy which awaits us. It’s not too far to the police station, a Georgian three storey building which is situated directly next to the more ornate magistrates’ court. I follow him through the station’s arched doorway into its cool interior.

The whitewashed walls of the entrance hall are pale and yellowish. A tired looking woman clutching a toddler to her side is seated on a wooden bench next to a sleeping man who smells strongly of spirits. Behind a desk stands a policeman, tall and official in his dark blue tunic with its brass buttons and high neck. He greets Chapman with a nod then turns back to his paperwork.

A rubicund, portly man in a black frock coat comes forward to meet us. “Is this the lady’s cousin, Sgt Chapman?” he asks, as he clasps my hand.

“I am,” I answer, introducing myself. “Mrs Chancey.”

“Inspector Kelley.” He ushers us through the station to the back, until we stand in its cobblestoned yard. “Horrible business to put a lady through, but it would be wonderful if we could finally identify one of these women.”

Placing his plump hand on the door handle of what looks like a large out-house, he asks, “Are you ready, my dear?”

I find I can’t speak, but feeling Sgt Chapman’s hand on my elbow give a supportive squeeze, I nod my head.

“Right,” says the inspector, as he flings open the door.

The room is chilly and very bare, except for the shrouded figure which is laid out along a cot-bed. A constable carrying a lantern precedes us into the room to shed light on the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/63 body. From the corner of my eye I can see a stain on the lower half of the sheet, a blotch of rusty red. I doggedly keep my gaze on the inspector’s face. He’s standing opposite me on the other side of the body and I wonder at the daintiness of his fleshy fingers as he picks up the corners of the sheet and looks at me expectantly.

“Ready?”

I nod again, mouth dry, and force myself to gaze down upon the face of the latest victim. In death, the young woman’s skin is the colour of aged ivory and has lost its youthful rosiness. Her pink lips are swollen and bruised, and tinged with a deathly blue. However, her fair curls are still alive, their golden hue shifting and glowing in the lamplight. From the corner of the woman’s eye, snaking its way down to her temple and through to her hair, is the dry trail of a tear.

I’ve never fainted, not when my corset’s so tight I can barely breathe, nor when the stage becomes so hot with candlelight I feel I could suffocate. Not even back in those days when I couldn’t find food for days, and I wandered the lanes delirious with hunger. But this once the room whirls around my ears in a warm, nauseous rush. My fingertips and the palms of my hands tingle and sweat pricks my skin.

“Is this your Miss Carter?” asks the inspector.

I shake my head slowly. “No. It isn’t. But I know who she is.”

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Chapter Seven

“It was definitely that Dutch girl, Till,” I say, taking a sip of the sherry cobbler we’re sharing.

We’re seated together again at the tall table in The Old Trout and the alcohol warms my chest and loosens the tension in my shoulders.

“Bloody hell,” whispers Tilly. She takes a long pull of the sherry through her straw.

“Bloody hell.”

We smoke and drink in silence for a few moments. I shiver, and pull my shawl more securely about my shoulders, and wish that we could be seated nearer to the fireside, but women are banished to the far end of the room for fear that their layers of skirt and petticoat catch alight. I’ve seen several cases of women rolled upon the floor, while the smoke and flames are smacked from their gowns. An uneasy giggle rises in my throat, ‘cause it looks funny, but also ‘cause it’s so awful. The stench of singed hair, scorched skin mingled with burning fabric. Awful.

“Poor Anneke,” says Tilly.

“Was that her name? I didn’t know.”

“The Charlies called her Annie. She used to always boast she was good with her quail pipe, which was lucky ‘cause half the time she had shocking shankers.” Her mouth lifts in a wry smile and she takes another sip of the sherry cobbler.

“Did she see a doctor?”

Tilly shrugs. “She saw that nice young doctor last year when she was poorly, but usually Henry helped her out.”

“Henry?” I think of the barman at Silvestre’s. “Why Henry?”

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“He used to be a dispenser in a pharmacy or something,” Tilly answers. “He’s always giving us evil tasting draughts when we’re poorly.” She pushes a pink strand of hair back from her forehead. “Where’d they find her?”

“Down by the river next to Rooper’s fishmonger. Apparently she lay in the mud for quite a while because passers-by thought she was just another tail lushy from too much gin. A fruit vendor finally noticed the blood and summoned the police.”

“Terrible,” she says. She looks at me, puzzled. “How do you know all this? Why did they send for you?”

I explain how I’d met the sergeant at the mortuary, and that they had collected me in the hope of having the body identified. “They thought it might be Eleanor Carter.”

“And you reckon Anneke died like the other girls?”

I nod. “Till, have you heard of women having their insides taken out – their wombs?”

“Of course. When I lived with my aunt in Clerkenwell, the churchwarden’s wife had terrible pains in her middles and had her womb removed. She was so sickly and sad afterwards because she could never have children.”

“Well, that’s what’s happening to these women. Other renters like us, Till. They’re not just getting a scrape. Their whole wombs are being sliced out too. And their other bits.

Their fun bits, their quims.”

She freezes over the straw. “So it’s true. The girls by the bridge are calling it the devil’s scrape, but I thought it was all talk. Just their pimps trying to scare them silly.”

“Yeah, it’s happening. The poor things bleed to death.” Something occurs to me. “Do you think Anneke was pregnant?”

“I wouldn’t know. We weren’t that close,” she says, but then she slaps me on the arm.

“But I did see her puking the other day. I’ve only been in the pudding club once but I was as

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/66 bleak as a periwinkle’s arsehole. Dr Mordaunt took care of me.” She gives me a sharp look.

“Dr Mordaunt wouldn’t do this, Hell.”

I pull a face, unconvinced. “But didn’t you say she was seeing another doctor?”

“That’s right. Dr Blain. Sabine, that French girl, pointed him out to me one night when he was eating his supper at the Lion’s Inn.”

“Is that so?”

“The girls adore him, from what I heard. Luckily, I haven’t had any call to see a doctor for years so I haven’t been to him. You don’t think he could have hurt her, do you?”

I shrug. “Well, just tell the girls to be careful.”

“What? Keep their legs crossed?” Tilly guffaws. “Jesus, I never thought the day would come when it’d be preferable to have a bairn than have a scrape.” She rolls her eyes, smiling.

“I agree. Who wants a bairn?” I say, the last of the sherry cobbler bubbling up the straw. I make sure she can’t see my eyes. “How do you avoid it?”

“I have these French regulating pills.” She takes a brass trimmed pill box from her reticule to show me. “Ooh, they cramps up your middles something awful. Sometimes I have to take time off from the Charlies. What do you do?”

“Not a thing,” I say, hopping down from my stool. “Just good luck I suppose.”

As we round the corner onto Pearman St, Henry brushes past us, smoking a cigar. He’s dressed in a green and white gingham gown, and his wig is a little askew.

Tilly looks over her shoulder at his receding figure. “I wonder where he’s off to in such a hurry.”

Just then Sergeant Chapman comes out through Silvestre’s gate. He lifts his hat to

Tilly as she slips past him, and then bows in my direction. “Mrs Chancey.”

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“Sgt Chapman. Are you here to ask about the poor Dutch girl?”

He nods. “That’s right. Inspector Kelley wanted me to find out what I can about her.”

“And did you find out what you needed?”

He smiles his crooked smile. “Unfortunately, Mme Silvestre and her girls were not disposed to talking to me. However, you seem quite friendly with that woman with the pink hair. Did she tell you anything of interest?”

“I think she might have.”

Sergeant Chapman offers me his elbow. “Well, I am famished. How would you like to join me for lunch and tell me all you have discovered?”

Tucking my hand into the crook of his arm I allow him to lead the way. If he is to pump me for information, I can draw some from him too, after all. We come to The Pond and

Swan hotel not quite two streets away. The large room is cosy and well-lit, and we’re seated at a small round table with a fresh, linen cloth. We each order the roast meat and vegetables.

“And to drink?” asks the waiter.

“I’ll have a glass of claret,” says Sgt Chapman.

“And for madam?” asks the waiter, still addressing the sergeant.

Sgt Chapman raises his eyebrow at me.

“A glass of claret would be lovely,” I reply.

The waiter bows slightly and withdraws.

“He must think you’re my little wife,” says Chapman.

“Or he’s pretending I am, at any rate.”

“In that case, why don’t you call me Bill from now on. After all, we seem to be becoming quite well acquainted.”

He busies himself with the serviette, avoiding my eye. He’s becoming jolly friendly all of a sudden.

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The waiter places our glasses of wine before us.

“Then you must call me Heloise.”

“Your name is French?”

I smile. “Almost certainly. I’m afraid all my maternal relatives are from the continent.” Another lie. He probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce my real name. And he certainly wouldn’t be sitting there, looking chuffed with himself, if he knew all about me. I know it’s wrong, but I always feel a thrill of mischief when I think of how many people I’ve fooled.

Our meals arrive and, as I fight to keep the blanched, watery vegetables from slipping from my fork, I tell the sergeant what I learnt from Tilly.

“So she may have been with child, according to Tilly?” he asks.

“Maybe. She was not quite sure. And I’m afraid Anneke’s best friend in the house was the French girl, and I doubt very much if she’ll talk even to me.”

“And she once went to see this Dr Blain?” He reaches into his waistcoat pocket, withdraws a small notebook and pencil and starts to take notes. “But sometimes the girls were treated by Henry…” he murmurs as he writes. He looks up. “Do you know his last name?”

“No. I just know him as the barman at Silvestre’s.”

I watch him fold the notebook and place it back into his pocket. “These women…

They’re bleeding to death?”

Bill nods. “Yes, it seems that way.”

“The poor things must have been in agony.” I shake my head and place my fork on the plate. “I don’t understand. Why try to help these women but then leave them to bleed out and die?” I want to know more of the wounds the poor girls are receiving, but shy away from discussing their sexual organs with him. The botched abortions are bad enough, but why does this creature also find it necessary to remove their buds too? Is it to inflict pain or to simply

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/69 deprive them of pleasure? I suddenly remember a discussion at my last soiree in Mayfair – wasn’t there talk of a doctor who was secretly slicing the buds from women to keep them sane? It seemed so ludicrous and cruel. I will never understand it. But I’d drunk a little too much champagne by then, I don’t remember the conversation clearly… what was that doctor’s name again? He had two names. B, B? It always comes back to some bastard of a doctor.

“I’m not sure. Maybe he or she is not well-trained?” Bill answers.

“She?”

He places the last bit of meat in his mouth and chews. “Well, yes. Often these back street abortions – these ‘regulating’ operations – are done by women. Mind you, usually the abortion is carried out in a much simpler fashion than the surgical removal of the whole… area.”

He’s right. Many madams have a rummage around their girls’ insides with a piece of wire or an injection of some sort. Maybe it is a woman mutilating the girls. Silvestre? She did look a bit put out the other night when I questioned her.

I glance up from my plate and catch Bill watching me closely. “What do you think?” he asks me.

And I wonder, with a cold rush of dismay, if he considers me a suspect. It would be all too laughable if I didn’t know from hard experience how devious, or even plain inept, our esteemed police force can be. I take too long to answer. I flounder between offering up

Silvestre as a suspect and wondering how guilty I’d appear if I protest my innocence.

Bill continues, as he gestures for the waiter to take their empty plates. “Maybe it’s carelessness? It really is hard to say, at this stage. I think we need to know more about this Dr

Blain, don’t you?”

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“I think you need to know more about him, not ‘we’. My only concern is to find my poor cousin, Eleanor.” It’s time I left the sergeant’s side, minded my own business – Eleanor

– and returned safely to Mayfair as soon as possible.

“But surely you are curious to know if Blain could be our man?” he says.

I cannot deny a slight twinge of interest, but shake my head. My only mission here is to find Eleanor, and in that I’m doing an abysmal job.

“But what if he has your cousin right now? What if he is trying to ‘regulate’ her right now?”

Mutilate her, he means. “Don’t say that.”

“I will need to tail him, follow him,” says Bill, tapping the table. “It will be tedious work, but he is our only lead at the moment.”

“That might take you an age until you find anything incriminating,” I say. “It may not even be him.”

Bill studies my face for a few moments, and I stare back.

“Lion’s Inn, did you say?”

“Yes. Apparently he sups there.”

“Let us summon a hansom cab. We will have a look at this Dr Blain,” he says, standing up abruptly from the table. “Come along?” He holds his hand out to me.

If I cavil, disappear, would that appear like I have something to hide? I’ve nothing to go on with the Eleanor Carter case, and I’m interested to see this Dr Blain, after all. “Alright.

I will accompany you for a short while.”

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Li Leen

It is wretched this waiting to be of use. I might as well return to Limehouse and scrub floors or prepare dumplings until my fingers cramp and become deformed. Even that would be better than being cooped up in this house like a rooster in a straw cage. It is in these idle moments, when there is nothing to busy my hands or tasks to fret my mind, that I remember. I remember the jasmine scent of the coffea flowers. I remember my favourite dish, konro, and the tang of the lemongrass as the soft beef falls from the bone leaving a slick of gravy on my lips. I remember sitting in the shade beneath the guava tree, slicing pieces of the fruit’s pink flesh to pop in my thirsty mouth. Most of all I remember my mother. I remember the smell of her scalp, when she laid her head against my chest to hug me close. I remember how the palms of her small, delicate hands were always rosy and how her breath smelt of cacao seeds. And I will never forget the last words I ever heard her say – you must stop looking at my daughter.

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Chapter Eight

The Lion’s Inn, with its striking, slate-grey façade and ox-blood trim around the doorway and bay windows, is located on a busy crossroads. It’s sandwiched between a bakehouse and a stable yard and is diagonally situated across from an upholsterer’s workshop. It’s only mid- afternoon, long before the steady stream of workers begin their trudge home, although the costers are already fervently pushing their products on those who do pass. Bill leaves me by a fruit stall and has a quick look around the interior of the Lion’s Inn. On his return he shakes his head. “He doesn’t seem to be there. The barman said he usually arrives around tea time and sits in that bay window there.” He points across to the window closest to the stable yard.

He suggests we have a stroll around the immediate area to pass the time. One street over we find a crescent of newly built homes which overlooks a charming park. Bill leads me to a bench and wipes it clean with his kerchief before we sit.

“Are you quite comfortable?”

“Yes, quite, Bill, thank you.” I stare straight ahead, watching a sparrow hop on the grass. If I’m silent he will feel compelled to speak. In my long career of tending to men, I’ve found that they enjoy talking about themselves. And although I’m a master of entertaining chatter, as careful as I am, small truths sometimes slip out.

However, he remains quiet too. Glancing up at him I see that amusement crinkles the sides of his eyes. “You think if you’re quiet enough I’ll do all the talking,” he says. “You really are a loss to the police force.”

I lift my shoulder. “I wouldn’t enjoy wearing that itchy, woollen uniform in any case.” I look at his suit and ask, “And why do you not wear your uniform anymore?”

“I’m still on leave from my normal duties to carry out these investigations. Inspector

Kelley thinks it is best if I am in informal dress.”

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I turn to face him. “Tell me, how did you come to be a policeman?”

He takes the hat from his head for a moment and runs his hand through his fair curls.

A hardness shifts across his face before it relaxes into its usual complacency. “I was up at St

Andrews until a few years ago, but my poor old father could not afford to keep me there.

He’s a scientist, you know, up at the Royal Institution, but his last experiment failed, left a hole in the family finances. I was reading law, so rather than become a clerk in the dusty law firm my father had in mind, I joined the police force. Much more exciting.”

He taps the skirt of my gown with his hat. “It’s now your turn. You must tell me what you do when you are not searching for your cousin.”

I watch his hands for a moment. There are scrapes across his knuckles, alongside the inside of his right forefinger. His hands are strong, a worker’s hands. I like men’s hands. I like holding them, moulding them to mine, feeling for the grooves and creases of their lives. I like that a man’s palm is larger than my palm, that his fingers can engulf mine. I’ve found that often, before I discover the intimate details of a man, I can learn much from his hands.

His pastimes, his passions… maybe even some proportions. As Bill twists his hat between his hands, I can see that his fingers are long. I press my lips together, suppressing a grin, and quickly glance up into the shadows of the oak tree above.

“The usual things. A little sewing, a little playing of the pianoforte and sometimes, when I become very low and bored, a light supper, a card game maybe, with family.”

Nothing more innocuous than a widow on a modest independence, after all.

I look into his pale blue eyes, so pale it’s a wonder I can’t see straight through into his skull. If only I could know if he considered me a suspect or an accomplice.

Placing the looped ribbon of my reticule over my wrist I stand up. “I think we should pass the Lion’s Inn again and see if Dr Blain has arrived yet.”

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We make our way back to the busy crossroad, and standing by the fruit stall again, see that a good looking man is seated in the bay window.

“That must be him,” I say. “He doesn’t look that evil from this distance.”

Bill smiles down at me. “You would be surprised who can turn out to be wicked.”

I nod, keeping my face blank. Bill’s liver would curl if he knew what I’d seen. What of that time ol’ Mikey bashed Leaky Sue so bad she had to hold her jaw in place? What of that den down by the docks, where you could hear those ‘napped children screaming? Those children…But I’ve left that all behind. I smile up at the policeman and say, “You are right. I am being silly.”

He rubs his chin in thought. “I must keep an eye on him now. I will send you home in a cab. You won’t be offended if I do not escort you?”

I peer at Dr Blain through the window. “Surely your plan to follow him will yield no results. And if they did, it might take a long time.” I turn back to Bill. “Allow me to interview him. I might be able to make his acquaintance – see if we are following the right clues.”

“But in that case I could just march in there, make his acquaintance myself.”

“Of course you could,” I agree. “But he’d be more likely to let his guard down with me, after all.”

A troubled frown forms on his face. “I don’t think I can allow you to do that. It might be dangerous.”

“How dangerous can it be? We will be in the crowded dining area of the Lion’s Inn and you will be right here keeping an eye on things.”

He rubs his chin again. “You may be right. But what will you discuss with him? How will you meet him?”

I re-tie the bow of my bonnet at a coquettish angle and arrange the fur tippet around my shoulders. “Leave that part to me.”

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Luckily the dining room of the Lion’s Inn is crowded with folk having a drink after work, early supper or tea. There are no vacant tables so I make my way to Dr Blain’s table, and hesitate. When he finally notices me, I give him my most winning smile and ask, entreatingly, “Do you mind if I sit at your table, sir? There does not seem to be any other room in here to have a nice cup of tea. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”

He folds his newspaper neatly into quarters and places it next to his teacup. He blushes a little as he stands up and lifts his hat from his head. “Not at all, madam. Please take a seat.”

He’s a tall, angular man with a very upright posture. He’s handsome, but his suit is a little too neat, his brown hair and beard trimmed a little too fastidiously. The intensity of his stare under the straight, dark eyebrows is quite disconcerting.

“Would you care to share my tea?” he asks.

I glance at the dark tea in his mug and the assortment of cakes on a saucer. “Thank you. That would be delightful.”

Dr Blain attracts the attention of the waiter and orders another cup and once this is done he opens out his newspaper and continues to read.

My quarry hides behind his newspaper and, glancing out the bay window, I can see

Bill point and laugh. I resist the urge to make him a rude gesture and pour myself tea into the cup the waiter has placed before me.

“I see that the news is not so dreadful anymore coming from the Americas,” I say, loudly, peeping around the side of the newspaper to catch Dr Blain’s attention. “War is so distressing.”

He looks at me in surprise, then shakes out the newspaper and turns over the front page to read. “Ah, yes. Terrible business. I have relatives living in Tennessee. It was a very

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/76 worrying time for them.” He places the newspaper on the table between us. “I’m afraid the paper is often full of terrible news.”

I allow for a careworn expression to wash over my face. “It’s not a very happy day, is it? The only reason I am here is because I am waiting for a letter from my sweet, young cousin to be delivered, but every day I return and each day I am disappointed.”

“That’s no good. Is she not in London?”

I shake my head, sadly. “I am not sure. She has run away from her family and we are very worried for her safety. She left word that if she desired to contact us she would leave a message here at the Lion’s Inn.”

Dr Blain reaches for his newspaper again. “I am very sorry for your difficulties, madam.”

“Not at all. It is very kind of you to listen to a stranger’s woes. You must be a very charitable gentleman.” I put my hand out so that he can’t pick up the paper. “Please let me introduce myself. Mrs Heloise Chancey.”

He accepts my hand in his and stammers, “Dr Nicholas Blain.”

I pretend to be struck by a thought. “Maybe you have seen her. Yes, maybe she has been here and you have seen her, sir.” Rummaging around in my purse I bring out the photograph of Eleanor. “Have you seen my cousin?”

I watch him closely as he gazes at the photograph. He looks at the likeness for a few moments, and rubs his thumb down its surface. “I may have,” he says. “I have a practice near here – I am a surgeon – and she may have been in to see me a few weeks ago, but I really cannot remember.” He shakes his head as he passes the photograph back to me. “Maybe I should keep this likeness for a few days? Show it around to my neighbours and patients?

Someone else may have seen her.”

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It’s a little difficult to tug the photograph from his grip. “That is so generous of you, sir, but I’m afraid this is the only copy I have and naturally it is something I treasure too much to part with.” I sigh. “I will just have to return here every evening until I hear more.”

“What a bore for you, Mrs Chancey,” he says. “But I am here most evenings. I will keep you company. Unless, of course, Mr Chancey objects.”

I look away, just as I always do when I talk of my husband. It’s then that I glance down at the open newspaper and a certain article catches my eye. I pull it to me and read the title out loud. “Ghastly murders of prostitutes in Waterloo. Police baffled.” I don’t need to pretend shock because I didn’t realise the press had notice of the deaths, but I’m quick-witted enough to glance at Dr Blain to gauge his reaction. He frowns and tilts his head to scan the article upside down. His mouth tightens in anger as he reads.

By the time our hansom cab rumbles up to the house on Frazier St the rain’s falling heavily.

Bill shrugs out of his jacket and stepping down from the coach he holds it high so that I can shelter beneath it as we run to the front door. Once under cover I brush raindrops from my hair and peer quickly onto the dark street. There’s no dark carriage lurking in the shadows.

Bill smiles at me crookedly, and the steady gleam of admiration in his eye gives me a thrill of pleasure. I thank the sergeant for his assistance and sweep through the doorway. I press my back to the closed door and grin. No nasty note has been tipped through the mail slot and I’m pretty sure the sergeant has taken a liking to me despite himself. It’s been a good day.

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Chapter Nine

The next morning dawns glorious and warm, but I wake with a headache, the tail-end of a dream weighing upon me. I remember trying to run, run away, but my feet couldn’t make purchase on the ground, my legs swimming through the air. It’s left me feeling dull, so I enjoy a leisurely lie in followed by a light breakfast of tea and raspberries while Agnes dusts the living areas. The girl lingers most mornings, finding inane tasks with which to fill the time. I reckon, from her chatter, she has a poor time of it in Silvestre’s house, between the bossiness of the cook and the disdain of the working girls. I half listen to the girl’s complaints of the brothel’s bed sheets as I write a quick letter to Sir Thomas outlining my progress in the investigation.

“Two days ago wus the wust,” she says. “Look at me ‘ands, from all that scrubbing.

All chapped they is. Those sheets had all kind of muck on ‘em.” She wrinkles her nose at the memory.

I place the sealed letter and some pennies into her outstretched hands. “That’s terrible,

Agnes. Why don’t you post this note for me and have a short rest. Treat yourself to a bun or tart.”

I leave the house not long after Agnes. Birds peck at the sparse patches of grass and quarrel over space in the tree branches. I let my shawl slip to my elbows and revel in the feel of the warm rays of sunlight blanketing the skin on the back of my neck. I come across Chat who’s sitting in the gutter, scraping at a splotch of stubborn mud. Despite the sunshine the roads and walkways are still damp and clogged with refuse.

“Ah. It’s my saviour from the other evening.” I smile down at the grubby boy. His stubby fingers are smudged with filth but his bright, grey eyes beam clear from his dirt- streaked face. “What are you scraping up there?”

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He holds up two rag bags. “I got some dog turds in ‘ere, and this one I keeps for rubbish nobody wants no more but me da’ can sell.” The stench from the opening in the bag wafts up and my stomach squelches in revulsion. “Bu’ whatever the tanners give me for the dog gems I get to keeps for me self.”

“Is that how you make your money?”

The boy resumes scraping at the mud of the street and shrugs. “The renters sometimes give me a few coppers for cleaning up the road. It’s enough for me da’ an’ me.”

I bring out five shillings from my purse. “In that case, please take this,” I say, offering the money to the boy, before moving off. “I appreciate you keeping the path outside my house so clean.”

The curtains are drawn at Silvestre’s house, and chaos ensues outside The Old Trout where the brewer’s dray has become ensnared with a donkey cart. The poor man with the dray is being harangued by the tavern keeper while a costermonger pushing a barrow of radishes joins the affray on behalf of the donkey cart owner. I’m tempted to pause and watch the fun, as insults are exchanged between the men while two female vendors fling curses from across the way.

Turning onto a wide thoroughfare lined with majestic plane trees and a park to the side, I inspect some pastries displayed in the window of a bakehouse. I remember the days when a soft, sugary bun was the surest reward for a long day on the street. My tongue kisses the roof of my mouth and I can almost taste the cinnamon glaze, but it’s so forkin’ hard to squeeze into my corsets as it is, I resist the urge to buy myself one. A barker shouts to passing shoppers, extolling the virtues of his ginger beer and three horseback riders race noisily down the wide lane, so it’s no surprise it’s a few moments before I realise someone is calling out to me. Looking over my shoulder I notice a short woman with wiry brown hair beckoning to me

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/80 from the other side of the street. I wave back and hitching up my skirts, weave through the horse and carriage traffic until I join the other woman.

“Katie, I haven’t seen you for an age.” I clasp the other woman’s hands. “How is your coffee stall?”

Katie Sullivan puts her hand around my waist and steers me towards the stall. “Never better. People always want their coffee,” she says, a vague Irish brogue accenting her speech.

“My sisters help me out when they can leave their bairns, and so does my daughter now and then. That’s her there now servin’ the customers.” She gestures to the young woman behind the counter who hands her a cup of steaming, black coffee which Katie passes on to me.

“Syrupy with sweetness just how you like it.”

I take a tentative sip of the hot liquid. There’s nothing like Katie’s strong brew to wake up a lass.

“Tilly told me you were looking for that poor girl who was cryin’ her eyes out in the park a while back,” she says.

“Yes, but I haven’t managed to find her.”

“That is a pity. But I’m glad I saw you across the way,” she says, pushing her black velveteen bonnet back from her forehead. She has marvelous, light brown eyes with uneven amber flecks around the iris. “I was goin’ to ask Silly Tilly where I could find you, but then I saw you standin’ there, sighin’ over old Mrs Rodd’s pastries.”

“And why were you looking for me?”

“There be a young woman – a girl really – askin’ after you yesterday.”

“Really? Do you know who she was?”

“She said she met you the other day, down by the bridge.”

I think for a moment and realise she must mean the girl who’d led me to Mrs Hawes’ home. “Did she have bucked teeth? Skin and bone?”

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She nods. “Aye, that’d be her.”

“But how did she know who I was?”

“I don’t know. She knew you by name but. Said she knew of something you might be interested in.”

“Oh.” I frown, wondering what the girl wants to tell me.

“What trouble you got yourself into this time, missy?” she asks me.

I dimple. “Must keep oneself busy, Katie.”

The girl’s sitting in the same doorway as on the previous occasion, but this time her face is buried against her bent knees and she doesn’t notice my approach. I gently pat the girl’s head and smile when the girl peers up at me with bleary eyes.

“Long night?” I ask.

The girl springs to her feet, but sways slightly and leans against the doorjamb. “I haven’t had a full night’s sleep for close on a sennight now,” she mumbles.

I open the cotton neckerchief I’d borrowed from Katie to reveal an assortment of Mrs

Rodd’s pastries to the girl. I’m gratified to see colour come into the girl’s cheeks as she takes a sticky bun with unsteady fingers.

“Thank you so much, Miss,” she says, covering her mouth with the back of her hand as she chews.

I urge the girl to sit again and press the kerchief and remaining pastries into the girl’s lap. “Katie Sullivan from the coffee stall near the park said you were asking for me.”

The girl nods her head vigorously as she sucks the sugar from her fingers. “Yes, I have something to tell you.”

“But how did you know who I am?”

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“One of the tails down the street saw you with me that day and told me that she recognised you from this penny opera thing she sneaked into a couple years back. She said you were on the stage, all done up in silks and powder and rouge and such.” The girl pauses in her eating for a moment, her head lowered. “She also said you used to be a tail like the rest of us.” A blush pinkens her ear tips.

I glance over my shoulder at the older prostitutes a few doors down. They’re smoking and drinking like the last time I’d seen them, but this time they stare back at me. I look down at the girl again. “And you know my name?”

“Heloise something.”

“That’s right. So you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“It’s Cecilia, Miss.”

“That’s a pretty name. Cecilia. Why don’t we take a short walk and you can tell me for what reason you came in search of me?”

Cecilia wraps her pastries up neatly in the kerchief. “We won’t have to go far.” Just as before, she can’t help but run her fingers across the softness of my merino shawl as we walk.

“Is it something you want to show me?” I ask.

“Well, remember I was telling you about my friend who disappeared? The woman who was so kind to me when I first came here?”

“Yes, I do. Don’t tell me she’s back?”

The girl nods. “Yes, she is. And this time I have to look after her.”

Why has Cecilia summoned me to tell me about her friend? Maybe she imagines that

I can assist them in some way.

“And where is this friend of yours?”

Cecilia pulls me towards a building which is almost directly opposite Mrs Hawes’ dreadful dwelling. The heavy door creaks as Cecilia pushes it open and beyond the sunlight

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/83 that creeps through the doorway all is darkness. She drags a brick across to the door to prop it open and as we enter I gaze up at the steep stairway. The air is dank but not as malodourous as the entrance to Mrs Hawes’ building.

“We don’t need to climb those stairs,” she says. “She’s over here.”

Cecilia leads me to the back of the room and points towards the alcove beneath the stairwell. There, huddled in the corner on makeshift bedding, lies a woman. She’s slumped against the wall, her dark hair falling out of its clasps, her knees, covered in flimsy, brown stuff, drawn up to her chin. Her eyes are pressed shut but her mouth hangs open. It’s hard to tell how old she is in the gloom, but she looks about middle aged.

“What is her name, Cecelia?”

“Her real name’s Prue, but the others call her Loose-Pruce, I think on account of the curls around her face.”

“Why did you bring me here? Is she ill?”

“She is ill. But that’s not why I brought you here,” the girl answers. She kneels down and softly shakes the woman by the shoulder. “Prue, Prue,” she whispers. “I have that lady here I was telling you about.”

A spasm of coughing overtakes Prue and she keels forward, eyes still shut, and continues to cough and wheeze for many moments. When the seizure passes, she leans back against the wall, spent. Cecilia wipes the perspiration and spittle from her face with her skirt and cooes tenderly to the older woman. She helps Prue take a sip from a bottle and offers her the pastries, which Prue pushes away feebly. Cecilia beckons for me to move closer.

I crouch on the floor and try to sit as close to the other woman as my crinoline will allow.

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“She’s been in the workhouse all this time. That’s why I couldn’t find her,” says

Cecilia. She holds Prue’s hands and turns them, palms up, for me to see. The fingertips are raw, tiny fissures cracking her skin. “They made her pick oakum.”

Prue pulls her hands away and croaks, “I tried my hand at sewing before that, but the hours were even crueller. I could not keep up, I was so poorly. That’s how I ended up in the bloody work’ouse.” The last word catches in her throat and she coughs up phlegm onto her sleeve.

“Tell her why you were poorly, Prue,” urges Cecilia.

Without turning her head, which is resting against the wall, Prue’s eyes peer around at me. “Cecilia tells me you’ve been asking around about the renters who have been cut up.”

“That’s right. The girls who are dying.”

“Well, I was cut up too, but I didn’t die.”

I breathe in sharply and cover my mouth. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I was cut up like all those other renters Cecilia here has been telling me about, but I did not die.”

I grasp the other woman’s arm. “Who did this to you?”

Prue shakes her head slowly. “I don’t know.”

“But how could you not know?”

“How could I not know?” She lets out a tired ‘ha’. “I was too far gone with gin and puff, wasn’t I? All the punters are the same to me then. And if I please, I can pretend they are all one and the same.”

The three of us are silent for a minute, listening to the creaking coming from Prue’s chest.

“He took all of my lady laycock, the bastard,” says Prue. A tear falls down her cheek.

“I woke up in hospital, I did. Someone had found me in a pool of blood and taken me there.

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They kept me for a while – long enough to clear up the clap and wait for the wounds to heal.”

She wipes the tear from her cheek. “They told me I could never have children.” She smiles, even as another tear drops. “Strange, huh? It was a curse to be pregnant, but once the chance was taken away, I felt sad.”

“Were you with child when you were attacked, Prue?” I ask, as gently as possible.

Prue nods. “I was just starting to show.”

“And you don’t remember anything of the person who did this to you?”

“I’m sure it was a man,” she says, staring ahead as she concentrates. “He had a deep voice. He wouldn’t stop talking, although I cannot remember what he was saying. I was lying on my back, and my feet was in those stirrup-like things. And the smell…” She gags. “This sickly, sweet stench. It was nice, but wrong too, which made it worse. I puked all over myself.”

“Sounds like ether. And how long ago did this happen, Prue?”

“I’m not sure,” she answers. “Long enough for me to be in hospital and for them to send me out to work. They found me a place at a dressmaker’s, but the hours were so long I couldn’t keep up or make enough money to buy food. And that’s how I landed at the work’ouse. But I couldn’t do it no more. I’d rather be a doxy and feel no pleasure,” she pauses for a moment, her face pinched, “than go back to that bastard of a place.” She doubles over and coughs up some more, spitting into her skirt. This time, though, she leaves a smear of blood on the tattered cloth.

“I’m no more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old, if I remember right,” she wheezes. “And look at me – look what’s become of me.”

Bloody hell. Prue is much the same age as I am, and yet there are grey strands running through her hair and her thin face is haggard and lined. There for the grace of God and all that forkin’ nonsence, huh?

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“Thank you for talking to me, Prue,” I say, standing up. I walk out into the sunlight and breathe in the air which, although it still holds the pong of the river, is fresher than that under the stairwell.

“What will you do?” asks Cecilia.

“I’ll tell the police what Prue just told me.”

“What shall I do, Miss?”

I stare at her for a moment. There’s nothing I can do for these women. Hand them over to the poor-house? I could never. Take them home? Bundle and the cook would probably leave, and Amah would skin me alive. I take the remaining money out of my reticule and give it to Cecilia. But it’s not enough. Not enough to dispel the sour guilt I feel for leaving them behind. So I take off the merino shawl and wrap it around the girl’s shoulders. I have two more in my Mayfair home, in any case. “Take care of Prue.”

Cecilia buries her nose into the soft wool and sighs. “It smells like my ma’s Sunday best.”

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Chapter Ten

After a short rest, I sit at the dressing table, dressed in nothing more than silk drawers, pearl drop earrings and my necklace. Using a soft, sable-hair brush, I sweep scented powder across my neck and breasts. I place the brush back into my teak and brass toilette case next to the other beauty aids which are neatly arrayed on the purple velvet inlay. I pull the crystal stopper from a bottle of perfume and dab the scent behind my ears and then pluck a few stray eyebrow hairs. Lifting the silver lid from a cut-glass jar, I apply pale, crushed pearl powder to my face. My hand freezes for a few moments as I gaze at my reflection in the mirror. How could one woman, such as Tilly, be so relieved to be childless, and yet another woman, Prue, be heartbroken at the loss. I place my hand over my lower belly and wonder.

But it’s late in the day, I must hurry if I am to take tea with Blain again. I rub some rouge onto my cheekbones and smudge the tiniest amount of coal around my upper eyelids. I slip on a chemise and tie myself into a corset, crinoline and gown the best I can, cursing yet again for not bringing Amah. I’ve just pinned a rose into my chignon when there’s a knock at the front door. As I trip down the stairs I tie the ribbon on my fanchon bonnet, then fling open the door. I’m pleased to see Bill standing on the threshold even if I do wonder if he still considers me a suspect. Maybe he’s keeping me close at hand to keep an eye on me. Maybe not.

I spin around and finish with a little curtsey. “I’m ready for Dr Blain.”

“Yes, I can see that,” he says, but he pulls a rueful face. “Unfortunately the Inspector thinks it is far too unsafe for you to interview Blain again.”

“What? But I’ve set it up so.” I was looking forward to probing the doctor for clues. I have some clever questions already lined up.

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“It’s just not that good an idea. We can’t allow a defenceless woman to interview

Blain, especially if he turns out to be our culprit.”

There’s a finality to his tone. He’s not going to let me go. Of course, I could still go ahead behind his back, follow my instinct to interview Blain. I’m on Sir Thomas’ clock, after all.

Bill’s watching me, hasn’t made a move to leave. Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe it’s not my feeble sex that prevents the police from using me. Maybe they really do suspect me of the mutilations.

I lead him into the sitting room and pour him a madeira. “It’s all the chargirl has supplied me with, I’m afraid.”

I pour myself a glass too and sit on a lounge chair across from his. All afternoon I’ve been wondering about how much I should tell Bill of what I have discovered. It’s true that I stumbled across Cecilia and Prue in my search for Eleanor, but I’ve decided the best thing I can do is inform Bill of what they told me. It’ll assist him in his investigations into the person butchering those poor women.

“You will never believe what I discovered today,” I say, taking a sip of wine. I tuck myself into the corner of the chair and curl my legs up under my petticoats and tell him of my meeting with Cecilia and Prue.

“That’s remarkable,” he says, placing his wine glass on the table. “Remarkable. I must interview her as soon as possible.”

“I think you must make it as soon as possible, Bill. I don’t think she can survive long now.”

“It is a pity she cannot tell us who her attacker was.”

“Yes, it’s a great pity. But we now know for certain it is a man, and surely his use of ether and such must mean he sees these attacks as surgical operations?”

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Bill nods slowly. “You might be right.”

“And Dr Blain is familiar to these women too. So is Dr Mordaunt.”

“And I assume they both have access to a surgery.” He stares at me for a few moments, frowning. “But tell me. How did you come to meet these women?”

“Well, actually, I came across the younger one, Cecilia, when I was searching for

Eleanor.” It’s now or never. At least if he knows the truth of my situation, he can stop wasting time on viewing me as a suspect, and maybe even help me find Eleanor in turn. “The thing is…The thing is that Eleanor is not my cousin.”

He slapped his thigh. “I knew it. So who are you?”

“Well, my name is Heloise Chancey, and I am searching for Eleanor Carter, but not as a relative. I’m employed by Sir Thomas Avery.” I look for recognition in his eyes but there’s none. “He owns a private detective agency.”

His eyebrows lift. So do his lips. “You’re a detective?” There’s amusement in his voice.

“Yes. I am.” Amongst other things.

“What do you do, when you… detect?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I say. “Much the same as you, I suppose.” I want to say that I spy on people, find out their secrets, but that’s not very nice, is it? Not very lady-like.

“I don’t think you do what I do, Heloise,” he says. He’s still smiling, but he shakes his head in disbelief. “It’s rough work what I do, you know.”

“Well, I search for people sometimes, like what I’m doing here now. Searching for

Eleanor.” And my work can be bloody rough too.

He considers me for a few moments, then leans forward, his hand extended. “Well, private detective Chancey, let me introduce myself again,” he jokes. I take his hand, glad of the good spirit in which he’s taken my news.

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“So, I will go ahead and meet up with Blain,” I say to him. “I’m quite sure he can help me with my investigation into Eleanor’s disappearance.”

Bill frowns again, the smile slipping from his face.

“I will anyway, with or without you, Bill,” I grin. “It’s what I’m being paid to do, after all.”

His pale eyes study me. “You’ll go ahead with this meeting, regardless of me?”

I nod.

“Well, then I will accompany you. Make sure you are as safe as possible. He was in my sights for the evening anyway. We will go ahead with the original plan.”

I haul myself up from the lounge chair. “We must leave then, I think. I don’t want to miss his teatime.”

As I pick up my reticule from the hall table Bill takes me gently by the upper arms and turns me to face him.

“I will not be far away, and I will be watching you, but you must take every care to be safe. This Dr Blain might be the mad monster we are searching for. We are not sure what he is capable of.” Concern creases his craggy face. “I am not sure we are doing the right thing sending you in as bait.”

I reach into the recesses of my reticule and bring out my handgun. “I will be perfectly safe. I’m not the bait, Bill, I’m the stalker.”

He takes the gun from me and turns it in his hands admiringly. “What’s this then?”

A smile curls my lips. “That’s my muff pistol.”

“Ah, Mrs Chancey, you are here already.”

I look up into Dr Blain’s handsome face. He takes the chair opposite to mine at the table in the bay window and calls the waiter over to order tea.

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“Any news today?” he asks.

“No. There is no letter waiting for me. Nothing at all. I do hope she is well and safe.”

He frowns. “Yes, so do I.”

He seems preoccupied with his thoughts so I drink tea in silence, wondering what he’s thinking about. I crumble the stale cake between my fingers, but don’t eat.

“I agree,” he says, suddenly. “The tea things are not particularly nourishing this evening. A patient of mine told me today that the local park is hosting a fair tonight. Would you care to join me in a stroll to this fair, Mrs Chancey?”

“Of course I would, Dr Blain. I am sure that will lift my spirits like nothing else could.”

“Do you have a maid to escort you, madam?”

“Ill. She’s ill. I had to leave her in my rooms unfortunately,” I prevaricate. “But surely, in such crowds and with you as escort…”

He agrees and leads me from the tavern. I draw my fur tippet over my shoulders and follow him onto the sidewalk. I catch sight of Bill crossing the road behind a horse and cart.

The streets are abustle with office clerks returning home, women in swinging, wide hoops and any number of costermongers spruiking their soup, baked eels or shoe polish.

“The fair is three streets away, Mrs Chancey. Near the river.”

“Lovely.” We walk at a sedate pace, I assume for my benefit. “Dr Blain, yesterday you seemed very put out by that article in the newspaper about those poor… fallen women…being murdered.”

“Yes, you are right. Working in this area, Mrs Chancey, means that I have regular contact with unfortunate women. It is a sad fact that they are attacked and used woefully, yet it angers me when I see it sensationalised in the newspapers.”

“Are your medical rooms far from here?”

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“Not far at all,” he answers, steering me around a group of people pushing their way onto an omnibus. “I was very lucky to have attained the surgery from my uncle about eighteen months ago.”

I place my hand on his forearm and peer up at him, eyes wide. “Did you know any of those poor souls who were written about in the newspaper?”

He smiles down at me, with a patronising air. “No. Not at all.”

“Really? That is a pity. You might have been of great help to the police.” Has he forgotten the Dutch girl or is he hiding the fact that he had administered to her? “Apparently the last woman was foreign. Mmm… a Dutch girl I think I heard.” No flicker of recognition crosses his face. “I am so afraid for my cousin’s safety.”

We arrive at the park, and pretty lanterns in the trees twinkle against the ash grey sky.

A chill breeze wafts from the Thames, bringing a slightly muddy odour. I shiver and draw my tippet closer about my neck.

“Tell me more about your cousin, Mrs Chancey.”

“Oh, Eleanor. Such a sweet child. And so pretty, Dr Blain. So fair, so ethereal.”

“Yes, I remember that from the photograph you allowed me to see. Would it be too much of an imposition to show me that likeness of your cousin again, Mrs Chancey?”

“Of course you may see it.” I rummage carefully in my reticule so that he doesn’t catch a glimpse of the handgun.

He takes the photograph almost greedily, and studies it under the light from a gas lamp. He stares at it for several moments as if he is memorising every bit of Eleanor’s features before he hands it back. He pushes his hair from his forehead so that it lies neatly against his grey, silk hat. “No, unfortunately I have not seen her before.”

The fair is arranged under looming oak trees and there are already a large number of people clustered around the stalls, exchanging pennies for hot corn cobs, tickets to gawp at

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/93 bizarre humans or to play various games of chance. We stop to watch a rowdy game of skittles. The contestants have taken their jackets off and pushed their caps to the back of their heads while they noisily call each other on or moan in frustration. As we move away, I say to him, “Dr Blain, you’re a medical man, and I am a widow. I am not naïve nor stupid, but I am very afraid for my cousin. Please tell me, why is there a monster hurting these unfortunate women so cruelly?”

He’s thoughtful for a moment and then says, “Maybe he thinks it is for the best. Every day I see the cruel circumstances and the tragic outcomes of how these women live. He might believe it is best if they cannot procreate.”

Luckily, before I have the chance to make an ill-advised rejoinder to the doctor’s remark, he points to a well-lit area ahead. “Ah, that is where the music is coming from, I believe.” He offers me his arm. “Shall we venture over there to see what is afoot?”

A Chinese bandstand, replete with a red, sloping roof and golden dragon motifs shelters a small but lively orchestra. In front of the stage, on a hard parquet floor, several merry couples dance in a swirl of motion. Blain hands coins to an usher so that we can enter and take a seat at one of the many tables arranged around the dance-floor. A supper table is laden with platters of fleshy sirloin beef, capons, turkey legs, hams and tongues, which are surrounded by bowls of grapes and strawberries and dried fruits, brandied cherries and cheeses. The usher offers us champagne punch, but Blain says he doesn’t touch spirituous drinks at any time.

“No, neither do I,” I say. “It’s very bad for the constitution, so I’ve heard.” I watch wistfully as the usher whisks away the bowl of punch.

He makes a hearty dinner of the roast meats, while I eat some cheese and fruit.

I tap my foot along with the lively music. “They do seem to be enjoying themselves,”

I say, my eyes on the dancing couples.

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“Yes,” he says. “However, I really do think romping about like that cannot be good for you after a meal such as this.”

“I am sure you are right,” I say, but I can’t take my eyes off the dancers.

He drops his serviette onto the table. “Well, just this once we must dance. I am loath to disappoint you, Mrs Chancey, and I can see your heart is set on a dance. But we must take it slowly,” he warns.

I jump up from my seat. There are very few things I enjoy more than a frolic around a dance-floor, but Blain turns out to be a very sobering partner indeed. He holds me awkwardly, well away from his chest, and the few times I peep up at his face, his chin is elevated and his eyes stare at a point above my head. His direction is stately with very slow, careful turns, which keeps us out of time with the others. Eventually, I feign a laugh and pronounce I’m too exhausted to continue.

Two broughams pull up close to the band stand. From these well-polished carriages alight a number of fair, bright beauties. They’re rouged and powdered a little too much to be lady-like, but these Cyprians of fashion conduct themselves with cheerful, yet quiet, decorum. They’re heavily bejewelled and their hairstyles and headwear are elaborate in the extreme, sporting feathers, flowers and ribbon. I’m interested to see that one woman, willowy with titian hair, has miniature, artificial birds attached to her headpiece. I feel a prick of irritation that not one of my new summer bonnets features this modish turn. I must tell Amah.

A flicker of distaste passes across Dr Blain’s handsome face as he watches the women take their places at a table by the bandstand while their male attendants, well-dressed gentlemen with silk hats and tails, fetch them cups of champagne punch.

“Dr Blain,” I breathe with contrived wonder. “Are those women what everyone refers to as…Gay Girls?”

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“Yes. Well, they are a little further up the ladder than a mere gay girl,” he answers, sniffing. “They, I believe, refer to themselves as ‘courtesans’. Very indelicate subject, but from our conversation earlier this evening, I feel I can continue. I would have you know, madam, that I consider these ‘courtesans’ worse than the poor unfortunates I deal with on a daily basis at my surgery. Those poor women are so destitute and desperate they are forced to prostitution. Those women you see there,” he nods towards the beauties across the way, “are nothing more than leeches with no morals who are in search of riches from those who are their betters.” He stands up abruptly. “I think it must be time to return you home, Mrs

Chancey.”

As we walk back through the fair gardens, we pass a balding, old man who’s attired in a dirty, white shirt and tan breeches with a tatty, red scarf tied around his neck. He has a parrot perched upon his shoulder which nibbles at his silver earring with its curved beak and black tongue, and he’s seated at a card-table across from a large, orange orang-utan.

“Come pat Meng, my dear,” he calls out. “Look at her kind eyes. Saved her from the wilds of Borneo, I did. She’s almost human, she is. More human than the brown heathens I bought her from, at any rate.” He laughs noisily at his own joke, and hawks on the ground.

I approach the beautiful primate, and look at its kind, almost mournful, face and put my hand out to touch the bristles on its arm. I feel sorry for this creature that has been brought from its warm, succulent home to the grey unfriendliness of London.

“Have a cup of tea with her, madam. See how refined she is,” urges the man.

Dr Blain hands the man a penny, who fills a filthy cup with a thin, dark liquid which he hands to me. I hold it in one hand and offer my other hand to the orang-utan. Meng places her leathery paw, limp and cold and as long as my foot, into my hand but continues to munch on her cabbage leaves without looking at me. Truth to tell, I’m a little disappointed by the total indifference the orang-utan shows in me.

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Placing the cup on the table I thank the man. Taking a few steps back, I keep my gaze on the ape. A light mist of rain touches my face.

“Dr Blain, you confuse me, sir. On the one hand you are most rightly revolted by women such as those we were seated by, and you say you believe it might be best if prostitutes do not beget children, and yet you seem to feel deeply for their plight.”

He also watches the orang-utan. “It is like this monkey here,” he explains to me.

“Look at her. The man’s right – she is almost human. My cousin is a naturalist and he was telling me that in the Malay jungles scores of monkeys such as these are shot down from the trees because it’s imperative that their specimens are studied for the better understanding of humankind. I believe this to be justified. In this modern age some things are warranted in the name of science, I think you will find, Mrs Chancey. And while I feel sympathy for creatures killed in the pursuance of science, and I feel sympathy for the poor creatures who come to me for curative care, I cannot approve or desire to mimic their way of life.”

I’m appalled by his words but also uneasily aware that I’m glad he doesn’t know of my true identity. How pathetic is that? I don’t want to be judged by this prig of a man. I don’t want him to dislike me, or worse, pity me for who I really am. “I am sorry, Dr Blain. I am afraid my brain is too feeble to fully comprehend what you are saying.”

He smiles at me understandingly.

The rain falls in earnest by the time we leave the shelter of the oaks, and Dr Blain runs out to the road to summon a cab. I heave my skirts through the narrow doorway of the vehicle and am surprised when he climbs in after me.

“I’ll see you home,” he says.

“That’s very kind of you.” This is no good. What if he’s the person butchering dabbers? He’ll know where I live. I stare down at his square, strong hands that rest lightly on his thighs. They look like they could guide a blade with keen precision. What am I to do if he

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/97 reaches into his coat pocket? Pulls a knife on me? I reach my cold fingers as close to the door handle as I dare, as we bowl along the streets. I hope Bill still has us in sight.

The rain eases somewhat by the time I run up the front path to my door, but I’m soaked through. I wave to Blain as the hansom cab pulls away, revealing a black carriage parked a little further down the road. The breath catches in my throat. I step behind the portico column and peer around at the vehicle. Although the drizzle limits my view, I’m sure the glossy, black carriage is the one that followed me two nights ago. The coachman sits as still as last time, staring straight ahead, the rain dripping from the brim of his hat. The crimson curtains of the carriage windows open a few inches but it’s too dark for me to see who’s inside. My hands tremble as I untie the ribbons of my reticule and, taking my handgun out, I let the bag fall to the ground. A dark figure looms up from the footpath. I take aim with the gun, hard- put not to scream.

“Heloise, what are you doing?” shouts Bill, putting his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot.

It’s just me.”

Cold relief washes over me as I run forward and tug his sleeve. “That carriage over there – it’s following me.”

As I point, the coachman cracks his whip and the carriage moves forward. Bill sprints out onto the road and although he comes close enough to rattle the locked side-door of the carriage, he has to fall back when the carriage sweeps around the corner. We watch as it bumps away. Bill turns back, collecting his hat which has fallen into a puddle.

I pick up my reticule with cold, damp fingers and unlock the front door. We both make our way into the sitting room.

“How long has that carriage been harassing you for?” asks Bill, as he makes up the fire.

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“I first noticed it a couple of nights ago. I’ve only seen it the once, but I wonder if I just haven’t observed it at other times.” I pick at my bottom lip and frown. “Whoever’s watching me from that carriage now knows where I am living.”

Bill stands up from the fireplace. He’s as wet through as I am, and his hat looks particularly soggy. I reach up and take the hat from his head.

“You must take this thing off. You’re getting mud in your hair,” I laugh.

He smiles too. He takes a step closer to me, and slowly unties the ribbons of my hat.

His fingers brush my cheeks and are already warm from the fire.

“And you must take off your pretty bonnet. The ribbons have started to droop.”

I consider him for a moment. Do I dare go further? His pale eyes are watching me like never before. “Ah, and your coat, sir, is soaked. You must take it off.” I run my hands over his shoulders beneath the coat fabric and help him shrug it away. My fingers brush along the curves of muscle in his arms, and his forearms flex as he tries to catch my fingers in his. I unbutton his waist coat, saying, “This too must come off, if you are to dry properly.”

He’s no longer smiling. “Madam, look at the hem of your skirts and petticoat. They are soiled dreadfully, and drenched through.” He crouches down and pushes his hands up beneath my silk skirts. His calloused fingers lightly scratch my flesh as he runs them up the back of my calves, my thighs, rest on my hips. He loosens my petticoats at the waist and they fall to the ground. Straightening up, he slides his hands beneath my silk drawers from behind, nudging his fingers between my thighs. He grabs a handful of buttock cheek and pulls me to him.

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Chapter Eleven

“He seems like a nice man, with all his prosing on about poor women, but I don’t trust him,”

I say of Blain. I’m lying with my head upon Bill’s shoulder, leg draped over his. “It could well be him who’s taking care of these poor girls. But then who’s stalking me in that carriage?” I wonder. My thoughts turn to Dr Mordaunt. “All doctors are vile, after all. It could be any one of them.”

“And he showed an uncommon interest in Eleanor?”

I nod, sitting up against the heaped pillows. “Do you know what is strange, though?

He did not once ask me why Eleanor is alone in Waterloo. Not once did he ask me why she ran away, or anything about her predicament. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

“You think he knows already?”

“Well, to show so much interest in her, but to refrain from asking why a young lady is roaming free in Waterloo? It seems very suspicious to me.”

Bill rolls onto his side to face me, studies my pearl choker. “Tell me about this necklace you always wear.”

I drop my chin to peer down at the locket resting against my chest. “It was a gift to me from my husband on our fifth wedding anniversary. The jade is from China.” I don’t tell him that on the other side of the jade, which I’d actually bought from a sailor in Liverpool, is a gold amulet of a dragon with ruby eyes which was left to me by my grandfather.

He runs his fingers around the seed pearl trim of the pendant and lets his hand drop to my nipple, which he rubs softly with his thumb. He takes my other nipple in his mouth. I close my eyes and surrender to the pleasure of it. I run my hand through his coarse hair. I’m almost gone, thoughts drifting, when Mordaunt’s notebook pops into my head. I should inspect it again with Bill. I pull away from him, say, “Soon.”

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Bending over the side of the bed I retrieve the book. “I forgot to show you this.”

For the next ten minutes we peruse Mordaunt’s scrawled writing.

“I think it’s a blackmail book,” says Bill. “Read this… she wanted an abortion so that her husband would not find out about her pregnancy. He’s jotted the initials A and K, the date and an address. And this more recent one… he wanted a mixture of abortive drugs to give to his pregnant wife – but I do not believe the lady to be his wife. She seems far too young to be married to him and her pallor, despite her fair hair… Initials E and C. Mmm.

And look here, he follows them to find out where they live and what they do. He must be blackmailing them.”

“I wonder why the number nine is circled by every few entries,” I say, pointing at the circled roman numerals. ix.

“Maybe it’s code for how much money he blackmails from his victims. Nine guineas?

Shillings?”

“He’s revolting, that one.” So forkin’ revolting. I fall back onto the pillows. “I’m so overwrought now, I will never find sleep.”

Bill scrambles out of bed, naked. I admire his straight back and firm rump as he leaves the room. He runs down the stairs and returns with his coat. Feeling in the inner pocket he brings out a plain snuff tin.

“What have you there?”

He crawls onto the bed, and lying on his back, he rests the tin on his chest and opens the lid to reveal an off-white powder. A faint whiff of violets reaches my nostrils.

“Snuff?”

He smiles. “It’s a very special mixture. Take some. It’ll help you relax into sleep, I can assure you.”

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The powder has a distinctive stickiness to it when rubbed between my warm fingertips. “Is it opium?”

He nods. He sits up for a moment and places the tin between us. Taking my hand, he dabs a pinch of the snuff onto my wrist and inhales it sharply. He sighs and lies down amongst the pillows.

Taking a pinch of the snuff, I sprinkle it on the flat, soft skin between his pubis and hipbone. Bending over, my tousled hair tumbling over his stomach, I sniff hard at the opium- laced snuff. I lick what remains with the tip of my tongue and feel him stiffen. Sitting back up, I light a cigarette and grin so he can see my straight, little teeth. “Will I have time to finish this?”

It’s already late in the morning when I follow Bill downstairs to the front door. I spot the folded note on the mat almost immediately. Running forward I pick it up, and read – You should be burnt, nay, stoned, for what you are. You are cursed. I sink onto the bottom step.

“What is it?” he asks, seating himself next to me. He takes the note from my hand and peruses it. “What a bloody cheek. Who sent this to you?”

“I don’t know. They’ve been arriving since I first came here. I don’t know who even knew I was here at first, and I’ve no idea why I’m being sent these letters. Maybe they’re from whoever’s watching me from the carriage.”

He’s silent for a moment, and then pats my knee. “Don’t worry. They might be for the tenant who had this house before you.”

He’s right. This house is always used by Silvestre’s girls, so the notes could be aimed at any one of the women who’s resided there.

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Standing up, he looks at his watch. “I have to run, I’m afraid. I’m late for work. We’ll discuss this later.” He stoops down to kiss me on the forehead. “Don’t fret. Keep that blasted gun of yours at hand,” he says, as he closes the front door behind him.

I’m in the middle of my toilette when there’s a soft tapping at the front door. Pulling a peignoir over my undergarments I trip down the stairs. “Who is it?” I call out, and on hearing

Katie Sullivan’s voice, pull the door open.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Katie, I’m not properly attired yet.”

“You don’t have a maid?”

“No, but I wish I did.” I try to usher Katie into the sitting room, but she won’t enter any further. She insists she doesn’t have time, but in the back of my mind I wonder if she doesn’t want to enter my house of sin. I can’t help but feel a bit chagrined at the thought but won’t embarrass her either way. She’s a friendly woman but there are limits after all.

“I must get back to the coffee stall, but not bein’ sure if you’d be by the park again today, I thought I’d better come and tell you my news myself.”

“What is it?”

“I think I might know where that lass is. The young thing you’ve been searchin’ for.”

Jubilation quickens my senses. “Where is she?”

Katie shakes her head. “Now, I’m not absolutely sure it’s the same lass as I saw that day in the park who was a-cryin’ – the girl I sent home with Silly Tilly – but I’m reasonably sure it is her.”

“Have you seen her again?”

“Well, I think it was her as I saw at the fruit markets this mornin’. She was walkin’ along with that Mrs Sweetapple.”

“Who is Mrs Sweetapple? I’ve never heard of her.”

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“Oh, she’s a nasty one, she is. Much nastier than old Mme Silvestre,” she says. “She seems genteel enough. In fact, I think she was genteel not too long ago, but somewhere in her life things have come unstuck, and now she has a very discreetly run introducin’ home.”

“An ‘introducing’ home?” I’ve never heard of such a term before.

“Do you not know what an introducin’ home is, Heloise? Fancy me having to explain the ways of the world to you,” she says, chuckling. “Well, so Mrs Donnelly explained it to me, she being a good friend of mine – who cooks and sells a very nice oyster soup not far from my stall – an introducin’ house is a more refined version of what the coppers call a

‘disorderly house’.”

“In what way?”

“Apparently that Mrs Sweetapple ‘introduces’ gentlemen – real gentlemen, mind – to nice young ladies – you know the type I mean, don’t you, Heloise? Not actual nice ladies.

Mrs Sweetapple finds quiet, polished ladybirds. So the gentleman comes to her, tells her what he wants in particular in his lady, and she sets it all up. She has all sorts, says Mrs Donnelly.

Really fat girls, old girls, foreign girls. She reckons she even had a Negro girl once. The difference is, Heloise, the gentleman gets to play families with the nice ladybird. They set up house, but without the wedding. Apparently there are many men who are either too shy to find their own bride or are too bored with their real bride, and they use Mrs Sweetapple to fulfil their peculiar little dreams. Well, that’s according to Mrs Donnelly.”

I can’t help keep the scepticism from my face. “Very strange.” Sounds a bit too good to be true, but what could this woman know of the cruelties that can go on in these sorts of arrangements?

“Yes, isn’t it? And she might have her claws into that young girl you are lookin’ for.

Poor lass.”

“But Miss Carter is with child. Surely she cannot sell a woman with child?”

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“There are some very queer sorts in this world, Heloise. We both know that.”

So, not so naive after all. I think for a moment. “Does your Mrs Donnelly know where this introducing home is?”

I dismount the burly, black horse I’ve hired from the local stables. In truth, even though he’s a fine, tall specimen, he is sluggish and obstinate to ride and I’m relieved to tie him to a post.

I’d been looking forward to a bracing ride, used it as an excuse to wear my new riding habit, but really, it hadn’t been worth the time. I should’ve caught a cab. I stand in front of a very neat house situated on a very neat street. The black, wrought iron fence gleams, just as the neighbours’ fences gleam. The red and grey tiles on the doorstep are bright and clean and the front door is lacquered a dapper teal blue. I rap on the brass door knocker smartly.

The silk of my riding attire is of a severe black, and military-style frog buttons fasten the tight bodice at the front so that it is almost tunic-like in appearance. Perched towards the front of my head is a plum-coloured porkpie hat with fat, purple ostrich feathers that tickle the back of my neck. I’ve chosen this outfit for a purpose – I want to appear assertive, no- nonsense.

I rap on the door again, this time adding a few taps with the riding crop.

The door opens slowly and a maid, dressed in a crisp black uniform that sported a skirt almost as wide as my own, asks me how she can help.

“I’m after a Mrs Sweetapple. I have some private business to discuss with her.”

“Do you have an appointment?” asks the maid, her voice uncertain.

“No, I do not. I did not realise I would need one. However, please let her know it would be very inconvenient for me to have to return at another time.” I tap the riding crop against the side of my skirt impatiently.

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The maid invites me into the small hallway and asks me to wait. She opens a door to the left, as narrowly as her wide skirts will allow, and closes the door behind her. It isn’t much longer before she comes out again and beckons for me to follow.

The parlour’s cool and uninviting, despite the over-stuffed sofas upholstered in rosy, floral tapestry, the mountains of frilly, velvet cushions and the stench of rose oil. The walls are painted a soft peachy colour and all the shelf space and table surfaces are crammed with china ornaments and crystal. By the window, at a round, oak table, sits Mrs Sweetapple. I’m surprised at how young she is, as I’d expected to meet an older, more redoubtable madam.

Mrs Sweetapple makes a homely figure, her plump form ensconced in a striped, cerise and navy gown. Her face is quite pretty and her shiny, light brown hair is dressed simply and covered with a lace bonnet. Although she simpers sweetly, there’s a calculating coolness in her eyes.

I’ve put a lot of thought into how to tackle Mrs Sweetapple. At first I thought I might burst in upon the woman and demand the return of Eleanor, but I was quick to see the pitfalls of this plan. If Mrs Sweetapple is to prove difficult, and she did indeed have Eleanor, she might charge an exorbitant fee for her return. This doesn’t worry me unduly, as I’m sure Sir

Thomas and Eleanor’s father would happily pay, but I’m aware that if I’m to explain the truth behind Eleanor’s predicament, I’ll be exposing Eleanor’s family to further blackmail. As well as that, I don’t want to alarm the woman. It wouldn’t be any good if a whiff of the police or private detectives forces Mrs Sweetapple to spirit Eleanor away altogether. And now, looking into the other woman’s watchful eyes, I realise I’d come to the right decision.

Mrs Sweetapple bids me to take a seat, and helps me to tea from a china tea pot decorated with blowsy tea roses. “How may I help you, Miss…?”

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“Miss March.” I light upon the name of the fidgety boarding-school mistress who had ruled my life for sixteen long months in Liverpool when I was young. “Muriel March. I have heard I might be able to – let us say – acquire a companion from you.”

Mrs Sweetapple takes a tiny sip of her tea. “I am afraid you are wrong. I do not manage a hiring agency here, you know.”

“Yes, but I do not want to simply hire a servant. I am after something far more… special than that.”

Mrs Sweetapple gazes at me over the rim of her teacup. “And who has informed you that I can assist you in this manner?”

Well, I can’t say it was a Mrs Donnelly, costermonger, purveyor of excellent oyster soup. “I would rather not say. I was asked not to repeat his name.”

The cup rattles as Mrs Sweetapple places it back on its saucer. She still has the insipid smile on her face, though, as she says, “I’m afraid I cannot help you then, Miss March.”

I rack my brain, then lean forward and whisper, very low, “It was Sir Herbert

Brimm.” Forkin’ hell it feels good to bandy the name of my local, Methodist magistrate abroad; the same man that bastard Priestly had threatened me with. Serves him right for sticking his long, thin nose too closely into my business. “A friend of mine procured a lovely, sweet thing for him from you. But please, do not repeat his name. I was sworn to absolute secrecy.”

A door slams up above, and I can hear female voices. I wonder how many girls this

Sweetapple has squirreled away upstairs.

“And what sort of companion are you looking for, Miss March?”

“Just someone who can be useful to me at home. Maybe help me dress, attend to my needs.” I stare at Mrs Sweetapple steadily, a small smile hovering at the corner of my mouth.

“Someone to do what I desire. Do you understand?”

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Mrs Sweetapple’s eyes travel over my mannish bodice and take in the riding crop, which is resting in my lap. She nods, still simpering. “I believe I do.”

“However, I have very exacting tastes in my attendants, Mrs Sweetapple. Very exacting. I am willing to pay what you require but I’m afraid if you cannot fulfil my needs, I will have to take my business elsewhere.”

“Of course. Please tell me what you require, and I am sure, given time, I can supply you with what you want.”

I pretend to consider for a moment. “She will need to be slight. Very slight. I don’t want a buxom lass. And fair. Not dyed, you understand?”

“Perfectly.”

“For my purposes, she needs to be young.”

“What do you consider young, Miss March?”

I shrug. “Sixteen, seventeen? Certainly no older than twenty.”

Mrs Sweetapple nods.

“And pretty. I cannot abide ugliness.”

“I am in total agreement with you, Miss March. Why waste time on the ugly?” She stands up and moves towards a roll-top desk. Opening a grey ledger, she says, “I am sure I can assist you for the right sum, Miss March.”

I fiddle with my teacup. I look out the side window and straighten my shoulders. I’m hoping this sour bitch will sense my feigned embarrassment.

“There is one more thing.”

“What is it?”

“I am told you can cater for even the most… unusual of requests.”

She frowns for the first time. “That is correct.”

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I pause again and then, setting my face into a look of defiance, say, “I wondered if any of your prospective companions are with child?”

A slow smile widens Mrs Sweetapple’s mouth, and her eyes harden. “With child? I am not often asked that.”

“Not often. So you are asked occasionally?”

“Never by a lady. But that’s no matter to me.” She runs her finger down a list in her ledger. “That will cost a little more.”

“How much?”

“Would you require lodgings, Miss March? To share with you companion?”

“No. I have lodgings.”

“You would not be returning the young lady anytime in the near future?”

“What if she does not suit me?”

“Oh, then, certainly something will be arranged, Miss March. I would not leave you encumbered with an attendant you did not desire.”

“Well, then, let’s assume she will be with me for quite a while. How much then?”

Mrs Sweetapple writes some lines in her ledger, and says, “Shall we say £30. That will ensure you receive a lovely young lady and total confidentiality.”

I lift an eyebrow at the repellent woman. “Make it twenty, and I will return in an hour with the bank notes. Please have her ready to leave.”

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Chapter Twelve

When I return with a hansom cab to fetch the girl, I hope it is actually Eleanor Carter I will find, or else I’ll be lumped with a girl I don’t need and left with a substantial hole in my purse. But when I set eyes on the withdrawn, slight figure in Mrs Sweetapple’s parlour, I’m sure that I’ve finally tracked her down. Mrs Sweetapple holds Eleanor in a firm grip, high on her arm, and leads her forward. “Miss March, this is Eleanor. Eleanor Gray. And this, dear, is the lady who you will accompany,” says Mrs Sweetapple to Eleanor. “You have been of such great solace to me, I am sure Miss March here will not regret her choice.” She makes herself clear despite the lack of malice in her voice or simpering face.

Eleanor curtsies but doesn’t look at me. It’s obvious from her blotchy eyes and the excessive powder on her face that the girl has been weeping. I take Eleanor’s hand in mine and squeeze. “I’m sure we will get along famously,” I say softly.

My voice grows curt again when I face Mrs Sweetapple. “And here’s the sum we agreed upon.” I hand her an envelope. “I am sure we will not need to be in further contact.”

I usher Eleanor from the sickly pink house and into the cab. The girl carries a small valise. “Is that all you are travelling with?” I ask, surprised.

She blushes, and holds the valise tighter to her body. “It is all I have left. I have had to sell many of my gowns, unfortunately.”

I pat her on the arm. “Well, don’t worry about that. We will soon have you well attired and well shod again.”

She starts to cry quietly in the corner of her seat and I turn to her, take her little hand again. “Hush, you goose. You are perfectly safe now, Miss Carter.”

She gapes at me. “But how do you know my true name?”

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“I have been hired by your father to find you. He has been extremely worried about you.”

She gazes at me, and her mouth hangs open for a moment longer. “You must be mistaken, Miss March. My father is the last person who is worried about my well-being.”

“My name is not Miss March. It’s Heloise. And truly, I was hired through a detective agency to find you. You have led me on a fine chase for nearly a week now.”

Her hand grips mine. “And I can go home?” she asks, eagerly.

“I’m afraid not, Miss Carter.” She’s crestfallen and looks to be about to cry again.

“He wants to see you safely ensconced in Shropshire.”

A stubborn look sweeps across Eleanor’s face. “I will not go to Shropshire. I will not.” She looks out the window, as the cab slows down to allow a group of workmen to cross the road. “I don’t know what else I can do, but I won’t go to that nunnery and have those dour old things grumbling at me.”

“Well, let us wait and see. Maybe your father and Sir Thomas – he owns the detective agency, you know – will come up with another plan.”

The hansom cab pulls into the side of the road outside my temporary home in

Waterloo. Chat’s burrowing away in a neighbour’s rubbish heap but pauses long enough to stare at us as we walk up the front path. I deposit the girl in the bedroom and quickly scrawl out a letter to Sir Thomas telling him of my good news. I poke my head out the front door and call to Chat.

“Can you take this to the nearest receiving house, Chat? I think you’ll find it is the shop on the next corner.”

The boy takes the letter and the few pennies I offer him, and is walking down the path, when I call him back.

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“Chat, have you noticed that carriage again? The one that followed me home the other night?”

The boy shakes his head. “No, miss. Has it been following you again?”

I nod, and turn back into the house.

“But I seen the old prig what pushes notes through your letter slot in the middle of the night.”

“Have you?”

“Yep. Few times now.”

“Hurry and take that missive to the shop and then return here and tell me about it.”

That evening we arrive at the Ship and Turtle on Leadenhall St a little earlier than Sir

Thomas. We’re seated at a table next to the murky aquariums that line the side of the room.

I’d arranged for him to meet us here instead of the musty Frazier St house as a small celebration. Eleanor had seemed so downcast I wanted to cheer her up with a good meal and a little champagne. And I wanted to dress up, drink a little champagne myself, show Sir

Thomas and his bastard of a friend Mr Priestly what a fine job I’ve done.

Eleanor stands and gazes mournfully at the slow-moving monsters swimming in the smoky, green water. “Poor creatures,” she says softly, smudging the opaque glass as she draws her fingertip in a line beside a turtle’s bobbing head. I can barely hear her above the din of the other patrons of the restaurant. “Living in the shadows, trapped behind glass.”

Just then Sir Henry pushes his way to our table. “Mrs Chancey,” he says, taking my hand in his, beaming. “Once again, you have not let me down.” He turns to where Eleanor is standing by the aquarium. “And Miss Carter. What a relief we were able to find you before anything too untoward happened. Your father is so happy.”

Eleanor looks over his shoulder. “He did not come?”

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Sir Thomas glances at me, looking embarrassed. “Sit down. Please, sit down. Join me in supper,” he says to Eleanor, pulling out her chair.

Sir Thomas and I keep up a patter of conversation while we order our meals. Only then does he broach the subject of Eleanor’s position.

“I have a letter for you, Miss Carter, from your father,” he says, taking an envelope from his coat pocket.

Eleanor takes it swiftly from his fingers, tears it open and reads. The hopeful expression on her face fades, and she replaces the note neatly. “He does not wish to see me.

He insists I continue on to Shropshire.”

“Miss Eleanor has told me that she is still of the same mind as when she ran away originally. She does not desire to go to Shropshire,” I inform Sir Thomas.

I catch his eye and raise my eyebrows. He looks a bit startled. “I am not sure what the alternative can be,” he says.

We’re quiet as our meals arrive – a plate of bread, some boiled potatoes and three bowls of steaming, aromatic turtle soup. I sip the broth, which is hearty and well-seasoned, but Eleanor, after pushing about some of the glutinous substance with her spoon, pushes her bowl away.

“I have an idea for the short while,” he says, eventually.

We look at him expectantly.

“I think it might be best if Eleanor stays with you in the meantime, Mrs Chancey, until we decide what is best. At least then we will know she is safe and well-looked after and most importantly of all,” he smiles kindly at the girl, “we will know exactly where you are.”

It’s like a pebble sinking in my chest. Sir Thomas continues to slurp up his soup and even Eleanor looks more cheerful than I’ve seen her all of the afternoon and evening, and manages to eat some of the bread and butter. But what of me? I was looking forward to this

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/113 assignment being over. I looked forward to returning to the luxuries of Mayfair, the attentions of my admirers. I watch Eleanor as I sip my soup. She’s spent the last week or so in the company of whores, yet she still seems untouched, genteel. How can I look after such a well- bred, middle-class girl? What a bore.

Calling for the bill, Sir Thomas thanks me again and says he must rush home to have tea with his wife. “It is the only time of the day that we meet each other,” he laughs.

He escorts us out into the alleyway where a fog has crept in, as dense and hazy as the water in the turtle’s aquariums. He stands by the roadside, whistles sharply and in a few moments his coachman parks a smart, two wheeled carriage polished the colour of burgundy, next to the kerb.

“Ladies, allow me to take you home,” he says, with a bow.

I have to laugh. “Sir Thomas, that is a very pretty carriage indeed, but it is impossible that the three of us would fit along its seat.” I’m polite enough to not point out Sir Thomas’s wide girth, but gesture towards our full skirts. “You are very kind, but I will take Miss Carter home in a cab.”

He agrees, shouting up to his driver to summon a cab. He makes sure we’re neatly packed in, pays the driver and waves us on.

“What a kind man he is,” murmurs Eleanor.

“Yes, he is.” I look out the window as the hansom cab’s wheels crunch across the cobblestones. The fog is so soupy it’s hard to see the people walking on the sidewalk. I don’t know how our driver can even see other vehicles on the long drive home to Waterloo. The cab lumbers along and once in a while the driver, in a heavy, guttural accent I can’t quite place, shouts directions at loiterers or other coachmen who impede his way. There’s a pause in the traffic and I wonder if the dim lights I can see are from The Old Trout when a heavy

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/114 whack to the side of the cab throws Eleanor against my shoulder. The cab lurches sideways as the sound of screeching wheels and the splintering of wood fill the air.

It’s dark in the carriage and I have to feel for Eleanor’s arms. “Are you alright,

Eleanor?”

Her soft voice answers, “I think so. Although I do believe my cheeks will be bruised.”

I can just make out Eleanor prodding at her own face.

“Well, as long as no bones are broken.” I test my own feet and legs before pushing open the cab door and hopping down onto the road. Taking only a few steps I observe that a coach, bulky and dated, from which a querulous, old man, with ruddy, round cheeks is shouting instructions, has side-swiped the hansom cab. His coachman, a skinny rat of a man, is poking his finger into the cab driver’s chest as he snarls up at him proving he must be full of pluck, considering the cab driver is a lofty, heavy-set fellow.

“You were s’posed to gi’ me righ’ o’ way, ya grea’ clotpole,” shrills the smaller man.

“It was your fault,” bellows the cab driver, shoving the other on the shoulder. “You’f smash’t my cab. De springs on my veel is bent to buggery now, dank you fery much.”

By this time a small crowd has gathered around the broken vehicles. Still holding their beers, working men find the source of the noise, having picked their way through the fog to the broken vehicles. A few venders, holding their sacks or carts of goods, have moved in close to add to the commotion, and in the distance the thin, reedy sound of a policeman’s whistle can be heard. The stragglers from the tavern let up a roar of encouragement when the cab driver strips off his jacket ready for a brawl. I’m not averse to watching a scrap, knowing full well the excitement and horror of watching two men set upon one another. However, I’m conscious of my responsibility to the young woman still waiting in the hansom cab so I squeeze through the throng until I reach the cab door again.

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“Come,” I say to Eleanor. “Gather up your bag and shawl. We had better leave. Sir

Thomas has paid the man, and he is of no help to us now.”

I draw Eleanor through the crowd, ignoring the leers and suggestions from a couple of the revellers as we pass, until we reach a quieter part of the street.

The street lamps only give off a dim halo of light in the fog, too pale to see clearly by.

There are no other bloody hansom cabs to hire so, linking arms with Eleanor, I steer her towards the Frazier St house. Our shoes slide slightly on the sludgy cobblestones as we walk and the fog’s miasma lingers over my face and throat until I feel like flapping it away.

There’s little traffic for the road is clogged by the two damaged vehicles. The din of the cheers and the constables’ whistles become quieter the further we walk. Everything is grey – the venders who are folding away their produce and the workers who are slouching homewards. Even our own footsteps are muted by the thickness of the fog. Just as we reach the next crossroad an ominous, steady trundling of a carriage’s wheels creeps behind us. I quicken my step, and fear knuckles its cold fingers up my spine. I glance over my shoulder, and sure enough, its black paintwork gleaming, the crimson curtains swaying, the carriage follows us at a sedate pace. Who’s in the bloody carriage? Is it one man, two, three?

Ever since I first noticed the carriage following me I’ve been having nightmares again about that night, that forkin’ terrible night those bastards picked me off the street. I was still a girl when it happened, a forkin’ skinny girl. I wasn’t a virgin, no, but what was forced upon me that night was not right. Sometimes I watch those young ladies in Hyde Park, strolling with their nannies, trotting along in their father’s phaeton. Pretty parasols to guard their skin, servants to guard their cleanliness, tightly buttoned gowns to guard their virtue. And I could almost choke on the envy I feel. Every eye – covetous, jealous, fascinated – might be on the alluring, incomparable Heloise Chancey, but beneath the shallow layer of beauty and

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/116 expensive attire is that grubby, greedy girl who didn’t even know this type of life existed.

And here I am in the nightmare again, trying to flee, but never quite fast enough.

Fear rings in my ears as I pull Eleanor along, until we’re nearly running over the uneven, slippery ground. She trips and asks, “Is something the matter, Heloise? What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing, dear, just let’s hurry.” I peer over my shoulder again at the carriage, which is gaining on us.

Eleanor limps a little as we walk, slowing our passage. I support her under the elbow, as she hobbles forward, and I hold back my impatience. The horse’s hooves clop closer.

Dread creeps up the back of my neck even as the horse’s warm snort whistles against my ear.

“Why is that carriage following us so closely?” she asks me.

“I don’t know,” I say, and even I can hear its grim tone.

What am I so afraid of? I’m not sure if it’s because I’m with Eleanor, or if the fright has fuelled my anger, but I’m fed up. I stop short. My street is a short distance away, but I know the closer we are to home, the more vulnerable we will become on that quiet, deserted road. I stare up at the coachman, who irresolutely ignores me just as he has each time, and then I look hard at the crimson curtain. It twitches, which peaks my anger even more. Why doesn’t the coward who’s spying upon me show himself?

I move swiftly towards the carriage door. I don’t even have my pistol, but that doesn’t worry me. I’m determined to see, once and for all, who is in the damned, black carriage.

Wrenching open the door, I peer into the shadowy interior until my eyesight adjusts.

I’m so stunned by what I see it takes me a moment to speak. “Amah! What are you doing?

You forkin’ scared the arse off me.”

“I am driving somewhere, as you can see,” says Amah Li Leen, a defensive note in her voice.

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“You’re spying on me, you mean,” I say. I realise my hands are still shaking with adrenalin and clamp them on my waist. I shake my head at her. “You can bloody drive us home then.” I call out for Eleanor to follow and jumping up into the body of the carriage sit down opposite Amah.

As I help Eleanor through the doorway, I ask, “Where on earth did you rustle this carriage up from? And where’s mine?

She lifts her chin. “I had to hire this carriage at a considerable cost. Taff would not let me use yours.”

“Didn’t approve of you spying on me, didn’t he?”

“It would seem not,” she answers with dignity. “He doesn’t have your well-being at heart, like I do.”

I sniff. “Well, now that you’re here, you bloody well had better’ve brought my red petticoats.”

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Chapter Thirteen

It’s well into the evening when the door knocker raps. Eleanor pauses in tying the ribbon of her cotton night dress and turns anxious eyes towards me.

“Do not worry, Eleanor, I am expecting someone.” I look at Amah and my tone is arch when I say, “Now that my maid has decided to join us, I have sent to my home for some necessities.”

“This is not your home?” asks Eleanor.

“I am surprised Miss Heloise has lasted this long here,” says Amah, gingerly opening a drawer of the shabby dressing table.

“I am only here until we have decided what is best for you, Eleanor. Ignore my maid,”

I call, as I skip down the stairs.

I pull open the door and stand back. “Bill.” I usher him into the sitting room. “I was expecting my coachman, but you will do just as well.” I grin up at him. “You will never guess who I have upstairs.”

“That Oriental woman who stared at me from the landing? She gave me quite a turn.”

He shrugs off his coat, and places it over the back of the sofa.

Casting my eyes to the ceiling, I click my tongue. “No. That’s my lady’s maid. She’s tracked me down.”

“You’re very game to have an Oriental sleep under the same roof as you. You’re not scared she may cut your throat from ear to ear one night, all to avenge her pagan gods or some such?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bill.” I turn away and pour glasses of madeira to hide the irritation I know flickers across my face.

“How did she find you, if you didn’t want to be found?”

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“She knew I was in Waterloo somewhere.” I grin again. “It was she who was following me in the carriage, would you believe. Scared the life out of me, the hornet.”

He frowns. “That doesn’t make me any more comfortable with her presence in your house. Less so, in fact.”

I take a seat next to Bill and cosy up to his side. “But now you must guess who I do have upstairs, right now, in my bedroom preparing for sleep.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve found her? Miss Carter?”

“Yes.” I clap my hands together. “I finally found her.”

“Her family must be very happy.”

I agree, thinking of Sir Thomas, ghastly Mr Priestly and the underserving Mr Carter.

“She is safe. I am so relieved she is safe, at last.” I tell him of Mrs Donnelly and Mrs

Sweetapple and my clever plot that reclaimed Eleanor.

“Very clever.”

“Yes, and my adventures for tonight are not done. So what with one thing and another, I cannot invite you to stay,” I say to him. I’m a little regretful, to tell the truth.

Maybe when I move back to Mayfair…

“No, I am too busy to stay, as well.”

“Then why are you here, sir?” I curl my hand into his, my fingers sweeping his skin. I press a moist kiss into the palm of his hand.

His eyes cloud momentarily, but he smiles as he says, “Firstly, I have a gift for you.”

He pokes around in his waistcoat pocket before pulling forth something small wrapped in a handkerchief. “I saw it in a shop near my home. Thought of you.” He hands me a tiny, pretty snuff bottle made of cranberry glass. The ruby red vessel has an ornate, silver lid on a hinge and is strung upon a thin piece of leather. “It’s just a little bit of nonsense I thought you might

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/120 like.” He tries to sound off-hand, yet I’m aware of his gaze upon my face, eagerly gauging my feelings for the simple gift.

And I’m touched. The pretty bauble doesn’t nearly measure up to the presents of diamonds and gold (and guineas) I’ve become accustomed to receiving, but I’m touched he thought of me. I immediately put it around my neck with his assistance, a shiver of pleasure passing through me as his fingertips brush the nape of my neck.

“I have placed some of my special snuff mixture within it,” he explains, smiling. “To help you relax when I am not around.”

The cold glass of the pendant rolls against my skin. “Thank you, sweet man.” I kiss him on the mouth, catching his bottom lip between mine. His moustache bristles against my skin. “What else did you want to discuss with me?”

“Well, I wanted to let you know that I couldn’t find that poor woman, Prue, who you told me about.”

“Oh, that’s sad.” I think of her greying hair, the blood she coughed up and realise she probably passed away.

“And I wanted to ask you some questions about Mme Silvestre’s.”

I sit back, interested. “What questions?”

“There’s a barman there. At least, he dresses up as a woman when he works at the bar, but he is a man, nonetheless. Do you know him?”

“Henry? Yes, I’ve seen him. I don’t know much about him. We’ve only talked once and that was when he was preparing drinks.”

Bill nods and thinks for a moment. He feels in his pockets and brings out a crumpled piece of paper which he presses flat and places on the table. “I had a hunch about him. There was something not quite right when I went to Silvestre’s after the Dutch girl was found. He slipped off before I had a chance to question him.”

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“I remember that day. I saw you there and he rushed by.” I lean over to look at the piece of paper. Underneath a sketch of a man with a beard and longish, straight hair is an offer of ten pounds.

“That man is said to have swindled a lot of money out of people in Bloomsbury when he posed as an apothecary with access to miraculous medicines. Said he could cure all kinds of things but he was especially interested in women’s problems.”

“What problems?”

Bill shrugs. “Hysteria, mania, regulatory.”

“For women who didn’t want a baby?”

“It would seem so. But it was soon found out that his famously expensive tonics were not patented and were nothing better than sugar water, although one pill he sold as a regulator was made of irregular amounts of arsenic and herbs which caused severe and life-threatening symptoms in the women. In fact, one woman did die, hence the end of his career in medicine and his flight from the law.”

I squeeze his hand. “Yes,” I say. “I’d forgotten. Tilly was telling me the other day that the girls in Mme Silvestre’s brothel do not always go to the doctor to be…” I almost say

‘scraped’, but think better of it, “regulated. Sometimes they rely on Henry and an evil tasting draught he gives them.”

I pull the picture to me again. “Henry’s eyes are very like those in this picture – a little sunken and dark. And his nose is straight, just as it is here. I guess it could be him.” A memory snags so that I slap the piece of paper and bounce up from my seat. “Now I know who he is.”

“What do you mean?”

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I’m so excited I can barely say the words sensibly. “I saw him. Henry. I didn’t know who he was. I mean, I recognised him, but couldn’t place him. Without his curls. Of course.

He was leaving Dr Mordaunt’s premises.”

“When?”

“That day I pinched the notebook.” My thoughts rush ahead. “Do you think he could be in this with the doctor?” My voice is hushed with triumphant hope.

“Well, that is now what I am wondering,” he says. “Might he be venturing further into the world of medicine? His tonics have failed. Has he turned to surgery?”

Suddenly I remember Agnes whinging about the messy sheets. Were they nastier than a night of dissipation could account for? However, I can’t deny I find it a little hard to believe

Henry could be a part of this butchery. But, of course, if he is under the sway of that bastard,

Mordaunt… “He seemed quite nice, though, at Silvestre’s.”

Bill smiles and tucks the flyer back into his pocket. “You women will trust anyone.”

The poor thing really has no idea.

“Well, I won’t do it, Miss Heloise,” says Taff, backing out of the kitchen. “I won’t’m.”

“You must, Taff, you foolish man,” I snap, bearing down on him. “Give me that sack at once.”

I tug the bag from his hands and peer inside at the screwed up pieces of clothing.

“I would never have bought those old rags if I knew’m what you had in mind, Miss

Heloise,” he says, shaking his head slowly. He looks over at Amah Li Leen. “What do you think, Amah?”

The older woman’s mouth screwed to one side. “She always does what she pleases.”

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“Well, if I’m to wait out on the street in the dark,” I say, looking out the window,

“and it’s well past midnight already, I cannot be dressed as a woman. I will blend in best if I am disguised as a man.” I pull out a tattered pair of trousers. “A vagrant, no less.”

“Why don’t you just let’m me do it, Miss Heloise?” asks Taff.

“Because I want to feel the thrill of the catch, not have it relayed to me,” I answer, stepping out of my shoes. “Taff, we won’t need you again tonight, so take the horses home and rest. We might need you tomorrow.” It’s only when I curl my stockings down from my thigh to my ankle, determined to undress in the kitchen, that Taff stops hesitating and leaves.

Amah and I hear a soft voice from above. “Go attend to Eleanor, Amah. Nothing can be simpler than dragging on a man’s attire.”

The patched trousers are stiff and I hope that no fleas or lice lurk in the threadbare fabric. I pull a rather musty shirt over my head, shrug into a flannel vest and pull a cloth cap over my hair which has been pinned flat to my head. I have to put my own little boots back on but it’s dark outside anyway. Nobody will be looking at me closely. Finally, I tuck my handgun into the back of my trousers and grabbing a half empty bottle of brandy I slip through the back, kitchen door. I stand very still in the darkness and listen, my ears attuned to the distant voices of drunks and working men plodding home. I creep down the narrow easement between my house and the next, letting out a low whistle as I tread. Almost immediately Chat pops out from behind a small shrub across the way, and I cross the road to join him.

“Are you sure I am not too late?” I whisper to the boy.

“Nah. I ‘aven’t seen anything yet.”

“Let’s walk up and down so we just pass for a couple of drunks.” I take a swig of the brandy which burns my throat but warms my flesh, and pass the bottle to the boy.

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He takes two swigs, screwing up his face. “Cor it doesn’t ‘alf scratch yer throat on its way down.”

We bump against each other as we trudge along the road in a drunken manner.

“Why are you around here so late at night?” I ask him.

“Me da’ and I doss down around this corner.” He pulls me along and points to a rickety lean-to huddled in the shadows away from the light of the gas lamp. “Used to be a goat in there,” he says. “Bu’ thankfully it died and we been there ever since.”

“Where’s your father? Is he there now?”

The boy shakes his head as we turn back onto Frazier Street. “No, ‘e sometimes gets work cleaning up at the tannery late at night. Cor, ‘e reeks when e’ comes ‘ome. That’s why I stays on the streets this late. I feel a bit afear’d when I’m by meself in our shack.”

We trudge along the path again, slurping noisily from the brandy bottle, and then pretend to settle down to sleep on the steps of a boarding house adjacent to my house. A good half hour passes and apart from a straggle of men making their way home, heads down, hands shoved deep in their trouser pockets, all is quiet. No lights flicker behind windows, there are no sounds of human movement. A chill breeze tickles my exposed ears and I’m just wishing

I’d brought my fur tippet when Chat whispers, “‘Ere comes the gorbellied, ol’ cow.”

We watch a large figure noiselessly leave a house three doors down from my temporary home. The heavily cloaked individual shies away from the gas lamp and then, turning abruptly, makes its way up my path. I pad across the road as noiselessly as a cat, and hear the faint clink of the front door’s mail-slot.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” My voice is loud and strident.

The intruder tries to push me aside but is tackled to the ground by Chat, who sits on top of his prisoner. The front door opens and Amah stands in the doorway holding up a lamp.

“Did you capture him?”

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I take the lamp from her and holding it over the figure struggling and shrieking on the ground, reveal a plump woman with greying ringlets falling from her crooked bonnet. “Well, we captured her.”

“How dare you hold me like this, you harlot,” screeches the woman.

“How dare you leave nasty notes in my letter box, you dog-hearted wretch.” I bend over and pick up the note the woman has left behind. Jezebel. Whore. May God pierce you with his sword, and the Devil turn you aflame. I read it through twice, and then laugh. “I cannot believe I was afraid. This is nothing more than nonsense.”

I watch as the woman totters to her feet. I smirk. “’May God pierce you with his sword,’” I quote, poking the woman in her side. “Is he going to stick his cock in me? Is that what you mean? You saucy wench. Where did you find such filth?”

“How dare you?” gasps the woman. “I only read the Bible like all good people.”

By now the neighbours have awoken to the noise and are peering out their windows.

“There is no cause for alarm,” I call out. “We have just found an intruder. Peeping in on us, she was.”

The woman clasps her hands to her droopy cheeks. “I never was. I never was. You are an evil trollop and you and your like should be punished.”

My eyes narrow. “I will summon the police right now if you do not leave my doorstep. And do not deliver me any more of your nauseating notes or I’ll tell all the neighbours you’re harassing me ‘cause I stole all your best johns.”

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Chapter Fourteen

I endeavour to sleep through the rest of the night in the sitting room upon the lumpy sofa, but only manage snatches of rest ‘cause I can’t straighten my legs or turn over on my side in the improvised bed. This time I dream that my gun fails – that I need to, am desperate to, shoot a dark shadow of a man who’s intent upon attacking me, but my gun refuses to shoot. A short knock on the front door, followed by its opening squeak, wrenches me from an uneasy sleep and I peer over at Amah, who’s slept on the carpet in front of the fireplace.

“That must be Agnes, the chargirl from Silvestre’s,” I whisper. I collapse back onto a cushion and rub at my bleary eyes. “Agnes,” I call. “Agnes.”

The girl pops her head around the door and gasps and ducks back when she sees

Amah, who’s groaning as she sits up.

“Who’s that, Miss?” Agnes asks.

“That is my maid. You may call her Amah. Don’t stand there gawping at her. It’s rude.” I press my hands on the small of my back to stretch. “And I have a lady guest upstairs in my bedroom. We are a full house this morning. Would you put some water on for tea, please?”

“Yes, Miss,” says Agnes. “For ‘er too?” she asks, nodding towards Amah.

I frown upon the girl. “Tea for everybody, thank you, Agnes.”

“Yes, Miss.”

Once she’s left, I grin at Amah. “Still scaring the natives, I see.”

“Pah!” She shakes her head, straightening her blouse. “I will never be bothered with what the likes of her think of me, Heloise.”

“I know,” I say, pulling on my peignoir. “That’s what’s so amusing.”

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We trudge up the stairs to the bedroom and I push open the door slowly. Eleanor’s sitting up in bed, and she has opened the curtains so that weak sunlight filters unevenly into the room.

“How are you this morning, Eleanor?” I ask.

“I am well,” answers the girl, although there are dark smudges under her eyes and her face is pale. She smiles shyly at Amah and watches as the older woman takes a pale celeste- blue gown from the cupboard and places it on the bed at Eleanor’s feet.

“I had this brought for you to wear, Madam,” she says to Eleanor. “It is one of

Heloise’s day dresses, but she has grown too large for it.” She throws me a sly look which I note but choose to ignore. “The colour will suit you nicely.”

Eleanor kneels forward and strokes the shiny taffeta. “It is beautiful.” She continues to watch Amah, as she unpacks further toiletries from a trunk. “Are you Spanish, Amah?” she asks curiously.

“No.”

Eleanor picks up the blue gown and holds it against herself. “Maybe you are from

India?”

“No, I’m from a land further away than that,” Amah says. “You would not have heard of the place.”

“I might have,” says Eleanor. “I was born in Delhi, you know. That’s where my mother died, so they sent me home to boarding school when I was twelve years old. Father returned to London not many years after that.” She stares at a spot on the blanket, plucking at the weave with her fine, tapered fingers. “I was so happy in India.”

Amah stares at the girl for a few moments and looks to say something, but thinks better of it. Her mouth twists to the side as she continues to unravel hair ribbons.

“Has there been any word from Sir Henry or my father?” Eleanor asks me.

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“No. I believe we have them at a standstill,” I answer. “Not to worry. I’m sure between the two of us, we can arrange something you might be pleased with.”

Amah helps us dress. With me, she’s merciless, hauling in the stays of my corset, her bent knee pressed firmly into my back as she pulls. But she’s gentle with Eleanor.

“How far along are you now, Eleanor?’ I ask.

Uncomfortable blotches of red flush Eleanor’s face and neck. “I’m not entirely sure.

Four months maybe?” She places her hand on her slender stomach, the slightest of firm curves the only hint that she is with child.

I watch the girl as Amah tugs away at my hair. I wonder if Eleanor knows of her options; if she knows she might have had a chance to rid herself of the child. In her days being passed from one place to another in Waterloo, surely someone had mentioned the possibility of an abortion to her.

When Amah’s finished with my hair, having fixed it in a more intricate manner than I could ever achieve by myself, she starts on Eleanor’s. The old harridan brushes Eleanor’s hair softly, as if her fair locks are a sacred halo. I roll my eyes as I slide my silk hose onto my feet and up over my knees. I slip my feet into white, kid boots and go to the kitchen in search of breakfast, finding Taff seated at the table having a cup of tea with Agnes.

“Ah, Miss Heloise, I have returned because I have’m a missive for ye,” he says, handing me a neat, square card. I recognise the writing on the egg-shell white, stiff paper at once.

“Agnes, could you please take some tea up to Miss Eleanor and Amah?” I ask the girl as I take a seat at the table. I wait until the girl has left the room before I open the letter.

I’m shining with excitement when Amah joins us in the kitchen. “I have left Agnes to moon over Eleanor,” she says, pouring herself a black tea. “She is admiring the girl’s

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/129 prettiness and helping her with her toilette.” She regards me with narrowed eyes. “What do you look so pleased about?”

“I have a message from Lord Hatterleigh. He is back from the country and wants to take me to the opera tonight.”

“Is that where he’s been?” she says. “I wondered what he thought had become of you.

You’re not thinking of going are you? You cannot leave Miss Eleanor.”

“But it’s Faust, Amah. You know how much I’ve been longing to see Faust ever since Sir Berry described it to me.”

“But what about Miss Eleanor? I will have to stay with her.”

“No, I’ll need you to help me prepare,” I say, biting my lip. “And I’ll need to go home to Mayfair for the night, of course.”

“We can take Eleanor.”

“Take Eleanor? Amah, we cannot take Eleanor. How strange she would find it when she sees that Lord Hatterleigh is to stay the whole night, and how strange he will find it that I have an unfamiliar girl in the house.” I worked bloody hard to get where I am. I’m also well aware that it’s been a small miracle I’ve pulled it off. So the idea of sharing my Mayfair home with another fair beauty…? No. I won’t share the attentions of my lover and patron,

Hatterleigh, just yet, either.

Agnes and Eleanor descend the stairs. Agnes is regaling Eleanor with a story about

Mme Silvestre’s cat. “Vomited the pearl right up on Silvestre’s bosom, it did,” she finishes, triumphantly.

I swivel around in my chair to face the chargirl. “Agnes, I will not be able to keep

Miss Eleanor company this evening. Neither will Amah. We’ll both be out for the entire night. Do you think Mme Silvestre can spare you? So you can stay here with Miss Eleanor?”

Agnes looks pleased. “I’m sure she’ll allow it if you was to ‘ave a word with ‘er.”

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I smile broadly at Amah. “That will not be a problem. I will write a short note to her right now and you must deliver it at once.”

Eleanor seems so wan I decide to take her for a walk, ensuring we each carry a parasol to guard our complexions from the sun. I try to set a quick pace but Eleanor pauses to admire every flower or pat every dog or talk to each small child. Eventually I have to draw her arm through mine so I don’t leave her too far behind. As we pass Mme Silvestre’s establishment

Eleanor averts her gaze, but once at the corner we both look back on hearing a commotion.

Mme Silvestre herself, as well-stuffed and tightly buttoned as an ottoman, bellows obscenities from her front doorway while Mr Critchley holds her back from pounding a young policeman over the head with a shoe.

Spying Tilly standing by the front gate I leave Eleanor for a moment and approach her. “What’s she carrying on about?” I ask.

“The pigs have come around looking for Henry.” She points at my purse. “You have a cigarette for me?”

I bring out my cigarette case, hand her one. “Where is he?”

“Don’t know,” she shrugs, blowing out smoke. “But they’re heading around to

Mordaunt’s now.”

This I want to see. If the police are going to take in that rat Mordaunt, I want to be there. I race back to Eleanor, and tug the girl behind me all the way to the doctor’s cul-de-sac.

We’re just in time to see Mordaunt led out through the front door between two constables.

Crowded upon the front terrace are several surprised patients. The doctor’s assistant is so shocked he can only gabble noiselessly, rubbing the palms of his hands down the shiny breast of his suit-coat.

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Walking behind is Inspector Kelley, who’s mightily officious in his black frock coat and helmet. Then comes Bill, his bowler hat in hand, and Henry, who’s shed his gown and is dressed in his plaid brown suit, hands manacled behind his back. Bill acknowledges me with a nod and they all climb into a police buggy which is parked in the road.

Eleanor clutches my arm nervously so I lead her away. I choose a route that’s in the opposite direction to The Old Trout and we walk in silence for a few minutes.

“I’ve seen that man before somewhere, the one in the brown suit,” says Eleanor.

“Yes. He’s the barman at Silvestre’s.”

“There was no barman on the night I was there.” The memory of the place quivers across her soft features.

“Yes, he was. You cannot remember a rather big lass tending bar? Blue frock, over- abundance of rouge and powder?”

“With brown hair?”

“That’s him. He was dressed as a woman. Those rich ringlets on his head were from a very tidy hairpiece, I wouldn’t wonder.”

Eleanor stops walking for a moment, a look of aghast wonder on her face. “He was dressed as a woman?”

“Yep,” I grin.

A small crease puckers the girl’s eyebrow. “I am sure I have seen him somewhere else, though.” She straightens her shoulders. “Although I was not thinking clearly the night I was in that horrible place. I was so dizzy I was sure I was going to faint.”

She looks so upset I direct her notice to a mangy cat sitting atop a fence post but then

I have to spend the next bloody minute deterring her from fondling its patchy coat.

I buy us each a plum from a street vendor and we wander onto a scrap of parkland and settle on an old log that’s lain here so long the grass and weeds snake over its bark. I bite into

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/132 the tart skin of the plum catching the sweet juice with my cupped hand. Its nectar runs down my chin so that I have to bend well over my billowing skirt. I suck the juice stain from my lace gloves. Eleanor doesn’t bite hers, just holds the plum lightly in her lap with one hand, and with the other snaps up pieces of grass.

“What is to become of me?” she asks.

“What do you want for yourself, Eleanor?”

She shrugs her thin shoulders and the tip of her nose becomes red with the exertion of holding back tears. Eventually she whispers, “Do you know what I’d really like?”

I shake my head.

“I would like to live in a cosy little cottage somewhere. Somewhere where I could just stay and be left alone.” She lifts her face to the sun and shuts her eyes. “Somewhere like

Cornwall. I went there once before on an excursion with my school, you know, to stay by the sea. Oh, it was so lovely, Heloise. And by the water there were quaint little cottages, whitewashed with thatched roofs. I would dearly love to live in one of those cottages with my baby. Just me and the baby.” Her eyes open again and she stares ahead.

“No gentleman?”

“No,” she answers immediately. She rests her chin on her hand and watches an ant crawl across her boot. “No gentleman. Although I think I would be happy with a maid. A maid like your kind Amah.”

I laugh, a snort escaping my nose. “Even Amah would be surprised to hear herself described as kind.”

A light mist sifts past, seeming to hang in the top branches of the young plane trees, smudging edges and muting the light.

“How did you know the French man you tried to find in Charing Cross?” I ask her.

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“Oh, Mathis? He was my viola teacher. Of course I was supposed to call him

Monsieur Baudin, but he became my Mathis when we fell in love.”

“You were in love with him?”

“Yes. He was so sweet. He was not exactly handsome – his nose was too large and he was too stout to be considered handsome – but he had lovely, brown eyes. I loved him and he loved me too.”

“So… why are you not with him?”

“Well,” she says, a grim smile on her serious, little face. “I cannot believe he was terribly thrilled at the idea of being saddled with a pregnant girl.” Her face becomes sad again. “But he was going to do the right thing by me, which is more than the others were willing to do.”

“So, he didn’t throw you over?”

“Oh, not at all. He was willing to marry me and take me to France.”

“Then why in heaven’s name did you not take him up on his offer?”

The mist lifts from the trees and silvery sunlight clears the air again, but Eleanor trembles and covers her face with her hand.

“It is not his baby. And although I do not know what I am to do, I could not make such a good man pay for my sins.”

I try in vain to find out the name of the father of Eleanor’s baby. She becomes white with the effort of holding onto her sobs until she starts to retch. I put my arm around the girl’s heaving shoulders and wait for her to quieten down.

I don’t know Eleanor well enough to speculate on who the man might be. Surely the

French music master was the most dangerous of risks to enter the sheltered world of a young lady fresh from boarding school? Has Eleanor any brothers? Brothers who have other young

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/134 gentlemen to visit? I’m not sure, but from listening to her earlier it’d seemed she was an only child.

A grey wood pigeon wanders before them, pecking for crumbs. Not too much longer another pigeon, with white tufts on its neck, joins its partner.

Unless it was her father. Eleanor’s face rests against her folded arms and I study the barely visible, flaxen down on the curve of the girl’s pink ear. Maybe Eleanor’s own father has left her with child. It’s not unheard of, especially in the back-rooms of brothels.

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Li Leen

In some ways I am like Eleanor. I sometimes think back to my time in Makassar and wonder if that was the happiest period of my life. The earlier years, that is, the years before Tiri came into our lives. When Mother still combed my hair with her tortoise-shell comb and fed me tripang with her sandal-wood chopsticks. Before Tiri’s gaze inched so heavily across my skin that I allowed my hair to fall across my face while I looked to the side, pretending he was not there.

The only respite I had was to work in Tiri’s shop that fronted our living space. Mostly

I sat by the cash box, counting the comings and goings, while Tiri’s serving girls assisted the customers. At the back of the shop stood two large aquariums, the water moss-green and cool, in which glistening, tiger-striped gourami bobbed sluggishly waiting for a customer with a yen for fresh fish. A girl from the Dutch governor’s kitchen taught me how to handle and fillet the fish. For this I had a special scaling knife with which I pierced the gill of the flapping fish and waited for the wet shiver of death, a coat of viscous webbing shiny on my fingertips. I then cleaned and scaled the fish, before handing its fleshy carcase over to the customer. When possible, I kept the fish head for Mother to stew in ginger and garlic so that she could offer it to the Chinese gods of her tiny red and gold shrine. We well knew how much the gods delighted in fish head.

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Chapter Fifteen

Amah Li Leen sets the kitchen table with bread, cold meats and cheese for our midday meal.

She’s testy with Eleanor, who only nibbles on a few berries.

“How can you nourish yourself and your young one if you are not to eat?” she says.

“Look at yourself. You are so thin I can almost see through your white skin.” She tuts and scowls at the girl but carefully assembles a neat cheese sandwich with wedges of butter and thin slices of pickle. She then removes the crusts and cuts the sandwich into bite size squares.

This she places in front of Eleanor next to a cup of sweet, milky tea. “Eat, eat,” she urges.

She pinches me on the elbow and gestures towards the spread of food on the table.

“You eat too. None of this fasting before your big night out at the opera. I did not trudge through the dirt and haggle with those smelly hucksters for you to both starve yourselves.”

We eat obediently as Amah washes the dishes, occasionally popping a morsel of food into her own mouth. When Eleanor is finally finished, having only eaten half her sandwich,

Amah sniffs but takes the plate away.

Since there are no books in the house, or musical instruments or even, thankfully, needle-work to be done, I endeavour to engage Eleanor in conversation. We sit upon the sofas in the sitting room and, being curious about how the young woman had fared for her few weeks of solitude in Waterloo, I slowly draw the story from her.

“I did not realise my money would last such a short period.”

“The owner of the boarding house made you leave?”

“Oh, yes,” she says. “As soon as she understood that I could no longer pay her any board she almost pushed me out of the house.” Colour tints her cheeks. “What an abominable woman she was. You know, she made me take my shoes off when I entered the house. And

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/137 she only allowed us one cup of tea in the morning. She guarded the pot like it was a chest of gold, and I’m sure it was not even tea. I’m sure it was just muddy water from the drains.”

“And then?”

“And then Tilly took me to Mme Silvestre’s.” She thinks for a moment. “It’s strange.

It was over a week ago that I was at Silvestre’s but I seem to have learnt a lot since then. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not.”

“But you did not stay there?”

“Oh, no, I could not. It was so warm there and seemed so merry but when that man placed his hand on me and all I could see was his wet mouth…” She shudders.

I grin at her. “Yes, you need to grow a very tough skin for that kind of thing.”

She looks across at me and then lets her gaze fall. “Did you ever work somewhere like Mme Silvestre’s?”

“Yes. I worked there for a short time when I was about your age. There are worse places to work.” I laugh at the horror on Eleanor’s face, although I do feel a tiny, tiny flicker of irritation. “Although I will refrain from telling you the particulars. So tell me, what did you do then, before that ghastly woman, Mrs Sweetapple, sank her claws into you?”

“It was awful. Awful. I found myself near the bridge and it was very dark and I was so frightened I eventually begged a room from an Irish woman. The lodging was no better than a hovel and the room cost no more than two shillings a week, and yet I could not even come up with that. She had me help her launder men’s shirts and breeches for my board but after a few days her niece arrived so she asked me to leave. I would have gone to the workhouse, but I did not even know where it was, and I was too ashamed to ask. So that first night I hid in a stairwell not far from here. Luckily it was not a terribly cold night, but I still did not manage any sleep.”

“I can imagine you didn’t. Your hiding place wasn’t discovered?”

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“I was so afraid I would be found. So many men, so many women, passed. I did not know what would become of me. I hoped that if I was found it would be by a woman, a kind woman who would assist me, but I have learnt that the fairer sex is not always as charitable as I had been brought up to expect. I was sick with worry. I assure you, if I had eaten anything that day, I would have passed it up.” She leans forward and with shaky hands she grips her teacup and has a sip before carefully placing the cup down again on its saucer. “I only had the one gown left by that stage and it was terribly soiled and crushed. And my hands

– I had thrown away my gloves by then, they were in such a sorry state I could not bear to keep them. I think that was when I realised there was no going back for me to a normal life.”

She gazes down at the palms of her hands, and rubs at them with her lace handkerchief. “My hands were so dirty. I could not wipe the grime away.”

“How did you meet Mrs Sweetapple?”

She hides her face in her hands. “It is so mortifying to have to tell you this part.” She looks up again and there are red smudges around her eyes where her hands have pressed. “I was so hungry. I was more hungry than I have ever felt in my life. At first I asked a coster who looked friendly enough if I could have one of her apples, having no money, but she told me if she was to give me an apple, she would be obliged to give all the vagrants an apple, and then where would her business be? She did not say it nastily, but she was very firm. I was too afraid to ask again after that. Then I noticed a cart of chestnuts. The man was serving an old lady, so I walked past and tried to sift my hand through the nuts,” she makes the motion with her hand. “I tried to take one without being seen but a beastly little girl told the old woman and then the coster looked around at me too. I could have sunk into the ground I was so embarrassed. I just stood there, the chestnut in my hand, unable to explain myself, when Mrs

Sweetapple took it from me and told the costermonger that she would buy it for her niece – she was referring to me, you see.”

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“How clever of her.”

Eleanor nods slowly. “Yes. So when she offered to take me home, and she seemed so kind, of course I went.”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” she repeats. She stares down at her cup of tea, and I let her be.

Amah and I are packing some of my toiletries to take with us for the evening, when Agnes appears at the bedroom door.

“There’s a gentleman at the door for you, Miss.”

“Do you know who it is?” I tuck some stray hairs behind my ear.

The girl shakes her head. “Nah. Never seen him, Miss. Looks like a toff though, all straight and proper, ‘e is.”

I follow the girl down the stairs and am surprised to see Dr Blain, attired in evening dress, standing by the hall stand.

“Dr Blain. How do you do?” I’m not entirely able to keep the astonishment from my voice.

“Mrs Chancey.” He takes my hand in his gloved one, drops his hat, and upon gathering it up again, says, “You must find it very strange that I have called upon you.”

I smile politely, and assure him I’m delighted to meet him again. Knowing Eleanor to be in the sitting room, I’m unsure as to whether I should invite him in or whether to continue our uneasy conversation in the hallway.

“I see you are going somewhere special tonight,” I venture, gesturing towards his tailcoat.

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“Yes, yes,” he says, distracted, picking at the rim of his hat. “I have an engagement to attend with my aunt.” He swallows hard. “The thing is, I was wondering if you have found your cousin yet, Mrs Chancey?”

I’m just about to tell him that I haven’t yet found Eleanor when the girl herself walks out from the sitting room.

“Dr Blain?” she says. Her face is flushed pink as if she has sat by the fire too long.

Blain stares at her, then rushes forward to take her hand in greeting. “You are well.”

“Yes, I am well. Heloise has taken such great care of me.”

He glances back at me. “But how did you find her?” He looks again at Eleanor.

“Where were you?”

I’m not quite sure how to answer so I usher the two of them into the sitting room to give myself some thinking time. “A kind lady not far from here allowed Eleanor to board with her,” I finally say. “The woman who owns the coffee stall knew I was searching for

Eleanor, and having heard of this kind lady taking in a young woman, she thought to tell me of it.” I hold Eleanor’s gaze for a second. “Luckily it was my cousin Eleanor, after all.”

We each take a seat. Blain sits next to me so that he’s facing Eleanor. He stares at her for a few moments before his eyes fall to his hat which is resting in his lap. “And you have been well, madam?” he asks me.

“Yes, thank you. And your work, Dr Blain – has it kept you very busy?”

“Yes, yes it has,” he says, glancing again at Eleanor. “That is to say, no, actually. It has been slow lately. Which is a good thing for my patients as that means cholera is not rife, yet it is not so fortuitous for my livelihood.”

He smiles tremulously at Eleanor and a blush creeps across the skin above his stiff collar and bow-tie. Jesus. He’s besotted with the girl, not stalking her. I press my lips together

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/141 to stop from grinning. Poor Eleanor, who’s unpicking the lace border of her handkerchief, seems to be oblivious to his attentions.

“Let me arrange for the tea things to be brought in,” I say, standing.

“No, no. Please do not bring them on my account.” Blain also stands. “I really must be going. I have to collect my aunt very soon. I only came to enquire after Miss Carter.” He jerks out a smile at Eleanor then walks from the room.

I follow him into the hallway and he turns to take my hand. “I suppose you will be returning to your own home soon?”

“Yes, I will,” I wonder if Eleanor will be averse to seeing the nice doctor again. “I will provide you with my address.”

“No, that is not necessary. I am afraid this may be the last time we meet under these circumstances.”

“But surely you will visit us again?”

He gives a short shake of his head. “No. No, I don’t think I will. In fact I know I will not.”

“But…” I say, confused. “But you seemed so… glad to see Eleanor again.”

“Mrs Chancey, your cousin came to see me as a patient. I know her predicament.”

I feel the expression on my face flatten, tightening my mouth and brow, as I realise what he means.

“Ah. Therefore, even if you desired to do so, you could not bring yourself to know

Eleanor better?” I say.

“No. It would not be right.”

The smile on my face is fixed, as I open the front door. “Well, we must be thankful for the generosity of spirit that allowed you to check on Eleanor’s well-being. You are a true gentleman.”

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“Heloise,” calls Eleanor from the bedroom doorway just as we’re leaving for the night.

“Yes, Eleanor?” I look up at the young woman.

“I’ve remembered where I saw Henry – you know, the barman from Silvestre’s.”

“Where, dear?”

“It was on the morning after I slept in the stairwell. I was so sick and dizzy with hunger and fatigue it slipped my mind.” She curls her fingers over the banister. “It was still quite dark and I wandered by the river. That’s where I saw him. He was standing over a woman who had fallen in the road beside the fishmongers.” She frowns. “No, that’s not right.

It was almost as if he had dropped her there. I thought she may have fainted or else maybe she was the worse for wear from gin.”

“And you’re sure it was him?”

She nods, although her eyes are worried. “I think so.”

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Chapter Sixteen

I’m bursting with contentment as I dab scent behind my ears and between my breasts. If I was a cat I’d be purring. How satisfying to be back in my luxurious home in Mayfair. It actually irks me to know I’ll have to return to Waterloo again to organise Eleanor’s affairs. How pretty my boudoir is, with its creamy, thick carpet and the glossy, ornate furniture. The bed, with its canopy of heavily embroidered gold and black velvet and its crisp linen sheets is especially inviting. Everything smells fresh and clean – no musty mattress, no tallow candles.

My beauty accoutrements are spread across the surface of the mahogany dressing table – crystal jars containing fragrant ointments and oils that nourish my skin and assist in keeping it fashionably pale and free of freckles; lip salves and fragile bottles of tinted cream to enhance what nature has neglected; and ivory-handled brushes to groom my hair and apply powder to my face and body. I choose a pair of heavy diamond earrings from my jewellery case.

“I have to tell Bill what Eleanor told me of Henry. The timing fits in with when the poor Dutch girl’s body was left by the side of the fishmongers,” I say to Amah. “Can you fetch me paper and pen?”

“No, I cannot, Heloise,” she snaps at me, as she twines my hair into a full, loose braid that tapers down my back. “I need to finish your hair for tonight, and what with that and dressing you, there is no time for letter writing.”

I sigh loudly with frustration. “Alright. I suppose I can let him know in the morning.

Hopefully they’ll keep Henry at the station.”

“Did they arrest him?” Amah asks as her nimble fingers pin diamante stars into my hair. Towards the nape of my neck, at the top of the loose braid, she inserts a glittering diamond and pearl comb.

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“Yes. At least, I saw Bill and other bobbies taking him off in their buggy,” I murmur, as I trace charcoal across the corners of my eyelids. I turn my face from side to side to admire my handiwork.

“You know, where I come from they say beauty fades with each moment you admire yourself,” says Amah, inspecting me from behind.

I laugh. “What rubbish, Amah. I’m positive you just made that up. And besides, beauty fades each moment anyway. That’s why I need all these unguents,” I say as I rub tinted cream onto my cheek bones.

In the reflection of the mirror I notice Amah shake her head.

“Which of your new gowns will you be wearing tonight?” she asks.

“Bring me the two gowns Worth sent from Paris.”

Amah pauses on the way to my dressing room and says, “I’m sure I saw Sir Thomas’s friend outside the Waterloo house this morning. It was when I was on my way to the markets.”

“What man?”

“You know – Mr Big Ears,” she says, holding her hands up to her ears and flapping them.

“Mr Priestly? No, you couldn’t have.”

“Yes, I am sure it was him. He walked past the house in Frazier St,” she insists.

I frown, puzzled, but lose all thought of Priestly when Amah returns from the other room and drapes a gown of silk taffeta the shade of champagne over a plump armchair. The bodice is cut to reveal the shoulders and fine, intricate lace flows from below the bust-line and around the upper arms. The outer layer of the flowing skirt is neatly parted in the front with a swathe of lace and a run of neat bows. The other gown, made from a burnt red and

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/145 gold silk brocade, she places on the bed. The fabric is so sumptuous that besides a short train, further lace and furbelows are unnecessary.

I press my hands to my cheeks. “Ravishing. I’m sure I cannot choose.”

“Well, I must say, Worth dresses you well,” says Amah grudgingly, her hands on her hips as she scrutinises the dresses. “He knows what colours suit you too. None of that ghastly purple you favour so much.”

I roll my eyes but refrain from saying anything. Gently rubbing the brocade of the red dress, I say, “I think I’ll wear this one tonight. If the old hags are going to cut me, I might as well give their husbands and sons something to look at.”

As she replaces the other dress Amah calls out, “Yes, but at least you can be sure that tomorrow all those same ladies will run out and command their cheap little dressmakers to copy your gown.”

I half-smile at myself in the mirror, my cheek dimpling. “Yes, that is some consolation,” I say. I step into my crinoline and petticoats with Amah’s assistance. Together we pull on the gown, which is gratifyingly heavy. I adjust the bodice so that it is low enough for the fullness of my bosom to swell with the tantalising possibility of glimpsing nipple. I arrange a black, lace mantilla shawl around my shoulders. Its scalloped edge swells over the back of my gown, although my straitened, tiny waist can be seen through the sheer lace.

Amah tidies my hair again and then kneels on the floor to help me step into my delicate shoes. She rests back on her haunches. “There. You’re ready. You look beautiful.”

Her voice holds satisfaction, but her smile is tight.

I sway against Lord Hatterleigh as his carriage hurtles through the London streets. The carriage is as well-sprung as money can buy and is upholstered in dark leather and plush, maroon velvet. He hands me a crystal goblet of cognac. “Drink up,” he says, as he throws his

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/146 own cognac back. The glass clinks against the decanter when he pushes it back into its small cabinet. I sip the pungent liquor and settle my other hand on his thigh, which he covers with his own large one.

Lord Hatterleigh is the heir to an earldom, and owns fine estates in both Ireland and near York, although it cannot be denied he has more the look of one of his gardeners than that of an earl. He hasn’t got a fluted, aristocratic nose, and his complexion isn’t so fair that canals of blue veins are visible. He’s a thick-set man, without being too fat, with dark hair and a meaty face. He has fine, smiling eyes though, which are well-brimmed with dark lashes.

“What have you been doing with yourself, my dear, while I have been rusticating?” he asks.

I place my head on his shoulder, careful to not mess up my hair. “I have been waiting for you, Giles, of course.”

He lets out a shout of laughter and slaps my thigh so smartly that, had it not been amply covered with layers of fabric, would have stung. “You jade. Now, tell me the truth.”

I pinch his arm and grin. “I’ve been working for Sir Thomas again.”

“That rogue. What has he mixed you up in this time? You haven’t managed to sneak into the Prussian embassy again, have you? There’ll be hell to pay, love, if you’re found out.”

“Nothing so glamorous. I’ve been hunting for a girl in Waterloo.”

Hatterleigh pats my hand. “Be careful of the hoi polloi down there, Heloise. Don’t want to pick up one of their fevers.”

The carriage pauses in front of a terraced house in a small lane off Tottenham Court

Road. A middle-aged lady, wearing a blue dress which is tightly buttoned to her neck, its only embellishment being a lace collar, strides towards the carriage and climbs in after waving away the groomsman’s helping hand.

“Good evening, Mrs Forrest,” I say.

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“Good evening, Heloise.” Mrs Forrest takes the cognac Lord Hatterleigh offers her and finishes it in three determined sips as the carriage pulls forward. Mrs Forrest’s gingery, wiry hair is pulled into a neat chignon under a lace head covering and above her bulbous, pink nose she wears large glasses which accentuate the creases on her pinched face. She’s a distant cousin of Lord Hatterleigh’s and he pays her well to exude her air of conventionality when she chaperones us on public outings.

The carriage halts by the imposing entrance to the Covent Garden Opera House. A throng of people are gathered in front of the theatre but it’s not so hectic because it’s out of season. We press forward with the assistance of the theatre manager and make our way through the outer columns into the foyer. My heart thrums a little faster once we’re amongst the other opera patrons who chatter loudly under the bright and glittering light thrown from the chandeliers. The gentlemen are neat in their tailcoats and silk top hats, while the ladies display astounding tastes in flounces, silks and hairpieces. We make slow progress up the curving, carpeted staircase to our box so that Hatterleigh can greet his friends along the way.

I know several people myself, of course, whom I greet with a grin and a quick word. Many others pretend to ignore my presence when they’re not actually staring at me.

A man, leering so that his yellow teeth flashed all the way to his pallid gums, breathes

“Paon de Nuit,” as I pass. I have to turn my head away from his foul breath and attention, but when a handsome, young woman hisses, “There she is. The Peacock of the Night,” to her plump, overly-frilled companion, I give those bitches a serene smile and a quick curtsy of acknowledgement. They look affronted and hide behind their fans.

“I don’t know why everyone insists on calling you a peacock, Heloise,” complains

Mrs Forrest. “A peacock is a male bird, after all. Although, to be sure, a pea hen is a drab, brown creature, more along my lines, really. The Pea Hen of Soho. Ha.”

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We take our seats in Hatterleigh’s box just as the orchestra strikes the first thrilling notes. The box is on the second tier which has an excellent view of the stage and as the lights dim to accentuate its splendour, I have to marvel at the magnificence of the newly restored theatre. All is fresh and sparkling; there are no faded, moth eaten curtains and no persistent stench from the water-closets. It’s a far cry from some of the theatres in which I’ve performed.

I enjoy the first act, amused at Faust’s self-important transportations. I can just imagine Amah’s eyes cast to the ceiling in disdain at the man’s conceit and my own lip lifts in agreement. I’ve known many men who would be as easily corruptible as Faust. It then occurs to me that maybe I’m a bit like Faust. It’s a sobering thought I decide not to dwell upon.

During the interval Hatterleigh and I leave the box for the narrow corridor. He goes in search of refreshments while I relish the relief to be had from standing upright. Those damned corsets stick into my ribcage something rotten. Several gentlemen pass me on similar missions to that of Hatterleigh, and a few boxes down two ladies stroll arm in arm along the corridor.

I’m about to enter our box again when Dr Blain marches up and glowers down at me.

His face is flushed and his usually neat, brown hair is as dishevelled as I’ve ever seen it.

“Dr Blain. I didn’t realise you were at the opera too.”

“Mrs Chancey,” he says, grinding on the word ‘Mrs’. “If that is your real name.”

I glance towards the other women in the corridor, but they have turned to perambulate in the opposite direction. “I’m not sure I understand your meaning, Dr Blain,” I answer, smiling politely.

“I am here tonight with my aunt, I’ll have you know, Mrs…” Blain stops, apparently unable or unwilling to repeat my surname.

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“Yes?”

“Yes. And my aunt knows more of society than I do, Mrs…”

“Please, just call me Heloise if the name Chancey is sticking in your throat,” I say, exasperated.

“I would prefer not to refer to you at all. My aunt has told me all about you.”

“Ah. Is she an acquaintance of mine?” I ask, lightly, mischief stirring my blood. “You must bring her here so that I can greet her.”

He glares at me. “My aunt is a good woman. It distresses her to be in the same theatre with you, let alone in the same room.”

I can no longer keep up a friendly façade and the smile vanishes from my face.

“Indeed. Then how can she know so much of me, sir?”

“You are infamous, madam.”

I’m silent for a few moments as I try to dampen the anger rising in my chest. I can feel that Liverpool street-girl close to the surface, the one who can scream blistering insults until her throat feels scalded. “What is your point, sir?”

Blain runs his hand through his hair. “What of Eleanor? What is to become of her?”

I feign a look of surprise. “What concern is that of yours, sir? You washed your hands of her mighty quickly earlier today.”

“Yes, yes, I did.” The skin around his lips is white. “And it almost kills me to do it. I cannot marry a woman who is already with child to another man, but it is almost worse to think of her residing with a woman such as yourself. I would prefer her dead.”

“Stop your hysterics, sir,” I say through clenched teeth. The ladies further down the corridor watch us over their fluttering fans. “I can assure you, Eleanor is much better off with me than lying dead in a doss-house somewhere, no matter how noble you think that end might be.”

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Blain takes a step closer and thrusts his face close to mine. I don’t back away.

“Madam, just because you are well known at the opera, live in a fancy house and own expensive steeds does not mean you are anything better than the harlots on the streets of

Waterloo,” he chokes out, his eyes bloodshot with the exertion.

“I am a woman of independent means, sir, and she will be just fine in my care.”

“You are a prostitute.”

“I am a courtesan.” I feel forkin’ foolish as soon as I say it. My hand clenches into a fist and I’m sorely tempted to clout him on the cheek.

“Who is this, Heloise?” asks Hatterleigh.

Blain and I were so absorbed in each other we hadn’t noticed his approach. I take a deep breath and straighten my fingers in their soft, white gloves.

“Nobody,” I answer, smiling stiffly up at Hatterleigh. “Nobody at all. I believe he is lost.”

Hatterleigh opens the door to our box and says, just loudly enough, “I did advise you to stop mixing with the hoi polloi, my dear.”

Faust falls to his knees, his hands clasped in prayer while he watches despairingly as

Marguerite is lifted into the heavens of the theatre. The grand curtains close upon the scene and the audience applaud, some men standing to cheer.

Although sympathy for Marguerite’s plight swells in my chest with each rising note, so that I too hold my breath through the final moments of the opera, it doesn’t take long for common sense to steady my heartbeat. I gather up my mantilla and wonder how Marguerite had killed her infant. Smothered with a pillow? Quickly with a knife? She would’ve been better off using the blade on Faust than begging for God’s forgiveness.

Mrs Forrest also stands. Her glasses are fogged over and she sniffs hard.

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“Wonderful opera, Giles. Very French, but wonderful, none-the-less,” she says to her cousin. “Where are you young people off to now?”

Hatterleigh looks to me. “Motts?”

I wrinkle my nose. “It’s become a bit boring, don’t you think? Let’s try somewhere new.”

“Why don’t we try that dance hall old Trickett was telling me about?” he says, as he guides us down the stairs to the foyer. “It’s quite smart, apparently. A mix of all the right people and those who are a little more audacious. You’ll enjoy it, my dear, having grown accustomed to the riff raff of Waterloo.”

The Clipstone Street Hop is tucked behind a timber yard in Fitzroy Square. A cool wind has picked up between the tall buildings on the street, whisking my hair into my face as we walk briskly from Hatterleigh’s carriage to the small assembly room. We join a noisy crowd of revellers gathered around the entrance to a squat building. Progress is slow as those desiring entrance to the Hop, which is situated in the loft, have to reach it by ladder. The spectacle of gentlemen either shoving the ladies in their cumbersome skirts up the ladder, or needing to duck out of the way of those same undulating appendages, only adds to the merriment.

Finally, we manage to squeeze into the club. Despite its humble entrance, the

Clipstone Street Hop is flash and aristocratic. The lighting from the gas lamps, being warm and low, casts a flattering glow on the complexions of those out carousing so late in the evening. The carpets are dark, and the surrounding furnishings are made of well-polished timber and marble. A long bar runs across one side of the room behind which glittering glass bottles full of whiskeys and wines line the wall, and on the other side of the room a violinist and harpist play upon a stage next to a small dance floor. Amongst the crowd we recognise many of our friends from the opera who canoodle with fair ladybirds and sleek lotharios.

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I gulp down several glasses of champagne in quick succession and dance the quadrille with a number of my admirers, and although I maintain a cheerful front, my irritation with Dr

Blain and my own reaction to his words still gnaws at my spirits. The champagne only heightens rather than dispels this mood, until a headache hammers at the back of my head leaving me feeling giddy, as I weave back and forth amongst the other dancers. Blain’s a pompous arse. Mooning about over Eleanor, like she’s a tragic figure in a stupid play, while blathering on about the difficulties of poor, fallen women. Thinking he’s as good as a mortal god, like all the other doctors I’ve ever met. What the hell did he know about my life?

I make my way unsteadily through the crowd until I reach Hatterleigh. “I’m not feeling too well,” I shout in his ear, over the din of the music. “I’d like to return home.”

He looks surprised. His eyes are bleary and his nose has turned red. “That’s not like you, Heloise.” He drains the last of his whisky. “Not to worry. I’ll take you straight home.”

The night’s turned nippy, and once Bundle lets us in, Hatterleigh settles in front of the fire in the drawing room with a fresh tumbler of scotch in his hands. I still feel a little light- headed from the champagne and find Amah waiting in my bedroom. She helps me shed my petticoats and the stiff crinoline. Even without the hoop, the skirts of my gown remain full and heavy, and I sway from the room, tripping over its hem. I gurgle and poke out my tongue at Amah, who tuts and shakes her head.

Returning to the drawing room I sit by Hatterleigh, who lifts his glass to the portrait where I’m dressed as a Javanese girl.

“I’ve always liked that painting,” he says. “I can imagine you as my little native girl.”

I grin as I pour myself a scotch. “Would you like me to wear that costume one day?” I curl my legs up against him and stroke the corner of his mouth with my thumb.

Amusement lightens his heavy features. “That would be a bit of fun. I could unravel you slowly, like a sweetmeat from a wrapper.” He brushes a tendril of hair from my neck.

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I swallow my drink and press up against him. “I could be your exotic lover.” I lean in and nuzzle in the crook of his neck. I pepper soft kisses across his throat until his body becomes pliant. He tastes of sweat and the sharpness of cologne, and when I flicker my tongue into his ear I can smell the musky scent of his hair oil.

He slides his hands beneath my petticoats, along my thigh, and when I close my eyes,

I can still feel the remnants of the headache click away irritatingly. His hands are large and strong, but his skin is smooth, unlike Bill’s. I feel a pang of pleasure when I recall Bill’s body against mine, and I keep my eyes shut to stay absorbed in the moment. Hatterleigh grasps me firmly by the hips and pulls me to him so that I straddle his lap. I bring my face close to his, gently bite his bottom lip, drawing it into my mouth. I squeeze his full cheeks and rub my thumb across the stubble around his mouth. I’m so bloody fond of this man, this man who takes such good care of me. But I don’t love him. I know better than that.

For where would love have gotten a girl like me? I would’ve had to settle for a dismal life in some back alley or country village. Maybe long hours in a dark room, stitching other’s breeches, or worse, sewing ball gowns for other women who were more happily provided for.

Working every day, while my intended toiled equally long hours until we could afford to marry. And look where love has gotten poor Eleanor.

I can’t help it, my thoughts turn to Blain again. I tense at the memory of his obnoxious words. Arrogant bastard. I unbutton Hatterleigh’s shirt and pushing back the fabric, kiss his chest. Entwining my arms around his neck I kiss him on the mouth, my tongue teasing his. I close my eyes again and picture the tall doctor dangling by the neck at the end of a piece of rope. How I’d enjoy it if he were found guilty for the murders of those poor doxies, but somehow I can’t believe it of him.

I help Hatterleigh shrug his trousers down and, kneeling between his knees, I take his erection in my mouth. He groans as I run my tongue firmly along its ridge and then I settle

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/154 into tickling a pattern along his cock with the tip of my tongue. This I continue for a few moments until taking him fully into my mouth. I count the seconds in my mind, easing into the rhythm, one-buttercup, two-buttercup, three-buttercup, four-butter... Usually I allow for five minutes or so, or until the muscles around my mouth ache, but I find myself hoping that the police discover the evidence they need that will prove Henry is the Waterloo monster after all. I really hope that the horrible deaths will stop with his arrest. And what’s old

Silvestre doing, meanwhile? I almost feel sorry for the old cow, but I’m relieved it’ll all be over soon.

I’ve lost count, but Hatterleigh pulls me into his lap again and enters me beneath the canopy of my brocade skirts. My head falls back and for a few moments my eyes follow the scrolled patterns in the pressed ceiling. I will myself to relax and enjoy the waves of motion as I would normally, but I can’t. I rock against his thrusts, and just as he reaches climax, I remember Dr Mordaunt’s diary. Has Bill investigated Mordaunt any further? He’s another man I’d like to see hanging from a rope. I slump against Hatterleigh and bury my face in his neck.

“Is something the matter, Heloise?” He holds me lightly by the nape of the neck and kisses me on the chin.

I climb from his lap and reach for the crystal whisky decanter again – anything to numb the headache and thoughts that drum away in my head. I lean against his arm and take a sip of the amber spirit. “I still have that headache.” Finishing the whisky, I allow the glass to roll from my fingers onto the carpet.

Hatterleigh stands, pulling his trousers up. “Let’s get you to bed then, my love.”

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Chapter Seventeen

Hatterleigh’s left by the time Amah pulls the curtains apart to wake me in the morning. She flicks on the gas lighting because the day is gloomy, and loud, heavy rain streams down the window’s glass. I bury my face into the pillows and groan. My headache’s shifted, now stabbing at the area behind my eye sockets, and my mouth is sour and dry.

“Too much champagne, as usual,” she says. “I do not know when you will learn.”

Shut yer mouth, shut yer mouth, shut yer mouth churns through my mind, but I don’t have the energy to utter the words. There’s the tinkle of a silver teaspoon against china.

Amah’s preparing a cup of hot, sweet tea for me, but I’m only enticed from the depths of my swansdown pillow by the smell of toast.

When she sees my face she pretends to look frightened and then laughs heartily, covering her mouth as she chuckles. “Ah. You look like the warrior god, Zhong Kui, with his beady, red eyes and ferocious frown.”

I grimace at her and take a sip of tea. “Hush your mouth, or I’ll hack up all over the carpet and you’ll have to clean it up.”

Amah cheerfully butters the toast and hands a thin slice to me. “Monsieur Agneau made your favourite eggs, so make sure you eat them up. You know what he’s like,” she says of my cook. “You leave a morsel and he’ll be offended.”

I slump back against my pillows. “Can’t you eat them for me? I can’t face them.”

Amah places a fork between my slack fingers. “You eat them. You’ll feel better for it,” she says, firmly.

“Between you and Monsieur Agneau I get no peace. I’ll be as large as a sow at this rate,” I grumble. “I need a little puppy so that it can eat what I don’t want.”

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“Except I’ll be the one left looking after it,” says Amah, as she moves towards the dressing-room to prepare my wardrobe for the day.

I nibble at the toast, licking the butter from my bottom lip. I feel up to trying a few mouthfuls of the fluffy eggs, and the herbs are tantalising, reviving. How I’ve missed

Monsieur Agneau’s cooking.

I watch as the rain drizzles against the window. It dampens my spirits to think that I have to return to Waterloo. Hell, it dampens my spirits that I have to leave my cosy bed.

Amah returns with a jewellery case, in which she deposits my diamonds. She glances sideways at me and smirks. “I know why you’re so grumpy today. You don’t want to return to that mouldy house in Waterloo.”

I lick egg from the fork and shrug. “Do you think we could just send Taff to pick up

Eleanor and the rest of my clothing? Bring her here?”

Amah places my dratted corset and petticoats upon the foot of the bed. “Well, it depends on what you have planned for the girl. I don’t know what you and Sir Thomas have arranged.”

My lips turn down. “Nothing yet.” I rub my face and turn onto my side, almost upsetting the plate of eggs. What to do with Eleanor? It’s true that I’ve received no further word from Sir Thomas or Mr Carter as to the young woman’s fate, and Eleanor can’t stay under my wing indefinitely, after all. I roll onto my back and drape my arm across my eyes, to think. What to do with a pregnant girl? I’ve a great many acquaintances and friends, and even quite powerful connections, yet I don’t have any contacts in the field of good works, who would be of use in this matter – I don’t know any Christian, charity workers or benefactors who could find a home and employment for a young woman such as Eleanor.

And what of Eleanor? Do I really want to deliver her into a world of condemned drudgery for the rest of her life? The only community that I can think of which would be likely to take on a

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/157 young woman in Eleanor’s plight is the type to be found in houses such as Mme Silvestre’s. I know of many women from nice households such as Eleanor’s, who had fallen – through financial necessity, rape, seduction or ignorance – into the brothel trap. I myself had been much younger than Eleanor when I’d first stumbled into this way of life. But, damn it, I didn’t have a father who could pay my way like little Eleanor does.

And what of the child? Either way, Eleanor will not be able to keep the baby.

I think of Blain’s words, how he was revolted at the idea of Eleanor residing with me.

Bastard… A smile curls my lips. It will serve him right if I keep young Eleanor, here, in my den of immorality. Yes, and it will also serve as a slap in Mr Carter’s face, to have his fair daughter traipsing around town on Heloise Chancey’s arm. Hasn’t Hatterleigh mentioned time and again that I need to have a chaperon? And the baby. I’d adore having the pink, chubby creature in the house. Oh, how that’ll show all those bloody bastards.

“What are you grinning about under there?” asks Amah, her voice suspicious.

I sit up, purposefully pushing the covers from my knees. “I’ve decided what is best for Eleanor,” I announce.

She puts her hands on her hips. “And what is that, Heloise?”

“She will stay with me. She will be my companion and we will hire a nursemaid to look after the child.”

Amah’s silent for a few moments, her mouth agape. “Have you finally lost all your sense, girl?” she gasps.

I don’t know what’s twisted her garter. I know she’s fond of Eleanor and I’d been sure she would agree whole-heartedly with my plan. “But it’s a perfect plan, Amah. Can’t you see that?”

Her eyes narrow. “You’re thinking of the baby, aren’t you? You think it will be all sweetness and joy to have the little beast in the house.”

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I plonk myself down in front of the dresser mirror and tug the brush through my tangled hair. “And what of that? Poor Eleanor will not be able to keep the child any other way, Amah.”

“And what if you grow tired of her company?”

I cock my head to the side, considering. “If that time comes I’ll think of something else, no doubt.”

“She’s not a pet monkey to bandy around, Heloise,” Amah says, her tone cross.

“What are you going to do? Pass her on to a friend when you become tired of her like you did with the parrot Sir Winsome brought you from the Americas?”

I purse my lips together and glare at her. Amah’s always known just how to sting me like a noisome mosquito.

“Thankfully, this is my household, so I may do exactly as I please.” I have the satisfaction of seeing Amah’s mouth twist to the side in anger.

Bundle opens the front door just as my carriage arrives. The pair of chestnut horses toss their heads against the steady trickle of the rain. A whiff of earthy peat rises from the pavers as I stand in the doorway, waiting for Amah to fix her black hat and veil over her head.

“I don’t know why you persevere with the veil, Amah,” I say. I watch as the older woman pulls black gloves over her hands and a black cape around her shoulders. “You look like a villainous, black moth.”

“If you were stared at as much as I am,” she replies, “for all the wrong reasons, you too would find solace behind cover.”

We lift our skirts and trip across the neat path and with Taff’s help, climb into the carriage. The journey back to Waterloo isn’t too arduous since it’s the middle of the morning.

The houses become decreasingly elegant the further we travel.

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“You have not changed your mind about Eleanor?” asks Amah. She doesn’t turn to face me but rather stares out her side window as she speaks.

“No. No, I haven’t.” I too gaze out my own window at the buildings, coaches and people we rumble pass. I’m still miffed with her, so I can’t admit that since her words of warning I’ve experienced doubts about my plan. But I honestly can’t think of anything else I can do with Eleanor.

The roads have turned to mud from the incessant rain so I start to place pattens over my kid shoes. The carriage bumps its way along Frazier St and just as it pulls into the side of the road, Chat hurtles out through the front door of my Waterloo abode. His face is the colour of curd and his mouth hangs open in a distressed maw. He stumbles down the path, grasping unsteadily at bushes and the fence. He glances at the carriage but I don’t think he even recognises me, and then he runs off down the street.

“What’s happening here?” I cast the pattens to the floor of the carriage and leap to the wet ground before Taff can help me alight. I hurry through deep puddles of water, drenching both my shoes and the hem of my gown in the process. The front door is ajar.

The house feels as cold and barren as that first night I’d arrived. No warmth from the fireplaces, no aroma of tea or cookery. Dread tickles down my backbone and I pause in the hallway.

“Check the kitchen, Heloise,” whispers Amah, from behind. “I will check upstairs.”

Taff and I rush into the kitchen. Upon the table is a loaf of bread, the knife sticking out from it awkwardly, where it’s been left, mid-slice. One of two teacups is upset, the dark liquid spilt across the table cloth. The fire is out in the blackened range, and dirty water and plates fill the sink. I push a chair aside and sprawled across the floor, behind the kitchen table, lies Agnes. Blood, as sticky and rich as toffee, mats her hair. We both crouch over her body, but even before Taff presses his ear to her chest and then shakes his head slowly, I

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/160 know from the chalkiness of the girl’s skin and the blue tinge around her mouth that she’s dead.

I pinch at my bottom lip, aghast, and then spring up so quickly my head spins for a moment. “Eleanor.”

I hurry up the stairs and hear a short moan from the bedroom. At first I’m glad for the noise because it means Eleanor is alive, but then, bile rising in my stomach, I realise the moan comes from Amah.

“Amah, Amah,” I call. My voice is hoarse. “What’s happened?”

Amah tries to bar my way at the bedroom door. “No, Heloise, no. You must not see her.”

But I’m taller than her. Peering over her head, I can see Eleanor’s body laid out across the bed. I push Amah aside and slowly approach what is left of my young ward.

Eleanor’s face is so waxen it appears to be a mask of her true self, except for the marks of faint bruising around her mouth. A rosy blush no longer tinges her cheeks, and her bloodless lips are barely discernible against the glaucous pallor of her skin. There are rags twisted through some of her hair but she will never see the ringlets unfold. Her tiny body is hidden beneath the white sheet which is pulled up to her chin, but at the tips of the slight mounds that were her breasts, crimson blood is etched into the fabric, the blood’s stain accentuating its weave.

I can’t breathe. My fingers pluck at my bodice, trying to loosen it. Amah mutters in a foreign language behind me. I lean over the girl’s body and lift the sheet near the top of her thighs to reveal a pool of blood under her pelvis, resinous rivulets seeping down the side of the mattress. My knees give way.

I squeeze my head with strong, hurtful fingertips as if I can purge the ghastly image from my mind. “Horrible. Horrible.” The intimate stench of blood and another, almost

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/161 familiar, sweet smell, makes me gag. Amah grips me by the upper arm and yanks me to my feet.

We stagger to the landing, and I take in two long breaths and sink down upon the top step. Taff starts up the staircase but I shake my head. “Just fetch the police, Taff. Go now.”

I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets until it’s too painful. Poor, poor

Eleanor. I know I’ll never be able to erase the image of the girl’s mutilated body from my mind, and nausea fills my mouth with saliva, and my breakfast eggs roil in my stomach.

“That boy couldn’t have done this, could he?” asks Amah.

“Of course not,” I say, my voice choking. “The forkin’ monster who’s been cutting up prostitutes did this.” I punch the stair railings with my fist until the skin on my knuckles split open.

“Stop that,” says Amah, holding my wrist. “What will that achieve?”

“It’ll stop me from screaming, at least.” I allow myself one long groan. I then get to my feet, holding onto the bannister to steady myself. “I must find Chat. I must find out what he knows.”

“But the police will be here soon, Heloise,” says Amah, also standing. “What am I to tell them?”

“Tell them I will return shortly.” I rub my forehead. “I’m not sure what to tell them yet. You can just act like you don’t speak much English.”

I run down the stairs and out onto the street, turning left towards the goat-shed the boy had shown me on our night of adventure. I crouch low and pull aside the ragged material that functions as a doorway. Chat is seated cross-legged on the ground, his grubby face blank. He glances at me and then looks away.

I shuffle into the small shed as far as my skirts will allow, but I can still feel the wind and rain brush against my hind quarters.

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“Chat?”

He turns his head more to the side and doesn’t answer. I reach over and gently take hold of his frozen, stubby fingers. “Chat? What happened?”

Still the boy says nothing.

“Won’t you talk to me, Chat?”

The boy gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

“But you must, my dear. Aren’t we friends, after all?”

“I don’ wanna talk ‘bout it,” he mumbles. His bottom lip trembles.

We sit silently for a minute, until I finally say, “What did you see, Chat? Please tell me. You might be able to help.”

“I seen her dead on your kitchin floor. She ‘ad blood on ‘er ‘ead.”

“Did you see anything else?”

“Nah. I scarpered when I seen ‘er. You saw me.”

“Did you see who did it, Chat? Who killed her?” I hope, desperately, that he can identify the girls’ attacker. But Chat just shakes his head again.

“I didn’ see nuthin,” he says. “’cept that chargirl of yors dead on the floor.”

“But what made you enter my house?”

“The door was open, wasn’ it?” he answers. He stares down at his knee and picks at a dry scab until a dot of blood appears. “I wondered why your front door was wide open, so’s I went and called fer you but got no answer.”

“So you went in?”

He nods. “Wish I ‘ad’nt now.” He scowls. “You probably think I wanted to nab yer stuff, but I didn’. I wouldn’ nab from you. I was just checkin’.”

I pat him on shoulder. “I know, Chat. I know.” I watch him and then say, “You’re a brave boy, Chat.”

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He straightens his skinny shoulders. “Well, it’s not the first dead body I seen, is it?

There’s always a dead ‘orse or dog by the side of the road. Sometimes I’ve even seen dirty, old codgers lyin’ dead for anyone to sees.” He shrugs and says, loudly, “I was just shook up, is all, when I seen ‘er lying dead in your ‘ouse. There was so much blood on ‘er ‘ead.” His eyes dim again.

“I wasn’t at home all last evening, so I don’t have any idea what happened. You didn’t notice anyone going into or out of my house?”

He thinks for a moment. “Nah. It was a quiet night. My da’ left before dawn to beg for work at the tannery, and the only thing I saw was a cart go past. Nothing else.”

“What sort of cart, Chat? Was it coming from the direction of my house?”

“Yes. It was a ‘orse an’ cart like those at the markets.”

“Did you see who drove it?”

“Nah. A man, though.”

It’s not much to go on.

“But I seen a man yesterday walking up and down the street, staring at your ‘ouse.”

“Really? What did he look like?”

“Skinny. Dressed like a toff. Looks like the vicar what gives us free food late at night if he gets to feel your ballocks at the same time. But this toff ‘ad bigger ears.”

Anger tightens my chest. Amah was right. What the hell was Mr Priestly doing here the day before? “Is that right?”

Chat nods. “That’s all I seen out of the or’inary.”

“Well, like I said, you’re very brave.”

His eyes are still bright with distress, but there’s a stubborn sternness about his mouth.

“You do have a lot to deal with, don’t you? Do you ever cry, Chat?” I ask.

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“Nah,” he says. With his thumb he smears the smudge of blood from the scab into his skin. “What’s the use?”

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/165

Li Leen

As I sit in this desolate house waiting for Heloise’s return, I realise the heaviness of sorrow I feel for poor, dead Eleanor is half borrowed from the recollection of another’s death.

I woke well before dawn on that terrible day, when the evening buds of the sedap malam flowers were most fragrant. I was still young then, still foolish. I sat at the kitchen table and helped myself to a bowl of sweetened black rice, adding coconut milk for its saltiness. I had eaten most of it when my mother’s maid ran into the kitchen, fell to the floor, and wrapped her arms around my legs.

“She is dead. She is dead,” she wailed.

Mother had placed her Chinese gods in a circle on the floor and had hanged herself so that they were watching over her. I vomited up all the black porridge, a torrent of sorrow and regret and vileness. I gagged on my sobs, and my eyes grew so swollen I couldn’t see for days. My mother, my mother, had left me behind. She had written me a short note. “I am sorry, daughter. The shame is too great.” The shame of what? I did not know what she meant.

After that I moved into Mother’s room, and I didn’t bathe and rarely ate, just as

Mother had behaved in her last few weeks. I hoped her meaning would become clearer to me if I lived like her. But as I watched myself in the mirror I realised I was half white-ghost, and

I wasn’t sure if her gods, still gathered around her tiny shrine, would respond to me. Her maid brushed my hair, just as she had brushed Mother’s hair, and whispered in my ear of devils and ghosts and vengeance. I was too numb to listen, too weak to respond.

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Chapter Eighteen

When I get back to the Frazier St house there are uniformed police in the garden, in the living areas and upon the stairs leading to the bedroom. I find Amah seated in the sitting room, a monstrously tall constable standing to attention close by.

“He’s guarding me – he’s making sure I don’t escape,” she says, with that sour twist of her mouth. “Your policeman friend thinks I am the best suspect so far.”

“How foolish.” Bill enters the room. I’m relieved to see him. “Do you really imagine that my maid had something to do with this… butchery?”

He takes me by the elbow and draws me to a quiet part of the hallway where we can’t be overheard. He holds me by the upper arms and shakes me slightly.

“Where were you last night?” he asks. His face is rigid with anxiety.

“I went to the opera. I didn’t return here; I stayed at home.”

He pulls me into a quick, tight embrace, and then holds me at arm’s length again. “Do you realise that if you were here you could have been murdered just as these two poor women have been?”

My mouth falls open and I stare into his bloodshot eyes. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that I’d been at such risk too. My skin flinches at the thought of that sharp blade which had gone to work on Eleanor.

“And what of that heathen servant of yours? Where was she last night?”

I shake my head to clear it. “Don’t be ridiculous, Bill. She was with me, anyway.”

“All night?”

I’m anxious, can’t keep the annoyance out of my voice. “No, of course not. I was at the opera, and when I returned home, she slept in her own quarters. But whatever you’re

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/167 suggesting, it’s ridiculous. Amah did not sneak out in the middle of the night to murder these poor women.”

He crosses his arms. “Well, I’m not so sure.”

“You’re wasting your time.” I press my fingers to my temples. “Let me think.” What was it I wanted to tell Bill the night before? My mind feels spongy, my thoughts skittling out of reach. Something about Henry? “Where’s Henry? Mordaunt?”

“We still have Henry locked up, but we never really arrested the doctor. He was free to leave last night.”

I stare at him, aghast. Free? “Then he has done this.”

“Maybe.”

“But why else was Henry at Mordaunt’s so often? They’re obviously in partnership.”

“Well, Henry says it was just to clear up a case of the clap.”

“Can’t you see that’s just a cover up?”

Before he can answer, a tilbury, drawn by two horses snorting with exertion, creaks to a halt outside the house. Arranged across the whole length of the bench seat, arrayed in festoons of velvet the shade of moss, is Mme Silvestre.

“Get me ‘Eloise,” she shrieks at a constable. “Where is that dratted woman?”

I snatch up a parasol and hurry to the carriage, Bill on my heels.

“What are you doing here, Mildred?”

“What ‘as ‘appened ‘ere? Quick. You must tell me.” Silvestre’s neck and face are flushed puce, and as she gasps out the words, her bulbous bosom heaves. “What ‘as ‘appened to Agnes?”

As I hesitate over an answer, Bill steps forward and says, “How do you know something has happened to Agnes, Madam?”

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She sniffs in anger and her eyes become as hard as cold, glass marbles. “You ‘ave ‘alf the constabulary ‘ere, and you ask me ‘ow I know something is amiss? Are you simple?

You’ll ‘ave ‘alf the neighbourhood ‘ere soon wanting to know what’s ‘appened.”

Even as we speak, a crowd of people gather along the road. Women wander out from their homes, children in tow, and labourers and clerks stop on their way to work to peer in at the commotion. They stare at us curiously, and crane their necks over and around each other the better to see the house and the attendant police.

A young constable runs out from the house and calls for Bill. The sergeant seems loath to leave us but, on being called upon again, reluctantly leaves.

“Well, ‘Eloise, what ‘appened?”

I grip the side of the tilbury as I look into the madam’s face. “I’m sorry, Mildred, but she’s dead,” I say quietly, so that only she can hear me. “She was hit on the head.”

“Do the police know why?”

I glance at the people who hover close by, and keeping my voice low, I say, “There was another girl murdered here too. She was butchered like the others.” I watch Silvestre’s face closely for her reaction. When I’d originally asked her about the gruesome murders of prostitutes in the area, she’d laughed it off, but I find it puzzling that a woman of the madam’s stature in the world of prostitution did not know what was happening in her own vicinity.

Mme Silvestre’s fat face is expressionless. The high colour slowly drains from her cheeks and throat. “Their lives were taken by the same person ‘oo murdered the others?”

“Yes.” I fold the parasol down as the rain has petered out.

She relaxes against the back of the seat. “Therefore the police must know that ‘Enry could not possibly have killed them as ‘e spent all last evening and today safely in their gaol.”

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A satisfied smile twitches at the corner of her mouth. “Which means the police must now know ‘e could not possibly ‘ave killed the others either.”

An enterprising costermonger drums his pot of eel soup as he wheels his cart through the watching throng.

Silvestre sits forward again, peering over my shoulder. She says, over the din of the costermonger’s call, “It looks like they’ve finally nicked the real culprit. I’m not surprised either. Dirty chink.”

I spin around. Three uniformed constables march a shackled Amah along the front path to a waiting police buggy. My legs weaken and I stumble across the cobblestones towards her. It’s like I’ve taken a blow to the stomach. “What’s happening?”

The crowd jostle closer and murmur ‘yeller’ and ‘coloured’. Amah gives me a telling look and, the chains of the shackles rattling, she draws the black veil over her face. I reach for her, but Bill stands between us.

“She had a switchblade on her,” he says, in a low voice. “It was secreted away in a pocket of her bodice.”

“But you’re mad.” I frown up into the sergeant’s stern face. “She didn’t use it to murder these women. Amah uses it to slice fruit or to cut off loose thread. She would never hurt someone with it.”

“Until we’ve examined it carefully, and interviewed her, she must stay in our custody.”

“Well, I must accompany her to the police station,” I answer, pushing forward towards Amah.

“That will not be necessary, Heloise,” he says, holding me back by the arm.

The constable who’s leading Amah opens the door of the police buggy and as Amah lifts her skirt to climb in, a fresh, malodorous wad of manure plumps against her chest. A

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/170 lanky boy with boils spotted across his chin and the filthy evidence smeared across his hands whoops with delight. Some of the crowd noisily approve and a squat woman with greasy wisps of hair falling from her bonnet picks an egg from her basket and prepares to pelt it.

For a short moment I’m frozen in shock. Then a fierce, blind rage takes over. I pitch my parasol at the boy, clocking him on the forehead with the handle. I fly at the woman, but

Bill catches hold of me around the waist and holds me at bay. “You bitch,” I holler, clawing at Bill’s hands to free myself. I manage to swing my leg forward, kicking the woman’s basket to the ground, where the eggs smash upon the muddy cobblestones. In amongst all this commotion the constables bustle Amah into the waiting buggy and Bill drags me into the house where he firmly pushes me down onto the couch in the sitting room.

“You must calm yourself, madam.”

I struggle to get back on my feet, the weight of my wet skirts and petticoats weighing me down. “You should be out there arresting those bastards who assaulted my maid,” I shout.

“If that were the case, I should need to haul you down to the station too, for attacking bystanders.”

I collapse back against the chair’s cushions and fold my arms. I glare at the empty fireplace.

He waits a few moments and then says, “You have a fine throw, Heloise. Great precision. You could have taken the lad’s eye out if you’d tried a little harder.”

He crouches down in front of me, and tugs my skirt until I shift my gaze to his face.

“And that kick… Such a pretty fighter belongs down at the London Boxing Club.” He’s smiling at me now.

But I’m too anxious to smile back. I know he’s trying to cajole me, and I realise it’s in my best interests – in Amah’s best interests – if I calm down, if I charm him again. I lean

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/171 forward and grasp his lapels. “Can’t you see how ridiculous it is to suspect my maid of these murders?”

Bill sits back on his haunches. “Heloise, we have to investigate her just as we would any other suspicious character.”

“But these murders are obviously connected to the others.” Eleanor’s wounds flash to mind. I press my eyes shut. “Obviously.”

“That hasn’t been confirmed yet. And what of Henry then? Are we to set him free?

For if this is the work of the man mutilating prostitutes, then obviously he is innocent for he’s been locked up all night.”

He’s right. I cover my eyes with the heels of my hand, my fingers kneading at my hairline.

“Inspector Kelley will be here soon with the doctor,” Bill continues. His voice is kind. “I must go to the morgue now and make sure they are prepared, but I’m afraid you will need to stay here so the Inspector can have a word with you about Eleanor.”

“But if Eleanor has been murdered just as the other women were, then it couldn’t have been Amah who murdered them.”

“Are you so sure, Heloise?”

“Of course I am. What reason would she have, anyway, to butcher these poor girls?”

“If I provide you with the dates of the other murders, do you think you can vouch for her movements? Provide evidence of some sort.”

“Of course. I’m sure of it.” I swallow as he leaves the room. I’m not sure at all, but

I’ll have to try.

I push myself into a corner of the sofa. There’s no-where to go. Poor Agnes’s body is still in the kitchen, and what’s left of Eleanor – my heart skips a giddy beat – still lies above.

I stroke the cool glass of the cranberry pendant Bill had given me. How nice it would be to

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/172 sniff some of its relaxing elixir of opium and forget the ghastliness of the morning. I could lie down on the uncomfortable sofa and fall asleep, oblivious to the misery that’s ready to engulf me. Better yet, I could return to Mayfair and hide away in the folds of my bedcovers with the rosy bottle of snuff clutched to my nose. But I can’t do that. It would leave me too bleary to find a way out of this mess. I close my eyes, wishing the fire was alight to dry my cold, damp skirts.

“What are we to do’m, Miss Heloise?” Taff asks from the doorway.

I stare at my coachman for a few moments. “I don’t know.”

I stride across the room and fill two glasses to the brim with madeira. “Here, take one,” I say, holding a glass towards Taff. I throw my own wine back in one swallow and, clinking the decanter noisily against the wineglass so that a crack slithers down its side, I fill my glass again. This too I gulp down, until I feel the familiar warmth in my chest and my stomach’s initial recoil. I hold the decanter out to Taff who sweeps his half-finished drink away, placing it on the low table.

“It’s no help to Amah if we sit’m here and get corned, Miss Heloise,” he says, softly.

I rub my face. “You’re right.” I lean both hands on the side-table and feel the wine quicken my senses. “It’s so frustrating. I need to return home and find some way to prove

Amah was not responsible for these deaths, yet I have to wait here for Inspector Kelley.” I turn to the coachman. “You must follow Amah to the station and find out what’s happening.

Take the coach.”

Taff nods and rushes from the room, leaving me at a loss for something to do. I fret over Amah’s predicament for several minutes, pacing back and forth in the small, cramped room, until the unpleasant sensation of my soggy petticoats penetrates my anxious thoughts.

Kneeling on the hearth, I arrange kindling in the fireplace and I’m just ready to light a heavy log when I hear the sound of a carriage and voices from the road. I run to the front window

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/173 and peeping past the muslin curtains see Inspector Kelley alight from a coach. He’s closely followed by an elderly man with grey whiskers, who wears a tweed cape and carries a plump, leather doctor’s bag.

The two men greet the constable who guards the front door while another constable comes forward and guides them to the kitchen where Agnes’s body remains. The Inspector exclaims and the doctor tuts. They are some time, murmuring between themselves. I pop my head around the sitting room doorway in the hope of hearing what they’re saying, but encounter the stern gaze of the young constable on duty.

“When may I see the Inspector?” I ask with a friendly smile, to account for my curiosity.

“I’m not sure, ma’am,” he says. I wait for more, but he continues to stare at me in a baleful manner.

I wait several more minutes before hearing voices in the hallway. The Inspector directs the constables to help the undertakers remove Agnes’s body from the kitchen, and he and the doctor make their way up the stairs. As I stand by the doorway of the sitting room I remain unnoticed amongst the flurry of activity. There’s a moment of quiet while the constables are in the kitchen assisting the undertakers when I hear the Inspector swear loudly from above. Revulsion rushes through me, and I want to cover my ears, my eyes, in the hope of blotting out the horror I know the Inspector is witnessing at this very moment.

The constables and undertakers march past with poor Agnes’s body upon a stretcher.

The girl’s lifeless body seems heavy, almost womanly, upon the stretcher. Her apron is draped over her head to conceal the wounds. She’s anonymous, finished with. She will never again have to scrub the dolls’ sheets, never be a doll herself.

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The hallway’s clear, so I creep forward. Peeping out the front door I spy the constables, gathered around the undertaker’s carriage, smoking. I climb the stairs to the bedroom, moving slowly to minimise the creaking of the stairs and the rustle of my gown.

About three steps from the top I hear the Inspector ask, “But why on earth mutilate them in this way, Dr Featherby?”

“By that you mean, why take all their sexual organs?”

“Yes. Maybe if you have an explanation, we can be closer to finding the scoundrel who is doing this.”

“Well…” says the doctor slowly, “well, there’s been an interesting theory put forward lately by a set of physicians who believe that relieving women of a certain part of their sexual apparatus helps them become more whole – more rational – able to live fulfilling and sedate lives that hitherto had evaded them. Ever heard of the surgeon – Isaac Baker-Brown?”

“No.”

“Ever heard of a clitoridectomy? Or, for that matter, of the woman’s clitoris?”

“No,” says the Inspector, sounding flummoxed.

The doctor makes a grunting noise. “Well, this Baker-Brown and his crony – Ivor,

Isaiah, something like that – Xavier were taking ‘em from women against their knowledge.

Looks almost like you have an imitator here. Except Baker-Brown and Xavier managed to keep their patients alive.”

“Could one of them be causing these deaths?’

“No, that’s not likely. Baker-Brown was discredited by the medical fraternity and I think he may have moved across the Atlantic to a more sympathetic audience. And Xavier hid himself in the wilds of Wales, then took his own life. Took the disgrace quite hard.”

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I’m so immersed in what the two men are discussing I fail to notice they’ve moved closer to the bedroom’s doorway. Almost too late I realise that they are upon me, at which point I pretend to be hurrying up the stairs.

“Mrs Chancey,” says Inspector Kelley, looking down upon me in surprise. He’s paler than the last time I’d met him, and he mops the back of his neck with a handkerchief. “I did not know you were still here.”

“Oh, yes, Inspector, I have been waiting all this morning. Sgt Chapman informed me that you would need to have a word with me.” I touch my brow. “I was just coming up to ask you if it would be alright to collect some of my belongings before I return home.”

“Of course, of course,” he answers, taking my elbow and guiding me back down the stairs. “But first let us go into the sitting room. You don’t want to go into the bedroom with… er… the… right now.”

We return to the cold sitting room.

“Terrible business, Mrs Chancey, terrible business,” he says, wiping his handkerchief over his face. “It must have been quite a shock to find… er… her. Your cousin. In such a state.” He peers at me with concern.

I take a seat on the chair that faces the doorway. “I’ve never seen anything so ghastly,” I reply, truthfully. I watch the doctor lead the constables and undertakers up the stairs.

“I think Sgt Chapman told me you were out last night?”

I drag my eyes from the other men back to the Inspector. “Yes. I returned to my home in Mayfair so that I could attend the opera. I only came back here this morning.”

“And this foreign woman that Sgt Chapman has in custody? She is your maid?”

“Yes, that is correct. But she could not have murdered these girls. She was with me all evening.” My voice rises with agitation. “When I return home later today I will find some

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/176 way to prove she could not have been in the vicinity during any of the murders.” I pause, for over the Inspector’s shoulder I can see the men come out from the bedroom. Between them they carry the stretcher awkwardly down the stairs, but this time the body is completely shrouded in a white sheet.

We both watch in silence as Eleanor is carried from sight.

I wonder what’s to become of Eleanor’s body, and when I’m going to have a chance to inform Sir Thomas of this disastrous outcome. How could I have left the poor girls alone?

My heartbeat skips uncomfortably again. Maybe the police have already told Eleanor’s family. My thoughts lack coherence as I gaze at the Inspector. “Sorry, what did you ask me?”

“What was it you needed to find in your room, Mrs Chancey?” he repeats.

“Only some personal belongings. Toiletries. Clothing.” I draw my distracted thoughts back to the moment.

“Please,” he gestures for me to follow him. “Come, we’ll go together to fetch your things.”

We trudge back up the stairs. I hesitate only a moment on the landing before entering the bedroom. My eyes rest on the bed, which is now stripped of all its bedding. The mattress, already soiled with bygone cloudy patches, carries a dark stain so large and deep it couldn’t possibly be removed. I collect my brush and hair pins from the dresser, placing them in a case. My fingers are trembling. Gazing through the open doors of the wardrobe I survey the gowns within. I’ll leave them behind. I never want to see them again, or remember this terrible place. But behind the dove-grey gown I catch a glimpse of fresh, pale blue, and pull out the taffeta gown Amah had given Eleanor. I slip it from its hanger. This I will take. I’ll make sure Eleanor is dressed in it when… Or, at the very least, I’ll keep it in memory of the girl.

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I stoop to pick Eleanor’s handkerchief from the floor when I remember Dr

Mordaunt’s diary. That I must retrieve. It will look very strange indeed if the police find it in my possession, in this room. I look on the bedside table and under the bed and behind the dressing table, but I can’t find it.

“What are you searching for, Mrs Chancey?” asks Inspector Kelley.

“A book I was reading.” I’m puzzled. “It does not seem to be here. Do you think one of your men might have moved it?”

He shakes his head. “No. They would not have moved anything without my express permission.” He glances around the room. “Maybe you left it in the sitting room?”

I agree, and force a smile to my lips. Maybe Bill had removed it when he was inspecting Eleanor’s body. “Yes. It is nothing. I’m sure it will turn up.”

The Inspector escorts me to the front door. “Do you have a carriage, Mrs Chancey?”

“Yes, I do, but my coachman has taken it to the police station to hear word of my maid.”

“I’ll have someone find a cab for you,” he says, before calling over one of the constables and giving the instruction. He turns back to me, taking a notebook from his pocket. “Mrs Chancey, do we have any way of contacting you if we have further questions?”

I think quickly. I consider giving him a false address but know it will be easy enough for the police to trace Heloise Chancey. I should’ve made up a fake name at the beginning of all this mess. What was one alias compared to another, after all? Cursing myself, I give over my Mayfair address to the Inspector and climb into the waiting hansom cab.

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Chapter Nineteen

My study is tucked behind the staircase in my Mayfair home. It was previously used as a lady’s parlour by earlier residents and although I’ve kept the wallpaper, ‘cause I really like its rustic scenery of greenery and birds, I replaced the pretty table, chairs and lace coverings with furniture more suited to an office. Against the furthest wall stands my desk next to a large glass-front cabinet which is filled with books. My library includes novels, poetry and works of science suggested to me by past lovers and patrons who attend my evening soirees, but I also own tales of romance and murder, and one of my favourite books is the outdated

Newgate Calendar. I just love its lurid illustrations, they make my innards clench.

The one concession to comfort in the room is a chaise longue by the sash windows and lying upon it, face down, is the book by Wollstonecraft I’ve been reading. It seems like months ago I last picked it up, but actually it’s only been a matter of nine days or so. I open it and read from the page I’ve earmarked …‘Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.’ My eyes roam the rest of the paragraph, resting on words such as

‘insignificant’, ‘slavery’, ‘sensuality of man’. I struggle against seeing myself in these words, but recognise their truth too. But surely there’s more to my life now?

I close the book and move to the walnut filing cabinet. I know exactly what’s to be found in each of the twenty-four, slender drawers. The bottom drawer to the right holds the deeds to my houses and a couple of annuities. Two of the top drawers hold my latest receipts for a range of goods, from my evening gowns to horse shoes, while the third top drawer houses bills still to be paid. The drawer third from the bottom contains intimate letters from lovers; letters that I still cherish when I’m feeling sentimental. The other type of intimate

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/179 letters I’ve received over the years – the ones that I keep as insurance of one kind or another

– are safely locked up in the bank.

I pick at my bottom lip for a moment, staring at the filing cabinet. What can I find here to help free Amah? I pull out the second drawer from the top right side. Within are my receipts for payments to the servants, and a small ledger. Although there are amounts made out to the butler, the cook, the house-maids and the groomsmen, I know there will not be any formal receipt made out to Amah. I yank out the fifth and sixth drawers in the middle of the cabinet, where I keep my travel documents. I’d visited Paris for a sennight not five weeks ago. Of course Amah had travelled with me and if only I can find evidence for this, maybe I will prove that Amah did not have the opportunity to murder the earlier victims in Waterloo.

But searching through my paperwork proves fruitless. Although I have travel documents in my own name, any tickets or rooms that Amah had occupied have been left anonymous.

I sink down onto my desk chair. I can’t think of any other way to prove Amah was at home or abroad on the nights of the murders.

Is Amah in a cell at this very moment? Is she cold, thirsty? I pluck at my lip again until it hurts. Is the older woman scared? That would be almost worse than anything else.

And is Amah allowed to keep her veil lowered, hiding her dark features? It’s never been more evident to me why Amah likes to be invisible to the world of London, and that it is necessarily so.

My fingers clasp the familiar shape of the snuff bottle again. If only I could have a sniff. But Taff was right. Being delirious on the sofa is of no help to Amah. I take a cigarette from my purse and light it, drawing the smoke deep down into my chest. I flick the ash into the grate, and draw in another, quick breath of smoke. Suddenly I know exactly what I’ll have to do, and I have to stop wasting time wallowing around. I can’t prove Amah’s not the killer: therefore I’ll have to prove that someone else is.

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I think for a few more minutes, until the red tip of the cigarette burns my fingers. I toss its remnants into the fireplace. Pulling writing paper to me, I scrawl a note to Sir Thomas telling him the horrific news. My pen hovers above the paper, as I quell a surge of shame.

Eleanor was in my care, and I’d let her down.

I call for Bundle and hand him the letter to send.

“Any word from Taff?” I ask him. “Is he back yet with the carriage?”

“No, Mrs Chancey. No, I have heard nothing from him and the carriage has not yet returned. Shall I find you a cab?”

I fold Eleanor’s blue dress into a large hatbox, and grabbing a parasol, shawl and my reticule I walk briskly out to the waiting cab. I direct the driver to take me to the hospital in

Waterloo, and once there, bid him wait for me. I’m not sure if Bill is still at the morgue or back at the police station, but I don’t want to miss him.

The undertaker’s coach is still parked outside the building, and I peer gingerly down the morgue’s sterile corridor, hoping I won’t encounter the girls’ bodies again. I catch sight of Mrs Dawkins’s familiar iron-grey curls and call out to her from the doorway.

The cleaner bustles over. “Mrs Chancey. Such a terrible business. Terrible.” She folds her arms and shakes her head. “Terrible, it is.”

“Yes, yes, it is.” I offer the hat box to the older woman. “Mrs Dawkins, do you think you could make sure Eleanor Carter is dressed in this gown? I believe she admired it so.”

“Of course, my dear. Of course.” She pats my arm. “I’ll make sure it’s done, even if I have to do it myself.”

“You haven’t seen Sgt Chapman have you?”

Mrs Dawkins looks over her shoulder. “He’s still in the back room with Mr Pike and those poor, young ‘uns.” She shakes her head again, sadly. “He’s worked so hard on this matter. I’ve never met such a diligent young man.”

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“Do you think I could have a word with him?”

“I’ll go check for you.”

I only wait a couple of minutes before Bill strides towards me. He beckons me outside, and we stand on the kerb by a coffee stand.

“What is it, Heloise?” he asks. He looks less exhausted than he had earlier that morning, and I sense a tremor of impatience in him. His pale eyes are especially cool. “The inspector released Henry from our custody a little while ago.”

“I don’t care about him. What of my maid?”

“I’m sorry, I have no news of her.” He buys us each a cup of coffee. “Have you come with proof of her whereabouts on the nights of the murders?”

“No. No, unfortunately I could not find anything.” I watch his eyebrows lift, as if he expects as much. I tamp down a frustrated desire to regale him with the unfairness of a maid’s – a foreign maid’s – lot. “But I have remembered two things that I need to discuss with you.” I sip the tepid coffee which leaves a sour slick on my tongue. I throw the remaining coffee into the gutter and return the cup to the stallholder. “But first, tell me – did you take Dr Mordaunt’s diary from my room in Frazier St?”

He shakes his head. “No. I can’t remember seeing it, as a matter of fact.” He pulls his pocket watch out and glances at it. “I only have a moment, Heloise.”

“What of Dr Blain?” I say, quickly, catching hold of his sleeve. “I’ve not told you of his visit to us yesterday. He seemed very taken with Eleanor, but in a very odd way.”

“What do you mean by ‘odd’?”

I can’t tell him of my conversation with Blain the night before at the opera without compromising my own story, so I prevaricate. I remember Blain’s actual words, though, and turn them to my use. “I almost think he was obsessed with the girl. Almost as if he would rather see her die than not be with him.” I realise, if the sergeant were to interview the doctor,

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Blain will inform him of my true character, but what is that in comparison to Amah’s safety?

He would have to know sooner or later, anyway, if he is to visit me in Mayfair. But that test is for another time.

His expression hardens as he watches me. “You really do consider yourself the little detective, don’t you? But you must remember that I am the real detective. I’ll have you know that I have already thought of our Dr Blain and questioned him not an hour past.”

Ah. Now I see. Finally I can peer through those pale eyes into his mind. For I’ve seen this disdain before. This abhorrence that tightens the muscles around the mouth. The sense of betrayal that hums behind each word.

“And?”

“And he spent the whole evening at his aunt’s house last night. Escorted her to the opera, I believe.”

So, he won’t reveal what he now knows of me. I wonder if that is for my benefit or for his own. I join in the game even as my chest burns with disappointment. “But he could have sneaked out from there, surely? In fact, it’d be a good cover for his story if it was thought he was at his aunt’s house rather than in his own home near here, alone.”

“Heloise, she lives in Marylebone. It would take him an age to get to Waterloo. He’s hardly going to slip out in the middle of the night, do his dastardly deeds, and return there again.”

“But that’s exactly what you think Amah did,” I argue.

He just shakes his head. “What was the other thing you wanted to discuss with me? I really must be getting back.”

He turns from me. No fare-well, no crooked smile. I pull my shoulders back, bite down on my jaw. I have to keep my mind on Amah. And my other idea is almost more far- fetched than the one featuring Blain. I’ll investigate it on my own, bloody hell.

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Chapter Twenty

Hopping down from the cab I pay the driver and watch as the carriage’s large wheels rumble away. I pause for a moment in the middle of the road, and tap my foot against a cobblestone, thinking. I stare ahead at the bottle-green door. My heart’s racing and I take two deep breaths.

I’ve wanted this confrontation for years – for so many years – but I shake my head abruptly.

That is not why I’m here. I’ve come here on a new mission. A mission to find out who killed

Eleanor and the other women.

The black, wrought iron gate creaks noisily as I push it open. I close it with a decisive clang, and march into Dr Mordaunt’s office before my resolve flags. The bell above the doorway tinkles and the doctor’s oily assistant looks up from his work.

“I’d like to see Dr Mordaunt please,” I say, my voice haughty.

“Do you have an appointment, madam,” asks the assistant, his voice just as haughty.

“No, I don’t.”

“I will see when he is free.” The assistant makes a great show of perusing his ledger.

I roll my eyes at his greasy pate. The door to the surgery is open, the room empty. But the doctor’s office door’s shut and I can’t hear any murmurs or movement coming from in there.

I really want to search his office again. I need to find out if the notebook is back in his possession. If the diary is back in its hiding spot, then I can be sure that it was Mordaunt who’d taken it from the Waterloo house. Who else would have wanted to steal the diary? I can’t think of anyone else. And I know that if he’d stolen back the diary, it also meant he’d murdered the girls.

But what if he’s disposed of the notebook? What if he’d taken it home, not to his surgery?

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Then I’ll have to follow him. I’ll have to ransack his home, and hope against hope that he hasn’t destroyed it. I’ll have to keep searching for clues against the man so that I can free

Amah.

“I am afraid he was called away to a patient for the rest of the day,” says the assistant.

The sincerity of his tone is unconvincing. “He will not be returning here until tomorrow morning.”

“That is a pity.” I pull a face of disappointment. “I will return another time.”

“You don’t want to make an appointment?”

“I will take my chances, thank you.”

Returning to the cul-de-sac, I make my way to the next corner. I wait by the same fence I’d stood by last time, but after a short while I feel conspicuous. The street’s busy and bloody men ogle me as they pass. Keeping a watch on the mouth of the cul-de-sac, I stroll along the road, returning when I judge it too far to see when the assistant makes his way home. This I continue with for an hour and a half, stopping only to drink a ginger-beer and avoid the cold drizzle that dogs my surveillance. Sighing with the tedium, I’ve almost come to the stage of making excuses for myself to leave, when the assistant walks towards me from the doctor’s street. I duck behind a water-cart, pretending to scrape mud from my soaked shoes to keep my head averted until he passes by. I hesitate until he walks on down the street and turns left near the cross-roads.

Stepping swiftly across to the doctor’s street my pace drops to a stroll when I notice a young mother and her baby standing upon a neighbouring doorstep watching me curiously.

Smiling sweetly, I greet them, and continue to amble to the end of the cul-de-sac. I wonder what the hell I’m to do when, luckily, the woman re-enters her narrow abode.

I go to work on the doctor’s front door lock and enter as easily as I had the time before. Tiptoeing into his office, I close the door and lean my back against it. I must be very

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/185 careful. If I’m to find the diary and the doctor suspects as much, he will move or destroy it.

It’s imperative, that if I find it, the diary remains in the same place so that once I’ve informed the police, they can return and discover it for themselves. Surely, once I explain the timing of its disappearance from the Waterloo house to Bill, he too will see that Dr Mordaunt must have killed the girls.

I rifle through the drawers of his desk, careful to replace objects exactly where they are. I glance over the books on his bookshelf and flip through the papers in his filing cabinet but cannot find the diary.

This time, being so focused on my investigation, I don’t hear the bell’s tinkle from above the entrance.

Dr Mordaunt swings the office door open. He holds a half-empty bottle of whisky to his mouth. Liquid dribbles from his bottom lip when he sees me.

I’m startled, but only for a moment, ‘cause my dislike for him is so great I can’t prevent a sneer from lifting my lip.

“A bit early in the day for a doctor to imbibe, isn’t it?” I ask. “Although I do recall that you were at your most active in the middle of the night.”

“What the hell do you want?” He sets the bottle down on the desk.

I’m by the filing cabinet and the doctor’s between me and the door. I know there’ll be no fudging my way out this time. My hand snakes down into my reticule.

“I came here to discuss your diary.” I note with satisfaction how his hard eyes widen.

“You know – a black, leather notebook. Red ribbon.”

“So you took it, you little bitch.” He lurches towards me, his wide, white hands stretched towards my neck.

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I yank out my handgun and level it at his chest. He halts and stares at it for a few moments then gives a derisive snort. He slumps down at his desk and takes a mouthful of his whisky.

“Well?” he says, eventually. “What do you want to discuss?”

“I want to know where the diary is.”

“What do you mean? I thought you had it,” he says, looking up at me.

“I did have it. But it went missing last night and I think you took it.”

“How the hell was I supposed to know where you were with my diary? I don’t even know who you damn well are,” he shouts. “Yes, I guessed it was you who took it after I caught you in here last time, but I certainly didn’t know how to trace you. In fact, I’ve been waiting for your return.” He laughs humourlessly, and takes another swig from his bottle.

“Waiting. Waiting.” He turns a nasty face to me. “And here you are, as expected.”

I lean against the hard edge of the cabinet, my gun still trained on him.

“What do you mean – you were waiting for me to return?”

“Well, I assume you read the thing.”

“I glanced through it enough to see it held detailed records of your… more prohibited activities.”

He gulps from his bottle. “And now you’ve lost the notebook too. You’ve lost your nice little money-earner. Well I’m not sorry for it.”

“Money-earner?” It takes me a moment to realise what he means. “I wasn’t going to blackmail you with it. Why would I try to extort money from you?”

“Well, what the hell did you take it for?” He pounds the desk with the flat of his hand.

“What the bloody hell did you take it for?”

“I wanted to know what you were up to.” I manage to keep my voice and gun steady.

“And what did the diary tell you?”

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“It told me you were still doing your special favours for the women in the area.”

His eyes are fixed upon me. “But you’re not here to blackmail me?”

“No. I wanted to show the police that diary.”

“What for? There’s nothing actually incriminating in there. Just a list of former patients.”

“Who you’ve been following,” I point out. “That’s pretty sinister in itself.”

He shrugs. “What of it?”

“I’m going to prove to the police that you were behind the deaths of local prostitutes.”

“What deaths? You don’t mean…” He frowns at me, starting up from his chair. “The murders written up in the newspapers?”

I nudge the gun in his direction. “Yes. I mean the girls you’ve been slicing up and leaving to bleed out, you butcher.”

He stares at me through his thick glasses, his mouth ajar.

“I don’t know what you think I’ve done,” he says, eventually.

“I think you weren’t satisfied with scraping babies out of girls like –” I almost say

‘me’, but clamp my mouth down on the word. “– like the street girls and the parlour girls. I think you went one step further and ensured they’d never bear children again. And you snipped off their bits that made it bearable to be grinded by all you bastards. But being the incompetent culley you are, the poor women bled to death.”

“You’re mad,” he says, his lip lifting in disdain. “Hysterical. I should have you committed.”

Always an arsehole’s ultimate threat, that one. Oh, I’ve detested and feared this man for so long. Suddenly, my hatred for him is almost blinding, and I say, “You really don’t recognise me, do you?”

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“I told you last time that you looked familiar, but a lot of women come through my doors.” He looks me up and down. “You are covered in fine clothes and costly jewels now, but you girls never quite lose the shine of your former life.” He clicks his tongue in exasperation. “What do you expect? I see too many of your type.”

“But do you leave all of them barren, like you left me? Do you scour them out so that they lie in a fever for days, only to waken to a life of never being able to conceive a child again?”

“That’s always a risk,” he says.

“You should have told me.”

“And what? You would have kept the baby? Where? How? In the backstreet brothel where you worked day and night on your back?”

I forkin’ glare at him, but my fury won’t allow the tears that are scorching my chest and burning my eyelids to surface. I’m speechless, as both anguish and the acceptance of the truth of his words grapple inside me. What indeed would I have done with the child, had I had her? What choices did I have then? Not many at all, and not one of them enticing. I was so forkin’ young, and alone, and I’d had the abortion as routinely as the other girls did. But that didn’t mean I didn’t hope for a future of abundance and stability and love and babies.

Scrapes were supposed to be temporary, not for life. I remember Amah’s words to me when I announced I’d keep Eleanor and her baby; how that old harridan knows me so well. Amah had immediately guessed that I wanted a child in my household. That I wanted to feel the baby’s fat fist grasp my finger. That I wanted to cuddle her when she was asleep. But maybe

Amah was right. I’d be bored with it soon enough. And it’s never to be, anyway.

“And do you know what else I think?” I say to Mordaunt, finally. “I think one of your last entries in the notebook was about the young woman who was the latest victim.”

The angry flush ebbs from his thick neck. “What woman?”

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“The one in the photograph I showed you last time. Eleanor Carter. I’m sure you did know her, even though you denied it when we spoke.”

“Latest victim?”

“Yes. She was murdered last night.” There’s surprise on the doctor’s pugnacious features, and I feel a flicker of doubt. “But you knew that already.”

Mordaunt ignores me. He lifts the bottle of whisky to his mouth but pauses over it.

“The poor young lady.”

My attention sharpens at the word ‘lady’. “So you did know her?”

He drops the bottle to the desk again with a clunk. “Yes. Mind you, I did not know her as Eleanor Carter. She was introduced to me as Ellen Campbell.”

“How did you come to meet her?”

“She came to me about five or six weeks ago. She was in trouble.”

“But you didn’t…”

Mordaunt shakes his head. “No, not at the time. She was extremely agitated. There was nothing I could do then, but they were supposed to return when she was in a calmer frame of mind.” His words are becoming slurred and he rests his forehead against the heel of his hand.

“I wondered when I read an entry about a fair, young lady if it could be about

Eleanor. Or the girl you knew of as Ellen. Why did you follow her?”

He waves his hand briefly before resting on it again. His gaze is unfocused. “As you can imagine, many of my patients stay… ‘anonymous’ to me. Which was fine by me, I assure you.” He takes one last drink from his bottle of whisky, and tosses the bottle into the second drawer of the desk where it rattles against other empty bottles. “But then a charming fellow a few years back blackmailed me. I’d performed a procedure on his wife – if we can call her

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/190 that – and he made it clear to me that he was willing to disclose to the police what I had done.” He looks up at me. “But… for a tenner, he’d shut his mouth and move away.”

“And you paid him?”

“Of course. I might be a – what did you call me? – an incompetent culley, but that’s how I make my living, after all. However, you have to keep in mind that what he was willing to report to the police endangered his own position too. It was just as illegal for his woman to have the procedure as it is for me to perform it. But I didn’t know who he was, or who his woman was for that matter, or else I could have turned the tables on him and reported them to the police for soliciting an abortion from me.” The skin around his mouth slackens.

“Therefore, in order to cover myself from blackmail, I make sure I know exactly who I operate on. And if I’m suspicious, I get Ignatius to follow them to find out their true circumstances. You know? My assistant?” I think of the doctor’s obnoxious clerk. “Hence the diary.”

“So you have power over them?”

He shrugs again. “Yes. But I don’t use it.”

I run my eyes over him; his bulky shoulders and large, meaty hands; the hard mouth, loosened and wet from alcohol.

“I don’t know if I believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe because you don’t have the notebook anymore,” he jeers. “And if she really was murdered last night, then I couldn’t have done it. I was attending an old patient of mine in Newington. I was with him most of the night.” He grabs paper and, spilling ink as he scrawls upon it, says, “I’ll write down the name and his direction so that you and your precious police can verify my whereabouts.”

He holds out the scrap of paper and I snatch it from his hand. I keep the gun on him as

I edge my way to the door, my lips pressed together in contempt.

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He watches me from below his thick eyebrows as I back out of the room. “You blasted girls. You blasted girls.” He bends forward and grips his head in his hands. “You come hollering at me when you get in trouble and then you treat me like the devil when it’s over.” He lifts his head and jabs a finger at me. “Where would you all be if I hadn’t helped you out? Where? It’s bloody dangerous for me to go on, you know. It’s only a matter of time before a blasted moralist reports me to the police. And I can assure you I don’t do it for the measly money I get out of it either.”

“Well, what do you do it for?” I stop in the doorway, curious despite myself.

The doctor leans back in his chair and sighs. I can smell the alcohol on his breath from where I stand.

“It’s just part of my life now. I’m used to it.” He gives a drunken shrug and almost topples from his chair. “And what would the girls do if I didn’t operate on them or give them medicine? They’re a lot safer with me, I can assure you, than with the old sow in the alleys who pierces ‘em with a rusty knife.”

I don’t want to feel sympathy for this man. I drop my gaze and, teasing the cords apart of my reticule, I put away my gun. My voice is level when I speak.

“You said ‘they’. When you were talking about Eleanor, you said ‘they’ were supposed to return. Who was she with?”

“He said he was her husband.”

There’s derision in his voice. “You didn’t believe him?”

Mordaunt shakes his head.

Who’d brought poor Eleanor to this place for an abortion. Was it her father, as I’d suspected? Or Eleanor’s music master.

“Did he have a French accent?”

Again the doctor shakes his head.

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“No, he spoke his English as well as you or me,” he says. “Better, in fact.”

“Do you think he could have been related to her? Her father perhaps?”

He frowns, concentrating. “No, I’m almost sure he was not, although he was old enough to be. Ignatius reported that they didn’t reside together, for when he followed them, the gentleman escorted Miss Carter to a house near Russell Square after which he went on to another home in Goodge Street. Ignatius found out from a newsvendor that he lives there with his wife and five children.”

“What did this older gentleman look like?”

The doctor leans his head back against the chair-back and closes his eyes. “Thin prig of a man. Big ears.”

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Li Leen

Finally, hollowed, I decided to bathe. Mother had been dead for exactly twelve days when I peeled aside the stubborn frog buttons of my smock and lay it beside the mandi. I washed with the cold water, shivering with each splash and when I returned to my mother’s room and

Mother’s maid brought me a clean smock I told her I would not wear it. “Fetch me a sarung.

A sarung like the village girls wear. I do not want to answer to your Chinese gods anymore.

Bring me a sarung and I’ll be a local girl.” The maid laughed at me at first, and then grew impatient, but in the end she had to do what I asked. She brought me a brown sarung, made of the plainest weave and a kebaya for my bodice, although the fabric was so sheer my dark nipples and the curve of my breasts whispered against the silk. I sat slumped on the side of the bed when my step-father entered the room and sat by my side, his weight pressing the mattress down so that I leaned in towards him.

“What is this I hear? You won’t leave your room?” he asked.

I didn’t answer.

“You won’t come out into the world, so I have to come to you,” he persisted.

Still I said nothing. I had nothing to say.

“Beloved, are you afraid of what will happen to you now that your mother has died?” he asked, his toad face serious, the saggy bags under his eyes drooping. He waited a minute then continued. “I have a plan. Stay with me, my little fox-fairy. You can take your mother’s place in the house. Won’t that be the best way?”

He reached across and slipped his hand through the opening in my kebaya and drew his fingertips slowly across my bare midriff. It felt shivery but at the same time as though his fingertips had burnt a trail across my skin. I was surprised they didn’t leave a welt in their wake.

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Chapter Twenty-One

I peel off my soiled gown and petticoats and kick them aside. The warmth from the fireplace is a comforting relief after such a cold, long day. For once I ignore the sheer, silk peignoirs I would normally drape around myself and pull on a cosy, velvet dressing-gown, dusky grey with swansdown ruffles. I make my way to the drawing room on the floor below and pour myself a scotch.

“Mrs Chancey,” says Bundle, from the doorway. “Monsieur Agneau would like to know if you are in need of supper.”

“Thank Agneau for me.” I take a sip of my drink. It’s almost painful how the heat of the alcohol relaxes the muscles in my shoulders. “And let him know a light soup would be welcome.” Really, I can’t stomach a thing but I know the cook must be impatient to create a menu after so many days idle.

“Also, a note arrived for you not long ago from Sir Thomas,” says Bundle as he leaves the room. “I left it on your desk.”

I hurry to my desk, a fine specimen made from rosewood with elegant marquetry inlay, and snatch up the missive, tearing it open at the edges.

My Dear Mrs Chancey,

What truly distressing news you conveyed to me earlier this sad day. I

have since had the difficult task communing between the police and

poor Miss Carter’s father. I have not time to go into much detail here,

but please know that due to the police’s involvement in this case, Mr

Carter does not believe it is necessary to prolong your services. I am

truly sorry you had to be a part of this tragic situation. I blame myself

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for involving you – a frail female after all – in a man’s business. I

really do pray that this violent event has not forever damaged your

womanly, delicate senses. I will call upon you as soon as I am able,

Yours Sincerely,

T. A.

My ear-tips burn as I read through Sir Thomas’s letter, and I take a large gulp of scotch, and then another. I’ve truly bungled this affair and sweet, young Eleanor has lost her life into the bargain. Sitting down at my desk, I re-read the note over and over again. A frail woman? Sir

Thomas really is a fool. I’ve seen more horrifying things in my short life than Sir Thomas would ever know, although I have to admit the sight of Eleanor’s gouged body was one of the worst. I frown over the letter once more then crumple it into a ball.

I tap my fingernail on the desktop and swing lightly, to and fro, on the swivel chair.

How is it I’ve always had to follow the directions of the men in my life? Have I accumulated all this wealth and security for nothing? Certainly the pleasure’s gone from this detecting game, but I’m not ready to stop just because Sir Thomas and Eleanor’s father have ordered it so. Just because Bill has turned his back on me. I feel a dip of regret that I hadn’t had the chance to ease him into my life, but what can I do?

And what of Amah? I won’t be left at home, wringing my hands and sniffing smelling-salts, while I can help Amah. I’ll keep searching for the murderer. I know I have as good a chance to catch him as any of the others. And when I do – I curl my fingers into a fist until my fingernails leave crescent marks in my palm – I’m going to shoot a big, deep hole into the bastard, in a very manly fashion.

Pulling open the side drawer I take out a wad of paper and dip my pen in ink. The pen hovers over the page and a drop of the ink plops onto its surface as I think.

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For me, before I’d found Eleanor, the butcher who was murdering pregnant prostitutes could have been anyone in the vicinity. Anyone. But now, with Eleanor’s death, I’m sure I must know the murderer personally. How else would the murderer have known Eleanor was in the house on Frazier St, and that she was pregnant? Guilt worms its way through my stomach again, but I resolutely press on with my thoughts.

And who took Dr Mordaunt’s diary? The only person who makes sense is Dr

Mordaunt himself, although I’m almost persuaded he was telling the truth when he denied taking it. Regardless, I write his name down.

Under this I jot the name ‘Priestly’. It has to be him who Mordaunt had met with

Eleanor in his rooms, and hadn’t Chat and Amah seen him watching the Waterloo house? I write these points against Priestly, wishing I’d taken more notice of Amah’s words. But what of the other women who were murdered? Surely Priestly’s not responsible for all the deaths.

But he did know of the methods used to kill the earlier victims…Could he have copied the earlier murders to get rid of poor Eleanor? But why? Why would Priestly want Eleanor dead?

I stare at the wallpaper of my study, my eyes following the line of the branches, leaves and the occasional blue bird, until a possible motive for Priestly becomes clear to me, which I write against his name, my mouth pressed into a bitter line.

I sit back. Who else knew of Eleanor’s presence in Waterloo? Of course Tilly and

Katie Sullivan knew, but I swiftly dismiss them. I write down Dr Blain’s name, ignoring

Bill’s assurances of his innocence. I’m bloody sure the doctor had the opportunity to murder all the women. I list this against a note of his passionate reaction to Eleanor. My lip lifts in dislike as I write of him and it doesn’t lower as I consider the dreadful Mrs Sweetapple.

She’d also known of Eleanor’s predicament. Could she be involved? The woman’s detestable, but I’m really not convinced that she had a hand in the murders.

And what of Mme Silvestre, sitting high in her tilbury, that smug flush in her face?

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“I have laid out a tray in the drawing room, Mrs Chancey, by the fire,” says Bundle from the doorway.

“Thank you, Bundle.” I add the madam’s name to my list. Gathering up the pages, I move into the drawing room. On a low table by the sofa in front of the fireplace, Bundle has set out a fine repast. Next to a miniature, china tureen is a plate of chicken quenelles. I feel a little forlorn as I lift the lid of the tureen, releasing the clear consommé’s fragrant steam.

Agneau has prepared one of my favourite dishes and I’ve absolutely no appetite for it.

I reach for the crystal decanter of claret and pour myself a generous amount before sinking onto the sofa. Taking a few sips, I glance over the list I’ve made. My eyes rest upon

Mme Silvestre’s name. Was it smugness I’d seen spread across the madam’s large face when we both realised that Henry had been locked up during the latest murders? Or was the madam hiding something all along? I can’t be sure. I take another sip of the dark wine and close my eyes to recall my last encounter with Silvestre. Immediately I feel the pull of sleep, all thoughts of Mme Silvestre slowly dispersing. My hand twitches, spilling some of the wine onto my dressing-gown, and I’m awake again.

Not having a pen and ink at hand, I trace the name ‘Henry’ upon its surface with my finger-tip. Henry. I mustn’t forget that Eleanor had recognised him – that she had seen him with one of the victims. And Bill was sure of Henry’s guilt too, before Eleanor’s death. What if Henry was the real murderer and someone had murdered the girls in Frazier St to cover for him? Someone like Silvestre. Or bloody Mordaunt. I always come back to him.

Swallowing the last of the wine I lean forward to pour some more. The warm alcohol leaves a sudden void in my belly and I kneel in front of the small table and pick a quenelle up between my fingers and take a bite from one end. I lick the warm sauce that streaks down the side of my hand and then take one more mouthful before dropping the rest back onto the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/198 platter. I feel around in my pocket for Eleanor’s handkerchief I’d salvaged from the house in

Waterloo and wipe my fingers. Picking up my wine glass, I lean back into the sofa.

The fat madam. Silvestre. Would the old cow go that far to free her lover? I can’t bring myself to believe it. I’m sure the old woman’s callous enough to tolerate a certain amount of violence inflicted upon her girls, but these mutilations? And the thought of

Silvestre exerting herself to go to the extreme effort of murdering and butchering two women? It’s laughable.

Which leaves Henry in jail at the time of Eleanor’s murder, and most probably innocent of the other deaths.

So maybe Eleanor didn’t see him standing over the Dutch girl’s body after all. So where did she see him? Was it just at the brothel? Or was she mistaken? I swallow another mouthful of the wine and lie my head back against the sofa. My thoughts are unfocused and I just want to sleep.

Lifting the cranberry snuff bottle to my nostrils, repulsion sweeps over me. I can’t just lie here and inhale my way to oblivion, and the faint, sickly scent of violets with which Bill drenched his snuff mixture makes my stomach quail, which reminds me of Eleanor, enshrouded in her own blood. I sweep a hand across my eyes to blot the image, and take another gulp of wine.

The snowy handkerchief lies upon my lap and the embroidered letters in one of the corners catches my eye. XI. I hold it before myself, frowning. An X and I. It’s not the handkerchief Eleanor picked at, after all. And it’s certainly not mine. Mine are made of the finest French linen and lace – almost too dainty to blow your nose on. XI? I toss it onto the floor. It must belong to one of the policemen who tramped around that bedroom. Or maybe it’s Dr Featherby’s – the doctor who attended poor Eleanor’s body? Inspector Kelley’s? I think of their conversation about the vile men who stole women’s pleasure. That B, B man –

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/199 something Brown? And the other one. Xavier. I nudge the handkerchief with my toe. Flip it over. IX. Someone Xavier. I Xavier. And I think of the last time I noticed these letters. The number nine. The roman numerals circled in Mordaunt’s notebook. But this Xavier Dr

Featherby spoke of is dead. He said he died of shame.

Gazing out the long windows into the inky darkness, I wonder if Bill is still at the morgue or the police station at this time of night. I must tell him of my ideas. I think of his strong hands, his crooked smile. Really, I shrink from seeing him again, but I must. I need to look him in the eye, let him see that I am unaffected by his disdain for me. I must find him as soon as possible, but the warmth of the fire and the wine, and maybe even the muddled insights forming in my mind, leave me feeling unusually languid. I hope no more girls will die violently overnight while I sit here paralysed with uncertainty in my comfortable drawing room. Surely the killer will not strike again with Amah safely tucked into a cell acting as scapegoat. Pulling the sheets of paper against my breast I resolve to make a plan of action, but promptly fall fast asleep amongst the sofa cushions.

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Chapter Twenty-Two

The police station’s chilly entrance hall is so crammed with malodourous men – some bleeding, all caked in dirt – that I’m jostled on my way to the front desk. Muddy boots tread upon my skirts, interrupting my progress, and at one stage I have to duck out of the way of a falling body. The constables’ batons weave through the air and the prisoners, stale liquor on their breath, holler abuse.

I’d woken in the middle of the previous night, shivering on the sofa. I had a crick in my shoulder and a beating headache from the wine. Finding little rest since then, I filled the intervening hours with determined plans to free Amah. As soon as the milky morning light filtered through the curtains I made my way to the police station. The sight of the unruly mob in its vestibule did not dampen my impatience.

I finally see the uniformed policeman who mans the station’s front desk. He’s a young man with cropped brown hair and earnest eyes and as I reach him I have to calculate the neatest way to attract his assistance. Should I squeal, topple into his arms, a yielding armful of floral scent and rustling silk? Maybe at another time I would, but I don’t have the patience for it right now. I grab his sleeve and tug.

“Madam, this is no place for a lady,” he says. His baby face looks horrified on my behalf. “Allow me to take you away from this commotion.” He leads me past the closed doors of the back offices and into a room that appears to be a makeshift kitchen.

“Why are there so many men here?” I ask. I widen my carefully accented eyelashes and pretend to be fearful of the filthy men being led away by the constables. I sense the young policeman expects a certain level of femininity from me. “Who are these brutes?”

I allow him to settle me into a chair, away from the melee.

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“Don’t worry about them now, madam. I wouldn’t sully a lady’s ears with their doings in any case,” he answers. A slow blush creeps into his face as he gazes at me admiringly.

I peer around the open doorway at the departing captives, guessing they were participants in an overnight brawl or fighting match. “Where will they be taken?”

“They’ll be confined in the lockup out back.”

“But, how many lockups do you have?”

“Just the one,” he says, leaning against a table. “One space is enough to cram those thugs into.”

“But this won’t do.” Alarm has made my voice strident. “My maid is confined there.

She cannot be expected to wait amongst those men.”

“Your maid?” He looks confused.

“Yes. She was brought here on ridiculous, trumped up charges yesterday. I have come here to beg for her release.” I draw a sheaf of paper from my reticule. I know most of this paperwork is next to bloody useless, but I’ve forged Amah’s names onto one ticket of passage and entered her name against two receipts. “I have brought what I can to try to prove her whereabouts over the last few months.” I twist around in my chair and look around the station. “Where is Sgt Chapman? William Chapman? He will know why I am here.”

The young constable gapes at me for a few moments. “Do you mean the foreign woman who was here last night?”

“Yes.”

“Is she your maid, is she?”

“She is.”

He stares at me some more, before shaking his head slowly. “She’s murdered many women, madam. There will be no freeing her.”

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“But you don’t understand.” I shove the papers I have crushed between my fingers towards him. “She did not murder those women. I have brought proof. She cannot be left with those drunkards.” I can’t think of any other way to free Amah. It’s been years since I’ve felt so utterly helpless. Anxiety constricts my chest as I think of the older woman, wondering if she’s frightened or just plain angry at me for not getting her out of this mess. I imagine the proud woman cowed in the corner of the cell surrounded by the pack of abusive men. My tummy aches.

The young policeman looks dubious. “Madam, you will have to wait for the Inspector to be free as he is the only one you can speak to of this matter.”

“Well, where is he?”

“He is interviewing a witness at this very moment. He could be a long while.”

“Can you at least have my maid wait in here? With me? Have her wait with me for the

Inspector.”

“I am sorry,” he says, averting his eyes from mine. “Our orders are to leave her in the lockup and, come this afternoon, she will appear before the magistrate and then be sent to

Newgate.”

I slump back into the chair and squish my lips between my fingers. I feel so sick in the stomach. Amah will be tried for murder and hanged by the neck before we know it.

The policeman moves to my side swiftly. “Madam, are you ill? It’s the shock, no doubt.”

“I must be strong,” I say. I allow for a staged, tremulous note to creep into her voice, but truth be told, maybe it wasn’t all acting. “I have had so many frights lately, but your Sgt

Chapman has been such a friend to me.” I look up at the young man, my dark eyes pleading –

“shimmering pools of melancholy, making thy heart ache” after all. “Do you think he is available to see me now?”

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“I will check for you.” The policeman returns after what seems only a few moments.

“I’m afraid he isn’t,” he answers, apologetically.

I bite down on my lower lip and taste blood. I can’t be sure if Bill really can’t meet with me or if he just refuses to.

Leaving the papers, the handkerchief and a note for the Inspector in the policeman’s care, I summon a cab to take me to an address in Waterloo. I’m going to hunt the killer down to his own lair. I know I should have someone accompany me, but the police have proven of no help and I don’t have time to track down Taff. Briefly I think of taking Chat along with me, but I can’t upset him any more than he has been. I have something far more useful anyway.

My hand folds over the handgun which is in a hidden pocket of my gown, its bulk reassuringly heavy against my thigh. The only thing on my mind is the immediate release of

Amah, which means I have to find the murderer and evidence against him. And shoot him, if

I’m lucky enough.

As yet, I’ve not actually shot at anyone with my pretty handgun. A lover – a young squire – gave it to me two years ago and had trained me in its use at his hunting box in Essex.

Before that I’d made do with a pretty, pearl-handled switchblade I now use as a picklock.

Amah had taught me well in the use of that blade, but today I feel the handgun is more propitious.

The cab driver lets me down on the corner of where Emery crosses Morley Street.

Pulling an organza veil over my face, I pass a horse yard and stables until I reach a row of small shops. Between a milliner’s and a tobacconist is a butcher’s shop, its wide shopfront filled with gleaming, pink carcases hanging from hooks. I pop into the milliner’s, which sells cheap, unfashionable headwear, and ask directions from the young shopgirl, who points to the alleyway that runs down the side of the horse yard.

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The brick wall of the shop looms high to one side of the alley, while on the other side the tall, timber fencing of the stable yard cuts out most of the grey light. The alleyway is so narrow my skirts brush against the side walls, and a brisk wind whooshes past my exposed neck, making me shiver and cross my arms. The rims of my shoes stick in the mud as I pick my way through to the row of small, two-storey dwellings that are adjacent to the rear of the shops. The stench of the cluttered yard grows stronger as I approach – the smothering sweet smell of open flesh and manure mixes with the pungent odour of rotten meat. I press a handkerchief to my nose as I round the corner. The dripping end of a newly-slaughtered sheep nudges my shoulder from where it hangs over a bucket. A stream of fresh, port- coloured blood streaks through the filthy cobblestones and two more sheep tethered to a stake watch me, dancing on skittish hooves, ignoring the hay at their feet. A skinny lad carries a straw cage of chickens to a chopping block. He looks enquiringly at me as he lifts a hen by its feet from the cage. Its squawking and flapping make conversation difficult so I just point at the house nearest to the butcher’s.

Knocking on the front door, I’m not sure if my rapping can be heard over the screeching of the chicken. The din stops abruptly with a loud thud so that my second round of knocking rings out loudly across the small yard. I wait through the raucous deaths of two more chickens, but no-one answers the door. Turning the door handle, I find it locked. I watch as the butcher’s lad carries the chicken carcases through the back entrance of the butcher’s shop, and quickly pick the lock. Stripping my gloves from my hands, I stuff them into one pocket while pulling my handgun from the other. I slip into the small house.

I find myself in a large, dimly lit area. There’s only one small window at the back of the room, the daylight muted by a grubby, muslin curtain. The furniture, although aged, is surprisingly fine in its dreary surrounds and the two paintings upon the walls are quite valuable. A lovely crystal bowl encrusted in dust stands upon a side-board, yet the table is set

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/205 with cheap crockery. I’m still as I survey the room, my senses heightened to hear any movement from behind or above. Along the wall is a make-shift bookcase, constructed from bricks and planks. My eyes are drawn across the spines of the books, reading the titles – there are several university anatomy books and home doctor journals – and my breath catches as I glimpse the book at the end of the row. It’s black without a title across the spine, and a red ribbon pokes out between the pages. I spring forward and, lifting the notebook, open its pages. It’s Dr Mordaunt’s missing diary.

My fingers tremble as I replace the book against the others. The uncomfortable beating of my heartbeat echoes loudly in my head. I’m in the right place. I’ve tracked down the man who’s murdered all the women; who’s murdered poor Eleanor. Where is the bastard?

I grip the handle of my handgun, my fingertip resting on the trigger. It’s time to put that hole in him.

I tiptoe across the grimy floorboards, pausing to look at a framed document upon the wall. Royal College of Surgeons curves across the top of the page, over a coat of arms. At the bottom of the page, written in curling script, 1830. Ignatius Xavier.

The name of the surgeon the doctor had spoken of; the surgeon who snipped off women’s bits to keep them from hysteria. I mouth the name – Ignatius Xavier. Forkin’ Hell.

If only I’d caught on earlier.

I move across to a poky stairwell, and peer up into the shadows. I can’t see the half of the staircase that turns off from the landing. I place my foot on the first step, quickly withdrawing it when I notice the dark smudge ingrained into the wood. I crouch low in order to see it more clearly. The thickish stain runs down the middle of the lowest four steps. A quiver of apprehension creeps up my spine and grips the back of my neck. Is it blood?

Someone shouts in the butcher’s yard, and a cow clip-clops its way across the cobblestones, lowing. I grasp the stair’s handrail, listening. Another male voice joins the first.

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Perhaps the butcher and his assistant? The sound of steel scraping across whetstone muffles their voices. Feeling a little reassured at their close proximity, I stare up into the stairwell again and begin to climb the steps, keeping to the side to avoid the stains.

I reach the landing. It’s even darker than it is below. Turning to my right I look up the remaining stairs. At the top is a door, ajar. What will I find past that doorway?

The cow is bellowing in earnest now. I can just hear it over the loud whooshing of my heartbeat. Perspiration prickles the skin above my upper lip and at my hairline. I make my way slowly up the final stairs, gripping the handgun so tightly I have to be careful it doesn’t go off prematurely. I reach forward. Lightly push open the door.

In the centre of the room, illuminated by a single lantern, is a chair – a chair like the one in Dr Mordaunt’s rooms – a reclining chair with stirrups.

I gape at it for some moments before I notice the baleful silence. No voices, no cow.

By the time I hear a rustle behind me, it’s too late. He pries the gun from my grip as he holds me in a strangle hold with his other arm. He presses a wad of linen soaked in a familiar, acerbic substance to my mouth and nose. I struggle in his arms, scream, bite and scratch, but the more I try to call out, the more I breathe in the ether. My heartbeat clamours in my ears and I feel I might be sick, when all goes black.

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Chapter Twenty-Three

I heave back into awareness. I struggle to sit up but my ankles are bound in the chair’s stirrups and my wrists are tied to its arms. I’m groggy, panting with the effort of righting the spinning room.

Ignatius steps in front of me. Mordaunt’s slimy assistant. He smiles, and his wet lips make my skin creep with loathing. “Awake?” He points my handgun at me. “If you dare squeal I’ll finish you so quickly your screams will be taken for a hen’s squawk.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” My mouth’s dry from the ether, my tongue numb, sunken in my mouth, slurring the words.

“I think you know exactly what I’m doing, Heloise.” Oh god, he knows my name. He holds my gaze until I know what he means. “How did you find me?” he asks.

“I watched you leave Mordaunt’s. You always turned into this alleyway.” My words come slowly.

“Well, what a lovely surprise to find you here. How do you like my humble abode? It suits me very well, I must say – the noisiness from the slaughter yard, its remoteness from others. But do you know the best part?” He breathes in deeply. “The smell. That rank, metallic stench of blood. Of course, mostly it’s from the cows and the sheep, but once in a while the blood from a whore’s carcase mingles with the rest.”

“You’re a forkin’ bastard.”

An ugly expression settles across his craggy features. “I’m no bastard.” He moves to a side-table. “I can account for both my parents, which I’m sure is more than you can do.” He neatens some objects on a cloth, metal jangling against metal. “In fact, my father left me these,” he says, holding up a scalpel, shiny in the yellow lantern light. “They’re instruments from his surgery. He had no more use for them, and then he died anyway, so I have

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/208 appropriated them.” He places the scalpel back on the cloth and picks up what appears to be a butcher’s knife. “Have you worked out that part yet?”

I nod, the words sticking in my throat. My stomach churns as I stare at the mottled grey of the knife. “Yes. Ignatius Xavier. Baker-Brown’s associate. I assume you’re his son,” I finally croak. The son of one of the doctors who’d been discredited for mutilating women.

His jaws clench and he stabs the point of the knife into the table top. “I didn’t ever train to be a doctor, you know. I wanted to be on the stage, trained to sing opera in Venice.

But when the pricks struck my father off, leaving him with no income, I had to support myself. Had to find work in a fucking doctor’s office.” He scowls, moves to my side. “I found my father’s body, you know. It had rotted away for weeks before that. The poor fellow had been deserted – deserted by his friends, by his family, by the medical fraternity – all because he tried to help you whiny, crazy women.”

I long to turn my head away, shut my eyes, but I’m mesmerised by his knife hand. I can barely comprehend what he’s saying.

“What gave me away? What brought you to my home?”

“I found your handkerchief. I noticed the monogram. Same as in Mordaunt’s notebook.”

His eyes narrow as he gazes at me. “Clever little bitch, aren’t you? Now you know the real me. Of course, I’ve known the real you for a while now too. When you first came into

Mordaunt’s office I thought I’d seen you before, but I couldn’t place you. I only truly recognised you when I glimpsed you eating supper at the fair by the river. It was when you stood amongst all the other fancy-pieces in their gaudy jewels and painted faces, that I thought – Ah, yes. I see now. She’s the infamous Paon de Nuit of the stage and of the bed.

Heloise Chancey. Peacock of the Night. The woman who ventures out in all her finery to attract and trap unwitting suitors.” He reaches down and caresses between my legs with his

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/209 free hand. I squirm to the side so he tweaks me hard and laughs at my yelp of pain. “I’ve seen you often at the opera, my dear. But of course, I don’t venture past the lowly stalls. You would never notice the likes of me.” He’s still smiling but there’s an unpleasant glint in his eye.

“Why are you doing this? Why mutilate all those poor women?”

“I couldn’t let my poor pater’s work go unfinished. He can no longer fight for himself, but I can seek justice for him.”

“That’s justice, is it? Slaughtering young, defenceless women?” I ask.

“They weren’t just normal young women, though, were they? They weren’t decent ladies, at home, minding their families. They were diseased. They were immoral. A wound – an infection – in our society.”

“That’s nonsense,” I whisper.

He places the heavy knife on my stomach and with his free hand he strokes the loose hair from my face. “Your desire for pleasure causes too many problems, Heloise,” he says in a low voice, close to my ear, his warm breath on my neck. It has the sourness of rancid milk, of decay. “Disease, illegitimacy, madness. So I decided to further my father’s work. Cut pleasure from whore’s lives and cut the risk of procreation out of them while I was at it. This wanton desire of yours is dangerous. It needs to be destroyed. Have you read any of Darwin’s fascinating work?” I nod. “But of course you have. I’ve heard of your Mayfair evenings with gentlemen of science and culture.” He strokes my hair some more until I toss my head away.

“Let’s say my method is more akin to artificial selection than that of the natural sort. Instead of choosing the good, Heloise, I am choosing to cull the bad.”

“But do the girls have to die?”

“Well, I’m not a doctor, like I said. Although I have learnt some rudimentary surgery from the good Dr Mordaunt. Not that he knew of it. He’s usually too far gone with whisky to

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/210 know I’m skulking in the background.” He smirks down at me. “At first I meant for the tarts to live, but most of them didn’t which I realised wasn’t so unfortunate after all. I was quite excited when I found out one had survived and how she didn’t return straight back to the streets. But I had to finish her off too, although she was surrounded by a sentinel of infernal whores. What with her ghoulish account and the other whores’ deaths, my actions might mean an eventual end to prostitution.”

“Why don’t you just chop off your cock? And the cocks of all the men in London?

Then there’d be an end to prostitution,” I mock, unable to stop the bitter words.

His eyes narrow as he stares down at me. He returns to his side-table and pulls something from the doctor’s bag. He holds up a rounded, metal contraption. “Do you know what this is?”

He punches my face as I breathe in to scream. In the following blinding moments he rams the gadget into my mouth, securing it behind my head. “It’s called a choke pear, meant for shutting you women up. My father had it specially designed for my mother when she finally succumbed to her hysteria. I’ve found it very useful in my work.”

A scorching pulse of pain beats beneath my lacerated cheek as I gag against the choke pear. I fold forward, fighting rising nausea.

He presses my head back against the chair and, waiting until he has my full attention, he flourishes the butcher’s knife. He slowly rakes its blade at an angle down the skin of my throat and across my bosom, in the manner that men shave their whiskers.

“I fucked ‘em all first, you know. Although I had to… cajole that young woman staying in your house.” He clutches the knife in his fist, and hacks at the bodice of my gown, slicing an opening down the middle. “I saw she’d recognised me outside Mordaunt’s the day he was arrested. I remembered her too from the morning I disposed of that blond girl’s body.

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I had to make sure she didn’t expose me. She wasn’t exactly a whore, but clearly I had work to do on her too.”

I think back to the bright, sunny day Eleanor and I watched the arrest outside

Mordaunt’s. Think of how we watched Bill escort Henry past Ignatius to the police buggy, surrounded by all the uniformed policemen and the Inspector. Think of how they each had on a brown suit. How stupid of me. My breaths come in noisy gasps, my chest spasming up and down so that he nicks my skin. A patch of blood blooms through my white chemise.

“So I followed you home. You had no idea. I’ve had a lot of practice shadowing people for Mordaunt, after all.” He shook his head at me. “But a chink? You had a dirty chink there. There really is no end to your depravity, woman.” He pulls the fabric of my gown apart. “And I see you found Mordaunt’s diary downstairs. Handy that I found it in the bedroom when I killed that girl. My initials are against some of the entries, after all. And, of course, if I want to continue with my work in the future I need only peruse that notebook for the whereabouts of all the whores in Waterloo.”

He sweeps his hand over my breasts, cupping one, the knife’s cold edge resting against my skin. “I’ve noticed how much pleasure you women receive from these. I thought the only pleasure was ours.” He squeezes my breast so that I wince. “My usual experiences with whores are mere romps – bent over a table, a quick one on a musty bed.” He’s thoughtful for a moment. “Although I do prefer a hard one against a wall.”

He licks my nipple before sucking it into his mouth. I feel nothing. He might as well lick my elbow.

“So I sliced ‘em off,” he says, straightening up. “It’s a pity you weren’t home the night I finished off the other two. I was like a fox. I was going to clean out the whole hen house – her, you, your chink, the whore-house maid. After all, finishing you whores is not unlike killing chickens – a lot of squawking, then blessed silence.” He pulls his snuff box

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/212 from his pocket and inhales, his eyes shut in momentary contentment. He turns back to his surgical instruments and picks up the scalpel.

My eyes water as the choke pear stabs against the roof of my mouth with the slightest of movements. I try to shrink as far back into the chair as possible when he approaches me again.

The scalpel hovers above my bare skin. “I’d like you to survive. You’d be a perfect specimen of chastity versus pleasure, and its terrible outcomes. But, alas, despite my negligible medical skills, you definitely have to die. You are more dangerous than the rest, my dear, because you think you are entitled to the freedoms of a man.”

My bladder loosens as the wretched scalpel lowers to my breast. He presses the sharp point to the edge of my nipple’s areola, and the blade slips easily into my flesh. I scream against the choke pear. I flinch from the keen, searing pain, knocking his hand aside.

He lifts the scalpel away. “This won’t do. I cannot do a neat job with you struggling against me.”

Pulling the tie from around his neck, he binds my upper arm with a savage tightness.

Once the make-shift tourniquet is secured he turns to his instruments and, after some moments, returns with a syringe.

“In America they use opium in this form to relieve you feeble women from your special pains,” he says, as he forces the needle’s point into the vein of my arm. “I hope I have the dosage right – although I hardly think it matters if I inadvertently give you too much.”

I sink into the morphine almost immediately. I feel weightless, at peace, a lovely warmth mellows my spine. I retch against the choke pear, hot vomit rising in my throat. As darkness engulfs me, a great, black moth envelopes Ignatius, its wings beating furiously.

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Li Leen

“Your skin is as smooth as polished ebony, dark and tight,” Tiri said, as he ran his finger down my forearm.

I trembled and pulled my arm away. “Please stop touching me,” I said.

I stood to get away from him, but he followed and stepped close, so close my breast almost touched his.

“How full your lips are, you tempting little fox-fairy, and when you open your mouth, yes, like that, your mouth is pink, like the inside of a ripened fig.” I felt his breath on my own so I moved back again and said, “Please, leave my room, Tiri.”

He laughed. “Beloved, this is my room in my house, and now you are mine too.”

I stared at him, but he wasn’t really looking at me. All those times Mother pleaded with him to stop staring at me, he was not really seeing me – Li Leen; he was availing himself of my body with his eyes, those same eyes that now followed the lines of my breasts, and lingered on my nipples. That flickered over my waist line, over my hips, down my tightly clad limbs. The fear I felt melted away until a sore hardness stiffened my chest. He was so blinded, he did not see me draw out my scaling knife. I slid the blade into his throat, under the jawline.

Then he looked at me.

His warm blood sprayed my skin as softly as a spider treads, and he sank to the floor.

The life shuddered out of him, and all his gore, and words, and rapacity seeped into Mother’s special Persian rug. I wiped the knife on the side of my sarung and gazed at the beads of blood on my arm that glistened like ripe pomegranate seeds.

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And here I am again, many years later, wiping the drops of another man’s blood from my skin. I still wonder what it was that tormented my mother so greatly that she felt she had to take her own life. Was it her husband’s lust for me, her daughter? Or was it that I was her accursed, yet beloved, half-gweilo, who burdened her with bad luck? Or was it simply that she knew that it would be impossible for her to keep me safe from Tiri’s attentions? It can be difficult to protect a daughter.

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Chapter Twenty-Four

“Heloise… Jia Li… Heloise, my child, wake up.”

I stir, but I’m only forced to open my eyes when slapped across the cheek. “Bloody hell, that forkin’ hurt,” I protest, pressing my hand gently over my wounded cheek. The effort is almost too much. Morphine-induced lethargy weighs upon my limbs.

Amah gathers me into a sitting position. “We have to get out of here, Heloise. You must get up.” She tears away a strip of my ruined chemise and wipes the vomit from my chest and chin.

I lean into Amah’s bosom. The horrors of the past hour come back to me in dizzying clarity. I’m no longer bound, no longer choking on the mouth-piece. I let out a sob and clutch at Amah’s arm. “Where is he?”

“You’re safe now, Jia Li,” replies Amah. We both look down at the cuts to my skin, and Amah tsks her tongue. She carefully draws my bodice together and tucks her own cloak around my shoulders.

I bury my face in Amah’s shoulder. “Oh, Mama, I was so scared. So scared.” I sob dryly.

“I know, child, I know,” says Amah, patting me on the back. “But no good will come from sniffling over it.”

My face is still pressed against her chest, but I manage a weak grin. “Can’t you be tender just this once?”

“What good would that do?” she says. But her cold, bony fingers grasp me closer.

We stay like that for only a matter of seconds before she says, briskly, “Come. We must leave.” She pulls my veil back in place before covering her own face. Placing the handgun in her reticule, she takes me by the arm. “The police may be here at any moment.”

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“But that’s a good thing, surely. We can tell them who the murderer is.”

I lean heavily against my mother as we stagger from the room.

“Not such a good thing,” she answers. She pauses for a moment and nods towards the floor on the other side of the room.

On his back, his white shirt shredded with several gaping, crimson slashes, lies

Ignatius, quite dead.

“The police will work out that he murdered all those young women,” says Amah.

“But they need not know that it was I who had the pleasure of murdering him.”

Taff helps us climb into my carriage which he’s parked around the corner.

I lift the veil from my face and rest my head against the cushions. “How did you two find me?”

“We followed you.”

I frown. “Followed me? But you were locked up.”

“Taff freed me.”

“What?” I lift my heavy head to look across at Amah.

“He provided me with an alibi. We were with the Inspector most of the morning.”

I shake my head in wonder. “So when I was at the station, the Inspector was with you, all along?”

“I suppose so.”

“What was the alibi he gave you?”

She lifts her chin and gazes steadily out the window. “He just told the Inspector he knew of my whereabouts for the whole evening of Eleanor’s death.” Her ears turn plum as she speaks.

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“Well, how’s that convincing? I told them the same thing, but they didn’t believe me.”

“He said he was with me… with me,” she stresses the words, slowly. “For the whole night.” Her hard, dark eyes widen defensively.

It takes my drug-impeded mind a moment to catch on, and then I hoot with laughter.

“So, Taff pretended that he was with you, under the covers, for the whole evening?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t realise he was so brave.” I continue to chuckle, my eyes on my rigid mother.

“The police think you two are living in sin? Under my roof?”

“Yes.”

I press my lips shut, only allowing myself a little smirk, until a troubling thought occurs to me.

“It’s bloody lucky for me that you followed. Did you see me at the station?”

“The Inspector had just released me when we saw you hopping into a cab. Taff collected your carriage and we followed. We assumed you were returning to Mayfair.”

“If you were following me, why did it take you so long to save me?”

“We lost you for a few minutes. We asked for you in the tobacco shop and the butcher’s, but it was not until we spoke with the milliner that we found out where you’d gone. Even then we weren’t sure where you’d disappeared to from that slaughter yard.”

By the light from the carriage window I can see the damp, dark patches upon the black wool of Amah’s gown, and a fine spray of blood on the skin of her throat. I turn my gaze out the window. My thoughts are drawn into a loop of the nightmare I’ve narrowly missed. A tear slips from the corner of my eye.

“I know, I know. Snivelling will get me nowhere.”

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Chapter Twenty-Five

I scrutinise my face in the mirror. The bruises to my mouth are clearly visible by the sunlight that shines past the open curtains. There are dark smudges under my eyes, although I slept well and dreamlessly after drinking the dose of laudanum Amah mixed for me the night before. I’m finding it difficult to stop shivering even though Bundle has vigorously stoked the fire. I tenderly dab cream and powder around my lips to hide the blemishes, and apply a smidgen of tinted lip colour. Testing a smile in the mirror, I flinch at the sting that shears through the split in my upper lip. Well, I won’t smile then. God knows, I’ve nothing to smile about today, in any case. I pull open my peignoir and grumpily scrutinise the bandages Amah has wrapped around my wounds. I’ve no idea how I’m to explain them away to Hatterleigh.

In fact it might be best to go away for a couple of weeks. But first I have things to deal with.

The blue dress I’d left for Eleanor at the morgue lies across my bed. The girl’s detestable family sent it back to me last night and while Amah and I had discussed what to do with it, Amah came across a crumpled page of paper in the gown’s pocket. It was a letter from Eleanor to me.

I pick it up to re-read. Fury compresses my chest, makes my head ache.

A glint on the carpet catches my eye. The cranberry glass snuff-bottle. Sweeping it up in my hand, I wrench open the window and hurl it out onto the cobblestones. For several minutes I stare at the sparkling pink shards scattered upon the road.

“What are you thinking, Heloise?” asks Amah from behind.

“That I might retire.”

Amah snorts.

“Retire? Where would you go? What would you do?”

I watch Amah pull a chemise and petticoats from the dresser drawers.

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“I have enough money to live comfortably for a while. I might move to my house in

Brighton – that would cut costs.” I sit back down at the dressing table and stare at myself in the mirror. What other options do I have? I’m not that good an actress that I could live off my wages. Not in this style anyway. Seamstress? It isn’t worth the hardship. Governess? Nobody would have me. The only other option I can think of is marriage, but aren’t the freedoms of my current situation preferable? “Maybe I could just continue with Sir Thomas’s work.”

“That wouldn’t pay for the champagne and Worth gowns,” says Amah. “You’d be back at it soon enough, Jia Li.”

“Maybe not.” I step into the petticoat that she holds out for me. I then wait patiently while she buttons my chemise.

“Why do you think like this now?” she asks, as she lifts an embroidered gown over my head.

I think of poor Eleanor and the other dead women. I think of the despicable Silvestre and Tilly and all the other renters I know. It isn’t that I’m scared. It isn’t even that I’m sorry for them. I’m angry. Angry that we’re all vulnerable to the whims of all manner of men.

Before I can answer Amah there’s a sharp rap at the front door.

I pick up Eleanor’s letter and tuck it into my cleavage. “This will be very satisfying,

Amah. You should watch through the peacock’s tail.”

Mr Priestly is standing by the fireplace when I enter the drawing room.

He waves a letter in my direction. “What is the meaning of this missive, with its sly undertones and almost threatening tone?” he demands immediately he sees me.

I sit down on the sofa and spread my skirts neatly around myself, patting down the creases. “Ah, a threatening tone. You noticed that, did you?”

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“I most certainly did.” Blotches of colour mottle his skin. “How dare you send for me in this way.”

“Well, why did you come then, sir?”

His jaw bobs up and down as he tries to answer. “Well… I was curious, I suppose.

Curious to know what a little trumped up tramp would have to say to me.”

I manage to keep my temper in reign ‘cause I know I’ve got the upper hand. “Why don’t you take a seat, sir, so we can discuss this matter in a more – I was going to say friendly, but let us say – businesslike, manner.”

He remains by the fireplace, until finally, finding no response from me, sits down opposite in a deep lounge chair.

“Well, what is it?”

City noises – a horse trotting past, a dog barking and the clink of the mail box – fill in the moments we stare at each other.

“I want you to donate £500 to the Euston Reclamation Home for fallen women. I hear they do good work there with women unfortunate enough to be with child outside wedlock.”

“I will do no such thing.”

I tilt my head to the side. “Oh, I think you will.”

He sits back and folds his arms, smiling. “And how are you going to make me do that?”

“Well, if you don’t, I will tell the police about how you were following Eleanor in her last days. I believe I might convince them that you are the one who murdered her.”

“But you’re mad. I didn’t murder her. I spoke to Sir Thomas just this morning. The police have found the culprit who murdered all those prostitutes.”

“Yes, but there’s no proof he murdered Eleanor. And I have two witnesses who saw you shadowing her on Frazier St on the day she died.” Of course, it’s best not to mention that

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/221 one witness is of foreign blood while the other witness is a homeless child. “And you are also mentioned in Dr Mordaunt’s diary, which I believe is in the police’s possession at this very moment. I know that Dr Mordaunt can definitely identify you as the man who accompanied poor Eleanor to his surgery, so that you could be rid of your baby.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asks, through bloodless lips.

“I mean – I know that you were the father of Eleanor’s baby.” I feel an absolute thrill of triumph when wrath sweeps across Priestly’s face.

“Take that back, you harlot.”

“I will not.” I allow a smile of victory to curl my lips as I slowly withdraw Eleanor’s letter from between my breasts.

He licks his dry lips as his eyes follow my every movement. “What is that?”

“A letter from Eleanor,” I reply, as I unfold the sheet of paper. “In which she names you as the man who raped and impregnated her.”

Priestly makes a sudden lurch for me, but I hold up my hand, pointing to the doorway where Bundle stands with a sword stick held casually against his thigh. “Ah-ah,” I remonstrate. “Come closer, and Bundle will cut you.”

Priestly glances at the tall butler and settles back into his chair. He turns his frown back to me.

“What do you intend to do with that?” he asks.

“I haven’t quite decided yet.” My eyes scan the letter. “But I do believe it would make interesting reading for Eleanor’s father. Although I am not sure I could put even Mr Carter through the repugnance of reading Eleanor’s account of how much she loathed your touch.” I re-fold it and poke it back into my bodice. “It will go straight into my safe at the bank and, of course, if anything dastardly were to happen to me, this letter will be sent to Mr Carter and a copy to the police.”

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“You will never convince the police that I murdered her,” he says, his voice hoarse.

My eyes narrow. “Probably not. But tell me, how would you like this letter and the witness accounts smeared across the newspapers for your wife and esteemed friends to see?

Think of your poor children, Mr Priestly. Be sure, the damage will be done, even if you are not prosecuted for murder.” Priestly’s mouth gobbles away at words that will not come. I have to suppress a bubble of laughter ‘cause I haven’t felt so good in days.

I stand up. “So, I expect my friends at the Euston home to inform me within the week that someone has given them a large amount of money in Eleanor Carter’s name. If the money does not appear, I will send this letter to The Times.”

Priestly hauls himself out of his chair with difficulty. He leans upon its arm. “But that amount of money will break me.”

I dimple, but my eyes are cold. “Sir, that is not my concern.” I turn my back on him and gaze out the long, sash window.

As soon as Bundle sees Priestly from the premises he returns to the drawing room to hand me a letter.

“This arrived while you were engaged with Mr Priestly.”

The butler walks from the room passing Amah in the doorway.

“How do you know of this Euston home for prostitutes?” she asks, joining me by the window.

“I had Bundle make some enquiries when Eleanor was still with us,” I murmur as I rip open the seal on the letter. “It’s from Sir Thomas.” I read from it out loud.

“My Dear Mrs Chancey,

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I hope I find you in happier spirits than the last time we corresponded. You have, yet again, cleared up a mystery that puzzled even the police. Of course, they may never have solved these murders had you not pointed them in the direction of their evil culprit.”

“So they know it was this Ignatius Xavier,” says Amah.

I nod. “I have just arrived back at my office from a meeting with Inspector Kelley. He told me that as soon as he received the message you left with him at the station stating your suspicions of Dr Mordaunt’s assistant, he gathered a small force of men and went directly to

Xavier’s home.”

“What did you write?” asks Amah.

“I wrote that Eleanor had recognised him as the man with the dead girl. And that I’d found his monogramed handkerchief next to… you know.” I continue to read. “I do hope that what I am about to relay to you does not leave you faint, but the Inspector and his men found

Mr Xavier stabbed to death. They are convinced he lured another prostitute to mutilate but was most likely overwhelmed and murdered in turn by her or an accomplice. Well, that much is true,” I say, wryly. “There was sufficient evidence in his house, of which I won’t sully your senses, to prove that he was indeed the man killing those poor, defenceless women. Also, they found a curious diary, which they assume is a list of past or future victims.” I look up at

Amah. “He must mean Mordaunt’s diary. Dearest Mrs Chancey, although I earnestly apologise for the grief caused by poor Miss Carter’s death, I am truly thankful we retained your investigative services or this despicable affair would not be over. Please find enclosed a promissory note. I think you will find that Mr Carter has been quite generous. I hope to visit you soon etc etc.” I stare down at the cheque, my face blank. “Well paid for my excellent service, yet again.”

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Amah takes the note from me, and her eyebrows lift as she reads the amount. “Very generous. That will take care of the servants’ wages for the next six months. I will put this note on your desk with your other banking tasks.”

I watch my mother, dark and tightly bustled, walk from the room. How horrified society would be if it found out that the celebrated Heloise Chancey, Paon de Nuit, is a true exotique. Not that it matters who I am actually – what matters is what society thinks I am.

I glance across the room at my portrait, at the façade I call Heloise Chancey. It’s just one of my many roles. Can I really leave it all behind? I have my independence, thanks to my shrewdness with the riches that have come my way, but do I have any real choices that are not already carved out for me?

Maybe it’s time to give up the pretence. The artifice of allure, and the constant pursuit of luxury, is exhausting.

Although, doesn’t pleasure count for a lot? Thinking back to the stupor and pestilence of poverty that was once mine, I know that it does.

There’s a knock at the front door and peeking out the window I see that Sir Ripon and his friend, the rich Mr Burke, have come to visit. The word’s already out that Heloise

Chancey is receiving guests again. I rustle over to a small, cloisonné mirror on the mantelpiece and pinch my cheeks and neaten my hair. It’s time to perform.

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Exegesis

A Nemesis in Crinoline: the Eurasian courtesan as sleuth

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Chapter 1 Introduction

Playing Devil’s Delight is a crime novel in which the Eurasian courtesan, Heloise, acts as sleuth. The accompanying exegesis ‘A Nemesis in Crinoline: the Eurasian courtesan as sleuth’ investigates how the crime fiction narrative form is extended with a re-imagining of a Eurasian courtesan of the Victorian period. The research demonstrates ways in which I, through a form of ventriloquism, can ‘re-script’ the Eurasian courtesan of the nineteenth century in order to investigate how neo-Victorian crime writing addresses complex notions of race and gender. Crime fiction serves as a vehicle to explore these positions in my novel Playing Devil’s Delight via the role of Heloise, who is a Eurasian, a courtesan and a female detective. In the very process of re-scripting the fictional portrayal of the courtesan (usually love interest or victim) and the fictional Asian (usually sinister and criminal) in a crime novel set in the nineteenth century, I hope to displace and disrupt representations of the crime fiction protagonist. As Cathy Cole (2004) argues, the crime novel’s narrative structure offers authors the opportunity to deconstruct stereotypical images, not only of the ‘goodies’, but also of the ‘baddies’ (p. 14). The exegesis, in the service of investigating narrative form, examines scholarship on feminist crime fiction, transgression theory and neo-Victorian studies. The project therefore re-imagines ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, and through this critical and creative process, develops a number of writing strategies that are useful in addressing or extending genre boundaries. In brief, these strategies relate to incorporating the ventriloquist concept (as below); negotiating a doubling of the narrative; introducing the sub-protagonist; and attention to authorial intent and ethical impulse.

In recent decades there has been a growing scholarly interest in both neo-Victorian fiction and crime fiction featuring a female sleuth. Stephen Knight (2010) writes of the dramatic increase in the number of critics who are attracted to the crime genre: In recent years work of this kind has been expanding, apparently because of the growth of theory-informed approaches in literary criticism and the worldwide move of English studies towards a broader curriculum – not only are there now hundreds of

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courses on crime fiction in universities and colleges, but the impact of feminism, cultural studies, postcolonial and ethnic studies is clear… (p. xi). My project expands on existing critical studies in crime fiction. Lucy Sussex (2010) argues that an examination of crime fiction’s ‘founding mothers’ (female writers) is long overdue (p. 3), while for Maureen Reddy (1988, p. 9), there is a need for a feminist tracing of the history of crime fiction to acknowledge literary foremothers (fictional female detectives). Creative writers are responding to this interest by presenting different dimensions of the protagonist. In this project I am contributing to and extending a tradition of existing research in the area of neo-Victorian crime fiction featuring a female detective. As a female writer of crime fiction and an author of Eurasian heritage, I am especially interested in re- imagining the figure of Eurasian courtesan in order to reveal gendered and racial discrepancies. My original contribution to scholarship in this area includes the identification of six strategies for writing a neo-Victorian crime novel that challenges enduring depictions of the ‘sinister Asian’ and courtesan. I use the term ‘re-scripting’ to define the neo-Victorian studies process followed in this project. The method of ‘re-scripting’ fictional depictions of the courtesan or Asian is an adaptation of the concept Helen Davies (2012) refers to as ‘ventriloquist metaphor’, a “complex juncture between the ‘speaking through’ and ‘speaking for’” Victorian subjects (p. 4). The concept of ‘ventriloquism’ is important to this project from a theoretical and creative writing perspective. Davies (2012) argues that a neo-Victorian ‘ventriloquism’ can be understood in terms of Judith Butler’s work on the subversive transformation possible in the very process of repetition, a concept that is examined further in the Methodology chapter. For Davies, a “ventriloquial rethinking of Butler’s theories is relevant to the ‘re-voicing’ and ‘re-scripting’ of Victorian discourses on ventriloquism in neo-Victorian texts” (pp. 20-21). Davies writes that the ‘ventriloquist metaphor’ has the ability to ‘talk back’ and ‘speak through’ subjects, “offering multiple possibilities for voice, agency and intention” (p. 7). She states that the ‘ventriloquist metaphor’ can, depending on authorial intention, also challenge patriarchal, Eurocentric power imbalances (p. 6). The depictions of Heloise (Eurasian courtesan) and Amah Li Leen (Asian resident of London) represent the ventriloquist practice of speaking through subjects. Disruptions to subjectivity, Heloise’s in particular, signify the neo-Victorian tension between ‘ventriloquist’ and the puppet, or ‘original’ and ‘copied’ voice (Davies, p. 8) which is further explored in the Creative Reflection below (Chapter 6). Within this framework of ventriloquism, I extend Davies’ use of the term ‘re- scripting’, by placing the emphasis on the writing strategies at play in ‘re-imagining’ a

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/228 nineteenth century female detective. In my work, the term ‘re-scripting’ involves the ‘re- imagining’ of the ‘sinister Asian’ of various fiction set in the Victorian period, and the ‘re- imagining’ of the figure of the courtesan as commonly portrayed in romances or tragedies. Re-scripting refers to the action involved in presenting these characters with fresh, alternative scripts, as in a play script, but also refers to work by Butler and Davies. Butler (2007) conceptualises gender as ‘script’, a discourse produced and repeated by social and cultural imperatives. Certain fictional depictions of Asians or the courtesan can be understood to represent fictional ‘scripts’, depictions also produced and repeated by social and cultural imperatives. The discourses involved in the shaping of the fictional Asian or courtesan in the Victorian period is further investigated in the Literature Review (Chapter 4). It is in this context that the word re-script is used in my critical essay; as a way in which I, as a creative writer, might challenge how women or Asians are depicted in literature— crime fiction in particular. My research indicates that generic representations of Asians or courtesans might hold inaccuracies, and I argue a neo-Victorian re-scripting of the Eurasian courtesan has the capacity to shift perceptions of both Asians in Victorian London and the gendered positioning of women. The critical essay investigates representations and narratives of the fictional female detective, Asians in nineteenth century London, and the courtesan. These representations are examined through a study of crime fiction as a genre, neo-Victorian crime writing and historical accounts of the late 1800s London as in relation to the theoretical concepts mentioned above. This work includes textual analysis of two crime novels featuring female detectives written by female writers. Both novels are set in the Victorian period, although Eleanor’s Victory (1863) was written in the nineteenth century, while Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (2013) is a neo-Victorian crime novel. In the Creative Reflection chapter, I investigate the relationship of the critical and creative aspects of this project. The creative work, Playing Devil’s Delight, is a 70 000 word neo-Victorian crime novel set in early 1860s London. In this novel a Eurasian courtesan, Heloise Chancey, is the sleuth. This novel illustrates neo-Victorianism’s negotiation between “(feminist) political aims, claims to historical authenticity and commercial marketability” (Tara MacDonald & Joyce Goggin, 2013, p. 11). I chose to write a novel set in the Victorian period for three reasons: first, crime fiction has a strong heritage in this period; second, I was interested in the figure of courtesan and her possible subversions, both literary and social; and last, because the character of ‘sinister Oriental’ finds its origins in fiction of this period. Heloise is a successful, affluent courtesan who dabbles in private detection for pleasure and extra income.

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She hides her Asian background, as the Oriental aesthetic was fashionable in the Victorian period, although actually being Oriental was socially unacceptable (as examined in the Literature Review, Chapter 4, ‘The Exotic Sleuth’). The sub-protagonist, Amah Li Leen, offers an alternative, neo-Victorian voice to Heloise’s. A negotiation of Davies’ ventriloquist metaphor allows for a multiple layering of voice in which to portray differing intent and origin. Amah Li Leen knows the social limits of being Asian in Victorian London, but will not join Heloise in a parodic performance. Heloise and Amah Li Leen, as re-scripted or re- imagined characters, contest the enduring clichéd depiction of Asians in crime fiction. Neo-Victorian studies involves a creative impulse to re-imagine or ‘re-vision’ the Victorian. Samantha Carroll (2010) argues that neo-Victorian fiction has the ability to make important contributions to social justice as it has the capacity to enhance the representation of marginalised groups through the depiction of non-normative characters. Carroll writes that in this representation there is the potential for a gradual expansion of cultural norms to accommodate a diversity of social subjects (p. 195). The ‘gradual expansion of cultural norms’ through creative writing represents the authorial impulse of this project, which is explored more fully in the Methodology chapter, Focus Texts chapter and the Creative Reflection. A writing project such as this involves a certain degree of ‘prescience’, in that I give Heloise a voice she may not have possessed, a voice that risks transforming her into a ‘ventriloquist dummy’ to depict “concerns and opinions of a twenty-first century audience” (Caterina Novak, 2013, p. 131). However, I argue that a level of prescience is acceptable in a neo-Victorian project such as this, which both re-imagines the past and is conscious of the present. Davies’ neo-Victorian ventriloquist metaphor, a form of doubling or speaking through the Victorian Other, is a useful approach in which to consider the efficacy of ‘prescience’, which is investigated further in the Methodology chapter. Also, as argued in the Focus Texts chapter and the Creative Reflection, I contend that what might appear to be prescient might actually hold some accuracy. For instance, scholars such as Kate Mitchell (2010) state that discourses such as feminism, psychoanalysis and materialism contributed to new representations of the Victorians that included social groups previously invisible or excluded, such as women, the criminal classes and non-Europeans (p. 45). In Playing Devil’s Delight, the protagonist and her mother are Eurasian. Kathleen Gregory Klein (1999) writes of crime fiction’s ability to explore issues of race and ethnicity, examined further in the Literature Review and in the Focus Texts chapter. My project involves research of the Asian population of London in the Victorian period, which is

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/230 analysed against the generic depictions of the ‘sinister Asian’ found in a variety of Victorian crime fiction and even in neo-Victorian works. My work, both critical and creative, represents an authorial intent to subvert the perception of the ‘sinister Asian’. I explore this act of re-scripting the fictional Asian in the Creative Reflection chapter. Priscilla L. Walton and Minina Jones (1999) write that a genre’s effectiveness lies in its ability to signify in alternative ways while accommodating ideologically contradictory practices without ceasing to be recognisable (pp. 92-93). Crime fiction’s familiar conventions are advantageous for a project such as this which involves a neo-Victorian re-imagining of the nineteenth-century Asian and courtesan. This re-imagining of the fictional courtesan includes traces of the past and present. In the Literature Review I investigate both the research regarding actual nineteenth-century courtesans and the discourses that might have shaped the figure of courtesan in Victorian fiction. However, the re-imagining of the fictional courtesan involves a consideration of what Marie-Luise Kohlke (2008) terms ‘sexsation’ or the ‘new Orientalism’ in neo-Victorian fiction. Kohlke proposes that neo-Victorianism, as a mode of imagining sexuality in the current consumerist, sex-surfeited age, risks developing into a new Orientalism: “By projecting illicit and unmentionable desires onto the past, we conveniently reassert our own supposedly enlightened stance towards sexuality and social progress (p. 346).” MacDonald and Goggin support this position and argue that many neo-Victorian narratives tread a treacherous line between sexual and political critique and voyeuristic impulses, which can displace the feminist pedagogical aims of neo-Victorianism (pp. 5, 6). I investigate possible displacement in the exegesis. Although I examine the sexual tolerations that are existent in Victorian works (Focus Texts) and consider the commercial aspects of portraying a courtesan (Creative Reflection), I also investigate how I, as a creative writer, can invert aspects of ‘sexsation’ through the depiction of Heloise, my neo-Victorian protagonist. Heloise’s deployment of sexuality is portrayed as ‘labour’ but also, as represented in her shifting subjectivity, as an interrogation of contemporary feminist concerns. McDonald and Goggin suggest that engagements with the historical past can, and do, continue to inform feminist thought today (p. 2). For Charlotte Boyce and Elodie Rousselot (2012) neo-Victorianism offers the past as an ostensibly safe refuge from which to negotiate and work through the concerns of the present. This contemporary consciousness combined with the creative impulse to ‘re-imagine’ the past is facilitated by the familiar generic conventions and popularity of crime fiction.

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Playing Devil’s Delight depicts Heloise Chancey as an effective investigative figure capable of extending the boundaries of the narrative form of crime fiction while providing insight into the situation of women (then and now) and London’s Asian population in the 1860s. In this way, Playing Devil’s Delight, operates as a neo-Victorian exploration of those themes identified in the critical essay. Although crime fiction has maintained key elements over time, it is a genre that also favours innovation: No detective is needed to identify the vigorous life and remarkable diversity of crime fiction. The statistics are dramatic – over a billion Agatha Christie novels sold, American feminist detectives expanding from 40 to 400 between 1980 and 2000, and estimates suggest a third of the fiction published in English belongs to the genre. Visual evidence is obvious in the large and heavily patronised crime and mystery sections in bookshops and public libraries, while the massive and still increasing output of crime stories in film, television and computer games seems to have enhanced rather than reduced the interest in literary fictions of crime (Knight, p. xi). In order to keep readers of this genre interested and engaged, crime fiction has necessarily diversified. Plot devices, locale or murder scenarios might vary or, as in the case of my novel Playing Devil’s Delight, it is the protagonist that pushes the boundaries of the genre of crime fiction. Transgression studies allows me to link the crime genre with neo-Victorianism and the re-scripted Eurasian courtesan. The theories of transgression examined in Chapter 3, Theoretical Approaches, are employed in order to understand the ‘limits’ and consequences of transgression in relation to both subjectivity and literary studies. Transgression studies facilitates an understanding of how to investigate for gendered or cultural transgressions in Victorian crime fiction. Furthermore, theories of transgression inform my creation of a neo- Victorian Eurasian courtesan sleuth who transgresses social and gendered discourses. As argued in the Literature Review (‘The Female Detective in Crime Fiction’), narratives that include a female detective, whether from the Victorian period or now, offer evidence regarding social and cultural attitudes. For Sussex, crime fiction has consistently been a space for women writers, although early female crime writers were constrained by their gender (p. 4). The narrative’s criminal transgression often echoed a rebellion against Victorian notions of correct female behaviour (p. 4). This aspect of female crime writing is examined in the Focus Texts chapter, when I analyse Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Victorian crime novel Eleanor’s Victory (1863) for what Julian Wolfreys (2008) refers to as the author’s ‘ethical impulse’ in the writing of a novel. Wolfreys’ ‘ethical impulse’ involves an

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/232 authorial subversion of the text, in which the author, such as Braddon, might extend the narrative of social subjectivity and the subjectivity of readers. This aspect of Wolfrey’s work in transgression is similar to what Davies terms as ‘authorial intention’. She writes that authorial intention might demarcate a script that is supposed to challenge normative expectations (p. 27). Authorial intention, further explored in the Methodology chapter, complements Carroll’s argument that neo-Victorian fiction offers a possible space for the gradual expansion of cultural norms (p. 195). In summary, my critical and creative work investigates how the neo-Victorian figure of Eurasian courtesan can extend the practice of crime writing. Neo-Victorian processes, informed by the work of Davies, Carroll and Kohlke, are employed in this project in order to re-script the stereotypical ‘sinister Asian’ and courtesan. Three theoretical approaches (crime fiction, feminist and transgression theory) and research involving the female detective, the courtesan and the Asian population of nineteenth century London allow me to examine the figure of the Eurasian courtesan in relation to gender and race. Theorising and analysis allowed me to develop six useful strategies central to writing a neo-Victorian crime fiction such as Playing Devil’s Delight. These strategies include: integrating new critical and creative frameworks via the protagonist/sub-protagonist, into an established genre with strong conventions; implementing the neo-Victorian ventriloquist metaphor in order to layer voice; negotiating a ‘doubling’ of the narrative through ‘re-scripting’ the fictional character; introducing a second voice/sub-protagonist; an authorial intent/ethical impulse; and negotiating a balance of neo-Victorian tone. It is my authorial intent, as a Eurasian crime writer, to write a crime fiction that shifts generic representations of the ‘tragic’ or ‘romantic’ courtesan and the ‘sinister Asian’ of Victorian London.

Exegetical Structure

In Chapter 1, I examine how the popularity and familiarity of the crime fiction format allows for a level of access for readers to consider the neo-Victorian aspects of this project, which includes the impact on women in relation to gender and race. The research demonstrates ways in which I can ‘re-script’ the Eurasian courtesan of the nineteenth century in order to investigate how the craft of neo-Victorian crime writing can reveal important aspects of the social position of women in relation to gender and race.

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Chapter 2 states the project’s methodological framework. A practice led approach guides this work and the qualitative research incorporates textual analysis and reflective practice. I investigate how Neo-Victorian studies works as both methodological and theoretical approach in my critical and creative project. Neo-Victorianism allows me to contextualise this work in relation to associated theoretical approaches, as examined in Chapter 3, including genre and feminist theory and concepts of transgression. Chapter 4, the Literature Review, initially investigates the important role of the female detective and female crime writer in the evolution of the crime genre (‘The Female Detective in Crime Fiction’). Moreover, the subversions undertaken by both the character of female detective and the female crime writer are explored for possible social transgressions. In the next section I investigate the research regarding the Asian population of Victorian London, in particular the Chinese population (‘The Exotic Sleuth’). The third section of the Literature Review includes an analysis of literature on the nineteenth-century courtesan and possible transgressions of social and spatial boundaries (‘The Courtesan as neo-Victorian detective’). The Literature Review indicates that prior studies have not addressed the nuances of race and gender possible in this genre. The textual analysis undertaken in Chapter 5, Focus Texts, includes a study of two crime fictions, Eleanor’s Victory (1863) written in the Victorian period and the neo-Victorian crime novel Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (2013). These crime novels are analysed in order to reveal the social positioning of women in fiction via the role of transgressive female detective and female crime writer. In the Creative Reflection, Chapter 6, I analyse the neo-Victorian studies process taken in the creation of the crime fiction Playing Devil’s Delight. Caterina Novak (2013) writes that the writer of a neo-Victorian work is conscious of marketability, historical authenticity and the political agendas of neo-Victorianism (pp. 130- 131). Accordingly, I re-script the ‘sinister Asian’ of crime fiction and the courtesan of Victorian fiction in order to address certain racial and gendered issues.

Key concepts

Eurasian: a person of mixed Asian and European ancestry. In my creative work, Amah Li Leen has equal parts Chinese and British heritage, while Heloise is three-quarters British, a quarter Chinese. Anxieties regarding inter-racial sex and the resulting Eurasian children existed in nineteenth century Britain, explored further in the literature review.

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Hybridity: this thesis and creative work examines the hybridisation of self (sexuality, race and class) and the hybridisation of literature (neo-Victorian and Victorian; feminist crime fiction and traditional crime fiction).

Neo-Victorian studies: provides a strategic forum to analyse the contemporary creative engagement with the Victorian period that might involve historical remembrance, revision or reconstruction. Neo-Victorian work includes a historical authenticity combined with a contemporary consciousness.

Neo-Victorian Ventriloquism: Helen Davies’ (2012) concept of re-voicing/re-citation to subvert the heteronormative and patriarchal aspects of Victorian ventriloquism in literature.

Sexsation: a term used by Mari-Luise Kohlke (2008) to theorise a “new Orientalism’, a mode of imagining sexuality in the Victorian period from our own supposedly enlightened stance. Sexsation involves neo-Victorian works that are positioned as sexual or political critique but include voyeuristic impulses.

Crinoline: used in this thesis to describe a tone found in fiction that can be ascribed to historical romance.

Genre: generic identities in popular fiction. Involves familiarity with the type of fiction being written/read—in this case, crime fiction.

Scope

The term ‘crime fiction’ is used in this project to encompass detective fiction, police procedurals and all the other forms to be found in this genre. Maurizio Ascari (2007) uses ‘crime fiction’ as an umbrella term, explaining that Julian Symons considers this the sensible way of naming a complex literary form (p. 6) and Stephen Knight argues that despite all the differences that can be found within this genre, there is always a crime (p. 7). As Cole writes: “Should a definition of crime fiction include political thrillers, murder mysteries, tales of crimes against humanity or the environment, stories that reveal the perpetrator in the opening

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/235 pages and those which leave a reader guessing? Yes, one answers confidently, and many, many more—subgenres and subgenres of subgenres” (p. 10-11). My project enters into the territory of sub-genres and examines attempts, mine and others, to stretch boundaries of neo- Victorian crime fiction.

For the purpose of this study the focus texts are taken from the period between 1860 and 1880. This decision was taken to examine the early stages of the genre of crime fiction, the role of the earliest fictional female detectives and how the representations transgressed contemporaneous crime narratives. This analysis informs the way in which Heloise, as transgressive figure, can negotiate the social and cultural restrictions in place before the New Woman movement.

The creative work is not categorised as historical fiction as I am not writing about real people or real events. Historical fiction is creative work with a setting located in the past which relates accurate details from the chosen period. My work, although set in the nineteenth century, is conscious of contemporary concerns which are not necessarily depicted in historical or Victorian novels.

In this project the terms ‘neo-Victorianism’, ‘neo-Victorian approach’ or ‘neo-Victorian studies’ refer to the critical approach undertaken in the creation of the crime novel. In his paper ‘What is Neo-Victorian Studies?’ Mark Llewellyn writes that: In regularly bringing together a critically-inflected creative writing strand with a creatively-aware criticism, it opens up different interpretations which, while they cannot and do not claim to be all-encompassing reconfigurations of the Victorian, can nevertheless illustrate conflict and difference through their very act of undermining the stability of a presumed hegemonic historical narrative (p. 165). However, the term ‘neo-Victorian’ is also a way of describing the sub-genre to which novels such as Sarah Water’s Tipping the Velvet or Tasha Alexander’s And Only to Deceive belong. Nadine Muller argues that: “fictional revisitings of the nineteenth century by authors such as A. S. Byatt, Michel Faber, Amitav Ghosh, and Sarah Waters… have begun to form part of a neo–Victorian canon that, since the turn of the new millennium, has begun to receive significant critical attention” (2012, p. 99).

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In my critical work below there is, at times, a conflation of the terms Asian and Chinese. Heloise Chancey, my protagonist, and her mother Amah Li Leen are Eurasian, of Chinese descent. However, these characters do not originate from China, as depicted in Amah Li Leen’s narrative. As explored in ‘The Exotic Sleuth’ (Literature Review, Chapter 4) many Chinese in London may not have been recognised as of Chinese descent simply because they had made their way to Europe via another Asian country, usually in South East Asia. In order to understand the position of the Chinese, as an Asian migrant group—as Other—I also consider the figure of Asian (Malay, Lascar, half-castes and so on) portrayed in Victorian literature. For the same reason, some of the research regarding the Chinese in London has been undertaken under the umbrella of ‘Asian’.

In my project there is also at times a conflation of the terms courtesan and prostitute. Even though Heloise is a high-class courtesan with many advantages unattainable to the lower- class prostitute, she remains a sex-worker. Her transgressions at the interstices of the social, spatial and gender boundaries of Victorian London are similar to those of other prostitutes. Therefore, much work regarding the transgressive possibilities of the prostitute in Victorian London can also be examined in relation to the position of Heloise Chancey, courtesan.

Post-colonial studies and work by Michel Foucault, such as transgression theory and discourse theory, are instanced throughout this project and are implicated in much of the critical work on neo-Victorianism. However, as this is project is not a Foucauldian or post- colonial analysis I have not devoted a particular section to these frameworks. The focus of this exegetical project is related to creating a neo-Victorian crime fiction.

Research question

How can writing a neo-Victorian crime novel, in which the protagonist is a Eurasian courtesan, extend the practice of contemporary crime fiction via the process of ventriloquism? This project argues that in using neo-Victorian approaches, the writer is able to address complex notions of race and gender.

What strategies support the process of writing a neo-Victorian crime novel such as this?

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Chapter 2 Methodology – Practice led neo-Victorianism

Practice led research is an appropriate methodology for a creative project that engages with literary scholarship in the genre of crime fiction, as “practice raises questions that can be investigated through research, which in turn impacts on practice” (Gray & Malins, 2004, p. 1). My project incorporates a creative reflection, in which a reflective journal was maintained, clarifying how the creative work was informed by the research (Chapter 6). The project is qualitative research incorporating textual analysis and reflective practice. The reading of genre fiction, newspapers and journals of the period as well as current scholarly literature forms the background to this study of the courtesan, the Victorian- period Asian population of London and female detective. In this context, textual analysis is the primary methodological approach. This analysis includes two focus texts, Eleanor’s Victory and Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, both of which are useful exemplars for the application of Julian Wolfreys’ process of analysing texts for transgressions (Chapter 5) in a feminist and neo-Victorian theoretical framework. In this way, Neo-Victorianism, as well as serving as a theoretical approach in this project, is used as a methodological approach for my critical and creative work. Neo-Victorianism, as creative process, is pertinent to how I ‘re-script’ the character of Asian courtesan in a crime novel.

Neo-Victorian Studies as Conceptual Framework

As stated above, a neo-Victorian approach functions as both methodological process and theoretical framework. Neo-Victorianism, as a methodological approach, explains the craft process in writing a novel such as Playing Devil’s Delight. As a theoretical approach, neo- Victorianism allows me to investigate texts for social or generic transgressions. Mark Llewellyn (2008) argues that neo-Victorianism “is as much about criticism and critical thought as it is about the creative, re-visionary impulses towards the historical” (p. 179): Neo-Victorianism offers this as a critical paradigm precisely because it blurs the distinctions between criticism and creativity, with each becoming a reflection on self and other, producing a sense of what I term ‘critical f(r)iction’ in the knowing and historicised, critical and scholarly perspective contained within the fictional text (pp. 170-171).

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Critics such as Marie-Luisa Kohlke (2008) have shown that historians and theorists of crime regularly return to nineteenth century work (p. ii) and both Kohlke and Mark Llewellyn (2008) state that neo-Victorianism is a useful way to study the legacies of nineteenth century thought especially in relation to social discourse (Kohlke, pp. iii & Llewellyn, p 170). Neo-Victorian studies does not argue that historical fiction is of equal validity to historical narrative, but that “neither is valid without the recognition of the fabrications of history as process, history as narrative and the historical as an imaginary configuration and combination of critical and creative thought” (Llewellyn, p. 180). According to Dana Shiller (1997) neo-Victorianism is acutely aware of both history and fiction as human constructs, repudiating traditional boundaries between historical fact and fiction, and uses this awareness to rethink form and content (p. 540). The exploration of alternative possibilities in the past, which are suggested by present knowledge, extends historical narratives (p. 547). For Shiller, this ability to extend historical narratives means that neo-Victorianism can explore the past in ways that are more substantive than merely appropriating its fashions: Neo-Victorian fiction, then, is not simply a pastiche of popular mental images of Victoriana: corsets, overstuffed furniture, and highly polished silverware designed to satisfy contemporary nostalgia for a more opulent look…Both narrativized history and fiction invariably reshape the past in the light of present issues (p. 546). The scholarly critiques noted above suggest that the theory of neo-Victorianism offers a rewarding framework in which to create a crime novel set in Victorian London. My work, both creative and critical, is informed principally by Helen Davies’ (2012) ‘ventriloquist metaphor’ with reference to Kohlke’s (2008) ideas on the new Orientalism, or ‘sexsation’ and Samantha Carroll’s (2010) work on neo-Victorianism as postmodern revisionary critique. Carroll’s central proposition in her essay, ‘Putting the ‘Neo’ Back into Neo-Victorian: The Neo-Victorian Novel as Postmodern Revisionist Fiction’ is that neo-Victorian fiction serves two masters—the ‘neo’ as well as the ‘Victorian’; that this homage to the Victorian era and texts is enacted in combination with a postmodern revisionary critique. Christian Gutleben (2001) suggests that neo-Victorianism capitalises on the Victorian novel’s continuing popularity and that a ‘certain commercial orientation’ upholds the neo-Victorian novel and that such opportunism often comes at the expense of a higher intellectual purpose (p. 183; Carroll, p. 176). Carroll, however, argues that neo-Victorianism need not be merely nostalgic and retrograde (p. 176); that it is, chiefly, a contemporary genre (p. 179). Neo- Victorian writers, she states, can locate or restore eclipsed narratives of the nineteenth century which might complicate our understanding of the period:

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However, neo-Victorian fiction’s representation of the Victorian past is also the lens through which a variety of present concerns are examined: the interaction of advances in cultural theory and developments in postmodern criticism… and, the imaginative restoration of voices lost or constrained in the past, with repercussions for the present. Neo-Victorian fiction creatively integrates these post-nineteenth century insights into a hybrid ‘Victorian’ discourse for the postmodern era (p. 180). For Carroll, Neo-Victorian studies diverges from Victorian studies in its concern with the impact of the creative co-mingling of the present with traces of the nineteenth century. She writes that it is in this postmodern era that cultural studies and postmodern theory colour neo- Victorian fiction (p. 181) so that the neo-Victorian novel has become an “emergent literary category that triangulated history, fiction and postmodern critical thought” (p. 182). My work, both creative and critical, engages with a co-mingling of history, crime fiction and a protagonist who represents a modern consciousness. I explore how the neo-Victorian courtesan sleuth can appropriate a strategy of agency that subverts power regimes through a variety of authorial choices. There are differing arguments about neo-Victorianism’s function as a subversive methodology in which power can be assigned to previously marginalised groups. Critics such as Gutleben have questioned the efficacy of neo-Victorianism’s subversive practices which, he argues, has become institutionalised thereby losing its impact and intent (p. 172; Carroll, p. 190). However, Carroll asks if this criticism of the postmodernist impulse in Neo-Victorian fiction is, “after all, just a way to usher postmodernism to the door when it still has revisionary work to do?” (p. 190). Carroll maintains that a text needs to be viewed as a constructed form within particular discourses which demonstrates power relationships between different social groups. Furthermore, Carroll writes that “in the current rhetoric, the surest means of dismissing liberal revisionism is to consign it to the trash-heap of ‘political correctness’” (p. 191). Equating postmodernism with the politically correct creates a convenient shorthand for dismissing issues of representative justice as just the latest left-wing fad (p. 192). Carroll states that according to this reasoning, with which she disagrees, people from formerly marginal groups—such as non-white, non-heterosexual and non-male—have gained sufficient mainstream acceptance, so that the neo-Victorian fictional practice of centralising such figures is no longer controversial. She contends that this recoil from ‘political correctness’ has the effect of falsely assigning marginal subjects a political sovereignty they simply do not possess (p. 194). In exploring ‘recognitive justice’, which claims that the most damaging injustices are ‘cultural or symbolic’, Carroll writes that neo-

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Victorian fiction makes an important contribution to social justice as it has the capacity to enhance the representation of marginalised groups: If some neo-Victorian writers’ use of formerly marginalised characters as protagonists has indeed become ‘conventional’, this conventionality has not been converted into actual political representation, or even into the recognition of some basic human rights. Yet, the centralisation of non-normative protagonists in neo- Victorian fiction participates in the gradual expansion of cultural norms to accommodate a diversity of social subjects, with the potential to advocate for transformative changes to the political equality of such subjects beyond the narrative (p. 195). Carroll’s work is representative of what Julian Wolfreys refers to as the authorial ‘ethical impulse’ to re-vision—or what I call ‘re-script’—marginalised figures. My position is that in re-scripting the situation of the fictional Asian or courtesan of the Victorian period there is a capacity to shift perceptions of Asians in crime novels and question contemporary feminist ideas. Helen Davies’ (2012) theory, examined below, of the ‘ventriloquist metaphor’ informs my process of re-scripting depictions of the Asian or courtesan of the Victorian period. Marie-Luise Kohlke (2013) states that tropes of doubling or ‘speaking through’ the Victorian Other are clearly in evidence in neo-Victorian fiction from the mid-twentieth century but that problems or concerns relevant to this form of ‘ventriloquism’ need to be investigated (p. 189). For Caterina Novak the problem with this form of ‘ventriloquism’ lies in the markedly modern vocabulary and freedoms with which neo-Victorian fictional characters are endowed (p. 126). She argues that while a writer of feminist neo-Victorian fiction undeniably gives voice to those who have been marginalised in the Victorian period, she also “gives them a voice they would never have possessed and risks transforming them into faux-Victorian ventriloquist dummies for the concerns and opinions of a twenty-first century audience” (p. 131). This ‘prescient’ aspect of the neo-Victorian novel is examined in the reflective practice chapter (Chapter 6) and the Focus Texts chapter (Chapter 5; ‘How Kitty Peck informs Heloise’; ‘Kitty Peck, Eleanor Vane and Orientalism’), where I explore how to create a protagonist who is true to her ‘contemporary’ self and her ‘Victorian’ self. I argue that a level of prescience is appropriate in a novel such as Playing Devil’s Delight, as it is not simply a historical novel, but a neo-Victorian work, which favours a contemporary consciousness. According to Helen Davies, there has been a lack of engagement with the term ‘ventriloquism’ within neo-Victorianism, and that the aim of her work is to establish the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/241 position of a ‘ventriloquism metaphor’ that offers neo-Victorian re-voicings of the Victorian era. In existing academic commentaries, ventriloquism might be either a ‘subversive’ or ‘conservative’ enterprise. It might challenge a patriarchal, heteronormative and eurocentric discourse of history, but it also risks repeating it (Davies, p. 6). For Davies, neo-Victorian ventriloquism cannot simply be dismissed as an ‘ethically suspect’ practice (Kohlke, p. 190- 191) and her ideas regarding ‘ventriloquism’ in neo-Victorian fiction in her book Gender and Ventriloquism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Fiction (2012) are pertinent to this study. Davies argues that the Victorian period is a significant era in the history of ventriloquism (p. 7). A vital aspect of this history of ventriloquism is that it becomes evident that to be ‘ventriloquized’ repeatedly manifests as a feminised condition, whereas the agency of ‘voice’ and ventriloquial prowess is linked to masculinity—a gendered power imbalance between the masculine ‘ventriloquist’ and the feminised puppet. If certain Victorians had no voice, as many commentaries on neo-Victorianism suggest, what are the ethical stakes at play in contemporary authors providing these suppressed and imagined lost voices? Even with benevolent intentions, the initial ‘silencing’ of Victorian subjects is surely compounded by this ventriloquist process; there is no dialogue, no exchange, only neo-Victorianism talking to itself (p. 6, 7). However, Davies’ study offers an alternative vision of this ventriloquist metaphor: “What will become apparent is a crucial uncertainty as to the origin of voice. I want to propose that ‘ventriloquism’ can actually be a ‘talking back’ and ‘speaking through’ of subjects as opposed to objects, offering multiple possibilities for voice, agency and intention that cannot be simply reduced to a finite dichotomy of power” (p. 7). Davies explores a possible strategy for understanding the implications of a neo- Victorian ventriloquist metaphor in an examination of work by Judith Butler: “My analysis suggests that these ‘repetitions’ of ventriloquial texts can be read, in Butler’s terms, as ‘re- citations’ of the script of gender and ventriloquism that subversively ‘talk back’ to visions of Victorian ventriloquism” (p. 8). It is through ‘re-citations’ such as this that an examination can be made of hierarchical relationships between ‘ventriloquist’ and the puppet, or ‘original’ and ‘copied’ voice, both in terms of literary production and in terms of gendered models of ventriloquism. In Gender Trouble; Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Butler (1990) argues that gender is performative, that it is “the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural source of being” (p. 45). Performative gender is not an isolated act, but a continuous, compulsory repetition. Davies writes that the essential issue in Butler’s

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/242 theory of performative gender is that the emphasis on gendered construction does not suggest that gender has an element of choice and can be easily cast aside, but that the ‘constructedness’ emerges as a deeply rooted social, cultural and psychic phenomenon (p. 26). However, becoming, or being, a woman is an ongoing discursive practice, open to intervention and resignification (p. 9; Butler, p. 45) and for Davies the implications of this potential for ‘resignification’ are important, that the ‘acts’ constructing gendered identity can be performed differently or subversively. Butler argues that “gender is an “act,” as it were, that is open to splittings, self-parody, self-criticism, and those hyperbolic exhibitions of “the natural” that, in their very exaggeration, reveal its fundamentally phantasmatic status (p. 187). Deviations from this script of heteronormative gender—‘performance’ as opposed to ‘performativity’—can serve to expose the constructed nature of gender identity and alter the script the subject enacts or recites (p. 9; Butler, 2002, p. 189). Davies identifies the difference between ‘performativity’ and ‘performance’ in Butler’s work: There is thus a distinction to be made between the ‘performative’ as the compulsory, restrictive script of gender that all subjects must recite and ‘performance’ as the expression of the subject’s agency to alter these repetitions, to produce a subversive transformation in the very process of repetition. I argue that it is this tension between repetition and transformation that is so relevant [to] the neo-Victorian texts…” (Davies, p. 10). In relation to her own work, though, Davies asks how we are to judge when a performance is subversive of the heteronormative construction of gender and when it is just a recapitulation. She writes that according to Carole-Anne Tyler, the difference in distinguishing between gendered performance as subversive repetition and a representation of gender merely repeating the script is represented in the author’s intentions. Authorial intention might demarcate a performance that is supposed to challenge heteronormative, patriarchal expectations but the success of such a performance may also be dependent upon the audience’s interpretation (p. 27): “How will a subject—whose very existence as a subject is dependent on regulatory power regimes—appropriate a strategy of agency from within those power regimes to attempt to subvert those power regimes?” (p. 26). In my creative work I explore how the neo-Victorian courtesan sleuth can appropriate a strategy of agency that subverts power regimes. I have also extended Davies’ ventriloquist metaphor to include an investigation of the subversions that might be possible when the Asian character performs as both Oriental and Orientalist. The idea of ‘authorial intention’ speaks to Julian Wolfreys’ work regarding the creative writer’s ‘ethical impulse’, which is examined in the section on

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/243 transgression theory (Theoretical Approaches, Chapter 1) and more intensively in the Focus Texts section (Chapter 5). Authorial intent is pertinent to both my creative practice (Creative Reflection, Chapter 6) and to the textual analysis component of this thesis (Chapter 5). Davies argues that even if the script of gender is prescribed and recitation compulsory, a sense of agency can become manifest within the possibility of altering the recitation—in terms of ‘talking back’ or performance. Her broadened view of the ventriloquist metaphor is about the potential for repetition with a difference (p. 30). This understanding of ventriloquism provides a strategy for representing and articulating Butler’s ambiguous excursions between performance and performativity, intention and interpretation, subversion and reconsolidation, agency and subjection… There is a space for multiple ‘voices’ and various intentions; a continuum between agency and constraint, original and copy, that does not have to be just one or the other but can articulate both at the same time (p. 31). This multi-voiced exchange takes into account Victorian texts, neo-Victorian texts and also neo-Victorian criticism: “Encompassing both the repetitions and the subversive transformations of Victorian scripts, thinking ventriloquially about neo-Victorianism allows space for ambiguity of authorial intention and reader interpretation and can articulate subversion within limitations” (p. 35). Davies’ ventriloquist metaphor represents the method in which I endeavour to re-imagine the position of the Eurasian courtesan in Victorian period London. Although there is, necessarily, reconsolidation and repetition in representing a courtesan detective, I alter the re-citation—I re-script—this character in a process similar to that of Davies’ ventriloquist metaphor. In the very process of re-writing the figure of courtesan (usually love interest or victim) and the Asian in a crime novel (usually sinister and criminal) I am producing a subversive transformation of crime fiction protagonist. However, in re-scripting a character such as Heloise, Asian courtesan, I also need to consider what Marie-Luise Kohlke (2008) refers to as ‘sexsation’ in neo-Victorian fiction. Kohlke proposes that neo-Victorianism as literary genre and aesthetic technique risks becoming the new Orientalism, that it is a mode of imagining sexuality in the current consumerist, sex-surfeited age. She argues that writers turn to the Victorian period to construct a substitute Other: “In an ironic inversion, the Victorian age that once imagined the Orient as a seductive free zone of libidinous excess in its literature, architecture, and arts, itself becomes Western culture’s mysterious eroticised and exotic other” (p. 352). Despite a self-conscious critique of gender, class or race relations, ‘sexsation’ brings with it the dangers of inadvertent recidivism and obfuscation. Kohlke studies the problematic position of the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/244 character of the prostitute in Tipping the Velvet and The Crimson Petal and the White. According to Kohlke, the prostitute is, despite degrees of degradation and exploitation, granted an individuality beyond their typical embodiment of sin and social evil, and prostitution is portrayed as a means of self-actualisation through performativity, an appropriated female labour, and a means of achieving economic independence. However, she argues that: such figuration articulates a questionable laissez faire policy and twenty-first century trope of selfliberation through sexual liberation, which threaten to re-encode femininity first and foremost in terms of sexuality, and thence in terms of the body and its sexual availability… This includes the notion, encoded in the picture of Susannah and the Elders in Alias Grace, that “women are always held responsible for male desire” and its consequences (p. 353). Tara MacDonald and Joyce Goggin (2013) write that the continued interest in the period as locus of feminist contest and revision hinges upon the period’s strict sexual codes and restrictive female roles but, more importantly: the contradictory qualities of the Victorian era – best represented, perhaps, by a Queen who did not advocate suffrage – seem strikingly similar to those that shape and inform our own moment, fraught with conflicting versions of womanhood, feminism, and gender performance all of which add up to very complex and often perplexing (sexual) politics (p. 3). Neo-Victorianism and feminism have always been related endeavours in a variety of historically determined ways, and these engagements with the past can and do continue to inform feminist thought (p. 1). However, they write, the aesthetic production that falls into the category of ‘sexsation’ places the feminist pedagogical aims of neo-Victorianism in question (p. 5-6). My creative work, although presenting the character of the courtesan as one with apparent agency and independence in the Victorian period, is meant to function in the opposite manner to that of ‘sexsation’. Her sexuality is represented as both ‘labour’ and outside the scope of the prevalent Victorian middle-class discourse that framed much Victorian fiction. Moreover, my character, Heloise Chancey, is always aware of the limitations of her position, both as a prostitute and as a Eurasian. Contemporary ‘faux- feminist’ representations of self-empowerment through sexuality and sexual availability are questioned in both this thesis and the creative work, revealing a feminist theoretical approach

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/245 that is further explored below in the Feminist Studies section (Theoretical Approaches, Chapter 3) and in the Creative Reflection section (Chapter 6).

This practice led project includes a creative reflection and textual analysis. Two focus texts— Eleanor’s Victory and Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders—are examined for literary, feminist and cultural transgressions. Throughout my work, both critical and creative, neo- Victorianism works as both theoretical and methodological approach. Neo-Victorianism is not simply a replica of Victorian work, but is as much about criticism and a creative re- imagining with a contemporary consciousness. Neo-Victorian aspects of this project were informed by the work of Helen Davies, Samantha Carroll and Marie-Luise Kohlke.

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Chapter 3 Theoretical Approaches

Three key theoretical approaches, that provide insight into the research question, are addressed in this chapter. First, crime fiction theory, as a context for theorising the female detective and female crime writers. Second, crime fiction is examined in relation to feminist scholarship. Last, concepts of transgression, allow for comments to be made regarding issues of race and gender specifically via the craft of neo-Victorian crime writing.

Crime Fiction Theory

Crime fiction theory is useful for this thesis as it allows me to examine the figure of Eurasian courtesan outside her usual fictional confines. First, Heloise, as the protagonist in a crime fiction, interrogates in what way a woman in the Victorian period might have had the necessary agency to be a detective. Work by Lucy Sussex, Kate Watson and others found in the Crime Fiction section of the Literature Review (Chapter 4) investigate both the early female crime writer, as well as the figure of female detective and how her evolution has influenced crime fiction. Second, a study of the Asian population of nineteenth century London, juxtaposed with the ‘sinister Oriental’ found in crime fiction to this day, reveals contextual concerns (further investigated in the Literature Review, ‘The Exotic Sleuth’ and Chapter 5, Focus Texts). Critics such as Marie-Luisa Kohlke (2008) have shown that historians and theorists of crime regularly return to the nineteenth century as a fulcrum point (p. ii). Some crime fiction elements were already in place by the late nineteenth century when Sherlock Holmes and Auguste Dupin first appeared (Stephen Knight, 2004, p. 26). The importance of early female crime writers of this period and depictions of nineteenth-century female detectives are explored in the Literature Review—Crime Fiction section. Although Ken Gelder (2004) states that novels by Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie are now used as key narrative sources within crime fiction (p. 55) Lucy Sussex argues that it is the Victorian period foremothers of crime fiction who deserve attention (Literature Review, ‘Crime Fiction’). Knight (2003) writes of the ‘the golden age’ period of crime fiction which occurred between 1913 and the 1940s. He argues that despite variety in crime fiction, consistent tropes

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/247 were apparent. Some of the key features found within this type of crime novel are multiple suspects, a plain writing style and a non-emotive victim and murderer (pp. 77-79). According to Knight, modern crime fiction in the West is modelled on this earlier type of ‘golden age’ fiction (p. 79). Similarly, Martin Priestman (2003) points out that while crime fiction has evolved it has kept some of the tropes of earlier crime fiction (p. 173). Knight (2010) argues that during the turn of the nineteenth century when the novel became a dominant form in crime fiction and women were increasingly recognised as both authors and readers, two things occurred: “death became the threat which the fiction would dissipate and writers found ways of involving readers in the operations of the story” (p. 80). For Cathy Cole (2004), “what sets crime writing apart from other writing is the way its narratives play out, the way the writer manages the process by which the reader enters the mystery” (p. 12). In crime fiction generally, and in my novel in particular, the use of clues is incorporated as a strategy for engaging readers. Knight (2003) explains that a ‘clue-puzzle’ novel makes it possible for the reader to be involved in the text and ‘fair play’ ensures that the reader is aware of each clue that the detective in the novel encounters (p. 79). Despite such established tropes, crime fiction also favours change, as does popular fiction in general. Crime fiction is ripe for innovation but also easily accessible (Kathleen Klein, 1999, p. 1; Gelder, p. 54), making it a useful genre in which to work when exploring the conceptual issues of gender and race while re-scripting the fictional Eurasian courtesan. Crime fiction draws its popularity and importance from “dynamic variations on compulsive patterns and from its own rapid responses to changing sociocultural concerns” (Knight, 2010, p. xii) which is consistent with the neo-Victorian process taken in this project.

Feminist Theory

A broadly feminist theoretical framework allows me to interrogate texts, both literary and scholarly, for gender transgressions and limitations of the crime fiction genre. A feminist approach also allows me to examine in what way I can re-script the fictionalised nineteenth- century courtesan in order to create a protagonist who is representative of the social mobility possible in that period but who also represents contemporary feminist concerns. Sarah Gamble (2006), in The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism, writes that a general definition of feminism might be:

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the belief that women, purely and simply because they are women, are treated inequitably within a society which is organised to prioritise male viewpoints and concerns. Within this patriarchal paradigm, women become everything men are not (or do not want to be seen to be): where men are regarded as strong, women are weak; where men are rational, they are emotional; where men are active, they are passive; and so on. Under this rationale, which aligns them everywhere with negativity, women are denied equal access to the world of public concerns as well as of cultural representation. Put simply, feminism seeks to change this situation (p. vii). My creative work and thesis respond to these feminist concerns via the practice of writing a crime novel featuring feminist themes. There has been critical interest in the role of female writers and female sleuths from the formation period of crime fiction (the mid-1800s) although opinions are divided regarding the efficacy of the female sleuth to enact feminist roles. Lucy Sussex and Kate Watson among others discuss the importance of early female writers of crime fiction to women’s studies and genre studies, while work by Arlene Young and others discuss the importance of the ‘imagined’ female sleuths of the time. Questions around female subjectivity and performativity are part of my creation of the courtesan sleuth. In my novel I endeavour to depict Heloise, courtesan detective, as a woman with agency in the Victorian period, but also as a character who unwittingly interrogates the limitations of a contemporary, postfeminist ‘faux-feminist’ rhetoric that continues to involve patriarchal restrictions. The effects of this market-driven ‘feminist illusion’ on female sexuality can be further examined in work by feminist essayists and academics such as Angela McRobbie (2009), Susan J. Douglas (2010) and Laurie Penny (2011). This perspective is explored in the analysis of Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (Chapter 5) and in my Creative Reflection Chapter (Chapter 6).

Transgression Theory

Deborah Nord (1995) describes the Victorian prostitute as “an instrument of pleasure and a partner in urban sprees, as a rhetorical and symbolic means of isolating and quarantining urban ills in the midst of an otherwise buoyant metropolis, or as an agent of connection and contamination” (p. 3). The transgression theories discussed below are employed to show how the figure of courtesan sleuth can cross spatial and social boundaries of Victorian London. In

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/249 this context, work by Peter Stallybrass, Allon White and Judith Walkowitz are informative for this exegetical project, together with elements of transgression theory by Julia Kristeva and John Jervis. Julian Wolfreys’ process for analysing texts for transgressions is used as a framework in the analysis of the focus texts (Chapter 5). This scholarship supports my development of Heloise, as neo-Victorian protagonist, and her maid/mother, Amah Li Leen. In The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, Stallybrass and White (1986) illustrate the transgressive qualities of the poor, ‘low’ classes and their space, and the bourgeois anxiety surrounding this sensuality and apparent pollution. These transgressive qualities are discussed further in relation to the bourgeois pre-occupation with notions such as ‘contagion’, ‘contamination’ (p. 135), ‘hybridisation’ (p. 193), ‘displacement’ and ‘sublimation’ (p. 197). They argue that “the bourgeois subject continuously defined and re-defined itself through the exclusion of what it marked out as ‘low’”, and that it is this exclusion of low-other that actually creates that identity (p. 191). Stallybrass and White examine the city scape and how the bourgeoisie attempted to maintain divisions between themselves and the lower orders. The ‘contamination’ of the streets by the prostitute was seen to threaten the bourgeois home, and “in the 1850s, the fears of the ‘respectable’ increasingly concentrated upon ‘the great social evil’, prostitution. Walkowitz (1992) writes that “as the permeable and transgressed border between classes and sexes, as the carrier of physical and moral pollution, the prostitute was the object of considerable public inquiry as well as the object of individual preoccupation for respectable Victorians” (p. 22). According to Stallybrass and White, opposition in four symbolic domains—psychic forms, the human body, geographical space and the social order—is fundamental to mechanisms of ordering and sense-making in European cultures (p. 3). Heloise, as Eurasian courtesan, can be seen to transgress all four of these domains, destabilising this hierarchy. However, as a result, Heloise finds her own subjectivity disrupted. Julia Kristeva’s theory of marginality provides a contextual reference point when thinking of the liminal/peripheral space created by transgression. Kristeva’s ideas regarding the subject-in-progress are useful because they draw attention to the marginal space in which alternative practices can disrupt and transgress the laws of symbolic order (Kristeva in Toril Moi, 1986, p. 12; Fuery & Mansfield, 2000, p. 126). Kristeva identifies the way in which the subject has the capacity for “renewing the order” in which she exists, despite being “inescapably caught up” (1986, p. 29). Jervis (1999) also investigates how the subject is both constrained and limited in the process of transgression (p. 5). Using Jervis’s notion of a ‘bounded self’ to interrogate Heloise’s subjectivity is important because, as Eurasian

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/250 courtesan, she can imagine difference and otherness, yet is only able to explore them in constrained and limited ways (p. 5). For Jervis, transgression involves hybridisation. He locates the project of transgression within the realm of the moral, revealing the oppressive tendency in Western society to exclude and marginalise that which it finds disagreeable (Jenks, 2003, pp. 8,9). According to Jervis (1999): The transgressive is reflexive, questioning both its own role and that of the culture that has defined it in its otherness. It is not simply a reversal, a mechanical inversion of an existing order it opposes. Transgression, unlike opposition or reversal, involves hybridization, the mixing of categories and the questioning of the boundaries that separate categories (p. 4). Theories of transgression are useful in clarifying how a character such as Heloise, as Eurasian detective, is created. Her identity is formed in the liminal area created by her societal and gendered transgressions, or in Jervis’s terms, her hybridised space. Kristeva’s and Jervis’s transgression theories are also useful in understanding the authorial intent in writing a novel such as Playing Devil’s Delight and the shifting position of feminism which is discussed in Chapter 6 (Creative Reflection). According to Julian Wolfreys, transgression is not binary, but changeable and constant. Wolfreys (2008) asserts that transgression is “the very pulse that constitutes our identities, and we would have no sense of our own subjectivity were it not for a constant, if discontinuous negotiation with the transgressive otherness by which we are formed and informed” (p. 1). Through an investigation of transgression theories, which includes analytical and critical engagements with literary studies, he explores transitions in the development of literary and cultural interpretations. Wolfreys advocates an analysis of different styles of literary texts. He states that transgressive actions can be found not only through the character’s identity but also through the form of the literary text; through aspects of movement/passage/temporality; and in a study of space/location (2008, p. 4). He also promotes a transgressive reading of the text from a mixture of critical styles into different topics and areas of focus (pp. 6,7). For Wolfreys, transgressions, being multiple, self-differentiating and inventive can avoid order, logic and narrative and that “they cannot be examined from the outside, for the very reason that they are of the very fabric of the historical, and to isolate them according to a master narrative is to fall foul of critical recuperation into the structural conventions already acknowledged, and

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/251 with that the belief that the image is the real” (p. 8). I implement some of Wolfreys’ techniques to analyse the crime novels in the Focus Texts section (Chapter 5). In relation to Victorian fiction in general, Wolfreys argues that it is a: transgressive, ethical impulse which proffers the signature of the age, affirming Victorian identity as one caught in an act, not of self-fashioning, but of self- questioning. For, if transgression crosses a line, it also supposes the possibility that we ask why the line had to be crossed. Imaginative sympathy, which everywhere haunts narrative of the nineteenth-century subjectivity, by making transgression the engine that generates subjectivity as this location and locus at the intersection of public and private, present and past (p. 126). An ‘ethical impulse’, which involves an authorial subversion of the text, is examined further in the Focus Texts chapter (Chapter 5), in relation to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Eleanor’s Victory. Braddon extends the narrative of social subjectivity and the subjectivity of readers by writing a novel that seemingly complies with Victorian social standards, yet in the very creation of a female detective, she contravenes both gender expectations and the masculine form of crime fiction. Transgression studies allows me to link the crime genre with neo-Victorian social and political perspectives. The theories of transgression examined above facilitate an understanding of how to investigate for gendered or cultural transgressions in Victorian crime fiction and how a fictional courtesan sleuth can transgress social and gendered discourses in a neo-Victorian crime novel. Moreover, transgressions relating to the hybrid space of Other are represented in the re-scripting of an Asian in Victorian London, which is investigated in both ‘The Exotic Sleuth’ section (Chapter 3) and the Creative Reflection (Chapter 6).

This project engages with aspects of crime fiction theory, feminist theory and transgression theory. The genre of crime fiction is an ideal tool with which to explore conceptual issues to do with race and gender. An examination of the history of the female sleuth and female crime writer illustrates their influence upon the genre. Crime fiction provides a framework in which to examine the figure of courtesan outside her usual fictional confines of romance or tragedy, while supporting a study of the ‘sinister Asian’ trope so prevalent in crime fiction. A broadly feminist theoretical approach allows for an examination of gender limitations and transgressions in crime fiction, via the portrayal of the female detective and role of female crime writer. A feminist approach informs how I re-script the figure of courtesan to represent contemporary concerns. Transgression theory, represented by the work of Stallybrass and

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White, Nord and Walkowitz, is useful for studying the position of sex-worker or Asian/Eurasian in Victorian London. Work by Kristeva and Jervis are pertinent to understanding my protagonist’s hybridised self, while Wolfreys offers a mode in which to examine texts for literary transgressions. Each of these theoretical approaches represent how I create the Eurasian courtesan as protagonist.

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Chapter 4 Literature Review

The literature review provides an overview of the research undertaken in order to examine the craft of writing about a potentially subversive protagonist and sub-protagonist who cross lines of race and gender within the genre of crime fiction. The first section, ‘The Female Detective in Crime Fiction’, provides insight into the history of the female detective and how she has shaped crime fiction. Feminist theorists have considered the efficacy of the female detective as a source of disruption to the masculinist constructs of crime fiction, which informs my creation of Heloise, courtesan sleuth. The second section of the literature review, ‘The Exotic Sleuth’, includes research regarding the Asian population, the Chinese in particular, of Victorian London. Academics, such as John Seed (2006) and Shannon Case (2002), argue that despite their small numbers, fear regarding lost labour and anxieties about interracial sex provided an impetus for an ‘imagined’ Limehouse that features the ‘sinister Asian’. An understanding of this positioning of Asians in the Victorian period is useful in order to re- script the ‘sinister Asian’ of crime fiction via my protagonist and sub-protagonist. A study of the figure of courtesan, especially the courtesan of the nineteenth century, forms the final section of this literature review, ‘The Courtesan as Neo-Victorian Detective’. Research reveals that the courtesan, despite patriarchal constraints, managed to cleave some form of independence in her time. It is argued here that in positioning my protagonist Heloise as a courtesan, she retains the necessary agency to be a detective in a neo-Victorian crime fiction.

The Female Detective in Crime Fiction

The creative work is set in London as this location has a strong crime fiction heritage and is instantly familiar as a backdrop to a murder mystery. Joan Acocella (2010) lists varying opinions for crime fiction’s lasting popularity: that for W.H. Auden, crime fiction’s appeal is religious, that a crime’s solution vicariously relieves our guilt; that crime fiction’s popularity increases during political upheavals, such as in the interwar period between WWI and WWII; and that, for the reader, social order is retained in a disruptive society with the removal of one bad person (p. 88). For Cole (2004), crime readers want to read a well-crafted and engaging narrative that threatens their complacency, although the genre’s conventions of repetition can also represent comfort and expectation for others (p. 13 & 17). The depiction of a courtesan

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/254 sleuth in a neo-Victorian crime novel plays with this sense of security at once harnessing the convention while at the same time disrupting the genre. Despite the extensive historical and theoretical work on crime fiction as a genre, there has been little scholarship on the craft of writing about a potentially subversive protagonist who crosses lines of race and gender, disrupting the masculinist/Western genre conventions that continue to dominate the form. Edgar Allan Poe’s nineteenth-century stories featuring genius detective Auguste Dupin are generally regarded as the forerunner to mystery fiction as we know it (John Scaggs, 2005, p. 32) although Stephen Knight (2004) states that some crime fiction elements were already in place in earlier works (p. 26). According to Cole, “Victoria Fuller Victor (1831-86), Anna Katherine Green (1846-1935) and Australia’s Ellen Davitt (1812-79—were writing crime narratives close on the heels of Poe (1809-49)” (p. 25). For Kate Watson (2012) early female writers were crucial in adding to the corpus of crime writing (p. 3). Her work, Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880: Fourteen American, British and Australian Authors, explores the methods female writers used to experiment with the conventions of crime fiction. She states that due to gendered literary conventions, these female writers tried to experiment with crime in other narratives, such as sensation fiction (p. 23). In Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel, Maureen Reddy (1988) argues that to find the origins of feminist crime fiction, one must look back to these gothic and sensation novels of the nineteenth century (p. 7). Reddy contends that the accepted version of crime fiction’s history as founded by writers such as Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle excludes as much as it includes. She writes that “a feminist tracing of the history of crime fiction would acknowledge literary foremothers as well as forefathers” (p. 9). Similarly, Lucy Sussex (2010) argues that an examination of crime fiction’s ‘founding mothers’ (female crime writers) is long overdue (p. 3). These foremothers of crime fiction were doubly constrained by their gender and the masculinist form of the genre. Reddy explains that crime fiction as a genre has been particularly problematic for the feminist writer because of its history. The form has been defined according to a masculinist model, “by which ‘objective,’ distanced rationality is the highest virtue; crime novels tend to celebrate traditionally masculine values and to reinforce conservative social attitudes…finally establishing a single version of reality, which he calls ‘truth,’ that we are required to accept if we are to move with the text toward closure” (p. 5). My characters, Heloise and Amah Li Leen, are not distanced, objective observers. They are personally attached to the victims, while inhabiting a similar space of Other, so that with each murder there is a shift in their subjectivity. For Sussex, writing crime fiction was an option

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/255 for the female writer who was “prepared to undertake the experiment with form and content that crime fiction presents” (p. 184). Although the law and the police force were off-limits to women in this period, it was “fictionally an area to which these female professionals struck their claims alongside the males” (p. 185). She argues that due to gender constraints of the period, female crime writers’ “subject matter of criminal transgression echoed to some degree a personal revolt against Victorian notions of correct female behaviour” (p. 4). These traces of personal transgression are representative of what Julian Wolfreys terms the ‘ethical impulse’ of the author, which is further examined in my analysis of Eleanor’s Victory, a Victorian crime novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Chapter 5, Focus Texts). However, Kathleen Klein (1995) questions if these experimentations and personal revolts in crime fiction are enough to extend gendered discourses. In The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre Klein examines the depiction of professional female detectives (both in the Victorian period and those that appeared in the 1980s) to test if a feminist perspective can be supported in the narrative boundaries of crime fiction. Klein questions feminist attempts to redefine the genre of crime fiction and reclaim it for women’s uses. She argues that this activity poses serious ideological problems (p. 5): “The feminist detective winds up supporting the existing system which oppresses women when she re-establishes the ordered status quo…Adopting the formula traps their authors” (p. 201). Klein claims that an analysis of female authored crime novels up to that point (the late 1980s) demonstrates a triumph of the genre over feminist ideology: “The genre must be completely remade, stripped of some of its most characteristic elements and reinforced by a new ideology and awareness” (p. 221). It must be noted that Klein’s study interrogated feminist crime novels that were published in the 1970s and 1980s, such as those written by Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, which were written in response to second wave feminism. Klein’s afterword to the second edition of The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre is more encouraging, however. She outlines how more recent feminist crime fiction (those from the 1990s) extends and engages with the genre and feminism by featuring female detectives who are the opposite of ‘loner’; identify with the victim or the social disruption caused by murder; do not become like a killer to catch a killer, instead choosing to avenge a victim by caring about the victim (p. 233); do not have guns and who eschew violence (p. 236). Klein writes: the role of feminist discourse—both academic and public—in these re-visions of the genre cannot be discounted…Feminist thought has provided novelists and readers not merely affirmative-action opportunities for new detectives (gay, female, lesbian,

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black, Asian, native American, etc.) but the challenges, disruptions, demands, and encouragement that assure the future of the genre (p. 241). Klein’s afterword is more in keeping with the aims and argument of my project, in that my creative work, which features a Eurasian courtesan as sleuth, both extends and engages with the genre of crime fiction and feminism in order to address gendered and racial issues. Sally Munt’s (1994) statement that a genre is a dynamic paradigm, dependent on definitions that change over time, “a cultural code in which meanings are consistently contested” (p.201) is similar to Klein’s afterword. However, unlike Klein’s earlier indictment of the feminist efficacy of the Victorian female detectives, Munt argues that: even in the genre’s origins certain fundamental structures emerge that are to be characteristic of the meeting between women and crime fiction: utopian models of female agency; an exploitation of the transgression of social mores by the employment of disruptive humour and parody; an irreverent ‘feminizing’ of male authority myths; the coded deployment of stereotypes… which signal to the reader the seeds of subversion (p. 6,7). I investigate these ‘seeds of subversion’ in various crime fictions from the Victorian period which feature female detectives (Chapter 5, Focus Texts; Chapter 6, Creative Reflection). Sussex argues that the figure of female detective is older and more varied than previously considered (p. 3). Kate Watson (2012) writes that as far as crime fiction is concerned “the decades from 1860 to 1880 have been continually perceived in terms of and misconstrued as a vacuous space” (p. 5) which elides the early female crime writers. She argues that “the genre in its fully formed incarnation, however, did not appear in a vacuum or arise only with the appearance of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes” (p. 5). Whereas studies of fictional female sleuths usually place their beginnings in the New Woman period of the 1880s, there is evidence of fictional female detectives before this period, as discussed below. The creation of these earlier female detectives indicates a burgeoning aspiration for and preoccupation with increased social mobility for women. Sussex states that the female detective was a trope that expressed anxieties about women’s changing roles (p. 3) while Watson writes that the fictional female sleuth first appeared when social commentators were pondering issues of women’s redundancy and subjection (p. 26). Fictional female sleuths such as Wilkie Collins’ Anne Rodway and Braddon’s Eleanor Vane were prototypes for later female detectives “whose privileges and professionalism are arguably a product of their Victorian predecessors’ early forays into the male-dominated world of crime” (Anne-Marie Beller and Elizabeth Foxwell, 2012, p. 75).

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Joseph Kestner (2003) argues that these proto-models defied the patriarchal constraints imposed upon them and provoked readers’ fantasies of power (p. 3). These female sleuths were always amateur detectives, but in the early 1860s two fictional female police detectives appeared—Mrs G in The Female Detective and Mrs Paschal in Revelations of a Lady Detective. Both novels were written by men, but as Kate Watson points out, “the existence of these figures begins the process of constructing a descriptive space that will later be inhabited by the woman writers of detective fiction and their female investigating protagonists” (p. 28). Given the evidence that these sleuths initiated a descriptive space it is pertinent to consider critical accounts of the possible authorial intentions involved in such works. There are differing opinions regarding the intentions behind the depiction of professional Victorian female sleuths, although it would seem they were created in the most part for commercial reasons, rather than as a reflection of a feminist standpoint. According to Nick Rennison, a common technique used by Victorian crime writers was to give their characters a Unique Selling Point: “One possible USP which rapidly became anything but unique was to make your detective a woman” (p. 18). Klein says “as protagonists and narrators, these women detectives are used by their creators to gain variety and commercial attention” (p. 17). Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogen (1981) even argue that it would be “wrong to suggest that their creation represented a serious expression of feminism; the stories that featured these two women were firmly escapist” (p. 15). Craig and Cadogen state that the characters of Mrs G and Mrs Paschal anticipated historical fact in their professional associations with the police 20 years before the force actually employed women (p. 16). Michelle Slung (1975) writes that women were not attached to the Metropolitan Police in London until 1883, when two women were employed as wardresses for female prisoners, and not until after 1905 was there a police matron (p. 16) although Klein states that women were not officially part of the police force until 1915 (p. 16). Regardless, Kestner argues that if such narratives did not correspond with actuality, they accorded with cultural aspirations and that inherently, their nature is transgressive (p. 16,17). He states: narratives about the female detective from the 1860s…are crucial pieces of evidence about societal attitudes and cultural practices. In their empowerment through professional surveillance—their enterprise, independence, resourcefulness and survival—the female detectives symbolized the gradual emergence of the model of the twentieth-century woman (p. 232).

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However, Klein argues that crime fiction, as popular literature, follows rather than parallels social change (p. 57): “Recognizing that detective fiction as popular literature is more a commodity produced for mass consumption than a valid social history makes it easier to understand that whether written by women or men, the product is usually responsive to society’s demands” (p. 5). Klein discusses the discontinuation of The Female Detective and Revelations of a Lady Detective as evidence that female detectives did not exist and were unsuccessful as a crime fiction sub-genre (p. 57) but Klein’s study is limited to professional female detectives. Other fictional female detectives were created during this period, such as Braddon’s Eleanor Vane and Collins’ Anne Rodway. I argue that, if “the product is usually responsive to society’s demands”, the early prototypes of female sleuths, as depicted by Braddon, indicate a burgeoning aspiration for increased female agency, or at least an interest in the portrayal of a more diverse sense of female agency. Moreover, there is some research that indicates the fictional female detective of the Victorian period may not have been a figment of imagination, nor just an aspiration for increased female agency. According to Arlene Young (2008), Chris Willis reveals that the Victorian female detective might not have been entirely imaginative. Willis cites four articles published in Titbits between 1889 and 1891 about women employed by private detective agencies, and a more authoritative discussion of the topic in Queen, a woman’s newspaper published a year earlier (p. 17). The latter article mentions that the number of women detectives increased during the last ten years or so, indicating that female detectives date back to at least the 1870s. Therefore, Young argues that although a female police detective may have been imaginary in 1861, the concept of a female detective working in some kind of official capacity was likely to be fixed in reality (p. 18). This fictional female sleuth first appeared when social commentators were pondering issues of women’s redundancy and subjection, and that in depicting a professional female detective, defined by her job, crime writers created a radical version of female independence (p. 26). Although these fictional female sleuths of the nineteenth century challenge the masculine hegemony of crime fiction, their presence and power is usually curtailed by the end of the narrative (Watson, p. 28). Slung states that the writers of these female sleuths often abandon her in mid-career and finish her off “at the matrimonial altar, in order to reassure the Victorian public of her ultimate femaleness” (p. 17). Sussex also writes of the limits placed upon female detection, so that “after some effective work the heroine sleuth usually collapses with stress or brain fever, reverting to passive femininity, and a happy marriage with the man she has saved. Thus the transgressive and fascinating depiction of the heroine-sleuth is

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/259 rendered conventional and unexceptionable” (p. 36). Although this type of ending frequently occurs in earlier crime fiction that features female sleuths, it was not always the case. The transgressions to this style of writing crime fiction in the Victorian period are explored further in Chapter 5 in which I analyse Eleanor’s Victory. Klein uses the fictional female sleuth of the Victorian period, Loveday Brooke, to argue that the female sleuth’s function as detective is curtailed by her femininity, and that her successes are subordinate to her traditional female responsibilities. Klein states that “the unsuspecting woman reader… finds herself in the protagonist’s position—undercut at the end. Thus, the detectives and the readers of the books in which they appear are continually reminded not to go too far, not to ask for too much” (p. 73). However, it can be seen that, given the cultural context of the period, these fictional figures go to extraordinary lengths in order to detect. As Craig and Cadogen state, the general idea behind the use of a female detective is bound to appear progressive, irrespective of how it is worked out (p.11-12). Despite Klein’s doubts, it is possible to argue for a greater diversity of representation of women’s mobility in certain fiction of the period. In this context, a discussion of the relationship of feminist critiques to shifts in the genre of crime fiction (as below) is important. One can argue that similarities between the New Woman period and second wave feminism in relation to crime fiction indicate interesting shifts in women’s social mobility. Crime novels written by women with female sleuths in the years directly preceding the New Woman period were produced in a time that reflected a growing agitation for increased women’s rights. Kestner writes that this is the period in which John Stuart Mill’s essay The Subjection of Women was published (1869) and women were allowed to study at the University of Cambridge (1869). The Married Women’s Property Act (1870) and the Matrimonial Causes Act (1878) strengthened women’s social rights (p. 16). Although the increase in women’s independence is more obvious during the New Woman period, these actions are a reflection of women’s desire for more social mobility which was already apparent in the crime fiction of the 1860s, such as depicted in sensation novels featuring female sleuths. So too can it be argued that feminist crime fiction of the 1980s was written in response to increased interest in women’s rights. Priscilla Walton and Minina Jones (1999) draw attention to the possible shifts in this genre: “It has become a critical commonplace to observe that the phenomenon of feminist activism and changes in society and gender roles occurring during that period made possible shifts in the conception of the fictional detective

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/260 hero” (p. 12). They argue that these shifts in gendered perceptions are produced by and reflected in such events as the establishment of a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in 1961; the publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique; the passage of the American Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the incorporation of the National Organization for Women in 1966 (p. 12). According to Munt: Feminist fictions are read by a community of readers who actively interrogate the texts they see as ‘theirs’ for an affirmation of sub-cultural belief, and an exploration and dissemination of ideals. The consumption of these texts often constitutes an active reconstruction of political identities (p. 199). As she argues: “each cultural shift is a ripple in the sea of representations which construct our reality” (p. 201). The effects of the historical context have been examined in order to understand the timing of burgeoning female authored crime novels with female sleuths. One of the key shifts in representation is the development of a canon of crime fiction based on patriarchal influences, as explored in further detail below. The male constructed canon formation of Victorian crime fiction blunted aspirant feminist influence. Kestner claims that much of the early crime fiction with female sleuths written by women was in the form of short stories, which are now elusive unless published as a collection (pp. 226,227). He argues that males defined the canon and wonders if crime novels with empowered female detectives were neglected or erased in the evolution of literary history: “detective fiction about female detectives is doubly disadvantaged in the process of canon formation by males” (p. 229). In a similar vein, Watson claims that crime fiction in the nineteenth century was largely dominated by masculine epistemology and male exponents (p. 15), while Reddy argues that “sexist bias masquerading as objective, aesthetic judgement is rampant in literary criticism, as so many feminist critics have shown, and the field of crime fiction is not exempt” (p. 5). Despite these disadvantages, female writers have used crime writing as a way into the publishing world and also as a vehicle in which to question and reveal social issues relevant to women. In fact, Knight (2010) writes that for Susan Rowland (2001) the genre of crime fiction, representing the Other of traditional social order, is in itself inherently feminine, and that women writers have authenticity in controlling its forms and themes (p. 166; also see Cole, p. 138). He writes: “It is true that for these writers there is very little space in which to imagine a woman detective…But the creators of the early women detectives were trying, against the tide of the male magazines as much as against social attitudes, to offer different and inherently subversive positions and values for detecting crime. The idea that they all pursued…was that crime can both threaten and be

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/261 explained by a woman as much as a man” (p. 79). For example, female authors created female sleuths who enacted their role differently from their male counterparts. This divergence from the patriarchal mode of detecting that allowed the writers and their female detective creations to transgress the form of crime fiction is studied below and is linked with the aims of my creative project. The early fictional female sleuth’s methods of investigation, whether written by male or female authors, varied from that of their male counterparts. These female sleuths only investigated crimes that were closely connected to their own lives (Beller and Foxwell, 2012, p. 74). Slung points out that: keen analytical reasoning was not their forte, and they did not thrive on empiricism. The special qualifications of these heroines lay in their vivacious energy and brisk common sense, aided by the ‘female instincts’. While on the scent, many of them were nonetheless accompanied or watched admiringly by a secondary character (p. 19). This observation is certainly true of Eleanor Vane, as analysed further in Chapter 5 (Focus Texts). However, Michael Sims (2011) argues that the creation of a female detective provided a number of narrative possibilities unavailable to male heroes. For example, sometimes the female sleuth just had to be silent and observant, carried along by the authoritarian assumptions of the male characters; some placed themselves in position of housemaid or governess in order to detect; and many fictional female sleuths used disguise and were welcomed into domestic scenes that were shut off from males (p. xiii). In the act of disguising, or masking, herself the female sleuth transgressed both the narrative of the crime novel and social expectations. Feminist theorists, according to Reddy, read the world differently from men (p. 10). For example, a woman detective might read clues differently from how they might be read by a male detective. Usually in a crime novel the detective exposes a criminal through a reconstruction of a previously obscured crime narrative. His is the privileged voice. However, Reddy argues that: what the closure of detective fiction generally won’t admit is precisely what the earlier portions of the novel rest upon: narratives, and the signs of which they are composed, are capable of supporting multiple, conflicting interpretations. Could the detective’s solution simply be another misreading?…women writers, and especially feminist women, might be expected to play around with the issue of narrative (p. 10).

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Despite this avenue of potential subversion, Reddy states that many women crime writers follow conventional formats. However, I would argue that this familiar format of crime fiction can facilitate subversive ideas within the text with methods such as the use of parody or reverse discourse. In my crime novel, the courtesan is Eurasian: the inclusion of a mixed race protagonist living in nineteenth-century London adds a further complexity to the critical and creative investigation of gender and crime. Klein (1999) in Diversity and Detective Fiction explains that crime fiction is a genre that is “well known, widely accepted [and] easily accessible” making it “ripe for innovation with authors delicately working out the balance between what remains the same and what might conceivably be different” (p. 1). She explains that a current, socially provoked innovation explored within these novels concerns issues of race and ethnicity (p. 1). She argues further that crime fiction has a wide exposure and is considered “familiar, accessible, and unthreatening by readers who might be resistant to other texts” so that authors are able now to explore issues of culture and ethnicity within this genre (p.2). According to Reddy (1988) feminist issues can also be revealed in the familiar format of crime fiction. She writes that feminist crime writing exposes an “essential subversiveness, with women writers borrowing familiar features of detective fiction in order to turn them upside down and inside out, exposing the genre’s fundamental conservatism and challenging the reader to rethink his/her assumptions” (p. 2). Munt explores how feminist innovations are complemented by the familiar narrative structure of crime fiction. She argues that “whilst the form undoubtably can foreground masculine and misogynistic structures, there is also an argument for the form being fundamentally friendly to feminists” (p. 191). Munt explains that according to some feminist criticism the standard devices of the crime novel—the central hero, the single viewpoint, the linear sequential narrative neatly closed by a natural conclusion—are masculine devices (p. 199). In Chapter 6 of this project (Creative Reflection) I explore the ways in which I, as feminist crime writer, extend or disrupt these standard crime writing devices in Playing Devil’s Delight. My novel appears to have a central hero, yet I use the strategy of the sub- protagonist’s viewpoint to intercept both the hero’s detection and subjecthood. Another feminist source of disruption to the masculine structure of crime fiction is the use of parody. Whereas Klein consigns parody to being an inane repetition of a male form, Munt states that the reader is engaged by the pull of parody, which reveals the seed of truth contained within the absurd (p. 203): “Parody has played an important part in destabilizing dominant myths of gender and sexuality in feminist culture, and we also find that it is integral

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/263 to the crime form itself” (p. 206). She explains that lesbian crime fiction relies heavily on parody to denaturalise gender and sexual roles. But for Walton and Jones (1999), simple parody does not work (p. 93). Walton and Jones argue that feminist crime fiction constitutes what Michel Foucault refers to as ‘reverse discourse’, “a discourse that repeats and inverts the ideological imperatives of the dominant discourse in order to authorize those marginalized by it” (Walton and Jones, p. 92). Feminist crime fiction creates a reverse discourse that explores positions of resistance and agency that were inaccessible to women. They contend that reinscribing and revising those prior discourses refuses stereotypical structures while revealing their contradictions, and potentially, allows a space for differential practice (p. 93). Reverse discourse, such as described by Walton and Jones, is representative of the re-scripting process taken in this neo-Victorian project. Through reverse discourse, crime fiction can both inscribe an empowered female subject and rework the conventions of subjectivity that make that position problematic: “With reverse discourse, neither feminism nor the formula is at risk” (p. 94). For Knight (2010) “modern feminist crime writers may be fighting the same battles as the formidable mistresses of Gothic and sensational fiction, with at least some of the same successes” (p. 166). The Victorian fictional female sleuth fuses “some of the most pressing issues regarding women in the 1860s and 1890s with one of the most inventive forms of popular literature of the period” (Young, 2008, p. 26). This transformation of the nineteenth- century female figure into protagonist sleuth extended both crime fiction and societal expectations. A neo-Victorian crime novel can accomplish the same fusion by investigating current feminist and cultural concerns within the framing of an earlier historical period.

The Exotic Sleuth

“So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.” (Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966).

The courtesan sleuth is already a transgressive character along gendered and social lines, yet it is possible to develop this character’s subversive and transgressive qualities further; she is secretly Eurasian in nineteenth-century London. An investigation of the Chinese community

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/264 in London is undertaken as the characters of Heloise and Amah Li Leen are part Chinese. The life of Chinese people in Victorian London is under-researched simply because their numbers were so few (Ng, 1968, p. 1; Shannon Case, 2002, p. 17; May, 1978, p. 122). Ng Kwee Choo, in The Chinese in London, reports that as early as 1814 there were official references to Chinese seamen in Britain who were mostly employed by the East India Company (p. 5). By 1851 a census of London revealed that 110 residents were born in China, which increased to 665 by 1881 (p. 5). However, this statistic does not mean that these were the only Chinese or part-Chinese residents of London. For centuries the Chinese have emigrated in large numbers, (Benton and Gomez, 2008, p. 289) especially to South-East Asia in search of work in tin mines and on plantations (Ng, p. 9). By the end of the nineteenth century a tiny ‘Chinatown’ existed in Limehouse, and most of the Chinese residents originated from parts of China, but also from Singapore and Malaysia (p. 18). Within the larger Malaysian community of nineteenth- century London, there may have been people of Chinese descent who were born in Malaysia. Therefore, they were not recorded as Chinese. For this reason, a search within the literature for other types of Asians, besides those deemed Chinese by birth, is undertaken. George R. Sims (1900) offers a lavish description of Oriental London by one Count E. Armfelt (pp. 81-86). He states that although the “maharajah who wears a diamond star and the ayah with her children” (p. 81), the solemn Japanese, the Persian philosopher and the Parsee student from the West End are all very interesting, it is the Orientals of the East End that are more striking (p. 81): The pale yellowish Chinaman from Peking who almost trails his pigtail, and whose loose flowing robes are caught by the breeze, and whose soft thick felt shoes glide silently through the streets, and his brother from Canton or Hong Kong who wears sailor’s clothes, and whose hair is neatly plaited round his head and covered with a large golf-cap… The jaunty-looking Malays, so handy with the kris and whose lips are blood-red with the juice of betel (p. 81). In describing an institution especially catering for these varied Orientals, Armfelt mentions Sumatrans amongst the list of Asians found within this club (p. 83), which is an indicator, however slim, of the presence of Indonesians in Victorian London. Stallybrass and White (1986) describe Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1812) as a popular, titillating book for the bourgeoisie. Egan writes that amongst the lascars, dustmen and ‘once fine girls’ found in the East End of London could be found ‘women of colour’ (p. 139), a rare reference to non- European women residing in London during this period.

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Gregor Benton and Edmund Gomez’ book The Chinese in Britain, 1800-Present: Economy, Transnationalism, Identity examines the small Chinese community of Victorian London. This work is a history of the Chinese immigrant in Britain, in which Benton and Gomez argue that transnational studies homogenise migrants of the same ethnic background, despite an absence of community found within the British Chinese who have become increasingly hybridised (p. 4). Ng also discusses this lack of coherence in the Chinese community of London, although his study was undertaken forty years prior to Benton and Gomez’. He argues that the Chinese do not have a close-knit community as the Chinese residents of London are dispersed geographically. He also states that the Chinese community’s lack of assimilation within the British community was due to the fact that the Chinese immigrants did not mean to settle permanently; they did not learn English; and they kept cultural ties with their homeland (p. 88). Ng maintains that one of the reasons there is not a greater collection of data on the early Chinese residents of London is because they were largely inoffensive as a community: “The reason for this apparent lack of interest in Chinese immigrants would seem to be largely that they have not appeared to pose any sort of minority problem” (p. 2). However, in the chapter “The Chinese in Britain, 1860-1914”, J.P.May examines the tension that existed between the British and the Chinese immigrants. He writes that in the late nineteenth century there was a general understanding that the Chinese—that ‘yellow peril’—offered cheap labour, which was a potential threat to local labour (pp. 112-113). This general understanding is reflected in Beatrice Potter’s comment in 1888, “The women have been fitly termed the Chinamen of this class: they accept any work at any wage” (p. 112). Angela Woollacott (2007) marks the mid to late nineteenth century as a period of belief in European superiority and a perception of mobile Chinese labourers as a threat: “As practices of discrimination were undergirded by purportedly scientific theories of social Darwinism, and the global modernist proclivity for racial stereotypes reached its apogee in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries” (p. 17). May notes that in Liverpool, British seamen offered the most organised and lasting opposition to the employment of Chinese: “They distinguished, moreover, between the Chinese and all other foreigners although, for instance, the numbers of the Chinese were significantly fewer than those of the Lascars” (p. 115). Benton and Gomez describe this British sinophobia as: a complex product of British and Western perceptions of Chinese in China itself, in Chinese settlements abroad, and in Britain. The internationalisation of sinophobia

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distinguished it from other forms of racial hatred. Anti-Chinese feeling at its peak at around the turn of the century was greater than that aimed at any other racial group (p. 288). May explains that the Chinese community’s social habits and behaviour caused further anxiety: Their addiction to opium taking was frequently remarked upon and although legal, served to underline their alien character. The most recurrent note of disquiet in reports on Britain’s Chinese was almost certainly their sexual relation with white women and girls (p. 113). As there was almost a total absence of Chinese women in Britain, Chinese men married local, British women, the result of which were Eurasian children (Ng, pp. 18,19). Douglas Jones (1979) argues that it is for this reason the small Chinese community could not stay isolated (p.398). In a letter to the Home Office in 1906, Liverpool’s chief constable explains that although there seemed to be no cause for concern regarding the Chinese community, “there is no doubt a strong feeling of objection to the idea of the half caste population which is resulting from the marriage of Englishwomen to the Chinese” (p. 115). In Chapter 6 of The Chinese in Britain, 1800-Present: Economy, Transnationalism, Identity, Benton and Gomez write about how forms of racism, such as ‘yellow peril’ and British sinophobia affected the cohesion of the Chinese community. However, Peter Schjeldahl (2011) states in his article concerning the Oriental decor created by James McNeill Whistler in 1876 and the installation of its recreation, the Peacock Room: “A mania for things Asian raged in England then, in concert with the aestheticist movement—a reaction, exalting unalloyed beauty, against the moralistic constraints of Victorian taste” (p. 128). This fascination is also reflected in novels such as The Portrait of Dorian Grey and The Mystery of Edwin Drood in which exotic, Oriental furnishings are indicative of an elegant lifestyle. Although there was a “mania for things Asian”, or Oriental, it is clear it was not for the people themselves. Edward Said’s ideas on Orientalism are pertinent. For Said, the discursive construction “Orientalism” was self-generating and bore little or no relation to the actuality of the “Orient” (Robert J.C. Young, 1995, p. 160). Said (1995) argues that the Orient was not simply ‘Orientalized’ as a necessity of imagination, but that “the relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (p. 5).

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In striving to find evidence of a possible Asian background for Heloise and Amah Li Leen, novels set in the Victorian period and written in the Victorian period were examined for traces of Asian inhabitants of London. In nineteenth-century novels such as Charles Dickens’ (1870) The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the protagonist wakes up in a room with a Chinese and a Malay man, all the worse for wear from opium use (p. 3). The woman who prepares the opium assures him she is better than old “Jack Chinaman” across the way (p. 4). Watson is urgently called to an opium den in Arthur Conan Doyle’s (1988) The Man with the Twisted Lip, originally written in 1891. A “sallow Malay attendant” urges him to partake (p. 105), and a “rascally lascar” owns the den (p. 107). Dorian Grey (Wilde, Oscar, 2003; first published 1891) enters an opium den near the docks, where chattering Malays (p. 178) and even a “half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster” are found (p. 180). In Moonstone, (Collins, 2008) a group of Hindu dancers are positioned as the red herring, and in the Klimo short stories by nineteenth-century writer Guy Boothby (Rennison, 2013, pp. 256-287) all of Simon Carne’s servants are Indian. Foreigners are found in Soho, according to Mrs G, the Victorian female detective (Forrester, 2012, p. 123) while a Chinese bakery is mentioned in the neo-Victorian novel Tipping the Velvet (Waters, 2000, p. 185). These fictional representations of Asians in London are indicative of an ‘imagined’, Orientalised population according to John Seed (2006). Works by writers such as Sax Rohmer and Thomas Burke fed this misconception of an area that was actually quite under-populated with Chinese. Shannon Case (2002) argues that Rohmer, who wrote the Fu Manchu novels, understood: that the cultural work of placing China in the British imagination required not useful information about the Chinese as an ethnic racial, cultural, or socio-economic reality, but rather a strong image, and an idea of place. The image, an unreality concocted from Orientalist stereotypes, needed Chinatown to bring it home (pp. 21,22). In this way, both Burke and Rohmer illustrate how place can be invented and made to signify (p. 22). Seed explores the reasons for an exaggeration of Chinese ‘ills’, such as the Victorian opium den as a space for the interplay of sexuality, and anxieties about inter-racial sex and so on: “In exploring the ideological construction of Chinatown we are dealing with an imaginary cartography, which projects onto the real cityscape its own shadowy ideological antagonisms and fears” (p. 15). Maire ni Fhlathuin (2004), in studying the novel Le Proces des Thugs, states that its themes and structures reflect the discourse on contemporary crime of the time; that lower classes, women and foreigners were more inclined to commit crimes such as

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/268 murder. The final element of the narrative process is not just the discovery of the criminal but also “their definition as ‘other’ to the society against which they have offended” (p. 40). Fhlathuin argues that although only used fleetingly, characters such as the Indian ‘thuggee’ in Around the World in Eighty Days “encapsulates a narrative of crime and criminality that pervades the popular culture of the nineteenth century” (p. 31). Literary works such as these “embody the Victorian fascination with the ‘other’, which is also, of course, an aspect of the ‘self’” (p. 31). Case refers to both Stallybrass and White’s work on transgression and Said’s Orientalism to explain fictional Limehouse. He states that when the social explorer enters the East End and confronts the low-other, he is filled with repugnance, seeing a carnivalesque, upside-down image of bourgeois self. As in Orientalism, this repugnance is part of a process in which the imperative to reject the debasing ‘low’ conflicts with a desire for this Other (p. 20). The fear and fascination for this Oriental space is consistent with the fear of class contagion and the bourgeois’ anxious preoccupation with the transgression of its social borders. This form of cultural transgression is enabled through sites of hybridity. Ien Ang (2001) argues that when studying hybridity as a key concept in the study of cultural politics, “the diasporic intellectual may in fact be especially well placed to analyse this complicated entanglement because it is embodied in her own life trajectory” (p. 3). Being part Asian I have a personal interest in an examination of the discourses that affected the experience of the Asian or Other in Victorian London, and the character of ‘Eurasian courtesan sleuth’ further explores these transgressive dimensions within the creative work. For Rey Chow, the in-between space of hybridity from where cultural change can be brought about quietly, without revolutionary zeal, contaminates established narratives and dominant points of view” (Ang, p. 2). Susan Stanford Friedman (2002) identifies this ‘inbetweeness’ with three rhetorics of identity she refers to as ‘border talk’, ‘hybridity talk’ and ‘performativity talk’. She argues that theorising identity with terms such as ‘melting pot’ and ‘mosaic’ “tends to obscure the liminal space in between difference” (p. 1). She explains that ‘border talk’ refers to borders as fixed and enforcing exclusion, but also as transgressed and subverted. Stanford Friedman points out that the word ‘hybridity’ has little consensus of meaning, but it does “gesture toward the interrelated phenomena of biological, linguistic, cultural, spiritual, and political mixing produced through some sort of border crossing” (p. 3). ‘Performativity talk’ explores how the production of identity involves performative imitation at the borders of difference (p. 4). For Stanford Friedman this performativity (as distinct from Butler and Davies’ use of the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/269 word ‘performativity’) is ‘oppositional’ (within feminist, post-colonial, queer and race contexts) and indicates how a subordinated group mimics the dominant group, performs at the borders between difference and highlights the gap between the subordinated and dominant groups: “The hybrid forms produced through performative mimesis or parody in the borderlands between difference dissolve the fixity of the border in the act of transgressing it” (p. 6). This hybrid form can take one further step into transgression. Stephania Ciocia (2005) argues that Nancy (the protagonist in Tipping the Velvet) cross-dresses, which seems to be transgressive, but actually it is the disguising of her true sexual identity that is the transgression (p. 4). This notion is further explored in the exegesis as my protagonist seems to be transgressive while ‘performing’ as an Orientalist, but the fact that she is actually Oriental is the real transgression. Woolacott examines the life of Rose Quong, a Chinese Australian actor-writer, who moved to London in the 1920s. This work is about how “Orientalism – that edifice of Western representations of the East as exotic, mysterious, barbaric and sensuous, among other characteristics – could be appropriated by ‘Orientals’ to their own ends” (p. 17). However, this is a study of Quong’s success at using, or even exploiting, her actual ‘Oriental’ self, given the societal factors of the time. Heloise and Amah Li Leen do not have this luxury in Victorian London. Given the abhorrence for ‘half-castes’ and the perception of the villainous Chinese from Limehouse, Heloise needs to keep her true ethnic background hidden. Through the re-scripting of the fictional Asian who resides in Victorian London, Heloise, Eurasian sleuth, and Amah Li Leen, give voice to other possibilities. This neo-Victorian ventriloquist strategy is examined further in the Creative Reflection (Chapter 6, ‘The re-scripted Asian protagonist’).

The Courtesan as neo-Victorian Detective

The courtesan of the nineteenth century existed in the space created by the social discourse of the period. Joanna Richardson (2004) in The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in 19th Century France argues that these famous courtesans “are still worth recalling as social phenomena which could not have existed before their time, or since”. Virginia Rounding (2004) begins her book Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans with an exploration of nineteenth-century social and liminal contexts and what this meant for the women who were contained within this space but who also transgressed its

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/270 borders. This ability to transgress the class and spatial orderings of society meant that courtesans had the ability to be a part of what Frances Wilson (2003) describes as a ‘reverse sexual economy’, in that their marketability increased with each new distinguished lover (p. 28): “Prostitution was a trap into which women fell, whereas a courtesan could expect to have a career including perks, promotions, pay rises and a certain amount of job security (p. 22). In The Courtesan’s Revenge, Wilson investigates the history and background of the ‘courtesan’, with a focus on the Dubouchet women—Harriette, Amy and Fanny. For women of the lower classes there were not many options that were not the exclusive preserve of men, and that in becoming courtesans “they were able to live in a style they would not otherwise have known, to experience an independence otherwise not available to women of their background” (p. 28). In fact, written on her death certificate of 1845, Harriette Dubouchet is described as a “woman of independent means” (p. 298). Likewise, Susan Griffin (2001) writes that courtesans had the ability to amass wealth that was unavailable to working class women otherwise and that, like in other professions, the business of being courtesan was sometimes passed down from one courtesan to her child (p. 120-121). She states that “there can be no doubt that courtesans were extraordinary women, not only considering their talents but because, as Simone de Beauvoir writes, they created for themselves ‘a situation almost equivalent to that of man…free in behaviour and conversation,’ attaining, ‘the rarest intellectual liberty’” (p. 5). Heloise Chancey, courtesan sleuth, has amassed wealth and a certain degree of independence through shrewd business dealings in a similar manner to actual courtesans such as Catherine Walters and Apollonie Sabatier. Her pursuit of intellectual pleasures, such as detection or political knowledge, is enabled through the deployment of her sexuality. However, the courtesan’s sexual empowerment was not necessarily celebrated in the Victorian period. In novels or plays such as Camille: The Lady of the Camellias (Alexandre Dumas fils, 2004) or Nana (Emile Zola, 1992) the courtesan almost always came to a romantic, ignoble end. The literature detailing courtesans’ lives shows that although often this was the case, many courtesans led long, prosperous lives. Rounding argues that “any account of a life is a story, affected by the interpretation, style and point of view of the teller and all previous tellers” as happened with the account of Marie Duplessis as La Dame aux camelias, where the ‘real’ Marie “slipped into the shadows” (p. 5). In the journal article ‘The Doomed Courtesan and Her Moral Reformers’, Rachel Rusch (2007) examines this doomed courtesan in literature and argues that she is a ‘myth’. Courtesans were placed in a ‘half-world’, close to the real world but not in it, after which the “dramatists of the nineteenth century pushed the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/271 courtesan out of that liminal space and into the certainty of the grave” (p. 1). She states that these “authors shaped the role to fit the prevailing morality of their time” (p. 1). This shaping is a representation of Foucault’s discourse analysis that proposes that “human subjects and historical events are not firm and discrete (id)entities but are fragmented and changing sites across which the flows of power move” (McHoul & Grace, 1993, p. 41). This concept of the flow of power illuminates how the fictional figure of the courtesan has been positioned by the gendered discourse of the Victorian period: “This type of discourse analysis, then, has intimate connections with how human subjects are formed, how institutions attempt to ‘normalise’ persons on the margins of social life, how historical conditions of knowledge change and vary…” (p. 41). Foucault (1979) argues that it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together: We must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable. To be more precise, we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies (p. 100). The moral discourse of Victorian London affected social texts regarding women’s sexuality and prostitutes. As examined above, the character of courtesan or prostitute usually lost her life by the end of the Victorian novel, as befitted the moral and social expectations of the period. This is not unlike the fictional female sleuths of this same period being returned to domestic life once the narrative ends. Society’s control of women’s sexuality in the Victorian period meant that most women had their lives contained to a private/domestic/enclosed sector. However, the courtesan of Victorian London slips the harness of this control and navigates the public sector: “Perhaps one of the definitions of a courtesan should be that she was a woman who dared to break the rules. The rules of sexual morality gave way first, but in their wake fell other, perhaps more far-reaching barriers: of class, society and female propriety” (Katie Hickman, 2003, p. 23). Her sexuality (or how society positions her sexuality) actually forces her out of the bubble of respectability, which empowers her to transgress societal, spatial and gender lines. It is these transgressions that allow for a re-scripting of the fictional courtesan into one of the more likely female characters of the Victorian period to have had the necessary agency to sleuth in the public and private sphere.

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However, despite the courtesan’s degree of agency in the Victorian period, my authorial intent includes the depiction of Heloise Chancey as a neo-Victorian character who considers her deployment of sexuality and its resultant form of empowerment as dependent on a patriarchal social structure. Foucault states that “we must conceptualize the deployment of sexuality on the basis of the techniques of power that are contemporary with it” (1979, p. 150). Representations of the shifting struggles between a more traditional feminist objective and that of a contemporary feminism that involves a form of empowerment through sexuality is examined via the depictions of Heloise Chancey and Amah Li Leen. The relationship between neo-Victorian studies and crime fiction provides a theoretical context in which to posit a courtesan detective as protagonist. As a courtesan, Heloise operates at the intersections of social and gendered space. She represents the re- scripting of the fictional courtesan as a working-class woman with agency (albeit limited in both a gendered and racial sense) while revealing current feminist tensions which is further explored in the Creative Reflection chapter (Chapter 6).

Conclusion

Writing a neo-Victorian novel allows me to explore issues regarding race and gender while the crime genre itself is an ideal narrative mode in which to convey these findings. An investigation of the representations of women’s lives in Victorian crime fiction informs the creation of the courtesan sleuth in a neo-Victorian novel “as that former epoch has come more sharply into focus as a locus for our understanding not only of the past but of the contours of our modernity” (Vincent Newey and Joanne Shattock, Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation, General Editors’ Preface, 2004). The transgressive, empowered figure of Eurasian courtesan allows me to re-script those Othered by the social discourses of the Victorian period, therefore extending the craft of crime writing via transformed character or plot boundaries.

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Chapter 5 Focus Texts: Analysis of Eleanor’s Victory and Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders

Two crime novels are analysed in order to demonstrate how the fictional female sleuth transgresses gendered, class and spatial confines, and how this fictional figure extends the boundaries of crime fiction. Each of these novels—one written in the Victorian period and one a neo-Victorian work—is written by a woman. The focus texts are Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Eleanor’s Victory (1863) and Kate Griffin’s Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (2013). In the first section of this chapter I analyse Eleanor’s Victory. Eleanor Vane is a female sleuth created by a female writer prior to the New Woman movement of the 1880s. My analysis of Eleanor’s Victory includes an investigation of how the transgressive Victorian female sleuth and her creator may have been active in shifting social as well as narrative boundaries of the time. In the second section of the Focus Texts chapter, I examine how the character of Kitty Peck, neo-Victorian detective, is shown to acknowledge Victorian crime fiction but also represents the tensions around contemporary women’s sexuality. In the last section of this chapter, aspects of Orientalism and the ‘sinister Chinaman’ are examined in each of these novels to reveal in what way the portrayal of Asians in crime fiction has or has not evolved. These analyses provide insight into the research question by illuminating how crime fiction can be extended through craft strategies related to both the protagonist and neo-Victorian ventriloquism. As Rosemary Hennessy (2013) argues: “the reasons for reading historical sources can be taken to lie in the ideological force which they—or their narration—(continue to) exert on the present” (p. 118). This chapter includes an analysis of the texts for diverse literary transgressions, such as in relation to place, identity and temporal coherence, as exemplified by Julian Wolfreys (2008), in order to express how work such as these influence my own creative work.

Eleanor Vane a nemesis in crinoline

Eleanor’s Victory is a Victorian crime novel written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Eleanor, the protagonist, takes the role of detective when she pledges to avenge and investigate the death

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/274 of her father. Braddon was a writer of sensation fiction from the 1860s until the early 1900s. Lucy Sussex (2010) states that these sensation novels “were crime both in subject and in form, often structured around a detective search” (p. 82,83), but that Eleanor’s Victory was Braddon’s only “novel where the heroine-sleuth motif is central” (p. 93). The creation of the female sleuth in the Victorian period allowed writers, such as Braddon, to experiment with early crime fiction, which itself was in its formative, albeit patriarchal, stages. Watson argues that from the 1860s a proliferation of British women’s voices significantly contributed to the creation of a female canon of crime fiction, and that the sensation novel offered a semi- respectable venue in which women could write about crime (p. 23). Braddon’s novel, Eleanor’s Victory, was part of this canon of sensation crime fiction.

Reading for transgressions

Julian Wolfrey’s (2008) theory on the act of reading as transgression is a useful way in which to approach a Victorian crime novel. He writes: It involves a reorientation of the act of reading, so that reading, responding to those codes or traces that gesture beyond narrative or representational coherence and which exceed the limits of the form, becomes itself transgressive. More specifically, the transgressive reading is one that recognizes those traces in any text which are themselves disruptive of conventional and institutional codes (p. 12). I employ Wolfrey’s reading style in order to analyse the text for Eleanor’s social and narrative transgressions, but also to explore, or ‘recognise’, how the author possibly transgresses the narrative via an ‘ethical impulse’, examined further in the last section of this analysis. For Wolfreys, the interesting narrative transgressions are concerned with: setting; temporal coherence; identity; memory; and ethical impulse (pp. 97-126). Eleanor sets out on her adventures in Paris, where her father is living in exile from British creditors. Paris, as Other to England, allows this young woman to have freedoms of movement that would have been very strange in London. She can cross public space with impunity and on the night her father dies, she walks home alone through the city streets. After she leaves her husband, she works as a companion for a couple who are friendly yet morally dubious, and with them, finds herself back in Paris. It is in Paris that Eleanor discovers one of the villains, a corrupt French man, who suffers from delirium tremens. She meets with this man, alone, to negotiate

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/275 the acquisition of evidence. Paris, as a space of Other, allows Eleanor, and Braddon, to transgress social norms of the Victorian period. Disruptions to Eleanor’s places of residence and class identity intervene in the narrative form of Eleanor’s Victory, disrupting the novel’s coherence. Eleanor is upper-class by birth, but due to lack of money during her young life she oscillates between the lower- middle and working classes before returning to the upper middle class via marriage. She starts out in Paris; lives a bohemian life in the Pilasters, Bloomsbury, “one of the queerest nooks in London” (Braddon, p. 88); is a paid companion at Hazlewood, in Berkshire; returns to the area as mistress of Tolldale Priory; and works again in Paris. Anne-Marie Beller (2007) states that the indistinct nature of boundaries to do with self, other, private and public, appearance and reality, as well as those relating to class, race and gender mean that “the characters move between opposing roles, creating uncertainty for the reader and a shifting, unstable sense of identity for themselves” (p. 52). Of course, in this novel, it is Eleanor’s role as female detective that is the main subversion to boundaries of self and social order. Eleanor Vane is only fifteen years old when she begins her quest for vengeance upon the men who caused her father to take his own life. Once she makes the pledge to be the detective in her father’s murder Eleanor must transgress gendered and class lines to achieve her aim of revealing the murderers. Her detecting is sporadic, due to her circumstances, but in time and with the help of her friend Richard Thornton, she discovers one of the villains and plots her revenge. The period’s gendered discourse is represented in the way Eleanor enacts this role of detective, but also in the way in which this role is perceived by others. Beller and Foxwell argue that “these women detectives have inevitably reflected the dominant feminist concerns of their period in an interesting way” (p. 75), and that Eleanor is an early model in the tradition of female detectives, “a role that has always been linked to transgressive identity” (p. 74). It is her depiction as female detective that allows Eleanor to transgress gendered and class discourses. The role of the detective is usually to vanquish a threat to social order. However, the investigator’s role in Eleanor’s Victory is inverted: it becomes clear that Eleanor, as female detective, becomes Other; she is the threat to social order. Beller (2007) argues that it is the inherent contradiction of her position that disrupts convention. Beller quotes Chris Willis, who states that the Victorian detective-heroine is an anomaly because as a detective she steps out of the home to invade the strictly male domain of the law: “Through the narrative of female detection, therefore, ambiguities are exposed that demonstrate the conflicting expectations of appropriate feminine behaviour” (p. 55).

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As Beller and Foxwell point out, in earlier female detective novels such as Eleanor’s Victory, the detective only investigates crimes that are closely connected with their own lives and happiness (p. 74). Although it is true that Eleanor embarks on her investigation for personal reasons, it could be argued that this young character already had independent ideas. Before her father’s suicide she tells her friend, Richard Thornton, that she wants to become a governess so that she can live and support her elderly father (Braddon, p. 45). At no time does she discuss the option of being supported through marriage or otherwise. However, it is not until she pledges to avenge her father’s death that her ‘femaleness’ is called into question: “Eleanor, Eleanor!” cried the Signora: “is this womanly?” (p. 77). Two years later Eleanor makes it clear to Richard that she still considers herself on a quest to find her father’s murderers, and although he tells her she is acting in a foolish, as well as an unwomanly manner, she further transgresses social expectations by explaining how she would deal with the villain, manipulating both patriarchal laws and justice (p. 100). Richard is appalled and says, “You talk like a Red Indian,” (p. 101) and considers her “determined talk of fierce and eager vengeance… more natural to a Highland or Corsican chief...” (p. 104), thus firmly placing her in the position of Other. Later in the novel, when Eleanor is sure she knows the identity of the men who were responsible for her father’s death, she argues with Richard regarding her on-going investigation. Richard asks her: Supposing you can prove this; by such evidences as will be very difficult to get at – by such an investigation as will waste your life, blight your girlhood, warp your nature, unsex your mind, and transform you from a candid and confiding woman into an amateur detective… What good is effected; what end is gained? (p. 173). Clearly, according to Richard, being a detective and being a feminine woman is mutually exclusive: “You have changed very much since you were fifteen years of age… you were a feminine hobbledehoy then. Now you are—never mind what. A superb Nemesis in crinoline, bent on deeds of darkness and horror” (p. 259). Yet Richard, who voices his abhorrence of Eleanor’s detecting behaviour so frequently, is her main ally throughout the novel. In this relationship we see Stallybrass’ and White’s perspectives on power, fear and desire. They write that the ‘top’ includes the ‘low’ symbolically, “as a primary eroticized constituent of its own fantasy life. The result is a mobile, conflictual fusion of power, fear and desire in the construction of subjectivity” (p. 5). Socially, Richard is not ‘top’ and Eleanor’s social position shifts throughout the narrative. However, within the gendered discourse of the Victorian period, just the fact that Eleanor is female makes her the ‘low-other’. Throughout the novel, Richard is alternatively horrified

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/277 and beguiled by Eleanor’s detecting, fluctuating between loving her and being repulsed. By the end of the novel, when she forgives Darrell, Richard declares he worships her as she has finally behaved in a feminine manner. This is what he perceives as her ‘victory’ (Braddon, p. 397). However, by this stage in the narrative he is no longer in love with her. She is once more just the ‘beautiful young woman’ he grew up with. Eleanor herself has misgivings regarding her identity as sleuth, indicating the tensions faced by the author, Braddon, between the transgressions her character enacts and the social discourses of the day. Eleanor finds work as a paid companion, and is no longer the ‘hoydenish’ girl she once was. Finding herself almost lulled into a sense of contentment with her life in the country, she asks: “Was she to be happy, and to forget the purpose of her life?... to abandon that one dark dream, that one deeply-rooted desire which had been in her mind ever since her father’s untimely death?” (p. 116-117). Re-reading her father’s last letter, her inner struggle is vanquished for the moment; although thwarted by circumstance, she decides to hold to her role as investigator, and not to succumb to “pleasant girlish companionship” (p. 117). Even towards the end of the novel, Eleanor admonishes herself for taking such an ‘unwomanly’ course of action (p. 366), but as soon as she rediscovers one of the culprits, she determines to continue her investigation: Launcelot Darrell. This was the name that struck upon Eleanor’s ear, and aroused the old feeling in all its strength. The snake had only been scotched after all. It reared its head at the sound of that name, like a war-horse at the blast of a trumpet (p. 369). Comparing her act of investigation to both a ‘snake’ and to a ‘war-horse’ is ambiguous, problematizing the position of female detective. There is a struggle between her role as noble, avenging sleuth and her role as unwomanly transgressive detective, which is reflected in such language. This language reveals tensions, both social and textual, faced by Braddon as the creator of this Victorian female sleuth. In a study of Victorian female detectives, Craig and Cadogen state that “women sleuths, once sealed in wedlock, were dead to detection forever” (p. 17). But not only does Eleanor continue to detect after marriage she chooses to marry Monckton in order to detect, stating: “Oh, let me avenge my father’s cruel death,” she thought, “and then I may be a good and happy wife” (Braddon, p. 188). Eleanor’s role as detective takes priority to that of ‘good’ wife, thus subverting Victorian social expectations. Although Eleanor’s Victory is a very early form of crime fiction with a female sleuth, Eleanor’s actions transgress even Victorian crime fiction’s expectations. For many months Eleanor keeps her investigation secret from her husband. When he finally does find out, he thinks: “this strange purpose of her life

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/278 divided her from him, and left his own existence very blank” (Braddon, 1863, p. 286). For Monckton, Eleanor’s detecting further reinforces her ‘otherness’; which in turn fortifies his own identity. In discussing the bourgeois’ exclusion of ‘low-other’, Stallybrass and White write that the “very act of exclusion was constitutive of its identity” (p. 191). Monckton will not join Eleanor in her ‘otherness’ even though it leaves his “existence very blank”.

Braddon and the conclusion of Eleanor’s Victory

If Eleanor’s behaviour as female sleuth has shown signs of transgression up to this point, the conclusion of Eleanor’s Victory has her behaving according to contemporaneous social expectations. Critics have commented on the endings of such novels. For example, Craig and Cadogen state that: “the apparent feminism of many of the early stories featuring women sleuths is at odds with the sentimental endings which popular authors often felt obliged to append to their works” (pp. 11,12). Sussex writes that this persistent formula of the heroine- sleuth is one possible reason Braddon made Eleanor so ineffectual in the end (p. 93). Sussex states that nineteenth-century female detectives tended to follow a formula which functions structurally as part of the romance plot: “As such, the heroine-sleuth can be identified as a motif…recurrent stock figures, as predictable in their narrative role as the impossible tasks set the hero of folktale before he can marry a princess” (p. 36). Sussex asserts that detection usually begins with a male (lover, husband or brother) vanishing, causing the heroine to investigate, the detection being short-lived. She states that: After some effective work the heroine sleuth usually collapses with stress or brain fever, reverting to passive femininity, and a happy marriage with the man she has saved. Thus the transgressive and fascinating depiction of the heroine-sleuth is rendered conventional and unexceptionable (p. 36). The narrative form of Eleanor’s Victory contravenes this understanding, in that Eleanor tenaciously detects for years, through friendships, working life and marriage. It is true that she is detecting in order to avenge a male close to her (her father), but the resolution is not pursued solely in order to settle down in a domestic, loving marriage. In fact, although married, Eleanor refuses to be a ‘good’ wife until her father’s manner of death is resolved. Finally Eleanor does forgive Launcelot, but she does not give up on her revenge lightly. She asks, “Do you want me to abandon the settled purpose of my life—the purpose to which I have sacrificed every girlish happiness, every womanly joy—now that the victory is

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/279 mine…” (p. 396). When Launcelot’s mother begs her to forgive Launcelot, Eleanor keeps resisting, until it is brought home to her that her father was a forgiving man. Realising her father would have been merciful is what finally sways Eleanor to forgive Launcelot (p. 397). Therefore, even though her clemency appears to be ‘feminine’ (Sussex, p. 93; Beller & Foxwell, p. 74), Eleanor actually wants to follow through with the revenge, yet a masculine (her father’s) characteristic is what influences her decision to forgive. Of course, had she gone ahead with her revenge and not fallen in a heap into her husband’s arms, she would not be considered a ‘proper woman’ (Klein, 1995, p. 4). Due to the gendered discourses of the day, Eleanor is placed in a no-win situation. She returns to the feminine sphere, in accordance with Victorian literary conventions, disappointing modern critics. For Sussex, though, there is another possible reason Braddon wrote an appeasing ending for such a strong-willed character. Both Braddon’s novels, Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd, had led to speculation over what kind of woman had written such daring books: “Subsequently Braddon’s depictions of women were far more conventional, as if she sought to avoid comparisons between the writer and her fiction. One apparent instance of this new caution was Eleanor’s Victory” (p. 93). However, this wariness did not prevent the Spectator, a weekly British magazine, from publishing a scathing review of Eleanor’s Victory on 19th September, 1863. The anonymous review complains of the weary, flimsy storyline and how male characters are only useful to Braddon for the purposes of plot: “This is all, indeed, that Miss Braddon ever introduces a man into a story for” (p. 18). The review states that Braddon is “known for a certain sort of work… She is liked for her bad women…but even a woman may tire of depicting her sex in the blackest colours” (p. 18). According to the Spectator Braddon seemed to wish Eleanor to be as wicked as Lady Audley or as artful as Aurora Floyd, but her “hand trembled, and the heart, surely not unnaturally, seems to have sickened over the task” resulting in a weak-minded, silly and uninteresting person (p. 18). The Spectator does pose an interesting question though: “We have seen that Miss Braddon can depict the bad side of the female nature, but when her women cease to be bad, they become poor flabby creatures, talking like ‘poor Poll’, and acting like spoilt children… would Miss Braddon be able to interest her readers in a really good woman? Would she be able to associate with such a character the power, and energy, and force that characterized her ‘Aurora Floyd’?” (p. 19). However, we already know from earlier in the review that the Spectator considers Aurora Floyd an unfavourable work, that Aurora Floyd, passionate and independent, is a ‘bad’ woman. It is questionable whether a female character could retain

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/280 power, energy and force and still be considered a ‘really good woman’ by the Spectator or if in fact it is, as argued by Stallybrass, White and Walkowitz, her ‘badness’, her transgressions against what was considered to be the ‘good woman’, that lends such a female character her appeal to readers. Furthermore, the reviewer is critical of the ending of Eleanor’s Victory: “This is her ‘victory’. She triumphs over her passion for revenge. The moral is good, but it makes a very dull ending to the story” (p. 19). And if she did persist with her revenge? It could be argued that an alternative ending would be equally unpalatable to the reviewer, but for opposing reasons. Here is Braddon’s dilemma as a writer—either her female characters are ‘bad’ but at least interesting, or they are lady-like yet boring. As asserted by Sussex, Braddon may have written a more conventional character such as Eleanor in order to deflect criticism of her own moral standing, but I argue that in in the process of creating Eleanor’s Victory she writes with what Wolfreys terms as an ‘ethical impulse’ which is examined in the next section.

Braddon’s ethical impulse

In depicting the ambiguity of Eleanor’s motivations for forgiving Launcelot, Braddon plays with gendered discourses and experiments with ideas and possibilities for the fictional female detective. One of the last lines of the novel is: “And, after all, Eleanor’s Victory was a proper womanly conquest, and not a stern, classical vengeance” (p. 400). Braddon is seemingly conforming to gendered paradigms of the day yet is also possibly challenging the masculine form of crime fiction. Yes, Eleanor is returning to the domestic sphere, but in the meantime she has crossed into the patriarchal world of law and justice and feminised its resolution. These opposing representations of Eleanor and her quest keep the narrative unstable and are depicted through the actions and speech of the characters themselves, through the omniscient narratorial voice and by the way in which the author, Braddon, allows Eleanor to operate. Wolfreys argues that this “doubleness transgresses the reliability of representation” (p.120). For example, throughout the narrative there are passages that condemn Eleanor’s actions as female sleuth. These are voiced through Richard, Mr Monckton, Signora Picirillo and even Eleanor herself. The reader is told: “Eleanor Monckton had taken upon herself an unnatural office; she had assumed an abnormal duty; and her whole life fashioned itself to fit that unwomanly purpose” (Braddon, p. 201). The omniscient narrator offers this representation of Eleanor, yet Braddon, the creator of Eleanor allows her to continually

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/281 challenge gender expectations. Another example of this shifting of representation concerns the constant chastising of Eleanor for being un-Christian-like in her role as detective, yet when she finally finds a way to continue her detecting, she thinks: “My prayers have been heard” (p. 185). The representation of Eleanor as detective and her actions that contravene social expectations reveal aspects of what Wolfreys refers to as a ‘transgressive, ethical impulse’. Braddon, by writing sensation or crime fiction with a female sleuth, was already intervening in literary and social discourses of the Victorian period. In one respect, Braddon seems to be conciliatory to the social discourses of the day but in the use of the ‘doubleness’ of representation—in letting Eleanor operate as sleuth—the character is actually subverting or transgressing Victorian subjectivity. Sally Munt (1994) discusses the role of the female detective in the Victorian period as an imaginative creation which was “part of a general, strained response to the changing position of women” (p. 4) and that the self-consciousness of its transgression resulted in a “defensive type of paradigmatically feminine sleuth” (p. 4). In this way, Eleanor’s ‘doubleness’—her apparent conforming to gendered and literary paradigms, yet her transgressions against those same discourses—provides a disruptive reading, subverting prominent paradigms of the time. By portraying an independent, sleuthing young woman in Eleanor’s Victory, Braddon extends the narrative of nineteenth-century subjectivity and perhaps the subjectivity of her readers. I, too, endeavour to write a novel which seems to conform to gendered paradigms regarding the courtesan and female detective of the nineteenth century, but via neo-Victorian ventriloquist processes, I endeavour to provide a disruptive reading so as to subvert the subjectivity of the reader, which is further explored in the Creative Reflection chapter (Chapter 6).

Kitty Peck the reluctant neo-Victorian detective

Kitty Peck, a neo-Victorian detective in Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, published in 2013, offers a contemporary rendering of women in Victorian London. Kate Griffin has created a protagonist who investigates both a crime and social history, while catering to current sensibilities. I chose to analyse this particular neo-Victorian novel as it portrays a female detective who is not just working class but, like Heloise, also belongs to a social

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/282 group that has aspects of the demimonde. It is through a character such as Kitty Peck that an examination can take place of the hierarchical relationship between ‘ventriloquist’ (Victorian novelist; gendered discourse) and ‘puppet’ (working class woman; representations of women’s sexuality). Creating depictions such as Kitty Peck or Heloise can shift or reinforce notions of women’s agency or sexuality in the Victorian period. Furthermore, I found it interesting that this neo-Victorian novel features aspects of the ‘sinister Asian’ so prevalent in Victorian fiction. This is investigated further in the final section of this chapter.

Kitty Peck, who works in a music hall called The Gaudy in Limehouse, is an orphaned seventeen-year old whose older brother has been missing for two years, feared dead. She works backstage at The Gaudy, cleaning and helping with costumes, when she is summoned by the ‘Baron’ of Limehouse, Lady Ginger, the owner of The Gaudy and all surrounding theatres, bars and one assumes, brothels. By threatening the life of Kitty’s ‘missing’ brother, Lady Ginger forces Kitty to investigate the disappearances and probable murders of girls and women in the area. Therefore, just like the fictional female Victorian detectives before her, Kitty takes on the role of sleuth to assist a male relative. There are other aspects of this novel which are reminiscent of Eleanor’s Victory. Eleanor’s friend Richard is a set-designer whose step-mother is Italian, and Kitty’s friend Lucca is an Italian set designer. He too assists Kitty in her investigations, and disapproves of her nightly excursions or freedoms. However, unlike Richard’s concern for Eleanor’s state of ‘femininity’, the neo-Victorian Lucca is concerned for Kitty’s safety. Also, just as Eleanor spies on the villains in the dead of night (Braddon, pp. 277-296), so too does Kitty “turn the tables” when she doubles back in the fog to find the man or men who are stalking her (Griffin, p. 210). Braddon names the working class area Eleanor inhabits earlier in the novel as ‘Pilasters’, in Bloomsbury, just as Kitty lives in ‘Paradise’, in Limehouse. It is at this stage in Eleanor’s Victory that Eleanor is represented as part of the working class. It is in their roles as working class women that Victorian fictional female detectives such as Wilkie Collins’ Anne Rodway (1856), Braddon’s Eleanor Vane (1863) and Griffin’s Kitty Peck (2013) have certain freedoms of movement necessary to sleuth, even if their investigations are restricted to personal ambition and local geographical area. Although Kitty does find clues through perseverance, some clues are only revealed to her once another character decides to uncover knowledge that has thus far been withheld. As in Eleanor’s Victory, lies and secrecy are familiar tropes in Victorian sensation novels and it

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/283 is in this manner that Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders resembles a sensation novel. This slow revealing of knowledge that ultimately leads to the denouement transgresses the reader’s sense of comprehension—just as Kitty is confused, so is the reader. Lady Ginger and Lucca’s duplicity maintains this instability.

Reading for transgressions

Even though Kitty does not transgress the geographical area of Limehouse, she ‘contaminates’ borders between this working class area and James Verdin’s Mayfair when she has sex with him, referencing the perceived threat of the prostitute to the bourgeois home felt by the ‘respectable’ people of London (Stallybrass and White, p. 137). Kitty challenges class relations when she makes clear that her working class standards are one and the same as their upper class standards, only less compromised. She states: “It struck me then that the only thing dividing the poor from the rich was the fact that a wealthy man could buy himself a nice clean conscience—along with every dirty secret his appetites ran to” (Griffin, p. 228). This representation is a reversal of Stallybrass and White’s ‘low-other’; Kitty’s identity is formed by Othering the upper class (Jervis, p. 7; Stallybrass and White, p. 191). Griffin further compromises accepted Victorian power relations by having Kitty ‘capture’ Edward Chaston and by making the immigrant, homosexual Lucca voice his disgust with Sir Richard Verdin (pp. 226-238). At the end of the novel, Lady Ginger assures Kitty that “men like Sir Richard Verdin are not unreachable” (p. 289). As in Eleanor’s Victory we find in Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders a series of disruptions to the protagonist’s class/occupation identity which intervene in this novel’s coherence. In the beginning of the novel Kitty is a humble cleaner and dresser at The Gaudy, bereft at the loss of her brother. With her role as performer/detective her character gains strength, is more decisive, yet she is ambiguous about the fame and sexual prowess that is now hers. Unlike fictional Victorian detectives such as Eleanor Vane, Kitty does not fall back into her ‘feminine’ ways at the end of this novel. By solving the mystery, she attains the ultimate power to be had in ‘Paradise’; she becomes the new ‘Baron’. Kitty’s power is both inherited and earned and her changing role throughout the novel disrupts the reader’s sense of what could be achieved by a young woman in the Victorian period. Kitty’s sexuality shifts throughout the novel which may reinforce readers’ notions of Victorian sexuality, but also references neo-Victorian tolerations. I would argue that Kitty’s

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/284 attitude to sexuality is a marker of a contemporary, hybrid quality of sexuality, as discussed by Claire O’Callaghan (2013) and other neo-Victorian feminist researchers, rather than as a representation of ‘sexsation’. As is widely understood in feminist literature, gendered norms, many of them formulated in and derived from Victorian culture, pervade aspects of contemporary culture (O’Callaghan, p. 66; Genz, 2009, p. 99). Kitty’s sexual ambiguity informs and reflects the incongruity of representations of neo-Victorian sexuality without the tone of the novel becoming overly prescient. This hybrid sexuality is reflected in Kitty’s acceptance of and adaptation to flexible sexual rules, while she simultaneously guards her virtue and rejects work as a stage performer with its sexual implications (Griffin, pp. 14, 40, 68, 281). In this novel, Victorian sexual mores, such as sexual abstinence, fear of sexual disease and the favouring of heterosexual marriage or monogamy are integrated with contemporary ideas of sexual freedom and the acceptance of relationships and procreation outside marriage (Griffin, p. 31, 142). Although resolved to not join their ranks, Kitty is sympathetic and appreciative of the plights of prostitutes (pp. 40, 68, 148), indicating a more working-class or neo-Victorian attitude than that found in many novels of the Victorian period, or indeed, conventional historical fictions set in this same period. Despite a preference for sexual virtue, Kitty is pragmatic, in a very neo-Victorian manner, about bastardry (p. 134), homosexuality (p. 232) and ultimately, her lost virginity (p. 149). Current themes to do with date rape (p. 143), sexual abuse (p. 30) and spiked drinks (p. 142) are depicted in this neo-Victorian novel. As argued by Davies (2012), there is space for multiple voices and intentions in a neo- Victorian work, which is represented in Griffin’s novel. This “continuum between agency and constraint, original and copy” is articulated in the figure of Kitty Peck (p. 31). Disruptions to Kitty’s sense of identity and sexuality contravene the reader’s understanding of a young, Victorian woman’s place, but as she is actually a neo-Victorian creation that responds to current sensibilities, these disruptions also transgress and inform the modern reader’s subjectivity. For McDonald and Goggin (2013) the contradictory qualities of sexuality found in the Victorian period are echoed in our own moment “fraught with conflicting versions of womanhood, feminism, and gender performance all of which add up to very complex and often perplexing (sexual) politics (p. 3). The conflicting expectations of appropriate feminine behaviour found in Victorian female crime fiction (Beller, p. 55) continues to be demonstrated in Neo-Victorian fiction.

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How Kitty Peck informs Heloise – those ‘other Victorians’

Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders is set in 1880 at the beginning of the New Woman movement. Neo-Victorian fiction such as this novel (along with the female detective fiction written in the years preceding the 1880s) shows readers that this class of women may have helped shape the prevailing or emerging feminist discourse. Crime fiction offers a stable form in which to introduce new ideas, such as a neo-Victorian account of a Victorian, working class woman’s acceptance of and challenge to sexual and social restrictions. By portraying a working class, sexually aware woman in a neo-Victorian novel, Griffin, like Braddon before her, extends the narrative of woman’s place in nineteenth- century London and the subjectivity of 21st century readers. Braddon, like the character Kitty, originally worked in the problematic profession of stage-acting, and her novels, as discussed in the section on Eleanor’s Victory, reflect a burgeoning break with convention. Kitty, as a representation of a Victorian woman with agency, challenges how the reader might perceive the position of women in the Victorian period, just as the character of Eleanor must have done in the 1860s. Both Kitty’s ‘doubleness’, as the enlightened, neo-Victorian character who is nevertheless mindful and affected by middle-class, Victorian standards, and Eleanor’s ‘doubleness’, with her apparent conforming to gendered and literary paradigms while transgressing those same discourses, provide disruptive readings which contravene gendered and class discourses. In reading Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, the reader is convinced that certain women of the Victorian period—such as Braddon, or women in Kitty’s position—might have had more social sympathy than what is reflected in certain novels of the time. This social toleration is supported by a study of work such as Steven Marcus’ (1969) The Other Victorians and Foucault’s (1979) The History of Sexuality. In The Other Victorians, a book of reproduced Victorian erotica, Marcus writes of what he refers to as the ‘sexual subculture’ of Victorian England: “The subculture to be studied was ‘foreign’, distinct, exotic; at the same time it was a human subculture and consequently was relevant to our own humanity and culture… a new language or dialect had to be learned, preconceptions had to be rigorously put aside…” (p. xx). While Marcus’s position here is reminiscent of what Kohlke refers to as a new Orientalism, Robbins and Wolfreys (1996) argue that “despite its adoption of twentieth-century ‘knowingness’ and its anachronistic application of Freudian analysis, Marcus’s book remains important both as a source of fascinating information, and as a first attempt at breaking down the monolithic

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/286 structures by which Victoria’s reign was understood by the generations which succeeded her” (p. 3). Kate Mitchell (2010) writes that it was not until after 1960 that the intervention of discourses of feminism, psychoanalysis and semiotics contributed to new representations of the Victorian period, representations which included features previously invisible or excluded such as women, the working and criminal classes and non-Europeans (p. 45). Walkowitz (1980) argues that sexuality in the Victorian period was controlled along lines of class and gender domination. She writes that: Most studies of Victorian sexuality have focused on one single code of sexuality, expressive of the ‘world view of those persons in positions of power’ – namely adult middle-class males. In so doing, they have assumed the existence of a unitary Victorian culture. In fact, several Victorian subcultures existed at the same time, each with distinct prescriptions about sex. This pluralistic model, however, can also be misleading; these subcultures were not equally powerful nor were they fully autonomous within the dominant culture (p. 5). Walkowitz writes as well that notions of respectability among the poor did not completely mirror those of the middle class and that it is difficult to discern what ‘respectable’ neighbours thought of prostitutes or other sex-workers, given the limited historical sources available (p. 29). Similarly, Robbins and Wolfreys argue that there are no fixed Victorian values, and that scholars need to work to demonstrate that the adjective ‘Victorian’ means “not one thing—not a monumental set of values, moralities or beliefs—but many. The critical consensus has developed to suggest that the nineteenth century was in a constant state of flux where conflicting discourses struggled for pre-eminence” (pp. 2-3). I would argue that this is still the case especially when examining the representations of female sexuality, both in contemporary and Victorian work. Foucault (1979) writes of the production of sexuality, that “it is the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp, but a great surface network…(p. 105). Perceptions of sexuality, both in a historical and contemporary sense, are open to intervention and resignification through characters such as Kitty Peck and Heloise Chancey. As Davies (2012) suggests, a neo-Victorian ‘ventriloquism’ provides a strategy for re- scripting sexuality, as revealed below. Although sexuality is prescribed to a certain degree, a sense of agency can become manifest within the possibility of altering the recitation. Although this recitation might be derided by some reviewers as prescient, I would argue there is a place in the neo-Victorian process for a prescience such as this, and as argued above, this prescience might hold some accuracy. Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders and Playing

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Devil’s Delight represent neo-Victorian discursive practices that re-imagine the sexuality or social awareness/openness of a working class woman of the Victorian period—in Kitty’s case, as a cleaner/seamstress, and in Heloise’s case, as a Eurasian sex-worker. This neo- Victorian process is not ‘sexsation’ at work, nor does the representation of these tolerations ‘orientalise’ the Victorian period. Kitty and Heloise transgress the subjectivity of readers with a depiction of Victorian sexual tolerations which also relate to current concerns.

Kitty Peck, Eleanor Vane and Orientalism

As examined in the Literature Review, British engagement with the culture and artefacts of Asia is evident in Victorian fiction. In Eleanor’s Victory, Maurice de Crispigny’s stately home, Woodlands, includes an “antique tea and coffee services, [and] the great dragon-china jars on the staircase” (p. 218), which reflects the Orientalism of the period. Launcelot Darrell, while in Paris, is supposed to be working in India, and towards the end of the novel, Eleanor’s employer explains how she wanted to have her child taken to India and “advertised for an ayah who wanted to return, and who would go with me for the consideration of her passage-money” (p. 362). Not only does this section of the novel indicate the presence of Asians and colonial subjects residing in London, but as Martin Kayman (2003) points out, the narratives of the Victorian period often provide a trace of Empire: “the precious stone brought back from India, the missing brother or wife who returns from Australia, or the crime committed in the past in America (p. 43). Although Orientalist in nature, Eleanor’s Victory does not ‘imagine’ the nineteenth-century Asian character to the extent taken in Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders. Griffin’s portrayal of her Chinese characters as sinister, inscrutable and violent is as clichéd as Sax Rohmer’s creation of Fu Manchu (John Seed, 2006, p. 22). In this crime novel, Lady Ginger’s Chinese costume and exotic surrounds (she is actually a British woman in disguise) reinforce her menacing, mysterious power (Griffin, p. 9, 17, 24). Lady Ginger’s Chinese henchmen have scars on their faces with plaits snaking down their backs. They keep Lady Ginger doped on opium (p. 7, 97) and they actually scalp two girls with their long blades in front of a horrified audience (p. 159). Although Griffin has saved Kitty from being Othered in the Victorian period, she has done no such service to the Asian population of Victorian London. As noted earlier in this study, the Chinese community of Victorian

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London was incredibly small (Ng Kwee Choo, 1968, p. 1, 5; Shannon Case, 2002, p. 17; J.P. May, 1978, p.122), and, at least early on, of no particular bother to the local community or police force (Ng, p. 2, 115). A number of contemporary scholars have discussed the increased racism of this period and the attendant anxieties of economic hardship and fears of inter- racial marriage between Chinese men and local British women (May, p. 112, 113; Gregor Benton and Edmund Gomez, 2008, p. 288; Seed, p. 15; Case, p. 20). In the literary context Ross Forman (2013) writes that in the late nineteenth century British commentators looked to China as a slumbering giant, ready to join the ranks of the modern, prosperous nations, although this optimism ran in tandem with a counter-discourse, which revealed anxieties regarding East Asia’s power to threaten the West in both economic and military terms (p. 131, 133, 159). Of course, this same plight, or counter-discourse, continues. The caricature of the ‘sinister Asian’ continues to be prevalent in crime narratives. Traces of racial stereotypes are found in contemporary narratives, such as in the BBC program Sherlock (2010-), a modern interpretation of the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories of the late 1800s. Despite a modern setting and clever neo-Victorian updating of situations and props, the themes found in each Sherlock episode are not always consciously representative of current concerns. The Sherlock episode, ‘The Blind Banker’ (2010), is loosely based upon the Sherlock Holmes short story The Adventure of the Dancing Men (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) in which Sherlock has to decipher symbols, which turn out to be Chinese Hangzhou numerals. In pursuing the murderer, he learns that the code and murders are linked to the deadly Black Lotus Tong, a criminal gang that smuggles antiquities. Sherlock arranges for John Watson and his girlfriend to watch a travelling Chinese circus. When Watson and his companion are subsequently kidnapped by the criminal circus troupe, Sherlock rescues them and realises that the ‘treasure’ the murderer is searching for is a jade hairpin that belongs to the Chinese royal family. Of course, triads and gangs are often a feature of contemporary crime narratives. However, I would argue that despite having the modern touchstone of Asian organised crime, ‘The Blind Banker’, being a Sherlock Holmes narrative, has borrowed from themes made popular in its time, just as Griffin has done for Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders. In Playing Devil’s Delight I re-script this depiction of the ‘sinister Asian’. Research and a neo- Victorian impulse establish in what way a contemporary crime novel can re-imagine the life of an Asian in nineteenth century London. This process, in which I portray both Amah Li Leen and Heloise as resident Asian Londoners, is examined in the Creative Reflection chapter (Chapter 6).

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Conclusion

Two focus texts were analysed in order to examine how the Asian female sleuth can both transgress the genre of crime fiction and disrupt readers’ perceptions of such figures. A study of Eleanor’s Victory illustrates how the character of female sleuth in the nineteenth century transgressed social and narrative expectations. Eleanor, as a young, female detective with a degree of independence, displays a drive to investigate that was traditionally understood to be the preserve of the male detective. Despite a conventional ending to the novel, Eleanor’s transgressions can be seen to represent Braddon’s ‘ethical impulse’ to contravene social expectations. Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, while including some similar tropes to those found in Eleanor’s Victory, maintains a neo-Victorian consciousness of sexuality and class which also serves to shift how readers might understand the position of a working class woman of the Victorian period. However, although the female character is released from being Othered in this crime novel, the figure of ‘sinister Asian’ remains as clichéd as that found in the Fu Manchu novels of the early twentieth century. An examination of these texts identify ways in which I can extend and contest the genre of crime fiction via a neo-Victorian ventriloquism that acknowledges Victorian fiction but is also mindful of current concerns.

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Chapter 6 Creative Reflection

This chapter reflects on my writing process and demonstrates relevant connections between the creative and critical aspects of this project. For Graham Mort (2013) a reflective space such as this encapsulates the creative work “so that a conversation relating to creative practice also incorporates a discussion of linguistic usage, social, historical and political context and cultural practice (p. 209). In this context I pay particular attention to the neo- Victorian studies approach taken in creating Playing Devil’s Delight (PDD). The following discussion consists of four sections, beginning with crime fiction and the stylistic considerations in writing this neo-Victorian novel. This is followed by an analysis of the Asian protagonist and, finally, an examination of how I have created Heloise, courtesan sleuth. Theorising, analysis and creative writing techniques have allowed me to develop six useful strategies central to writing a neo-Victorian crime fiction such as Playing Devil’s Delight. These strategies include: integrating new critical and creative frameworks via the protagonist/sub-protagonist, into an established genre with strong conventions; implementing the neo-Victorian ventriloquist metaphor in order to layer voice; negotiating a ‘doubling’ of the narrative through ‘re-scripting’ the fictional character; introducing a second voice/sub-protagonist; an authorial intent/ethical impulse; and negotiating a balance of neo- Victorian tone.

Playing Devil’s Delight – Crime fiction

In this section I examine my manuscript novel according to certain crime fiction tropes in order to provide a generic context in which to investigate the figure of Eurasian courtesan. As noted above, crime fiction is a popular and varied genre that maintains some consistent tropes, such as the presence of clues, various suspects, murder and a detective. However, the genre has evolved to meet readers’ constant desire for innovation. Variation in the use of plot devices or murder/murderer scenarios have the ability to re-fresh this genre or, as in the case of my novel Playing Devil’s Delight, it is the protagonist that pushes the boundaries of crime fiction. Although technically the central hero, Heloise’s narrative is supported by Amah Li Leen’s story; Amah Li Leen is the sub-hero/protagonist, she is an alternative neo-Victorian voice. Heloise’s single viewpoint is disrupted by Amah’s sections in the novel, in which her

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/291 narrative, set in the past, interrupts the linear trajectory of the novel, shifting the reader’s focus from the crime at hand to Amah’s own. (This aspect of my novel is interrogated further in the third section of this chapter). Usually the cover illustration and title of a crime novel signals the work’s genre. Many crime novels in the past featured titles that included the word ‘mysterious’, identifying the centrality of the mystery element to the form (John Scaggs, 2004, p. 35). The title of the first draft of my novel was The Mystery of Heloise Chancey. In this manner I emulated crime titles of the Victorian period, such as Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) and ‘golden age’ novels such as Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) and The Caribbean Mystery (1964), in order to indicate to the reader that the narrative included a criminal mystery. Moreover, in the wording of the title—the mystery of Heloise—I wanted to allude to the other mystery in my novel, which is Heloise’s hidden Asian heritage. However, several people who reviewed my earlier work expressed dissatisfaction with the title of my novel; that it was too old-fashioned and not captivating. I turned to contemporary crime fiction in order to develop a style that might be of more interest to current readers. Finally, I settled on two titles: The Devil’s Scrape and Playing Devil’s Delight. The Devil’s Scrape references the term the local prostitutes use for the abortion procedure carried out in my novel: “So it’s true. The girls by the bridge are calling it the devil’s scrape, but I thought it was all talk. Just their pimps trying to scare them silly” (PDD, Chapter 7). Although The Devil’s Scrape refers to the form of murder found in the novel, I also contemplated (keeping in mind that my protagonist is a sex-worker) creating a title that features an archaic sexual euphemism, such as Tipping the Velvet. Eventually, in the nineteenth-century book of erotica My Secret Life, I read what the protagonist refers to as playing “devil’s delight with their organs of generation, as they are modestly called” (Anonymous, 1888-1890, p. 296). The author is referring to a sexual act but, for me, his act of delving amongst a woman’s genitalia could relate to both the sexual act and the more sinister connotations found in my creative work. Currently, this is the title I have chosen for my neo-Victorian work. Playing Devil’s Delight is a clue-puzzle crime novel that adheres to the type of narrative that features an unequivocal detective, numerous suspects, clues and red herrings. However, it does not take the crime writer long to realise that charting a crime narrative involves a certain amount of plotting agility. As Cole (2004) writes: “Halfway through the narrative a writer may think she’s worked it out, only to find that the story has petered out, and now requires additional subplots and less obvious clues. A crime novel must be

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/292 obsessively puzzled over and balanced in this manner…” (p. 36). For example, the first draft of this novel was to feature Dr Blain as murderer. Therefore, my original prologue included the following passage: “Doctor,” Nell whispered through her blue, dry lips. She made as if to lift herself onto her side. The older woman pressed her down. “A doctor?” she said, incredulity sharpening her voice. “What doctor’s gonna come down ere’ Nell? And ‘oo’s gonna pay ‘im?” One of the girls said, “What about Dr Mordaun’?” Nell moaned and shook her head, and repeated the word, “Doctor…” The older woman said, “Well, I don’ blame ‘er. That Dr Mordaun’ is a cruel fella. When my poor girls see ‘im comin’ with those cops, they…” “Blain,” Nell’s sunken eyes were dimming as she said the word. “Blain.” The women watched as her eyes fluttered shut. The stench from the bedding below her became stronger, more suffocating. “She must mean Dr Blain,” whispered one of the girls. “Is he that nice looking un what sups at the Lion’s Inn?” “That’s ‘im.” A soft choking noise rose from the bed. The girls leant forward to peer more closely, but the older woman stood back. “It’s too late for ‘er to see any doctor now,” she said. I intended this section of the prologue to be a clue/red herring. The reader was to think that Nell is calling for Dr Blain, when in fact she is denouncing him as her murderer. This technique was inspired by an Agatha Christie novel, The Seven Dials Mystery (1929). Soon after writing this prologue I found that Blain was too obvious as a suspect. It is difficult to find the balance between ‘possible suspect’ and ‘so obvious it can’t be him’ and ‘not obvious at all so becomes even more suspicious’ in crime writing in general, always keeping in mind a fair-play for the reader. Therefore, quite early on, I changed from Dr Blain to Sgt Bill Chapman as the murderer. Being a policeman and Heloise’s lover, Bill was to be the suspect that is so obvious or so ‘good’ he cannot possibly be the murderer. Throughout the manuscript I inserted red herrings that implicate other suspects while ensuring there were clues that identified Bill as murderer. According to Franco Moretti (2005), decodable clues are a key ‘technical law’ of crime fiction (p. 72-74). For Moretti,

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/293 clues “colonize a market niche”, and writers accept it or they disappear from this genre (2008, p. 218). Heloise receives threatening, anonymous notes and is stalked by a black carriage; Dr Blain is suspiciously interested in the missing girl and has treated one of the victims; Dr Mordaunt is the local abortionist and has an incriminating diary; Silvestre defends Henry who has worked as an abortionist and is recognised by Eleanor as the murderer. Of course Henry is not really recognised by the girl. Both Bill and Henry are dressed in brown suits, information I impart on separate occasions in the novel, which is my main clue regarding Bill as murderer, for it is Bill who Eleanor actually recognises. Other clues include the similarity between his name and that of the doctor who performed the illegal genital mutilations and his frequent visits to the morgue (despite being the detective). All readers of crime know that the murderer often re-visits the bodies or places of their crime. Unfortunately, Bill was also too obvious because the murderer is often the love- interest or a crooked cop. Over numerous drafts I endeavoured to make Bill more likeable, less likeable, more suspicious (to throw suspicion off him) or increasingly distrustful of Heloise. But he still was too obvious a murderer. At this stage I mapped out the character list of my novel and found that Mordaunt’s assistant could be a plausible murderer with minimal plot meddling. I decided to keep most of Bill’s clues in the novel (which then, of course, became red herrings), although the pendant he gives Heloise of course no longer contains cyanide. As he is not the murderer I have Bill find out about Heloise’s position as sex-worker and show his disdain. Therefore, she still smashes the pendant at the end of the novel, but for a different reason. The action of Henry being arrested needed to be moved to Mordaunt’s surgery (I altered a section to make it appear that Henry was in cahoots with the doctor in the murders) so as to have Ignatius (the assistant/murderer) on hand to be recognised by Eleanor. He now wore a tan suit. I added his initials ‘ix’ to Mordaunt’s diary and a handkerchief, and the doctor who attends Eleanor’s body mentions that one of the surgeons who performed illegal clitoridectomies was named I. Xavier. Genital mutilation has been a subject of feminist scholarship for some time. Moreover, in Victorian London, a doctor named Isaac Baker Brown did perform clitoridectomies as a cure for hysteria on unsuspecting women. Various 20th century cultural and literary theorists from Foucault (1978) to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987) have written on the nineteenth-century association of suppression of sexual organs and hysteria. From a creative perspective, these ideas also play into the conventions of the Jack the Ripper discourse.

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Walkowitz (1992) is useful to my project in this context because she argues that the Ripper story is part of the formative moment in the production of popular narratives of sexual danger; that the Ripper story was used as a cautionary tale for women, “a warning that the city was a dangerous place when they transgressed the narrow boundary of home and hearth to enter public space” (p. 3). She examines the competing cultural elements that are incorporated into the Ripper narrative, including elements that are both excluded and resisted, such as those in which women are not silent or terrorised victims (p. 2). This latter factor, regarding the women who might be situated in a space of non-terrorised survivor, supports the feminist impulse I felt in creating a female protagonist who negotiates the ‘dangerous’ city and investigates and apprehends the murderer. Of course, this aspect of my work includes the character of Amah Li Leen. Although a discussion of the role of the Mother is beyond the scope of this thesis, I wanted to portray a mother figure who saves the ‘protagonist’, as opposed to the frequent depiction of the ‘devouring’ or absent mother of crime fiction (Cole, p. 155). As explored earlier, Klein (1995) writes that feminist crime fiction features protagonists who are not loners and who identify with the victim (p. 233). Although Heloise is employed on a lone basis, she uses a network of people in order to detect—Bill, Taff, Chat and, of course, Amah Li Leen. She is familiar, even friendly, with some of the victims, Eleanor and Agnes in particular. Heloise is not the objective detective, which I have tried to portray through her reaction to both Agnes’s and Eleanor’s deaths. For example, she is saddened when she sees Agnes’s ignoble departure: The constables and undertakers march past with poor Agnes’s body upon a stretcher. The girl’s lifeless body seems heavy, almost womanly, upon the stretcher. Her apron is draped over her head to conceal the wounds. She’s anonymous, finished with. She will never again have to scrub the dolls’ sheets, never be a doll herself (PDD, Chapter 18). Similarly, Heloise’s horror at Eleanor’s death is personal, not distant: My ear-tips burn as I read through Sir Thomas’s letter, and I take a large gulp of scotch, and then another. I’ve truly bungled this affair and sweet, young Eleanor has lost her life into the bargain… I have to admit the sight of Eleanor’s gouged body was one of the worst” (PDD, Chapter 21). In this way the crime/murder is portrayed as a tragedy, not just as a crime fiction trope. Although the murder scene has a level of graphic violence, it is not necessarily gratuitous. Heloise identifies with the victim. Her subjectivity shifts with each murder. Writing of the

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/295 criticism regarding the portrayal of violence against women in crime fiction, Cole argues that “feminist crime writers may give voice to the female victims of felt grievances about the way society treats the less fortunate” (p. 22). Amah Li Leen, as the sub-protagonist, offers a further layering of voice, representing a ventriloquist flexibility combined with authorial intent. She is also affected by Eleanor’s death, which initiates her memories of ‘felt grievances’, such as her mother’s death and her own sexual abuse: “As I sit in this desolate house waiting for Heloise’s return, I realise the heaviness of sorrow I feel for poor, dead Eleanor is half borrowed from the recollection of another’s death” (PDD, Li Leen). Munt (1994) argues that the masculinist form of crime fiction includes a central hero, single viewpoint and linear storyline that features a neatly- enclosed ending (p. 99). Each of these aspects are contravened in my novel, mostly through the depiction of the sub-protagonist, Amah Li Leen. Her viewpoint and her own narrative, which traverses her own present and past, interrupt the novel’s linear trajectory. At times Amah functions as the modern modulator in this neo-Victorian work. When thinking of Heloise, she writes: “She thinks she has power over these men, that her skills in pleasure and the charms of her body are enough to keep her safe, but when will she realise she has no real power? They hold all the power, over her money, over her body, over her beauty”. Amah Li Leen, seated behind the portrait of the peacock, watches and interrogates Heloise’s social and sleuthing choices: “Sir Thomas admires her; why else does he continue to employ her in this manner, so that she needs to use the skills she has learnt outside the bed? He is twice her age, yet he blushes when he speaks to her. But that Mr Priestly – Mr Big Ears –I did not like how he looked at her when she was not noticing” (PDD, Li Leen). Amah is not the secondary character who watches on admiringly (Slung, p. 19). I do not reveal Amah is Heloise’s mother until the denouement, so that the reader might wonder about Amah’s role as spy, in order to foster a sense of suspense; is she really the supportive sub- protagonist or are her actions more malevolent? It is through watching and questioning Heloise’s actions, that this sub-protagonist foils the murderer. By the end of Playing Devil’s Delight, the police and Sir Thomas believe the murders have been solved in a neatly-contained manner, but they are unaware of Amah Li Leen’s involvement: “The police will work out that he murdered all those young women,” says Amah. “But they need not know that it was I who had the pleasure of murdering him” (PDD, Chapter 24). As Reddy (1988) argues, feminist crime fiction can demonstrate that “narratives, and the signs of which they are composed, are capable of supporting multiple, conflicting interpretations” (p. 10).

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In the writing of Playing Devil’s Delight I combined common crime fiction tropes, such as clues, red herrings, multiple suspects and a murderer, with feminist crime fiction features, such as the ‘non-terrorised survivor’ and a subjective protagonist/sub-protagonist. This triangulation of a crime fiction platform with neo-Victorian processes and a Eurasian courtesan as protagonist extends the boundaries of crime fiction. In the next section I examine the methods I used in creating a neo-Victorian aesthetic.

Creating the neo-Victorian

I studied Victorian period novels and historical works and visited London twice to become familiar with the setting and language style necessary for writing a novel set in nineteenth century London. I researched reading material from various sources: academic literature; crime fiction; nineteenth-century narratives such as those written by Charles Dickens and George Vickers; nineteenth-century erotica such as The Secret Life; courtesan biographies; and, of course, internet sources. For example, the idea for a Dutch cab driver in Chapter 12 of my novel came from one of the Victorian short stories featuring the female detective, Mrs Paschal (Andrew Forrester, p. 10, ‘Tenant for Life’), while The Clipstone Street Hop, in Chapter 16, and ‘introducing houses’ (PDD, Chapter 11) are described in The Girl with the Swansdown Seat (Cyril Pearl, 1955, pp. 36 & 170). A picture of a couple sipping from a ‘Sherry Cobbler for Two’ (p. 152) with a description of this drink and its straws (pp. 170, 171) is featured in Pearl’s book, and is referred to when Heloise shares a drink with Tilly (PDD, Chapter 7). Walkowitz writes of brothel life and the strong female subculture which was a distinguishing feature of nineteenth-century prostitution: “While in the ‘life’, prostitutes seem to have been most tied to the other women living in lodging houses and to the lodging-house keeper” (p. 25-26). This aspect of brothel life is depicted in my novel when Heloise shares mutton soup with Mme Silvestre’s girls and in the portrayal of Celia’s relationship with Prue. Walkowitz argues that British prostitutes were relatively free of the control of pimps, and although there were ‘bullies’, “prostitution in Victorian Britain was a trade largely organized by women rather than men… nor were they mere creatures of the male criminal element, as Dickens’s portrait of Nancy in Oliver Twist would suggest” (p. 25). Originally, I wrote a section in which Celia says the other prostitutes are scared of a beating from their pimps, but I subsequently removed it to be more representative of the research undertaken by Walkowitz.

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Eleanor Catton (2013), who wrote The Luminaries, “claims to have read only writing published before 1866, the year in which The Luminaries is set, for a year while she was writing the novel, to immerse herself in the style of the period” (Kirsten Tranter, September 21-22, 2013, p. 18). Similarly, I immersed myself in nineteenth-century crime novels, such as Ruth (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1853) and The Diary of Anne Rodway (Wilkie Collins, 1856) which feature female protagonists. As well as works written in the nineteenth century I also examined various neo- Victorian novels in order to become familiar with the language conventions. Here I found a diversity of styles. Of course, a romance such as Claiming the Courtesan (Anna Campbell, 2007) has a voice distinct from the literary work Tipping the Velvet (Sarah Waters, 2000). Even Catton, once immersed in the style of Victorian fiction, did not aim to “create a strict historical replica, and more pedantic readers will be annoyed by various anachronisms of diction and reference. The result is a distinctive, archaic voice that makes use of some old- fashioned stylistic conventions…” (Tranter, p. 18). When I started writing Playing Devil’s Delight I decided to use the type of formal language that seemed as close as possible to what I considered a Victorian voice. However, the result of the first draft was that the writing sounded too ‘crinoline’ or old fashioned. This ‘crinoline’ voice may have been an effect of writing a character associated so closely with romance or tragic drama. My first draft was almost ‘bodice ripper’ in tone, despite the fact that it is supposed to be almost the opposite of a romance novel; Heloise’s sexual relations are associated with her career as courtesan, not as a romantic by- product. When depicted as pleasure, such as when Heloise sleeps with Bill, her sexual relations are representative of the courtesan’s sexual freedoms as compared to those of women of other social stations in Victorian London. In order to reduce the ‘bodice ripper’ tone, I cut back on some of Heloise’s ‘feminine’ actions, such as any gasping or giggling, although I left in the scenes that feature her toilette or her use of sexual embodiment as I wanted to depict her performance of femininity/sexuality as a woman in a patriarchal society and as sex-worker. In the original version of my novel Heloise was written in third person, past tense. Heloise was supposed to be the frivolous character; the character who takes the reader on a murder mystery ‘romp’. In contrast, Amah Li Leen’s voice, written in first person, present tense, is more reflective and critical. She is nostalgic, but also watchful of her daughter, Heloise. Many contemporary novels, especially psychological thrillers, are written in present tense. I re-drafted Heloise’s sections of the manuscript into present tense, and found that in

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/298 the act of writing present tense it became easier to access Heloise’s interiority. Also, an immediacy to the story developed, pulling Heloise forward to the present, so that even though she actually exists in a period over one hundred and fifty years ago, her motivations and actions appear more relevant and immediate. I also cut back on formal language, making it more colloquial and less ‘Victoriana’, although I have maintained using only words that existed at the time. Heloise’s thoughts and actions might indicate a certain amount of neo- Victorian prescience, but her language does not. However, it was not until I changed the point of view to first person that I was satisfied that my portrayal of Heloise would appeal to contemporary readers. I think each writer of neo-Victorian fiction needs to consider how to balance the Victorian and modern tone through craft considerations such as these, and mine developed over time and numerous re-drafts. Heloise’s first person interiority and the first person/present tense is more modern in tone than that found in the earlier versions of my novel. Psychological thrillers are currently popular and, as stated, I emulated a number of contemporary psychological thrillers in tense and point of view in order to be more marketable to current readers. Both Stephen Knight (2010) and Sally Munt (1994) examine work by Patricia Highsmith in order to explain the features of psychological thrillers. These characteristics include a “mundane world” that includes the “criminality of normal people” (Knight, p. 150) and “a dissolving sense of reality; reticence in moral pronouncements; obsessive, pathological characters; the narrative privileging of complex, tortured relationships” (Munt, p. 20) such as those found in the novels The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins, 2015) and Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn, 2014). Although my novel is more clue-puzzle crime fiction in tone than psychological thriller, I decided to re-write the prologue to be more in line with a contemporary psychological or suspense thriller. The tone of the present prologue is more personal and graphic, more sinister, in keeping with current thriller novels.

The re-scripted Asian protagonist

As part of my neo-Victorian process I wanted to re-script the portrayal of the ‘sinister Asian’ found in various fictions. I endeavoured to depict two female, Asian residents of Victorian London who lead lives of more complexity and less caricature than that of Dickens’ ‘Jack Chinaman’ or the Chinese characters found in Fu Manchu stories. Heloise and Li Leen give voice to new possibilities via a neo-Victorian ‘re-citation’. This process of re-citation

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/299 illuminates the hierarchical relationship between the Victorian novelist or crime writer and the ‘puppet’—the Asian character. Re-scripting the fictional Asian allows me to create alternative voices. The crime fiction trajectory of Playing Devil’s Delight is disrupted by neo-Victorian ventriloquist processes which address racial issues. Heloise’s first-person narrative is interspersed with interludes narrated by her Oriental maid/mother, Amah Li Leen, in which she relates her tragic past in Makassar and her thoughts on Heloise’s lifestyle. Heloise and Amah offer differing aspects of Asian subjecthood in Victorian London, and it is in this speaking through of Heloise and Amah as subjects, who offer multiple possibilities of voice, agency and intention, that represents a neo-Victorian ventriloquism with authorial intent. Creatively, I use this space to depict multiple voices that range between ‘original and copy’— voices that are representative of my research (the re-scripted characters, Heloise and Amah) and the ‘sinister Asian’ of crime fiction (represented by characters such as Bill and Mme Silvestre). In Davies’ terms, the Asian subject of Victorian literature and crime fiction can be performed differently or subversively, creating a potential for resignification. Amah’s story was a result of my need to create a plausible backstory for Heloise, a Eurasian courtesan in Victorian London. Imagining Amah’s Asian and British heritage forced me beyond a neo-Victorian trajectory: “My father left Makassar when the Dutch returned and expelled the British for good. He took my uncle with him on the ship, but left my mother and me behind” (PDD, Li Leen). Her narrative, told in a voice distinct from Heloise’s, also transgresses the linear crime fiction form of the novel, the depiction of the ‘sinister Asian’ and Heloise’s personal narrative. Consequently, Amah is the sub-protagonist who has her own story of crime. Moreover, Amah does not join Heloise in her Orientalist subterfuge. Being Asian remains a prominent part of Amah’s identity, as depicted in her memories of Makassar, but she is also cognizant of the limits placed upon her in London society: “If you were stared at as much as I am,” she replies, “for all the wrong reasons, you too would find solace behind cover” (PDD, Chapter 17). Amah’s position as Other provides her with the capacity to contravene both the crime fiction framework and contextual aspects of this work. Cole states that female crime writers often draw on their personal history, relationships and psychological roots (p. 26). Writing Amah as the reflective, sometimes critical, mother-figure was certainly influenced by my own personal background. However, Amah Li Leen’s Makassar heritage was of more importance to me as I am of Indonesian descent. As stated in Chapter 4 (‘The Exotic Sleuth’) England’s Chinese population did not necessarily come from China originally, but some sections of the community also found their

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/300 way via Southeast Asian countries. In order to create Amah Li Leen and her backstory I read short stories by Somerset Maugham (which are of a slightly later period, but well describe Southeast Asia pre-World War I and II); literature on the Asian lifestyle in port areas of England; Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s (1990) Awakenings; and Anna Forbes’ (2008) Insulinde: Experiences of a Naturalist’s Wife in the Eastern Archipelago, originally published in 1886. I decided that Amah Li Leen should be only half Asian to represent the cultural hybridity of Colonial Indonesia. First, her sections in the novel are meant to portray her past life in Asia: “I remember the jasmine scent of the coffea flowers. I remember my favourite dish, konro, and the tang of the lemongrass as the soft beef falls from the bone leaving a slick of gravy on my lips. I remember sitting in the shade beneath the guava tree, slicing pieces of the fruit’s pink flesh to pop in my thirsty mouth. Most of all I remember my mother” (PDD, Li Leen). Second, Amah’s impressions of being an immigrant in Britain are explored: “Wah, it is always cold here, and it is not yet winter. Even though I have gweilo blood running through my body I have never, ever grown accustomed to the constant chill in the air” (PDD, Li Leen). Her narrative first began as a short story that referred to themes found in Oscar Wilde’s Salome. The short story was originally set in a slightly later period entirely in Makassar. Her father was a British trader of Makassar oil, although I cut this from her excerpts in Playing Devil’s Delight. Instead of murdering her step-father (as in my crime fiction) Li Leen kills a local preacher. I shortened this narrative, though, so as to reduce confusion when it was incorporated into the rest of the novel. Amah’s daughter, Heloise, although only a quarter Asian, necessarily has to obscure her heritage in Victorian London if she is to transgress social borders. As stated in the literature review, although being Orientalist was acceptable, being Oriental was not: “I watch my mother, dark and tightly bustled, walk from the room. How horrified society would be if it found out that the celebrated Heloise Chancey, Paon de Nuit, is a true exotique” (Chapter 25). Of course, racial issues have been investigated before within crime fiction, postcolonial crime fiction in particular. However, instead of only re-imagining the Asian protagonist as detective/hero in order to shift perceptions of the Asian character, my characters Amah and Heloise are deliberately confronted with the Victorian portrayal of ‘sinister Oriental’. The anxieties and tensions regarding the Chinese population of Victorian London are represented in both Bill’s initial reaction to Amah, as an Oriental who might cut Heloise’s throat and pray to pagan gods, and the crowd’s mobbing of Amah Li Leen when she is led away by the police (Chapter 13 & 18). Mme Silvestre makes it clear what the local population think of the Chinese when she says, “You don’t still have that yellow chink working for you, do you?

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People around ‘ere don’t swallow that sort of thing, you know. That’s something for the tastes of those who frequent the dock areas” (Chapter 2). In order to avoid similar racism, while developing a successful life in London society, Heloise hides her Asian background: “Not that it matters who I am actually – what matters is what society thinks I am” (Chapter 25). Heloise is a ‘subject-in-progress’, whose ‘self’ occupies a site of marginality that queries and examines the racial constraints of Victorian London. Kristeva argues that the transgressions that take place in the semiotique do not simply form a binary system but include a liminal area in which “challenges and disruptions take place… these are empowered, and empowering sites of subjectivity and morality” (Fuery & Mansfield, 2000, p. 130). In ‘Semiotics: A Critical Science and/or a Critique of Science’ (1968), Kristeva writes: the site of semiotics, where models and theories are developed, is a place of dispute and self-questioning, a ‘circle’ that remains open. Its ‘end’ does not rejoin its ‘beginning’, but, on the contrary, rejects and rocks it, opening up the way to another discourse, that is, another subject and another method… (1986, p. 78). Heloise’s Asian ‘self’ occupies this site of disputation and representation, asking questions of the symbolic order while asking questions of itself. Her subjectivity is in constant development. Although her Asianness is concealed, Heloise’s awareness of her place at the borderline of society means she knows “the shame of compromise, of being in the middle of treachery” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 2). Kristeva’s abject offers a point of reflection in relation to the creation of Heloise as subject-in-progress: the time of abjection is double: a time of oblivion and thunder, of veiled infinity and the moment when revelation bursts forth… Jouissance, in short…. We may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it—on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger. But also because abjection itself is a composite of judgement and affect, of condemnation and yearning, of signs and drives (p. 9). The ‘abject’ infringes upon selfhood and is that which is both rejected and disturbs identity. Heloise’s abjection involves her Asian heritage. This abjection of self also involves loss, and in Heloise’s case her loss/want is understood in terms of ‘whiteness’. She is puzzled by Amah Li Leen’s refusal to ‘perform’ Oriental, yet also queries Amah’s need to hide her Asianness with a shawl, while retaining an awareness of the racial discrimination found in Victorian London.

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I argue that Heloise’s true social transgression is being Eurasian. As examined in Chapter 4, The Exotic Sleuth, she is both ‘contaminated’ by Asian blood, but also runs the risk of ‘contaminating’ society. She inhabits a secret, liminal space that even other courtesans do not occupy and it is this secrecy that is so subversive: “Another lie. He probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce my real name. And he certainly wouldn’t be sitting there, looking chuffed with himself, if he knew all about me. I know it’s wrong, but I always feel a thrill of mischief when I think of how many people I’ve fooled” (Chapter 7). Heloise’s actions are reminiscent of what Stanford Friedman refers to as ‘Performativity talk’, which “explores how the production of identity involves performative imitation at the borders of difference (p. 4). By obscuring her racial background, a racial background that is so vilified by society, Heloise’s ‘performativity’ is oppositional. She mimics the behaviour of the dominant group but her ‘performativity’ is covert. Heloise’s drawing room, akin to Whistler’s Peacock Room, is representative of a ‘performative imitation’ of the popularity of an Asian aesthetic, as examined in the Literature Review (The Exotic Sleuth). She is irritated when Amah will not dress in an ‘Oriental’ fashion, to correspond with her ‘Oriental’ décor (PDD, Chapter 1). Really, she is irritated that Amah Li Leen will not join her in the ‘performativity’ game, for there is the possibility for a feeling of personal empowerment in a parodic situation such as this, maybe akin to how a cook might feel a twinge of triumph when he manages to spit in the soup. In a space that is limited both socially and culturally, a secret transgression such as Heloise’s Asian background provides her with a sense of power. The joke is on society. My depiction of Heloise and Amah Li Leen might appear to be prescient simply because readers (especially of crime fiction) have become accustomed to the image of the ‘sinister Oriental’. In my creative work I tried to imagine an accurate account of the possible lives of two Asian women in Victorian London. I have tried to portray how they might have felt and behaved, and also how those people around them might have reacted to their Asianness. Although within the scope of neo-Victorianism, I consider Ripper Street’s episode that features historical Chinese themes (Chapter 5, analysis of Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders) as more prescient, in that Reid is the Post-colonialist. However, similarly to my analysis of ‘prescient’ sexuality in my novel and Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, I contend that parts of the population in Victorian London did have awareness or sympathies as portrayed by Reid (although a full discussion of this aspect is outside the scope of this thesis). Carroll (2010) argues that because of neo-Victorian fiction’s “capacity to enhance the representation of marginalized groups, fiction is an important mechanism for meting out recognitive justice” (p. 195). In writing this neo-Victorian novel, I felt an ethical impulse to

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/303 shift the subjectivity of the reader of crime fiction with re-scripted Asian characters. It was my authorial intention to extend the crime fiction narrative with a challenge to the persistent, hackneyed portrayal of Asians, be it in a book such as Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders or a television program such as Sherlock. This re-scripting of the Asian caricature is justified given the inaccuracies found in novels such as those written by Sax Rohmer and Thomas Burke which set the trend for later crime fiction.

Heloise Chancey – courtesan detective

As a creative writer of crime fiction it is difficult to create an original type of detective that might be of interest to a savvy crime-reading audience, let alone a publisher. I first imagined Heloise, a Eurasian courtesan who detects for intellectual stimulation and the income, after attending a pitching competition at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. As discussed in the Crime Fiction section of Chapter 3, crime fiction has a Victorian heritage which has extended into neo-Victorian works, so I decided to write of a nineteenth-century British-Asian courtesan as this topic was something I could research. It soon became apparent to me that writing a neo-Victorian novel means that the writer has to grapple with marketability, Victorianism (historical authenticity) and the political agendas of neo-Victorianism (Novak, 2013, p. 130-131). In the final section of my Creative Reflection I investigate the difficulties I faced in writing a neo-Victorian novel that is both commercially marketable and conscious of a feminist agenda but first I will describe the development of the character of Heloise Chancey. In order to write with historical authenticity, I examined stories featuring female detectives that were written in the Victorian period such as The Diary of Anne Rodway (1856), Eleanor’s Victory (1863), The Female Detective (1864) and Revelations of a Lady Detective (1864). I also considered the neo-Victorian novels featuring Kitty Peck (Chapter 5, Focus Texts) and Tasha Alexander’s And Only to Deceive (2006). Alexander’s series of neo- Victorian novels features the widow Lady Emily who is drawn into detection through an investigation of her deceased husband, echoing the motivations of Victorian heroines as discussed in The Female Detective section of this thesis (Crime Fiction, Chapter 4). Lady Emily is assisted by her husband’s friend/future husband, and both she and Kitty Peck are limited socially and spatially by their gendered and social positions. As argued, the courtesan’s position at the interstices of the social, spatial and gender boundaries of Victorian

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London, allows my character Heloise to transgress diverse locations and social situations. She connects with and contaminates London’s social classes (Nord, 1995, p. 3). This versatility is useful when creating a female detective of the period. I wanted a character who is as plausible at the opera with Lord Hatterleigh as in a brothel with Mme Silvestre. Her transgressive qualities as courtesan allow for a rescripting of the fictional courtesan into courtesan sleuth. Heloise is not restricted by the social codes that bound the middle-class and upper-class women of Victorian London, nor is she restricted by the lack of income and time experienced by the working-class or lower-class women. This re-scripted courtesan ensures an extension of future possibilities for further Heloise novels. Moreover, I wanted a protagonist who detected on a professional scale, not as an amateur or for private reasons like many of the fictional female sleuths of the nineteenth century. Andrew Forrester’s The Female Detective, first published in 1864 and William Stephens Hayward’s Revelations of a Lady Detective, also published in 1864, feature female police detectives operating in a period when women were not actually part of the police force. These short stories/cases are presented as professional memoirs, ranging in date from the 1830s to the 1860s. It is of interest that Mrs G (The Female Detective) and Mrs Paschal (Revelations of a Lady Detective) are professional detectives in a time when there were no actual female police officers and all other female protagonists in crime fiction sleuthed for personal reasons. Alexander McCall Smith states in the foreword of the current edition of The Female Detective, “the idea of a woman being involved in the murkiness of criminal detection must have seemed a radical and adventurous one in Victorian times” (2012, p. v). Richard, in Braddon’s Eleanor’s Victory, tells Eleanor: “I’ve been playing spy, Eleanor, for a couple of hours at least. The Duke of Otranto used to find plenty of people for this kind of work— artists, actors, actresses, priests, women, every creature whom you would least suspect of baseness” (p. 244). This statement is in reference to Joseph Fouche, first Duke of Otranto, the French Minister of Police under Napoleon I, who commanded a civilian force which served partly as the secret police (Broers, 1999, p. 28). In Revelations of a Lady Detective, Mrs Paschal, the protagonist, states that female detectives are descendants of Joseph Fouche (2013, pp. 5,6). Each of these references to Fouche indicate that there may well have been public knowledge of female spies or sleuths operating in the Victorian period. Professional female detectives probably did exist in London in the 1860s, as explored in both the Introduction and Chapter 4 of this exegesis. However, in reference to Mrs Paschal and Mrs G, Craig and Cadogan (1981) write that it would “be wrong to suggest that their

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/305 creation represented a serious expression of feminism; the stories that featured these two women were firmly escapist” (p. 15). I would argue that the narratives created by male writers, such as The Female Detective, were partly written in order to be shocking. For example, when Mrs Paschal sheds her wide skirts to fit down a hole in the floor this event was probably more for titillation than gender subversion (Hayward, p. 17). In Playing Devil’s Delight, Heloise’s crinoline is portrayed as both feminine and fashionable but also as an encumbrance. Her sexuality is in flux, dependent on the situation in which she finds herself; dependent on the social expectations she needs to transgress in order to be the sleuth. The cover of the first copy of The Female Detective features a picture of a woman showing her ankles under her crinolines and smoking a cigarette. This picture influenced the scenes I wrote between Heloise and Tilly at the tavern. Colonel Warner, Mrs Paschal’s chief, refers to the female division of the police force as his ‘petticoated police’ (Hayward, p. 6). For Young (2008), ‘petticoated police’ “encapsulates some of the troubling dimensions and denotes both the strengths and weaknesses of the female detective’s position. To be part of the police force is to have… well, force, while to be petticoated is to have none; it is, rather, to be frivolous and culturally encumbered, both literally and figuratively” (p. 19). I have tried for this tone in my neo-Victorian novel. Heloise has agency as courtesan sleuth, yet her crinolines, both ‘literally and figuratively’ control her actions. Twice she is compromised because she cannot hide wearing such cumbersome attire (PDD, Chapter 5), although, not to be wholly foiled by her gender, she dresses as a man in order to catch the person leaving anonymous notes (Chapter 13). The development of Heloise as detective was influenced by The Female Detective and Revelations of a Lady Detective in various ways. Heloise works for a private agency owned by Sir Thomas Avery, while Mrs Paschal and Mrs G work for the police. Similarly to Heloise, though, Mrs G thinks of her profession as ‘work’ and even mentions her ‘fellow- workwomen’ at the station (Forrester, pp. 5 & 52). Young writes of the fictional female detectives’ strengths: “It is clear from the variety of Mrs. Paschal’s undercover manoeuvres that there is no sanctuary— not government bureaucracies, not religious orders, not the home—that this woman cannot and will not infiltrate, and her success is clearly related to her gender” (p. 22). Mrs G declares that, “without going into particulars, the reader will comprehend that the woman detective has far greater opportunities than a man of intimate watching, and of keeping her eyes upon matters near, which a man could not conveniently play the eavesdropper,” (Forrester, p. 4). The ability to sleuth in various places and manners is enabled through the use of disguise.

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Both Mrs Paschal and Mrs G disguise themselves as workwomen such as dressmaker, ‘talking companion’, milliner and so forth. Heloise refers to earlier times when she resorted to disguise for detection: “I’ve posed as a sewing woman to gain access to a noble house, I’ve rouged and revealed myself as a street prostitute in order to spy on a group of young men and I have even performed as a harem dancer in order to reconnoitre at a foreign embassy” (PDD, Chapter 1). Heloise has a background on the stage and uses her acting skills to her advantage when sleuthing. Mrs Paschal also performs, but her reasoning is situated thus: I was well born and well educated, so that, like an accomplished actress, I could play my part in any drama in which I was instructed to take a part. My dramas, however, were dramas of real life, not the mimetic representations which obtain on the stage. For the parts I had to play, it was necessary to have nerve and strength, cunning and confidence, resources unlimited, confidence and numerous other qualities of which actors are totally ignorant” (Hayward, p. 6). Of course, besides being a nineteenth-century female detective, Heloise plays a part also, as part of the ‘dramas of real life’. Detection is just one of the roles she performs, along with that of Heloise Chancey, Eurasian courtesan. In order to rescript the fictional courtesan I studied literature regarding actual courtesans of the nineteenth century, such as Catherine Walters (1839-1920) in particular (Henry Blyth, 1970, Skittles; The Last Victorian Courtesan; Cyril Pears, 1955, The Girl with the Swansdown Seat). Walters, who was also known as ‘Skittles’, was a British courtesan in the Victorian period. Just like Walters, Heloise lives in South Street, Mayfair (where there is still a plaque commemorating Walters’ residency). At times, Walters also took up a suite in Brown’s Hotel which, coincidentally, is popularly believed to be the hotel Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel (1965) is based upon. Walters was brought up in poverty in Liverpool, and in my novel too there are references to Heloise’s difficult background in Liverpool. The level of celebrity Heloise possesses in London society was inspired by a letter to The Times, titled ‘Anonyma—to the editor of the times’ (pp. 90, 91; Pearl, p. 131-134). He writes of a fine horsewoman, commonly attributed to be Walters, who rides in Hyde Park: “Nobody in society knew her name, or to whom she belonged, but there she was, prettier, better dressed, and sitting more gracefully in her carriage than any of the fine ladies who envied her her looks, her skill, or her equipage” (Pearl, p. 131). He continues to write of her growing fame, how even the “highest ladies in the land enlisted themselves as her disciples” in fashion and action. The roads are “daily choked with fashionable carriages—from five to seven—all on account of Anonyma. Chairs are placed along it on either side… all sit there,

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/307 watching for Anonyma” (p. 133). Two books about Walters were released in 1864: Skittles, the Biography of a Fascinating Woman, and Anonyma, or Fair but Frail (interestingly, written by Hayward, the same author of Revelations of a Lady Detective, analysed above). I include references to Heloise’s fame in my work: “I’m almost famous, infamous. When I think of this I feel a flutter of excitement in the pit of my stomach, but I also feel a little sick like I’ve eaten too much custard. I’ve worked towards this for a long time, even before I knew what could be achieved” (PDD, Chapter 1). Amah Li Leen also refers to the public who stare at Heloise, and the murderer recognises her as the famous Paon de Nuit. In the Victorian period the courtesan was the celebrity: “There were no press photographers in those days, but these young women were always in the public eye” (Blyth, p. 113). Hickman (2003) writes that “courtesans were shunned by ‘respectable’ society, and yet, despite itself, society—men and women alike—was fascinated by them” (pp. 7 & 23). Due to the courtesan’s celebrity, she had the ability to transgress social, psychic, physical and geographical borders, destabilising social hierarchy, even more efficiently than the street prostitute of Victorian London. Both Pearl and Blyth write of Walters’ horsemanship, her fine riding-habits, how she set the fashion for porkpie hats, which I have inserted into Heloise’s narrative. Pearl reports that it was written that she had the face of an innocent child, yet swore like a cabman, while another tribute praises her tender, timid eye, though “her language, should one tread on her dress, is a caution” (p. 137). For Heloise, although she no longer has a strong, Liverpool accent just as Walters had, her past accent is referred to in her scene at the brothel with Tilly, and she swears—forkin’—when she so desires. Heloise’s knowledge of the French language in Chapter 3 of my novel is attributed to her time with a French lover in Paris, which was inspired by Walters’ time in France with Achille Fould, the Minister of Finance. He apparently encouraged her to read and have an interest in the arts, pursuits she would not have gained exposure to as a working-class woman of Liverpool (Blyth, pp. 112, 113). When considering her profession, I have Heloise reflect upon truths for the poorer, working class women of the Victorian period. Walkowitz (1980) writes that on the whole there was little to distinguish prostitutes from the large body of poor women who eked out a precarious living in the urban job market (p. 15). As ‘Swindling Sally’, a nineteenth-century prostitute tells Bracebridge Hemyng: “How did I come to take to this sort of life? It’s easy to tell. I was a servant gal away down in Birmingham. I got tired of workin’ and slavin’ to make a livin’, and getting a ____ bad one at that; what o’ five pun’ a year and yer grub, I’d sooner starve, I would” (Mayhew, p. 223).

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Inspired by studies such as these and the protagonist’s predicament in Ruth (Gaskell, 1853), Heloise wonders about the choices that might have been available to her if she had chosen a virtuous path: “I would’ve had to settle for a dismal life in some back alley or country village. Maybe long hours in a dark room, stitching other’s breeches, or worse, sewing ball gowns for other women who were more happily provided for (PDD, Chapter 16). Likewise, George Bernard Shaw’s social statement (1902) in the preface to Mrs Warren’s Profession (1894) defends the morals of his play, arguing that women become sex workers as they are underpaid and undervalued (p. 181). He argues that: every man and woman present will know that as long as poverty makes virtue hideous and the spare pocket-money of rich bachelordom makes vice dazzling, their daily hand-to-hand fight against prostitution with prayer and persuasion, shelters and scanty alms, will be a losing one… And ask yourself whether, if the lot in life therein described were your lot in life, you would not rather be a jeweled Vamp (1946, p. 187). Heloise asks herself: “What other options do I have? I’m not that good an actress that I could live off my wages. Not in this style anyway. Seamstress? It isn’t worth the hardship. Governess? Nobody would have me. The only other option I can think of is marriage, but aren’t the freedoms of my current situation preferable?” Heloise questions her lifestyle as courtesan, but “thinking back to the stupor and pestilence of poverty” she decides it is for the best (PDD, Chapter 25). Heloise’s doubts and fractured sense of identity provide a point of engagement with Davies’ (2012) ventriloquist metaphor. Davies argues that, as there is a crucial uncertainty as to origin of voice, ‘ventriloquism’ can be a ‘talking back’ or ‘speaking through’ of subjects as opposed to objects, offering multiple possibilities for voice, agency and intention (p. 7). The ventriloquist metaphor is useful in a neo-Victorian examination of both Victorian and contemporary sexuality. As argued in Chapter 5 (Focus Texts; How Kitty Peck informs Heloise) discourses of sexuality, both in a historical and contemporary sense, are open to intervention and resignification through a character such as Heloise Chancey. Writing of her disrupted and shifting subjectivity is a process which represents “Butler’s ambiguous excursions between performance and performativity, intention and interpretation, subversion and reconsolidation, agency and subjection (Davies, 2012, p. 31). Re-scripting the fictional courtesan allows for this exploration of the ventriloquist metaphor. Whether prescient or not, as part of the neo-Victorian process of this project, Heloise considers some aspects of her life from what we would recognise as a feminist point of view.

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She realises that she is controlled by a patriarchal society; that all the women she knows are “vulnerable to the whims of all manner of men” (PDD, Chapter 25). Heloise recognises the double standards that exist in Victorian London. Her comment to Blain that “Eleanor is much better off with me than lying dead in a doss-house somewhere, no matter how noble you think that end might be,” (Chapter 16) refers to Rusch’s (2007) statement that the dramatists of the nineteenth century shaped the courtesan’s role to fit the morality of the time (p. 1). Moreover, Heloise is uncomfortable when she realises that her embodied sexuality and femininity is referenced in the Mary Wollstonecraft passage: “‘Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.’ My eyes roam the rest of the paragraph, resting on words such as ‘insignificant’, ‘slavery’, ‘sensuality of man’. I struggle against seeing myself in these words, but recognise their truth too” (Chapter 19). It is in this moment of disruption and dispute that Heloise represents what Jervis (1999) refers to as a bounded self, able to imagine difference and otherness, yet only able to explore them in constrained and limited ways: “the space of rational selfhood and the space of its transgressive possibilities, the boundaries that engender self as continuity against the flux of otherness, and also posit, through desire, the irreducible present of the latter in selfhood itself, with all the possibilities this opens up for conflict and contradiction” (p. 5). In Playing Devil’s Delight, the instance when Heloise destroys the cranberry glass snuff-bottle represents this time of hybridisation (PDD, Chapter 25). This is a moment of revelation, in that she realises her position as courtesan is both empowered and compromised. In contemporary terms, this is a struggle between her postfeminist self and her feminist self. She is both Other and subject, constrained and liberated. Heloise represents and profits from female sexuality—this is one of her societal transgressions—yet she recognises the gendered compromises involved. Her gendered subjectivity is constantly evolving. As opposed to the tenets of what Kohlke refers to as ‘sexsation’ (examined in the Chapter 2; Methodology), Heloise’s sexuality and sexual activities are depicted as a line of work, but also as a representation of postfeminist performativity. I endeavoured to portray Heloise’s sexual intercourse with Lord Hatterleigh as well-practised and considered (although her mind is on the murder mystery also, as her role as detective is important to her). It is not that Heloise does not find pleasure in sex but her commitment to Lord Hatterleigh’s pleasure is of more importance due to her line of work and social expectations. This expectation of female sexuality, represented by a nineteenth-century courtesan, reflects modern postfeminist

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/310 demands of women’s sexuality as empowering yet still contained within a patriarchal framework. I re-drafted sections relating to Heloise’s performance of femininity/sexuality. I re- wrote the opening pages so that Heloise very consciously sets the scene for her performance as ‘unconscious’ sexual provocateur. She then considers her body and her beauty, in a businesslike rather than vain manner: “I own my face, but so do others” (PDD, Chapter 1). However, when she is desperate to catch the attention of a young policeman at the station, Heloise decides to do away with her feminine ‘performance’ (PDD, Chapter 22). When I first wrote this passage I had her use her embodied sexuality, just as Eleanor had in Eleanor’s Victory, but then decided I wanted Heloise to be less reliant on her sexuality outside the bedroom. Ultimately, Heloise realises that her limited options are shaped by men, and that what others recognise as her ‘self’ is actually a performance: “I glance across the room at my portrait, at the façade I call Heloise Chancey. It’s just one of my many roles” (PDD, Chapter 25). Her control and performance of sexuality is a large part of her profession. By the end of my novel, Heloise questions her lifestyle which is restricted within a patriarchal framework. She no longer simply accepts that her sexual availability and embodied sexuality should be her only available options. However, in Heloise’s case, to survive in nineteenth-century London with its rigid social structures, the performance of sexuality and its traps is worth continuing as her choices are limited. Heloise’s ‘doubleness’, in Wolfrey’s (2008) terms, transgresses the reliability of representation which might, in turn, shift the subjectivity of the contemporary reader.

Conclusion

In the creative reflection, I considered the writing processes necessary for the creation of a neo-Victorian crime novel. The creative reflection was divided into four sections. First, as crime fiction favours innovation, I have introduced a protagonist and sub-protagonist who shift boundaries of gender and race. However, I also consider the crime fiction tropes that are negotiable, such as the title and the prologue, yet I maintain the use of clues. Second, in order to write a neo-Victorian novel, I studied Victorian and neo-Victorian work, both creative and critical. For various reasons, the tone of earlier drafts of Playing Devil’s Delight seemed too ‘crinoline’. Experimentation with several strategies assisted me in finding a tone that was more acceptable. Third, as I had an authorial impulse to re-imagine the life of Asian residents

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/311 of Victorian London, I examined how to re-script the ‘sinister Asian’ via my protagonist, Heloise, and her mother/maid, Amah Li Leen. Last, having decided the figure of courtesan meant I could engage with three tenets of neo-Victorianism—marketability, historical authenticity and a contemporary/neo-Victorian consciousness—I reflected upon how she could fulfil the role of female detective while representing current concerns regarding gender and race. Overall, I found six writing strategies useful to my creative work: integrating new critical and creative frameworks via my protagonist; implementing the neo-Victorian ventriloquist metaphor; ‘re-scripting’ the fiction character; sub-protagonist; an authorial intent/ethical impulse; and balancing the neo-Victorian tone of my novel.

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Chapter 7 Conclusion

I first formed the idea of Eurasian courtesan sleuth when considering what type of crime fiction would catch the attention of publishers at a pitching competition. Since then, there has been a certain amount of interest in my novel, especially in the character of a Eurasian courtesan in Victorian London. However, it was not long before I realised that there are complexities inherent in the depiction of such a salacious, neo-Victorian character, for which I developed six writing strategies, examined below. As a feminist writer I did not want to exploit the character of courtesan purely for commercial reasons. As examined in the courtesan section of my Literature Review (Chapter 4), successful courtesans of the Victorian period attained wealth and independence compared with many other women of the time. However, it is still a form of sex-work in a patriarchal society and there are varying feminist stances regarding prostitution, both positive and negative. Although I did consider these aspects at the beginning of this project, I decided against arguing either way, choosing instead to concentrate on aspects of sexuality. A neo-Victorian novel needs to be marketable, to have historical authenticity and be conscious of contemporary concerns. In the writing of Playing Devil’s Delight, I have striven to balance commercial interests and historical material with an ethical impulse to advance a feminist approach. Of course, as stated by Davies (2012), authorial intent does not mean that the work is read by an audience in the same manner as the writer intends, but for me, at least the intention is there, as argued in this thesis. Also, as argued by Cole, crime fiction is interactive, in that readers test their knowledge, their ethical and political positions and their instincts as they read (p. 42). Readers might be interested or intrigued in reading of a glamorous Eurasian courtesan, but I have tried to be thoughtful as to how Heloise can also represent the social restrictions upon young women, both then and now. Mary Eagleton (2003) writes that for even the most sympathetic, feminist creative writer, writing with feminist themes “can seem like an irritating change of role from ‘writer’ to ‘agent of the movement’” (p. 163). In fact, I would say that being conscious of representing Heloise with a slightly prescient sexuality and a feminist consciousness was necessary for me when writing about a courtesan, in order to avoid a form of ‘sexsation’. I would also argue, just as in postcolonial writing, crime fiction can be a useful vehicle to convey feminist ideas that subvert expectations.

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For Mitchell (2010), writers of neo-Victorian fiction “grapple with the issue of how to package the Victorian past for the tastes and demands of contemporary readers, how to make ‘retro’ accessible and, for that matter, commercially successful. Moreover, they struggle, too, with the issue of what is involved in this re-creation of history, what it means to fashion the past for consumption in the present (p. 3). My intention in this project was to explore how to extend the practice of crime writing via the process of neo-Victorian ventriloquism. The study also focused on how I could address complex notions of race and gender using neo- Victorian approaches within the genre of crime fiction. I investigated whether ‘re-scripting’ the generic Asian and courtesan could reveal literary or political tensions. I identified how to extend and contribute to a tradition of existing research in the area of crime fiction featuring a female detective. Also, as a female writer of Eurasian heritage, I was interested in depicting a ‘re-imagined’ neo-Victorian Asian protagonist. The study sought to answer the research question: how can writing a neo-Victorian crime novel, in which the protagonist is a Eurasian courtesan, extend the practice of contemporary crime fiction via the process of ventriloquism? This exegesis has proposed that the answer to the research question lies in an adaptation of Davies’ ventriloquist metaphor, which negotiates what I have termed a genre ‘re-scripting’ through creative writing, textual analysis and reflective practice, developed further below. In response to a gap identified within historical and theoretical work on crime fiction, this project examines in detail the craft of writing about a potentially subversive protagonist and sub-protagonist who cross lines of race and gender, disrupting the masculinist/Western genre conventions that continue to dominate the form. Crime fiction is a recognisable genre that is well placed to serve as a platform for a neo-Victorian consciousness. However, crime fiction also favours innovation, and it is in the process of re-scripting depictions of the Asian and the courtesan that I have extended the practice of crime fiction. Scholars such as Maureen Reddy and Lucy Sussex argue that our understanding of crime fiction is incomplete without a feminist tracing of the history of the genre. My creative and critical work references this interest in the female writer and the female detective. I found that in combining Helen Davies’ ventriloquist metaphor, Samantha Carroll’s revisionary position and a consciousness of Marie-Luise Kohlke’s ‘sexsation’ I was able to write a crime novel that explored feminist and racial issues. Through the characters Heloise, Eurasian courtesan, and her mother, Amah Li Leen, I challenged the common depiction of the ‘sinister Asian’ found in Victorian fiction or crime fiction. This destabilisation of the stereotypical character was carried out via a process of re-

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/314 scripting the clichéd Asian of literature. Similarly, through re-scripting the common depiction of the courtesan I created Heloise, a female detective in the Victorian period. Furthermore, I attempted to write Heloise, courtesan, as a character with a ‘prescient’ feminist consciousness. I have extended the practice of contemporary crime fiction through the depiction of these two characters who respond to neo-Victorianism’s three tenets: historical authenticity; a consciousness of contemporary concerns; and commercial marketability. This project addresses crime genre’s constant requirement of innovative work by the application of three research tools of enquiry. First, through the creative work which depicts two Asian women of the Victorian period. Second, through textual analysis, this project explored fiction that features a female detective and traces of Orientalism, in order to identify what has gone before, but also what narrative space still exists. Third, through reflective practice, this work examines how to extend the practice of contemporary crime fiction via neo-Victorian approaches. An analysis of the process of writing Playing Devil’s Delight offers other crime writers a new perspective on extending crime fiction through the depiction of characters who might shift perceptions via an implementation of a ventriloquist metaphor in tandem with authorial intent. The creative and critical practice resulted in the identification of six strategies that may assist in this type of creative practice. The first strategy locates the need for an authorial desire to integrate new critical and creative frameworks into an established genre with strong conventions such as crime fiction. Crime fiction is a useful genre in which to address complex notions, as it is a genre that retains stable elements, but also values innovation. In the case of my novel, I found the figure of courtesan and Asian useful protagonists to subtly challenge or explore feminist and racial issues within the plot-driven format of crime fiction. The writer, with the help of setting or character, can use the familiar crime genre to reveal alternative complex concerns. Secondly, though implementing the Neo-Victorian ventriloquist metaphor, a ‘speaking through’ of subjects such as Heloise and Amah Li Leen, can offer multiple possibilities for voice and intention. The neo-Victorian ventriloquist metaphor allows for a process of negotiating complex representations within the conventions of the genre. This strategy is especially beneficial for the creative writer who has a ‘re-visionary’ impulse. In my own work, research revealed aspects of the Victorian that is not normally portrayed in Victorian or neo-Victorian fiction. Applying Davies’s ventriloquist metaphor allows for a process of questioning discourses that shape narratives or history. Implementing a neo- Victorian ventriloquist metaphor also allows for the writer to acknowledge a consciousness of

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/315 past and present issues, which can be executed through processes such as parody or prescience. Third, negotiating a ‘doubling’ of the narrative through ‘re-scripting’ the generic character: the term ‘re-scripting’ involves the ‘re-imagining’ of generic characters found in fiction, such as the ‘sinister Asian’ in crime fiction or the tragic/romantic courtesan. This is a process in which I apply the neo-Victorian ventriloquist metaphor via my own fictional characters. My re-scripted characters Heloise and Amah Li Leen are directly juxtaposed with generic racism or clichés by setting the novel in this period that has such strong literary connections with these characters. It is in this way the creative writer can attempt to re-write depictions in order to shift reader perceptions. The introduction of a secondary character, as a second voice/sub-protagonist, such as Amah Li Leen, broadens the neo-Victorian scope. A sub-protagonist has the ability to depict alternative aspects of the neo-Victorian ventriloquist ‘re-citation’. In my work, alternative aspects of feminism, detection and race are presented through this secondary character. The sub-protagonist is an element the writer can use to challenge or question the ‘truths’ that might surround the hero/narrative of the genre. Fifth, an authorial intent/ethical impulse represents how the author might transgress the narrative, in this case the stable form of crime fiction, in order to address complex notions such as race and gender. This authorial intent can be embedded within crime fiction although, of course, it is impossible to know how, or even if, the ideas investigated within the text are acknowledged by the reader. However, an authorial transgression of the narrative has the capacity to further extend the boundaries of crime fiction. Lastly, negotiating a balance between a Victorian and modern tone needs to be undertaken in order to write a neo- Victorian work. In particular, the tonal quality of the narrative must be decided; a satisfactory tone is developed through re-drafting technical aspects of the work in relation to voice and genre requirements. As noted throughout this thesis, representations of the ‘sinister Asian’ and the ‘tragic/romantic’ courtesan are still prevalent in certain fictions. Although there have been postcolonial depictions of Asians with agency, such as Asian detectives or heroes, crime fiction lacks characters who directly challenge the clichéd characterisation of the ‘sinister Asian’ of the Victorian period. In this exegesis I have investigated a specific aspect of crime fiction and introduced a more nuanced and complex depiction of the 'Asian narrative' into the genre by way of neo-Victorian ventriloquism. In the future, I think it would be of interest to critically and creatively explore Victorian discourses, such as those produced through anti-

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/316 racist campaigns of the nineteenth century, that were opposed to those that shaped the ‘sinister Asian’. Also, through the development of my novel, Amah Li Leen, the sub- protagonist, took on a larger narrative role than originally planned. It would be of interest to me to engage in further work, creative and critical, that extends and interrogates this intriguing, multi-faceted figure of Mother in crime fiction. Playing Devil’s Delight is meant to be the first in a series of crime novels. Each novel will reveal a little more information about Heloise and Amah Li Leen—their Asian background, parentage, how Heloise came to be a sex-worker and so on. A neo-Victorian crime novel, with a Eurasian courtesan as sleuth, extends the genre of crime fiction which is in essence repeatable and self-referential, but also values uniqueness and individuality (Ken Gelder, 2004, p. 54). A negotiation of current concerns to do with race and gender is possible in a work such as Playing Devil’s Delight. Cole writes that “women want to read texts in which women have agency, in which women manage their lives and assert their role in society” (p. 25). Through a form of ventriloquist doubling, the characters Heloise Chancey and Amah Li Leen represent shifting depictions of the female hero in crime fiction.

Mirandi Riwoe/Courtesan as Sleuth/317

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