The Solitary House Read Free

mind—just as he was taught by his great-uncle Maddox, the celebrated thief taker. His parents had named him Charles in Maddox’s honour, though not without some misgivings: Maddox might have made a lot of money out of his chosen profession, but it was not one well-regarded by the middle classes. Not then, when Maddox was practising, in the early years of the century, and certainly not now. But then again, the Victorian bourgeoisie can rely on a properly constituted police force, which is a luxury their grand-parents never had. Thief taking may never have been a particularly respectable occupation, but it was an essential one, nevertheless, and all too often the only bulwark between order and anarchy. ‘Charles Maddox’ he is, then, the second of that name, but his parents could hardly have expected he would want to emulate his predecessor in a far more significant way, and take up the same low calling. When he turned seventeen Charles reluctantly agreed to follow his father into medicine in a last forlorn attempt to salvage their relationship, but he lasted less than a year before giving it up and beginning the world again where his heart really lay—with the Detective.
    The second officer comes up now and stands behind him, watchful but silent. Charles thinks he’s seen him before, but can’t remember his name. Clough, is it? Or Cuss? Something like that, anyway. The officer’s face is as sharp as a hatchet and his skin as dry as an autumn leaf.
    “So what do you make of it?” the man says eventually, in the same level tone he might use to order a beer. Was it indifference—or just an appropriate and commendable detachment? Charles can’t be sure.
    “Can you tell me who found it?” he asks.
    “Couple of lads, playing where they shouldn’t. I doubt they’ll be back here in a hurry.”
    “And it was like this?”
    “Nothing’s been moved. Not yet.”
    Charles bends down and looks more closely, straining his eyes in the low light. Without a word, the man brings the bull-dog lower, and Charles feels the lantern’s warmth on his skin. It’s clear to him now what must have happened. Judging by the exposed knots of red yew root, the last week’s rain has washed at least an inch of mud from the surface of the soil. And what it’s revealed is the tiny body of a newborn baby, still wrapped in a dirty blue woollen blanket, a scrap of white cotton tangled about the neck. He may never have completed his medical training, but Charles knows enough to make a pretty shrewd guess how long these bones have been here. In this waterlogged London clay, probably three weeks; certainly no more than four. The eyes are long gone, but wisps of pale hair are still pasted to the small skull, and the flesh is largely intact, though almost black with putrefaction and scored with the marks of teeth and claws. Indeed, the rats seem to have done an unusually efficient job. One hand is completely gone below the wrist, but the fingers of the other are curled as if to a mother’s touch. When Charles lifts the edge of the sodden blanket the gaping belly is swarming with larvae. But that isn’t the worst of it. Underneath the body he can already see the buried blue of another coverlet, and the broken rib cage of another small child. His breath catches. He glances up at the officer, “Do you want to, or shall I?”
    “Be my guest. It’s not a job I relish.”
    Charles takes a pair of gloves from his pocket, and the officer hands him a small trowel. Five minutes’ careful digging reveals three bodies buried under the first, one next to the other, exactly aligned. Indeed, they look for all the world like infants in a cradle. Sleeping soundly side by side, carefully swaddled against the night air. Charles sits back on his heels. “So what do we think? Are we assuming it’s a woman?”
    The other man considers. “Most likely, in my experience.”
    “And the same one each time?”
    “Hard to tell for sure. Could be two of them. The