and Kitty and Eustace Flask. Ambrose had been drinking in one of the local alehouses and found it hard to align the key with the front-door keyhole. He succeeded at the sixth or seventh attempt and stumbled into the tiny hallway then through the kitchen and, after more fumbling with the back door, out to the privy in the yard. Here he enjoyed a prolonged piss, swaying slightly and clinging on to the rough whitewash of the wall with one hand. Back in the yard he glanced up at the sky. The day had been fine and there were still a few streaks of light in the west.
Having groped his way back into the hallway, he stood at the bottom of the stairs, grasping the banister. It was quite dark indoors. After a time his attention was roused by noises from the floor above. After a bit more time he recognized them. Little groans and squeals and sighs. Kitty, the bitch! His hand tightened round the banister knob. But instead of thundering up the stairs, Ambrose became all calmness and deliberation. He slipped off his shoes. He went back to the kitchen, found a kerosene lamp and lit it, adjusting the wick to reduce the amount of smoke.
He returned to the foot of the stairs and, holding the lamp in one hand, climbed up one tread at a time. He need not have bothered about keeping quiet. The noises from above were growing louder and more oblivious. Mingled with them were the fluting tones of Eustace Flask, uttering meaningless sounds that reminded Ambrose of a bleating goat. Ambrose paused on the cramped landing. There were three doors leading off it, one to the bedroom which he shared with Kitty, one to a space so small that it was more cupboard than boxroom, and one to the chamber which Flask occupied all by his long, lonely, weedy self. That was where the noises were coming from.
Standing outside the door, Ambrose took a deep breath. He had been drunk and now he was sober. Well, fancy that, he mouthed to himself. He gripped the knob, twisted it and kicked the door so hard it almost came off its hinges. Then he held the lamp aloft. It threw an incongruously soft glow across the occupants of the room. Ambrose might have laughed at the absurd spectacle before him. He might have laughed but he did not.
Kitty Partout was lying beneath Eustace Flask. They were slantwise on the medium’s spacious bed. Her chemise was bunched up and her legs splayed out either side of the spiritualist’s hindquarters. Those hindquarters had been pumping away like billy-oh but the crash of the door caused them to freeze like small animals caught out in lantern-light. Flask was still wearing a shirt but had gone so far as to remove his trousers. Ambrose saw legs as pale and thin as pipe cleaners.
Ambrose did not laugh. Neither was he angry, not yet. Instead he was conscious of an instant of high glee. So this was what the refined medium got up to when he thought no one was looking, the dirty bugger. He was no better than all the rest of them. In the few months since he and Kitty had met Flask he had suffered from a sense of inferiority. Ambrose was the brawny assistant, Flask was the one with brains while Kitty provided the ornamental trimmings. Now Ambrose Barker had the upper hand over both of them.
All this flashed through Ambrose’s head in the few moments it took for Flask and Kitty to jerk their heads round and realize there was a person standing in the doorway. Instinctively, they flinched away and blinked, unable to see properly. Then Flask leapt off Kitty, pulling down his shirt to conceal his member — which was thin and raw- looking like a dog’s — but leaving Miss Partout exposed. Her hands flew down to cover the black bush between her legs. Don’t bother, I’ve seen it all before, Ambrose was about to say, but he stopped himself. The remark did not rise the occasion. He felt as clear-headed and powerful as he had ever felt in his life, standing there in the upstairs doorway of the rented house in Durham’s Old Elvet and confronting this pair of… this pair of…
Something special was required, a remark that would put Eustace and Kitty in their places for a long time. Something to show that he too could be clever with words.
‘Oh my,’ he said, imitating (not very well) the fluting tones of Eustace Flask. ‘Oh my, Uncle Eustace. I am so sorry to disturb you when you are so busy with your niece.’
‘I’m not his niece, Ambrose,’ said Kitty. ‘You know that. Don’t be silly.’
She spoke quite composedly. Flask, for once, had nothing to say for himself but continued to kneel on the bed, looking absurd as he tugged his shirt down to hide his shrinking pizzle even though the movement served to reveal more of his flat buttocks.
Ambrose Barker revelled in his moment of power. He carefully formed the next sentence in his mind. He ignored the fact that Kitty Partout wasn’t Flask’s niece — of course she wasn’t his niece, Ambrose was making a witty gibe — and said, ‘You ought to have the law on you, uncle Eustace, the law, I say. You know why? An uncle doing it with his niece. ’S a clear case of incest.’
But Ambrose was not as clear-headed as he imagined. His voice was slurry with all the pints he’d swallowed that evening and he was stumbling over his words. He had difficulty with ‘niece’ which sounded more like ‘nice’ and he mangled ‘incest’ altogether so that what he wanted to say emerged as ‘a clear case of insects’.
And then Kitty made the mistake of laughing. It was more of a titter than an outright laugh. She took one hand from between her legs and clapped it over her mouth.
‘Oh Ambrose,’ she said. ‘A case of insects!’
All at once Ambrose’s sense of cool superiority drained away. How dare the bitch laugh at him! It was as if he had shifted back from being sober to being drunk again, drunk and raging, although he had really been drunk the whole time. He strode a couple of paces into the bedroom and swung the kerosene lamp at her head. Eustace scrabbled from the bed and cowered on the far side against the wall with his hands covering his head while Kitty screamed and rolled to the edge of the bed.
The glass case of the lamp shattered and within seconds the burning wick had set a pillowcase and top sheet on fire. Flask reacted by huddling further down against the wall while Ambrose glared, stupefied, at what he had done. It was only Kitty’s quick response which saved them. There was a china jug and bowl on a side table, used by Flask for his morning ablutions and (luckily) unemptied. Kitty jumped from the bed, seized the jug and bowl from the table, and threw the contents over the flickering flames. Then she smothered the burning linen with a blanket, which she beat down with her hands.
The bedroom was filled with a horrible stench — of kerosene and singed bedclothes and burnt feathers — and the air was already thick with smoke. But Kitty’s quickness had doused the fire. At a cost, though. She held up her hands which were bleeding in several places from the glass shards of the shattered lantern.
Ambrose Barker was finally roused from his stupor. He saw Kitty Partout’s bloody hands, he saw Eustace Flask rising shakily up from his huddled stance. He was still angry, very angry indeed, but he realized that now was not the right moment to exact his revenge. Instead he shook his fist at the pair — although it’s not certain that either of them noticed the gesture — and stalked from the room and down the stairs. Only when he’d slammed the front door to the house and was standing in the street did it occur to him that he had not the faintest idea where to go or what to do next. But that wasn’t quite true. He did have an idea. It came to him from nowhere. He’d show her, he’d show them.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the lovers’ chamber, Eustace Flask had recovered a little of his composure. He did his best to remove the glass splinters from Kitty’s palms and fingers. He created makeshift bandages for her out of torn-up bits of bed-sheet. He tutted and cooed and tried to still his trembling hands. Despite the shock and her injuries, Kitty was the calmer of the two. She was simultaneously tearful and calm. Blinking her eyes, she watched as Eustace fumbled to wrap the linen strips about her hands.
Men were very foolish, she concluded.
Before the Performance
It was an outing to the theatre. Not only the Ansells but Julia Howlett and Septimus Sheridan were going to see the redoubtable magician and his Hindoo troupe. Tom and Helen had been invited to visit Major Marmont in his dressing room at the theatre before the performance. He was curious to meet Helen, since he had known her father.
The Ansells walked to the Assembly Rooms which were not far from Aunt Julia’s house in the South Bailey. A dozen yards behind them came Miss Howlett and Mr Sheridan, her arm twined companionably through his. From a distance they had the appearance of an elderly married couple and Helen, looking back, wondered whether she’d been too hasty in dismissing the idea of marriage, even this late.
But Helen had other and more pressing things on her mind. She asked Tom if he remembered the name of the policeman who had attended the seance at Tullis Street.
