The door was opened by Mr Bazzard, whose eyes stretched wide before he bowed low, ushering me in.
"I'm afraid Mr Grewgious is otherwise engaged on legal business," he said. "But I am sure he would not object to my admitting you."
He watched me sit down and then stood for a moment, raking me over with his eyes until I felt like an exhibit.
"When do you expect him back?" I asked, put out.
"Imminently, I am sure. I suppose you will be wanting some form of refreshment?" The offer was made without enthusiasm.
"No, no, just…do you have such a thing as a bucket? Or a basin?" I looked around me wildly for such a thing, finding only shelf upon shelf of law books.
"A bucket?" Bazzard was nonplussed, but all became clear when I leapt from the chair, but I was too late, for I fell to my knees and retched all over the rug.
"Oh dear," I gasped, still on my hands and knees. "I am so sorry."
Truth to tell, there was not much to be cleared up, for I had not eaten since breakfast and most of that lay in Princess Puffer's chamberpot.
Bazzard simply stood staring at the rug with horrified dismay.
Grewgious chose that inopportune moment to make his entrance.
"Good heavens. Whatever is amiss? Rosa?"
"I'm afraid I have made a mess of your rug."
"Dear girl, you are not well." He hurried over, dropping his case on a table before helping me back into the chair. "Well, Bazzard? Do you have many flies to catch today? Fetch a mop and bucket, for heaven's sake."
"And now it has come to this," he muttered dramatically. "If you are in need of somebody to mop up the contents of somebody's stomach, call on Daniel Bazzard."
He stormed off, leaving Grewgious and I together.
"Rosa," he said gently.
I did not know how to open the conversation. I had thought about it in the cab, when I was not flipping through that strange book of Jasper's. I could draw no conclusions from it. It seemed, in most respects, a perfectly ordinary type of journal, detailing the movements of himself and Edwin up to Christmas. It was true to say that he rather overstated the seriousness of Eddy and Neville's fight, but whether this was from genuine concern or as part of some larger plot I could not determine.
Princess Puffer had said he intended to hand it to the police – it was all intended as evidence to frame Landless. But nothing in it was false, as far as I could make out. He did, however, seem to exaggerate his attachment to Eddy, whom I now knew he had barely even liked, which was one thing that pointed towards the harridan's theory.
He had started the diary the day after we met, which gave me pause. Did he start fantasising Edwin's murder from that point? But the early entries were bland and dull in the extreme, except the little reminders every Monday and Thursday: "1 p.m. R" – which made my stomach twist in reminiscence. Scattered about the margins were little bars of music here and there, occasionally crossing into the main body of the diary, presumably when he was feeling inspired. One of them had a title: Rosebuds.
But had murder been on his mind, truly? Could he have put his dream into practice? Anyone in the world could dream of murdering a person – few could actually do it.
And now I was here with Grewgious, I did not know what to say. I had no idea how I wanted to proceed.
"I need a little breathing space," I managed to say.
Bazzard came in and pushed the mop listlessly around the rug until Grewgious, uncharacteristically irritable, sent him out to make tea.
"There is trouble between you and Jasper?"
"There is…I cannot explain it, Mr Grewgious, but I only ask your forebearance and wonder if you would be so kind as to give me a bed for the night."
"For as many nights as you wish. And you know that my earlier offer is still open. If you wish to make a formal separation from Mr Jasper―"
"I do not wish to make any such decision. I have just learned some…startling information…and I need peace and solitude to try and understand it. And, as you are the closest I have to a living parent, I came to you."
"You did well, Rosa. My door is always open to you. Might I enquire what the nature of this startling information might be?"
"I am so sorry, Mr Grewgious, for I know your intentions are the best, but I do not think I should discuss it with anyone except my husband. At least, I should discuss it with him first."
"Very well," he said. "There is a bed made up in my guest chamber upstairs. Let us take tea and then I will show you to it."
"Thank you."
We talked of other things, inconsequential things, while we drank our tea, though my mind felt far from capable of concentration.
I spent the rest of the day – except supper – in that guest chamber, looking over and over the diary, reliving every word Princess Puffer had spoken, trying to imagine an alternative reality in which I had not broken with Edwin and Jasper had…what? Would he have killed him? Would he have stood by and watched Neville Landless hang, for the sake of possessing me? It was too outlandish. And yet when I thought of Jasper, of his vehemence and intensity, I shivered a little and thought perhaps…
I went to bed early, fatally sapped by the rigours of the day, combined with a kind of bone-deep weariness that seemed linked to the nausea, and managed to find some sleep.
When I awoke the next morning, my path seemed clear. I would go back to Cloisterham, and Jasper and I would talk, a once-and-for-all kind of talk that made it clear that I expected no further obfuscation or concealment of the truth, regardless of what it related to, and then I would know what to do.
I would have to tell him about the child as well.
I breakfasted with Grewgious – or rather, Grewgious breakfasted while I held my head over a basin – and then he departed, with profuse apologies, for the courts.
Bazzard was expected within the hour. I relished the peace, managing a triangle of bread and a few sips of weak tea before there was a tremendous banging at the door. It was still a little early for clients, and Bazzard presumably had a key.
Oh. I knew who it was.
I went to the door and asked, "Who is there?" but the wood was thick and I don't think he heard me.
So I opened it. Jasper, who stood on the other side, darted out a hand with lightning speed, taking hold of my wrist and pulling me out of the door.
"You will not leave me," he said, in the fiercely intent way he had when he spoke of the blackmail, as if he were making some kind of spell or invocation.
"I needed some time," I said. "I needed to think."
"Think as much as you like, you are coming home with me."
"I mean to."
He looked astonished, frowning. "You do?"
"Yes. Let me collect my things and we will talk. Bazzard will be here soon."
I let him into the office while I packed my little carpet bag upstairs. The notebook too.
"Where can we go that is pleasant?" I wondered aloud, trying my level best to keep things light and unthreatening. I wanted to be somewhere public when I asked him about the notebook and the opium dreams. "Where we can discuss things in peace?"
"And what do we need to discuss? That you are my wife and you belong with me. I see little room for ambiguity."
"I went to see Princess Puffer."
He paled and gripped the back of a chair.
"I told you not to," he said hoarsely after a most horrible silence.
"That's why I went to see her," I retorted. "Do you not know me at all?"
"So you went to see her? But you still intend to come home with me?"
"I think I do. But first, we must talk. Let us go somewhere…"
"The Whispering Gallery," he said. "You wanted to see it."
"Yes, I did."
He held out his hand.
For a moment, I thought better of taking it. The hand that might have killed my Eddy.
But it hadn't. It hadn't killed anyone.
I took it, and we left in the direction of St Paul's.
"I was worried sick about you," he said, weaving with me through the lawyers and clients, the sellers and buyers on the streets. "Anything could have happened to you."
"I was safe and well."
"You went to Limehouse." He shouted the words, stopping and pressing tight into my arm.
"I had to."
"I cannot…God, Rosa. When I think of what could have happened…"
"Murder, perhaps? You know about that, don't you?"
He looked so haunted that I regretted my throwaway words. I had not meant to bring the subject up so cavalierly. But his scolding had made me bristle, as it always did. I had done nothing wrong!
We walked on in silence until we reached St Paul's. He led me up the many, many stairs until we arrived on the Whispering Gallery. Immediately, I regretted the choice of venue. It was so very high up. It was not the place for such a charged conversation as ours was bound to be. All the same, I clung to the handrail and tried to look up instead of down.
"Princess Puffer told you all, did she?" he opened softly.
"She told me about your dreams."
"Yes, I had dreams. Opium will induce them."
"Does it choose them for you? Or do you choose them?"
"It was a fantasy, which the opium elaborated and made richer. The day I met you, I lay in bed that night and thought about what might happen if Edwin died. When I went to Limehouse the following weekend, that thought exploded into this dream. Such a pleasurable dream it was, too."
"You took pleasure in dreams of murder?"
"You cannot understand unless you have known the perfect beauty of the opium dream. It repeated itself, over and over, until I came to think of it as a prophecy. A prompt. A direction from a higher power."
"A delusion."
"Yes. A delusion. But you must realise, Rosa, that by then, I was hopelessly in the grip of my dependency, and I could not think as I do now. The opium drove the obsession and the obsession fed on the opium until they became parasitically related."
"And if I had not broken up with Eddy?"
I could not look at him. The great dome arced above us, heavenly and golden, perhaps like Jasper's opium dreams.
"Would I have killed him?"
The question whispered through the empty gallery. I waited and waited for his answer, fixing my gaze on one gilded embellishment until it blurred before my eyes.
"I don't know."
"Oh, dear Lord. What am I to do?"
"I don't know, Rosa, because I no longer understand or even recognise the man I was at that time. Whatever he might have done, he was not entirely me. He was the dark part, unrestrained, unrestricted by the rest of me, the person you see now. The person you married."
"You cannot abdicate responsibility so completely. You were still John Jasper. You were not so different."
"Outwardly, perhaps not. But inwardly, I was in fragments. Pieces of me…went missing. Parts of my mind, burnt away by opium."
"So perhaps you would have done it?"
I looked at him, desperate for him to deny it completely.
He shook his head. He would not deny it, though he could have lied to me. It would have been so easy for him to have lied to me.
"I think it is unlikely, when I look at the facts of the case," he said.
"That diary…"
"Oh, it was simple idiocy. Just a token of the fantasy I was living. All my life, Rosa, I have written down murder plots and stories, pieces of fiction. They drained some of the poison from my mind. You have no idea how many people I have murdered in fiction. My sister, Captain Drood, half the boys from the choir school."
"But you have never really murdered anyone?"
He laughed, but it wasn't really a laugh, more a kind of hacking sob.
"God knows I've had the provocation. But no."
I looked down, all the way down, weighing his words.
Two options lay open to me.
I could leave him, for he had behaved most dangerously in the past, taking opium and plotting murders and becoming unhealthily fixated on me to a point that could well have ended in disaster for all concerned, including me. To think back on all of that, now I knew it in entirety, was certainly chilling and good grounds to turn my back on him.
Or I could be brave. I could look at the man I was married to and accept that time of turbulence as some kind of terrible episode of illness or mania, induced by opium. He knew well enough how far beyond the pale he had gone and his remorse was genuine. He wanted nothing else than to live an unassuming life as my husband and the father of my children. And this was all I wanted as well. Should I give it all up for the sake of something that was past and gone with nobody the worse for it?
"Why did you not tell me any of this?" I asked heavily.
"I wanted to shield you."
"From the kind of man you are? The kind of man I have committed my life to?"
"I did not want you to fear."
"You have made me fear far worse. You should have told me."
"You would have left me."
"I deserve to be able to make an informed choice."
"I could not have you make that choice. I could not. I wanted you to think…oh, it is useless."
"To think you were perfect and everything was wonderful?"
"Yes. I wanted you to think that. That is what you deserve to think. It seemed selfish for me to take that happiness from you. And we were happy, weren't we? So very happy. For a time. I had simply hoped it could all be forgotten…but my transgression hangs over me like an axe, eternally, never to be expiated."
"Oh, Jasper. You are always so dramatic." I turned to him. "I have told you I am coming home. That is what I intend to do."
His knuckles whitened on the handrail.
"You cannot mean it."
"I do mean it. But I have a condition."
"Name it."
"You keep nothing from me in the future. Nothing at all. Even if it seems completely trivial, you must tell me. And especially if you think it is something I won't want to hear. If you think it will pain or upset me, then that is what I want to hear the most."
His facial muscles twitched, the hint of a smile.
"You have made the right decision," he said. "I will make you the happiest woman alive."
"You already have done. If you could do it more consistently…I would consider it an improvement."
"You forgive me?"
"Yes. And I don't believe you could ever have committed a cold-blooded murder. You are the least cold-blooded creature I have ever met in my life."
The twitch of muscles became a smile, sheepish enough, but wonderful to see.
"Whatever is in your past, John Jasper, you are in my future, and I am in yours."
"Then we can put this, all of this, behind us? No recriminations? Just a clear path into the future?"
"It is all I have wanted, ever since Christmas Day. But if I am to have faith in you, you must be worthy of it. One more concealment of the truth will be fatal to my trust. You do see, don't you?"
"Yes, I do. I see it now."
"You must."
"I do."
"And now, can we go home?"
"I want to pay a visit to somebody first."
"Oh, who?"
"You go back to Grewgious' chambers…"
"No. You have to tell me. I will come with you."
"It is Princess Puffer."
"Oh, John, what do you intend? Leave her be. She has done her worst and now we can forget about her."
"I need to ask her something, then I can let it rest."
"You are not going to threaten her, are you?"
"No. But she has made a number of oblique references to knowing something about me. I should like to know what she means."
"Oh! When I visited her, she said something strange…about not wanting history to repeat itself. I don't know what she meant by it."
"Then shall we ask her?"
"I suppose so. I do not like her room very much."
We were by now on the way down the stairs, comfortably hand in hand once more.
"Opium confers glamour to the drabbest of surroundings, but even so, I never found her den especially congenial," admitted Jasper.
"I wonder what she meant."
We hailed a cab outside the cathedral to take us back to Limehouse. Jasper held my hands tight all the way, and he did not take his eyes from me, as if he were afraid I might vanish into the ether.
"She said she would not blackmail you any more," I said.
"She has nothing to threaten me with now."
"What about telling the Dean? About the opium?"
"She never threatened me with that. I half-hoped she would tell him, then perhaps he would give me a reference simply to be rid of me." He sighed, then squeezed my fingers. "But I have no grounds to be gloomy today. Fortune favours me, at last, for I still have you, and you may be sure I shall never risk losing you again."
"I don't want to be lost. And I would be so lost without you."
"You must have said something to affect her, for her to yield my secret. How did you persuade her?"
But the cab had arrived on the dingy quayside and I was saved the eventuality of answering.
I was substantially less nervous with Jasper by my side, though I wondered whether she would have company of the inert, opium-dazed kind.
He pushed open the rickety door. The light was every bit as poor as it had been the day before, but she was at least awake, and burning some material in the bowl part of one of her pipes.
She looked up at the creak of the door, squinting into the gloom.
"Who is there?"
Jasper stepped forward, with me on his arm.
"Well, well," she said. "The happy couple. And she's still your Rosebud, is she, after everything? You want to hang on to her, dearie."
"I intend to. Is what she says true?"
"About what?"
"Our arrangement. It is at an end."
"Listen to me. I know what you think of me. I was a means to your end. I gave you the oblivion, you gave me the tin. But there's more to Princess Puffer than that. I'm a creature of flesh and blood, just like you."
"I don't doubt it." He sounded confused. "But I have come here for more than your assurance that you will not demand any more money from me. You have mentioned several times some knowledge to which I am not party. I want that knowledge."
"Sit down, both of you. I think I've some nuts somewhere, if either of you―"
"No, thank you," we both said, taking our seats on the cot beneath the window.
"Isn't it funny how things turn out sometimes?" she said, looking at us both, beaming as if she were proud of us.
"Excessively," said Jasper dryly.
"You see, little singing bird, when I saw you and your Rosebud by St Paul's, I decided I would track you down. I had my little scheme in mind, my little pension plan, if you like. And with your singing and your dreams about the cathedral, I thought you might be in a choir. Well, St Paul's, I thought. I'll enquire. I went in and saw the verger. 'That gentleman who just left here, the dark gentleman. He sings in your choir, don't he?' The verger looks down his nose at me. 'No,' he says. 'But he's a chorister, though, I'm sure of it, for I've heard him sing. I can't remember what church it might have been at, though. You're sure he's never been in your choir?' 'Oh no,' says he, 'never here. But he is choirmaster at Cloisterham. Perhaps you have heard him there.' 'Well, well,' thinks I. 'There's a class of smoker we don't get so much round here. A choirmaster.' And my scheme looks better and better."
"Yes, yes," said Jasper testily. "The Metropolitan police could employ your talents, I'm sure. But what of it?"
"Well, I'd never been to Cloisterham, but I knew a good friend who went there years ago, and I thought perhaps I could look her up. Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. One a singing bird and one a fancy little peacock, what I lost touch with years ago." She laughed at her own colourful metaphor, but neither Jasper nor I joined in.
"So there I am in Cloisterham, and what a queer little place it is too. I walks to the cathedral and I asks a gentleman in a dog collar, 'Please, what's the name of your choirmaster here?' 'It's Jasper,' he says, and that strikes me speechless."
"Why?" Jasper swallowed.
"Because blow me down if that ain't the name of my old friend."
"What?"
"Jasper. Meg Jasper. Or Mrs Margaret Drood, as her very good fortune made her."
"You lie."
"Why would I lie, my dear? We was tight, me and Meg, all those years ago. She had her airs and graces but she was such a pretty thing, and so was I, though you won't believe it. Oh, we had all the swells after us." She chuckled. "But she believed their promises where I never did, the silly girl. She let them sweet-talk her into places good girls should never go. You know what I mean, Rosebud, don't you?"
I tightened my lips.
"Well, perhaps you can guess what happened. The poor girl fell. She had a child and gave it up to a baby farmer – I think the father paid, whoever he was."
She paused to give Jasper a significant look. I held on to his arm and laid my head against my arm. Oh, my love, my poor boy.
"It was me," he whispered.
"You do have a look of her, though it passed me by till I knew your name."
"She said she was my sister."
"Oh, so you saw her again? I lost touch with her, once Captain Drood came calling and bore her off to Cloisterham. She wasn't going to tell him about you, you know. But I think she got drunk one night before the wedding and it all came out. Her little secret. Lucky, she was, that he kept faith with her. He must have loved her very much."
"More than she ever loved anyone. Except Ned, of course."
"So there you are. My little revelation. Your poor mother couldn't keep you – I believe she died some years ago, God rest her – but your Rosebud ain't going the same way. No baby farms for your little one, eh?"
"Indeed…not," he said, turning to frown at me in bewilderment.
"Oh lor', she ain't told you. Well, I'd best let you be. Goodbye, my dears. And mind you tend your mother's grave a bit better. Nobody had put flowers there for years, I reckon, before I did."
Jasper rose, helping me to my feet. We left without another word.
Outside, on the fish-stinking quay, I put my hand over my mouth, trying to quell another urge to retch.
Jasper patted my arm.
"Morning sickness, my love?"
I nodded guiltily.
"I should have told you before…"
"So it isn't just me who keeps things to himself, is it?"
"I had hoped for pleasanter surroundings and a more appropriate time. Oh dear. You think it a bad circumstance. I know we have little money and the gatehouse is small and―"
He shushed me, taking me into an embrace that blocked out the insalubrious sounds and smells of Limehouse Quay.
"I think it the best news in the world, Rosebud. The very best. Now, where is a hansom cab in this godforsaken place. I am taking you home."
A/N: I think this might actually be The End. Phew. There is nothing else standing in their way and they can live their lives without fear. But I don't think it's completely the end, because I have an Epilogue in me. I do love an Epilogue.