Melbourne, 30 October 1868
Lola stands in a squalid room at the foot of a rickety bed, watching Edward bestow a passionate kiss upon the mouth of her naked friend. Marie’s white arms and legs are flung out anyhow, her dark hair crawling over the pillow. Edward lifts her up from the bed. He puts his ear to her nose and lips. He slaps her hair-streaked face.
No, thinks Lola, no.
She pulls off her shawl and tries to wind it around her friend’s body. The beautiful skin is clammy and cold, a toad skin. Edward moans, pushes Lola away. He smells of brandy. He flings Marie down, pummels her chest with his fists, then drags her into a sitting position.
‘Hold her,’ he says.
Lola wants to shout at him to take his damn hands away, but the urgency in his voice pushes her to the other side of the bed. She puts her arms around Marie, presses in on her shoulders, digs her fingers into the wool of the shawl. Her dainty friend is suddenly so heavy. She bends at her tiny waist. She flops forward like a badly stuffed doll. Edward shakes her, and a reeky yellow liquid oozes from her slack mouth. A great hank of hair slips from her head and falls down her back to the pillow. Dear God, some poison has set off a galloping mange.
He opens his bag, draws out a long rubber tube, pushes it into the little O that was once Marie’s perfect rosebud mouth. Now the O is swollen, chapped, purple. In and further in goes the tube, a serpent devouring from inside. Lola feels her own throat constrict and choke.
Marie convulses. Lola holds her down on the bed. Edward opens a flask and pours dark liquid down the tube. A bitter smell of coffee. He attaches a bulb to the end of the tube, squeezes and releases it. The liquid comes back with a sickening suck. He tips in more coffee, squeezes and releases. The liquid splashes onto the floor, and now it has a sickly-sweet chemical smell.
Marie falls limp. Glazed eyes in a waxy face stare at Lola without recognition.
‘You’ve killed her,’ hisses Lola.
‘Hush.’
Edward yanks out the tube, wipes her nose and lips with his fingers, listens for a breath, pushes the tube back in.
‘Water,’ he says.
Lola fetches the full water pitcher from the stand. He uses the bulb to suck up the water mixed with something from another bottle with an ammonia smell. He pumps the mixture through the tube then takes the tube out of her mouth. Thank God. Must wash her poor face. Piled on an armchair by the bed are white gloves, silver fans, a little red book, corsets, striped stockings, a wig stand, a tangled cascade of pearls and diamonds, and a red scarf that flashes gold. Lola dips the edge of the scarf in water and tenderly wipes the sweat-dotted brow and cheeks, avoiding those bruised lips.
Her howls echo around the bare room with the glittering walls.
Now Edward gestures to her to pull Marie upright, off the bed. They yank her arms over their shoulders. They walk her up and down, up and down; her toes trail over the boards with the tiniest of clicks. Up and down. Past the picture rail and hangers with their dozens of gowns in purple and blue-striped silk, yellow and green damask, crimson satin. Up and down. At the end of one wall hangs a long black velvet cape, trimmed with white fur. Lola could close her eyes on this blaze of colour and still know this as Marie’s boudoir from the scents of Quelques Fleurs and Earl Grey tea.
But not from the sickening whiffs of mould and ammonia. Not from the peeling daisy-patterned wallpaper, drab muslin curtains, sagging armchair and ramshackle bed, and the solitary lamp on the bare floorboards. Not from her friend’s Blue Onion porcelain teapot, waiting lidless on the floor below a cracked ceiling bulging with stains.
Up and down. The lamp’s sputter, their marching boots, Edward’s heavy breath, her own gasps. Yet not a sound from Marie.
Suddenly Marie shakes with a series of stertorous breaths. Lola and Edward stare at each other. His Babylonian beard and eyebrows are strangely darker. It is the contrast with his white face.
A guttural gurgle from Marie’s throat. Sh or ch.
Glory be, Lola thinks, we have saved her.
Then the breaths stop.
Edward lays her back on the bed. His fingers circle her wrist. With great gentleness, he closes her eyes and smooths her hair. As he moves away, Lola flings herself across the sweat-drenched shawl and the body beneath, breast to breast, and her howls echo around the bare room with the glittering walls.
A skeleton wearing a jaunty hat barred Lola’s way just inside the door of the Yorick Club. It took her a moment to realise the thing was inanimate. She gave it a wide berth and crossed the rush matting towards a well-stocked bar. The scribblers’ den shook and echoed with a deep rumble of voices. Fellows lounged on the bundles of papers tied with string that served for seats, knocking back brandy nobblers or putting their heads together, no doubt to share newspaper gossip. The biggest crowd was at the bar, where a young fellow in tall black riding boots was cocking one arm like a fencer. ‘Science has identified four categories of young unmarried female,’ he declaimed. ‘The goddess, the prim miss, the willing woman and the willing for the money woman.’ The crowd burst into laughter.
Where was her quarry? She had never seen him or had a description. All she knew were his words in newsprint. That baldie? That greying whiskery man? He would have an air of authority. All the others were vultures. The room seemed larger and larger. As she came closer to the bar, a silence fell. Perhaps fifty heads turned, stared. She was the only woman in the place. Her best blue dress buttoned up to her chin, yet those eyes stripped her bare.
He would have an air of authority. All the others were vultures.
A short figure with a magnificent beard broke from the bar crowd and came to her elbow. Edward Neild, her doctor and Melbourne’s veteran theatre critic, with brandy on his breath. At least he wasn’t a vulture. More of a pouter pigeon.
‘Miss Sanchez, what are you doing here?’ His voice was low, anxious. ‘Yorick doesn’t allow females, don’t you know that?’
‘Do they accept women as guests?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Then I am your guest.’
The scowling bartender had moved out from behind the bar and was bearing down as if she were a wild dog that had sniffed its way in. Lola grabbed Edward’s arm, held it tight. ‘I am looking for Magnus Scott. Can you point him out?’
‘What in blazes do you want with Magnus?’ He nodded at the bartender, began to steer her back towards the skeleton.
‘Did I hear my name?’
The young man who had been holding forth at the bar stood just behind Edward, towering over him. His face, one of the few clean-shaven in this place of goats, was in shadow, but she could tell he was gazing intently at her. She freed herself from Edward’s arm and shook the young fellow’s hand like a man. ‘I am Lola Sanchez. The actress. I seem to have broken the Yorick rules, Mr Scott. But I’m hoping you will help me.’
‘Always happy to help a lady.’ He half-turned towards the bar where the men had recommenced their talk. The barman had retreated but still glared at her, while Edward was hovering helplessly. Someone whistled, others brayed and snickered. It was like standing in a tank full of eels.
‘Let me take you to the Café de Paris—it is more welcoming.’ He took her arm as if he thought it belonged on his, swept the hat off the skeleton as he passed and dropped it on his own head. Those riding boots took long strides; she had to scurry to keep up. She forgot about Edward, about the vultures, the eels, the goats.
As he strode he tapped the pavement with a silver-handled cane. Was that Excalibur, his famous swordstick? It looked like any other walking stick. But of course a sword could be hidden inside.
The Café de Paris was quiet; only three solitary figures sat hunched over their drinks. The boots crossed the chequered black and white floor to a secluded booth. He took one side of the table, waved her to the other. The moment they sat, a waiter in a long white apron bobbed up with a humidor of cigars and a box of matches.
‘A bottle of the usual, Leonard.’
Lola said she wanted lemonade.
‘Nasty stuff. I insist you taste the Veuve, the queen of champagnes.’ Magnus Scott took off his hat, pulled out a cigar, lit it, made a business of coaxing the flame and sat back with a sigh, all the time looking at her with narrowed eyes that were almost sinister, though it could have been the smoke.
This is an edited extract from Murder in Punch Lane by Jane Sullivan (Echo Publishing), available now at your local independent bookseller.
