The Dark Lantern: A Novel

329 Pages·2008·0.82 MB·English

by  Gerri Brightwell

the Dark Lantern
gerri Brightwell

Dark
Lantern
The

a novel
crown Publishers • New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Gerri Brightwell
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark
of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brightwell, Gerri.
The Dark lantern : a novel / Gerri Brightwell.—1st ed.
1. Women domestics—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901—
Fiction. 3. London (England)—Fiction. 4. Impostors and imposture—Fiction.
I. Title.
PR6102.R54D37 2008
823'.92—dc22 2007020759
eISBN: 978-0-307-40967-6
DESIGN BY ELINA D. NUDELMAN
V1.0
For Cam, with love
Acknowledgments
This book is a work of fiction. Although it refers to some historical
people and events, my intention was to create a compelling story
rather than to write history. I have therefore allowed myself to
reimagine them for the purposes of this novel.
I am indebted to many people in writing this novel. I must thank
the many members of the VICTORIA discussion list for their generos-
ity in helping with information about late-nineteenth-century Britain.
In particular, I’d like to thank Judith Flanders for her willingness to
answer tricky questions or point me to sources that would help.
For taking me on, thanks to my wonderful agent, Zoe Fishman,
and my insightful editor, Allison McCabe. For their support and en-
couragement, thank you to Derick Burleson, Anne Caston, David
Crouse, Melina Draper, Amber Flora Thomas, Len Kamerling, Anne
Carter, Louise Doughty, and Fadia Faqir. For getting me to the point
where I could write this novel, thanks to Frank Soos, Don Ross,
Gordon Hirsch, Lois Cucullu, and Anna Clark.
Thank you to Conor, Ross, and Callum, who patiently put up
with a mother who must have seemed always to be writing. Lastly,
for plot fixes, the time to write, and his love, thanks most of all to
Cam Esslemont.
By the late nineteenth century, two new technologies appeared which
promised to streamline the process of criminal identification. One,
fingerprinting, is familiar to us. The other, an identification system
based on anthropometry, the physical measurement of the size and
proportions of the human body, has become a historical curiosity. Yet
the two techniques were once well-matched rivals, which vied for
ascendancy for forty years.
— Simon A. Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of
Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification
the Dark Lantern
Chapter 1
London, October 1893
S
he sits stiffly on the seat of the cart, her whole self held in against
the tumult of the city. It is too much: the carriages that clog the
roads, the raucous cries of costermongers pushing barrows, the
shabby children that hold limp bunches of flowers and cress out to
her and, when she shakes her head, run off through the filth of the
street in bare feet.
Beside her the driver in his shapeless hat urges the horse on with
flicks of a whip. They slip into a gap between a hansom and a four-
wheeler, around a corner into a narrow street of frowning houses
where the clop-clop of the horse’s feet echo. On and on they go,
through murky streets where men and women are little more than
shadows. She waits for grass to appear, or fields, but this is a world
where such things do not exist. So many buildings, so many people—
she fears she will be swallowed up by it all.
Her breath trails in plumes behind her, then fades into the dark-
ness of the afternoon. Night is creeping out of alleys, out of court-
yards, and it’s only half past four—as they turn a corner she hears
bells ring out close by, then those of another church, and another.
She grips the seat with both hands. She thinks how down in Teign-
ton she’d be bringing in the tea, how every day when she opened
the study door Reverend Saunders would huff, “Oh, it’s you, Jane,”
and glare at her from over his books, as though she was determined
to disturb him.
1
Gerri Brightwell
Does she regret it, leaving his warm house, his vinegary wife, the
daily round of scrubbing and scouring? Of course she does. Now as
she’s driven through these streets by a man who smells not of
horses—that she could have borne—but of gin, she wonders if she
is safe here, and suspects she is not. She has thrown herself out
onto the world, enticed by an advertisement in a newspaper, and a
letter written in an elegant hand by a Mrs. Bentley saying that yes,
her character is acceptable and for fourteen pounds per annum plus
room and board, she will take her on as second housemaid.
Such a step seems folly now. But to have stayed was impossible.
The way Mrs. Saunders would go out visiting on Jane’s half days off,
and not return until teatime, when there was no time left for Jane
even to walk into the village. The way she counted out Jane’s wages
every month and slid the small pile of coins across her desk with the
very ends of her fingers, as though there was something dirty in the
whole business. The way she fed prim spoonfuls of custard into her
flat line of a mouth at dinnertime and, with the smell of it still on
her breath, called Jane and Mrs. Phelps up from their work in the
kitchen for evening prayers and warnings about extravagance.
That place had closed in around Jane like a wet sheet, and it
wasn’t until this morning, when she found herself on the station
platform with her box at her feet, that she’d realized: she had left it
behind. She’d pressed her hand against her pocket and Mrs. Bent-
ley’s letter inside it. A sheet of paper—that was all she had to see her
safely through the world. Her breath felt hot in her chest, and she
couldn’t help looking back through the station’s archway to the road
and the sullen winter sea beyond, though who she thought was
going to walk in and tell her not to get on the train she couldn’t
imagine. Not the Reverend or his wife, that was for sure. They’d al-
ready taken on a new girl, who’d arrived four days before she left.
Another girl who, like Jane, had been taken from the orphanage to
be trained up. But a girl unlike her. Not the daughter of the mur-
derer Martha Wilbred, who’d been hanged by the neck until she
was dead. Not a girl they would watch with wariness when she took
up the poker to stir the fire, or carried the carving knife to the din-
2