The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins - [77]

‘How?’

She smiled, like an angel – her eyes shining. ‘James. He found me. He carried me to his brother’s friend, Dr Sparks. He saved my life.’

Nathaniel Sparks – Samuel Fleet’s great friend. Kitty’s father had saved Gabriela. ‘Gabriela… you know that Kitty…’

‘His daughter. Of course! I know Kitty, when she was very tiny. My God the noise. She cry, cry, cry. I think I go deaf. That’s why we save you last night. For Kitty. What – you think I fall in love with your legs?’ She smiled again. A light had returned to her face, now the worst of her story was over.

If I were a wise man, I would have left her then. Everything I had feared was true. So leave, now - and quickly. Run from this world of butchery, murder and revenge. Grab Kitty’s hand and flee the city and let this tragedy play to its end without you. But I didn’t move. I stayed quite still, pressed into the chair. I must know it all.

‘The brothel burned down.’

Gabriela’s eyelids grew heavy. ‘Yes.’

‘Two people, burned alive.’ Aunt Doxie, and the man she would not name. Who did not deserve a name. Lost and unmourned for ever. ‘James did this for you?’

‘Yes.’ And there was love in her voice.

‘But he spared Joseph Burden.’

‘No, sir. We did not spare him.’ She hugged her knees to her chest. ‘I still dream of that night. So many times. I had escaped that room, you understand? But he dragged me back there. He held me down. You think to kill him was enough? A few moments of pain?

‘The night James burned down the brothel we could not find him. He’d fucked one of the new country girls. A fresh maid. Worth good money. Aunt Doxie found out and she have him kicked from the door. James and Samuel, they search the town and at last they find him. On his knees in church, sobbing like a child. He knows why the brothel burns down. He knows that now is his turn. James was going to slit his throat, but Samuel… Well. You knew Samuel, sir.’

Oh, yes. I knew Samuel Fleet. Never once chose a straight path if a crooked one were on offer. Or better yet, a maze of his own devising, full of twists and turns and general confusion.

‘Samuel said, “Think, Brother, is it not better to let the man live and suffer? Why should he escape the miseries of existence?” You remember, this is how he talks?’

‘I remember.’

‘He says, “Mr Burden – you train as a carpenter, yes? So you will take up your trade once more. You will become a respectable citizen, go to church, read the Bible. You will marry and have children. All that you earn, you will pay to us. And one day we will come back and we will finish what was begun today. We will take your life. But not today. And perhaps not tomorrow. If you run, we will find you. If you try to speak of this, we take you and we kill you slowly. So you think that burning alive is a mercy.” ’

Only Samuel Fleet could have dreamed up such a plan. It was so elegant, so cruel. So profitable. How he must have enjoyed watching Burden, trapped all those years in a dull, virtuous life. I doubted Fleet could imagine a worse torture for any man.

‘Twenty years, we let him live. He works like a dog and we take his money. Twenty years – always afraid one night my husband will come for him. I wonder sometimes if his heart burst from fear. But he lives. He marries and has children.’

‘Ned said his mother was a whore.’

‘His mother was a young girl. The country girl that Joseph Burden took for himself. Aunt Doxie threw her out too. She have nothing, so she steals. And she is caught.’

I sighed at the thought of another broken life. Ned’s mother had pled her belly at Newgate. Her son had saved her for that short while, but then she had died on her way to the colonies. ‘You made Burden take Ned in.’

Gabriela drained her glass. She was tired, of a sudden. ‘So. There is my story.’

‘But it is not finished.’

‘No.’ A long pause. ‘Samuel was killed in gaol. Of course he had lived next door to Burden for several years. He found it amusing. He would say, “Good morrow, neighbour, what – has my brother not killed you yet?” He said to Burden, “you must thank me”. That he was the only one who could persuade James to spare his life. And this was true. Samuel said to James, let the children grow up first. I agreed with this; they are innocent. When Samuel died, Burden knew his own death was coming.’

And now I understood Burden’s strange behaviour in the weeks preceding his murder. He knew he could be killed at any moment. He brought his son home from school to be close to him in his last days. He refused to move house, knowing that all the profits from his business had drained into James Fleet’s pocket. He refused to give Ned a position for the same reason. And – my God, of course. He forced himself on Alice. Ned couldn’t understand Burden’s behaviour in the last weeks of his life – it had seemed so out of character. The truth was quite the reverse. It was the previous twenty years that had been out of character for Burden. He may have gained some bullying satisfaction from his work with Gonson and the Society, but his natural inclination was very different. Why not fuck his maid, when Death lurked around every corner? When Gabriela’s son moved in next door, silent and watchful?