Ah Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us

What and where they be.

—Tennyson, Maud (1855)

Private Inquiry Office, Patronized by the Aristocracy, and under the sole direction of Mr. Pollaky himself. Relations with both the British and the Foreign Detective Police.

DELICATE AND CONFIDENTIAL INQUIRIES INSTITUTED WITH SECRECY AND DISPATCH IN ENGLAND, THE CONTINENT AND THE COLONIES. EVIDENCE COLLECTED FOR CASES IN THE DIVORCE COURT, &C.

—Mid-Victorian advertisement

A week might pass, two, but then she would stand before him . . . The third week begins, and she has not stood before him. Charles cannot be faulted; he has been here, there, everywhere.

He had achieved this ubiquity by hiring four detectives— whether they were under the sole direction of Mr. Pollaky, I am not sure, but they worked hard. They had to, for they were a very new profession, a mere eleven years old, and held in general contempt. A gentleman in 1866 who stabbed one to death was considered to have done a very proper thing. “If people go about got up as garrotters,” warned Punch, “they must take the consequences.”

Charles’s men had first tried the governess agencies, with-out success; they had tried the Educational Boards of all the denominations that ran Church schools. Hiring a carriage, he had himself spent fruitless hours patrolling, a pair of intent eyes that scanned each younger female face that passed, the genteel-poor districts of London. In one such Sarah must be lodging: in Peckham, in Pentonville, in Putney; in a dozen similar districts of neat new roads and one-domestic houses he searched. He also helped his men to investigate the boom-ing new female clerical agencies. A generalized hostility to Adam was already evident in them, since they had to bear the full brunt of masculine prejudice and were to become among the most important seedbeds of the emancipation movement. I think these experiences, though fruitless in the one matter he cared about, were not all wasted on Charles. Slowly he began to understand one aspect of Sarah better: her feeling of resentment, of an unfair because remediable bias in society.

One morning he had woken to find himself very depressed. The dreadful possibility of prostitution, that fate she had once hinted at, became a certainty. That evening he went in a state of panic to the same Haymarket area he visited earlier. What the driver imagined, I cannot suppose; but he must certainly have thought his fare the most fastidious man who ever existed. They drove up and down those streets for two hours. Only once did they stop; the driver saw a red-haired prostitute under a gaslight. But almost at once two taps bade him drive on again.

Other consequences of his choice of freedom had mean-while not waited to exact their toll. To his finally achieved letter to Mr. Freeman he received no answer for ten days. But then he had to sign for one, delivered ominously by hand, from Mr. Freeman’s solicitors.

Sir,

     In re Miss Ernestina Freeman

We are instructed by Mr. Ernest Freeman, father of the above-mentioned Miss Ernestina Freeman, to request you to attend at these chambers at 3 o’clock this coming Friday. Your failure to attend will be regarded as an acknowledgment of our client’s right to proceed.

Aubrey & Baggott

Charles took the letter to his own solicitors. They had handled the Smithson family affairs since the eighteenth cen-tury. And the present younger Montague, facing whose desk the confessed sinner now shamefacedly sat, was only a little older than Charles himself. The two men had been at Win-chester together; and without being close friends, knew and liked each other well enough.

“Well, what does it mean, Harry?”

“It means, my dear boy, that you have the devil’s own luck. They have cold feet.”

“Then why should they want to see me?”

“They won’t let you off altogether, Charles. That is asking too much. My guess is that you will be asked to make a confessio delicti.”

“A statement of guilt?”

“Just so. I am afraid you must anticipate an ugly document. But I can only advise you to sign it. You have no case.”

On that Friday afternoon Charles and Montague were ushered into a funereal waiting room in one of the Inns of Court. Charles felt it was something like a duel; Montague was his second. They were made to cool their heels until a quarter past three. But since this preliminary penance had been predicted by Montague, they bore it with a certain nervous amusement.

At last they were summoned. A short and choleric old man rose from behind a large desk. A little behind him stood Mr. Freeman. He had no eyes but for Charles, and they were very cold eyes indeed; all amusement vanished. Charles bowed to him, but no acknowledgment was made. The two solicitors shook hands curtly. There was a fifth person present: a tall, thin, balding man with penetrating dark eyes, at the sight of whom Montague imperceptibly flinched.

“You know Mr. Serjeant Murphy?”

“By reputation only.”

A serjeant-at-law was in Victorian times a top counsel; and Serjeant Murphy was a killer, the most feared man of his day.

Mr. Aubrey peremptorily indicated the chairs the two visitors were to take, then sat down himself again. Mr. Freeman remained implacably standing. Mr. Aubrey shuffled papers, which gave Charles time he did not want to absorb the usual intimidating atmosphere of such places: the learned volumes, the rolls of sheepskin bound in green ferret, the mournful box-files of dead cases ranged high around the room like the urns of an overpopulated columbarium.

The old solicitor looked severely up.

“I think, Mr. Montague, that the facts of this abominable breach of engagement are not in dispute. I do not know what construction your client has put upon his conduct to you. But he has himself provided abundant evidence of his own guilt in this letter to Mr. Freeman, though I note that with the usual impudence of his kind he has sought to—“

“Mr. Aubrey, such language in these circumstances—“

Serjeant Murphy pounced, “Would you prefer to hear the language I should use, Mr. Montague—and in open court?”

Montague took a breath and looked down. Old Aubrey stared at him with a massive disapproval. “Montague, I knew your late grandfather well. I fancy he would have thought twice before acting for such a client as yours—but let that pass for the nonce. I consider this letter . . .” and he held it up, as if with tongs “... I consider this disgraceful letter adds most impertinent insult to an already gross injury, both by its shameless attempt at self-exoneration and the complete ab-sence from it of any reference to the criminal and sordid liaison that the writer well knows is the blackest aspect of his crime.” He glowered at Charles. “You may, sir, have thought Mr. Freeman not to be fully cognizant of your amours. You are wrong. We know the name of the female with whom you have entered into such base conversation. We have a witness to circumstances I find too disgusting to name.”

Charles flushed red. Mr. Freeman’s eyes bored into him. He could only lower his head; and curse Sam. Montague spoke.

“My client did not come here to defend his conduct.”

“Then you would not defend an action?”

“A person of your eminence in our profession must know that I cannot answer that question.”

Serjeant Murphy intervened again. “You would not defend an action if one were brought?”

“With respect, sir, I must reserve judgment on that mat-ter.”

A vulpine smile distorted the serjeant-at-law’s lips.

“The judgment is not at issue, Mr. Montague.”

“May we proceed, Mr. Aubrey?”

Mr. Aubrey glanced at the Serjeant, who nodded grim assent.

“This is not an occasion, Mr. Montague, when I should advise too much standing upon plea.” He shuffled papers again. “I will be brief. My advice to Mr. Freeman has been clear. In my long experience, my very long experience, this is the vilest example of dishonorable behavior I have ever had under my survey. Even did not your client merit the harsh judgment he would inevitably receive, I believe firmly that such vicious conduct should be exhibited as a warning to others.” He left a long silence, then, for the words to sink deep. Charles wished he could control the blood in his cheeks. Mr. Freeman at least was now looking down; but Serjeant Murphy knew very well how to use a flushing witness. He put on what admiring junior counsel called his basilisk quiz, in which irony and sadism were............