Ficlet: "Sugar" ( Ripper Street, PG)
Fandom: Ripper Street
Title: Sugar
Pairing: Edmund Reid/ Homer Jackson, pre-slash
Length: approx. 2,700 words
Rating: PG (drug use and a few strong words)
Author's Notes:
This takes place shortly after the end of Season 1 (and shortly after the end of my previous ficlet “Finger Crawl”, although both stories are stand-alones).
Many thanks to Bridget, Timberwolfoz and Darcyone for their advice on language and content, and all my gratitude to Primo Levi, to whose story “Arsenic” I have shamelessly paid homage.
Homer Jackson leans back against the pillows and brings the stem of the opium pipe to his lips a second time. A quick puff is enough to add to his feeling of light euphoria and to help his mind wander a little, pleasantly unfocused. It’s slower than alcohol, and it’s better than booze whenever he feels restless, brooding.
His eyes go from the Chinese bowl and the lamp heating it to the ring on his left hand. No. He won’t be drawn into thinking of Matthew Judge, heathen, surgeon, gunslinger, bodyguard, and, for a few months, happy husband. Now Matthew Judge has disappeared, officially never seen by or known to anybody in London. There’s only Homer Jackson, drinker, gambler, womaniser, occasional consultant to the men in blue.
He strokes his chest, running his nails over his nipples. He could be doing this with any of Susan’s girls, of course. But Rose is dead set on making a new life for herself, Bella is still recovering from her walk in the park with Victor Silver, and Myrtle and Annie are just - boring. There’s nothing wrong with pleasure given and received, but sometimes he needs - more. The edge of competition, the edge of finding out who’s in charge and who accepts to submit. The edge of stepping over and across borders, mind and body tensing in the challenge. Fondness mixing with impatience, touches which are tender one moment, rough the next.
He used to have that with Susan. Sometimes still does, a little. She’s the only woman who never bores him. But when he’s in this mood, he finds that it’s not women his desires turn to. Sex with men is the thrill of secrecy and risk, the frisson of a competition between equals, the joy of a language with few words. Matthew Judge discovered it as a young man, Homer Jackson occasionally indulged in it before he started working for the redoubtable Inspector Reid.
He blinks. When he’s not fully alert, he tends to let his guard down, and Reid slips under it,
just as he does when he cajoles, bullies, flatters and threatens Jackson into doing whatever he wants. Jackson is in charge in the dead room, and Reid is in charge everywhere else. And when his guard is down, Jackson finds himself thinking about Reid doing his shoulder exercises with his shirt off.
He would like to see the rest of Reid and to reach out.
He would like to know how creative Reid can be with his body, this man who believes in stretching his mind and gets excited at every new invention he comes across. He would like to take Reid’s face in his hands and run his thumb over the bags under Reid’s eyes, over the slight pockmarks on his cheeks, over the stubble on his chin.
He would like to make Reid gasp. Cry out. Ask for more - nicely or otherwise.
He would like to see what Reid is like when he loses control not because he’s angry, but because he’s being fucked senseless.
He would like. Sure he would. What a goddamn stupid waste of time, lying here daydreaming. Reid is married, and any rumours about his straying have only involved brave, buxom Miss Goren who runs the Jewish orphanage. Oh, hell. Jackson takes another, deeper puff.
“Jackson?”
The knock on the door is perfunctory; Jackson coughs up a lungful of opium and starts to say “Come in,” but before he can get it out the door opens wide and slams shut, a bit of plaster detaching itself from the wall. Reid strides in and comes to stand at the foot of the bed, thumbs stuck into the pockets of his waistcoat.
“Officer Lester reported that you were unwell. Miss Hart told me that I would find you alone. Busy smoking what is left of your brain to a pulp.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,”Jackson drawls, enjoying the way Reid’s jaw begins to jut forward, enjoying the way Reid’s hands start clenching into fists. He would love to jump out of bed, buck naked as he is, and let Reid see what dangerous effects he has on him. Then he’d like to push Reid to the ground, straddle him, and make him feel his weight, his arousal.
He calls himself a number of things, manages to control his rising lust, swiftly puts on his poker face and mutters “I’m off duty, Reid.”
Waste of breath. “Men on my ticket are off duty only when there are no problems to be solved. And in your dead room there is a problem that requires your immediate presence.”
“Dead woman?” Reid shakes his head. “Man? Horse?”
Reid grabs Jackson’s trousers and tosses them at him, not gently. “A pound of sugar.”
“A pound of what? Give me a break, would you?”
Reid is always good at not hearing objections from his minions. “Get dressed, Jackson. Unless you want me to drag you out of here naked and trussed.”
Jackson grimaces and complies. However, getting dressed takes a little longer than usual, because he needs to mentally push away several interesting images evoked by Reid’s words, and because Reid keeps looking him over and then looking sharply away.
They walk to Leman Street side by side, in silence. It’s early evening, the air is clear and mild. Jackson unobtrusively tries to take deep breaths to dispel all residues of opium. When he goes through the door, he notices a young woman sitting on the bench opposite Artherton’s desk: tallish, bespectacled, sitting very straight, hands folded in her lap. She stands up the moment she catches sight of Reid.
“She a suspect?” Jackson whispers.
Reid shakes his head. “She’s the one who brought in the sugar.” He turns to the woman and ushers her into his office, offering her the only chair: “Take a seat, Nurse Lang.” Jackson leans against the door and observes her: the eyes behind the lenses are intelligent and serious, and she fills her modest blouse and skirt quite appealingly.
“You’re a registered midwife,” Reid prompts.
“Yes. I completed my training last year, in Edinburgh.” Her Scottish accent is a soft burr.
“A long way from Edinburgh to London,” Reid prompts again.
She looks from one to the other of them, levelly. “My husband and I both work at the docks at St. Catherine’s. I help look after new mothers and babies. He’s a union steward.” Just a hint of defiance in the last few words. “You may have met him a few months ago, during the strike, when there was that trouble with the Russians planting bombs.” She turns to Jackson: “I came here because I knew you were the police scientist.”
Jackson is not sure whether “the police scientist” is a compliment. He pointedly looks at the small parcel wrapped in blue grocer’s paper lying on Reid’s desk. “And that, Nurse, is . . .?”
She takes a deep breath. “All I can tell you now is that I fear there may something strange in it.” He makes a questioning face, and she makes a small, not quite apologetic gesture with her hands. “I would sooner not tell you anything until after you have looked at it. I do not wish to influence your examination in any way.”
Reid lightly pushes Jackson in the direction of the bench with the burners, flames and test tubes. “Get to work.” Jackson heaves a put-upon sigh and grabs a bottle of distilled water, feeling warmth on the small of his back, where Reid’s hand was.
A little of the sugar is stirred into distilled water: the solution is cloudy, and Jackson turns an approving face towards Nurse Lang. “Good girl, you guessed right; there is something wrong with it. Now . . .” He pauses, frowns, trying to remember what the next step is, and for a moment he’s stuck, unable to collect his thoughts.
A light slap on the back of his neck makes him jump: “Use your brain, what’s left of it.”
Jackson is about to erupt, but beneath Reid’s taunt there’s something warm, some protective confidence that makes Jackson’s brain glow like the electric filament of a light bulb. He’ll show this Limey bastard. “Just hand me the little crucible, Reid.”
Jackson weighs half an ounce of sugar, puts it into the crucible and lights a high flame under it. In a few seconds the air fills with a strong metallic smell. Jackson lights a cigarette and turns to his audience of two: “Patience. We’re gettin’ there.” Young Matthew Judge enthusiastically studied science and medicine because he wanted to solve problems and help the vulnerable. Then things happened, in Baltimore, in Chicago, with Theodore Swift, with young William Goodnight, with a lot of other people. But in the squalor and filth of Whitechapel some of Jackson’s problem-solving skills can be useful, to free an innocent person, or to send a villain to the gallows. There is some satisfaction in this. He has helped to defeat Russian spies and corrupt railway builders. He has saved London from a couple of deathly poisons. And his face-off with Frank Goodnight saved Reid’s life.
Nurse Lang comes to stand behind him. “May I ask what a crucible is?”
“It can be heated to high temperatures,” he says without turning. “I heat this stuff until all the moisture goes, and then I can make it react with other substances. You’ll see.” The girl is curious, and she seems to understand things. Maybe, if she had been a man, she could have studied medicine instead of midwifery. But then again, she’s useful already, she prevents women from getting infected and dying, or shows new mothers how to breastfeed, or even, god help her, treats the ones who have tried to get rid of their babies. “Now I can filter the solution . . .” His audience watch, alert, absorbed.
“Give me a hand with the Kipp generator, Reid.” Reid does what he’s told and handles the piece of equipment carefully - it cost him quite a bit a couple of months ago, and the glass is fragile. Jackson stirs the sugar around the small inner cone, inserts the bubble-shaped acid reservoir. In a few minutes the hypothesis that had formed in his mind as soon as he heard about the sugar will be confirmed, and order will replace chaos. Reid will be pleased. He seeks order with determination and grit, he won’t rest until chaos, however small in scale, has been overcome, however temporarily. And this passion for order is reflected in the way he looks, always spotless, always buttoned up to his chin. Jackson pays little mind to neatness and cleanliness, probably because he has accepted that life is messy and dirty, and that any order a man can impose is bound to be disrupted sooner rather than later.
“What are you smirking about, Jackson?”
“Nothin’.” He adds acid, and soon a yellowish powder begins to form in the base, and hydrogen sulfide starts jetting out and filling the room with the stink of rotten eggs. “Lady and gentleman,” Jackson says ceremoniously, “may I introduce you to arsenious anhydride.”
“Also known as arsenic,” says Reid, and it may as well be Eureka, the way his eyes sparkle and his full lips part in triumph: order has prevailed over chaos once again.
“Madame Bovary’s last meal,” adds Jackson with a grin.
Reid looks him over, surprised and a little amused: “You never fail to astound me, Captain.” His voice is low, and if it was anyone else Jackson would think there’s a trace of flirtation there. But it’s Reid, and he has other things in mind, and swiftly turns to Nurse Lang: “Now you can tell us how you came by this sugar.”
“It was left on our doorstep,” she says guardedly. “Steve and I opened the parcel, but when we saw what it was, we did not touch it.”
“But you know who left it,” Reid insists.
For a long moment she just sits looking at her hands clenched in her lap; then she raises her eyes into Reid’s. “We think it may have been . . . a woman who helped with deliveries before trained midwives came to the East End. Her methods were . . . old-fashioned.”
“Mother Sharpe,” Reid and Jackson say almost simultaneously; she’s a well-known character, tall and large, bustling around the homes of the poorest, least educated women, where she’s welcome and trusted. Jackson has heard that she sometimes puts a knife under the mother’s bed “to cut the pain” and that sometimes, if labour becomes difficult, she uses the same knife to cut the womb.
“Why do you believe it was her? And,” Reid adds firmly, “there are several trained midwives in Whitechapel. So why do you believe she wanted to poison you?”
Nurse Lang sighs softly. “I’m not sure. Maybe because she thought I stole her clients . . . and I also think . . . that it was because of Steve.” She stops and then speaks slowly, choosing her words one by one; with every word, her Scottish lilt becomes stronger, and her voice colder. “Mrs Sharpe’s son Martin was working with Steve in the dock strike. Steve asked Martin to help him stop the scabs who were unloading crates of chemicals.” Reid and Jackson exchange a swift glance: the crates full of arsenic, the ones that the Russians wanted to blow up to score a lethal point in their tournament of shadows. Nurse Lang gives them both a long straight look before continuing. “Two policemen beat them up with their billy clubs. Steve wasn’t badly hurt. Martin was: he was hit on the head, his brain was damaged. Now he just lies in bed, drooling. He’ll never work again. His mother has to support him.”
Reid nods, his face darkening. Chaos, Jackson thinks. Dirt and disorder reclaiming their place. And then he feels Reid shifting a tiny bit, moving imperceptibly towards him. Closing ranks? Or seeking comfort? Jackson makes up his mind and takes a small step sideways. His shoulder brushes Reid’s.
Nurse Lang speaks again. “What will happen now?”
“Tomorrow Captain Jackson, Sergeant Drake and I will visit Mrs Sharpe’s house, question her, and make a search. If we find sufficient evidence, we will arrest her.”
Her voice begins to shake. “Will she hang?”
“She will not, because nobody died. But if she is found guilty of trying to poison two people, she’ll probably spend the rest of her life in Newgate Prison.”
“And Martin will be left alone and helpless. We should have thought things over before I came here, so we should.” She heads for the door, eyes brimming.
“Wait,” Reid says sharply, and she stops and slowly turns around.
“If you want to, you can write a statement explaining what just told me. About her son. The statement will be read out in court, and if she’s found guilty it may be taken as a mitigating circumstance. Especially if Mrs Sharpe says that she regrets what she did and undertakes never to do anything of the kind again.”
“I will. I will write the statement tonight and bring it to you tomorrow.” She pauses. “Thank you, Inspector. And thank you, Doctor.” She walks out, fast and determined.
Jackson lights another cigarette. “I’m surprised at you, Reid. I would’ve thought that enforcing the law came first and foremost for you.”
Reid looks away. “Sometimes the law and justice . . .” He shrugs. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” But then he looks back at him, sizing him up, and Jackson could swear that for a second there’s a spark in his eyes. “You didn’t do too badly, Captain, befuddled or not. Now, I take it you haven’t had much to eat today?” Jackson nods, cautiously. Reid pauses for a moment. “Emily is visiting friends in Harrow. Would you sooner go back to your opium pipe, or join me for dinner?”
Jackson needs all of his poker-playing skills not to blink, or raise an eyebrow, or ask what happened to Miss Goren. He just stands there, without saying a word or moving a muscle, until Reid asks, in his usual abrupt fashion, “Well?”
This invitation may not mean anything. Things are very unlikely to turn out the way Jackson hopes. And if they do, there will certainly be pain and confusion. But Jackson believes that life is mostly chaos anyway. He lifts a corner of his mouth: “You’re on. I’m game.”
Title: Sugar
Pairing: Edmund Reid/ Homer Jackson, pre-slash
Length: approx. 2,700 words
Rating: PG (drug use and a few strong words)
Author's Notes:
This takes place shortly after the end of Season 1 (and shortly after the end of my previous ficlet “Finger Crawl”, although both stories are stand-alones).
Many thanks to Bridget, Timberwolfoz and Darcyone for their advice on language and content, and all my gratitude to Primo Levi, to whose story “Arsenic” I have shamelessly paid homage.
Homer Jackson leans back against the pillows and brings the stem of the opium pipe to his lips a second time. A quick puff is enough to add to his feeling of light euphoria and to help his mind wander a little, pleasantly unfocused. It’s slower than alcohol, and it’s better than booze whenever he feels restless, brooding.
His eyes go from the Chinese bowl and the lamp heating it to the ring on his left hand. No. He won’t be drawn into thinking of Matthew Judge, heathen, surgeon, gunslinger, bodyguard, and, for a few months, happy husband. Now Matthew Judge has disappeared, officially never seen by or known to anybody in London. There’s only Homer Jackson, drinker, gambler, womaniser, occasional consultant to the men in blue.
He strokes his chest, running his nails over his nipples. He could be doing this with any of Susan’s girls, of course. But Rose is dead set on making a new life for herself, Bella is still recovering from her walk in the park with Victor Silver, and Myrtle and Annie are just - boring. There’s nothing wrong with pleasure given and received, but sometimes he needs - more. The edge of competition, the edge of finding out who’s in charge and who accepts to submit. The edge of stepping over and across borders, mind and body tensing in the challenge. Fondness mixing with impatience, touches which are tender one moment, rough the next.
He used to have that with Susan. Sometimes still does, a little. She’s the only woman who never bores him. But when he’s in this mood, he finds that it’s not women his desires turn to. Sex with men is the thrill of secrecy and risk, the frisson of a competition between equals, the joy of a language with few words. Matthew Judge discovered it as a young man, Homer Jackson occasionally indulged in it before he started working for the redoubtable Inspector Reid.
He blinks. When he’s not fully alert, he tends to let his guard down, and Reid slips under it,
just as he does when he cajoles, bullies, flatters and threatens Jackson into doing whatever he wants. Jackson is in charge in the dead room, and Reid is in charge everywhere else. And when his guard is down, Jackson finds himself thinking about Reid doing his shoulder exercises with his shirt off.
He would like to see the rest of Reid and to reach out.
He would like to know how creative Reid can be with his body, this man who believes in stretching his mind and gets excited at every new invention he comes across. He would like to take Reid’s face in his hands and run his thumb over the bags under Reid’s eyes, over the slight pockmarks on his cheeks, over the stubble on his chin.
He would like to make Reid gasp. Cry out. Ask for more - nicely or otherwise.
He would like to see what Reid is like when he loses control not because he’s angry, but because he’s being fucked senseless.
He would like. Sure he would. What a goddamn stupid waste of time, lying here daydreaming. Reid is married, and any rumours about his straying have only involved brave, buxom Miss Goren who runs the Jewish orphanage. Oh, hell. Jackson takes another, deeper puff.
“Jackson?”
The knock on the door is perfunctory; Jackson coughs up a lungful of opium and starts to say “Come in,” but before he can get it out the door opens wide and slams shut, a bit of plaster detaching itself from the wall. Reid strides in and comes to stand at the foot of the bed, thumbs stuck into the pockets of his waistcoat.
“Officer Lester reported that you were unwell. Miss Hart told me that I would find you alone. Busy smoking what is left of your brain to a pulp.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,”Jackson drawls, enjoying the way Reid’s jaw begins to jut forward, enjoying the way Reid’s hands start clenching into fists. He would love to jump out of bed, buck naked as he is, and let Reid see what dangerous effects he has on him. Then he’d like to push Reid to the ground, straddle him, and make him feel his weight, his arousal.
He calls himself a number of things, manages to control his rising lust, swiftly puts on his poker face and mutters “I’m off duty, Reid.”
Waste of breath. “Men on my ticket are off duty only when there are no problems to be solved. And in your dead room there is a problem that requires your immediate presence.”
“Dead woman?” Reid shakes his head. “Man? Horse?”
Reid grabs Jackson’s trousers and tosses them at him, not gently. “A pound of sugar.”
“A pound of what? Give me a break, would you?”
Reid is always good at not hearing objections from his minions. “Get dressed, Jackson. Unless you want me to drag you out of here naked and trussed.”
Jackson grimaces and complies. However, getting dressed takes a little longer than usual, because he needs to mentally push away several interesting images evoked by Reid’s words, and because Reid keeps looking him over and then looking sharply away.
They walk to Leman Street side by side, in silence. It’s early evening, the air is clear and mild. Jackson unobtrusively tries to take deep breaths to dispel all residues of opium. When he goes through the door, he notices a young woman sitting on the bench opposite Artherton’s desk: tallish, bespectacled, sitting very straight, hands folded in her lap. She stands up the moment she catches sight of Reid.
“She a suspect?” Jackson whispers.
Reid shakes his head. “She’s the one who brought in the sugar.” He turns to the woman and ushers her into his office, offering her the only chair: “Take a seat, Nurse Lang.” Jackson leans against the door and observes her: the eyes behind the lenses are intelligent and serious, and she fills her modest blouse and skirt quite appealingly.
“You’re a registered midwife,” Reid prompts.
“Yes. I completed my training last year, in Edinburgh.” Her Scottish accent is a soft burr.
“A long way from Edinburgh to London,” Reid prompts again.
She looks from one to the other of them, levelly. “My husband and I both work at the docks at St. Catherine’s. I help look after new mothers and babies. He’s a union steward.” Just a hint of defiance in the last few words. “You may have met him a few months ago, during the strike, when there was that trouble with the Russians planting bombs.” She turns to Jackson: “I came here because I knew you were the police scientist.”
Jackson is not sure whether “the police scientist” is a compliment. He pointedly looks at the small parcel wrapped in blue grocer’s paper lying on Reid’s desk. “And that, Nurse, is . . .?”
She takes a deep breath. “All I can tell you now is that I fear there may something strange in it.” He makes a questioning face, and she makes a small, not quite apologetic gesture with her hands. “I would sooner not tell you anything until after you have looked at it. I do not wish to influence your examination in any way.”
Reid lightly pushes Jackson in the direction of the bench with the burners, flames and test tubes. “Get to work.” Jackson heaves a put-upon sigh and grabs a bottle of distilled water, feeling warmth on the small of his back, where Reid’s hand was.
A little of the sugar is stirred into distilled water: the solution is cloudy, and Jackson turns an approving face towards Nurse Lang. “Good girl, you guessed right; there is something wrong with it. Now . . .” He pauses, frowns, trying to remember what the next step is, and for a moment he’s stuck, unable to collect his thoughts.
A light slap on the back of his neck makes him jump: “Use your brain, what’s left of it.”
Jackson is about to erupt, but beneath Reid’s taunt there’s something warm, some protective confidence that makes Jackson’s brain glow like the electric filament of a light bulb. He’ll show this Limey bastard. “Just hand me the little crucible, Reid.”
Jackson weighs half an ounce of sugar, puts it into the crucible and lights a high flame under it. In a few seconds the air fills with a strong metallic smell. Jackson lights a cigarette and turns to his audience of two: “Patience. We’re gettin’ there.” Young Matthew Judge enthusiastically studied science and medicine because he wanted to solve problems and help the vulnerable. Then things happened, in Baltimore, in Chicago, with Theodore Swift, with young William Goodnight, with a lot of other people. But in the squalor and filth of Whitechapel some of Jackson’s problem-solving skills can be useful, to free an innocent person, or to send a villain to the gallows. There is some satisfaction in this. He has helped to defeat Russian spies and corrupt railway builders. He has saved London from a couple of deathly poisons. And his face-off with Frank Goodnight saved Reid’s life.
Nurse Lang comes to stand behind him. “May I ask what a crucible is?”
“It can be heated to high temperatures,” he says without turning. “I heat this stuff until all the moisture goes, and then I can make it react with other substances. You’ll see.” The girl is curious, and she seems to understand things. Maybe, if she had been a man, she could have studied medicine instead of midwifery. But then again, she’s useful already, she prevents women from getting infected and dying, or shows new mothers how to breastfeed, or even, god help her, treats the ones who have tried to get rid of their babies. “Now I can filter the solution . . .” His audience watch, alert, absorbed.
“Give me a hand with the Kipp generator, Reid.” Reid does what he’s told and handles the piece of equipment carefully - it cost him quite a bit a couple of months ago, and the glass is fragile. Jackson stirs the sugar around the small inner cone, inserts the bubble-shaped acid reservoir. In a few minutes the hypothesis that had formed in his mind as soon as he heard about the sugar will be confirmed, and order will replace chaos. Reid will be pleased. He seeks order with determination and grit, he won’t rest until chaos, however small in scale, has been overcome, however temporarily. And this passion for order is reflected in the way he looks, always spotless, always buttoned up to his chin. Jackson pays little mind to neatness and cleanliness, probably because he has accepted that life is messy and dirty, and that any order a man can impose is bound to be disrupted sooner rather than later.
“What are you smirking about, Jackson?”
“Nothin’.” He adds acid, and soon a yellowish powder begins to form in the base, and hydrogen sulfide starts jetting out and filling the room with the stink of rotten eggs. “Lady and gentleman,” Jackson says ceremoniously, “may I introduce you to arsenious anhydride.”
“Also known as arsenic,” says Reid, and it may as well be Eureka, the way his eyes sparkle and his full lips part in triumph: order has prevailed over chaos once again.
“Madame Bovary’s last meal,” adds Jackson with a grin.
Reid looks him over, surprised and a little amused: “You never fail to astound me, Captain.” His voice is low, and if it was anyone else Jackson would think there’s a trace of flirtation there. But it’s Reid, and he has other things in mind, and swiftly turns to Nurse Lang: “Now you can tell us how you came by this sugar.”
“It was left on our doorstep,” she says guardedly. “Steve and I opened the parcel, but when we saw what it was, we did not touch it.”
“But you know who left it,” Reid insists.
For a long moment she just sits looking at her hands clenched in her lap; then she raises her eyes into Reid’s. “We think it may have been . . . a woman who helped with deliveries before trained midwives came to the East End. Her methods were . . . old-fashioned.”
“Mother Sharpe,” Reid and Jackson say almost simultaneously; she’s a well-known character, tall and large, bustling around the homes of the poorest, least educated women, where she’s welcome and trusted. Jackson has heard that she sometimes puts a knife under the mother’s bed “to cut the pain” and that sometimes, if labour becomes difficult, she uses the same knife to cut the womb.
“Why do you believe it was her? And,” Reid adds firmly, “there are several trained midwives in Whitechapel. So why do you believe she wanted to poison you?”
Nurse Lang sighs softly. “I’m not sure. Maybe because she thought I stole her clients . . . and I also think . . . that it was because of Steve.” She stops and then speaks slowly, choosing her words one by one; with every word, her Scottish lilt becomes stronger, and her voice colder. “Mrs Sharpe’s son Martin was working with Steve in the dock strike. Steve asked Martin to help him stop the scabs who were unloading crates of chemicals.” Reid and Jackson exchange a swift glance: the crates full of arsenic, the ones that the Russians wanted to blow up to score a lethal point in their tournament of shadows. Nurse Lang gives them both a long straight look before continuing. “Two policemen beat them up with their billy clubs. Steve wasn’t badly hurt. Martin was: he was hit on the head, his brain was damaged. Now he just lies in bed, drooling. He’ll never work again. His mother has to support him.”
Reid nods, his face darkening. Chaos, Jackson thinks. Dirt and disorder reclaiming their place. And then he feels Reid shifting a tiny bit, moving imperceptibly towards him. Closing ranks? Or seeking comfort? Jackson makes up his mind and takes a small step sideways. His shoulder brushes Reid’s.
Nurse Lang speaks again. “What will happen now?”
“Tomorrow Captain Jackson, Sergeant Drake and I will visit Mrs Sharpe’s house, question her, and make a search. If we find sufficient evidence, we will arrest her.”
Her voice begins to shake. “Will she hang?”
“She will not, because nobody died. But if she is found guilty of trying to poison two people, she’ll probably spend the rest of her life in Newgate Prison.”
“And Martin will be left alone and helpless. We should have thought things over before I came here, so we should.” She heads for the door, eyes brimming.
“Wait,” Reid says sharply, and she stops and slowly turns around.
“If you want to, you can write a statement explaining what just told me. About her son. The statement will be read out in court, and if she’s found guilty it may be taken as a mitigating circumstance. Especially if Mrs Sharpe says that she regrets what she did and undertakes never to do anything of the kind again.”
“I will. I will write the statement tonight and bring it to you tomorrow.” She pauses. “Thank you, Inspector. And thank you, Doctor.” She walks out, fast and determined.
Jackson lights another cigarette. “I’m surprised at you, Reid. I would’ve thought that enforcing the law came first and foremost for you.”
Reid looks away. “Sometimes the law and justice . . .” He shrugs. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” But then he looks back at him, sizing him up, and Jackson could swear that for a second there’s a spark in his eyes. “You didn’t do too badly, Captain, befuddled or not. Now, I take it you haven’t had much to eat today?” Jackson nods, cautiously. Reid pauses for a moment. “Emily is visiting friends in Harrow. Would you sooner go back to your opium pipe, or join me for dinner?”
Jackson needs all of his poker-playing skills not to blink, or raise an eyebrow, or ask what happened to Miss Goren. He just stands there, without saying a word or moving a muscle, until Reid asks, in his usual abrupt fashion, “Well?”
This invitation may not mean anything. Things are very unlikely to turn out the way Jackson hopes. And if they do, there will certainly be pain and confusion. But Jackson believes that life is mostly chaos anyway. He lifts a corner of his mouth: “You’re on. I’m game.”