We present an extract from The Grateful Water, the debut novel by Juliana Alderman.
When a young butcher spots a strange shape on the banks of the River Liffey in the hot summer of 1866, the city of Dublin is gripped by a grimy case of infanticide. Detective Martin Peakin – an amateur entomologist and full of regret for his failed engagement – sets off in search of the murderer, eager to impress his superiors.
But, as Peakin draws closer, he begins to realise that not all is as it seems...
5th August, 1866
Detective Martin Peakin woke because he couldn't feel his fingers. With great care, he moved the pillow under Peggi’s heavy head and withdrew his arm. She stirred, but didn’t wake. He brushed a strand of hair from her face.
He cursed himself as he disentangled his body from the damp sheet and reached for his pocket watch on the night stand. It wasn’t there, and neither was the night stand because he wasn’t at home. He stood and surveyed the room for his clothing. Peggi sighed and rolled over. His eyes adjusted to the dark, and he saw his folded clothes piled on the room’s only chair. He groped for the watch in his trousers. Three o’clock; still enough time to get home to bed.
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Listen: Juliana Alderman talks to Oliver Callan
He checked his billfold to see what Peggi had left. She robbed him by silent agreement, just enough to satisfy her pride. He’d been quite happy with Eliza’s company but one evening he arrived at Mrs Wilson’s and there was Peggi instead. 'Off to reform herself, isn’t she?’ Peggi said when he asked. His disappointment was absurd. Most men visited houses of ill fame to escape the constancy of marriage. But Peakin preferred constancy and he believed he would make the transition to the marriage bed gladly.
She’d taken an extra shilling but the single pound note from his wages was still there. He found a sixpence and left it on the chair. He would have to forgo chops this week to ensure he could pay his rent. He tiptoed from the room, down the stairs and out the front door. It was always too warm in Mrs Wilson’s, so he was surprised when the air on the street failed to cool his face. No breeze, no rain.
The streets were almost silent. He heard the cry of a drunk, the exhalations of a horse in a yard nearby, the deep lowing of cows that needed to be milked. The city’s equivalent of Peggi’s snores. As he walked, he thought about the baby boy, alone in the cool room waiting for the postmortem. He tried to imagine a woman killing it. His mind conjured first Eliza and then his sister but the images disturbed him, so he blinked to make them disappear. He wondered if the woman had been mad. Puerperal mania, they called it.
He peered down into the river as he crossed over Sackville Bridge. The weak light of the few gas lamps made the water as black as oil. Dublin’s own River Styx. He walked faster.
Another door, this one locked. Once more on tiptoe, this time up the stairs. Inside his bedroom, he stopped himself from collapsing onto the bed with the resulting groan of springs that would wake Mrs Malone. He took offthe clothes he’d just put on, climbed in with the curtains open, and slept until the sunlight woke him.
The two rooms he rented at the top of Mrs Malone’s house suited him absolutely. The bedroom’s window overlooked a tiny yard (which had only a privy and no pigs) whereas the parlour’s looked down onto the square and across to the Castle Hotel. With both windows open, the ventilating breeze wasn’t sweet but he had smelled worse. Now the heat was driving him mad. After a day of sweating innthe streets, he returned to his rooms to sweat out the night. He promised himself that on Sunday he would take the train out to Bray and do a bit of entomologising. The thought of the sea air almost cooled him.
Kate knocked at the door and entered, carrying his breakfast tray. Her hair made its usual efforts to escape from her white cap as she swung the tray without regard for the safety of its contents.
‘Morning, sir,’ she said.
‘Good morning, Kate. Here, let me take that from you.’
‘Not at all, sir. I’ve brung it this far and I wouldn’t want Mrs Malone thinking I was shirking me duties and letting a gentleman serve his own breakfast.’
Peakin watched Kate wobble her way to the small table, the china rattling like the teeth of a man dragged from icy water. He sighed with relief when the tray landed. He studied the benefit of his six shillings weekly board: porridge (made with more water than milk and not enough salt), a few slices of apple (brown at one edge and wrinkled at the other), tea (the leaves on their third drawing). In truth he was not sure that any wife would have tolerated this existence, never mind the wife he’d chosen. He imagined Isobel in the room, her sharp gaze taking the measure of everything. Would she have set herself to work and made the rooms homely? Mending curtains and painting furniture? He’d never know since she’d decided not to marry him after all.
The Grateful Water is published by New Island Books.
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