Work Text:
Mary Riddle has had quite enough. It has been ten years since her son, her precious only child, up and disappeared along with that horrible Gaunt girl, nine years since he came back, and they haven’t moved on at all. Tom is doing better, but he’s still not well. He was such a fine young man, bright and dashing, confident, outgoing. Now, her little boy is withdrawn, quiet, prone to outbursts of rage, but also silent moments where he stares into space and seems to forget altogether where he is. He has spent the last nine years leading a largely reclusive existence, and having the same argument with his father, over and over again. Thomas Riddle senior has been urging their son to remarry for years now, and Tom has been adamant in refusing; he will not even attend the kind of social events where he might meet suitable candidates for marriage. His experience with that horrible tramp has apparently put him off women for life, a frailty his father simply refuses to acknowledge. There have been Riddles in Little Hangleton for hundreds of years, and sooner or later, Tom Riddle Junior will have to pull himself together and do his damned duty by producing an heir. Or so Mary’s husband claims.
Mary isn’t content to wait. Her son seems to think he underwent some form of marriage with the Gaunt strumpet, and lived with her for the best part of a year before he came to his senses and left her. He doesn’t actually know if he’s legally a bachelor, a widower, or an estranged husband, which will be relevant if his father ever does persuade him to remarry. Of course Mary isn’t eager to welcome the tramp’s daughter as her daughter-in-law, but the sooner they know where they stand, the sooner they can decide what to do. Mary would quite like grandchildren one of these days, respectable, legitimate ones. She isn’t getting any younger; she will be fifty-two this autumn. She makes some telephone calls, to acquaintances and distant cousins who have had their own family scandals within the past few years. She follows up references.
In August of 1935, Mrs Mary Riddle hires a private detective, to discover whether or not her son’s marriage was legitimate, and to track down her putative daughter-in-law. The man is efficient, and the details come pouring in. First the bad news. The marriage was genuine, with a common licence rather than banns. The marriage had been solemnised two days after the couple left Little Hangleton, in July of 1925. Very unseemly, but entirely legal. Tom had been twenty, and Merope (horrible name) had been seventeen: young enough that the absence of parental consent was improper, but not so young as to invalidate proceedings altogether. The two of them had lived together in London, using Tom’s private income to rent a flat in Bloomsbury (shudder). Tom had returned home in October of 1926; apparently he had left his flat two weeks before that. Goodness knows how he had spent the intervening time; she was just glad he had come home eventually. Merope had been evicted by the landlord for non-payment of rent at the beginning of November, 1926.
There are no legal records of any kind of divorce proceedings, no desertion claims. No further signs of a Merope Riddle, or indeed a Merope Gaunt. No death certificate. No marriage certificate for any subsequent marriage, let alone any previous one that might have left her Tom a free man. Surely the woman cannot have vanished into thin air. The landlord has no useful recollections; the tenants have all changed; the local shopkeepers are unhelpful. Mary has her detective comb the records for death certificates of any and all Riddles and Gaunts in various Metropolitan boroughs: Holborn, Westminster, St Pancras, Finsbury, Shoreditch, St Marylebone... it takes months. By the end of October, she is quite despairing of ever getting answers, on the verge of telling the family lawyers to file a desertion claim and have done with it, when the butler appears to tell her she is wanted on the telephone, and the name he gives is that of the investigator.
He would not put a telephone call through for anything less than momentous news, but even so, she was in no way braced for the news she is now receiving. Yes, her regrettable daughter-in-law is dead, or at any rate the name ‘Mary P. Riddle’, with an approximate age only seven years above Merope’s real age, has appeared among the death certificates for the Metropolitan Borough of Islington, filed in January 1927. That is the good news, the hoped-for outcome. The truly momentous part is the place of death – Wool’s Orphanage – the cause of death – childbed – and the apparent survival of the child. Tom Marvolo Riddle, son of Tom Riddle and Mary P. Riddle, daughter of Marvolo. Yes, the marriage certificate did give Merope’s father’s name as Marvolo Gaunt, and his profession as ‘gentleman of leisure.’ (Layabout and tramp and good-for-nothing.) Further confirmation that this is not a coincidence. So, legally at least, she has a grandson, apparently born and conceived within her son’s lawful (shameful, disreputable, but lawful) marriage. Of course further investigation is necessary. It is entirely possible that the shameless hussy was passing off some other man’s child as Tom’s; it is possible that her own grandson died and the orphanage made a mull of the paperwork. It is possible that the boy is as mad and as disreputable as his mother’s side of the family, and not worth claiming, or should be claimed only for the sake of propriety, to be transferred to a reputable asylum. Certainly a Riddle of Little Hangleton, if that is what he truly is, ought not to be growing up in an orphanage. Not her grandson.
Her son is relieved that his wife is dead, delighted to the point of hysteria. Her husband is gruffly pleased, but horrified at the idea of a half-Gaunt grandson, convinced the child must be an impostor. Mary convinces him further investigation is necessary. (She has already engaged the services of a lawyer and put him in contact with the private investigator.) Her husband is convinced this will all turn out to be a trick. The spectre of a potential wife, threatening their son’s future marriage prospects, has been eliminated, and that success leads him to believe the prospect of an urchin grandson will prove similarly immaterial. He is content for her to do as she wishes, and believes it will all come right in the end. Thomas Junior is adamant that he wants nothing to do with any unnatural spawn of that unnatural hag, that deceiver, that witch. He becomes terribly agitated every time his possible son is mentioned. When the investigator – and the lawyer – make an appointment to call on the Riddles, Thomas Junior absents himself. It is only Mr and Mrs Riddle who gather in the parlour, to be shown an affidavit by one Martha Coles, describing the night of young Tom’s birth, and some photographs of a young boy in threadbare clothes, against a background of London brick and sky: a boy who is the very image of their son.
They have a grandson. All that bother about an heir, and they have one already. Of course, a spare would be a good idea, especially with the lad’s unfortunate upbringing and the possibility of mental instability. An heir and a spare and a girl for good measure: that’s the ideal. But they have time to convince their Tom to find a suitable young lady for a second essay at matrimony. For now, there is a child whose upbringing must be corrected.
Mary moves swiftly. It is unfortunate that neither her husband nor her son want the child to come to the manor, but hardly an impediment. They are Riddles. They own most of the village, much of the land for miles around. If it were necessary, she could always evict the tenants from one of the cottages they own, but there is a gamekeeper's cottage vacant already, perhaps fifteen minutes' walk from the manor. It was Mary's late father-in-law who liked his hunting; her husband employs a full staff of gardeners, but does not bother to restock the pheasants, let alone pay a man to prowl at night with a gun to deter the villagers from poaching. Her father-in-law has been dead for twenty years; the cottage has been empty for five. Mary inspects it for damage, has it rendered habitable again, buys some supplies locally and sends to London for others, instructs the servants to go through the attics of the main house and fetch out toys and books suitable for a child of eight or nine. She does not wait for it to be in order before she leaves for London. She has set things in motion; it will be done before her return, or she will know the reason why. She makes arrangements in the village to hire an extra housemaid and kitchenmaid; the new girls can work at the manor, and two experienced girls can run things at the cottage. It will not be a large household. Mrs Appleby, Mary's son's nanny, long ago pensioned off and now living with her daughter, professes herself delighted to look after Master Tommy's little boy for a year or two, while he is being coached to make him fit for public school. The daughter curtsies to the Lady of the Manor, and says little. Her mother will not be far away, after all, and will be looked after properly by the maids. If it seems strange to her that they are not simply moving her mother back into her old suite by the manor's nursery, she says nothing. The rich will do as they will.
Mary telephones to Bertram's Hotel, in Mayfair, where the family always stay when they are in London. They have not been since the incident, but before, when Tom was in his teens and early twenties, she and Thomas used to go maybe twice a year. Sometimes they would meet Tom off the train from school, see the sights with him. But this time it is just her. A maid, a chauffeur, and of course there will be a room with a connecting door, for the boy she has not yet met. It does not occur to her to ask Gregson if she will accompany her; Gregson always does.
Mary has sent off to several reputable agencies for details of a tutor or governess; she can conduct interviews once she is in London. She has notified the agent and the lawyer when she is travelling; they will inform the orphanage staff. All is in readiness. Cartwright has the car brought round. She kisses her husband and son goodbye; she will return in perhaps a week.
It is the 4th of November, 1935. Today, Mary will reclaim her grandson.