by Alex Scarrow
‘Your hand. It kept fumbling for something around your neck. A nice necklace, perhaps? A piece of jewellery? I saw your fingers stealing beneath your neck cloth, feeling under folds of flannel. Something right there,’ he said, pressing a finger against the subtle bulge at the base of her throat beneath the collar of her jacket.
‘I . . . I ain’t got nothing in there that’s any yer business, love.’
‘Oh, but you do have something, Polly; something very important to us. You know that, don’t you?’
Her jaw shuddered with that word. ‘Us?’
Babbitt grinned. ‘Yes.’
She took a step back from him, reversing into the stable’s wooden-slat wall. ‘Oh dear god . . .’
He rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘We need to have a little talk, my dear.’
Her jaw trembled, wobbled up and down, showing him a mouth full of missing teeth. ‘Oh god! P . . . p . . . please don’t ’urt me!’
He shushed her with a finger placed lightly against her lips. ‘Now, I know you helped a certain William H Tolly with a job some weeks ago, didn’t you?’
She stared at him, wide-eyed and frozen.
‘I know, Polly. I know, because William, or shall I say “ol’ Bill”, told me all about you. So shall we take it that there’s really no point your trying to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about?’
She managed a quick jerk of her head.
‘Bill told me you found something on that French woman. A very nice gold locket; the sort of gift a foolish man besotted with a beautiful woman might give. And inside this locket there was something else.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘You know, don’t you? Why don’t you tell me?’
‘P-picture. A . . . p-photograph.’
‘That’s right. Well done, Polly.’
‘The . . . the woman . . . and the m . . . man. They . . . were lovers . . .’
He smiled. ‘Good girl. You keep this up, keep being this helpful to me, and I promise I’m going to let you go.’ He patted her shoulder affectionately. ‘And I might even give you a couple of shillings for your troubles.’
She swallowed anxiously. ‘The man in the picture. I . . . I . . . seen ’is face again.’
Babbitt cocked a brow. ‘Really?’
Her head nodded vigorously. ‘’Is . . . face . . . in a newspaper. Handsome . . . young man.’
‘And do you know who he is, Polly?’
She shook her head. ‘No . . . no. But . . . but, I . . . I think . . . I . . . ’E could be in the guvver-ment or summin’?’
Government. Babbitt gave that a moment’s consideration. It would certainly make sense with the amount of money these gentlemen were prepared to pay him to fix this mess of theirs.
‘Can you tell me which newspaper you saw his face in?’
Her face flickered with effort, her eyes darting up to one side in a desperate attempt to haul something useful out of her head. ‘No . . . I . . . I . . . don’t remember . . .’
‘Not to worry. Now Polly, my dear; why don’t you pull out that nice bit of jewellery and give it to me?’
With trembling fingers, she delved under her frock and lifted the chain and locket out over her collar. Fumbling, she tried to lift it over her head but the chain caught on her hair, on her bonnet.
‘Here, allow me,’ he offered solicitously. He reached around her head, almost like a tender embrace, and undid the chain’s clasp behind her neck. ‘There,’ he said softly.
‘Picture ain’t in there n-no more,’ said Polly quickly.
‘Oh?’
He held the locket in his hand, warm from her body-heat, the size of a large flattened walnut. He fiddled with its clasp until it opened. As she said. Just an empty frame and a pink velvet inlay.
‘Where is it?’
Polly’s lips were quivering, reluctant to blurt out any more. Babbitt sighed. He reached into a pocket inside his jacket and pulled out his long, slender knife. Its blade glinted, a faint shard reflecting the pallid orange light from the lamp on the street outside. Her eyes instantly widened and she began to moan.
‘Ah yes, it’s not a pleasant sight, is it, hmmm?’
She swallowed and shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks.
‘Frightened?’
She nodded.
‘Yes, you jolly well should be. See, it’s this very blade I used to gut your friend Bill.’
‘Oh . . . g-god . . . oh . . . n-no!’ Her deep moan became a mewling whimper, thick with mucous and horror.
‘Now then, that picture; where might I find it, my dear?’
She sniffled something through the snot and tears.
‘Again please.’
‘A-Annie.’
Babbitt cocked his brow. ‘Would this be another helper Bill had on this job?’
‘She . . . she . . . was the one did the baby. I gave it ’er . . . this . . . this evenin’. The picture . . . I g-gave it her earlier.’
He let the tip of his blade flick back and forth in the small space between their faces. ‘Annie who? I’d really like her full name.’
‘Chapman! Annie Chapman!’
‘Chapman, is it?’ He smiled, charming and wide. ‘Thank you, Polly. And do you have an address for me?’
‘’Onest . . . I d-don’t,’ she replied, her eyes on the serrated side of the blade. ‘Sh-she moved in wiv a man last week. I think . . . b-but I d-don’t know . . . ’Onest I d-don’t . . .’
He could well believe that. Her type were all no fixed abode. Flop houses, workhouses and lodgings, from one to the next, to the bed of any man who promised to look after them.
‘Annie’s like you and Bill though, isn’t she? She has her favourite public houses?’
Polly nodded, lips pressed together as if that last morsel of information was going to need to be prised out of her.
‘I promised you some shillings, didn’t I? The same goes for Annie. I don’t want to hurt either of you. I’m just getting back what shouldn’t have been taken in the first place.’
‘Was it r-r-really y-you . . . that k-killed Bill?’
He sighed. ‘Yes, I did. But then, between you and I, I don’t think he was a very nice man, was he?’
She shook her head. He could see a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
Good. There was no need to make her any more frightened than she was. And hope . . . Hope was a good thing to be grasping hold of in the last few moments of life.
‘The . . . the Swan . . .’
The Swan. He’d done his research. He knew of the public house. Not so very far from here, as it happened. ‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve been immensely helpful.’ He reached down for one of her cold hands and cupped it in his. ‘Don’t look so worried. Here.’ He pressed a couple of shillings into her hand. ‘This is for your time.’
She looked down and caught the dull glint of coins in her palm. Her eyes lit up, a mixture of overwhelming relief and joy.
‘Thank you!’ She gazed wide-eyed at the money in her hand. ‘Thank you! I—’
His knife was suddenly buried in her neck up to the hilt; with a quick jerk, he wrenched it forward, opening her throat in a jagged gash from beneath her left ear, almost all the way round to the other. She looked up from her coins, still trying to work out what had just happened. Then blood tumbled and spattered onto the stones between them. She shuddered in his grasp, eyes wide and rolling.
‘Shhhh,’ he whispered softly, holding her head back to open the wound and ease the flow. ‘Like this. Be very still. It’s better, much quicker this way.’
She tried to gurgle something. Her boots scraping and slapping against the bottom of the stable wall.
‘There’s a good girl,’ he whispered into her ear. He kissed her cheek tenderly. ‘You can sleep soon enough, my dear. Soon enough.’
Her struggling, shuffling, began to wane. ‘This really isn’t your mortal life, Polly. Don’t you see? This world around us . . . it’s purgatory.’ Her legs flexed beneath her and all
of a sudden she was a dead weight in his arms. Gently, he lowered her to the ground.
For a few moments he studied her still body, growing damp beneath the heavy patter of rain, the blood that had begun to pool beneath her neck washed away by a miniature stream of rainwater that snaked towards a gutter and sewage drain across the small courtyard.
He would have liked a candle to hand, to light, to watch the flickering flame for a few moments. Instead, he struck a match and gazed at the glow for a moment before extinguishing it with his fingers.
‘And now, my dear, you’re free to go . . . whichever way you must go.’
A clock chimed the quarter hour. It was 2.45 in the morning. He stirred from his reverie. There were tradesmen that would be getting up within the hour.
He crouched down over her body.
Make it look the work of madman . . . not a hired man.
He stabbed at her abdomen several times; hard, ruthless thrusts that were deliberately uncontrolled, artless and vicious.
CHAPTER 30
30th September 1888, Holland Park, London
Argyll was standing in the hallway, staring at the front door, working up the courage to open it and step outside.
‘Come on, John,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It’s just a little walk. You can do that at least, can’t you?’
This morning, after finishing his breakfast and reading his paper, he decided to set himself a challenge. To do something for himself instead of relying quite so much on Mary to nurse him. He was beginning to wonder whether the poor young girl might be having second thoughts about the commitment she’d taken on. He certainly couldn’t blame her if she was entertaining the notion of leaving him. Caring for a man so many years her senior, a shuffling invalid no less, with an empty vessel of a mind and nothing noteworthy to say for himself. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
In truth, he was sure a beauty like her could be stepping out with any young man she chose. A wonderful girl like her, so vivacious, so charming, a wholesome quality that made her fresh freckled face look out of place amongst all the other sallow, sickly faces of London. But she appeared to be prepared to stay by his side, for whatever it was that she saw in him. The thought made him feel guilty. And frightened – terrified – of losing her.
‘Come on, you pathetic fool,’ he snapped at himself irritably, and reached for the door, pulling it open. A rare stream of autumn sun warmed his face and immediately the stifling quiet of the hallway, marked only by the ticking of a brass clock on the side table, was flooded with the noise and bustling activity of Holland Park Avenue.
He shuffled his still-numb left leg over the dust mat onto the top step outside. The bad leg was behaving itself this morning. He decided he no longer needed the walking stick that Mary had bought him a couple of days ago. It made him look, feel, older than he was. As for that wheelchair, it was already just an embarrassing memory tucked away in the back room, out of sight and mind.
He took the steps down carefully, one at a time, through the wrought iron gate and onto the pavement, tapping his forehead in a polite gesture at the police constable passing by on a bicycle.
The fleeting sunlight felt good; he savoured the warmth on his face, the noises of midday business going on around him. He looked up and down the street. To his right, he remembered, was Hyde Park, a mile or so along. And halfway between there and here was Notting Hill with, as he recalled from their last walk to the park together, a number of pleasant-looking teashops and cafes.
A walk. And perhaps a little something to eat?
He realised he was getting peckish. Mary had been gone awhile now and it was almost lunchtime. He had a pocket full of jingling coins and a rumbling stomach.
‘Why not?’ he uttered resolutely. Pleased with himself so far. He smiled. Mary was going to be impressed when he told her later that he’d actually managed to take himself out for a walk and order something to eat and drink. All by himself. She was going to be so pleased with him.
Half an hour later, a faltering and cautious stroll had brought him to Notting Hill, busy with a farmer’s market; a cacophony of traders’ barking voices and chattering women; carts parked on one side of the road, ponies and horses tethered together to railings on the other. The main road was thick with small mounds of drying manure that he didn’t fancy stepping in. On the far side of the busy road he saw a nice-looking tea house with broad, sunny windows that were trapping the fleeting sunlight. He hesitated and took several abortive steps into the road. Hesitated long enough that an old woman eventually reached for his arm and helped him across. Argyll doffed his hat and thanked her on the far side, pink-cheeked at the thought that she’d been helping him instead of the other way round.
A bell jingled above the door as he entered the tea shop. He picked a small round table for two by the front window, sat down and watched the market through a window spattered on the outside with spots of pigeon droppings, until an old woman with raw red hands and a crisp white apron asked him what he fancied. He ordered a pot of tea, a round of toast and butter and a slice of bacon, quietly pleased with himself for his impressive show of independence. His life story might still be a complete mystery, but good grief, at least he was able to order a spot of lunch.
Ten minutes later, he was enjoying the activity of the market, sipping tea and savouring the warm toast thickly spread with melting butter. He watched a fishmonger in a leather apron behind a propped up pallet of filleted mackerel; fillets lined up like soldiers on parade, the shimmering blue of their scales interlaced with the puckered pink of exposed flesh. A fat greengrocer almost lost behind a veritable mountain of soil-covered potatoes, each the size of a boxer’s fist. A butcher hacking at cuts of mutton, observed by the dead eyes of a row of pigs’ heads arranged along the edge of his stall like jurors in a court. The space between the stalls was teeming with bonnets and feathers, bowlers and tops hats, flat caps and forage caps; a painter’s palette of so many different-looking faces all intent on the same errand, the same mission: something nice and tasty for our tea tonight.
He looked at them.
Yes, why not? Go on . . . take a good look at them.
Argyll stirred uneasily. He recognised that voice and his good mood soured. The voice brought with it an unpleasant sensation; the notion of things left undone, obligations unfulfilled. A spiteful, mean-spirited little voice that he was certain didn’t approve of him merely sitting here watching the world go by.
You’re right. Because you are not looking closely enough. Look at them. Look at them, ‘John’. Do you see that fishmonger putting spoiled fillets in behind the good? Do you see the butcher trimming rancid corners off his meat? Do you see that gentleman walking with his wife and yet his eyes lingering on the baker’s boy? Do you see the beggar over there with crutches he pretends to need? Do you see that small boy flicking dirt into his baby sister’s face behind his mother’s back?
He saw those things, like the small background details of a giant painting; brush strokes that told stories hidden amidst swirls of oil paint.
They’re all rotten, all spoiled stock. The good people, ‘John’, all the good people went on from this world long ago. In far better times than this.
He hated the tone of the voice, the unpleasant sharpness to it. It was the hectoring of a disapproving tutor. The nag of an unsatisfied creditor. The persistent chase of a debtor. The spiteful ridicule of an older sibling.
Do you remember anything?
His eyes narrowed. There’d been another dream last night, hadn’t there? In it he was young, much younger, perhaps in his early-twenties. He remembered catching a glimpse of a reflection of himself in a store window: a wild-looking young man in deerskins and a threadbare and faded red polka dot shirt staring back at him. He looked like a frontiersman. A trapper? He vaguely recalled docks and sailboats, steamships, wagons. Someplace busy, just like the market out there.
Then a second strange, dislocated dream that made little sense to him again. He had a feeling t
hat chronologically, it was some years earlier. He remembered an Indian, ghostly white with chalk powder, standing over him and shouting something he didn’t understand, pushing him and pointing a finger. The Indian had the same shrill, nagging tone as the voice. He had the distinct impression the Indian was saying the same thing in his coarse, guttural tongue.
‘Do you see? Do you see? Do you see?’
And then he saw a village of those tall, cone-shaped tents that Indians live in. Yes, tepees, that’s what they’re called . . .
. . . They’re burning. Flames licking from the top of one tepee to the next, smoke blowing across snow-covered prairie grass. A thick blanket of snow stained a startlingly bright crimson in places. Militia men in forage caps with thick winter beards, wearing navy blue army greatcoats and riding thundering horses that blast plumes of breath into the early morning air. And the men are cheering, laughing, ‘yee-hawing’ at the thrill of the chase.
Between the flaming tepees, they’re chasing down terrified squaws; and their children and old men, hardly ferocious savage warriors, all of them half-naked, clearly freshly roused from sleep. Chasing them down, running the slow ones through with their sabres rather than waste the cost of a bullet.
Do you see? Do you see the baby bayoneted against that small fir tree? Left there, lifeless, dangling like a decoration. Do you see those three men and the young squaw? Do you see what they’re doing to her? Don’t look away. Look! And look down now . . . look down at your own hands. Do you see what you’re holding . . . ?
He’d awoken then, last night. Awoken in his dark bedroom, not quite sure if he’d screamed, if he’d roused poor Mary from her slumber yet again.
Oh, so you’re remembering just a little more now, hmmm? Argyll did his best to ignore the spiteful voice. Let me ask you . . . do you know what this place is?
‘Of course,’ Argyll whispered, almost immediately angry with himself for acknowledging the voice with an answer. It was only going to encourage the voice in his head.
Hmmm, yes, you do hear me. I know you do. So, what is this place, ‘John’? Where are we?