by Alex Scarrow
‘Good god!’ gasped the man. ‘Tell me what happened! Please!’
‘I knocked, wanting to speak to Mary. ’E answered the door and . . .’ Liz realised her voice was catching with emotion: delayed shock. She was going to cry if she didn’t draw a breath and slow herself down. ‘’E . . . pulled me inside . . . but I managed to escape.’
‘And your friend, Mary – was she in there?’
Liz shook her head. ‘I shouted for ’er . . . but she never replied.’
‘Oh gawd!’ cried Cath. ‘The poor love’s already dead!’
Warrington nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’m afraid that’s a possibility we may have to consider.’
‘You got to send someone over there! Now!’ said Liz. ‘She might not be—’
‘Calm down,’ said Warrington. ‘My men and I were watching the hotel. And you,’ he said, tipping a nod at Liz, ‘were followed by one of my chaps. He has that address and I’m expecting he will have already called it in. Some of our boys will be on their way over right now.’ He offered her a sympathetic smile. ‘We can hope your friend is all right. There’s still hope.’
Liz frowned. She was remembering something. ‘I got the feelin’ she was out, though,’ she said. ‘When I knocked, I think ’e was expecting ’er, or summin’.’
‘Then perhaps our men may get there first,’ said Warrington. ‘Before she returns. Perhaps, as you said,’ he nodded at Cath, ‘perhaps she’s on her way here to see you?’
Liz looked at him, feeling a little less troubled with the idea of confiding what she knew with the man. He didn’t seem like a dark-hooded conspirator. He seemed as genuinely concerned as them. In any case, that letter was just sitting up there in room 207; they were going to find it and read it sooner rather than later.
‘There’s something said in that letter, in the hotel room.’
‘Oh?’
‘’E . . . ’e said . . .’ Liz frowned, thinking how best to relay the things she’d hastily read. ‘He said summin’ about the royal prince. That ’e’s been . . .’ It sounded utterly unlikely now, like the utterings of a drunk or an idiot. ‘That the prince got some tart pregnant. That there was a baby and—’
Cath turned to look at her, her eyes wide, almost perfect circles. ‘What?!’
The gentleman raised his hand. ‘I think we should just deal with apprehending this man first, then we can investigate the contents of this hotel room of his in due course.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Your friend, Mary, may still be perfectly all right. And if she is, we would very much like to speak with her.’ Again, a comforting smile that assured Liz the worst of this awful business was over; that she and Cath had done the right thing offloading what they knew onto him. That it was all in the capable hands of the police now. Liz felt the weight come off her shoulders and a sense of exhaustion kick in.
‘Yes,’ said Liz. ‘I hope so.’
‘We’ll know soon enough about this man’s motives.’ He sighed. ‘But, you know, alcohol, opiates, those sorts of vices, can make an already troubled mind believe quite insane things.’
Liz nodded. Yes, having some more time to dwell on it, thinking about it, that rambling letter had sounded quite ridiculous.
‘We shall have this troubled man in irons soon enough,’ said Warrington, ‘and an end to this Ripper nonsense.’
CHAPTER 49
1st October 1888 (3.00 pm), Holland Park, London
He heard the front door click open.
‘John?’ Mary’s voice; quiet, apologetic. The door clunked shut. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so long . . . The man in the laundrette lost your bloomin’ shirt!’ She sounded out of breath, like she’d been hurrying home.
Footsteps down the hallway.
‘John? You in there?’ she called into the morning room.
Footsteps again, past the ticking clock on the hall table then, all of a sudden, her footsteps ceased. He heard her breath catch. She had spotted the cellar door was open.
Footsteps again down the hallway, towards him.
‘John?’ This time her voice was much quieter, less assured. ‘John?’
Her head craned round into the small kitchen. He looked up from the large notes of money spread across the round wooden table in front of him. He’d been counting them. Four thousand, three hundred and seventy-five pounds.
A lot of money.
Beneath the table, one fist gently squeezed the handle of a bread knife. He’d been holding it, absently caressing the worn wooden handle for what seemed like hours. He couldn’t remember actually picking it up, couldn’t remember deciding the thing ought to be out of the drawer and in his hands. It had somehow just ended up there in his lap. He wasn’t entirely sure why.
‘Oh, god,’ she whispered at the sight of the leather bag on the table and the money spread out beside it.
Remember what I told you? said the pig-voice. She will lie to you about all this. Just you see if she doesn’t.
Argyll said nothing. His lips clamped shut. His face immobile, hiding a raging battlefield of emotions. A discordant chorus of voices in his head, all screaming different things:
Run, Mary! Save yourself!
Why, Mary, why the lies?
You duplicitous bitch!
I love you.
I HATE YOU!
And like a conductor calling an orchestra to order, the rasping voice of that stump-legged pig hushed them all.
She’ll tell a dirty lie and then you’ll see she’s like all the other soiled wretches. Greedy, deceitful, selfish, spiteful.
Mary hesitated in the doorway of the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder, back down the hallway. A quick glance that looked as if she was measuring her chances of an escape.
Yes, oh yes. Even better; she’ll run for it. Go on, Mary . . . Why not run? See how far you can get. His leg is much better now. Just you see, girl.
Argyll’s lips trembled. He desperately wanted to warn her that the very next thing she might decide to say, to do, could very well be the end of her. He wasn’t sure if the pig in his mind was himself. He wasn’t even sure if this body was his anymore, whether he – ‘John Argyll’ – was no more than an imposter, a trespasser, no more than a passing tenant. The pig-voice, the person Argyll once was, now returned to take control of things.
Mary stared at him, then down at all that money spread across the table.
The rasping voice giggled with barely-contained excitement. She wants that money! She’s going to tell you it’s hers. Any second now . . . Come on, dear, come on, let’s have that lie. Say it.
She took a step into the small kitchen. Lowered the bundle of folded shirts she had in her hands – his freshly laundered one and several new ones – onto the table, her shopping basket down onto the floor.
‘I . . . I bought some pork for our tea,’ she murmured hollowly.
Look at her! Oh, she’s so very clever! Look at her! Do you see her thinking? Scheming? Hmmm?
Slowly, she pulled a chair out from beneath the table. Its legs scraped noisily across the stone floor. His fist clenched tightly around the knife’s handle. A part of him didn’t want to hear her talk; didn’t want her to say anything. A part of him that was fading away fast . . . dying. John Argyll.
‘Mary, please don’t . . .’
Shut up! Let the bitch talk! I want you to listen to her fucking lie!
She raised a finger to hush him. A tear rolled down her cheek and her lips curled and quivered. ‘I . . .’
Here it is! Here it comes!
‘Mary . . . please . . . don’t say any—’
Shut up! Let her do it! Let her . . . let her . . . LET HER!!!!
‘John, I . . .’ Her voice quavered.
The pig grasped the knife more tightly, as if to be sure he was holding it, not that imposter, Argyll. Under the table, the tip of the blade trembled, almost as if it had an eager hunger of its own.
‘I . . . I’ve not been honest with you,’ she said eventually. ‘This house? You and me? It’s all b
een me lying to you!’ Her shoulders shook as she began to sob uncontrollably. ‘It’s yours . . . this money. It’s your money. I . . . I don’t know why I thought this would ever . . .’ Her voice was lost as she dropped her face, mottled pink with shame, into her hands. The rest of her faltering words were an incomprehensible babble that spilled into her lap.
Quietly, Argyll loosened his tight grip on the blade. Then he tucked it away into a deep inside pocket of his coat. The pig was silent. It had nothing to say. It snorted with disgust, and he sensed it retiring to a dark corner of his mind.
She isn’t like all the others.
‘Mary,’ Argyll said softly. ‘I know. I remember everything now. Everything. I remember you and I were . . .’ He looked down at the table, as if the words he needed were nestling there amongst the five pound notes. ‘We weren’t anything. Strangers. We hadn’t met. I know that now.’
She looked up from her hands, eyes red-rimmed, her breath hitching. ‘It started out . . . I just wanted your money. But . . .’
He nodded. He reached out for her small balled fist; shaking white knuckles and flexing tendons. ‘I understand. What happened between you and me, it wasn’t in your plan. But it happened nonetheless.’ A winsome smile spread across his lips. ‘Never trust a plan; they always go awry.’
She nodded silently.
‘It’s . . . love . . . isn’t it?’ He dared to say that word.
She looked at him and nodded again, her face crumpled. ‘Yes, yes it is!’
‘Well then . . . all the rest of it.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s another life. Someone else’s. And I don’t want that life anymore.’ He looked around the kitchen. ‘I want this. This home that you invented. Even though it all started out as pretence.’ He sighed. ‘Even though this has just been pretend, I still want it. I want this. Us.’
His pig was silent, furious, chastened. Argyll thought he could hear its shifting movements coming from the dusty attic of his mind. Scraping, snorting angrily. No longer the master of ceremonies now; merely a disgruntled imp, a dark urge. An itch, banished to the rafters.
Mary looked up from her hands, red-eyed, cheeks blotchy and pink. Beautiful even in shame. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’
Argyll stepped around the table and knelt beside her. He held her oval chin in one hand, dimpled and creased and quivering as her breath caught.
‘Mary, I need you.’
The kitchen filled with the bark of a chair leg on the stone floor. More than that: a sob, a half-cry, a whimper of relief from her. She wrapped her arms around him. ‘Oh, John, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ Her muttered words soaked into his shoulder.
‘Listen, Mary,’ said Argyll. ‘You and me, we’ve got to leave this place.’
She wasn’t listening. Her tears dampened his neck, her hands tugged and pulled at his shoulders as if she wanted to climb inside him, hide within the warmth and safety of Mr Argyll. He pulled her firmly away from him, his expression stern.
‘Listen to me! We have to leave right now.’
She was hearing it, but not understanding it. ‘Leave?’
‘Yes. Get your things. Whatever’s important to you. One bag. And fill it quickly!’
She sniffed, dabbed at her eyes. ‘Why?’ She looked at him. For the first time she noticed that he had his coat on. ‘Where . . . where are we going?’
He cupped her small jaw again in his hand; the very same hand that only moments ago had been ready to thrust the end of a bread knife deep into her neck. ‘Do you trust me?’
She nodded shakily.
‘Good.’ He lifted her arms off him and began gathering up the money. ‘We have to leave this place as soon as possible. We’re in danger.’
CHAPTER 50
1st October 1888 (3.15 pm), Holland Park, London
Sir Henry Rawlinson’s carriage turned off Clarendon Road onto Holland Park Avenue. He felt a burning indigestion in the pit of his stomach. He hated haste. He hated being in a hurry. It upset him. Especially directly after eating so heavily.
If there was one lesson in life that he’d learned thoroughly, it was that great haste preceded many an error. A hurried plan was little more than deferred chaos. Nothing worth anything in this world was ever conceived or constructed in haste. And if it was, then it wasn’t long before it started to unravel.
‘Nearly there, sir.’
Rawlinson nodded at Robson sitting opposite him, rocking from side to side as the carriage barrelled along the street, faster than city ordinance allowed. A common hansom rattling along at this sort of pace would probably have been waved down by a copper by now, but Rawlinson’s carriage – black lacquered and impractically long – was a caution to any young man in uniform not to waste the time of the Very Important Person inside with some finger-wagging.
Robson’s boxer’s hands absently played with the cylinder of his revolver. It clicked as chamber after chamber circled past the tip of the hammer. Good man, Robson, according to George Warrington. Glacially calm in a crisis. Apparently he’d seen a fair bit of action before leaving Her Majesty’s service. Ostensibly, he was just a doorman for their little club. More than that, of course; he was their Lodge’s sergeant at arms. He acknowledged even the higher members with a grumpy, grudging parade-ground demeanour that they all found rather amusing and vaguely charming.
Rawlinson was satisfied that the broad-shouldered man – with a chest and stomach like a cider barrel, still managing to maintain army fitness despite his middling years – was going to be enough, with his revolver, to deal with the Candle Man. This hired killer was, after all, just a ruddy man.
Robson shifted in his seat to look out the carriage window, scanning the numbers on the doors along the avenue.
‘Sixty-seven, wasn’t it, sir?’
Rawlinson nodded.
‘We just passed fifty-nine. We’re getting close. Perhaps best if we stop a little downwind?’
‘Yes, quite right, Robson. Don’t want to spook the game.’ He leant forward, pulled aside a hatch and tapped the driver’s back through it. ‘Just here is fine, Colin, if you please!’ he called out.
‘Right y’are, sir,’ the driver bellowed back, before reigning in the horses and clucking at them to settle down. The carriage came to a halt and Robson reached for the door handle.
‘Robson?’
‘Sir?’
‘If he’s inside, don’t waste a single second. Do you understand? You fire your gun the instant you set eyes on him.’
Robson looked uncertain. ‘It’s quite busy right now, sir. Lot of people are going to hear a gun shot—’
‘That’s not your concern.’ He offered the man a reassuring nod. ‘Nothing we can’t tidy up later on.’
‘Right you are.’ Robson nodded. ‘Shoot first it is then, sir.’
‘And you be sure to shoot for a kill. We have absolutely no need at all to talk to this gentleman. Do you understand?’
Robson pushed the carriage door open and stepped smartly out into the road, the revolver tucked discreetly into his coat. Rawlinson followed him out and together they stepped up onto the busy pavement, their eyes picking out the dark front door of 67, thirty yards ahead.
They made their way towards the property, stepping aside for a pair of young nannies pushing prams side by side and lost in their conversation, then weaving around a coal delivery man as he hefted a sack of coal past them and down a metal stairway into a basement entrance. A child’s toy fell from one of the prams and Robson instinctively reached down, scooped it up and handed it to one of the young ladies with a tip of his hat.
Rawlinson tutted. Now wasn’t the time for a theatrical display of good manners. He jabbed his man in the back with his walking cane.
‘Come along, Robson,’ he hissed as they stepped aside for a couple striding past; a tall, lean, middle-aged gentleman, laughing merrily at something the frizzy-haired young lady on his arm had just said. They strode past, oblivious, full of joy, her pretty oval face the very picture of
youthful exuberance and excitement.
Lovers. Henry winked at them as he stepped aside. Long time since he’d had such a delightful creature as that on his old arm. The man smiled back at him.
Finally they were looking up six steps to the front door of number 67. Rawlinson nodded at Robson and they quickly climbed the steps. At the top, Robson reached out for the door knocker.
‘Whoever answers, we push our way in, Robson.’ Rawlinson glanced at the busy street behind him. It was busier than he’d have liked. ‘Better we do what needs to be done inside, behind a closed door.’
‘Right you are, sir.’
As Robson reached to knock, he noticed the door was slightly ajar. ‘It’s already open, sir.’
Rawlinson gave him the nod to go in. ‘Be careful.’
Robson pulled the gun out of his pocket, shielding it from any curious passers-by with his back. He pushed the door open.
Argyll flagged a hansom on the opposite side of the street. The driver touched the peak of his cap and pulled over on the far side as he waited for them to cross the busy traffic and join him. Climbing aboard the open fronted cart, Argyll gave the driver instructions to take them to Euston station.
The carriage began to clatter down Holland Park Avenue and Argyll turned in his seat to watch those two men they’d just passed by, now taking the steps up to their front door.
A Mason and his foot soldier. He’d noted the older man’s cravat pin. A square and compass.
He managed to contain a gasp of relief. Good god, a moment or two more fussing around inside and they would have been caught in the house.
‘John? John?’
He realised Mary had been saying something to him. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Why are we in such a hurry? You said something about being in danger? Please tell me . . . Where are we going? What’s going on?’
He looked out at the driver sitting on the jockey board in front of them, the bouncing flanks of the horse, the rhythmic rise and dip of its head.
‘Not here, not right now, Mary,’ he uttered quietly.