by Alex Scarrow
Argyll’s jaw set, his eyes narrowed. ‘Please. I can’t explain right now.’
‘You said there was danger . . .’ A thought suddenly occurred to her. ‘Is it the police?’ she asked. ‘Is that who we’re runnin’ from: the police?’
He glanced at her with dark, deep-set eyes that, for a moment, probed her, tried to read her face. ‘No, it’s not the police.’
‘Them ones who attacked you, John . . . Do you remember? Is it them?’
He nodded.
‘For your money? Was that it?’
‘No . . . It wasn’t for the money.’
‘Then what? Please . . . Tell me what this is all about!’
‘It’s a matter that’s behind me. Done. All done, and it’s something I wish not to return to.’ He reached out for her hand and squeezed it affectionately; his arm he put around her narrow shoulders and pulled her gently towards him until his lips were tickled by the curls of hair beside her ear.
A whisper. ‘The less you know . . . the better.’
He was going to say ‘the less you know about my past’, but it would have invited more questions from her right now. Questions he wouldn’t want to answer even if they were completely alone in this station. Even if they were the last two people in this world. His mind was a quiet place for the moment, not troubled with the vicious snarl of that voice he truly hated. His mind was settled on a purpose; silenced by a very simple goal. Just to escape those foolish men, escape his past, escape a duty that he no longer wanted to be his.
If this world was really so bad, so irredeemable, populated only by the souls God Himself couldn’t stomach to let through, then where did this young lady sitting beside him fit in to all of that?
Let someone else snuff out damned candles if that’s what needs to be done.
He kissed the pink rim of her ear and whispered, ‘I’m John Argyll now.’
She closed her eyes and turned her cheek towards his hand, savouring his touch.
You, Mary Kelly, saved me from becoming who I was.
CHAPTER 53
1st October 1888 (8.30 pm), Euston Station, London
The hansom dropped them outside the archway at the front of Euston Station on Drummond Street, thick with other carriages and cabs picking up and dropping off. Warrington glanced at his timepiece: it was just gone half-past-eight. Hain told them along the way that the London and North Western Rail usually had a final train of the day leaving at nine in the evening for Liverpool.
This Candle Man – Mr Babbitt was his alias, presumably – might well have managed to catch the early afternoon train if he’d been very lucky, but it was unlikely. Equally, though, he might not even be heading for Liverpool. There were suppositions ladled on top of suppositions to think they might actually find him here. There were other ports of departure.
He grasped the tall tart’s arm and raced her across a pavement littered with an archipelago of suitcases and travel trunks. ‘Come along! Let’s see if we can find your friend Mary.’
Passing through the huge Doric archway of the entrance and the congested vestibule beyond, they were in the Great Hall: three stories of cavernous interior lined with classical Roman columns that stretched all the way up to the coffered ceiling sixty feet above them. At one end was a theatrically grand stairway that led up to a gallery one storey up, which ran all the way around the hall. Hain and Robson followed closely behind them.
All four of them scanned the busy hall.
‘We’ll not see much from down here, sir,’ said Robson. He nodded up at the gallery. Warrington followed his gaze.
‘Good idea. I’ll take her up there with me and you two stay down here on the floor. If she spots them, she can point them out to you.’
‘What if they’re already on the train, sir?’ He gestured towards the departure platform stretching out beneath the station’s long skylight roof, laced with arches of wrought iron. Candelabras of large electric light bulbs descended to bathe the platform with a warm, steady glow. An engine huffed impatiently, billowing a column of steam. It was still twenty-five minutes until the train for Liverpool was due to leave.
‘They don’t open the platform until fifteen minutes before,’ said Hain. Warrington had a feeling the man was right. There was only one departure platform and the luggage porters needed the platform space to unload and load luggage. If Babbitt and the girl were planning on getting that train, then they were surely in here, in the Great Hall, somewhere.
‘Watch for me closely,’ said Warrington. ‘If we see him, I don’t want to have to be waving my arms around like a lunatic to attract your attention.’ Then he turned and led the way towards the stairs to the gallery, Liz staying close by his side, her eyes anxiously darting from face to face in the crowd.
At the top of the second flight of white marble steps, they turned to rest on the gallery’s mahogany elbow rail and look down on the Great Hall’s floor. Warrington promptly looped his arm through hers and took a step closer so that their hips bumped gently together.
‘Hoy! What you think you’re doin’?’ said Liz.
‘We should try not to look too conspicuous, don’t you think? Sweethearts embarking on a holiday together; that’s what we shall pretend to be.’ He wasn’t sure anyone walking past them on the gallery would be convinced that they were lovers or betrothed, but from afar, from the floor below, huddled close together like a couple gazing down would be better than them appearing like two watchful prison officers suspiciously scanning an exercise yard.
‘Just look for her, will you?’ Warrington ordered.
Liz turned to study the milling knots of people against the geometric designs on the marble floor. A confusing kaleidoscope of pattern and movement, a thousand pale ovals of flesh beneath bonnets and hats, smiling, talking, laughing, scowling . . . and just one of them, in amongst them somewhere, was Mary. She didn’t even have any idea what Mary might be wearing today; her clothes were all new, not the familiar old gone-to-rags she used to wear.
Come on, love . . . Where are you?
Argyll looked at the large clock on the wall at the end of the main hall. ‘Not long. The porter said we’ll be able to board in just five minutes.’
Mary nodded absently, holding onto his arm and watching the goings-on around her.
They were standing in the middle of the floor now. Instinctively he felt more comfortable here, where the press of people was the greatest, than seated on one of the benches around the side.
For the first time since abandoning the womb-like sanctuary of that house on Holland Park Avenue, he had a few moments to evaluate his situation. He thought he’d been too hasty and skittish, dragging the poor girl away like this with nothing to call her own but whatever she’d managed to cram into the small bag she was holding. But seeing those two men taking the steps up to their home, as they’d passed on the avenue, he realised then that his instinct to flee had been right.
See? You need me. The unwelcome snort, the rasping voice of Mr Babbitt, the scrape of his restless trotters.
Argyll clenched his teeth, silently bidding the creature to go back into his corner and shut up. The truth was though, he needed the intuition, he needed the finely-honed instinct of his old self: Mr Babbitt and a hundred other aliases. John Argyll needed them, for the moment. Needed them until he was safe aboard a ship bound for New York. Perhaps then, when the shore of Great Britain was no more than a pencil line on the grey Atlantic horizon, perhaps then that snorting voice could be forcefully retired, banished forever, and he could be properly reborn as Mr John Argyll.
A pleasant dream. He squeezed Mary’s arm against his side and she squeezed back in silent complicity. Mr Argyll and Miss Kelly take on the New World.
Not just a rebirth but perhaps the start of a wonderful adventure for the pair of them. With a bag full of money and the quick-witted street-smarts Mary clearly had, there was a world of opportunity awaiting them. The far side of the continent, the new state of California, train lines linking the east to the west, é
migrés from the world over flooding to this promised land . . . A couple like Mr Argyll and Miss Kelly, with a bag of money, could make their fortunes.
He smiled.
Liz shook her head. ‘It’s too difficult. People are all movin’ about.’
‘Just keep your eyes peeled,’ said Warrington. ‘Her life depends on you.’ He looked at her. ‘You don’t want her ending up like those other poor women, do you?’
Liz’s mind filled with the recollection of their gruesome find this morning; that rotting organ in a jam jar, spilling its foul contents across the writing desk. She shook her head. Not poor young Mary.
‘I don’t know what she’s wearin’ . . .’
‘But she’s a good friend, isn’t she? You know her face? If you see her down there, you’ll recognise her, whatever she has on. Just keep looking.’
Warrington caught sight of his two men standing at the side of the hall, looking intently up at him; looking too damned obviously at him.
Bloody clods. Can they not be more subtle?!
He was about to mutter something under his breath about the clumpy practical boots men who used to be in the army were in the habit of wearing; how ex-army men had an all too obvious way they stood, arms behind their backs, legs planted sturdily apart. They stood out like a pair of sore thumbs. But then he felt Liz’s arm tense against his own.
‘There!’ she whispered, pointing into the crowd.
‘Don’t fucking point, you silly bitch!’ he hissed back.
She dropped her hand back to the railing. ‘Sorry.’
Warrington looked at where she had pointed. And despite having no idea at all what Mary Kelly looked like, he was certain the small-framed girl, with frizzy strawberry-blonde hair tied up in a bun, was her. Looping her arm was a tall, slender man with dark features and deep-set eyes that seemed lost beneath thick brows.
His stomach lurched, making him feel momentarily queasy.
My god, that’s him.
The hair on the back of Argyll’s neck prickled. He knew, he simply knew, that the woman up on the gallery had just pointed them out. A second quick glance and he recognised her as the woman who had come to speak to Mary earlier today. And the man standing next to her was . . .
George!
A snort and a dry cackle from inside. Yes, the silly fool who tried to betray us.
He watched George trying to nod, to point towards them subtly. Which meant he was trying to point them out to someone else; someone down here on the floor of the Great Hall with them.
Argyll turned casually, as if to catch a glance of the hall’s large clock. He spotted two men across the way, standing beside one of the columns, their heads both tilted up towards the gallery; as conspicuous as a pair of ink spots on a freshly laundered bed sheet.
You need me still, the pig rasped. You still need me, ‘John’.
The two men by the column with their plain clothes, their stiff posture, screamed ‘police’ at him. They were looking his way, heads bobbing from side to side to get a better look through the milling crowd.
Be relaxed. The pig was right; the only card he could play right now was to make it appear that he was utterly oblivious to their presence. To give them a false sense of security. He’d let them think they had the drop on him. He casually wrapped an arm around Mary and pulled her close to him. He nuzzled her hair affectionately.
Very well done, John. But you have to move. You have to move now!
‘I need to leave you for a moment,’ he said. ‘Stay here.’
She looked up at him, concern written on her face. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘The gentlemen’s cloakroom.’ He smiled. ‘I shan’t be long.’
‘Oh.’ She smiled back. ‘Right.’
Argyll weaved his way through the crowd. It was beginning to thicken before the chained entrance to the departure platform, passengers eager to board. Ahead of him, between two columns, were double doors of dark wood and a brass plaque indicating the cloakroom. Above it hung flower baskets that spilled over with bright purple and white pansies.
Hain watched him go. ‘I’ll follow ’im. You keep an eye on the tart.’
‘Right-o,’ said Robson.
Hain squeezed through the crowd, cursing as he tripped over a low travel trunk some fool had decided to deposit amid the press of bodies. He rubbed his barked shin as he desperately tried to re-acquire visual contact with the man. It wasn’t too hard. This Babbitt fellow was tall enough not to lose easily. There he was now, approaching the public lavvies.
So he just needs a piss, is all? He smiled. Human after all, then.
Hain glanced up at the gallery and saw Warrington looking down at him, overseeing proceedings. What was that? The man nodded? He wasn’t sure. Yes, there it was: another very affirmative nod. He wasn’t sure what that meant. Follow him? Wait for him outside? Take him?
He nodded back, not entirely sure now what instruction he was confirming. His hand discreetly fumbled into his jacket pocket for the reassuring grip of his gun.
Argyll walked over to the public conveniences and nodded politely at the cloakroom attendant standing just outside the double doors. The attendant pushed the doors open for him and Argyll stepped inside. Frosted windows and several bulbs in ornate wire-frame cages provided a steady but dim light. The Great Hall’s marbled floor had given way to black and white chequered tiles. Along the left wall was a row of porcelain urinals. Opposite was a row of spotless hand bowls, each with its own oval mirror above it, rimmed with highly-polished brass.
At the far end of the cloakroom, a row of a dozen private water closets, each with a deliberately thick oak door to mute the noises and spare the blushes of an occupier. The cloakroom was busy with four other gentlemen. He heard a muted whistle coming from out in the Great Hall and the others all suddenly hurried to finish their business. The departure platform must have just opened. He could hear a wave of voices raised in unison: ‘Ahhh’s and ‘about-bleedin-time’s, and a sound like tumbling shingle on a wave-swept beach as several hundred pairs of feet began shuffling impatiently forward through the unchained barrier and onto the platform.
Argyll found himself alone but knew that it wasn’t going to be for very long. He crossed the tiled floor, picked one of the private water closets and turned the brass handle. The heavy door clicked open and he stepped inside, pulling it to almost fully behind him.
Oh, yes . . . One of them’s coming. Be patient.
He was right. There, through the crack in the door, he could see one of those two men, most probably civilian-clothed policemen.
You must be so very careful, John . . . He will have a gun.
The man quickly determined that Argyll was in one of the private booths and he stepped slowly forward, the soles of his shoes lightly tapping the tiles. The man hesitated a couple of yards from Argyll’s door, clearly, by the anxious way he was tugging on his lip, undecided as to what to do next. To check the booths? Or not?
A small nod of his head – a decision made – and he stepped forward and tried the door of the booth to the right. Argyll heard the handle rattle and through the wall, a disgruntled complaint.
‘Ahhh . . . I do apologise, sir!’
Argyll saw an old man in a top hat step past him, glaring, crimson-faced at the intrusion on his privacy. Too embarrassed or too infuriated, he didn’t bother to stop and wash his hands.
Alone again. The man rapped his knuckles on another door. ‘Anyone in there?’ Then a moment later, a little further away, another rap of the knuckles. ‘Anyone in there?’
Argyll’s hand fumbled absently into the pocket inside his coat as he listened to the tap and scrape of the man’s feet and the rap of his knuckles again on another door, this time closer.
Yes. That’s quite right, the voice chimed approvingly. Be ready. Argyll looked down at his hand and realised he was holding the very same knife that he’d been clasping beneath the kitchen table earlier this afternoon. A knife for cutting bread.
; All of a sudden, through the hairline crack of the door, he noticed the cloakroom was now blotted out by the dark outline of a shifting form. Argyll pulled back quickly to avoid getting bumped by the door as the brass handle dipped. With a sharp tug on the handle, Argyll wrenched the door inwards.
The man, taken by surprise, his hand yanked by the handle, staggered off-balance and took a corrective step forwards into the cubicle. Enough. Argyll’s free hand grabbed a fistful of his jacket collar and pulled him head-first into the cubicle.
The man’s head cracked heavily against the rim of the toilet basin and blood smeared and spattered against the white porcelain as he collapsed on his back in the narrow space between the bowl and the booth’s tiled wall. Blood was streaming from a cut in his hairline, down his forehead and into his clenched shut eyes as he fumbled, blindly, with his gun, cocking it, ready to fire.
Don’t let him use it!
Argyll prised the gun out of his hand before he could squeeze the trigger and quickly tucked it into his side pocket. He then held the tip of his knife in front of the policeman’s face.
The man wiped blood out of his eyes, smearing a streak across his cheeks. He finally dared to open his eyes wide at the sight of the knife, the tip of it almost tickling the end of his nose.
‘Jesus!’
‘Why?’
The man looked nonplussed, his gaze comically cross-eyed at the blade.
‘Why are you people so damned persistently stupid!’ hissed Argyll, surprised at the sudden surge of anger. ‘I’ve assured your people, quite clearly I believe, that I have no damned interest in gossiping about your affairs!’
The man shook his head, his jowls quivering. ‘I . . . I’m just . . . P-please! Don’t kill me!’
Questions. Questions . . . Go on! You should ask him. Make the most of him!
Argyll nodded. He squatted down in front of the man. ‘How many of you? How many here at the station?’
Blood was trickling down from his hairline, soaking his brows and trickling into his eyes again. He clenched them shut. ‘Just . . . just three of us . . . and that tart!’