by Alex Scarrow
‘I’ll be in touch, George. Make sure you read the papers.’ He turned quickly and headed for the train, pulling open the last door of the rear-most carriage, to the clerk’s obvious relief.
‘We’ll find you, you know!’ shouted Warrington. ‘We’ll have men watching the ships!’
Babbitt stopped. Looked back at Warrington. ‘Who said anything about ships?’ he called back. ‘Oh, George, by the way –’ he pointed toward the Great Hall – ‘caretaker’s storeroom . . . chap of yours might appreciate some help.’ He stepped up into the carriage and pulled the door closed with a slam that echoed along the platform.
Several guards’ whistles blew and finally a green flag was raised. With the distant scream of steam from the locomotive at the front, the train suddenly lurched forward, the trucks and wheels beneath each coach chattering one after the other as the slack was taken up and the final carriage began to move away slowly.
Warrington saw Babbitt again, his head appearing out of the door’s window; eyes that he could have sworn glinted a sulphurous red within the dark orbits beneath his brow. The bastard even managed a cheerful wave for him.
PART III
CHAPTER 56
7th November 1888, Liverpool
Mary watched the stevedores and lumpers working industriously along the Waterloo Dock quayside. To the left of the quay, a row of sail and steam ships of all sizes were lined up, smoke stacks puffing dirty columns up into the thick grey sky. A jam of handcarts and wagons filled the quay, laden with rain-dampened wooden packing crates and canvas sacks of produce coming in from all corners of the world. To the right of the quay, a continuous wall of storage warehouses, their yawning fronts open wide, both disgorging and swallowing up a steady convoy of top-heavy carts and weary-looking lumpers. A parade of relentless activity as far as the eye could see that put the paltry scale of the London docks to shame.
Through the tea shop window, she could hear steam whistles, the clank of heavy chains working, swinging crane arms, and the colourful language of master stevedores bellowing profanities that would make a priest’s toes curl, as they cajoled their men to put their ‘bloody backs’ into it.
Watching it all, she felt a touch of excitement roll down her spine. It felt like that thing John did in bed: a gentle finger rolling down the bumps of her vertebrae, one after the other, like a harpist stroking the catgut chords on his instrument.
She would have loved to have taken rooms nearer the Prince’s Landing Stage. Close enough to see the Cunard, Pacific and White Star passenger ships coming and going, the broad thoroughfare filled with people of all classes, from all corners of the world, embarking or disembarking together. To see all the wonderful clothes of the first-class passengers; the plumes of ostrich feathers and the fine layers of lace, the wonderfully precise cut of felt on the men’s suits. But John had convinced her it would be better picking a smaller, less obvious hotel. Quite sensible, really.
‘Another slice of your usual cake, ma’am?’ asked the waitress.
Mary shook her head. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
The pink-faced girl all but seemed to curtsey as she backed up a step and returned to stand dutifully behind the tea shop’s counter. Mary had been into this place enough times now over the past few weeks that they’d spoken together a little. The waitress was just a year younger than Mary and yet she treated her with complete class-based deference.
That was me a few weeks ago, Mary mused.
No, perhaps she was flattering herself. It wasn’t. In the stratified bands of social class that existed in the East End, being a ‘seamstress’ – a codified way of admitting she occasionally took men for money – meant she would have been dipping her head deferentially even to a shop girl.
Now though . . . now she got a ‘ma’am’. And not said with a sarcastic tone or the sceptical cocking of an eyebrow, either. Up here in Liverpool, it seemed she actually really could pass as a lady. The occasional slipped vowel and omitted consonant – and to be fair she was getting so much better at not doing those things – were nuances that were so easily lost and less noticeable compared to the regional differences in the sound of their vowels. Indeed, simply not having a broad northern accent seemed to mark her out as somebody to offer that little extra gesture of courtesy to.
John sometimes chastised her gently for worrying so much about her airs and graces. His attitude was so typically American: that a person is judged on what it is they have to say, not on what sounds their words make. On the other side of that ocean, she was going to find a very different world, he kept telling her; not like this stultifying one where every child was doomed to follow the profession of their parents; where waitresses, footmen, market porters, coal men, were simply born several sizes too small to fit their uniforms of servitude.
Anyway, he’d told her many times over that it was her soul that so bewitched him. Her soul, her spirit, her zest. Not whether she could say ‘how’ instead of ‘’ow’, or ‘butter’ instead of ‘bu’er’. Mary smiled as she sipped her tea and watched the dock workers through the window.
So American. So refreshingly not English.
Thinking about it, Mary was rather glad they weren’t booking to go on one of those posh White Star or Cunard liners. Partly because those same elegantly-dressed lady passengers she longed to see more closely were most likely to be the sort of pursed-lipped stuck-up cows who would spot what she was in an instant and derive a fortnight’s worth of sport out of trying to trip a social gaff out of her common mouth. But also, not to forget, the money they would save taking passage on a freight ship.
John said their ship was due in soon. There would be several days’ turnaround as the ship was emptied of sacks of tea, coffee, sugar, and loaded up with a consignment of engineering tools due to be delivered and offloaded in New York. And, of course, enough room aboard for a small number of passengers paying a fraction of the fare that they would aboard a liner like the SS Celtic, as long as they didn’t mind eating alongside the ship’s crew.
Just another few days now, according to him. He was expecting their ship any day. If she didn’t trust him – completely trust him as she had in the four weeks since they left London – she might have begun to wonder whether there really was a ship booked for America. But the question never even crossed her mind. She knew her very own Mr Argyll wouldn’t be untruthful with her. She knew he couldn’t be deceitful, even if he tried. Even harmless white lies tripped him up. The other day, for example, he’d bought her a beautiful little cameo carved exquisitely into pink shell and had intended to give it to her over dinner, but had been so worked up and impatient about the surprise that he’d caved in during the afternoon and given it to her over tea. John was as honest a man as she could hope for. Far more honest than she deserved, given the duplicitous genesis of their love. If he said ‘soon’, then it was to be soon and she had no reason at all in the world to doubt that.
Soon would be good, though. Whilst sipping tea and pretending to be a lady was a pleasant enough fiction, she couldn’t wait for their new life together to begin in earnest.
The other day, John had entranced her with the possibilities that their bag of money could offer them. He had built a dream in his mind already: a hardware merchants in a place called Fort Casey, Colorado. He told her the recently constructed railways were bringing hordes of people from the east, travelling not all the way to the west now but stopping along the way to take advantage of the cheap prairie land on offer to turn into farms. People who had sold everything and were looking to start anew. A hardware store right beside the railway station. It would be one of the first places a new farmer would want to visit.
But they’d be travel-weary. Mary suddenly had a marvellous idea that she could add to his. What about a lodging house? A small hotel, small enough for the pair of them to run? Just a few bedrooms and perhaps a tearoom like this one? John could run the store and she the hotel. Mary pressed her lips together, trying hard
to give her tired mouth a rest from smiling.
It sounded wonderful.
He should be back soon. John said he had some business to attend to with the shipping merchant this morning. She couldn’t wait for him to return so she could tell him about the idea.
‘That’s fifty-one words in your message, sir,’ said the clerk. In his head he totalled the sum that was due for payment. ‘That’ll be two and a farthing, please, sir.’
‘And this will make tomorrow’s issue?’
‘If I wire it through to London now, sir, yes, it should be in for tomorrow. They don’t roll the printing presses until three in the afternoon normally.’
‘Fine.’ Argyll fumbled in his pocket for some coins, paid the clerk and then stepped out of the telegram office and onto the street. The air was damp with rain as fine as spray; ‘drizzle’ they called it over here. He turned the collar of his Mackintosh up beneath the broad brim of his slouch hat and began to make his way south towards the docks.
You know there’s no other way.
Absently, he thumbed the rubber stopper of the small glass bottle of chloral hydrate in his pocket. The pharmacist had tried to sell him half a dozen other miracle cures for insomnia, but Argyll had used the stuff before as a sedative; given in the right dose, it worked quickly, without any unsettling side-effects.
You’re doing the right thing, the pig whispered approvingly.
‘Be quiet,’ he muttered under his breath.
Argyll tried to avoid listening to that scratchy, hectoring voice. It was right, yes, he could see that now; this was the way he had to do things. But he didn’t need to hear this wretched, deformed freak telling him that.
‘Freak?’ You should show me a little more gratitude. Hmmm? I saw them first. Not you.
George and his fellows must have decided to take this business to the police, because he was certain he’d spotted them several times up here in Liverpool, at the Prince’s Landing Stage. Pairs of them watching discreetly, so they thought, as passengers boarded the liners. In pairs. So unmistakably coppers. Argyll was also quite certain every passenger liner booking agent was being carefully watched. The moment that he and Mary attempted to buy tickets, the moment they attempted to climb the steps for a ship to America, they were taking an enormous gamble.
You know it makes sense . . .
Argyll balled his fist and would happily have smacked his temple to shut the fucking thing up; would happily have shoved the long tip of a stiletto blade deep into his temple if he could be sure it would skewer that little bastard in there.
. . . to give them what they want.
And the little pig-voice being right just made it worse. It was the only way, wasn’t it? If George and his colleagues had roped in the police, as it appeared they had, then he was well and truly cornered.
She’s just a dirty tart. Dirty. How many stinking old men do you think she’s had? How many shit-covered fingernails grabbing and poking inside her for the price of a bed or a meal? How many of them, before she found foolish you? How many—
‘Shut up!’ he barked.
He turned onto a busier street, avoiding a puddle that spread across the pavement. Mary was in her favourite tea shop just up ahead. No doubt right by the window, her favourite table in there, watching the dockers load and unload the ships. He hated the voice being anywhere near her. He hated the thought it could even be in the same room as her.
‘I’m doing what you said!’ he snapped beneath the dripping brim of his hat. ‘Now go away! Please. Just give me tonight alone with her. Please!’
His aching head was quiet for a few steps. Babbitt-the-pig’s scraping hoof and his self-satisfied snort was all the answer Argyll got for a while. Then, as he passed the curtained window and saw her small oval face light up at seeing him through the rain-spattered window, it rasped once again.
I’ll go . . . for now.
CHAPTER 57
8th November 1888, Great Queen Street, Central London
‘Good god, this is a dammed relief! said Rowlinson. ‘I thought he’d slipped through our fingers!’
Warrington nodded slowly. ‘Indeed.’
He was tired. Bone-weary tired, with the constant gnawing stress of this damnable situation. The number of restful nights in the last month that had begun and ended with a kiss from his wife he could count on the fingers of one hand. The rest had been nights of tossing and turning and imagining scenarios in which this slippery bastard and the girl he had with him were far, far away. Far enough away to feel quite happy sharing their fascinating tale entitled ‘A Prince, His Whore, Her Bastard and the Ripper of London’ with some New York newspaper.
What easy headlines a story like that was going to make.
His sleepless nights were mixed with those worries and the very unwelcome flashing zoetrope images of dark crimson spattering across cotton white. Of eyes round with shock, surprise, a complete lack of comprehension in them.
Good grief, he’d even tried to calmly explain to the taller one, Liz, why it was that they both had to die. Warrington wondered what he’d hoped to gain by rationalising it to the whore; as if she was going to calmly listen to what he had to say, nod agreeably that it was perhaps the most sensible course of action for queen and country, and present her bare throat for his man to slit?
Orman had done his best with both of them to make it appear to be the work of the Candle Man. The first one, Liz Stride, he managed to do little more than nearly sever her head. He would have done more with her body but they’d been disturbed, nearly spotted by a man on his way to work in the early hours. The other one, an hour later, they’d been better prepared for. Orman, bless the man’s strong stomach, had needed no help from him. What he’d left of Catherine Eddowes more accurately resembled the earlier victims. A regrettable business. And now the London press were excitedly screaming that ‘The Leather Apron’ – or his more headline-friendly moniker, ‘Jack the Ripper’ – had claimed two more victims . . . in one night, no less!
‘Tomorrow it is, then,’ said Rawlinson to the others gathered in the reading room. He turned to Warrington. ‘George, you’ll meet him again, if you’re feeling up to it?’
He nodded. It wasn’t really a question, was it? This was his responsibility. His task. His mess.
The newspaper rustled as Rawlinson carefully inspected the column of personal messages once again. ‘By the way he’s worded this, it certainly does seem that he’s prepared to settle this matter the way we’d prefer it to be settled.’
‘Quite so,’ said Warrington. ‘It appears we have him trapped.’
‘I’m surprised,’ said Oscar. ‘There are a lot of ships a man could catch up there in Liverpool. Surely he could find at least one to escape on?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Warrington. ‘But we have quite a few policemen up there.’
They’d pulled in a lot of favours for this. Debts that their little ‘Steering Committee’ would end up in hock to for many years to come. Pairs of boots from the Lancashire constabulary all over the docks; plain-clothes boots, but probably obvious enough that they might as well have been wearing uniforms. But that was the point. They wanted the Candle Man to know the docksides were being watched.
‘He must probably think that every ship and agent is being watched.’ Rawlinson fumbled with a ginger biscuit that he had little appetite for. ‘He’s cautious. Boarding a ship represents too much of a danger, I fancy. That’s why he’s agreed to meet us.’
‘And do we try and kill him again?’ asked Geoffrey. ‘Even if he is prepared to hand us the girl?’
Warrington looked to Rawlinson. That would be his decision.
Rawlinson ran a tongue over dry lips, picking up several biscuit crumbs. ‘I’m afraid this horrible mess is too important for us to have this man wandering around, knowing all he knows. I accept he is a . . . professional,’ he said, with a hint of distaste for the word. ‘I accept our colleagues in New York are more than happy to vouch for his indefinite discretio
n, but . . .’ He sighed. ‘These wretched newspapers making so damned much of this story, turning what could easily have been – should have been – a few unfortunate, unlinked murders.’ He glanced pointedly at Warrington. ‘That really was stupid, George, making it look like the same man’s work.’
Warrington nodded, looked down at his feet. The pair of them had already had this conversation in private.
‘Point is,’ continued Rawlinson, ‘now we have the press believing their theatrically-named villain has killed four women now. That’s exactly what those awful bloody parasites want. It’s selling their papers for them.’ Rawlinson sat back in his armchair. ‘The whole thing has become quite ridiculous. We need a satisfactory conclusion to this quickly, now, before this preposterous “Ripper” character takes a firm hold of the public’s imagination.’
‘Making those last two look the same, Henry,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I thought that was quite clever of George. We can attribute them all to this Candle chap. Alive or dead, if we put a butcher’s knife in his hand and it happens that a leather apron is found upon his person, the people will have no doubt that their “Ripper” has been caught, and this business will soon be forgotten about.’
Oscar shook his head. ‘George, you should have briefed this man differently. These deaths should have been made to look more varied. The newspapers report a dozen or more murders every day. Unconnected murders would have passed without notice.’
‘Hindsight’s a very useful thing, Oscar,’ said Geoffrey.
‘We are where we are,’ said Rawlinson with a sigh. ‘There’s little to be gained raking over this, gentlemen.’
‘The Candle Man,’ said Warrington. ‘He will be this Jack the Ripper. The police will find him with enough evidence framing him.’ He looked at all of them. ‘Other than the prince’s indiscretion, there is no possible way to link the four women. They were all cheap tarts who happened to be plying their trade at the wrong time, in the wrong place. The metropolitan police and Scotland Yard will have a credible culprit. They will be the heroes of the hour, and law and order will be seen to have prevailed.’