by Winona Kent
“I understand you being upset. Did he mention the crime I’m supposed to have committed?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “But it’s not that. It’s my friend, Mr. Deeley. He’s been killed.”
The word sounded wrong. It was too new, too unfamiliar. It couldn’t be describing Mr. Deeley. He couldn’t be that. Dead. The memory of it was coming back to smother her, like the dense, smoky fog after a bombing.
And she remembered something else… when she had first met Mr. Deeley, in 1825, he had been accused, unfairly, of arson. He had been beaten and thrown into a prison cell, with the promise of a quick trial, a quick conviction, and a quick dispatch. Arson was a hanging offence. She had wanted to see him desperately, and his jailor had taken pity on her and allowed her to visit him for one hour. And in that hour, she had come to understand that they were meant to be together, inseparable, for whatever time each of them had left.
But time had played a very cruel trick on her. Why allow Mr. Deeley to escape the hangman in 1825, only to be killed three months later anyway? Was it always meant to be? Was it always intended that he should die at this exact moment in his life?
“He was killed in the air raid. In the cellar of the hotel where we had lunch. And I had to identify his body.”
“I’m so sorry, Charlotte.”
Charlie looked at him. His voice told her he meant it. And his face.
“I liked him. I really did. Such a shame.”
He paused.
“I am curious,” he said hesitantly, “about the tale that Ferryman has told you. You said he gave you details of the crime…?”
Charlie nodded.
“Did he tell you the year that it happened?”
It was Charlie’s turn to hesitate. “Yes,” she said, finally. “1849. Christmas.”
“And this doesn’t confound you?”
Charlie shook her head.
“Then you are not surprised by the suggestion that men and women are capable of travelling from one time, into another…?”
Charlie shook her head again.
“Then you must know, Charlotte, that I was less than honest with you last night, when we spoke about my origins. Betty knows nothing of my life before we met, and I hope to continue to protect her from that knowledge. Before I arrived in London, in December of last year, I was employed as a police officer. In Middlehurst. In the year 1849.”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “That’s what the other Thaddeus said. But he was the police officer. Not you.”
“‘The other Thaddeus,’ as you call him, knows a good many details about me. We grew up in the same village, separated by only a few houses. We attended lessons together as children. He apprenticed as a blacksmith, working for my father. And he married my sister, Matilda. The same Matilda Ferryman who was later found dead with her throat cut. Did he happen to mention the two other murders to you?”
Charlie nodded.
“I considered him to be the most likely suspect in all three killings in 1849. I believe him also to be guilty of two additional killings in the present time. The method he used to dispatch each of his victims is remarkably similar.”
“Two more killings?” Charlie said, faintly. “I know about one…”
“There have been two more killings,” Betty’s lodger confirmed. “The man has a taste for it. Having indulged himself three times in the past, he has found pleasure in repeating the evil, and will continue to do so until he is stopped. Before the sirens went I was observing you and your friend—and Ferryman—in the restaurant. I was careful to stay out of sight, so I couldn’t overhear what he was saying to you. But his familiarity with the waitress caused me great concern.”
“He invited her to have dinner with him,” Charlie said. “She agreed.”
“Dinner tonight?”
“Yes. And then dancing. And he promised to see her home safely. Her name’s Violet.”
The dark-haired gentleman closed his eyes. “I took shelter in the cellar with everyone else… and then, after the ceiling collapsed… I found my way out. I saw the young lady in question. She was uninjured. And I saw Ferryman, also unhurt. But while I was distracted, looking for you and your friend… Ferryman and the young woman disappeared from my sight.” He rested his head back against the curving passageway wall. “I may live to regret this day.”
“What time is it?” Charlie asked, after a few more moments.
“Just gone ten.”
“Has the All Clear sounded yet?”
“No idea,” Betty’s lodger replied, tiredly. “But the trains still aren’t running under the river, and that’s usually an accurate indicator of conditions outside. We may be stranded here for the better part of the night.”
Charlie struggled to her feet, using the passageway wall for balance. “I’ve got to get home.”
Betty’s lodger reached up and grabbed her arm, stopping her. “You can’t.”
“I don’t care. I’ll catch a bus. I know they keep running during air raids. I’ll find one going to Balham.”
“Please sit down, Charlotte. Don’t be stupid. You’re safe down here. Betty will understand. It’s wartime. People are caught out. And we’ve already lost your friend. I don’t want to lose you as well.”
Defeated, Charlie slid down the wall. The station was packed with shelterers. Until the All Clear sirens sounded, there was nowhere else she could go.
But it was true. She was safe down here—from the bombs, anyway, and from Silas Ferryman, whoever he was. Strand had been untouched by the Blitz. And if the dark-haired man sitting beside her really was the Middlehurst Slasher, he was hardly likely to draw attention to himself with so many witnesses present.
Charlie closed her eyes and waited. And at some point, she dozed off again, and then woke with a start as someone walked past, negotiating a path through the outstretched legs and slumbering, prone bodies.
She glanced over at the dark-haired man who Betty believed was Thaddeus. He was asleep, sitting upright against the wall, his jaw slightly open, his breathing verging on a quiet snore.
On the floor between them was his suitcase. It was small and black, with tan-coloured leather reinforcements around its edges and corners.
Why did he have a suitcase with him?
Charlie contemplated this for a moment.
She checked. It wasn’t locked.
And then she did something she would never have considered doing at home, in the present, where it wasn’t wartime, and life was ordinary, and orderly… and safe.
Curiously, and very carefully, she opened the lid of the case.
She was expecting clothing—shirts and socks and underwear and jumpers. But the case contained only two items. The first Charlie recognized as the yellow and black box belonging to a Brownie Box camera. Nana Betty had one just like it.
The other item was a gas mask. Or, what she at first assumed was a gas mask, but which turned out to be something altogether different.
Inside the cardboard gas mask box was a collection of jewellery.
A locket.
A ring.
A bracelet.
Charlie caught her breath as she realized what she was looking at.
But there was more. A brooch, painted gold, with leaves and three delicate flowers. In the centre of each flower was a tiny glass globe.
A pair of clasp earrings, tortoiseshell imitations, probably Bakelite.
Underneath the jewellery were two cuttings from newspapers, carefully folded.
The first was a story about Angela Bailey, whose body had been discovered on a bomb site, her throat cut, and her brooch missing. The murder that everyone in Betty’s road was talking about.
The second story was unfamiliar to Charlie. Deirdre Allsop, a young woman who lived with her invalid aunt and worked in a sweet shop in Balham, had failed to come home after work on Friday, August 23. The aunt was certain her niece did not have any boyfriends, however the manager of the sweet shop reported seeing her with a gentleman several t
imes when leaving work. When Miss Allsop’s body had at last been discovered on Mitcham Common, it was determined that her throat had been cut, and that her earrings, which she had borrowed from her aunt, were missing.
Charlie put everything back in the gas mask box, and closed its lid, and then very quickly and quietly closed the suitcase. And then, without disturbing the man snoring beside her, she got to her feet, and, clutching her broken handbag, ran out of the passageway and through the station to the emergency stairs.
• • •
Outside, the night air was cold and damp after the suffocating heat of the tube station, and it smelled of demolition and explosives and burning wood. After her eyes had adjusted to the sudden darkness, Charlie could see smoke rising from multiple fires, pale grey smudges against the red-tinged sky.
But the bombing seemed to have stopped, and the city was quiet.
She had no idea what time it was, or even if there would be a bus. If there were no buses, she would walk. It was about five miles from Strand to Balham. She could manage it in a couple of hours, easily. She rode her bike twice as far as that on summer weekends at home.
At Trafalgar Square, she saw the damage the bombs had caused. There was a rubble-strewn hole in the road across from Nelson’s Column. It really didn’t look that bad, but she knew the worst of it was below, out of sight in the tube station.
Rescuers were still running up and down the steps beneath the Underground sign, carrying shovels and bandages. Ambulances waited nearby to take the injured to hospital.
She spied an 88 bus and ran to catch it, jumping onto the open rear platform just as the bus rattled away from its stop.
“Single to Balham Station,” she said, to the conductress.
“That’ll be five pence, please.”
There was barely enough light inside the bus to see properly. Charlie offered another of her little silver 5p coins, which the conductress seemed to assume was sixpence: she received a big brown penny in return, and a very tiny cardboard ticket.
It was a long, slow ride along a blacked-out Whitehall and around the darkened Houses of Parliament. The driver stopped three times to pick up passengers and then crossed over Vauxhall Bridge to the south side of the river. It seemed like hours before the bus reached Balham, with delays and detours, and cautious navigations around holes in the road, and collapsed walls, and puddles of muddy water of unknown depths.
At last she saw the tube station, completely blacked out except for its dimly lit and hooded Underground signs. She got off the bus and, walking quickly, reached Harris Road in a few minutes. She let the knocker drop at the front door of Number Twelve, and waited.
There was no answer.
Charlie’s heart sank.
And then she realized that Betty was probably asleep in the shelter at the bottom of the garden. It was well past everyone’s bedtime.
Charlie knew there was a little paved lane that ran along the backs of the houses. Here, the wooden fences were all very high, preserving their owners’ privacy. She located Betty’s gate, and, standing on her toes, reached over its top to release the latch on the other side. She let herself into the garden, then shut the gate, making sure it was firmly latched behind her.
It appeared that the sound of the gate had woken Betty up; she peered out of the shelter’s entrance, shining her torch in Charlie’s face.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It’s you! I wondered where you’d got to. What on earth’s happened? And where’s your friend, Mr. Deeley?”
Chapter Fifteen
Shaun inserted his ticket in the automatic gate at the top of the escalators at Balham, and the barricades parted to allow him through.
He congratulated himself on this further accomplishment, and then took himself to task for dwelling upon the triviality of such matters. It was only the fact that he had dealt with the entire journey by himself, without the assistance of Mrs. Collins, which made it remarkable. Nevertheless, as he climbed the steps to the street, he made a note in his mind to mention his achievement as soon as he located her.
It was a short walk to Harris Road. He passed the shop that Betty’s father had owned, where the fellow who called himself Thaddeus had been employed. It was still a greengrocer, but now it also sold bus passes and travel cards, newspapers, magazines, a book containing historical photographs of Balham, confectioneries, and tins of things, all on display through its large window.
Shaun’s footsteps were almost jaunty as he approached Betty’s little terraced house. He opened the gate and walked up the path. Then he lifted the brass knocker on the green front door and let it drop against the mail slot.
Mrs. Collins’s aunt Wendy opened the door. Shaun recognized her from the Friday before, when he had met her for the first time after Mrs. Collins’s grandmother’s funeral. He’d thought, at the time, that she was remarkably youthful for someone who had been born seventy years earlier. Indeed, both Jackie—who was Mrs. Collins’s mother, and who was seventy-two years old—and Wendy herself could easily have passed for women who were much, much younger.
“Yes?” Wendy said.
“Mrs. Weller.”
“Yes?”
“Do you not remember me?”
“No,” she said. “Sorry. Should I?”
“But I am Shaun Deeley. Surely you recall our introduction. I live in the cottage in Stoneford with Charlotte.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Wendy said, “but I don’t know anyone named Charlotte. And which cottage in Stoneford?”
How could this be?
Shaun tried again.
“Your niece is Charlotte,” he said. “She is the youngest daughter of your sister, Jackie. She was married to Jeffrey Lowe. He died in a traffic accident. Charlotte lives in the cottage where she grew up. She owns it now. Her parents left it to her when they moved away to Portugal.”
Wendy Weller shook her head.
“I really am terribly sorry,” she said, “but I don’t know anyone named Charlotte, and I don’t know anyone named Jackie. And I have no idea who you are. My son Nick lives in Stoneford, but that’s as far as my family connection goes. And I’m in the midst of a bereavement. My mother has died. I really must get on…”
She tried to close the door, but Shaun stopped her.
“Wait,” he said, “please. I beg of you. Charlotte Duran. You must know the name.”
Wendy paused. “Charlotte Duran…?”
“Charlotte Duran,” Shaun repeated.
“Yes…” Wendy replied thoughtfully. “Yes… I think I do know the name. Perhaps you’d better come inside.”
• • •
The sitting room of Nana Betty’s house was dark and cool, and filled with glass-fronted cabinets that held collections of china and silverware, and stockpiles of magazines. A very ancient television, which looked nothing like the enormous flat screen Mrs. Collins had installed in her own sitting room, stood in one corner. Shaun only recognized what it was because he’d watched old films. An upright piano leaned against the wall, and on top of it were piled even more magazines, and books, and newspapers, which reminded him of Mrs. Collins’s propensity for collecting items which had long outlived their usefulness.
He had not entered this room on Friday. Instead, he and Mrs. Collins had been ushered into the dining room next door, and from there they had sought solitude outside in the garden.
“Sit here,” Wendy suggested, indicating a sofa covered with a pattern of green leaves and red roses. “I’ll see if there’s some tea left.”
She left him alone for a few minutes, and he took off his overcoat, easing the sleeve down over his left arm, which, he noted, had begun to bleed again. He pulled off the paper towels and examined the cut, unable to fathom how he had received it.
Wendy returned from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a teapot and two cups, milk in a jug, and sugar in a bowl.
“Here we are,” she said, placing it on a low table in front of the sofa. She saw Shaun’s arm, and the little wad o
f blood-soaked paper he was holding. “What’s happened there?”
“In truth,” Shaun said, “I do not know. I have no memory of receiving this wound at all.”
“Let’s have a look.”
She switched on a light beside the sofa, and sat down beside him.
“What did you say your name was?”
“My name is Shaun Deeley.”
“I trained as a nurse, Mr. Deeley. And this looks very much like a cut from a knife. You really ought to see a doctor.”
“Might we not just bandage it, and avoid a complexity I fear I may not be able to explain?”
“Very well,” Wendy said. “I think there might be something upstairs in the medicine cabinet. But if that gets infected and you come down with tetanus, I won’t be held responsible.”
• • •
The wound in his arm thus washed, disinfected, and dressed with white gauze held in place by strips of adhesive tape, Shaun at last turned his attention to the tea which Wendy had brought in from the kitchen.
“Milk and sugar, Mr. Deeley?”
“Yes, please.”
Wendy added both before giving the cup to Shaun. Then she reached into the pocket of her cardigan and took out a little blue booklet. Frayed and faded though it was, Shaun recognized it instantly.
It was the booklet that Betty Singleton had written upon with her pencil. War-Time Cookery to Save Fuel and Food Value.
“My mum died last week. Her funeral was Friday, in fact. I live in Croydon but I looked in on her every day while she was alive. I’ve just been going through her things. I was emptying one of the drawers in the other room and I found this. Mum’s written something on the back. Charlotte Duran says I am going to have a little girl. And I will name her Jackie. And a sister for Jackie, and I’m going to call her Wendy.”
“And,” Shaun finished, “she says my house will not be bombed.”
Wendy stared at him.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “And she’s put the date on it. October the 11th, 1940. How did you know that, Mr. Deeley?”