by Andy Conway
She marched off up the hill and broke into a run. Looking back as she ran, she saw Mary Lewis frozen with fear, staring after her, glancing back at the big house to see if anyone had witnessed it.
— 32 —
ARABELLA PALMER NOTICED that Inspector Beadle had kept hold of her hand. As the hansom cab rattled down the steep hill of Jamaica Row down to Digbeth, she felt herself lurching forward and was glad he held her firm.
He held her hand all the way along Digbeth High Street and she relaxed into the ride, enjoying the sensation as her flank bumped against his with each corner they took.
She was not used to carriages. They were an extravagance she could not justify. The tram had always suited her more, seeming more prudent, more democratic. It was something of a treat to be transported this way, a rare treat, and she wondered if he had hailed the cab in order to impress her. She hoped not. It was tiresome when a man thought he might take possession of a woman by paying for something, as if her head were on one of the coins in his pocket, like the king’s.
He said nothing as they rode through Highgate. She turned to look at him as they passed the Balsall Heath public baths, the signs for Men and Women engraved in terracotta above the entrances. His eyes met hers and she thought he might say something, anything, but he held her gaze and did not shy away and she was thinking of so many things – that this man had seen her at the darkest moment of her life, that he’d been there to pull her from the depths of Hell, and how they had existed in the same square mile for all these years without speaking, only passing now and then in the street, and had he recognized her in all that time or was yesterday the first time?
She said nothing, only gazed into his eyes until a bump in the road made her look away.
And they were taking the gentle rise to Moseley now and would he still hold her hand as they crested the hill and rode down through the village, as brazen as you like? Would anyone see them riding like this and would they think he was courting her or perhaps had arrested her and was taking her to the station?
No, they sailed past Woodbridge Road, away from the station, so no one could think this was official police business, unless he was taking her home after interviewing her. What was it he called it? A person of interest. Was she a person of interest? Was that what people might say as they winked and nudged and laughed in that way they did about any man walking with any woman. Couldn’t a woman talk to a man like she could talk to any woman and not have the world think she belonged to him? It was stupidity beyond belief that her sex prevented her from doing any of this – riding in this cab, holding this man’s hand, being alone with him – without it meaning she had signed her life away to him, without it meaning that she was his property.
She was glad it was night and there was nothing but the occasional gaslight to show their faces. They went through the village, the battlements of St Mary’s church tower pale against the black sky, and she wondered at Daniel Pearce and if he was there, watching her, seeing her with the policeman that had hounded him.
They passed the dovecote, standing alone and mysterious in the moonlight, and crested the final hill to ride down to Kings Heath high street.
She was glad that the driver veered left up Valentine Road rather than take the busy high street. It was dark and quiet. She could almost hear her heart thumping above the clatter of the horse’s hooves.
When they arrived on Woodville Road, the inspector did not wave her off and return to the police station as he had said he would. He stepped out with her. She let him murmur his words of farewell as he paid the driver. She opened the gate and went to her front door and felt him follow behind her. She said nothing.
Scrambling for the key, she opened the door swiftly and stepped inside to the dark hallway and he stepped in after her without a word. She thought he might have spoiled it by saying something or asking if he might come inside or invent some ridiculous excuse that would state in the open what they were doing, but he followed her in silence as if he understood what they both knew, and what this was. He closed the front door behind him with a resounding click that said this is happening, this is what it is.
For a moment they stood in blackness and she could hear his short, even breath, almost a sigh.
She switched on the electric light and looked at him again, a bold, brazen stare that challenged him to state his business. But he said nothing, simply gazed right back at her in that infuriatingly calm way he had about him. She wanted to slap the certainty right off his face. Who did he think he was, assuming anything about her? It was a gross impertinence.
“This is not the station,” she said.
“It would appear so,” he said,
As if he himself did not understand how he’d got here, as if he had woken from a hypnotist’s trance to find himself standing on a cliff edge staring down into the deep sea and none of this was his own doing, his own decision. As if she had entranced him and brought him here to fall to his doom.
She felt no shame. She was a modern woman, an independent being with her own mind and will and heart. She could have any guest she pleased in her own house at any time of day or night she chose.
She lunged for him, to slap him, sudden anger overwhelming her. But her hand met his cheek with barely the force of a kitten. It was more of a stroke than a slap, and in a moment, his lips were on hers.
And then it was all so clear. They were in this together as of now. Of course they were. Daniel Pearce had drawn them together. He was out there somewhere and they would find him together.
She sank into Beadle’s embrace, and they plunged off the cliff to fall into the deep.
— 33 —
RACHEL TRUDGED BACK to St Mary’s churchyard in a daze, hardly seeing anything around her. If she had stopped to think about it she might have wondered how she’d so quickly become immune to the newness of it all; walking through the village only a few hours earlier full of wonder at how different paving stones, street signs and lampposts were, and now walking ten minutes through gaslit streets as if she’d seen them all her life and didn’t need to see them anymore.
She didn’t notice the elegant townhouses along Wake Green Road, or that the mock Tudor row of dwellings along the upper part of St Mary’s Row were still there, and she turned into the churchyard through the upper entrance, hardly noticing the railings that cordoned the path off from the jumble of gravestones, most of which were no longer there in her own time, or had become paving stones. She walked through almost pitch blackness down the path to the rear of the church and to the touchstone, absent-mindedly placing her palm to the correct spot, feeling the flush of heat and her ears pop as the industrial white noise of 2011 rushed into her head.
She found her carrier bag under the bush, fished her long coat out and took off her hat, leaving Danny’s bag where it was.
She ambled home, slid her key into the lock and walked straight up the stairs, ignoring Olive walking out to greet her. Alone and safe in her room, she threw off her costume and put on jeans and a t-shirt and felt again a hundred years apart from that world she’d seen and breathed and lived, and at the same time not yet a part of this world where she’d always existed. She was stranded between two worlds, belonging to neither.
Later, she lay on her bed, flicking through the stack of old photos: Olive as a girl during the war posing with her parents outside the old house; Mary Lewis posing in front of the old house, not wearing her maid’s uniform, a baby in her arms; and others, through the 1950s and 60s and 70s. Her ancestors. The timeline that defined her. All of it a huge lie.
They had not owned the big house. Mary Lewis had been a maid. They hadn’t been rich. The family hadn’t fallen on hard times. They’d always been this poor.
In the morning, she sat sullenly at the breakfast table, playing with her Sugar Puffs, watching Olive washing dishes, her dad rushing out of the door, a slice of jam on toast in his mouth, ruffling her hair as he breezed out, not noticing that her world had fallen apart.
; She set off to the Central Library for a day of research, walking down the back streets of Moseley and scowling as she walked past the old house that had never belonged to her family.
— 34 —
“INSPECTOR BEADLE, YOU can wipe that smug smile off your face, right this minute.”
Arabella loosened her apron and pulled it off, which reminded him of last night. He smiled into his boiled egg as she joined him at the breakfast table.
“And I’d like to make it absolutely clear that I wait on you only as a guest, not because you are a man.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” he said. “Were this my house I would be serving breakfast to you.”
“As long as you know that.” She too had a smug smile on her face and crimson cheeks that matched the curtains.
They ate in silence, trying not to laugh out loud, and then she remembered something, leapt up and rushed upstairs. She came back down with an old leather-bound notebook and placed it on the pristine white tablecloth.
He sipped his tea and opened it to find vivid, violent swirls of colour. A sketchbook. An artist’s sketchbook.
“You kept this?”
She nodded.
He remembered it from when it had been just another piece of evidence. Disturbing, violent scrawls, clearly the work of a madman. It had seemed so then, anyway. Less so now.
“There,” she said, prodding her finger at a page as he flicked through. “You see?”
A girl standing by a gravestone, a church behind her.
“It’s St. Mary’s, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“He was obsessed with the place, and with that particular gravestone. He would take the shortcut through the graveyard and always stop at that gravestone, and could never say why it fascinated him so much. It’s where I saw him again yesterday. That exact spot.”
Beadle wiped his face with a napkin, noting how civilized it made him feel – he did not bother with such affectations at home. Women had a way of making you your better self.
“This, then, is the key,” he said. “Perhaps I could put a man there to wait for him to appear.”
“Could you do that?”
“No. I could not justify it.”
“I thought this was a private matter: our own private investigation?
He pushed the book away and took her in. That mischievous smile at the corner of her defiant mouth. Those lips he had kissed for hours.
“Do you mean to make me an amateur detective? Like that ghastly Holmes creation?”
“Don’t be mean. People like to believe in a gentleman sleuth with extraordinary powers of deduction.”
“Reality is much more mundane. I could tell you—”
“I believe you told Arthur Conan Doyle as much last night. You put him in his place.”
“I didn’t do it to be mean.”
She rose and stood behind him, putting her arms around him and kissing his head. “I know. I rather enjoyed you putting him in his place, Inspector Beadle.”
The echo of horses’ hooves slowly clopping up the street, and the rattle of bottles.
“That’s the milkman. You should go before the whole world sees you leaving and there’s a terrible scandal.”
“I do believe you would enjoy that too.”
He rose and put on his jacket and overcoat. She plonked his bowler on his head and pushed him to the door. He lingered at her lips, wanting to stay and melt into her again, but she shook her head and shooed him away, blushing.
He braced himself and stepped out into the morning fog.
In a moment, he was striding up the street, frost crackling underfoot, and no one had seen him leave.
He caught the tram to Moseley, feeling strangely alive, as if he had had a blood transfusion. All the blood coursing through his veins had been replaced with the blood of a younger man. He bounced into the station with an absurd grin on his face.
Sergeant Donaghy looked up from the front desk. “Morning, sir. You’re early.”
“Early bird catches the worm, Donaghy.”
“And the early worm gets eaten.”
“Quite so,” he chuckled.
“There’s a message for you, sir.” Donaghy held up an envelope. “Someone called last night, sir.”
He took it to his office. Inspector Beadle — Urgent scrawled on it.
Inside, a letter from Joe Rees.
Inspector Beadle,
I saw him again tonight. Our person of interest in the particular case of old. Namely, Mr D. Pearce! (or his son?)
He appeared again from the alley immediately opposite my place of work, no doubt having come through the churchyard of St. Mary’s. Realizing the importance of the moment, I locked up my cabin, with no thought to the financial cost to myself, and followed him.
The suspect was in the company of a young woman. The same as before. They walked along the Alcester Road northwards until they came to a house that was of particular interest to them (later confirmed as no. 12). The girl stood watch on the opposite side of the street, but DP went round to the rear of the premises.
In my surveillance, I circumnavigated the area and came to the rear of the row via the roads Trafalgar and Louise Lorne – whereupon I espied the suspect in conversation with a young lady at an upper story window – he having climbed onto the outhouse.
After a brief conversation, the suspect (DP) joined his accomplice at the front and they walked on northwards to Balsall Heath, and appeared to be in pursuit of the master of the house, one Mr Richard Parker.
I surmised this after calling at no. 12 and talking to the young lady of the house. She recognized me from my place of work but I think she did not suspect anything untoward.
Having earlier heard the suspects conversing as I passed, it is my considered opinion that they are plotting to murder Mr Parker with the assistance of his daughter.
I rushed to the station to report all to you but you had left.
Your servant, J.R.
Beadle shot up, his chair fell back, and he staggered free, the room swimming. Joe Rees was a fool. Good God, even the bloody newspaperman thought he could be a gentleman detective!
He read it again and again.
But it was good information. To hear them talk of murder and name Parker. That was good too. Joe Rees, the amateur bloody detective, had actually done rather well, even though he’d called at the door and named himself to a suspect.
Donaghy knocked and entered with a pile of slim manila folders. “The overnights, sir.”
Beadle took them.
Donaghy’s eyes flitted to the chair and the letter in Beadle’s hand. “Everything all right, sir?”
A private investigation, Arabella had said. Not official business at all. He couldn’t make it official, despite what was in Joe’s letter. Not just yet. There were too many strange factors to this case that made his neck cringe.
“Everything’s fine, Donaghy. Thank you.”
The overnights. Official police business. He would go through them and do his dogged duty and perhaps then visit the Parker household.
Righting his chair, he sat and went through the arrest reports, noting the increase of incidents on the previous night. His eyes marked the calendar. Friday the 24th November. Full moon tomorrow.
Donaghy came again with a cup of tea. It wasn’t so bad first thing in the morning. It was later when the urn produced a foul sludge.
His eyes.
A gunshot snatched the sound from his ears. His breath. His hold on the world.
His eyes, staring from the mugshot. It was him. Holding up a chalk board with a few numbers and the words Daniel Pearce — No Fixed Abode — Drunkard in Sergeant Donaghy’s scrawl.
Here. In this station.
The teacup fell and exploded.
He ran out, down the corridor, to the cells. Empty. Rising panic in his heart.
He darted to the front desk and slammed the arrest report before Donaghy. “This man! Where is he?”
“Wh
at? Him?”
“Yes! Him!”
“He’s gone, sir. Only ten minutes ago. You must have passed him as you came in.”
“Dear God, why did you let him go?”
Donaghy shrank back, stammered, wondering what he’d done that was so bad. “He was a drunk, sir. We keep them in till they’re sober and kick them out first thing.”
He wasn’t to know. He knew nothing of Pearce and murder and the Parker family. How could he?
“He was rambling and intoxicated when arrested. Said he was from the future. But he was perfectly sober this morning.”
That roaring in his ears again, like a ghost was trying to contact him from the beyond. Or just the sea. The great white whale escaping.
He rushed out to the street and looked up and down, knowing he would be nowhere in sight. He was long gone. But he knew where.
He ran back to his office. Tea all over the floor. The arrest report still in his hand. He folded it and shoved it in his overcoat pocket. Put on his hat and coat and marched out.
Pausing on the station steps, he thought of Arabella. He should call her. It was her business too. But there was no time. He knew exactly where Pearce would be and if he rushed, he would have him.
— 35 —
DANNY, CURLED UP ON a wooden bench in a crowded cell, realized what the phrase chilled to the bone meant: he felt it deep in his marrow through the night and shook so uncontrollably he couldn’t sleep.
In the morning, the huge, whiskered police sergeant unlocked the cell and discharged them all with a warning. He found himself outside, blinking at the morning fog, stretching himself, every joint aching.
He was surprised to find the streets already crowded with horse-drawn cabs, electric trams full of people heading for the city, barrow boys wheeling carts of merchandise to the shops.