by Alex Reeve
But what if Jack had survived his drowning after all, and had swum to the shore? And what if he had snatched another man who looked similar, and drowned him in his place? It would be easy enough to do. What if I was looking at Jack Flowers right now, alive and well?
I tried to remember what Bentinck had said, back in that room. My mind wanted to sink down into the black water again, and I had to paddle hard to stay afloat. Bentinck had said that the money had been stolen a second time, and was still lost.
If Jack Flowers had indeed survived the Thames, then he might have gone back to the house and stolen the money again. And if Maria had found out that he was still alive then he might have silenced her in the most permanent way possible. He’d already killed whoever ended up in the mortuary, so I knew he was capable of it.
All the pieces fitted. Everyone thought Jack was dead, so no one would suspect him. And now he was rich and free.
No, not he. Both of them. Rosie must have been part of the plan too. She had fooled me completely, following me and berating me and steering me on the wrong path, and all the time covering for her husband.
No wonder she hadn’t worn weeds.
I thought I was going to be sick. I remembered how she had tried to stop me looking at Elizabeth Brafton’s appointment book, where Jack’s name had been written, and how she had begged me not to talk to the police. Yes, she had saved me at Bentinck’s house, but in doing so, she had saved herself as well.
The fog had cleared the streets, too dense even for the costermongers and beggars. I was alone on the pavement, unable to move. I had come here to convince Rosie to let me save her, but all this time, she had been lying to me, distracting me from finding the truth. It was almost too much to bear.
How could I have been so blind?
And now I had no plan, and could only go home and wait for the police or Hugo to come for me. There was nothing else to be done.
As I turned to go, I noticed a movement over the road, a shape in the fog that seemed to be a man. I couldn’t be sure, and was about to step closer when a carriage came between us, and when it had passed, the figure had disappeared. Perhaps he wasn’t real. Perhaps my mind was making shapes from the angles of the doorway and shadows on the pillar, piecing together something that wasn’t truly there: a man in a long coat, watching me.
I rushed home through the market. The traders were packing up, buckling their money belts while their boys sorted through the leftover onions and cabbages, picking out the good ones for tomorrow and tossing the rest on the pavement. I nearly wept as I squashed the mouldy vegetables under my shoes.
By the time I reached Soho Square, almost all the way home, the fog was lifting, and the people of London were emerging like moles in springtime. There was a queue of traffic at the corner, and the drivers were yelling insults at the poor fellow at the front who had lost a wheel to a pothole.
I had the sense of someone behind me, and then heard a man’s voice.
‘I say!’ I turned, and there was Augustus Thorpe waggling his finger. ‘I say! You there! You’re the chap from that pharmacy, aren’t you?’
He was the last person I’d expected to see. My mind was so full of Rosie’s treachery I had trouble fitting him into it, as though he was someone I had met years before in a different city.
‘What? Were you following me?’
‘No, don’t be ridiculous.’ He was wearing a tight military jacket, rather than a long coat. ‘I was just coming to see you about Miss Pritchard. We agreed to meet in the park yesterday and … I suppose she had to make another arrangement. I’d appreciate it if you’d give me her address so I can call on her. Would you mind?’
‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t understand. She said … I mean, we agreed to meet. We’re friends. She said you could give me her address and it would be all right.’
‘Leave me alone.’
I turned away from him, but he put his hand on my arm. I was utterly repulsed by his touch. I, who had weighed the cancerous liver of a navvy crushed by a fallen wall, who had held together the torso of a man pulled apart by dogs so Mr Hurst could count his remaining ribs, could not abide Thorpe’s hand on my arm. Not even for a second.
I slapped his hand away, but he grabbed my lapel. ‘How dare you!’ he shouted. ‘I’m an officer in Her Majesty’s army and you will do as I say!’
I can’t explain what happened next, not fully. It seemed to me that Thorpe and Bentinck had become the same person. I knew they weren’t, but even so I had to get his hand off me, no matter the cost. I lashed out with my poker and he ducked. He shouted something I didn’t hear, and I swung again, this time making contact with his shoulder. He swore and groped at his side for a weapon, finding only air.
‘You’ll pay for this!’ he bellowed.
People were gathering, out of reach, watching the fray. One of them was yelling encouragement to Thorpe, and when he looked at me with those small, round eyes, I realised he was the weasel. He seemed to have found himself a new coat since I’d last seen him, a sleek black greatcoat with a velvet collar, much too large for him. It flapped open like an awning adrift from its frame.
He raised his eyebrows and flashed me a grin.
‘Hello again, Stanhope.’
I flailed at him but he sprang backwards, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a short, narrow knife. I thought he would rush at me, but he glanced at the crowd and thought better of it.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said, and was gone.
I was surrounded by faces I didn’t know. They parted as I ran.
24
The bells were ringing for six o’clock when I got home, utterly exhausted. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn’t, so I sat on the bed and absent-mindedly pushed chess pieces around the board.
Rosie and I, we had protected each other in the frenzy of that attic room. She had looked me in the eyes and told me: I won’t leave you. And I had trusted her. And perhaps she wasn’t deceiving me, at the time. Perhaps we had been bonded together, truly together, because otherwise we wouldn’t have survived.
But afterwards … well, Jack was alive and Bentinck was dead, so it had all worked out quite well for her, hadn’t it?
I knew I should tell the police, but Ripley had treated me like a bumbling idiot; admittedly, with some justification. Before I could go to him again, I needed to be sure.
I took my opponent’s knight, and held it up, thinking about Thorpe. On impulse, I poked it into the candle flame, watching the dark-brown paint blacken and start to smoke. I’d seen another side to him that day, not just puerile but bullying and self-serving as well. I could easily believe he would commit murder to retrieve his letter. But was he a better suspect than Jack?
When the knight caught fire, I blew it out and set it on my chest of drawers, and picked up the cork that substituted for the white queen. Might Elizabeth Brafton have been overwhelmed by jealousy, resenting Bentinck’s liking for her young employee? It didn’t seem likely. She was too proud to allow herself such rage, such indulgence.
A rook and a king for Hugo and Bentinck. They were capable of killing, but they had no motive I could think of. I laid the king on its side, resigned.
What about Jacob? Might he have killed her? He had been with Maria and had lied to me about it. I wanted to believe he was a suspect, but I was so angry with him I couldn’t think clearly. Still, it gave me some satisfaction to represent the impious Jew with a white bishop, and line him up beside the others. He deserved no better.
And finally, a pawn to represent Jack Flowers.
I lay back and examined my little assembly: knight, cork, rook, king, bishop and pawn.
‘Confess,’ I whispered to them, but they didn’t.
No matter which way I looked at it, if Jack was alive, he was the most likely killer. He had the best motives – money and freedom – and he was already a murderer.
And that meant Rosie too.
Why was I always so tender? Other people se
emed to have such resilience, while I hurtled around like a sparrow shut in a room, banging against every wall until my wings were broken.
Damn you, Rosie. I really believed you were my friend.
In the morning, I thought I heard a familiar voice talking to Alfie in the pharmacy, but couldn’t be sure. The previous night I’d taken another teaspoonful of chloral, and now the world seemed warped and wavering, as if I was looking at it through an uneven windowpane.
I went downstairs and was surprised to find Lilya seated regally in the dentist’s chair, with her little dog twitching on her lap.
‘Is that Leo? Come here, let me touch you.’
She couldn’t see my shudder as she reached out and pinched my cheek. ‘Ah, Leo. I’m very cross with you. I have to come here because you never visit no more. Jacob is so sad, and he says nothing’s wrong but I know him. Twenty years married. Before you were born.’
‘I’m twenty-five.’
She dismissed the mathematics with a wave of her hand. ‘So I says to go to the club and he says no I don’t want to. So I says it’s Leo isn’t it? And he goes upstairs and he don’t come down until it’s time to light the lamps. What happened, Leo? You must talk to him.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘Always things. Talking is the water that flows in the river. Always different water, but without it there’s no river.’
‘How did you get here, Lilya?’
She sucked her teeth. ‘I walked. My eyes don’t work so good but my feet work quite well. This I how much I care about you, and that daft old man, my husband.’ She sniffed. ‘This room smells funny. You smell funny too.’
‘I don’t believe you. You never leave the house on your own. Is Jacob with you?’
‘This is for fixing teeth, yes?’ She groped around the metal base of the chair, fingering the mechanism that tipped it backwards. ‘I have a toothache. Here.’ She pointed at her jaw. ‘Maybe your friend here could pull it out? How much?’
‘One and six up-front,’ said Alfie, rolling up his shirtsleeves and glancing down at her dog, which was avidly chewing on her purse. ‘Then it all depends.’
‘I don’t see very good,’ she said. ‘You must tell me what you’re going to do.’
‘Of course.’ He fetched the little mirror he’d soldered on to a stick. ‘Open your mouth please, and relax.’
He was barely able to keep the tremor out of his voice; she was the first living customer he’d ever had.
I went outside. It was gloomy and bitter to the bone, and the people were shrunken into their coats and muffs, with scarves wrapped around their necks. On the other side of the road, a man was shivering in a doorway, his hat pulled down over his forehead and his hands in his pockets. I couldn’t see much of him, but I could see that he was throwing furtive glances in my direction.
I crossed over.
‘What kind of coward sends his wife to plead for him?’
Jacob stamped his feet, trying to get warm. ‘It was her idea. I’m just here to make sure she doesn’t bump into things, though goodness knows she’s better in this bloody fog than I am. She ended up leading me.’
‘She says she has a toothache.’
‘Maybe she does. She would have them all pulled out just to annoy me.’ I turned to leave and he held up his hands. ‘Wait, wait. Don’t go, Leo. It was her idea to come but I was glad of it too. There are things I want to say.’
‘Such as? Say them fast, it’s freezing out here.’
Even if he told me the truth, how would I know? Once a liar’s been caught out, nothing he says can be trusted.
‘You’re young, Leo, and you don’t understand. You toy with life. It seems like for ever, but soon you’ll find out that your life is a day and it’s evening already. For me it’s getting dark and I can hear the clockwork ticking. Maria was young and lovely, and I wanted to have her, but I couldn’t. She just listened to me, to my stories of when I was a boy. No one else wants to hear them, the stories of an old man, far from home, whose children have all grown up.’
‘What nonsense. Three of them still live with you.’
‘Millicent is eight and the others are boys. Boys don’t want to listen. They run around shouting and hitting things with sticks. Maria was interested. Her mother was Jewish, she said. I know, I know, but I’m an old fool and I believe what I choose. Bah! I want to believe she was Jewish and I’m a young stallion who can cover any filly. I want to believe you’re a man too, if you say it’s so.’
‘Are you claiming you never shared a bed with her?’
‘I’m barely more of a man than you are.’ He coughed coarsely, blowing steam out through his scarf. ‘Bloody weather. Bloody England.’
I wasn’t comforted. ‘Very well,’ I said, sourly. ‘You’ve told me.’
‘I think she loved you, in her way.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘These girls, they don’t discuss their other customers, of course not. But one time she was sick, bad sick, like a cat. Lilya was the same, many times. It was obvious why.’
‘I already know she was pregnant.’
‘So she says I mustn’t tell that Brafton woman and I ask her if she knows anyone who could get rid of it for her. It was a thoughtless question, but she says she will have the baby, and there’s some fellow who will marry her. A soldier. An officer. But then she starts weeping and I’ve got my arm around her and wondering why I’m paying for this.’
‘What a touching story.’
‘Ha! A little of the old Leo back again. Good! Yes, a touching story. So I’m there and she’s weeping, my God, so much weeping. So I say, if there’s a soldier she can marry, that seems like good news, doesn’t it? But still she weeps, more and more, like a torrent.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘She was sad because of you, Leo. Because she cared about you. It’s obvious.’
I took a step forward and had to clutch my hands together to stop myself from punching him, right there in the street, an old man who couldn’t even walk up a flight of steps without wheezing. What right did he have to tell me these things, and tell me now, when she was dead and buried?
‘That doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Didn’t you tell me she used to blow you kisses from her window as you were leaving? That means something.’
She hadn’t blown me any kisses on that last day. By the time I had left, another man was in her room. He got all the kisses.
‘Is that it?’
‘I was jealous of you. What foolishness we find in our old age, becoming moonful boys again.’ He waved his arms around, remonstrating against the world. ‘I was jealous and angry, so I stopped comforting her. I told her a story about a dock whore I knew back in Nikolaev who was pleasuring the ship’s captain when a rope slipped and sliced her in half.’
‘Is that even true?’
‘How would I know? I heard it. Anyway, I felt guilty and the next time I brought her a doll. I got it for Milli but she doesn’t care about such things any more, and with Maria, I don’t know, it might have been a girl. That was the last time I was with her, and that’s everything, Leo. Everything.’ He peered at me from under his hat. ‘What have you done to your face? Are you hurt? What happened to you?’ He pointed at his forehead and I put a finger to my own. It was sore, a sharp pain where the skin was broken. I couldn’t remember how I’d got it.
‘I’m going now. Goodbye, Jacob.’
As I crossed back over the road, I heard him call after me: ‘She cared for you in her own way, Leo. You mustn’t forget that!’
Inside the pharmacy, Lilya was tipped back in the chair while Alfie pored over her. She pushed him aside.
‘Is that Leo? You talked to Jacob, yes?’
‘He had advice for me, as ever.’
‘Good, good. You talk and agree to be friends again. And follow his advice. He’s the wisest old fool in the Queen’s empire. He gives the best advice and never follows it hi
mself.’ Alfie bent to his work again, pliers in hand, but she hadn’t finished. ‘And what about the lady you were rushing off to last time? What of her?’
‘She … has someone else.’
‘Ah, but you mustn’t let that stop you. It was the same with Jacob when I met him first time, and here we are. Twenty years married. Before you were born.’
It wasn’t worth correcting her again. Once she had an idea in her head there was no shifting it.
‘You’re very lucky, Lilya.’
She closed her unseeing eyes and hugged her little dog closer. ‘Lucky? Perhaps. I have a husband, but I know what he is, where he goes. I’m blind, but I’m not blind. Maybe you have better luck than me.’
‘But I thought …’
She snorted. ‘Yes, you thought, I thought, he thought. We all think, Leo, but none of us know. Matters of the heart are like the river. They bend this way and then that way, and sometimes there are rocks around the corner. Sometimes. But sometimes not. You never know.’
‘Mr Stanhope!’ Constance’s shrill voice cut through my non-dream. I wasn’t sure what time it was, or even what day. ‘Mr Stanhope! The police are here again!’
Finally. At least it would soon be over with.
Downstairs, Detective Ripley was waiting for me. Pallett was with him, taking up more space in the room than was strictly natural. He nodded to me in that formal manner he had, somewhere between a senior servant and a hangman about to release the trap.
Seated at the table was Thorpe.
Ripley indicated the empty chair. ‘Sit down, Stanhope. You look bloody awful.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I gather you’ve met the major.’ He waggled a hand at Thorpe without looking in his direction. ‘He gave me this address and a description of you. Hang on, I’ve got it written down here: unpleasant type, slim, dark hair, beardless, shifty, bad temper. Sounds like you, doesn’t it?’