The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  Wiggins shrugged. “What you want to know?”

  “I want to know how to avoid surveillance,” she said simply.

  January the first, 1910, five months or so before meeting Wiggins in the train carriage, Constance went to her usual meeting, the rallying cry for the Society for Women’s Suffrage, in Hampstead. Women spoke—fine women. Constance sat in the front row and listened. She clapped. And inwardly she tried to pinpoint the differences between these speeches, these promises, and the ones made on the very same stage twelve months previously. The task was beyond her.

  “Excuse me,” a high-pitched voice rang out from the audience. “I rather think you’re talking a lot of old rot.”

  “I beg your pardon?” The speaker peered down into the crowd. Constance turned to see a young woman, a few rows behind her, standing up and for some reason holding her hat firmly to her head.

  “I said, I rather think you’re talking a lot of old rot.”

  Constance stifled a laugh. The girl cut a slightly comical figure, cheeks growing redder by the minute, but she stood defiant.

  “Here in Hampstead there is a proper way of doing things,” the speaker replied.

  “But gosh, that’s my point,” the girl went on, hand still clamped to her hat. “We’ve been doing things the proper way for years and we’ve got more than halfway to a big fat nothing.”

  A great intake of breath greeted this outburst. “We should be rebelling, bringing society to a halt—something, anything.” The young woman looked around her in exasperation.

  “Take your seat there, miss,” someone called amid murmurs of disapproval.

  The old matron at the lectern frowned. “The cause is just, but it is fragile. We have a long road to travel, and risking anything rash could set us back a generation.” She addressed her remarks first to the young woman, but then she hailed the rest. “Sisters, join me in song.”

  Constance arched her head backward. The young woman sat down, her face flushed.

  Shout, shout up with your song!

  Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking.

  March, march, swing you along . . .

  Afterward, as the assembled ladies rose and headed for the door, chatting, Constance shifted toward the young woman.

  “You spoke very well,” she said.

  The woman turned to her, bright as a small bird. “Do you really think so? I think I came across as a bit of a duffer.”

  “No, not at all. You were jolly passionate, that’s all.”

  “Well, I am rather. I’m not sorry I said it. Not in a million years. Do you mind?” She handed Constance a huge carpetbag, then slung another one over her shoulder. “Thanks ever so,” she said, taking back the bag and swinging it onto her other shoulder.

  “Would you like a hand?” Constance said.

  The girl—Constance guessed she was twenty—turned out to be called Dinah. “But don’t offer me supper, everyone does!”

  They stepped out onto the High Street, Constance carrying one of the huge bags. “Dinah . . . ?”

  “Just Dinah. My second name’s my father’s and that doesn’t count, does it? You?”

  “Constance,” she replied. And then, “Just Constance,” with a smile.

  Dinah beamed. Her high cheekbones shone pink in the January bite, her hair fell about her face, and her eyes danced.

  She twisted wildly as a cab jerked down the hill toward Belsize Park. “Halloo,” she cried, waving her free hand like a quayside sweetheart seeing off a beau. The motorized taxi shuddered to a halt. Dinah opened the door herself, threw in her carpetbag, then turned to Constance for the other one.

  “Thanks ever so,” she said. “I feel like a beast of burden sometimes.”

  “Surely not.”

  “An ass!” She laughed, then put one foot into the cab.

  Constance thrust out her hand and touched Dinah on the arm. She’d shocked herself by the gesture, but recovered. “Do you take tea?” she said.

  Dinah looked at her for a moment, one foot on the tailboard of the taxi. “You mean like a real lady, calling in the morning, sending in my card?” She sounded surprised, but also faintly amused, as if the suggestion were quaint.

  “Sorry,” Constance said. “Silly of me.”

  “No, no, not that,” Dinah replied, still smiling. “Of course, I absolutely adore tea.”

  “Now you’re fibbing.” They stared at each other for a moment.

  “You want a lift, miss?” the cabby barked. “There’s plenty of others that do.”

  “We’re on the meter,” Dinah hollered at him, then turned back to Constance. “What a grump. New Year’s Day too.”

  “Happy New Year,” Constance said.

  Dinah got into the cab, shut the door, and then leaned out of the window. “I like Lyons,” she said as the cab juddered into action.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Lyons!” Dinah bellowed as the taxi drove off. “The Corner House. Thursday at three.”

  Constance looked after the taxi as it slipped into the traffic down Rosslyn Hill. She was breathing hot and fast, and her breath bent tight curlicues into the cold air.

  The following Thursday, Constance gazed out across a sea of diners. Lyons’s Corner House was immense. Like the dining rooms of oceangoing liners stacked on top of each other. She’d tried the two floors below and now she stood at the door of the second-floor tearoom, alone. The building sang with the calls of the waitresses, an army of primly dressed women bustling to and fro. Yet for all the staff, Constance consistently failed to get anyone’s attention.

  They were moving too fast, smiling too briskly. She wasn’t used to it at all. The kind of tearooms and restaurants she normally frequented, the staff would stand to attention when she came in, would even know her name. But this place was entirely different. She was one among many, and if she didn’t feel well served, no matter, for another diner would take her place in a moment.

  Finally, a livid-red scarf rose from the throng. “Over here,” Dinah hallooed, bright as a beacon among the winter grays.

  Constance reached the table, only to discover that there were five or six other young women crammed around it. Dinah embraced her. “So lovely to see you,” she said. “Everyone, this is Constance.” She then pointed to each of the women in turn, as if counting. Constance failed to catch all the names, but she heard the final ones. “Pru, Tansy, Abernathy—don’t ask—and Nobbs.”

  The women looked up and nodded, but their conversation did not stop. “Awfully chilly, isn’t it?” Dinah said. “Let me get you some tea.”

  “No, I insist,” Constance said, glancing around for a waitress.

  “Never a Gladys when you need one,” the woman next to her, Nobbs, drawled.

  “I beg your pardon?” Constance said, but no one heard. She glanced at Dinah. “I rather thought, we’d . . . I mean, you and I . . . ?”

  “Over here,” Dinah hailed a waitress, then bumbled and fussed over the order. Her hair fell loose over her face when she laughed, wild and unkempt. It was useless for Constance to get her attention again while the tea and cakes were in progress. She sipped her drink and listened. Everyone seemed to be talking at once. It was like a play in which all the characters onstage were given lines, but kept preempting their own cues.

  “Squiffy’ll never see reason, of course. Did you know he has a terrible pash on a friend of mine? Years younger.”

  “Does not!”

  “Does too,” said the informant, Nobbs. “Well, all right, she’s not a friend of mine, but she’s a friend of a friend. School chums. Chap I know works in the Treasury reckons it’s true.”

  “You don’t know anyone from the Treasury,” Abernathy snorted.

  “My brother does,” Nobbs responded.

  They all laughed at this, apart from Tansy. A woman of twenty or so, with a severe fringe and a faraway look, she sat opposite Constance and had said little. But as the laughter died down she said, almost to herself, “Acid.”


  “What was that?” Constance asked, but she was ignored.

  “Are you all right?” Dinah whispered in Constance’s ear as Abernathy launched into a diatribe.

  “Absolutely,” Constance said. “Though I do feel very old.”

  “Nonsense,” Dinah retorted. “You can’t be more than thirty.”

  Constance smiled. It was either charm or naïveté on Dinah’s part, but it felt nice either way. “Is this a regular tea date? You and your friends.”

  “Wouldn’t call it a tea date, dear,” Nobbs said.

  “I hate dates,” Tansy put in.

  “Although we are regulars, if you know what I mean,” Abernathy said.

  “Too sweet.”

  Constance caught Abernathy’s eye at last. “No, I have no idea what you mean,” she said.

  Abernathy glanced at Dinah, who nodded brightly. “We are an offshoot of the hot bloods,” she said.

  “So you are suffragettes, not suffragists?” Constance asked, astonished.

  “Fairyland’s the place to learn, I’d say,” said Tansy, who was again ignored.

  Dinah giggled. “Of course we’re suffragettes, silly. That’s why I invited you, don’t you see?”

  “She says suffragettes,” Abernathy said, plucking at a half-eaten sandwich, “but it’s more than that.”

  “How so?”

  Abernathy suddenly ripped apart the sandwich and looked up at her. “Because we act.”

  Churchill was right. It was the greatest meeting of royalty the world had ever seen. May the twentieth, 1910, the funeral of Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Emperor of India. Kell reckoned there were nine crowned heads in attendance—not counting the one in the coffin—as well as numerous dukes, archdukes, duchesses, and presidents.

  As per Soapy’s directions, he’d placed himself among the foreign delegations in the funeral procession. He walked slowly through the serried ranks of mourners as the procession went up Whitehall and turned toward the park. The shadows of the tall plane trees of the Mall dappled the road in front of him. Black-clad crowds lined both sides of the street. The only sounds breaking the silence were the clinking of the sabers and the rattling of tack from the horses and carriages behind. Birds suddenly burst from the trees above him.

  His glance drifted out into the crowds once more, and his heart gave a lurch. Constance would not be there. Her blithe refusal to attend had shocked him, even though they couldn’t go together. The gulf between them was ever widening. He must act, he thought as they trudged into Park Lane. But what should he do? He felt impotent in the face of her commitment to women’s suffrage.

  Indecision and impotence had also characterized his approach to finding the Whitehall leak. Wiggins had yet to report back from his investigation into the clerk Carter. Had yet to report back at all, in fact, since Tuesday. He was due to meet Kell at Paddington when the procession got there, and maybe he’d have good news. In the meantime, and rather forlornly, Kell had positioned himself among the German delegation. He reasoned that if he couldn’t identify the mole from the inside, he might still have a chance of discovering who had received the stolen information.

  His eye snagged on a tall, heavy-jawed officer named Count Effenberg, who strode at the head of the German delegation, looking this way and that like a conquering general. Kell recognized him from a party the year before, but had no way of knowing if he was involved in espionage. They’d set a tail on him at the time, but it had thrown up nothing untoward. He could be Van Bork or a nobody. As they turned northward out of the park, Kell noticed for the first time the man next to Effenberg, walking almost in his shadow.

  He hadn’t seen him before, but he stood out in such a throng for his very ordinariness. On the street, in Whitehall even, you wouldn’t have noticed him. Smartly dressed, yes, but sober, low-key, ordinary, plump, balding. But in such an entourage, where every second man wore feathers and a bucket on his head, the ordinary man stood out.

  They continued to walk on, behind the long line of more important people, behind the most important coffin in Europe. Kell dropped back a little so that he could see Effenberg and the bald, fat man talk. As he did so, Kell noticed the heavy hang of the bald man’s coat pocket. A gun.

  The procession was up Edgware Road by this time, winding its way through the smaller streets just to the south and east of Paddington Station. Most of the mourners, including the foreign delegations, were due to see off the casket at Paddington and then disperse. Only close family (in other words, half the royalty of the world) and the crème de la crème would board the trains for Windsor. Kell was due to be on one of them, as a rather high-class “minder.”

  He’d ordered Wiggins to meet him at the station as an extra pair of eyes. He guessed that the balding, armed man by Effenberg was probably the delegation’s security guard, but he’d get Wiggins to follow him nevertheless. He had nothing else to go on.

  All he needed now was for Wiggins to turn up on time.

  Wiggins sat at a high window just off Praed Street, close to Paddington Station. He watched from this sniper’s nest of a spot as the crowds formed over the morning of the funeral. The previous week, when not chasing after Kell’s list of clerks, he’d reconnoitered the route and reported back. If anyone was going to try anything, Wiggins reckoned this would be the spot—where the procession turned off Edgware Road and into the tighter lanes around the station. He had the perfect view.

  “Want another cup of cha, lad?”

  “Ta,” Wiggins said. “Black.”

  He was in the sitting room of Symes, an aged librarian he’d known for years. Symes nodded his startlingly bald head and disappeared through the door.

  They had met when Wiggins was a kid. The librarian, then in middle age, had consulted Sherlock Holmes about thefts from the Reading Room at the British Museum, where he worked. Suspicion had fallen upon Symes, the only northerner on the staff. Holmes, convinced of his innocence but also somewhat bored by the simplicity of the case, had provided Wiggins to watch the real culprit. Wiggins had proved himself adept and brave, and Symes had kept his job. He’d been forever grateful, and had procured Wiggins a reader’s card for the Reading Room in perpetuity.

  As soon as he’d been told the route of the procession, Wiggins knew that Symes’s place would be the perfect lookout. He looked down into the street as the crowds swelled. So much money, so much expense—the coppers must have spent a grand on Brasso alone, their buttons shone so bright. The poor, meanwhile, his people, had been systematically scrubbed from the picture. Coppers had cleared at least three flophouses on the route the day before, and the down-and-outs had been shipped out east for the day.

  No sign of Peter. Wiggins strained his eyes. Futile, he knew, but there was always a chance. Symes clattered back into the room, muttering to himself. “What are you reading, lad?” he said, handing Wiggins the tea.

  “Not much.”

  “Won’t do, lad, won’t do. Come to the RR next week, I’ll have something for you.”

  Wiggins nodded, eyes cast on the street.

  Symes joined him at the window. “You say they’re worried about assassinations, lad? Anarchists?”

  “Something like that,” Wiggins said. He scalded his tongue on the latest cup of tea. “Ah!”

  “Get a lot of anarchists down the RR, mind,” Symes went on. “Leftists, revolutionaries. Ivans, I call ’em. All false names and bad breath.”

  “Why’s that then?” Wiggins said, but something caught his attention in the crowd. A familiar hat cutting through the throng.

  “Marx, of course. They all come to see where he worked.”

  “Who’s he?” Wiggins asked absently. The hat bobbed out of view, then reappeared a moment later.

  “Karl Marx. It’s all about capital, lad, capitalists exploiting the workers. I can understand that. You only have to go down pit to see that. But religion is the opium of the people? Alienation?”

  “Alien what?” Wiggins s
aid, but he looked down at his watch, only half interested in the answer. The old man had been droning on and he’d missed the half of it.

  The familiar hat had moved again, Wiggins noted with alarm. Its wearer seemed to have met some friends. From farther away, around the corner, he could hear the procession nearing.

  Symes wouldn’t shut up. “His idea is that we’re all working too hard for the rich, who cream off the profits for themselves.”

  “And what does this Marx want us to do about it?”

  “Throw off the chains, lad, throw off the chains.”

  Wiggins nodded and turned back to the window. A flash in the crowd—the person under the hat had joined with a gaggle of other people. Wiggins could see them pushing through the crush in an effort to get to the front in time for the coffin. It was only because he had such a high vantage point that Wiggins could see they were acting together. And he could see that they needed to be stopped.

  “I’ve got to go.” He swiped his cap from the mantelpiece, nodded a quick goodbye to the bemused Symes, and took one final look-see out the window. The group with the matching hats had now massed at the corner, ready to strike.

  Ready for disaster.

  6

  Constance had avoided her husband on the day of the funeral for a reason.

  She went alone to the procession, but then met up with the girls near Paddington. It was the one place they could really get close to the coffin. The women all wore wide-brimmed felt hats with a peacock feather in the band, so as to be able to see each other in the throng. Constance kept her eyes on Dinah. Her thick, golden-red hair squeezed out at the back in a bun that bobbed crazily as she walked. The crowd was thin enough at the edges that they could walk abreast, but once they approached the route of the funeral procession itself, they had to go single file.

  There were policemen everywhere. She could see lines of constables at the station, and inspectors too. A big burly constable with ruddy cheeks and a cider-drinker’s nose caught her eye. My word, she thought, he wasn’t even in a Met uniform. They’ve drafted policemen from all over the country for this.