The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  She pulled at her heavy dress. Each of the girls had stuffed flags around their bodies, ready to rip clear through special slits at the moment of truth. At least, she hoped that was all the other girls had on them. It was an ingenious construction, designed by Nobbs, but on such a hot day it was more uncomfortable than even a corset. Sweat trickled down her back. Her arms itched. The street smelled of blocked drains, horse dung, and too many people crammed together. It was difficult for a woman of her class not to sweat on a hot day, given a respectable wardrobe, but when you had five yards of heavy cotton flags wrapped around your midriff, it was impossible.

  Dinah glanced back at her. Abernathy pushed ahead. The crush closed about them. It was time. Constance checked the ripcord on her dress and looked up again.

  Abernathy neared the front of the cordon. Constance hesitated, unsure.

  Out of the crowd, a hand gripped her arm. “Not here,” Wiggins hissed. “They’ll kill ya.”

  Constance stared at him, struck dumb by his sudden appearance.

  “It’ll be a lynching,” he urged under his breath, fear in his eyes. “They’ll have ya!”

  She regained herself in an instant, and in one swoop she fainted into his arms. “Give me room, here. Lady’s swooned. A swoon, make way!” Wiggins hollered. She felt his hands cradle her head and shoulder as he continued to shout.

  Soon she heard the trills and gasps of her companions. “Fell like a ninepin, so she did, miss,” Wiggins said. “Seen it in the army, the heat, the crowds.” Constance stayed limp as he placed her gently on the pavement. He whispered in her ear, “Diamond,” then she felt his hands no more.

  She fluttered her eyes open. Four faces looked down on her. Dinah, worried eyes as large as saucers, knelt at her head; Nobbs crouched on the other side, holding her wrist; Tansy and another girl stood further back.

  “We’ve missed it,” Nobbs said as she timed Constance’s pulse.

  “Are you all right?” Dinah took her other hand.

  Constance smiled. A pang of guilt clutched her for a moment. “Quite all right, thank you. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “The whole thing’s a washout,” Nobbs said. “The coffin’s gone past.”

  Constance groaned. “I’m so sorry,” she said, pushing herself upright. “What awful luck.” Although she noted that Nobbs and Dinah—and, indeed, the others—didn’t look that displeased to be thwarted. It was one thing to talk about invading the King’s funeral procession with banners; it was quite another to do it. And, she suddenly realized with a piercing insight, Wiggins was right. They could very well have been killed. Thank God for Wiggins.

  Only Abernathy looked annoyed. She pushed between Tansy and the other girl, arms at her hips, brow deeply furrowed. “Oh, God,” she scowled, “you’re not preggers, are you?”

  The following Sunday morning, a casual bystander might have observed Wiggins at prayer, kneeling, eyes down, following the priest’s every word. The same bystander might have nodded sagely and assumed Wiggins to be of Italian or Irish descent, given his thick black hair and the fact that the church was a Catholic one.

  Wiggins did not pray. He was thinking religious thoughts, though. Or rather, as he shifted his weight on his knees, he was remembering the few times he’d gone to church as a child. His mother suffered from bouts of religion much like others got the fever. A week or two here, a whole month of churchgoing there, followed by long stretches of determined faithlessness. It was only much later, when she was long dead and he was into double figures, that he realized she had been going to church for the money. She hadn’t been gripped by any newfound fervor, seen the light three times a year; she’d been after any poor relief that was going—and the churches (whatever flavor they were) didn’t hand out money to nonbelievers.

  The priest carried on in Latin, but Wiggins thought of the phrases from those desultory church visits of his youth. Our Father, who art in heaven. Our Father? Sherlock Holmes was the closest thing he’d had to a father, hallowed be his name. Wiggins crossed himself at the joke. The Irregulars used to call him GOD sometimes—the Grand Old Detective—although always with a snigger, taking the piss, and never to his face. It didn’t do to question God.

  Wiggins flicked his eyes up to the gilt candlestick by his head. It was polished to a high shine and afforded him a clear view of everybody coming into the church. Small, indistinct figures at a distance, but clear enough for Wiggins to recognize people he knew once they were close.

  The woman walking toward him now, bent and squashed in the convex reflection, was not the woman he hoped to see. And yet, for all that, he felt a twinge of anticipation in him that he wasn’t quite expecting.

  She walked at a stately pace and her long dress kissed the flagstones with every swing of her hips. Wiggins kept his head bowed, although something told him that she’d already seen him. She walked past, crossed herself quickly, and sat down two rows in front. The hem of her dress spilled into the aisle.

  Wiggins spent the rest of the service staring at the back of her bare neck. She’d stuffed her tight black curls under her hat, leaving her brown skin to offset the white calico of her collar. He looked around twice more, but there was no sign of Poppy. Martha was the only whore at the church that morning. At least, the only one he recognized.

  The service ended and he waited for Martha to get up. She smiled and inclined her head toward him as she went past. He followed her down the aisle.

  “I never had you down as a Catholic, I must be honest,” she said as they exited the church. “An Irish mama?”

  “His works is mysterious,” Wiggins said at last.

  A ghost of a smile played across Martha’s lips. “Are you here to walk me home?”

  Wiggins bowed, then held his hand out to the pavement. They walked in silence for a moment. Wiggins noted her fine, long-sleeved dress, lace gloves, and a small carry bag adorned with a red ribbon. She smelled of spices and lemon and expensive soap. Despite her job, she smelled of sophistication.

  “I’m not what you want.”

  “Who.”

  “Martha’s my name, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “You French?”

  “Une petite partie de moi. La bonne partie.”

  Wiggins looked at her blankly.

  “My mama had a French daddy, I think, and we spoke some of the lingo back in Leone.”

  Wiggins couldn’t place her accent. She said Leone like it was home, but there was London in there too. Docks London, posh London, Frenchie. All sorts.

  Her skin was barely brown at all in the sunlight. Wiggins shot glances at her as they walked, and tried not to look at her bust. For all that she was wearing respectable, Sunday-best clothes, he found her distracting. She strode with her back very straight, her eyes forward and alive, her shoulders square: she was not afraid of anything, least of all embarrassment. Wiggins straightened up beside her.

  “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice,” Martha said after a moment.

  “You what?” Wiggins glanced at her quickly.

  She smiled back, fine teeth, big eyes, pinprick irises.

  “I know who you came for,” she said. “I saw your little romance last week with Poppy, but she ain’t praying today.”

  “I came for Millie.”

  “Millie?” Martha slowed for a second, in surprise. “Like a young filly, do you? I had you pinned different.”

  “It ain’t like that,” Wiggins said, half angry, half embarrassed. He turned his face away. “I’m trying to find her—for someone else,” he said after a moment.

  “People come and go in this business.”

  “That’s what Tommy said.”

  Martha rubbed her gloved hands together in silence. He remembered seeing her bare arms in the Embassy kitchen the week before. The cigar burn marks on her wrists, like she’d been owned, once, or still was somehow.

  “This business,” she said, as if talking to his thoughts and not his words. “I’ve been a whor
e for fifteen years. My mama couldn’t afford for me to do anything else. And you want to leave it every day, whatever anyone tells you. Since I was fifteen.”

  Wiggins didn’t look at her. A hurdy-gurdy player trundled past them in the other direction, silent.

  Martha went on. “And I see girls leave every day too.” She pulled at the ribbon on her bag. “In one way or ’nother. Millie’s just gone. We all go sometime. The ferry takes us, every one.”

  They stopped on a corner, Ranleigh Terrace—and the Embassy—the next right. By mutual, unstated agreement, they hesitated. “Don’t be too hard on Big T,” she said suddenly. “What would you do?”

  Wiggins nodded thoughtfully. His mind caught on something she’d said. “He boxes, he said. In a boozer. What was it again?”

  “The Bloodied Ax, I think. Down Lambeth.”

  Wiggins already knew the answer. He wanted Tommy to know he knew, and Martha would surely tell him. He tipped his cap. “Much obliged, ma’am,” he said, with exaggerated politeness.

  Martha curtsied in return. “Enchanté.” She paused, looked toward Ranleigh Terrace, then back at him. “We do walk out—with fellas—sometimes, you know.”

  Wiggins hesitated. “I’m spoken for,” he said at last.

  She tilted her head and smiled. She knew a lie when she heard one. “Good luck trying to find Millie, for your friend.” She turned and went, then, her body swinging and moving beneath the respectable dress in a quite unrespectable way.

  “Where the hell were you?”

  “Been here since nine,” Wiggins protested. He rose from behind Kell’s desk.

  Kell scowled. “I meant at Paddington! On Friday. It’s Monday morning and now you decide to show up?” He strode around his desk, too angry to even bother asking Wiggins how he’d gotten into the office again.

  He swiped the cigarette box from his desk and slumped into his chair. “Well?”

  Wiggins wandered aimlessly away from him. He gestured at a map on the wall. “Held up,” he said. “Thousands out there. Why you late?”

  Kell fixed his agent with a glare and smoked in silence. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was glad to see Wiggins—at least he was alive. He didn’t want to admit why he’d been so late either.

  He’d just come from another chastening meeting with Soapy, who was most disappointed that no progress had been made on discovering the leak. “We’ve eliminated some of the clerks,” Kell said weakly.

  Soapy raised an eyebrow. “And another thing,” he said. “Special Branch apprehended an armed German national leaving the funeral.”

  “Was he a spy?” Kell said, aghast, thinking of the balding German he’d last seen with Effenberg.

  “Well, no, actually, he was a security guard. But at least they are doing something. You’ve got nowhere.”

  Kell had left the Cabinet Office with Soapy’s final, softly delivered salvo ringing in his ears. “Quinn’s very keen to take your department over, you know. Nothing’s been decided, but I’d have a think, all the same. About what else you might like to do. Good day, old man, and best to Constance.”

  Good day, indeed, Kell thought as he glared at Wiggins over the desk. He finished his cigarette, pulled another one from the box in front of him and tried to gather his thoughts.

  “Would you go back to being a debt collector?” Kell asked at last.

  “You what?”

  “If I dispensed with your services. Is that what you’d do? I doubt the army would take you back.”

  Wiggins sat down in the chair opposite. “What you on about? I missed a meet by, what, minutes?”

  “That missed meeting may have just cost me my job!” Kell snapped.

  Wiggins leaned back, surprised.

  Kell took a long drag from his smoke. He disliked losing his temper. “Why did you not meet me?”

  “I told you. Held up.” Wiggins shifted in his seat and cast his eyes down. Kell tapped his hand on the table. His agent wasn’t going to tell him. That was reason enough to sack him there and then. But Wiggins was all he had, other than a clerk and a working relationship with the chief constables around the country. Special Branch obviously wanted him out of business, and Soapy’s support was as slippery as his name suggested. He’d stick up for you as long as the room was on your side.

  Wiggins was all he had, Kell thought again. He unlocked his desk drawer, keeping his eyes on his now silent agent.

  “I do not appreciate evasiveness,” Kell said coolly. “What I said was true, though. Your failure at Paddington has highlighted the difficulty of our position. We may both be out of a job come Friday.”

  “You tugging me?”

  Kell shook his head slightly. “Special Branch want to take over.”

  “If we had their gilt, we’d be—”

  Kell put his hand up. He’d had enough of Wiggins’s pert bravado. “Shush. Listen. We ran up a lot of credit last year with LeQuin and Woolwich. But that won’t stretch forever. We need results. We need to find the leak, otherwise this whole dandy exercise will come to an end. I’ll be sent back to pushing pens in the War Office, and you? Well, you’ll have to go back to where you came from—not something either of us wants to dwell on, I’m sure.”

  Wiggins glowered at him, but Kell went on regardless. “What about Carter, at the FO?”

  To Kell’s surprise, a smile flickered across Wiggins’s face. “Archie? He’s straight as, no trouble.”

  “Archie?”

  “We got to talking, over a game of cards. His brother dragged me into his house to make up a four. Top blokes, the Carters. And Archie ain’t leaking no gen to anyone, straight up. He’s honest. Not so sure about his neighbors, mind.”

  “Oh?”

  “Thirty-nine Hilldrop Crescent. Get one of your copper mates to have a look-see.”

  “As if I have nothing better to do,” Kell muttered as he drew a piece of paper from his desk. “I think it’s time we forgot about the clerks,” he said.

  “At last.”

  “Here is a list of the men who attended the Committee for Imperial Defence, all of whom knew certain information that then found its way into the hands of a German diplomat within days. One of them must have said something to someone.”

  Kell handed Wiggins the paper and watched while his agent scanned down the list. For all the desperate straits the department was in, it gave Kell a tiny tickle of pleasure to see a flash of incomprehension cross Wiggins’s face. Kell knew politics. Wiggins did not. He had that over him, at least.

  “Know these geezers, do you?” Wiggins said, tossing the list onto the desk.

  “I do.”

  “Want me to turn ’em over?”

  “I hardly think that’s appropriate.” Kell leaned back in his chair. “We must tread carefully.”

  “Careful and quick, and more than ten men to follow? That my job, is it?”

  Kell ignored the note of petulance. “Why did you say follow?”

  “What else we gonna do? We got to tail ’em one by one, sees what comes up in the wash.”

  Kell nodded slowly. “I’ll get Simpkins to draw up a list of addresses. Come back this afternoon—it shouldn’t take him too long. We’ll decide then who to prioritize. Not a word of this, understand.”

  “Who am I going tell, the King?”

  Wiggins got up and moved to the door.

  Kell hesitated. “Don’t you want to take this copy?” he said, uncertain. After all, the list contained many high men of state and their direct assistants, important people. He didn’t want it to get out that he was investigating them. He didn’t even want to investigate them, so horrified would he be if any of them were guilty. But he had no choice.

  “In here.” Wiggins tapped his temple. “Besides, you’ve got ’alf the Cabinet there. I’m not likely to forget the foreign secretary, am I?” Wiggins pushed out of the door.

  Blast the man, Kell thought again. Is there nothing he doesn’t know? Still, there was no better man in London than Wiggins at
following people. He’d been doing it all his life. Kell swiveled in his chair, suddenly caught by an interesting idea. Perhaps he could put Wiggins on his wife. The morality might be questionable, but at least he’d know what she was up to, and—he argued to himself—it was all for her own protection. She’d gone out earlier than him on the day of the funeral and now she hardly gave him a second glance. He had barely exchanged a word with her for weeks.

  It was just possible, he thought, that Wiggins could hold the key to the enigma that was his wife.

  Wiggins stepped out of Kell’s building on Victoria Street and turned west. He didn’t like lying to Kell, but he couldn’t land Constance in it. Kell was right; he was being evasive. The alternative, however, was to tell him he’d missed their rendezvous because his wife had been about to enact a very dangerous and illegal suffragette protest. He knew enough about Englishmen to know that, for all their manners and the yes sir, no sirs, when they were crowded together—be it at the football or on strike or at a hanging—they were one word or action away from a mob. Constance would have been lucky to survive.

  Not something that Constance would want Kell knowing, though, Wiggins felt sure. He had some sympathy for her and her cause. Most of the women he knew were smarter than the men in their lives—why shouldn’t that extend to politics?

  He took a left into a short alleyway. Great painted advertisements lined the walls on either side: JOLLY’S SANDWICHES. YORK HAM HERE. FRY’S. WOODBINES FOR YOUR HEALTH. He came out onto Horseferry Road, lifted a bottle from a passing milk cart, gulped half of it down and then placed it next to a hunched beggar huddling in a shop doorway.

  “Wot do I want wiv that!” the elderly beggar cried.

  “It’ll make the brandy go longer.” Wiggins winked as he passed the man a couple of pennies. “Don’t go spending that on anything useful.”

  Wiggins dodged the carts and taxis that clogged the road—business returning to normal after the King’s funeral—and headed toward the magistrates’ court.