by Caro Peacock
TWELVE
Next morning, at a quarter to midday, I waited in an alleyway opposite Robinson’s printing shop at Ludgate Hill. The man had said he’d be at Robinson’s for the manuscript copy on the stroke of twelve. My intention was to see him and follow him, without being seen myself. I wasn’t confident. Tabby was better at this kind of thing. In her street urchin clothes she’d have loitered without being conspicuous, following him through a maze of streets like a ferret down a rabbit hole. I’d dressed as plainly as possible, but was still out of place in this commercial part of town where there weren’t many women around. I’d already been pestered by two beggars, a crossing sweeper and a man handing out Biblical tracts.
A boy went into the print shop and came out loaded with papers. A flock of pigeons skirmished over oats dropped from a horse’s nosebag. A dog was chased out of the bookseller’s next door. The man was punctual. At one minute to twelve, a cab drew up and a middle-aged clerkly-looking man stepped out. Nobody I recognized. His face was pasty, lips pursed. He opened them just enough to issue one word to the cabby: ‘Wait.’ Then he crossed the pavement and went inside the shop the instant the clocks all round began striking twelve. I knew his business wouldn’t take long. There’d be an admission from Robinson that he had not recovered the manuscript then an angry exit. I turned over the waistband of my skirt, lifting the hem to ankle-height to help me walk fast. Not respectable but nor was following an unknown man. The cab looked quite new, the horse fresh and brisk. I couldn’t keep up with them for long. My best hope was that they’d be delayed in the traffic, but as bad luck would have it there seemed less than usual.
Then my luck turned. Another cab came round the corner. It was old and the horse unenthusiastic, but the great thing, it was empty. I rushed out of my hiding place, hoping that the man was still giving Robinson a piece of his mind, and called up to the driver to wait.
‘Where to, ma’am?’
‘Wait until a man comes out and gets into that cab there, then follow them.’
‘Where’re they going then?’
‘Not far.’ (I hoped.)
I passed up half a crown into his hand to silence further questions, opened the doors at the front of the cab and settled myself in, pulling my bonnet down to shade my face and sitting well back in the seat. Almost at once the man came striding out of the print shop empty-handed, mouth clamped even more tightly. He snapped something at his driver and practically threw himself into the cab. It went off at a brisk walk, had to halt briefly at the turning into Ludgate Hill, then turned left towards the Mansion House and the commercial heart of the City. My cab got off to an annoyingly slow start but caught up at the Ludgate Hill junction, then stayed within twenty yards or so of the one in front. If the angry gentleman had happened to look behind him, he’d see nothing suspicious about it. The City was as full of cabs as an old dog of fleas. Into Threadneedle Street, still close together. I’d hoped that the cab might confirm my suspicions by making for East India House, but instead it turned into narrow Bartholomew Lane.
Capel Court, the stock exchange, was in Bartholomew Lane. I was too occupied with watching the cab in front to wonder why that nagged at my memory. It stopped, and we stopped too, our horse’s nose almost nudging the back of the man’s cab. I watched as he got out and started stumping up the steps of the stock exchange then threw myself out and went to follow him.
‘Oy, ma’am, one shilling and threepence.’
My cabby’s bellow from the top of his box. Over the odds, especially considering the money I’d already given him, but I didn’t want to draw attention by arguing. I was uneasily conscious that I’d forgotten to turn my waist band over and lower my skirt, so my ankles were showing. Nothing to be done about that now. Reluctantly, I handed up the coins and hurried up the steps. The man had disappeared by now. A broad-shouldered doorman with a face like a section of brick wall, wearing some kind of uniform and a top hat was standing at the top of the steps. He stretched out a meaty palm.
‘Can’t come in here, ma’am.’
I started saying that I only wanted to ask the identity of the man who’d just gone in. He didn’t listen, just stood there repeating the same phrase. I was getting angry by then, wondering why the trading of bits of paper with numbers on them was too sacred for profane or female eyes. I might have wasted my breath in saying so, only something happened that changed the scene entirely. Some vegetable – I think it might have been a rotten turnip – came like comet out of nowhere and struck the doorman’s hat so hard that it shot off his head and went rolling down the steps.
He stood amazed for a moment, gap-toothed mouth wide open, then yelled and ran down the steps after his hat. Jeers and laughter came from a group of ragged boys opposite. I guessed the vegetable had come from them, then glimpsed one that didn’t look quite like the rest of them. The figure was slightly less ragged than the others, booted rather than barefoot, and was moving rapidly out of sight round a corner. A glimpse was enough. I knew from the way she walked, from the whole determined look of her. Tabby. There was a choice to make: run after her and find out what she was doing or use the opportunity she’d made for me. Almost without thinking about it, I did what she expected, even though it hadn’t been in my mind before. While the doorman was chasing his hat and shouting threats at the urchins I walked in through the doors of Capel Court. Tabby and I were a team. Sometimes her wildness gave me a push when I needed it, just as my common-sense pulled her back from the brink of some excess. Head up, look as if you have a right to be there.
It was loud inside, like a cattle market without the cow smells. It had a smell of its own, though, that was just as animal in its way, of a lot of men at close quarters being competitive. They were all dressed in formal blacks, whites and greys and the convention of the place seemed to be that top hats remained on heads, even inside. A blue haze of cigar smoke hovered just above the top hats. They were mostly formed in loose groups of three or four but were in constant motion as men broke away from their own groups to join others, like a disorderly country dance. The room was crowded and I guessed my man must be on the outskirts of it. Almost at once, I saw him talking to a stoop-shouldered man who was standing with his back to me. He was probably reporting his failure to get the manuscript. As I came nearer, the other man snapped some remark at him and turned away, his face petulant and impatient. It was an oddly shaped face, low and broad across the forehead then curving inwards to a narrow chin above a thin stalk of neck, like an inverted pear. I’d seen that face before, several times and at close quarters. On the last occasion the expression had been worse than petulant. The man had been literally spluttering in my face with fury. I was doing something I’d hoped never to have to do in my life again – breathing the same air as my ex-client, Cyril Eckington-Smith MP. I decided to leave before he saw me so turned towards the door. But in my surprise at recognizing him, I’d hardly noticed what was happening round me. The noise of conversation was fading like a wave receding. Men were nudging each other, eyes turning in my direction. If a camel had strolled into the cattle market, the ranks of gaping farmers’ faces would have looked much like these gentlemen. Naturally, Eckington-Smith turned too, to see the source of the excitement. He saw me.
By now, a tide of gentlemen was slowly advancing. I don’t suppose they’d have thrown me out bodily, but I’d no intention of waiting to see. I turned and walked out, briskly but not too hurriedly. The doorkeeper, hat back on head, face shiny from anger and exertion, took a step towards me.
‘I told you, you couldn’t go in there.’
‘Yes, I heard.’
I walked past him and across the road. The great thing now was to find Tabby. The urchins had run away from the doorman’s wrath, but not very far. I found them loitering round the next corner, dispensed a few pennies and got some answers. Yes, they’d seen the girl before. Only in the past couple of weeks, though. She was an odd one. Sometimes she dressed and talked like them, other times she’d be dressed more
like you, miss, then she’d pretend not to know them. They supposed she must be on the game, only she wasn’t quite like the others. She had a good aim, for a girl.
‘Do you think she’ll come back today?’ I said.
A collective shrug.
‘Might. Might not. Can’t tell with her.’
For a while I roamed the streets around Bartholomew Lane, but without success. I hadn’t much hope. Tabby wouldn’t be found if she didn’t want to be. Obviously, she didn’t want to be – at least not by me. My appearance must have come as a surprise to her. There was no possibility that she could have expected me at Capel Court. She’d decided I needed help and immediately given it, then gone away without waiting to see what happened. I gave up the search and committed the extravagance of another cab home, because something must be done urgently about Griffiths’s manuscript. Eckington-Smith knew where I lived. I decided to take it straight round to my friends in Bloomsbury, Daniel and Jenny Suter, for safe keeping. None of the people in the present case would know them and Daniel’s only connection with India had been composing incidental music for a play about the Great Moghul.
It was only on the way home from Bloomsbury, on foot, that a worrying thought came to me. Trying to account for Tabby’s strange behaviour, Amos had suggested that she might be trying to deal with some threat to me. Was it a coincidence that she should be outside the stock exchange when Eckington-Smith was inside? In the end, I decided that it was time to call on some inside information and delivered a note to 1 Grosvenor Gate.
THIRTEEN
‘Eckington-Smith is a parliamentary hippopotamus. There’s a whole herd of them,’ Mr Disraeli said.
His sixteen-hand dark bay thoroughbred tossed its head against the bit. Mr Disraeli had a tendency to raise his bridle hand when eloquent. I’d noticed that he was riding some expensive-looking new horses since his marriage to Mary Anne.
‘Hippopotamus?’
‘They keep their bodies safely under water, their stumpy legs firmly rooted in the mud and only their nostrils poking out, to sniff anything to their own advantage. Every now and then the whips will rouse them up enough to make them splodge through the division lobby and occasionally throw one of them some minor ministerial post.’
In spite of everything, I laughed, with that feeling of flying above the rest of the world that came from Mr Disraeli’s company. It was common knowledge that Disraeli himself was disappointed at not being offered a ministerial post, but his worst enemy couldn’t have likened him to a hippopotamus. Too clever for his own good, most of them said. I tried to be sparing of the times I asked for his help, especially when it came to getting up early to join me on my early morning rides in the park on my mare, Rancie. It was much more enjoyable than ‘At Homes’, and I suspected he thought so too, but on the dangerous edge of respectability. Still, I couldn’t think of anyone more likely to tell me what I needed to know.
‘Somebody remarked that if there were half a sovereign to be picked up on the floor of hell the demons would have to move quickly to get there before Eckington-Smith,’ Disraeli said. ‘Still, I don’t suppose he’s any worse in that than the rest of the herd.’
I had my own reasons for thinking him quite a lot worse, but kept quiet from confidentiality towards Eckington-Smith’s wife. It seemed even Disraeli’s network had not found out that connection.
‘I suppose I can guess your interest in the fellow,’ Disraeli said. ‘The same matter that we were talking about last time we met?’
‘Does he have any connection with McDruggy McPherson?’
‘Oh there are a lot of them adrift on the same raft. At present they’ll work together to keep it afloat, but they’ll be at his throat if it looks like sinking.’
‘Raft?’
‘Eckington-Smith and his like are investors in McPherson’s opium operations. They’re facing ruinous losses since the Chinese decided not to play their game. That’s why there’s so much urgency about getting the Government to pay them compensation.’
‘And will it?’
Disraeli shook his head.
‘No. At least, not until we’ve won the war against China.’
‘So there will be a war?’
‘The gunboats are already steaming towards Canton. Nice sharp little campaign, total capitulation by the Chinese and payment of compensation. After that McPherson and the rest of them might get their money, but that could be a year or more away. Still, they’ve got no choice but to hang together.’
‘Can they hold out for a year or more?’
‘Rumour on the stock exchange says they can’t. Not many people’s credit holds up so long without something to support it. Which is where McPherson’s jewel collection comes into the picture.’
He looked at me sidelong and must have noticed my change of expression.
‘You knew about that, of course.’
‘The jewels that weren’t stolen when his assistant was killed?’
‘Fortunate, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ve heard that they once belonged to a maharajah,’ I said.
I was taking a leap, associating those with the jewels in Griffiths’s story, but Disraeli nodded again.
‘So I gather. He was flaunting an example of his stock in Westminster Hall. To reassure the creditors, I suppose. Vulgar, though.’
This from Disraeli, whose own taste in rings and neck chains had raised many eyebrows.
‘So McPherson’s credit depends on the jewels?’ I said.
‘Yes, and if he crashes he’ll take a lot of other men along with him.’
I looked towards Rancie’s ears, thinking that explained why Eckington-Smith and others were prepared to run errands for McPherson. It might also explain why they were so determined that any doubts about McPherson’s right to them should not be made public.
‘Did you and your brother have anything to do with that story suggesting that McPherson had Griffiths killed?’
The question came from Disraeli in a conversational tone, as if it weren’t anything of great note. I almost jumped out of my saddle.
‘My brother had nothing to do with it.’
‘But you did?’
‘Are we talking about a news-sheet called The Unbound Briton?’
‘Some such scandal rag. I can’t remember the title. I hear it was causing quite a stir in the committee yesterday.’
I said nothing, wishing I hadn’t been carried away by Tom Huckerby’s journalistic enthusiasm. My brother would be furious.
‘So did he?’ Disraeli said, still conversational.
‘Have Griffiths killed? I can’t prove it.’
‘And did Griffiths kill McPherson’s assistant?’
‘I don’t know. I simply don’t know.’
My own voice sounded desperate in my ears. Perhaps it sounded that way to Mr Disraeli too because he said nothing until we’d turned and were riding back towards Grosvenor Gate. When he did speak, he was unusually serious.
‘Miss Lane, I think you should be careful.’
‘Why?’
I knew, but wanted him to spell it out.
‘There are big issues involved, and not very scrupulous men. If you or your brother were obstacles to their plans, I think they’d do something about it.’
‘It really is nothing to do with Tom. He’s sure Mr Griffiths killed himself. He doesn’t want me to have anything to do with it.’
It mattered more than anything to me to convince him of that.
‘Then maybe you should take your brother’s advice.’
I glanced at him and saw what looked like genuine concern on his face. My heart lurched. I didn’t even know if it was from fear or from surprise that he should care. He raised his hat to me, wished me good morning and cantered away towards the gate. It was one of the conventions of our park rides that we should meet like acquaintances by chance, then go our own ways.
As soon as he’d gone, Amos Legge came up to ride beside me. When Mr Disraeli was with us, he kept respectfully
back, pretending to be any other groom.
‘My farrier friend, he’s not getting anywhere so far with that horseshoe. Reckons it wasn’t made by any of the men he knows.’
I was less disappointed than Amos sounded, not having counted very much on the horseshoe in any case.
‘He’ll keep on trying though,’ Amos said. ‘It’s annoying him, not knowing.’
I told him about seeing Tabby. He was as much at a loss as I was about how to find her.
‘Do you remember a member of parliament named Eckington-Smith?’ I said.
Amos looked as if he was on the point of spitting and only just restraining himself.
‘Reckon his backside still remembers the nails in my boot.’
‘You kicked him, then?’
I knew there’d been a rough-house towards the end of that unlovely story, when Eckington-Smith had been lying in wait for me, intending violence, but had met Amos instead. I’d never been told the details of it.
‘Should have done worse,’ Amos said.
‘I saw him at Capel Court yesterday, the stock exchange. It was just after I’d seen Tabby there. It’s in my mind that she might be following him.’
‘If she thinks he’s threatening any mischief to you, that would account for the knife,’ Amos said.
His matter-of-fact tone only increased my worry.
‘If that’s it, we’ve got to find her and stop her,’ I said.
‘Or give her a bit of a hand.’