I did not turn around.
‘Did he discover anything?’ I asked, as if it were only of minor interest to me.
‘Judging by his walk, I would guess not,’ Mr Holmes said, concentrating on an old paper. ‘His gait alters quite significantly when he is frustrated.’
‘He didn’t find the right driver,’ I said, turning round.
‘Or no one would speak,’ Mr Holmes said, quite unconcerned. ‘I tip well; the cab drivers would prefer not to lose my custom.’
‘So is that it? Is it over?’ I asked. Mr Holmes looked up again at me.
‘I fear he will keep looking. Perhaps question the people in the houses that overlook the street, to see if anyone saw someone get into a cab that night.’
‘At that time of night?’ I said.
‘This is London,’ Mr Holmes observed. ‘Somebody sees everything.’
I went down to the kitchen determined not to think about it. I would not think about the blackmailer, or Eleanor Langham, or the Pale Boys, or the hospital. I needed a break.
But when I got down there, Mrs Turner was awake, and clutching a photograph. It was the picture she’d promised: the last boy she’d been asked to make a black suit for.
‘Would you like to stay?’ I said abruptly to her. ‘Not just tonight, but for good. Well, as long you want to.’
‘To do what?’ Grace asked. She seemed to have taken a protective interest in Mrs Turner.
‘Much as you do now,’ I said to Mrs Turner. ‘Clean, wash, the usual, except the cooking. I will always do the cooking.’
‘And she’ll be paid?’ Grace asked. ‘More than now?’
‘Of course,’ I said, taking the photograph Mrs Turner held out to me. ‘Well, will you?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said quietly, standing there as if waiting for orders.
‘Do you have your things?’ I asked her. She nodded. There was a pathetically small bundle by her feet. ‘Rest today,’ I told her. ‘You can sleep in the bedroom next to mine.’
I looked at the picture. It was a boy, I’d say around ten, with blond hair that fell over his eyes. He wore a torn suit of what looked like brown or grey tweed. He didn’t look afraid, or wary. He looked as if he couldn’t quite believe such wonderful things were happening to him. I suppose that was how they all started. They were taken in by this woman who fed them and clothed them, and gave them somewhere warm to sleep. If they had anyone who loved them, she must have persuaded the boy they were long gone, and only she loved them now. And now that she had done all this, they owed her everything. What would they do to repay her? How would they prove their loyalty?
I threw the photograph back on the table. I didn’t want to think about it, not tonight.
‘The urn in the background is exactly four feet,’ Mrs Turner said, gesturing. ‘And I knew the measurements of all the carvings on it. That’s how I got the measurements for the boys.’
I had noted the urn. I’d show Mary the photograph tomorrow.
‘Mrs Langham will be returning to hospital,’ I told Grace.
‘Ah, has she had a relapse?’ Grace asked.
‘Of sorts,’ I replied, keeping my own role quiet. ‘But the problem is in her mind again, rather than her chest.’
Of course I was using Mr Holmes’ trick again. I knew a lot less than I made her think I knew, but it was another way to make her talk. Grace had revealed, as she chatted to me, that whilst Eleanor Langham did indeed suffer from a heart problem for which she needed treatment, her real illness was in her mind. However, it had become clear that her instability lessened when she was in hospital, away from her husband, and her boys.
I tied my apron on. All these mysteries could wait. Now I wanted to make Banbury cakes.
A HOUSE OF SECRETS
Banbury cakes are finicky to make, and I had to do at least three batches before I was satisfied. It felt good to have my hands covered in flour again, to smooth together the butter and sugar, to measure to an exactness the right amount of allspice needed. I felt like I had achieved something at the end. I had cakes to show for my efforts, and not just a morass of information I did not know what to do with, or how to progress.
It was ten o’clock at night and pouring with rain by the time I finished. It beat hard on the window, and I felt sorry for anyone caught in it. Mrs Turner had long since gone to bed, and Grace had gone home (as she had been doing at night several times now), on the strict understanding that I took my medicine, changed my dressing and ate none of the cakes. She said I wouldn’t really need her from now on anyway.
I sat at the kitchen table, and tried not to look at the photograph. I ought to have taken it to Mary, I knew, but it could wait. She had had a hard day, looking at those bodies of the boys she thought she could rescue. In fact, the whole case of the Pale Boys seemed to have shaken her somewhat. She could become obsessed; I knew that from April, when she had deliberately walked into traps. She had only escaped with her life because I played the game and solved the puzzle.
In the middle of my ruminations I heard a knock at the door.
Inspector Lestrade stood on the doorstep, soaked to the skin. I took a breath. So this was it, then: he must be close to the truth now.
‘I’ll see if Mr Holmes is home,’ I said, in the well-known code for ‘check if he wants to see you’.
‘Thank you – no, wait,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’m not sure . . .’ For a man who was normally so certain of himself it seemed odd to see him vacillate. He glanced back at the street, and then back to me, and then up the stairs.
‘I came to tell him I found an eyewitness,’ he said. ‘Someone saw someone take the cab to Richmond.’ He had succeeded, but he didn’t look happy about it. He looked miserable and exhausted.
‘Would you like to come in and have a sandwich?’ I asked. His face lit up. I doubt he had eaten all day.
‘I would,’ he said. ‘I would like that very much.’
I led him to my kitchen table, placing his hat and coat on the chair before the kitchen range to dry. He sat down, slightly shyly. He had never been to my kitchen before.
I had put the photograph in my pocket before I invited him in, so the table was bare. He put his hands on it, as I often did, liking to feel something so old and solid beneath my hands. I watched him as I poured a steaming cup of tea, and cut him a thick beef and mustard sandwich. I watched him still as he bit into the sandwich with an expression of bliss, and all the time I held myself back from demanding who was seen, what did he know?
‘It was a woman,’ he said, as if reading my thoughts.
‘What did she look like?’ I asked, joining him at the kitchen table. He sat at the end, and I sat across the corner, so I could see his face. I expected triumph, not this misery.
‘They didn’t see much. Just a glimpse of a middle-aged woman all in black, asking the driver to take her to Richmond.’
‘Well, that describes half the women in London,’ I said. ‘It could even apply to me.’
He smiled thinly at my joke, putting the sandwich down and taking a long drink of tea.
‘I didn’t expect it to be a woman,’ he admitted.
‘Does that make a difference?’ I asked.
He paused a while, then continued, ‘I tracked down the scrap of paper I found at the burnt-out home. I remembered Mr Holmes is always looking at watermarks and so on, so I did the same. There was enough left to find out the paper was bespoke, made for a very fine family. I was quite proud of myself for that. I went to visit the family. That was when I found out the woman who wrote that note killed herself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said gently. He’d obviously been affected by this woman’s death.
‘I wasn’t so proud then,’ he said. ‘Do you mind me telling you this? Mrs Lestrade doesn’t like it. Well, I wouldn’t want to tell her. All this stops when I close my own front door. But I need to tell someone, and you’re very easy to talk to.’
‘I don’t mind. Tell me.’
‘I exp
ect you hear worse from Mr Holmes. Well,’ he said, fiddling with the remains of his sandwich, ‘it appears she was being blackmailed. The family were very polite to me. I wouldn’t have been, not if I was them. But they let me read her letters. I think they wanted me to know she’d done it out of a sense of honour. Does that make sense to you?’
I nodded. Who was she, this woman? There had been so many the blackmailer had blithely destroyed. I was eager to ask, but dared not.
‘I saw the letters that man sent her. They were horrific. I shan’t tell you what they said. No woman should hear that language. I found reference to another woman too – did you ever hear of the Whitechapel Lady?’
‘I did,’ I said. She too had once been a fine lady. The blackmailer had ruined her, but she had found a life of sorts helping the people of Whitechapel, until he murdered her. Officially, her murder remained unsolved.
‘I met her a few times,’ Lestrade said. ‘I liked her. I wanted to investigate her murder, but Abberline took it on as he thought the Ripper had killed her. That man,’ and he spat out the word, ‘that man who burnt had blackmailed her too.’
‘How many more?’ I asked, pouring more tea into his cup.
He shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he admitted. ‘But now I think the woman who killed him must have been a victim.’
‘So they were taking the law into their own hands,’ I said softly.
‘But people can’t do that,’ he said earnestly. He truly believed in the law. ‘The law is the law, and it must be obeyed, whatever the provocation. If we allow people to kill for this reason, how long before people kill for political differences, or personal dislike? It’d be anarchy.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ I said. I did, I really did. The first death was difficult, but after that, a small voice would whisper ‘you’ve already done it once’.
‘But if I caught this woman, and took her to court,’ the inspector continued, ‘all those secrets that lady died to keep would be revealed and then he would have won, even from beyond the grave. And what about those women still living, keeping secrets?’ He was agonized. The battle between the law and what he felt to be right was tearing him apart.
‘What would happen to the woman who killed him?’ I asked. ‘Would she get the death penalty?’ I put more sugar into his tea, though he didn’t need it, just to keep my hands steady.
‘I’d do my damnedest to make sure she didn’t,’ he said quickly. ‘I’d speak up in her defence. And I am sure no jury of good Englishmen would convict a woman for this. Yet the law is strict, and some judges have no mercy.’
His voice trailed off as he stared into the dark corners of the kitchen.
‘Why didn’t they come to the police?’ he asked softly.
‘They were afraid,’ I said, before I could think. He looked at me sharply, then nodded. He could understand the fear of officialdom and mistakes and setting into process something that could not be stopped.
‘Then that is our failure, as the police,’ he said. ‘My failure.’
‘No . . .’ I said, trying to reassure him, but he had made his choice.
‘I’m going to stop,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m going to stop looking for this woman.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said, then drained his tea. ‘But I will not condemn her for doing what the law ought to have done. I should have protected her – all of them – from a man like that.’
He stood up, and then looked at me.
‘Don’t tell Mr Holmes, will you?’
I glanced up at the open air vent. Possibly he already knew.
‘Why not?’ I asked, as he took up his hat. ‘If he thinks you failed to find the murderer, he’ll crow over you.’
‘I know,’ he said, as I took his coat and held it out for him.
‘He’d understand your reasons,’ I said. He’d done the same, once or twice.
‘No,’ the inspector said, shrugging his coat on. ‘I like to think Mr Holmes and I are friends, especially after Dartmoor. But more than that, I am Inspector Lestrade of the Yard. I am the living embodiment of the law. I cannot, and must not, be seen to bend or break the law. Especially not by Mr Holmes, who has a tendency to see law as elastic at the best of times.’
‘I won’t tell,’ I said, as I showed him out of the front door. After all, as I’ve remarked before, this was a house of secrets.
I took my time clearing up, wondering if Mr Holmes would come down to talk to me. He didn’t, and I went to bed. Mrs Turner was at the top of the stairs when I reached the second-floor landing. She was wrapped in her shawl, staring anxiously at me.
‘They’re here,’ she said quietly, ‘outside, watching me. What should I do?’
‘Close the curtains and go to bed,’ I said firmly. ‘They can’t get in here.’
To my relief, and surprise, she nodded and returned to her room. I went into mine and walked over to the window.
I had been slightly afraid she was imagining things, but no, there they stood. Three boys, all in black, standing in the mist, staring at my house. One was blond, and his hair glittered in the gaslight. I thought maybe he was the boy from the photograph. The other two had dark hair, and their faces were pale white. They couldn’t have been more than fourteen, one no more than ten. They were silent, and still, and it was very eerie. They had come to scare us, and it was succeeding. I looked at those boys, all alone in the dark. Had they killed? Had they chased us through that house? Could they really get through locked doors, and disappear into the night? I was afraid, for a moment.
But there, if I looked closer, the little one was shivering in the cold. The older one had fallen, and had mud on his knee. They were just boys after all. Just children, not shadows or demons. They weren’t supernatural, and probably not even that dangerous, not without their mistress to guide them. And as for me – well, tonight I felt fearless. I flung up the window.
‘I’ve seen you,’ I called out, cheerily. ‘You’ve made your point, you can go now.’
They didn’t move.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘It’s freezing cold, and very late. You might want to hang around and catch your death of cold, but I don’t. Go home and go to bed.’
And with that, I closed the window, pulled across the red velvet curtains, and got ready for bed.
By the time I’d undone my buttons, I heard them walk away, their footsteps echoing in the empty streets. Sound drifted so far at night-time.
Just boys, after all. The real villain was the woman who used them.
BACK TO WHITECHAPEL
I got up early, went down to the kitchen, and started to cook. First breakfast for Mr Holmes, but once that was out of the way, baking. I always think better when I bake. There’s something about the action of smoothing flour or cream or eggs between my fingers that concentrates my mind. But more than that, I felt like I wanted to be busy. I had spent weeks sitting back, feeling ill and worried and haunted. That was no way for a housekeeper – especially Mr Holmes’ housekeeper – to behave. So, I set to work. When Mrs Turner got up, I chivvied Mr Holmes out of his rooms, telling him he needed fresh air, and set her to work dusting there, and picking up all his discarded, torn and battered clothes. Mr Holmes liked his shirts to be pristinely white, but usually forgot he had to give them to me to be cleaned. I even set Grace to work when she arrived for the day (as she said, I didn’t need her nursing skills any more) putting together the boxes I used for the cakes I sold at the bakery. By the time Mary arrived, the house smelled of freshly baking bread, and the kitchen table was covered in cakes cooling.
‘Good grief,’ Mary said, looking at the evidence of my hard work. ‘I can see you’ve had quite the morning.’
‘I suddenly feel much better,’ I told her. ‘You can have any cake you like, except for lemon: that’s for Grace and Nora.’
Grace smiled in thanks, and said she was going to check on Mrs Turner. Since I no longer needed her, she had devoted herself to Mrs Turner until her job ran ou
t at the end of the week. She quietly accompanied her around the house, helping her, talking softly to her, trying to soothe the woman’s shattered nerves. I think Grace helped her a great deal.
I handed Mary the photograph of the boy Mrs Turner had given me.
‘It looks familiar,’ Mary said.
‘The boy?’ I questioned. ‘He was outside 221b last night, trying to intimidate me and Mrs Turner – what is her first name, by the way? As she’s going to stay I can’t keep calling her Mrs Turner.’
‘Harriet,’ Mary said, peering at the photograph, then looking up. ‘Oh, she’s staying? Wonderful. Wait a minute; the boys were outside your house?’
‘Standing in the gaslight and the fog, trying to frighten us,’ I explained. ‘It was really far too cold for them to be out that late at night. I sent them home.’
Mary laughed.
‘Now I understand all this,’ she said, sweeping her arm to indicate the cakes. ‘You’re like the chatelaine of the castle standing on the battlements telling the attackers they can stay all they like, they’ll never break the siege.’
‘Well, thank you – I think.’ I smiled. It was quite an attractive image, and rather glamorous compared to the reality of a dumpy middle-aged housekeeper. ‘So you said you recognize the boy? From where?’
‘Not the boy, the urn,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen it. Let me think.’
‘It’s just a standard urn found in any photographer’s studio . . .’ I said, but Mary held up a hand to stop me. She sat down at the table, closed her eyes, and started to think.
Ten minutes later, she jumped up.
‘Got it!’ she cried. ‘I know where I saw the urn before. It was in Robert Sheldon’s studio!’
We sat in the cab going to Whitechapel. That part of London was bright and cold that morning, and almost deserted. The few people on the street huddled around a chestnut seller’s brazier. Robert Sheldon was a very ordinary man, but an excellent photographer – of pornography. Mary and I had met him when the blackmailer had tasked him to follow me. He had been afraid of the blackmailer and also, for some reason, of me.
The Women of Baker Street Page 21