The Women of Baker Street

by Michelle Birkby

  ‘It’s not much,’ Mary objected, when I insisted we go to the Yard. ‘Really, it’s only a theory.’

  ‘It’s a very workable theory that could easily be proved,’ I said, looking around for a cab. ‘I suspect that, confronted, either Florence or Ruth would confess. They are not exactly stable. Where are all the empty cabs?’

  ‘It’s the fog,’ Mary said. The day had been cold and damp, and now night-time was here, the fog had settled all around us. It was a true pea-souper, thick and choking, winding tendrils settling around the gas lamps, other people nothing but shapes that loomed out at us and then disappeared. ‘It’ll be quicker to walk to the Yard. Will you be all right to walk all that way?’

  Well, no, I wanted to say. It had been a long day, I was very tired, my stomach hurt, I was hungry, my legs felt weak and I just wanted to go home. It could wait until tomorrow. I didn’t need to go to the Yard tonight. I could just plead illness, and catch the train home.

  ‘I shall be fine,’ I said.

  I didn’t mind the fog. Mary and I were hardened Londoners, and the fog was just a fact of life for us. Scotland Yard was within walking distance from here, and we set off – only to run headlong into someone.

  ‘Wiggins!’ I cried. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I brought him here,’ Billy said, coming out of the fog. ‘I figured you were either at the hospital or here.’

  ‘Lucky guess,’ Mary said, smiling at the boys. Wiggins looked very serious.

  ‘Deduction,’ Billy said, smiling back.

  ‘Do you know?’ Wiggins asked earnestly. ‘Who’s been killing the boys?’

  Street boys, boys he might have known, boys he could have looked after. Boys he’d dismissed as a fairy tale.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘We’re going to the Yard to speak to Inspector Gregson now.’

  ‘Well, tell me on the way,’ Wiggins said. ‘’Cos I need to know.’

  We set off, Mary telling the story to the boys on the way. I followed slightly more slowly, tired now. The work was done, the excitement was draining away, and I just wanted to be in front of a warm fire with a cup of tea.

  A couple of times I looked back to see if Miranda Logan was still following us. I wish she’d make herself known. I could tell her she was right. I wanted to know why she suspected Flo.

  It took a long time to tell the boys, and we were on the Strand and almost at Charing Cross before we realized our way was blocked. Several carts and carriages had run into each other in the fog, and boxes of apples and barrels of fish had split open and spilled over the street and pavement. A harassed police constable was trying to impose order as people darted to and fro snatching up the food. It was chaos. We couldn’t go any further.

  ‘Down ’ere.’ Wiggins gestured. ‘We’ll go by the river and up White’all.’

  It was a perfectly ordinary street leading down to the river, well lit and well used – Villiers Street. I knew it. But in the fog, London becomes a strange city, every sound deadened, every light dimmed. Even those of us who are used to it can feel unsettled. I felt unaccountably nervous as we walked down the street until we reached the Embankment. I could hear the river lapping up against the high stone wall, though I could not see it. The fog was dispersing a little now, and I could just see a few feet in front of me. And there it was again, that prickling sensation in the back of my neck.

  ‘We are being followed,’ I insisted. ‘I keep seeing someone behind us. Come out, Miranda!’

  Instead of Miranda Logan, a boy stepped out of the mist. He was tall and slim, all in black, and his blond hair lay damply against his head. He didn’t speak; he just smiled, and waited.

  The Pale Boys did not travel alone. I had been so careful. I had insisted that Mary make no rash moves, I had insisted we go to the police, but here we were, trapped again, facing the villain again, no way to escape, yet again.

  Beside me, Mary looked round, trying to peer into the fog. Wiggins stepped in front of me, curling his hands into fists.

  ‘Billy,’ I said quietly. ‘Can you find Scotland Yard from here?’

  ‘I can,’ he confirmed. Another boy stepped out, younger, stockier, with thick black hair. He didn’t smile.

  ‘Then run, as fast as you can, find Inspector Gregson or Lestrade or anyone and get them here.’

  Billy looked quickly at Wiggins, who nodded. Billy, always a fast runner, darted between the two boys. The blond one merely watched him go, but the black-haired one grabbed for him. Wiggins pulled the boy round before he could catch Billy and thumped him across the face. The boy backhandedly slapped him, as Billy ran away into the fog.

  ‘Wiggins, no,’ I called. ‘You can’t fight all of them.’ He grunted, wiping the blood from his mouth, and ran back to me. We took advantage of the disturbance and ran ourselves, along the Embankment, down the river, anywhere, away from these boys.

  But I couldn’t run. My breath came fast and sharp and I felt the wound in my belly tear and rip and the blood come. Deep inside something twisted and hurt. I felt the dampness spread across my belly. I gasped, and held my hand up to my dress. I was bleeding – but my dress was black, and it was dark. No one would know. I could not run – but I would be damned if I would let them know that. I stopped, held my head up, and walked back to the boys.

  ‘Run!’ I hissed at Mary. But she and Wiggins turned back to me.

  ‘You stay, we stay,’ Mary insisted.

  ‘Even if it is a bloody stupid idea,’ Wiggins added. As he spoke, three more boys came out of the fog around us. We wouldn’t have been able to run very far, just enough to make the chase interesting for them.

  Just five boys. Small, slim boys.

  Boys who weren’t quite normal. Boys whose minds had been twisted and damaged. Boys who had killed. Boys who were proud of their killing.

  Boys who carried knives. The knives didn’t shine. They were already stained with blood. Someone else had already died tonight, and now they were here for us.

  They teased us, like cats taunting mice. They darted forward and waved a knife, then laughed when we winced. They blocked our path, and left another one open. They were herding us.

  ‘If they want you, they have to come through me,’ Wiggins said. ‘No matter ’ow many there are.’

  ‘Oh, they will,’ she said, walking towards us. Florence Bryson. Not the chatty, vague, friendly woman in the hospital bed now. She walked tall and proud, her head high. I could see her boot-button black eyes, like a doll’s eyes, almost lifeless, disturbing in their glee.

  ‘My boys don’t let anyone stop them,’ she cooed. ‘My boys do as they’re told, and they like to do it. They’ll do anything I want for me, won’t you?’

  She looked round at them. They nodded, some eagerly. The smallest one stepped closer to her and smiled shyly at her. The tallest one, the blond, never took his eyes off me.

  ‘You are going to die,’ she asserted. ‘All of you, because that is what I want. Unless you want to come with me?’ she asked, holding her hand out to Wiggins. The boys accompanied her as she came closer and stationed themselves around us. By the river here, no one could see us, or disturb us. There was no one to rescue us until Billy got to Scotland Yard. ‘I can give you such a good life,’ she said to Wiggins. ‘Warm bed, warm food, and a mother.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Wiggins said shortly. ‘Got all I want.’

  She looked at me, and smiled. One boy flashed forward with his knife, and caught Mary’s skirt. Wiggins growled at him, but the boy just laughed. Another pulled at Wiggins’ sleeve, but he didn’t make the mistake of letting himself be drawn away. He stepped back, in front of me, panting, afraid, but never leaving his post.

  ‘You’ve failed,’ Flo said to me. ‘I just want you to know that, before you die. You thought it was Eleanor Langham, didn’t you?’ she asked, as if inviting my praise.

  ‘You’ve been directing me that way,’ I said. Little hints dropped here and there, the trail left for me.

  She shrug
ged. ‘It could have been her,’ she said. ‘She fits the bill, as they say, but then again, so do you. Once they knew it wasn’t her, I’d have blamed you next. Why do you think I rented your old house? That was quite a useful little find. You could have made such a convincing killer.’

  That hit a little too close to the mark for me.

  They had started to hum, a low sound, barely there, just enough to unnerve us. One laughed, and the other wiped his knife on his sleeve. They were pressing closer, surrounding us, and we had no escape. They were tense themselves now, blood lust up, waiting to be let off the leash and take their prey. Their knives didn’t hang by their sides any more, they held them up, in front of us, waiting, five knives for one boy and two women, one of whom was already bleeding. The blond boy glanced at Flo and frowned. He was ready to kill us. He wanted to. He stepped closer. He might not wait. Mary made a grab for the boy closest to her, the youngest, but he stepped back quickly. The other four moved in, flashing their knives at Mary, slashing at her skirts, and her bodice, but never actually touching her. She spun round and round, trying to shake them off, but they darted forward, catching the blades in her clothes, dodging Wiggins as he tried to stop them.

  ‘Enough. You can have her in a moment,’ Flo said gently. ‘I just need them to understand first. Understanding is very important.’

  ‘Understand what?’ I snapped.

  ‘I don’t normally do this outside,’ she explained, as if making arrangements for tea.

  ‘No, you do murder in empty houses and hospital beds,’ Mary retorted. When Mary was afraid, she became angry. ‘Why Emma? You liked her.’

  ‘She was in the right bed,’ Flo explained. She stroked the cheek of the boy next to her. ‘I like to see it done. It makes me feel special, and in that bed, I could see every little struggle. I could see every twitch of everyone who died in that bed. She fought, didn’t she? Well, she was strong, not like you, Mrs Hudson. You’ll fall at the first stab. Don’t think I don’t know you’re bleeding. I can smell it.’

  She did sniff the air, tracing the scent. All those nights she had lain in that bed, unable to get to her boys, so brought the boys to her, to prove themselves.

  ‘And it was that boy’s turn,’ she continued. ‘Tonight two more have their turn. They’ve passed all my other little tests. They’ve shown their loyalty. They just have to do one last little thing, and I’ll be their mother forever.’

  ‘Kill us,’ Mary said scornfully. ‘In the street, like thugs.’

  ‘Kill you,’ Flo said, her voice still cooing and soft. It was oddly hypnotic. ‘I know what you’ve been trying to do. You’ve been trying to separate my darling boys from me. You’ve been trying to take them away from their mother.’

  ‘You are not their mother!’ Mary shouted out, almost pushing past Wiggins in her anger at Flo. He pushed her back. ‘Their mothers looked for them and cried for them and wanted them back.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Flo insisted. ‘Their mothers abandoned them and forgot them.’

  ‘There is one in my home who has been searching for her boy!’ Mary insisted. ‘You stole her son.’

  One of the boys wavered and looked around. Flo smiled gently at him.

  ‘See the lies they’ll tell? Just to get you away from me,’ she said sweetly. ‘But I won’t let them.’

  The littlest one stared at Mary, but the tall blond one put his hand on his shoulder, and squeezed. The little one winced, but stepped back to Flo.

  ‘These are not your sons,’ I told her. ‘Your son is dead. These are just substitutes you’ve gathered together. You’ll kill them. You make them kill to prove their love, and then one day, they’ll look away from you and you’ll decide they’ve failed and you’ll kill them too. You like it, don’t you? All that death around you? All this death just to replace your dead son.’

  ‘You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’ Flo said, her voice suddenly becoming biting. ‘You lost your son, and now you’ve got your little band of Irregulars. You’re doing just the same as me.’

  ‘She in’t,’ Wiggins said fiercely. ‘She in’t ever told us lies, or made us do what we don’t want to do. She never made us kill for her. Look at you,’ he said, appealing to boys. ‘Look what she got you doing. This in’t what a mother should be doing. She’s treating you like puppets. I bet you daren’t even breathe without her permission.’ One of the boys lashed out and the blade slashed across Wiggins’ face. He gasped, and pressed his hand to the cut. The blood oozed through. He would have gone for the boy that slashed him, but I grabbed him and pulled him back to me. All those blades. All that blood. It had to stop.

  I had a weapon of my own.

  ‘They are my sons . . .’ Flo insisted.

  ‘Your son died,’ I persisted. ‘You didn’t need to replace him, you have a daughter.’

  ‘Her?’ Flo said, with scorn. ‘That mewling, whimpering thing? Always begging me to love her and want her. Always pushing my boy aside, thinking I’d want her. Why would I want her when I had my son? When I have sons? She’s just a girl. Boys are clever and strong and brave. You must know, Mrs Hudson, a mother’s glory lies in her sons.’

  We had been followed, I knew that. And not by the boys. I had seen a woman’s shape in the fog. Only I had been wrong about which woman it was.

  ‘Did you hear that, Ruth?’ I called.

  Ruth Bey stepped out of the fog.

  A DAUGHTER’S DUTY

  Flo did not look disturbed by the sudden appearance of her daughter. She merely looked at her, and then looked away. The boys stared at Ruth. They obviously had no idea who she was, though I guessed they had seen her before. Flo went to the tall boy, and whispered in his ear. He pulled the boy next to him round, and there we were again, faced by the row of knives. There was no way past. The momentary distraction of Ruth’s appearance was not enough.

  I was losing too much blood. My knees felt weak. Any moment now I’d fall, and then they would be on me. I could show no weakness now, but how long could I hold on? I tried not to show I was leaning on Wiggins.

  ‘Clever and strong and brave, Mother?’ Ruth quoted, full of bitterness. ‘Was I not all that for you? Think of the things I did for you.’

  ‘It was your duty, as my daughter,’ Flo said. She could not look at Ruth, or would not. She only looked at me.

  ‘What did you do?’ I asked.

  ‘I hid her,’ Ruth said, and now I could hear the tears in her voice. ‘She developed this obsession for a new son, lots of new sons, who would be just like my brother, even down to what they’d do for her, and I didn’t stop her. I helped her. I hid her and the boys. I found places for her. I brought them food when she could not. I covered her tracks, I even kept my back turned whilst she made her boys kill, God help me; I never stopped her.’

  ‘If you had been a little more convincing in court, they would have believed you killed the vicar,’ Flo said to her. ‘Then your brother would never have died.’

  ‘I tried,’ Ruth sobbed, breaking down and stumbling forward to her mother. Flo merely sniffed in contempt. ‘Mother, I tried.’

  ‘Not hard enough,’ Flo told her. The boys moved closer to me, unsure of what to do, but ready for orders. Were they beginning to question the lives they had been living? I saw the metal in their hands. How could we stop them? We couldn’t. Not by strength alone.

  ‘See!’ Mary cried. ‘This is how she treats her children,’ she said, gesturing towards Ruth, slumped to her knees, sobbing. The boys looked at her, and I could see uncertainty on some of their faces.

  ‘I don’t love her,’ Flo said, in her cooing voice. ‘I love my boys.’ The youngest one was looking at Ruth and I could see him wavering, but the tallest boy was still watching us, and I could swear he was enjoying himself. He still wanted our blood. I wondered what he was like before Ruth took him. He seemed the most like her dead son.

  ‘Really?’ Mary said scornfully. ‘Then where are the older ones?’

  Flo froze. That
mask of supreme certainty was shaken.

  The blond boy stepped towards us. He wasn’t going to wait for orders. I felt Wiggins tense beneath my hands, and I felt myself become a little weaker, as more blood dripped from me.

  ‘Older ones?’ Flo asked.

  ‘We know you’ve been doing this for ten years,’ I said. ‘Where are the boys over sixteen?

  The boys who became men?’ The older boy stopped. He looked at Mary with an odd expression on his face. He was intelligent, I could see that. Had he wondered that himself? He held out his hand to stop the others.

  ‘’Adn’t asked that question, ’ad you?’ Wiggins jeered. ‘Well, go on, ask it now. Where did they go?’

  ‘They went to the country,’ Flo said, regaining her self-composure, ‘when they grew up.’

  ‘When they started noticing girls, you mean,’ Mary said. ‘When you realized they weren’t going to love you forever. Soon they’d want a wife, not a mother.’

  ‘They went to the country . . .’ Flo repeated, as the tall boy turned to look at her. He looked back at me. He was thinking it through.

  ‘Did you see the graves in the park?’ I asked him gently. ‘Did you hear about the dead boys all in black?’

  He spoke for the first time, and it was a shock to hear his voice had not yet broken.

  ‘Why would she do that?’ he said to me. ‘She is our mother.’

  ‘Why? Is there a girl you like?’ I asked him. ‘Someone you smile at, and talk to? Has she seen you talking to her? Did she tell you that you could love only her? That you had to stay with her forever?’

  He was silent, but I could see on his face that she had. This time, he had agreed.

  ‘Ask ’er,’ Wiggins demanded of the boy. ‘Go on, ask ’er where the others went.’

  The boy turned to Flo.

  ‘Where did the older boys go?’ he asked.

  ‘I told you, the country,’ she insisted.

  ‘Where?’ Wiggins persisted. ‘Is this the same “country” that sick dogs go to?’

  ‘They’re in the park,’ Mary told them. ‘Go and see for yourself. It’ll be in all the newspapers tomorrow!’