‘I love you,’ Flo said to the boy, pleading. ‘More than anyone else ever could. I’d never hurt you. I didn’t hurt them!’
‘No, she didn’t hurt them,’ Mary said, magnificent in her anger. ‘It was very painless when she killed them.’
The boy swung round, his knife still in his hand.
‘They’re dead,’ I told him. ‘There are five bodies in the graves in Regent’s Park.’
‘Goodness knows how many elsewhere,’ Mary finished. The boy stepped back. The others, uncertain now, followed his lead.
‘It’s not true,’ the boy insisted.
‘It is true,’ Ruth said, getting to her feet wearily, as if every bone ached. ‘I dug the graves.’
Ruth looked at her mother with a sense of wonderment, as if finally coming to her senses and realizing what the woman was.
‘You never once said you loved me,’ she said. Flo ignored her. She only looked at the boys.
‘It’s not true . . .’ Flo said, reaching out to the tallest boy – but he pushed aside her hand.
‘You told me I was going to the country soon,’ he snarled. ‘Was I next?’
‘I remember my mother,’ the smallest boy said suddenly. ‘She sang to me, when she was drunk.’
‘She lied to you,’ the older boy said. ‘She’s been lying all along.’
‘Yeah, she ’as,’ Wiggins agreed. ‘You still going to keep doing what she tells you? ’Cos whether she kills you, or you end up swinging at the end of a rope for what she made you do, you’re still dead.’
The boy looked at Wiggins, and me, and Ruth, still gazing at her mother with a curiously blank expression. He stared at us, and then Flo. His grip tightened on his knife, and I braced myself.
Then he just left, simply walking away. He didn’t speak. He brushed by Flo, as she reached out to him, but he ignored her. He disappeared into the fog.
The other boys looked around at him, and us, and Flo.
‘We had mothers?’ the little one said. ‘Mothers that loved us?’
‘I love you!’ Flo cried.
‘You did,’ I told him. The boys looked at each other, then one by one, the boys followed the oldest into the fog.
‘No,’ Flo begged, as they walked away. ‘No, don’t leave me, not alone!’
‘You’re not alone. Your daughter’s here,’ I pointed out.
‘Yes, I’m here, Mother,’ Ruth said, in a curiously dead tone. Flo didn’t even look at her. She merely stared at me, her black eyes full of hatred.
‘You . . . you . . . bitch,’ she whispered. ‘You stole my sons!’ She flung herself at me, fingers crooked into claws, eyes wild. Truth to tell she couldn’t have done much harm, even in my weakened state, but before she laid a finger on me, Ruth had grabbed her and pushed her up against the wall, over the river, her fingers wrapped around her mother’s throat, squeezing hard.
‘No, don’t!’ I cried out. Wiggins and Mary grabbed her, trying to pull her off, but her grip was too strong.
‘You never loved me!’ Ruth howled.
‘Ruth, this is not the way!’ I shouted at her. Her mother choked and scrabbled at Ruth’s hands, but she wouldn’t let go. ‘You’ll regret it.’
‘I won’t,’ Ruth insisted, squeezing tighter.
‘You will,’ I told her. ‘It’ll haunt you, you’ll dream of it; it’ll be there everywhere you turn, even if it’s the right thing to do, you’ll be sorry every second of your life.’
‘She should die for what she’s done,’ Ruth insisted.
‘But not here!’ I cried, as her mother leaned further and further over the wall. Strangulation or drowning, either would finish her. ‘Not by you. It’d destroy your life too! Believe me, I know.’
Ruth looked at me, saw I meant it, then loosened her grip. She let go, and stepped away. Wiggins and Mary pulled Flo back onto the ground. She crumpled into a heap, all the fire and passion gone from her. She was just an old woman now. Ruth looked at her, sobbing and choking.
‘Your mother . . .’ I started to say.
‘I no longer have a mother,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell the police what they need to know.’
‘Where are they?’ Flo sobbed. ‘Where are my boys?’
‘Gone,’ Mary said. ‘You’re all alone now.’
In the distance, I heard the police coming towards us.
EPILOGUE
Mrs Turner placed the flowers, small posies of hothouse daisies, on the five graves. The sod had been replaced now, and you could barely tell anyone had ever been buried here, but we would always know.
She turned to me.
‘I know they can’t tell me if Stephen was one of those boys, or even if he’s alive,’ she said. Stephen would have been sixteen, and there was no trace of him. ‘But this is as close to him as I reckon I’m going to get now.’
‘It’s good to know someone’s thinking of them,’ I told her. Some would have had mothers like her. Some of those boys would have had cruel mothers, or mothers who sold them. Some of them would never have known a mother, or only known Flo Bryson’s twisted version of motherhood. But Harriet Turner would remember them all.
She smiled and nodded, and walked away. I stayed by the graves. I hadn’t visited my boy’s grave in years. He wasn’t there in the ground. He was in my memory, and if I closed my eyes, I could see him.
Robert: his name was Robert. I couldn’t save him, but we had saved others. That mattered.
I opened my eyes. In the distance I could see Mary, who I knew had been to see Inspector Gregson.
‘Ruth told them everything,’ she said, striding up to me. She took my arm and led me away from the graves.
‘How many more boys died?’
‘They’ve found four more,’ she said, her face grave. ‘They’re buried in the gardens of the empty houses they used. There could be more.’
‘And how many people did they kill?’
Mary frowned.
‘Ruth isn’t sure,’ she said. The mild winter sunlight shone onto the lake and its single duck. ‘She was never around for that part. She says the victims were chosen at random. She thinks they killed mostly street sleepers, and who would notice if they died?’
‘It would be easy. Bring them inside on a cold winter night,’ I said, imagining the scene. The nice lady, the friendly boys, the invitation to share some soup. ‘Then suffocate them, so there’s no marks, and dump them on the street again. People would think they died of cold.’
‘So why switch to the hospital?’ Mary asked. ‘It was more dangerous there.’
‘Because that’s where she was,’ I said. ‘She had to see the proof, all the time. She couldn’t wait. It was the best way to maintain control.’
‘Talking to Ruth is odd,’ Mary said. ‘There’s no emotion in her at all now. It’s like it all burned away that night by the river. She just recites the facts, like she’s repeating a catechism. I don’t think she cares about the boys at all, living or dead. I don’t think she ever did. Not even her brother.’
‘What were the other tests they had to go through?’ I asked. We crossed the bridge over the lake, and paused. Somewhere a barrel organ was playing ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. It felt very peaceful here now.
‘Stealing, at first,’ Mary said. ‘Most of them were used to that, they were street boys, but she made it into a sort of ritual to prove themselves. They didn’t steal for food, or money. Inspector Gregson found a whole pile of trinkets in one of the houses. Then robbery, killing an animal, that sort of thing. That must be what we saw in the house, the remains of an animal-killing ritual.’
The boys had gone back onto the streets. They were survivors, they knew how to hide. They stood out now, their pale faces in black clothes, but their faces would be dirty in a day or two, their clothes torn and ragged in a week or two, and by the time Christmas was over they’d look like any other street boy. Perhaps the lucky few would try to find their mothers. Most likely they’d use the skills Florence had taught them to scrape
a living. I could only hope none of them had learnt to like killing. That tall blond boy had a dangerous look in his eyes when he left us.
‘I saw Miranda Logan,’ I said. She had been waiting outside 221b that morning. I had explained the whole thing to her, and she had nodded and taken notes. She had suspected Flo out of instinct, nothing else, and seemed shaken to find it was not a conspiracy to kill Emma, but something far worse. ‘She still won’t say who she was working for.’
‘Ruth won’t speak now,’ Mary said. ‘She said she’s told her tale, and that’s the last of it. They think she’ll end up in an asylum.’
‘And Flo?’ I said, looking towards the graves.
‘Inspector Gregson wants her to hang,’ Mary said. ‘His superiors aren’t so sure. They think hanging an old, mad woman might not look decent.’
We stood in silence a little while longer, enjoying the feeling of having nothing we needed to do, right now.
‘I never knew you felt like that,’ Mary said softly. ‘What you said to Ruth, about regret, about it eating away at you.’
‘There was nothing else I could do at that point,’ I said firmly. ‘He had to die, and I have to live with the consequences. It’s a small enough price to pay.’
For Mary’s life. For all those secrets. For myself. I could live with that. The price was high, but the price of failure at that moment would have been higher.
I looked over at Eleanor’s house. Was she there? Were Lord Howe and Sir Richard there? They had been lucky. Their nasty, awkward little secrets had been kept, and they were spotlessly clean again. No trace of blame.
‘Mad . . .’ I said softly.
‘What?’ Mary asked, surprised.
‘I’m thinking about Emma,’ I told her. ‘If Florence’s choice of who died was purely random, anyone who slept in that bed, isn’t it convenient that one of her victims was someone so many people wanted silent?’
‘I thought that, too,’ Mary replied grimly. ‘She could choose the time she wanted. She chose us. We weren’t random. We were in the way.’
‘I swear that I saw Flo knock that drink over Emma’s bed,’ I said.
‘Meaning she was moved to the death bed,’ Mary agreed, ‘making her a chosen victim. Are you saying Flo wasn’t mad?’
‘I’m saying maybe someone guided her,’ I said slowly. ‘Someone influenced her choices, perhaps. My house too. What led her to my old house? Just like the blackmailer.’ I bit my lip. I was working my way towards something, but what I could not quite grasp.
‘Like the blackmailer?’ Mary questioned. ‘Are you saying the same hand guided them both?’
‘I think I’m saying,’ I answered slowly, as I thought it out, ‘that through these two cases, and one or two others I’ve heard about, there is a fine thread, and if we were to follow the thread, we’d find they were all tied together in one knot, and that knot is gently pulling and tugging at a thousand other threads.’
‘Yet if we were to grasp the thread, it would snap,’ Mary said softly. ‘That’s quite an image.’
It was, chilling and yet illuminating. It reminded me of something I’d thought before, but couldn’t remember when. Twice now I had felt the hand of someone else behind these crimes, and yet perhaps it was my imagination. Perhaps I merely did not want to think that people could be that mad or that evil all by themselves.
‘It’s just an idea,’ I said, shaking myself. ‘It really doesn’t mean anything. Let’s go.’ I took Mary’s arm in mine, walking towards the park gate.
‘Go where?’ Mary said, thinking we were off on a grand adventure. Which, in a way, we were. We just didn’t know it yet.
‘Back home,’ I replied. ‘Back to 221b Baker Street.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book started in hospital. In May 2013 I was rushed into hospital with terrible stomach pains, vomiting and malnutrition, and was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. I had to stay in hospital for two weeks for treatment.
I wasn’t used to hospital. I don’t like sleeping in the same room as other people, I don’t like being ill in front of strangers (or friends either, really) and I don’t like staying inside all the time. I found the whole experience very difficult, and to deal with it, I asked my friend to bring my paper and pens – I was going to write my way out of this.
I had a lot of time to just lie there and think. I also had a lot of time to get to know the other women in the ward. Some were interesting, some had stories, and some were very annoying. Lying there, I started to think how a murder in a hospital would go practically unnoticed – after all, people are expected to die in hospitals, especially Victorian hospitals. But how would it be done? And who would do it?
I was still in the middle of writing The House at Baker Street at the time, but I didn’t work on that. I wanted to write about where I was, what I was seeing every day. This was a unique opportunity to see a scene and situation I hadn’t seen before. If I was stuck here, I was going to make the most of it.
A hospital ward is an enclosed environment, and one that is always overlooked. People were in and out, administering various medicines, closing curtains, always watching each other. A murder here would be a challenge (and thinking like that is why I’m a crime author).
So I wrote, and as I wrote, I recovered. I came home, and carried on writing, both The House at Baker Street and this book. Over the next few years, as I went in and out of hospital and had various treatments, I coped by escaping into the world of Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson. I had their puzzles to solve, whilst the doctors were trying to cure me.
The book was finally completed as I had what I hope is my final treatment for ulcerative colitis (an ileostomy and J-pouch, for the information of my fellow sufferers). Writing this was very cathartic. I hope you enjoy reading it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The second book turns out to be just as much hard work as the first! So, thanks are due to the following;
First, my agent Jane, for continuing faith and much-needed support.
My editor Catherine, who really knows her Sherlock Holmes.
Everyone at Pan Macmillan, who are so enthusiastic.
To all my friends, for putting up with my constant drifting away into daydreams when I’m supposed to be talking to them.
The St Bartholomew’s Hospital Museum. It’s a fantastic place, tiny yet crammed full of knowledge – and the most beautiful Hogarth paintings I’ve ever seen.
Arthur Conan Doyle himself, of course, for giving me Mary and Martha to play with.
And finally as always, the librarians, teachers and booksellers. They started this.
THE HOUSE AT BAKER STREET
Behind every detective stands a great woman . . .
When Sherlock Holmes turns down the case of persecuted Laura Shirley, Mrs Hudson – the landlady of Baker Street – and Mary Watson – the wife of Dr Watson – resolve to take on the investigation themselves. From the kitchen of 221b, the two women begin their inquiries and enlist the assistance of the Baker Street Irregulars and the infamous Irene Adler.
A trail of clues leads them to the darkest corners of Whitechapel, where the fearsome Ripper supposedly still stalks. They soon discover Laura Shirley is not the only woman at risk – the lives of many others are in danger too.
As Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson put together the pieces of an increasingly complex puzzle, the investigation becomes bigger than either of them could ever have imagined. Can they solve the case or are they just pawns in a much larger game?
Turn the page to read an extract from Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson’s first adventure . . .
FAREWELLS AND GREETINGS
April 1889, London
If you have read John Watson’s thrilling stories, and I am sure you have, you know me best as housekeeper and landlady to the Great Detective, Sherlock Holmes.
Such a short sentence to write, and yet, oh my, what a wealth of information is there. Such adventures, such stories, such people. And as for me – I did so much m
ore than bustle in and out with the tea. Although to be fair, I did bustle, and there was an awful lot of tea consumed by everyone. And I feel you should know John did make a few mistakes in his stories. He claimed artistic licence, though I feel it was faulty memory. But what people don’t know about me is that I had adventures of my own, with Mary Watson, and sometimes other friends and acquaintances, and the occasional enemy, of Mr Holmes. So now it’s time I told a few stories of my own . . .
Believe it or not, I was a young woman once. For the first nineteen years of my life, I was Miss Martha Grey: sweet, innocent, and ever so slightly bored. Then, one particularly dull evening, I met Hector Hudson, and I wasn’t bored any more. I loved him on sight. He was a soldier, so tall and handsome in his uniform, with dark blond hair, and a special smile just for me that made the lines around his grey-blue eyes wrinkle in a fascinating way. To my delight, he loved me on sight too. He proposed just a week later, and I said yes before he had even finished asking.
We were a love story come true, but unlike most love stories, it did not end with a happy marriage.
It ended with his death.
He was a soldier and we were at war. Six months after our marriage, he died alone, on a blood-soaked battlefield, in some place I had never heard of, leaving me only with his child growing inside me.
But he didn’t leave me destitute, like so many other poor widows of the war; Hector provided me with the rent from several properties he had owned in London, which were now mine. Including, of course, 221b Baker Street.
But I didn’t go to London then. I stayed in the country with my son. He grew strong and clever and adventurous. He would stride out in the morning and not return till tea, full of tales of what he had done and seen, his pockets stuffed with treasures that he laid on my lap with pride. I know I should have tried to keep him indoors, keep him at his lessons, but he would not be shut up. He would escape into the world, and I did not have the heart to stop him. He looked at me with his father’s eyes, full of wonder and joy, and I knew he would grow up to be a great explorer, or writer, or something thrilling and exciting.
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