by Carol Hedges
The crossing-sweeper is definitely lost. His pitch upon Westminster Bridge has been empty for days. His regular clients have had to make their way, at great personal inconvenience, across the icy, muck-encrusted street without his invaluable assistance. One or two have even gone so far as to ask the coffee-stall holders if they know what has happened to the boy. Because really, it is a most unsatisfactory situation.
The coffee-stall holders shrug their shoulders, shake their heads sadly and say they don't know nothing. He did mention the building he lodged in had been recently flattened to make way for the railway. So that means he'll be sleeping rough. And the night-time temperature has dropped way below freezing. And he had that nasty cough, didn't he ... never mind.
No doubt they’ll find the body, give it a pauper’s funeral. Sad, but it happens all the time. Someone else’ll take over his pitch soon enough. Meanwhile, how about a cuppa lovely hot coffee? Slice of bread-and-butter to go with it? Have a good day, sir. At least we’ll still be here on your way home. You can be sure about that.
****
But can you really be sure about anything in this world of shifting reality? Bob Miller (who looks after the carriage-and riding-horses at a livery stable just off the Finchley Road) certainly thinks you can. He is telling his wife Rose (who looks after Bob) about the happenings of his day.
Supper has been eaten, and the cloth cleared. Now Bob is sitting back in his easy chair, with his feet on the fender and a pipe on the go, while Rose clatters the pots and pans.
“Green Ginger came back lame,” Bob remarks. “Poor beast had cast a shoe. You'd think that stupid arsehole of a coachman would've noticed, but no. ‘I am Lord Mauleverer’s driver, not his farrier’ he says to me, all haughty like, when I pointed it out. So I says to him, ‘Well, if you take out that poor beast again, I’ll make it my business to tell Lord Mauleverer. Then you’ll be his ex-driver.’ Didn’t like that, I can tell you.”
Bob Miller takes a good pull at his pipe, and chuckles at the recollection. The relationship between carriage staff and stable staff is always fraught with animosity, the former believing themselves to be vastly superior to the latter.
“Oh – and we might be setting on a new stable boy. Young lad turned up out of the blue first thing, said he was looking for work. Well, normally, I’d have sent him packing with a box round the ears for his cheek, but what with Tom Snape off with a fever, and that new family boarding four carriage horses and a riding hack, we're breaking our backs just to keep on top of the work.
“So I thought to meself, right, young feller, let’s see if you’re cut out for stable work. I gave him a broom and a shovel, and told him to muck out one of the boxes. The one where that horse has had a bad stomach upset. Shit up to your hoxters – if you’ll excuse my language. Stank to high heaven too. We’d all been avoiding it. That’ll soon sort you out, me laddo, I thought. You’ll be off down the road in no time at all.
“But blow me down, if he didn’t have the place all swept clean and tidy in a jiffy. Never seen anyone handle a broom like that. And then he says to me: ‘You want to mix more bran in that nag’s mash, gov’nor. It’ll settle her guts.’ Could have knocked me down with a feather. So I says to him: ‘Well, you certainly know about horses,’ and he says to me, ‘I should do, I’ve worked with them all my life.’”
Bob Miller grins. He leans back and folds his arms behind his head.
“You want to be careful, Bob,” Rose says, wiping her wet arms on the towel. “You shouldn’t let yourself be taken advantage of. After all, who is this boy? Maybe he’s part of a gang or summat. Them horses is valuable, ain’t they.”
Bob gives her an affectionate women-what-do-they-know glance.
“Ah love, I got a feeling for people, you know that. I can tell a good’un from a bad’un. And the lad’s fine. Honest blue eyes. Looked me straight in the face, no flinching. William, that was his name. Just moved into the area, he said. So I said to him: ‘William, my lad, you be here bright and early first thing in the morning as well, and maybe we’ll see about taking you on.’”
And bright and early first thing in the morning here is young William, in a pair of clean corduroy trousers, a warm jacket, muffler, stout boots and a tweed cloth cap that is slightly too big for him. He leans against the harness-room door, sucking a straw contentedly.
“Mornin’ gov’nor,” he greets the ostler. “Cold ’un, innit?”
And as the day progresses, it looks as if Bob Miller is right. William is indeed a good ’un. Without a word of complaint, he runs errands, mucks out stables, swills down the yard, and polishes tack.
Whenever he gets a rare break between jobs, he chats to the other grooms, asking questions about the horses and their owners. A bright lad with a bright future, Bob Miller thinks to himself. Young William could be a real asset to the yard, if he settles to it.
Then just before the dinner hour, something else happens. An unexpected visitor arrives. A redheaded young woman, snugly dressed against the cold, walks bold as brass into the yard, and asks to see William Smith.
Slightly taken aback by her unexpected appearance, and by her confident manner, Bob makes a clumsy remark about young Will being a bit young for sweethearts, but is informed crisply by the visitor that she is in fact not his sweetheart, but his sister.
Bob locates William, and conveys the news of her arrival.
Brother and sister greet each other most affectionately. Bob and some of the grooms watch them. It is always interesting to observe other people’s nearest and dearest. And it provides a welcome break from their labour.
“This is my sister wot I lives with,” William announces proudly.
“I have brought you a pie, William,” the sister says, in a voice that is, oddly, several classes higher than her brother’s. “Veal and ham. I hope that is satisfactory.”
“Veal and ’am is good, sis,” William nods.
“Have you come far, miss?” Bob inquires.
The sister gives him a brief half-smile.
“Not too far, thank you.”
Bob’s glance moves from brother to sister.
“Well, anybody can see you’re related,” he says happily.
“They can?” The sister’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Ho yes indeed! Def’nite family resemblance.”
He claps young William round the shoulder in a friendly way.
“You go and ’ave your pie with your sister, young Will. You’ve earned your break.”
Bob watches them walk out of the yard, side by side. It is nice to see such a devoted family. Warms the cockles of your heart. He thinks of Rose, and the dinner she is probably preparing for him right now. Oh yes, you can’t beat family. Family is worth more than all the silver, gold and precious stones in the world. It is indeed.
****
But only where there is also love. And there is precious little of that nowadays in the Thorpe household, where the prospective nuptial plans of Isabella Thorpe continue to run on apace, though seemingly with very little input from the future bride herself. The union of the house of Thorpe to the house of Osborne seems to be bypassing her altogether.
Not that her Mama has noticed, for she is far too busy broadcasting the happy tidings to all and sundry, fussing over venues, drawing up guest lists, and trying to outdo the Honourable Mrs Osborne in veiled unpleasanteries.
Things cannot go on like this.
And indeed, they don't.
One icy night, as darkness settles on the topmost ridges of the Heath, and the view of the city has sunk into a black gulf, a thin female figure makes her solitary way along the deserted and unlit high road. Isabella Thorpe has reached breaking point, and is finally initiating an exit strategy.
It is a downhill journey from the heights of Hampstead to the streets of the city below. Downhill geographically, symbolically, and in so many other ways too, for London is not a safe place for a physically-frail and emotionally naïve young lady out on her own. Especially at
night. Will Isabella make it safely to her destination? Or will she be sucked into the teeming, vice-ridden metropolis, never to be seen again? Who knows?
Maybe the answer will become apparent at the next spring exhibition to be held at the Royal Academy, where visitors are going to be shocked by a painting entitled The Princess’s Dream by the (up until then) little-known Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Papperdelli. The picture depicts a young woman gazing with rapt delight out of a window at some peacocks and pomegranate trees. She holds a single lily stem in one hand. It is a very pretty picturesque scene.
The scandal however, lies in the languorous curve of the woman's parted mouth, the vacant, half-closed, pebble-grey eyes, the lock of curled chestnut hair straying wantonly across her bare shoulder, and the faint half-flush on her cheek, all suggesting that something other than peacocks and pomegranates has recently been giving her pleasure.
When questioned, Papperdelli will insist that the painting came out of his imagination. Shortly after the exhibition ends, he will quit number 17 Red Lion Square for the even less salubrious artistic quarter of Paris. He will be accompanied by a pale young woman with chestnut ringlets, who is not his wife.
The Princess’s Dream is going to be bought by a rich Hampstead businessman who will add it to his personal art collection and hang it in his private study. Sometimes his wife, who has taken to wearing full mourning, will be found there, staring at it with a slightly puzzled expression on her face.
****
But all this is yet to be. Returning to the present, Detective Inspector Stride sits in his office finishing the last sentence of his report. He places a triumphant full stop at the end, then lays down his pen with a satisfied sigh. There had been dark moments in this investigation when he hadn’t been sure exactly where he was going, although he knew he was going somewhere. And now he has arrived. The case is closed. A knock at the door admits Jack Cully, carrying a piece of paper.
“The police surgeon’s report on the body has just arrived.”
“Excellent timing, Jack. I’ve just finished mine.”
Stride takes the report, adds it to the back of his, and straightens all the pieces of paper together. He glances up.
“Well, we did it. We finally recovered the Meadows emeralds.”
“Yes sir.”
“Which have now been returned to their grateful owners. And we discovered the real identity of that so-called ‘gigantic hound’.”
Stride pauses, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Who’d have thought it – a werewolf! Here in London in 1860. Attending parties, mixing with high society. Robbing, and killing innocent citizenry. It beggars belief! No wonder Herbert King and the poor Snellgrove maid were terrified out of their wits. The sight of that ... thing ... would be enough to scare the stoutest of hearts.”
“Indeed,” Cully murmurs. The memory of what he saw impaled on those railings is still giving him nightmares.
“I thought Miss King received the news very bravely, in the circumstances,” he observes.
“She did, Jack. Most impressive behaviour in a young woman. I had thought she might have a fit of the vapours or ... whatever it is young women have.”
A fleeting vision of Josephine King rises before Stride’s eyes, standing utterly still, her back ramrod-straight, her eyes fixed upon some point on the far wall. She had not shown a flicker of emotion when he and Cully had called to inform her that her uncle’s murderer had finally been found, but due to certain circumstances beyond their control (and barely within their comprehension), the individual concerned would not be standing trial.
Instead, she had merely thanked them politely for bringing her the news. Then, after an awkward silence in which she did not faint dead away on the hearthrug, she had rung for the maidservant (a different girl from the one they had seen on previous visits), who had shown them out into the street.
Stride gestures towards a pile of morning newspapers.
“Have you seen the papers today? The bloody hacks love us. Even Dandy Dick thinks we smell of roses.”
He shows Cully a copy of the Inquirer. The huge banner headline reads:
DARING DETECTIVES CATCH CRIMINAL COUNTESS!!
“What a shame that the editor has only one front page,” Cully observes drily.
Stride clips the two reports together with a flourish.
“There. Done and dusted. I’ll just get someone to run this across to the Home Office, and that’ll finally be an end to the whole affair.”
Jack Cully shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other, then clears his throat. “Ah ... perhaps not quite.”
Stride glances up.
“What do you mean?”
Cully feels around inside his pocket, and pulls out something, which he sets carefully down upon the desk.
Stride’s eyes widen.
“My God! Is that what I think it is?”
Cully nods.
“A bloody great diamond. Look at the size of it!” Stride breathes in wonderment. “Where on earth did that come from?”
“It was lodged in her ... its throat. The surgeon says that if the fall hadn’t killed her, this would. It was completely blocking her windpipe.”
“Well, well,” Stride muses. “What a beauty. It must be worth a fortune.”
The diamond glints and sparkles in the dim office light.
“What are we going to do with it?” Cully asks. “It might have belonged to her ... it, or it might not. Either way, we can’t very well place an advert in the papers asking the rightful owner or anybody who has information about it to come forward. We’d have every Tom, Dick and Sarah in London beating a path to our door claiming it was theirs.”
Stride stares thoughtfully at the diamond.
“Who knows about this?”
“You, me and the police surgeon.”
Stride scratches his head with the end of the pen.
“Right,” he says slowly. “Leave it with me, Jack. I'll deal with it.”
“You will? How will you?”
“In due course,” Stride says obliquely. “Oh – and I wouldn’t go mentioning this to anybody outside this office. As you say: we don’t want word getting out.”
Cully regards him speculatively, but Stride refuses to be drawn. He fiddles with the report and rearranges things on the desk, until eventually Cully gets fed up of waiting to be enlightened, and takes himself off to find a welcome mug of tea.
As soon as he has gone, Stride moves swiftly. He unclips the police surgeon’s report and slides it under his blotter. Then he places his own report in an envelope, which he addresses to the Home Secretary. He gets up and reaches for his coat and hat. Just before leaving the office, he slips the diamond, and the Inquirer into his inside pocket.
****
Robert Garrard of R & S Garrard & Co, Royal and Crown Jewellers, has closed the shutters of his Panton Street shop. He has locked the shop door, and drawn down the blind to keep the passing world away. He has given the staff a half-holiday. Now he sits in the deserted workroom, waiting for the waves of dizziness to pass over him.
He still cannot fathom how it occurred. The shop was busy. He remembers that. It is always busy in the run-up to Christmas. People like to buy expensive jewellery for their nearest and dearest. Or maybe just for their dearest, who can say. Whatever, the shop was busy, and at some point, a small newspaper-wrapped parcel was placed, or left, on the counter.
He remembers the last time he was this close to the jewel. The feeling of breathlessness, as if all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. The rising desire to scream with delight. He did not think he would ever feel the same way again. He did not dream that he would see it once more. And now it is as if a fault in time has opened, and the diamond has dropped through into his lap.
Garrard grips his hands together so tightly that his knuckles go bone-blue white, and his nails form red crescents in the palms. Of course, he knows that the diamond is technically not his: it belongs to the
young woman with red hair, but he does not know who she is, or where she lives. If, indeed she still lives. People move on. Accidents happen.
So, by default, he reasons to himself as his eyes devour its radiant perfection, the diamond has left her and has now come to him. For a while longer he sits and worships. But he is above all a man of business. A stone of this magnificence cannot be wasted. It is a jewel fit for a queen. And so, it is to a queen that it must be offered.
Thus a few days later, Robert Garrard, wearing his best black suit, follows a footman along a rather threadbare carpet towards the private quarters of the most important and powerful woman in the kingdom, nay in the whole world, mentally noting as he goes that despite her global importance, her palace still smells of sewage.
He is shown into her private sitting-room, a place stuffed with sofas and chairs and writing-desks. The walls are full of paintings of horses, family pets and children, and, despite modern advances, the room is still being lit by candles.
Garrard has met Victoria on many occasions, but once again as he bows low, he is struck by how this woman, who rules over nearly a quarter of the earth, looks just like a child in a woman's dress.
She is so tiny, and there is a twist in her top lip, like a kind of deformity. She has china-blue eyes, heavy-lidded and protuberant. Diamonds wink and glitter upon her neck, in her shell-small ears. Rings adorn every finger, and both thumbs. He knows that she loves fine jewellery almost as much as he does.
“Mr Garrard. You have brought something special to show me?”
Her voice is beautiful. Low and bell-sweet, like that of a singer. The voice of a queen. He offers her a velvet bag, corded at the top. She takes it and opens it up eagerly, like a little girl on her birthday. Next minute, the diamond sits in her hand, winking up at her.
“Oh, a fine diamond, Mr Garrard! Very fine indeed. How did you come by it?”
He tells a tale. A French émigré, impoverished, washed up in London and in desperate circumstances came into his shop one day. Victoria listens eagerly. She has a child's delight in stories.