by L M Jackson
‘At least you haven’t changed much, Georgie,’ she whispered.
George Phelps said nothing. He stayed quite still, a finger to his lips. After what seemed an age, they heard the sound of the policeman moving on.
‘He’s been dogging us all the way from Covent Garden,’ he muttered, mumbling a curse under his breath.
‘With good reason, I expect.’
‘Maybe,’ said Phelps. ‘I thought I’d lose him round the alleys.’
‘What was it this time?’
‘Some hotel work,’ he replied. ‘Though I don’t know how he got fly to it.’
‘What if he catches up with you?’
‘He won’t find a thing on me; I ain’t even done the job.’
‘Well, perhaps you had better be off, all the same,’ she suggested. ‘He might come back.’
‘Aye, he might at that,’ replied George Phelps.
Sarah Tanner said nothing.
‘Well, as you like,’ said Phelps, getting up from the booth and pocketing the two coins that still lay on the counter. ‘I’ll remember you to Her Majesty, anyhow.’
‘I’d rather you kept it dark, Georgie.’
‘Would you now? Well, I suppose it weren’t the best parting, now that I come to think about it. Still, you know me, darlin’,’ he replied with a wink. ‘I won’t say a word. Word of honour.’
The look upon Sarah Tanner’s face rather implied that she knew nothing of the sort. Nonetheless, George Phelps, with a rather satirical bow, proceeded to make his way to the door.
‘I’ll see you again, missus,’ he said with a grin, as he stood in the doorway. Then, out upon the street, he turned up his collar and walked quickly away.
Mrs. Tanner returned to her counter, with every intention of counting the day’s takings. But her mind was distracted and she continued to gaze out of the window – until her reverie was interrupted by an unexpected sight. For the burly figure of the policeman passed by the shop a second time, doubtless having completed a circuit round the back alley. It was not his presence that unnerved her, nor the grim determined look upon his face as he passed beneath the gas-light. Rather, it was the item he held, partially concealed in his hand, just visible above the curtain that covered the lower portion of the window. It was not the familiar wooden truncheon of the Metropolitan Police. She could see it clearly – the glint of a sharp metal blade.
Sarah Tanner tried to gather her thoughts. After a moment’s hestitation, she called out to Ralph Grundy – bidding him to mind the shop – grabbed her shawl from where it lay behind the counter, and hurried outside.
Leather Lane was all but empty. The only exception was a trio of convivial gentlemen, staggering out of the Bottle of Hay, the nearest public-house. Nonetheless, beyond them, she could just make out the policeman, a couple of hundred yards distant. Then the drunken men veered off, towards Saffron Hill, and the policeman took the opposite direction, turning into Baldwin’s Gardens.
Mrs. Tanner knew the road. The ‘Gardens’ were, in fact, a dingy, narrow side-street, quite barren of any flora – like most metropolitan thoroughfares which make historic claims to rusticity. She walked slowly to the junction, her face partly concealed by her shawl, and glanced warily round the corner. To her annoyance, there was nothing to be seen. For the gas-lights above the little row of nearby shops – long since closed – were not illuminated.
She resolved to press on, just a few steps further. And it was then that something drew her attention to a little alley on the right.
What was it?
Was it the choking, spluttering sound that suddenly assailed her ears?
Or the hint of movement in the darkness, the scratching hands, scraping in the dirt?
Both were terrible enough; quite sufficient to cause a chill to run down her spine. In truth, another woman might have screamed and fled.
And that woman – wise, sensible creature – would not have witnessed the death-throes of George Phelps, the bloody twists and turns of his guts spilling out onto the mud.
Nor would she have seen, in the distance, the sight of a blue-clad figure casting a wary glance in her direction, then disappearing into the darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
At first, Sarah Tanner felt sure that she was dreaming. For it seemed quite impossible that George Phelps’s ruined body lay before her. To her stunned senses – even as desperate half-formed sounds issued from the man’s throat – the scene resembled some strange piece of bloody theatre, staged for her particular benefit. But, at the same time, there was no doubting the evidence of her eyes. Nor could there be any doubt that George Phelps was dying.
George Phelps himself seemingly became aware of her presence and raised his head. His eyes silently pleaded; his hand reached out, grasping at thin air in short convulsive movements. But she found that she could only stand and watch, like a dreamer; passive; utterly helpless.
How long was it, before he died? She had not the slightest conception. It seemed an eternity. It was only the smell that finally woke her from her daze; it was like the scent of the slaughterhouse, the stench of the back-streets of Smithfield Market; it was the blood pooling at her feet. Instinctively, she stepped back.
She might cry for help, she thought to herself. She might cry ‘Murder!’ and raise the alarm.
But what then?
George Phelps was dead.
It was too late. What good would it do?
And it was the policeman that had killed him.
She turned it over in her mind.
The policeman?
It was Georgie’s fault, she assured herself – his bad luck. Mixed up in something he oughtn’t to be.
Murder.
It was a bad business – terrible – but not her business. Plain and simple.
Sarah Tanner made her decision. Quietly, cautiously, she turned round and retraced her steps back to Leather Lane.
She found that the door to the coffee-shop was locked, the gas-light turned off, and the shop’s rickety wooden shutters already slid into place. Ralph Grundy, however, kept sentry inside, his face just visible through the gap between the protective boards, his thin features pressed against the plate glass.
‘Thank you for locking up,’ she said, hurriedly, as he opened the door.
‘Them shutters are a blessed trial, for an old man on his own.’
‘Then you should have waited for me,’ she replied.
The old man shrugged and looked back at her. ‘Something up with your pal, was there, missus?’
‘Yes,’ she said, with only a slight hesitation. ‘He forgot his gloves.’
‘Oh, gloves, was it?’
Mrs. Tanner merely nodded.
‘Ah, well,’ said Ralph Grundy, buttoning his coat. ‘I’ll be off then.’
‘Good night.’
‘Night, missus.’
Ralph Grundy put on his hat and quit the shop. Sarah Tanner, meanwhile, locked the door behind the old man, though it was more through force of habit than any conscious decision. Then, just as she did every night, she took the oil-lamp that sat upon the counter, and carried it carefully up the back stairs to her bedroom above the shop. It was the privilege of the owner: a small room, overlooking the street. It contained a bed, dressing-table and washstand, all kept clean and tidy, a comfortable armchair beside the window, and a rather grand old wardrobe, only a little scratched here and there.
She sat upon the bed, unlaced her boots, and unbuttoned her dress. There was already a small fire burning in the hearth – a luxury she always carefully prepared a good hour before closing – and, as was her custom, she undressed with her back to the glowing coals, changing into her woollen night-gown.
But she knew in her heart that she would not sleep.
Morning crept stealthily over Leather Lane, a faint and smoky half-light, filtering through the murky metropolitan sky. And with the break of day came news of a terrible discovery in the region of Baldwin’s Gardens. The intelligence came neither from
the street-patterers, who daily gathered at either end of the market, armed with dubious ballad sheets of bygone murders, outrages and tragedies, nor from the penny papers, who would have to wait a full twenty-four hours for their opportunity; nor even from the Metropolitan Police, although they gave the matter their full attention. Rather it darted spontaneously here and there, communicated in quiet whispers and loud speculation, until at last it came to the notice of a certain respectable old matron, who cooked breakfasts, ‘full hot’, in a certain coffee-shop upon the corner of Leather Lane and Liquorpond Street. And she, in her turn, had no desire to keep the information to herself.
‘Murdered in cold blood,’ said Mrs. Hinchley in her most matter-of-fact tone, brutally cracking an egg on the rim of the frying-pan. ‘They found him off Baldwin’s Gardens not three hours ago.’
It was almost half-past seven in the morning. The kitchen of Mrs. Tanner’s Dining and Coffee Rooms, a rather dark and gloomy place at the best of times, seemed particularly dismal as Mrs. Hinchley made her grim pronouncement. Nothing, however, could dampen the curiosity of Ralph Grundy, who stood nearby, in the little corridor that led through to the shop, waiting to serve up the fruits of Mrs. Hinchley’s labours.
‘Quite certain are they?’ inquired Ralph.
‘Certain? I’ll say,’ continued Mrs. Hinchley, rapidly poking a fork into a pork chop, and depositing it upon the gridiron, warming to her theme as the meat began to sizzle. ‘Cut up something awful too. Proper gutted he was, too, like a bleedin’ mackerel.’
‘Gutted?’
‘And they reckon dogs had got to him, poor beggar. Margie Bladstow saw it, and she’ll swear on it. And now the Peelers are leaving him there ’til the inquest this arternoon. It ain’t Christian. Not from round here, neither; Margie would had know’d him if he were.’
Ralph Grundy nodded his head. Finding Mrs. Hinchley preoccupied with a second and third egg, he glanced back into the shop, where Sarah Tanner stood behind the counter.
‘The missus don’t look too clever, neither,’ he remarked.
‘Just!’ replied Mrs. Hinchley. ‘I said to her first thing, I said, “You’re sickenin’ for something, my gal. Mark my words. Dodd’s Pulmonic wafers. One in the mornin’ one at night. I swears by ’em.” Looked right through me. She’s too proud, that one.’
Ralph Grundy muttered his agreement and turned to look back at his employer for a second time. There was something wrong with her, that much was certain.
What did Mrs. Tanner say for herself? When asked – and Ralph Grundy did make the inquiry – she merely professed that she had not slept well. But that was not the entire truth: for she had not slept at all. She had, rather, lain awake in her bed and contemplated the scene she had witnessed in Baldwin’s Gardens. Nothing else had occupied her mind, from the moment the coals in the hearth dwindled into darkness, until the clock upon her mantelpiece chimed six. And the daylight brought no release; for, as soon as she began serving in the shop, the very first words she heard were rumours of an awful murder.
A murder!
Who could imagine such a thing? Sarah Tanner, for her part, feigned astonishment. And when a certain Joe Drummond, a coster, eating his breakfast, contended that the district had ‘sunk bleedin’ low’, she heartily agreed. When another man conjectured it ‘were most likely a foreigner’, she did not deny it. Indeed, she played along with every conjecture and theory, without contributing anything to the conversation herself. Thus, as the day progressed, no-one entertained the slightest suspicion that she might know a single detail about the circumstances of the tragedy.
The only possible exception was Ralph Grundy. For the waiter had noticed one small fact: that every time a policeman passed by the shop – and a good many did – Mrs. Tanner was inclined to glance rather anxiously in their direction.
In the event, however, the police did not favour Mrs. Tanner’s establishment with their presence. Moreover, if Sarah Tanner noticed Ralph Grundy’s attention, it was only upon the several occasions he came over to ask after her health. Thus, to all intents and purposes, Mrs. Tanner spent her day much as she had the day before: serving coffee and busying herself at the counter.
The only difference was that when the clock upon her bedroom mantel chimed midnight – by which time she had ushered Ralph Grundy out of the door, locked the shop, and retired – Sarah Tanner had come to a rather important decision.
In the solitude of her room, rather than putting on her night attire, she went to her wardrobe and selected her best silk gown. It was a fine article: the Paris fashion of the previous year, wholly unsuited to the humble proprietress of a mere coffee-shop.
But, strangely enough, it suited Mrs. Tanner rather nicely.
CHAPTER THREE
Sarah Tanner left her home in Leather Lane at a half-past midnight. She stepped hesitantly into the street, cloaked in a long, ordinary-looking brown shawl, which she had carefully arranged to almost completely conceal her dress. As she stood in the cold night air, she paused and assessed her appearance. The gas above the shop-front was already extinguished and only the keenest observer might have noticed the fine lace trimmings just visible beneath her woollen wrap. Nonetheless, she made a final effort to hide every trace of the gown, tugging at the shawl here and there, until she was quite contented. Then, at last, she set off, walking in the direction of Gray’s Inn Lane.
It was a swift progress, to Gray’s Inn, along Holborn to New Oxford Street, shunning the worst alleys of Seven Dials, past the towering chimney of Meux’s great brewery, all the time heading westwards. She did not falter for a moment, keeping her head slightly bowed, deliberately avoiding the gaze of the few nocturnal stragglers who hung about the streets. They were a motley collection: vagrants without money for even the lowest lodgings; unfortunates for whom the hours after midnight were hours of business; a mysterious few, like herself, whose motives could hardly be guessed by any passing stranger. But Sarah Tanner ignored them all; and everything about her own bearing, from her brisk gait to the expression upon her face, told the world that she would not countenance any delay. Consequently, no-one troubled her – neither man nor woman – nor even the solitary, rather bored policeman who stood on fixed point duty, at the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road.
Her destination was Regent Street. The object of her quest, however, was not the same broad, respectable thoroughfare that, in the hours of daylight, formed the capital’s chief commercial pleasure-ground. It was a more dubious street altogether. True, it looked quite identical: it contained the same grand shops, the same magnificent emporia of linen-drapers and milliners, which were the diurnal resort of the bon ton; its neighbours in nearby Mayfair were the same respectable neighbours. But it was Regent Street by night: where certain private houses opened their doors to guests; where dice and cards were the only form of entertainment; and where men and women mixed with an easy intimacy – an intimacy that would be quite unacceptable in decent society. And it was to one such town-house, a short distance from the Regent’s Circus, that Sarah Tanner repaired. To the passer-by, it must be said, the house’s front door gave every indication of respectability, from the solid brass knocker to its smart black paint. But Mrs. Tanner knew better.
She rapped gently upon the door and, in an instant, it opened a couple of inches, a metal chain snapping taut. There was no-one to be seen inside: merely a glimpse of a narrow, tastefully decorated hall, and a man’s voice.
‘Who is it?’
‘Don’t you know me, then?’ she replied.
‘No ladies without a gentleman.’
‘A strict rule is it?’ she said. ‘Well, I’d like to become a member.’
‘Who introduces you?’
‘I thought I didn’t need an introduction, Bert. Forgotten me already?’
There was a pause behind the door, and then the face of the inquisitor, a burly, bull-necked man, in a green liveried footman’s outfit, appeared in the gap between the door and its frame.
‘Damn me!’ he exclaimed.
‘Do I have to stand here all night?’ asked Sarah Tanner.
Open-mouthed, the footman freed the chain and ushered his unexpected guest into the hall. Mrs. Tanner, in her turn, unwrapped her shabby shawl and placed it discreetly beneath the nearby coat-stand.
‘You’re the last one I thought I’d see here again,’ said the footman, shaking his head, as if trying to solve an insoluble puzzle. ‘You got no brains in your head, gal?’
‘I’d just like a word with Her Majesty, Bert, that’s all,’ she replied firmly. ‘It’s important.’
‘That’s all? That’s all, is it? Don’t be a fool. She’ll swing for you!’
‘Still, if you don’t mind.’
The footman shook his head. ‘Here,’ he continued, taking up the shawl and holding it in his outstretched hand – a rather large, rough-looking hand for a footman – and gesturing towards the door, ‘you be a good gal, you get on your way. Then there’s no harm’s done.’
Sarah Tanner took the shawl and placed it back beneath the stand.
‘Please, Bert, you know me. Just tell her I’m here.’
The man frowned. Sarah Tanner touched his arm.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘I know Her, as well,’ muttered the footman. ‘I know what she’s like.’
‘As a favour, then.’
The footman mumbled something inaudible, but finally gave way, with an injunction that his visitor should ‘not shift a blessed inch’, whilst he went to make the inquiry. Mrs. Tanner agreed. Thus, she watched him as he carefully opened one of the doors that led off from the hall, and slipped quietly – for all his bulk – into the front parlour of the house. It was several minutes before he returned.
‘She’ll see you,’ he said, in a grudging tone.
‘You see, I told you she would.’
‘That ain’t the question, my gal,’ replied the footman. ‘The question is whether it’s a clever Christian what pays a social call on the lion.’