by Tessa Harris
“So I’m to say no one else was involved?”
McCullen nods with a smile. “You’re learning quick, laddie.”
“Yes, sir,” replies the detective sergeant. For the moment, he will simply have to suppress the doubts that have already begun to surface about the woman’s death.
CHAPTER 6
Saturday, December 22, 1888
CONSTANCE
Neither Flo nor me has had much sleep. We’re both worried about Cath. There’s seven women been slaughtered in White-chapel this year. Eight, if you count my own dear Miss Tindall. And now there’s a ninth. Of course, I’m praying it’s not Cath, but there’s been no word yet on who this latest victim is. The inquest opened yesterday at Poplar Town Hall. Mr. Wynne Baxter is the coroner. He’s the gent who was in charge of the inquests into the murders of Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman and Liz Stride, so he knows what he’s about, but he’s adjourned proceedings until the new year.
I wondered if we should go to the mortuary, but Flo told me we could get nabbed if the coppers recognize us and we might even end up doing three months’ hard labor in the clink. “Then what would Ma do?” she’d asked, putting on her teary-eyed act. Instead, she said she’d get her friend Sally Richardson, who grafts in Poplar, to ask around.
So that’s why we’re headed toward the West End and away from where the latest body was found, where I think we should be. We’re leaving Whitechapel behind for the day and looking out for richer pickings among the ladies and gents of the better-off districts of this teeming old metropolis. With it coming up to Christmas, the toffs have more money in their wallets than usual. They say the streets of London are paved with gold. Well, that’s not true. Everyone knows it, but the West End is paved with silver, all right. There’s more florins and crowns jangling about in swells’ pockets in Regent Street and Oxford Street than wives in the king of Persia’s harem. They’re too busy gawping at the fancy shop windows, dressed with their bells and red ribbons, or listening to the carolers, to notice anything else. So Flo will relieve them of just a little of it; it’s sort of like giving to charity, spreading festive cheer, only the first they’ll know of it is when they open their purses or look in their pockets to find their half crowns have gone to a more deserving home.
It’s the last Saturday before Christmas, so everyone’s out and about. We’re being carried along with the crowd as it flows toward Commercial Street. “This place is crawling with blues,” mumbles Flo. Her eyes are darting left and right. “The sooner we get out o’ here, the better.”
Just as we’re about to cross the road, a shout goes up. We both look behind us at the same time to see two coppers struggling with a ragged bloke, who’s spitting and cussing. We know they’re nabbing another one they think might be Jack. Last week, they took someone down the station just ’cos he had a peak on his cap, like a witness said. Old Bill is getting desperate, clutching at straws. We hurry on, plowing our way toward the omnibus stop, like a couple of gritty mastiffs, when Flo suddenly lightens up. She’s caught sight of her friend Sally Richardson, the one she was going to ask about Cath.
“Oi, Sal!” Flo shouts over the din.
Sally turns a freckled face toward the call. Flouncy like a pair of curtains in a tart’s boudoir, she is, in a bonnet with a sprig of holly in it. Flo lunges through the crowd and reaches out to take her elbow. She stops her outside the baker’s.
“Just the person I’m looking for!” yells Flo. Sal lets out a squeal when she realizes it’s her best friend and gives her a hug. It doesn’t take long before they both forget I’m there and my eyes start to wander. We’re in the lower half of Commercial Street, near St. Jude’s Church, and it brings back memories of Miss Tindall. Only a couple of months ago, I was trawling these parts looking for her after she went missing. Frantic I was, asking shopkeepers and hawkers and the like if they’d seen her. I was told she’d gone back to Oxford, that she’d left without saying good-bye, but I knew she wouldn’t do that; not to me. Turned out I was right. They buried her remains only a few days ago. I hope she’s at peace now. I fear I can’t be, knowing how she suffered. Every time I think of it, it’s like someone’s pressing on a fetid wound, it hurts me that much. So I try to hold my thoughts firm, lest they bring on angry tears. But here, in this place that stores so many painful memories, it’s hard not to. And just as I’m thinking I’ve blanked out her image, the strangest thing happens. Lo and behold, there she is again. Miss Tindall! She’s standing there, calm as you like, in broad daylight at the end of Fashion Street. It’s her. I know it is, even though her back’s to me. That’s her hat and she even’s got her trusty green brolly hooked over her arm.
“Miss Tindall!” I cry.
There are market stalls on the other side, spilling out from Petticoat Lane. Barrow boys are bawling and yelling and adding to the roar of the traffic. They’re selling bags and ribbons and umbrellas, and a sea of people is lapping all around her, but she’s not budging. She just stands there, looking calm and serene, as the cries and shouts whiz past her like artillery fire. Then she turns, slow like, and I see she’s holding something in her arms. She’s cradling a bundle of some sort, although I can’t make out what.
A quick glance to my left tells me Flo’s still gassing with Sal, so I take my life into my own hands and head off across the street toward her. I swerve in front of a hansom and the air turns blue with the driver’s hollering. Another cabbie joins in as I weave past his carriage, but just as I’m almost over, a wagon crosses my path. I have to lean back so I don’t get clocked and in an instant she’s gone. I screw up my eyes and look first left, then right, then left again. Miss Tindall’s nowhere to be seen. I scoot up Fashion Street, peering into the shops, then back down again, quick as I can. But it’s not quick enough. Blow me. She’s really gone. I’m whirling around like one of them dervishes in the Crimea when I hear Flo’s yell. She’s spotted me and she’s definitely not happy.
“What you playin’ at?” she squawks. She’s followed me across the road.
“It’s her,” I say. “I saw her.”
“Who?” She’s scowling at me. She knows very well who I mean.
“Miss Tindall!”
Flo shakes her head. “We’re not startin’ that funny business again!” She grabs me by the arm again. “You know she’s dead.”
“I tell you! I saw her,” I protest.
But she’s having none of it and she marches me along by her side like I’m a naughty nipper.
“Come on, Con. We’re late.” I wince at being called Con, but Flo’s in charge now. We’re trotting back down Commercial Street again. I glance back just one more time in the vain hope of proving I’m right, but just as I do, I spot a copper with his eyes locked onto me. A bent old hag in a head scarf is by his side.
“There,” she cries, lifting her arm and pointing at me. “That one!”
Flo looks daggers at me. “Scarper!” she yells. I panic. She goes left. I go right. It’s what we usually do when Old Bill’s onto us. Ofttimes we just nip down an alley, or hide in a doorway. It don’t take much to outwit a copper, but this time it’s different. My legs feel like they weigh a ton, like they’re stuck in thick mud, and I can’t move. I watch helplessly as Flo disappears round a corner, leaving me to the mercy of the approaching rozzer. “You!” he calls after me. It’s PC Tanner. He’s our regular down White’s Row, where we live, and the look in his eyes tells me I’m in big trouble. I quake in my boots, even though I’ve not helped Flo lift anything this morning. The bent old crone is catching up. “That’s ’er,” she huffs as she draws close.
“Me?” I wail. “I ain’t done nothing!”
My pounding heart is thundering in my ears as the copper grabs my arm and forces it behind my back.
“What the . . . ?” I feel the cold steel of the cuffs grip my wrists.
“Constance Piper,” says PC Tanner, all formal, “you’re under arrest!”
“What for?” says I, struggling vainly.
> A cluster of people has gathered round to watch. Handcuffs locked behind my back, the constable glowers at me. He’s a different bloke from the one who’s sweet on Flo.
“Don’t come the innocent with me,” he snarls.
“What for?” I ask once more as I feel my tears well up.
And then he looks at me from under his helmet and tells me straight.
“For the murder of a newborn child.”
Suddenly I see stars. In a heartbeat, the world blurs in front of me.
EMILY
I am not far away. Just across the road, in fact, watching events unfold as I’d planned. Had the child’s body been found abandoned on a rubbish tip or on the banks of the Thames, as is quite commonplace these days, then not many would have raised a brow. Few newspapers bother to report such findings anymore, eschewing the thorny subject of child cruelty for the more titillating gossip circulating in government or, better still, in the royal circle. An Act of Parliament to protect infant life was passed a few years ago after the shocking case of two “baby farmers” who murdered their charges. For a payment of five pounds, these women would take in babies whose mothers were unable to keep them and would neglect them so woefully that they only lingered for a few weeks in most cases. Oh, there was righteous outrage at first, as there usually is as long as such events remain at the forefront of our consciences, but then, of course, they slip out of our minds and are put to one side until the next calumny is exposed. At the moment, inquests into such infant deaths are deemed to be an irrelevance, and, more often than not, the verdict will be “found dead” and no inquiry is made as to by whose hand the child might have died.
It pains me to see Constance bundled away like that, cuffed by the police and shouted and jeered at by the growing crowd that thinks she has killed a babe. Desperate young women take desperate measures, including slaughtering their own, to survive. That is surely the crime the baying mob that now gathers thinks Constance has committed, but she will soon be able to prove her innocence.
She was not mistaken. She did see me carrying a paper parcel. I secreted it under the costermonger’s barrow, but she was the only one who knew I was there. She will have to endure another hour or two of discomfort before she is exonerated and set free. But by then, a train of events will have been set in motion that will save countless lives, as long as she is prepared to be guided by me.
CHAPTER 7
CONSTANCE
I’m not sure how I got here, but I’m in the local nick. I can’t see straight; there’s little stars tripping before my eyes and everyone is shouting and ranting around me. I suddenly think of Flo. I need her, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Then I remember. She scarpered off in the opposite direction as soon as Old Bill put the finger on me and now she’s left me to their tender mercies. PC Tanner’s face is still swimming in front of me and there’s another copper now, all gruff and meaty, peering at me. He’s sporting white muttonchop whiskers that are yellowed by tobacco smoke. I catch a whiff of him. Smells like a bonfire, he does.
“What’s all this then?” booms Whiskers, standing behind the front desk.
PC Tanner tugs at his blue tunic and then I hear him say it. “This here young woman’s accused of killing a baby, Sergeant Halfhide, sir.”
His words don’t register with me at first. It’s like he’s talking about someone else. He knows my name, so why don’t he say it?
Whiskers throws a look toward the station entrance, where there’s people trying to get in and there’s coppers trying to stop them. But they can’t quiet the jeers and the caterwauls and I’m beginning to panic. Then I do a stupid thing. I start to struggle and I dive for the door, but from out of nowhere, another two or three coppers are on me in a second and drag me back to the big desk. I lift up my bowed head, but it’s no use. The sudden surge of energy I felt has deserted me and I start to slide down the side of the counter again until a beefy copper tries to heave me onto my feet. I’m floppy as a rag doll, still I manage to bleat pathetically: “I didn’t do nuffink, I swear.”
“Let’s be ’avin’ her then,” barks Whiskers. All stern, he is, and the two coppers fix their arms under mine and heave me across the flagstones and through a door that leads to the cells.
Soon I find myself sat at a table in this little room. The hairy sergeant comes in and sits down opposite me. He leans forward and taps the charge sheet with his stubby yellow fingers.
“Infanticide,” he says. It’s a word I don’t know. I frown, so he repeats himself, only slower. “Infant-i-cide,” like I’m a kid at school. “Child murder.” Then he adds: “It’s a hangable offense.”
My heart’s in my mouth. I try and leap up. “I never . . .” But PC Tanner and his beefy mate tug me down. Whiskers gives one of his men a nod and sends him off and out of the room.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whine. “I ain’t killed a baby. I couldn’t kill a baby.” I feel tears running down my cheeks and I wipe them away with the back of my hand. I think of the bent hag with the head scarf who accused me. “It’s that old bunter’s word against mine,” I wail.
My pleas fall on deaf ears. “Yours was it? Or someone else’s?” Whiskers’ stare bores through me like a drill. It gets into my very core. I’m scared.
“No! No!” I’m shaking my head when PC Tanner comes back in again. This time, he’s holding a brown paper parcel, like the one I saw Miss Tindall carrying, and all of a sudden, the room’s filled with this pong. But it’s only when Whiskers folds back the wrappings that I realize what’s inside. I barely catch a glimpse of it, but that’s more than enough. It’s a sight no one should have to suffer. I gag at the stink that bursts into the air. It’s a baby. A dead baby wrapped in dirty cotton rags. I try and blink away the bulging eyes, the blue lips, and the little balled fists. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or girl, but it put up a fight. Yet the worst is to come. Around its tiny neck is a piece of flowery yellow ribbon tied and pulled tight. The little mite was strangled.
“God in heaven!” is all I can blurt.
My head’s still in my hands when I hear someone else come into the room. A sniff. Whoever it is knows the reek of death when they smell it. There’s the scraping of the chair as Whiskers stands to his feet sharpish. I look up and I’m that relieved to see a familiar face that I feel myself springing up from my seat.
“Constable Hawkins!” I cry.
EMILY
No wonder Constance is so relieved to encounter Thaddeus Hawkins. As a detective constable with K Division, he was present at the mortuary when Pauline Beaufroy identified my torso. I know the memory of it still flashes into Constance’s mind every day. He was kind to her in those most trying circumstances and, what’s more, he had faith in her. He attended my memorial service, too. I saw him pay his respects. He was not so important or so pompous as to forget that at the end of the day, when we take off our clothes and our tongues are at rest, we’re all Adam’s offspring. We have the same hopes and fears; and we all bleed. At heart, he’s a good man.
I think he’s taken more trouble with his dress than when he was stationed at the King Street Police Station: The neatly tied cravat, the waistcoat, and is that the sheen of oil on his pate? Perhaps that is because he has just been promoted. There’s a light in his eyes, too. He thinks he recognizes Constance, although he remains uncertain.
The hirsute sergeant catches the glimmer in the young man’s eyes. “She’s already known to you?” No doubt he’s eager to pounce like a cat on a mouse on any criminal record Constance may have.
I am relieved to see the detective nod. “We have met before.” It’s not a question, but I know he still can’t quite place her. Yet I also know Constance will prompt him.
“I was with Miss Beaufroy, at the mortuary, sir.” From his expression, he still needs more, so I can tell she has to force herself to say it. “The torso, sir.”
“Miss Piper. Yes?”
It is done. The memory floods back into the detective’s mind.
I will still need to explain everything to Constance, but she has started well.
CONSTANCE
I’m that thankful. I didn’t think he’d recognize me, let alone remember my name, but then, of course, he saw me as Miss Beaufroy’s companion—all dressed up like a lady—not what I really am. Or was. The truth is, I’m so confused after what’s happened, I really don’t know myself. Am I a flower girl or a lady?
“Constable Hawkins,” I reply. I can’t think of anything else to say. He’s looking at me all curious, like he’s not a clue why I’m here. He pulls out the chair and sits down at the table.
“It’s Detective Sergeant Hawkins to you,” snarls Whiskers. I’m not surprised that he’s climbed the ladder, but I’m the one who gave him a leg up—me and Miss Tindall, of course. If it wasn’t for us, the Whitehall Mystery, as the papers called it, would remain unsolved. I’m hoping he appreciates that.
“The charge,” says Whiskers, slipping a sheet of paper under Detective Sergeant Hawkins’s nose.
He reads it, then shoots me a horrified look. “Infanticide? What is the meaning of this, Miss Piper?”
“A mistake!” I manage to cough out before Whiskers cuts me off.
“Seen trying to rid herself of that parcel.” His nostrils flare in disgust as he nods at the brown paper package, which has been placed on a smaller table a few feet away. “She’s all yours, Hawkins,” Whiskers adds as he heads for the door.
“Thank you, Sergeant Halfhide,” the detective calls after him, although he’s still keeping his bewildered gaze on me. “You may leave us, too, Constable,” he tells PC Tanner, adding: “And perhaps you’d be so good as to arrange for that to be taken to the mortuary for examination.” He switches to the reeking parcel.