by Death
Whichever it was, Mr Herring had certainly conversed with Mr Reed at the party. He had lied.
It was beginning to grow dark. I couldn’t make my coffee last any longer; and I didn’t need another. There was a pie cart out on the street, and the braziers were being lit. I wrapped my cloak tightly across my shoulders, left the coffee house and bought a mutton pie. The pastry was greasy, but the meat tasted good. I licked the juice from my fingers and scowled at the bath house doorway.
They were still inside. There was only one credible explanation for why that would be. Here I was, wanting to be home and comfortable, rather than standing on a street corner, and Charles was inside warming his hands on some poxed piece of flesh who would be pretending to be a water nymph. What was worse, every now and then, a gentleman would approach me, some furtive, some bold, and ask for my price. I kept shaking them away, insisting that I wasn’t looking for business – or that they couldn’t afford me – all the while trying not to let anyone resembling Mr Beech pass my attention.
Another hour passed, and the tedium was turning into annoyance. I was waiting no longer; it was beneath my dignity. I marched to the door and stood, quietly raging, at the reception. The man in the red turban raised an eyebrow when I enquired after Mr Stanford and Mr Herring. He looked at a surprisingly neat list of the day’s visitors, marred only by a few splodges and freckles of ink, and moved his finger down the names. He tapped the paper.
‘Here we are, Mr Stanford – who arrived earlier, and Mr Herring. They used their own names.’
Of course, not everyone would.
I sighed, exasperated.
‘And where can I find them, please? Where do I go?’
He looked at me, confused.
‘I have no idea. You would know that, perhaps?’
The man was an idiot.
‘How could I possibly know? I’ve never been here. Where are they now, which room? Where do I go?’
I saw the comprehension in his eyes. He began nodding. I nodded back, to coax him into revealing their whereabouts in this grimy establishment.
He looked back down at the list and tapped it once more where there were more ink splatters.
‘See here. This tells me that they both left two hours ago.’
‘Left?’ How was that possible? I hadn’t taken my eye off the entrance for a moment. ‘They have not left this place at all. I have been watching the door for more than two hours.’
That must have sounded rather odd. He started to cackle. The cackle turned into a belly laugh and in a matter of seconds he was wiping tears from his eyes while I stood, almost blind with fury.
‘What’s so funny?’ I stamped my foot.
‘Ah, just that you have been waiting all this time by the door for your lover and his friend and they left by the other door!’
‘What?’
‘We have a door at the back. Come, come in and I’ll show you.’ He was still laughing.
I followed him through a dimly lit passage way towards a dank room. I could hear splashes and giggles. From large wooden bath tubs, naked men and women watched us, briefly interrupting their pleasures among the rose petals to wonder at a fully clothed woman striding angrily behind the doorman. At the far end of the room, another passageway, leading back to another chamber, where gentlemen customers had left their clothes in neat piles.
Another passage took us out of there and on to the street. They had left from this door and forgotten all about me. For all I knew, Charles, the heartless swine, had taken a woman from here back to his lodgings. She would be pink and warm, not cold and angry, like me.
I nodded politely to the man and thanked him for his time.
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It has been very entertaining.’
I ground my teeth. I was about to leave when something occurred to me.
‘Has Mr Beech been here this afternoon?’
He laughed again, his rotten stumps of teeth mocking me, and carried on chuckling to himself as he went back inside. I stood, like a fool, on the street, knowing that I had failed. There was nothing to do but walk home.
Chapter Forty-one
They were lighting braziers outside the taverns along the streets. I was in dire need of good food, warmth and cheering company at the end of what had been a dismal and fruitless day. I had left Mrs Farley’s money – much of it earned by me – in the hands of a fake Turk with bad teeth and a greasy turban. I hadn’t found Mr Beech. I had drunk too much coffee and I was shaking; whether from the coffee, the chilly breeze or my fury at a wasted day, I couldn’t tell. I made my way to the White Horse. To rid myself of the filthy temper, I began to imagine that I could smell Anne Bardwell’s mutton stew – and Harry Bardwell’s tobacco as he embraced me like a long-lost cousin – when I saw something to make me stop abruptly. I pressed my back against a wall, trying to be invisible as I spied.
Ahead of me stood Tommy Bridgewater. I was certain it was him. The collar of his coat was turned up, but his head was bare. His face was serious, dimly lit by the light from a window. He was rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, his hat held in the other. There was another man with him, his back towards me, who looked to be explaining something in detail. He jabbed a finger at Tommy, as if to make a point. Tommy stiffened and then nodded. The other man was smaller, older, I thought, given that he had a slight stoop. I couldn’t see much of him except an outline of his shape, black against the shadows of the street. He swept past Tommy, who turned and trailed after him.
I decided to follow.
They turned left, taking me further away from the White Horse, right and then left again down a narrow passageway. It was so deserted that I could almost hear my own heart thumping. We were behind a row of houses in a part of town that I wouldn’t choose to walk in, and there was no one who would hear me, or care, if I screamed. Screams were probably common around here. The walls of the passage were high and black and the ground underfoot squelched in a rank and sordid way; even if I had light, I wouldn’t want to see what I was walking in. I pulled my cloak to my nose, looking ahead to where the two men had gone, but all the time wanting to turn and run. This was the sort of passage where a woman like me could meet her end. I had no knife, no protection.
A small light bobbed about in the gloom. A third man had joined from the other end of the passage. The pale glow of a lamp lit their heads. They had stopped underneath a window ledge and I saw Tommy pointing up at it. He took the lamp from the other man while the stooping man bent down a little, making a step with his hands. The newcomer, relieved of his lantern, levered himself up to the window and scrambled inside.
They were robbing a house. Tommy Bridgewater was, indeed, a thief. Never mind Joshua Winchcombe, it was Tommy who was involved with Swann’s men. Oh God, poor Amelia. This would kill her.
I stepped back and kicked something over. It sounded like a bottle; I couldn’t see in the dark. It clinked against a wall; a loud sound in a near-silent place. The lamp ahead was immediately extinguished. I ran back, flailing over the slippery ground in my insubstantial shoes, until I left the passage, turned into a street, and then another, not knowing where I was heading. I stopped running only when I reached a pavement that was full of people and brightly lit with fires.
I glanced behind me, still breathing hard. No one was following me. My shoes were in tatters. And covered in shit.
It was only when I looked up that the flood of relief overwhelmed me. Compton Street. The White Horse was just up ahead. I laughed aloud, drawing a few glances from passers-by, then staggered slowly and heaved myself against the tavern door, nearly falling into the arms of Harry Bardwell who, just as I had imagined, reeked of tobacco.
‘Lizzie! My favourite lady of the night!’
‘Mr Bardwell!’ I gasped as I clung to him. His expression changed immediately, and he helped me to a table near the fire.
‘What’s happened to you, girl? You been attacked?’ Harry was solidly protective of his regulars.
; I shook my head.
‘I’m fine. Not injured in any way. Well, except for my shoes.’
I pointed to the foul items on my feet. Harry recoiled slightly.
‘Holy Mary, where have you been? Wading in the Thames?’
I shrugged. I might as well have been, given the state of them.
‘Food, Harry. I need food. Lots of it. And strong beer, please.’
He sent a boy over quickly with a thick stew and bread and I ate, barely looking up.
The White Horse grew busier as the evening drew on, but I wasn’t looking for work and flicked away a few culls who tried to approach me. The beer had calmed me a little and, with food in my belly I began to feel nearly myself once more and eased back into my seat, watching people.
There was a musician in the corner, failing to impress a pair of young women with his mandolin playing. He was singing an old familiar ballad – for once, not about John Swann – a tale of hopeless love between a sailor and a mermaid. He wasn’t bad at all, but they were unmoved by his playing, most probably because, although he was young, he was odd-looking, with pale eyes, pock-marked skin and bright red hair. The poor man gave up, while they twittered and fawned over a grander gentleman in a richly-decorated waistcoat. The young musician’s countenance fell for a moment and then, with an air of theatricality, he snatched up the older man’s hat and put it on his head, hiding his hair. He wrapped a thick shawl across his shoulders and pulled it up to his nose, giving him the appearance of a rogue. He took up his instrument again and this time began something more light-hearted. A teasing song about the arousing pleasures of spring.
Now the girls played along, amused by the costume, joining in the words of the chorus and encouraging the older man to sing with them.
Simple things: a hat, a shawl and a witty song, and the red-haired mandolin player was the centre of it all, with two girls hanging on his performance. At the end, they clapped and laughed and pressed some coins into his hand. The older man took back his hat, but bought the musician a beer, and encouraged him to play on, slipping some coin his way.
How foolish we are. How quick to judge a person on their appearance and aspect, when the reality of who and what they are might be so different.
Tommy Bridgewater, for instance. A decent sort of young man, I had thought, who loved sweet innocent Amelia and followed her to Berwick Street. I had assumed he was trying to find honest work to keep them, when all the time he had been out burgling houses with a clutch of thieves, abandoning her to her fate. Had I got it wrong? Had he killed Mr Reed after all? Was he, as Mr Groves had hinted, ‘a servant gone bad’? After all, on the night of the party, Reed had recognised him, laughed that he knew who Tommy really was. Had Mr Reed seen what I had failed to see: a dishonest man masquerading as an honest one? Was that why Reed had died?
Chapter Forty-two
It was Sunday, and the morning was full of bells. The church towers around London rang in different pitches and at different times, meaning one long discordant peal ran from nine until eleven, harassing the population to worship.
I tried not go to church, as a general rule. I think I feared that I would bump into my father: it was unlikely, but enough to make me wary of going. In any case, sermons, when they were not dull and long-winded, served only to remind me of him, charging me with wilfulness and harlotry with all the authority of the Almighty himself.
It was another of Ma’s oddities that, in a bid for respectability, she attended St Anne’s for the morning service almost every Sunday. We, as her friends and tenants, were expected to join her. This week, however, Polly and Lucy had spent the night elsewhere, and I had decided that attending a funeral had meant I had been to church already. Ma had gone out with Emily and Sarah. Sydney had been dragged along too, still in disgrace and in need of repentance, as far as Ma was concerned.
Ma went to show to everyone that she was an independent woman of business, mistress of a household, and a pious Christian. Emily went to secure her arrangement with the curate, a strange scrap of a man who visited her on Sunday afternoons to be punished for his sins.
I walked over to Marylebone, to catch a glimpse of fields and find some fresher air. I needed to breathe. Mr Reed had been right about the spate of house-building. Even out here, fine new properties were going up. London was a pit, sucking in more of the rogues and fortune-hunters who arrived every week. But the city simply gobbled them up and quietly expanded its girth. Everyone who lived in the belly of the city was on the make; everyone was looking to do better than their neighbours. Mostly that meant moving out – to find better neighbours.
Along the journey to fortune, though, many others got lost, trampled in the scramble. The streets were full of people who hadn’t managed to survive in this grasping world; who had been conned, tricked, left out. They were the ones sinking into the mire of oblivion that the gin shops provided, sleeping out under carts or girls like Sallie, selling themselves just to eat.
Out here, in the optimism of a spring morning, with the bells ringing and new houses being built, London looked like a splendid city; a bright, golden, vibrant city. But a few streets away there was enough grime and chaos to swallow it all. And I stood in the breach: for now, I was one of the lucky ones, but all the while I was acutely aware that my future was precarious. My life could descend into Sallie’s in the blink of an eye, just as surely as a fortune could be lost on a throw of the dice.
I did not know what to do about Tommy Bridgewater. I had seen him break into a house. I could confront him next time I saw him – which would be stupid and dangerous – or I could share what I had seen with the authorities. Or I could do nothing. It was a fair assumption that he would be caught eventually. Perhaps then, his involvement with Mr Reed’s death would come out. All that I could do was lend support to Amelia when that day came. Although, how I would ever get my money back when Tommy was caught and hanged, I had no idea.
I turned back for home.
Chapter Forty-three
I knew something was wrong as soon as I stepped through the door. Sydney was still at church with Ma – no doubt keen to show himself as respectable as well as loyal for a while – so Meg was at the door. She grabbed at me as soon as I entered, panic in her face.
‘I couldn’t stop them, miss, I couldn’t. They just pushed themselves in and went up to your room.’
‘What? Who is in my room?’ I thundered up the stairs, without bothering to hear the reply. I should have turned around and left the house. Instead, I reached the door of my room to find Jack Grimshaw and the tall man I’d seen at Bow Street rifling through my wardrobe, throwing hats on to the bed and pulling open drawers. The shriek left my mouth before I could stop it.
‘What in the name of heaven are you doing? How dare you come in here without my permission!’
The two men straightened up from their business.
‘We dare, Miss Hardwicke, because we heard that you were in possession of a new gold watch and a purse full of money. Mr Reed’s money, that is.’ Grimshaw snarled at me like a vicious dog. I barked back.
‘What? Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Not so ridiculous now we’re here, is it Snowy?’ Grimshaw stood with a look of triumph on his face and pulled a small blue velvet pouch and a watch out of his pocket. He swung the watch to and fro at ‘Snowy’, who laughed. A wave of panic hit me.
‘Where did you find those things?’
Grimshaw gestured at the bed. ‘Under your pillow, as well you know.’ He spat on the floor. ‘Typical whore, sleeping with your true love. I’ve never known one who didn’t care more for gold than anything else.’
‘You did not find that watch under my pillow. Nor the purse. There was nothing there.’ There was certainly no watch or purse under my pillow last night.
‘Are you accusing me of lying now, slut? Mr Snow here saw me turn the pillow over, didn’t you, Mr Snow?’
‘That I did.’ Mr Snow was adamant.
I glanced about my room. They
hadn’t found my secret hiding place; the rug still covered the uneven floorboard. On the table lay my hairbrush and ribbon box. The gold canary button was missing.
‘Where’s the button?’ I asked. ‘The gold button that was on the table.’ Their faces were blank. ‘There,’ I said, pointing to where the button had been.
It was clear that they had no idea what I was talking about, which was interesting. If these runners had found a gold watch under my pillow and Sallie’s button had gone, then someone had been in my room before these two ugly brutes had arrived. Someone had planted Reed’s things and taken the only piece of evidence I had for Sallie’s murder, and my belief that the two deaths were connected. This was not looking good.
‘I think you should come to Bow Street with us, miss,’ said Snow. ‘The magistrate would like a word about what happened to Mr Reed.’
Of course he would. Mr Winchcombe, although tangled up with John Swann’s gang, was not a murderer; the magistrate would have worked that out by now. He needed another plausible suspect. And now he had a whore with a gold watch.
‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘Who told you that I would have Reed’s watch? You came and turned this room over before. Why did you come here again?’
‘Information,’ said Snow.
‘We had word come to us,’ said Grimshaw.
By a letter, I had no doubt.
‘Does Mr Davenport know that you’re here?’ I asked. ‘Has he returned?’
‘Oh, he is looking forward to hearing your excuses for this.’
‘Are you coming with us like a lamb, Miss Hardwicke,’ said Snow, ‘or have we got to carry you out?’
Given the choice of exiting the house with my dignity or being man-handled by these two bears, I chose to lift my head and march out in front of them. There was a carriage waiting for us.
Chapter Forty-four
We travelled in silence until we reached the magistrate’s. From time to time, Grimshaw would take out the watch and turn it over in his hand, look up and try to catch my eye, as if expecting a sudden and heartfelt confession to murder. It was undoubtedly Reed’s watch; I could see his initials etched on the back, just as they had been embroidered on his handkerchief. Reed had been enamoured of his possessions and his status as a successful man of business. Grimshaw would probably find initials on the purse as well, if he cared to look. The jolting of the carriage only added to my sense of foreboding. Someone had put Reed’s watch under my pillow; a person with easy access to my room. Someone had been in possession of the watch in the first place. That could only be the person who had taken it from Reed. The same person had seen the button on my table and recognised it. A murderer had been in my room. A murderer who would be happy to see me convicted in his, or her stead.