by Death
‘I’m so sorry. Here I am telling you everything and you have something special to say. Do go on.’ I took her by the arm, to make her cease.
‘Would you give Amelia a message for me, please? Tommy has a job at last. He is going to assist at the magistrate’s. He helped the runners catch a gang of thieves and now Mr Fielding wants him to work at Bow Street.’
She nearly fainted – whether from surprise, shock or delight I couldn’t tell. ‘Heavens!’ was all she said. I was rather pleased to have made her speechless.
‘If she wants to find him, he will be with the runners. They’re celebrating at the moment, so she might want to wait until his head has cleared, but he’ll be waiting for her. They’ll have some money to marry at last.’
‘I’ll get back to her now,’ said Susan. ‘I wonder if I can persuade John to make room for them as a married couple. I’d love to keep Amelia with me.’ I knew it. ‘Will you come home with me?’
As much as the thought of cakes, warmth and charmingly innocent company was attractive, I needed to think about my future. And something was nagging in my mind.
‘Another time, Mrs Groves. Give her my love.’
She went on her way with a lighter step, ready to share the news, as I found myself at the tailor’s shop. It was closed, as I expected, so I sat on the step and watched people going about their business on the street. It was mid-afternoon and those who had been to church in the morning, were emerging again from their homes to take a walk, or perhaps to find another service. The bells were beginning to ring once more, calling the good and the faithful to prayer.
My father used to begin the afternoon service at three o’clock. He expected us to attend, me and my brothers as well as the servants. He would be walking to church, even as I sat here, a fallen woman with nowhere to go. He would say that my present misfortune was only to be expected – but then, he was unaware of his own brother’s part in my fall.
The air was still cool, but I imagined that, at home, there would be crocuses carpeting the church yard. The only spring flowers I saw in London were bought in the market. What was it that Mrs Groves had said? Something had sounded wrong. I couldn’t remember. I was, as I had said to Mr Fielding, dealing with puzzles: buttons, beaches, and people from Paris. If Tommy Bridgewater was not the murderer, then who was ‘Tommy’? Was there really a man called Mr Beech that I hadn’t met, or was someone masquerading?
A small girl was squatting on the ground, a stone’s throw away from me. Little more than a baby, she was tipping water from a bucket on to a patch of dirt and stirring it with a stick. She looked as though she was cooking herself a cauldron of soup, thick and muddy. I had done the same sort of thing as a child, to the horror of our housemaid, so I smiled at her. The girl stopped stirring and started to prod her mud soup instead, slamming the stick into the mess and giggling as it splattered and plopped.
‘Emmy!’ A woman’s voice from a nearby doorway, perhaps the child’s mother. ‘Emmy, stop that, you’re splashing mud everywhere. Emily, leave it alone and come here.’
The little girl gave her stick one last reluctant flick and sprayed muddy water across the path in front of her, almost reaching me, before jumping up and running to her mother, in a house just past the tailor’s.
‘Bye bye, Emily,’ I laughed to her as she passed.
Even as I said her name, my skin prickled and I stopped laughing. I knew who it was that was lying, who was playing a part. I knew, because I had, more than once, seen someone make a mess, not with a stick and mud, but with a pen and ink. I had seen ink splashes on paper. And now I realised their significance.
‘I know who you are, Tommy boy,’ I said softly. A shiver ran, involuntarily, down my back.
Chapter Forty-seven
The door of the tailor’s shop opened abruptly, and a face peeped out from the dark interior. It was the young assistant I had encountered the other day. He had struck me then as an intelligent lad, even though, in looks, he was unremarkable. He was slightly-built, with ordinary brown hair.
‘You were here the other day,’ he said. It was a statement rather than a question, because he knew he was right. ‘You’re the lady with the button.’
I stood up and looked him in the eye. ‘And you’re Jack.’ He was surprised that I remembered his name and coloured a little, but then lifted his chin, trying to act like someone in charge.
‘What do you want, sitting on the doorstep? Mr Andrews won’t be pleased.’
‘Mr Andrews isn’t here, though, is he?’ It was a guess, but I saw immediately that I was right. ‘I wonder whether you can help me, Jack. Mr Andrews didn’t seem to know as much as you about the canary button. And you, I think, know something about the coat it was attached to.’
He hesitated, torn between showing off to me and keeping a decent silence, like his superior. I leaned towards him a little and stroked his cheek, knowing enough about boys his age to be assured of the effect. ‘I’ll wager that coat was really special.’ The poor lad trembled, just a little, before stepping back into the shop.
‘It was a fine coat; not special at all. It was just…’
‘Just what, Jack?’
‘It was all wrong for the person it was made for.’ He was frowning; at the coat, and not at my touch.
‘It was made for a Mr Beech, that’s what Mr Andrews said.’
He shook his head. ‘You’d better come in,’ he said, keeping his distance. ‘Mr Andrews told you that a Mr Beech collected it, and that he did. But it wasn’t made for him.’
The shop was unlit. There was enough afternoon light coming in from the widows, but it was gloomy. The bolts of cloth which, in the brighter light looked rich and warm, now looked dull. We stood in the middle of the serving area, Jack rubbing his sleeve awkwardly.
‘So, who was it made for?’ I had a feeling that I already knew.
‘Charles Stanford.’
Charles Stanford knew Mr Beech, then.
‘You said it was all wrong. What did you mean by that?’
He put his head on one side, thoughtfully. He was a young man who took his job seriously, I could tell. He would not have wanted anything to be amiss with a fine coat.
‘Because I know Mr Stanford. Or, at least, I knew him when I was a child. I grew up near to Norwich and not far from Stanford House. Mr Stanford lived as a recluse with his old uncle; everyone knew of him.’
Charles had told me the story himself. His uncle had kept him almost like a prisoner until he came into his inheritance.
‘Didn’t he like his coat?’
‘I really don’t know, miss. Mr Stanford didn’t collect himself. He wouldn’t, would he? He never left Stanford House, because of his back.’
‘His what?’
‘His back. He was bent over, see?’ He bent and twisted himself over until he had made himself quite crooked. ‘Mr Stanford, the younger man, was a hunchback when I was growing up. The coat we made was paid for by Mr Stanford’s account and was supposed to be for Mr Stanford, but it couldn’t have been for him, otherwise it would have been measured differently, see?’ he said again.
I was beginning to.
‘The man who collected the coat, Mr Beech, would the coat have fitted his frame, do you think?’
He thought about it carefully. Then he nodded. ‘Yes, I think it would have fitted him perfectly. Perhaps Mr Stanford meant for his footman to have it.’
‘His footman?’
‘Well, I think that was who he was. He had the air of a servant and was a bit above himself – as footmen can be.’ He was a boy who had met a few officious servants in his work, I could tell.
Another thought came to me.
‘May I see the ledger again? I didn’t quite see Mr Beech’s name properly when Mr Andrews showed it to me.’
I hadn’t been allowed to see it. Mr Andrews had checked it himself. But Jack didn’t know that.
‘Of course. I can find it for you.’
He found the page almost immediately
and opened out the ledger for my inspection. There was a signature, with, as I expected, the same ink splatters that I had seen in the bath house guest book, and the same marks that I had noticed on the blackmail letter from, as I had assumed at the time, George Reed – the letter about an affair with a girl called Emily, who I now doubted even existed. The same person had mishandled his pen in the same way each time.
The tailor had written the details of the coat and the name of the man collecting it above the signature. Mr Thomas Beech. He had walked in as Thomas Beech and left as Charles Stanford; to be Charles Stanford to the rest of the world.
I didn’t know what had become of the real Charles Stanford, the hunch-backed recluse of Stanford House, but George Reed, the man from Norwich, had recognised the imposter immediately, and had sought to capitalise on his knowledge. No wonder he had met his end: such information had been explosive.
Jack was shuffling his feet.
‘I ought to close the shop, miss, if you have everything you need. People might think we’re open, and we’re not. I want to go and find something to eat, if you don’t mind, and get some rest. We start early on Monday mornings.’
‘Yes of course,’ I said, still distracted by my new information. ‘Sorry, what did you just say?’
He looked amused. ‘I said we start early on Mondays. Mr Andrews likes to check the stock first thing every week.’
Susan Groves had said that her husband had been summoned to the butchers and that this was unusual for a Sunday. The blood began to pound in my head as I tried to remember what I had told Charles about John Groves’ belief that a servant had killed his master. I had told him that Mr Groves had been speaking to George Reed.
‘Jack, I need you to do something for me, something extremely important, more important than supper. I need you to take a message to Bow Street, to the magistrate’s house.’
He looked very anxious. I probably looked anxious myself. That was as nothing compared with how I felt.
‘I’ll pay you well,’ I said, reaching for my purse, hands shaking. ‘You must take a carriage and get there as fast as you can. Speak only to Mr Davenport, William Davenport – only him. A man’s life is in danger. Have you a piece of paper for a note?’
His eyes began to sparkle at the thought of a wild adventure – the like of which he was unlikely ever to have known in the tailor’s – and he nodded vigorously.
I scribbled a note to Davenport, trying to convey as simply and clearly as I could the information I had and what I intended to do. It was the best I could manage, because I needed to hurry. I shovelled several coins into Jack’s hand, urging him to keep whatever was left to treat himself to a feast – only once he had delivered the note into Davenport’s hands. Then I kissed him, full on the lips, three times; because he had, unwittingly, saved my skin, because I needed him to carry out his task, and because I knew he would like it.
We left together. He waved down a carriage and sped away, hanging out of the window to catch a glimpse of me, even as I made my way to the butcher’s.
Chapter Forty-eight
The butcher’s shop was, as I remembered, down a quiet alley. It was almost wide enough to be called a narrow street. There were no other shops in it, and no one was walking up or down the cobbles. The shutters were closed. Tomorrow they would be open wide, displaying the butcher’s wares, smoked and preserved for weeks, hanging from the small hooks that, I knew, would be just inside the window. Tomorrow the alley would be busy with servants buying food for their houses. Today it was empty. The wooden door was shut, but I could see it was unlocked.
The cattle were brought to London by the thousands in the autumn, at the beginning of the season, and butchered with gusto by the sort of men who loved hacking at flesh and being up to their armpits in blood. For several weeks, and every day of the week, the roads of the neighbourhood ran red and the drains clogged up with bits of gut and hair and wrecked our shoes.
Once butchered, the meat would be sent out to the fine houses of the city, or packed on to stalls or piled on to carts and hawked about the streets. The heady months that followed would see the butchers selling their wares at inflated prices as the population swelled with incomers from the provinces. Between October and May, all traders pushed up their prices – as did we. Butchers aren’t the only ones to trade in flesh.
By the late spring, as the gentlefolk returned to their manor houses and estates in the country, we were out of fresh meat – in the bawdy houses and brothels, as well as the butchers – and life returned to a less-frenzied pace. For the butchers, what had been patiently salted, preserved and hung in ash to smoke, was now taken down when required. We would live on salted ham and beef, or bacon, until the end of the summer. It was better than surviving on turnips and onions – which was the lot of the poor all through the year.
John Groves had been summoned on a Sunday to pack a cart for market. I would have assumed that this would normally be done early on a Monday morning. You wouldn’t leave a cart full of meat, salted or not, overnight anywhere in this city. If you did, you would be several hams lighter by the morning.
I banged on the unlocked door for a while, but no one came to answer. I should have waited for the runners to arrive. Instead, I pushed the door open.
The butchery was larger than I was expecting. The shuttered window on the front gave little indication of the vast expanse that lay behind it. I was in a square space that was even higher than it was wide. A stone floor showed the tell-tale signs of its trade. There were black patches where blood had pooled weeks ago, before it had eventually been sluiced out on to the street. In the afternoon light, the stains looked like shadows on the ground.
There was an unmistakable aroma of drying meat. High above me, some twenty feet above, there were dozens of portions of meat, hanging still and silent, waiting to be chosen and bought. They were grouped towards the back of the store, up in the roof space where it was dark and cool. Each leg or shoulder was held on a hook, and then neatly hooked again over the long metal rods that ran horizontally from one side of the room to the other. Access to the meat came via a short wooden bridge that had been constructed underneath them. The butcher’s lads would climb the steps to the walkway to hang the meat when it was butchered and then climb up again to fetch it when a customer required it. It was a neat idea and saved using step ladders, which would get in the way when the men were slaughtering. There was still a good amount of meat here to be sold. If John Groves had been here to collect joints for loading, there was little sign of it. The long crook-ended poles, which the lads would use to lift each portion from its place, stood leaning in a corner, untouched at the bottom of the bridge steps.
At the back of the slaughter area was a table, empty, save for a few leaves of paper. A couple of rough chairs stood askew nearby. This was where the business took place, although the money would be safely stored elsewhere.
Beyond the table was a door into what I assumed was the back office. It was ajar, so I walked towards it, my shoes making a light tap on the stones that was almost as loud as the sound my heart was making.
The room was airy, a window looked out over the back of the street and the sun, which was lowering itself towards the horizon shone a reddish haze through the window. The butcher, who had so neatly hung his meats and tidily cleaned the blood and guts from his slaughter floor, had also dusted the window pane recently. Only one or two flies lay crumpled on the sill.
The floor of this room was, by contrast, very untidy.
There was a body on it.
I didn’t have to get close to know it was Mr Groves and, as I’d feared, the reason he hadn’t started to lift down the meat was because he had been smashed over the head by something heavy. Blood had congealed over the back of his head. It was dull and black, as if it had seeped from his head some time ago.
He had been dragged into the office. The way that he was lying, arms stretched out in front of him, face to the ground, made it look that way. I guessed th
at he had been hit as he arrived in the larger room, probably even as he opened the door, and then pulled into the back. He wasn’t small; it would have been hard work.
The terror of it suddenly struck me. I had to get out, go back to Bow Street, find constables, find Susan, anyone. I heard the front door bang shut. I ran out, and found myself standing under a hundred joints of beef and ham, face to face with Charles Stanford.
He was carrying a bottle of brandy, bought from somewhere in the neighbourhood. He checked his step when he saw me. I was supposed to be locked up at Bow Street, I realised.
‘Lizzie!’ he hailed me with the brandy. ‘What an unexpected joy to see you. Would you care for a drink? My companion doesn’t appear to want any more, as you’ve noticed.’
I watched him carefully, trying to stay calm and working out whether it would be possible to run for the door. He wasn’t wearing a sword, but I imagined he would have a knife somewhere. And he was taller and stronger than me.
‘So, Charles, it seems you’re not Charles Stanford at all, are you?’
He stood staring at me for a moment. Then he laughed, rolling his eyes and waggling the bottle, as if I were making a silly joke.
‘Certainly, I’m Charles Stanford. Who on earth else would I be?’
‘Thomas Beech.’
As soon as I said the name, everything that had passed between us was altered.
‘Who?’ There was a sharpness in his voice.
‘Thomas Beech. Sometime servant to Charles Stanford. Known to his friends and associates as Tommy.’
My breathing was shorter. I wished that Davenport were here, or even Grimshaw.
‘Hmm.’ He walked slowly to the table and put the bottle down carefully.
‘You have nothing to prove that, of course.’
No outright denial, then.
‘I can prove it, Charles… Thomas… I know.’