‘He didn’t follow Miss Rose? The lady who left here?’ I asked quickly.
‘Nah,’ Micky replied. ‘ ’E’s still out there.’
‘Right,’ I said firmly. In the last day I had been frightened, had run for my life, heard terrible stories and felt so helpless I could scream. Time for that to end. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I said, standing up.
‘Now what?’ Micky asked apprehensively.
‘That man’s been following me for days,’ I said to them. ‘Now we are going to follow him.’
CHAPTER
15
The Corners of Whitechapel
The sky had darkened, covered in thick black clouds, making the day as dark as night, though it was only noon. The air felt heavy and thick and sharp, presaging a thunderstorm, and all through Whitechapel people hurried indoors before the greasy rain fell. Micky pointed through a grimy window at the street below. There, lounging against a doorway, was a man, not tall, nor short, not dark, nor fair, wearing a jacket with an odd stain on the elbow, his face shadowed by a crumpled soft hat. He straightened up, anticipating moving soon. There was no doubt he was waiting for us.
‘There’s always another way out of these places,’ Irene said, and I did not have time then to wonder how she knew that. ‘Micky?’
‘Down ’ere,’ he said, and he led us through a door in the house that seemed to be nothing more than a crack in the wall. Once, it would have been a servant’s hidden entrance, but now it led us down through the wall of the building, thick with rats and stench. Beyond the walls I could hear people’s voices and moans. Micky did not take us all the way down, but stopped at another door. This led into a room, large and empty, though scattered with belongings. Micky did not hesitate but walked across the room and threw open the window.
It opened onto a flat roof. Irene led the way, then helped me out, hampered as I was by my skirts. Mary climbed after me, not needing help. We scurried across the roof and down an iron ladder into the street below. Down an alleyway, through another, and quickly nipping across the street, we found ourselves behind the Ordinary Man.
This was the point where Irene and Micky tried to persuade us to go home. Mary refused vehemently, in a hissing whisper so the Ordinary Man could not hear us. Micky turned to me, then said to Irene he’d seen that look on my face before and no way was he going to try to stop me.
‘Fair enough,’ Irene agreed. ‘Look, he’s going in.’
We peered round the corner. The Ordinary Man must have realized we were taking too long to come out, and had gone into the house to check on us. A moment later we heard him shout, and saw the curtain to Miss Rose’s room twitch.
It began to rain. Just a few large drops at first, then thunder smashed across the sky, and the rain fell in earnest. It was falling as if there were no end to it, as if it planned to spend its forty days’ and forty nights’ allowance in that one afternoon, in great huge rods of rain that hurt when they hit you, and smashed on the pavements and dashed though any gaps in the houses. The rain was filthy, grey with the dirt of London, grimy with the soot of the smoke it fell through. It was a rain to send even the rats scurrying for cover, but it was perfect for us. It emptied the streets, so no one was left but us and the Ordinary Man, and it was so heavy it concealed us and forced him to keep his head down.
He took a long and winding journey. He seemed to wander aimlessly, though Mary guessed that he was taking a deliberately convoluted route to flush out followers—but both Irene and Micky were skilled at this game. Mary and I hung back, out of his sight most of the time, whilst Irene and Micky worked as a pair, alternating between following him and coming back to guide us. Micky was good at this, as were all the Baker Street Irregulars, but so was Irene, subtly changing her appearance and the way she walked, so he could never tell if it was the same woman who was behind him.
‘Quite a skill she has,’ Mary observed once, dryly. ‘So useful for an opera singer from New Jersey.’ She and I had exchanged significant glances.
An opera singer from New Jersey—yet I had never detected the trace of an American accent in her voice. Well, maybe she had lost it—but America was such a convenient place to begin again, to wipe out one’s past and emerge shining and new. Where had she actually grown up? Where had she learnt to follow a man so she would never be caught? Where had she met locksmiths and thieves? What had she done in her past that she could be blackmailed about? When had she learnt the skills to wander the streets of London dressed as a boy, and to do it so successfully that she fooled even Mr Holmes?
I know he had tried to dig into her past. He had books of cuttings, labelled ‘her work’, ‘possibly her work’ and ‘maybe her work’. He had found nothing solid though, only rumours and speculations. Nothing about her seemed real; just the fancy of a moment. All he knew of her that was tangible was the sovereign of hers that he kept on his watch chain that she had given him when he had witnessed her wedding, and a photograph he kept in a drawer. And there was one other note about her: he had once said she had a face to die for, yet he seemed unmoved by that. But he had remembered hearing her sing at a concert, once, long ago, and her voice, and only her voice that night, had moved him to tears. Mr Holmes could always be touched by music where beauty failed. And now here was the American songbird in front of me, using skills no music teacher had ever taught her.
We must have seen every corner of Whitechapel that dark afternoon. Mary and I walked on, keeping the Ordinary Man at the very edge of our vision, sometimes letting him slip away altogether, knowing that Micky and Irene had a closer eye on him, and would come back to point us in the right way. The clouds thickened until the streets were black as night, and the rain hammered down incessantly. The whole scene had an unworldly look, like one of the engravings of hell seen in some old book that had terrified me as a child.
Once Mary pulled me back into an alley, against the wall, and motioned me to be silent. I thought perhaps our quarry had spotted us and was heading back our way, but a moment later I saw why we had hidden. As I peered out of the alleyway entrance, Mr Holmes and John ran past us.
I drew back, but they had not seen us. They had some quest of their own to pursue.
‘You have your revolver, Watson?’ Mr Holmes called.
‘Always do!’ John called back.
‘Good. He shall not escape us this time!’ Mr Holmes answered, as they disappeared into the dark and the rain.
‘What do you suppose that was all about?’ Mary asked, once she was sure they were gone.
‘I have no idea,’ I said, watching the street they had run down. I had not listened at the vent so frequently, and didn’t know what Mr Holmes was currently working on. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.’
We couldn’t ask them, not without admitting we’d seen them. How odd that we should all be in Whitechapel on this day, hunting down villains, entirely separate from one another.
‘Oh, John will tell us one day,’ Mary said lightly. ‘And then I’ll tell him what we were doing here.’
The clocks were striking four in the afternoon, and the skies had clouded over. In the narrow streets of Whitechapel this made the day seem as if it was almost twilight. Micky scurried back to us and said, ‘ ’E’s home. Miss Irene says we’ve found ’is lair. We’ve been hanging around outside for ages and ’e hasn’t come out yet.’
We followed the boy up Commercial Road, and then down one of the streets, until we were almost in Stepney. Before us was a huge grey-brick warehouse. The name on the side had long since faded away, and the walls were blackened with dirt and the traces of a long-ago fire. The few windows were boarded, and the huge great doors were securely bolted. Only one small side door remained unsealed. I looked around. We were surrounded by other great warehouses, and the streets were empty and abandoned. Irene stood by the one small door that she had just finished unlocking. It was open now, and an odd white light spilled into the street. We stood there, only a few feet away from the Ordinary Man.
I was surprised. I am not sure what I expected to find, but it was not this.
Most of the warehouse had been screened off with heavy curtains, leaving a large room about twenty feet square. This room was very brightly lit with gas lamps. Highly polished mirrors directed the light to various areas. The curtains themselves were either velvet, or had highly improbable country scenes painted on them. Various items stood about the room—larger plaster Greek urns, mismatched sofas and chairs, fake statues. Along one wall stood a rail, and from this hung several items of clothing—all rather gaudy and diaphanous. In the centre of the room, on a violently coloured Turkish carpet, stood a woman, perfectly still, posing as if for a portrait. She wore a Greek helmet, sandals— and nothing else.
‘Close the bleeding door, love,’ she called out. ‘I’m freezing my tits off ’ere.’
Mary gasped, half laughing. Irene did laugh, then turned the wide-eyed Micky round and sent him outside. I looked behind me to where I expected the painter to be. Instead I saw a large wooden box, about two feet square, balanced on a tripod. A large glass lens was inset on the side facing the girl. A cloth hung over the back of it, with a man underneath the cloth.
So, a camera. And being operated by the Ordinary Man. He even wore the same jacket with the same white stain on it. The one I had spotted over and over again, the only mark by which I’d recognized him. He came out slowly and glared at me— though more with annoyance than anger, to my surprise.
‘You again,’ he said wearily. ‘You just keep popping up, dontcha? What the ’ell do you want?’
I had nothing to say. I just stared at him, with the uneasy feeling creeping over me that I had made a horrible mistake—again.
Mary had walked over to a table at the back of the room. There were boxes of photos on it, and she shamelessly began poring over them.
‘Pictures,’ Mary said. ‘Dirty pictures. Very dirty pictures!’ she said, a little shocked, but not all that horrified. She turned one round and round in her hand. Irene, suddenly curious, went over to join her. I did not move.
‘Pornography,’ I muttered. ‘Not blackmail.’
‘Look, who exactly are you?’ the Ordinary Man demanded, quite reasonably given the circumstances. In passing, I noted that I had been asked that question rather a lot recently. Maybe I should give thought to acquiring business cards.
He must not have seen me properly before. Perhaps I was in shadow, as always. But as he came out from behind the camera, he turned one of the mirrors towards me, so the light was full on my face. It was very bright, but I did not flinch. He, however, did. He must have recognized me, as a woman he’d followed. He did not speak. Neither did I. We merely stood there, the shadows flickering between us, watching each other for a reaction we could understand.
The naked woman sighed, relaxed her pose, and rubbed her back. Spotting an opportunity, Mary hurried over to her with a dressing gown and started chatting to her, leaving the photographs to Irene. Mary had an art of putting anyone at their ease, and within moments she and the young woman, named Ruby, were talking brightly about photography. Mary’s questions sounded artless, but she was gradually drawing out of Ruby who the man photographed, how he photographed, could he take a photograph in secret?
‘According to the name on these pictures,’ Irene called out to me, ‘this man is called Robert Sheldon.’
‘Leave those alone!’ he ordered, but he didn’t take his gaze from mine.
I had expected defiance. I had expected anger. I had even expected, perhaps, horror at discovery. I had not expected his fear. The blood drained from his face, his eyes opened as wide as could be, his hand trembled. What could he possibly fear from me? He had brazenly followed me all over London, but he had never looked at me this way.
That was when I got the first inkling. Perhaps I had not taken the wrong path. Perhaps I had merely taken a necessary detour.
‘The Whitechapel Lady,’ I said quietly. Over in the corner Irene still turned over the photographs. At the other side of the room Mary and Ruby chattered happily, and fruitfully. Yet at that moment there was no one else in the world but him and me.
‘I didn’t kill her,’ he said. His pale eyes bored into mine and I believed him.
‘You were outside her home,’ I insisted. ‘You followed her. You followed her all over Whitechapel and when I visited her, you followed me. Then she dies in a pool of blood.’ I had no idea I could be so inexorable. He looked as if the curse had come upon him.
‘I watched you, that’s all. Just watched!’ he said, in a low, intense voice.
‘Why?’
‘I thought you were a do-gooder. I thought you’d try to get me stopped. I wanted to see who you talked to about me.’
‘Why would I talk about you?’
‘ ’Cos people like you do talk, doncha,’ he said bitterly. ‘You decent people. Talk about morality and doing good and cleaning up the streets and all you’re doing is doing people like me and Ruby out of a day’s wages. Whitechapel’s full of women like you, you know, wanting to stop us. I’ve met your kind before, and had to move on ’cos of it. I’m not ’aving your lot interfering again.’
And I knew that was a lie. Never mind, for now.
‘And was the Whitechapel Lady a do-gooder?’
‘Yeah.’ He sneered. ‘Dangerous profession.’
‘Do you know who killed her?’
‘No,’ course not!’ he insisted, turning pale. ‘I just wanted to see what she did. Wanted to check she wasn’t going to interfere with my work.’
‘Liar,’ I pronounced. I moved forward, the light behind me now, so my face was in shadow. ‘Someone told you to follow her. Someone told you to watch her. Someone told you to report on her. And when that someone heard I had visited her, had asked questions, someone told you to kill her. And how long, exactly, was I going to last before I too was found in a pool of blood?’
‘I didn’t kill her!’ he stammered, shaking. ‘I saw her, I saw all that blood. I went up there—he asked me to go up there…’
‘Why?’ I demanded. He became suddenly silent. ‘It was a warning, wasn’t it? This is what will happen if you talk to anyone. But I am here now, and he is not. Tell me,’ I insisted. He glanced around, like a trapped animal. ‘Tell me,’ I said again, but then, like a trapped animal does sometimes, he lashed out, the heavy mirror beside him suddenly pushed down onto me. I had a second, barely a second, to step out of the way, before it smashed onto the ground next to me. The shattered glass flew up and scratched my hands and face.
A moment before I had felt like Nemesis herself. Now I felt like a little old lady once again.
Irene ran forward and caught him by the wrist. He squirmed, but her grip was like iron.
‘Are you hurt?’ she asked me.
‘No,’ I said, my voice suddenly weak. Mary ran over and studied my cuts and scratches.
‘You’re fine,’ Mary confirmed. ‘Just superficial cuts. Lucky for you.’ She turned on Mr Sheldon. ‘If you had hurt her…’
‘So what!’ he cried. ‘Do you think I’m afraid of you? Whatever you could do to me, he could do much worse. I’m under his protection, do you understand!’ he screamed, his voice rising, trying to convince me as much as himself. ‘If you try anything, you’d be dead before you left Whitechapel!’
‘Maybe,’ Irene said, letting him go. ‘But we have protection too,’ she whispered, enjoying what she told him. ‘If you hurt any of us, we know a man who can and will hunt you to the ends of the earth
, and tear your heart out.’
We were at an impasse. He was too afraid to speak, our protectors were silent, invisible and deadly, and no one knew what to do next.
‘Leave ’im alone, can’t yer?’ Ruby said, not angrily. ‘Look, ’e ain’t a bad man, not a good one neither, but ’e’s been all right to me and I like this job.’
‘Do you?’ I asked, surprised.
‘It’s indoors,’ Ruby said, going to stand next to Robert Sheldon, laying one hand on his arm. He didn’t turn to look at her, but he did cover her hand with his for a moment. ‘In the warm, no one touches me or paws me—so I’d say this was pretty good, and ’e found me, and ’e gave me this, so stop scaring ’im, will yer?’
‘Sorry,’ Mary said, spontaneously. ‘It’s just…’
‘’E follows people,’ Ruby said. Sheldon seemed to be getting his breath back, and was standing a little taller. He was watching Ruby with astonished eyes. I don’t think he had known she cared. ‘ ’E’s good at it, and no one notices ’im. But I swear that’s all ’e does.’
‘I don’t recognize anyone in the photographs,’ Irene said. ‘But I doubt he’d keep the juicy ones here.’
‘Is that what you did?’ I asked. ‘Take secret photographs? Hidden behind a curtain?’ But my accusations sounded weak even to me.
‘I’m not sure it works like that,’ Mary said. ‘This equipment is hardly discreet.’
I turned back to Robert Sheldon. I had an idea. There was a way to eliminate at least one suspect.
‘Have you seen him then? This man?’ I asked. He shook his head. He would not answer, but Ruby did. She didn’t seem to be afraid. Perhaps she didn’t know she was supposed to be.
‘I did,’ she said. ‘Just once. ’E came to see Robert. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t ’ave been looking,’ she said in response to Robert Sheldon’s horrified look, ‘but I couldn’t resist a bit of a peek. ’E never saw me. Besides, I didn’t really see ’im. It was all dark in ’ere, and ’e was leaving. I just saw sort of a shadow on the door, that’s all. Just an outline. Not enough to tell you what ’e looked like.’
All Roads Lead to Whitechapel Page 19