Lestrade nodded again, and this time he did have questions—many of them—but was given short thrift when he asked.
“There’s no time to lose,” the Commissioner said. “We have a carriage driver in custody down in the cells. You will need to speak to him first, but I will warn you, he is making little to no sense whatsoever. After that, you will most probably want to go to the Embankment to have a look round for yourself. I shall expect a report from you at two o’clock sharp. Dismissed.”
No one else had spoken—they had not needed to. Lestrade could see the import of the situation in their manner and in their eyes. If the brass were that worried, then so was he.
He had just been handed a can of worms.
***
The man in the cell in the basement looked as unhappy as Lestrade felt. Although the room was cold and dank, he had been stripped to his underpants and shirt, and sat, hugging a mug of tea which was most probably the only thing providing him any warmth. His eyes were red, as if he had been weeping, and there was a pleading whine in his tone when he spoke, like a whipped dog begging for mercy.
“Look, officer, I’ve bin ‘ere all bleedin’ night. My missus will be up to high doh by now. I’ve told you—I’ve told four of you now—what happened. The lady vanished. Where do you think I put her? She’s not up my vest or down my trousers—you’ve checked there too. So tell me what to say so that I can get out of here. Please?”
Lestrade sat opposite the man, took out his tobacco pouch and expertly rolled two cigarettes, passing one over the table. The other man took it like a drowning man reaching for a life belt.
“Tell me. Just this one more time,” Lestrade said he lit them both up. “And if I believe you, you can go.”
“That’s what the last one said,” the man replied. “He didn’t believe me.”
“Try me,” Lestrade said, then shut up. He knew the look of a man who wanted to talk, and this man didn’t just want to, he looked like he needed to.
“I picked her up from a big house at the north end of Russell Square. The note at the depot had said eight o’clock sharp, and I were there at five to the hour. She came out—a fine lady in a long black coat and hood—her head covered. I didn’t see nobody else, and she told me to head for the Embankment. She said it was a round trip. I’d have a five minute wait and then we’d be heading back. Sounded like easy money to me, so I took her down to the river— it were right foggy last night, a real pea-souper, but she knew where she wanted to go right enough. Cleo’s Pin, that big ugly lump of Egyptian stone. She had me stop twenty yards upriver, said it was something she had to do alone—a promise to keep she said. She walked into the fog . . . and she never came back.”
The man stopped to take a draw from his cigarette, and it was several seconds before Lestrade realized that he was done with his story. It had all come out in a rush, but it hadn’t sounded rehearsed and he saw no subterfuge in the man, just a desire to get the tale told and get out of the damp cell.
“That’s it? That is your whole story? Lady Mears disappeared in the fog?”
“If that was the lady’s name, yes. I waited for half an hour, but there weren’t nobody moving about. A Bobby—one of yours—came by on his rounds and I told him what had happened. I wish to God I’d just gone home and kept my big bloody mouth shut.”
“And the lady never said a word about why she had to be at the Needle at such a strange hour?”
“Not a sausage. Just that she was keeping a promise.”
“Was she carrying anything?”
“A small purse, one of them single-handed jobs. But she was a lady, and I’m a carriage driver. It’s not like we were having a conversation.”
Lestrade asked a few more questions but it quickly became clear that the man had told everything he knew or had seen. The Inspector took pity on him and had him freed—the brass might not like that—but an innocent man deserved better than that.
***
It was still foggy as the Inspector made his way to the scene of the crime, if there had indeed been a crime. It would not be the first time that someone had lost their footing and ended up in the river in the fog; he only hoped that the lady was not, even now, being fished out somewhere down in the Docklands. But the fact that here had been no demands—either financial or political—had Lestrade’s nose twitching. A copper has a feel for the rhythm of a case, and the lack of communication told him that this was not a kidnapping. He suspected murder, but was keeping that to himself for the moment, for that wasn’t anything the brass would want to hear any time soon.
He found his way to the Needle easily enough—he’d been there the day they had the ceremony to unveil it, ten years ago now. He remembered the pomp, the bands, the great and good in their finery, and the fact that the nickname—Cleopatra’s Needle—was just that. The stone was older by far than that particular lady, made for a Pharaoh with a name that did not trip off the tongue quite so easily. Lestrade had walked past it many times since that ceremony and never given it a moment’s thought, but now, approaching it in the fog and in the accompanying muffled silence, he felt a strange sense of trepidation. There was also another, very familiar, old copper’s feeling—he felt the need to keep his wits about him; self-preservation came naturally to a policeman in this town.
He came up on the Needle slowly, watching it appear out of the fog ahead of him, looming like a mute giant over the road. There was no sign of any movement apart from the swirl of the fog itself, but that served to give the cold stone the simulation of breath, and a shiver ran up the Inspector’s spine as he came within touching distance of the plinth on which it was mounted. Now that he was right up close he could see that someone had dug out the cast iron panel on the eastern side, revealing a tin box the size of a small suitcase inside.
The box lay open, with its contents strewn around the cavity in the plinth. The material consisted of a cardboard box of hairpins, a box of cigars, several tobacco pipes, a set of imperial weights, a baby’s bottle, some children’s toys, a shilling razor, a hydraulic jack and some samples of the cable used in the erection, eleven photographs of young women, a small bronze model of the monument, a full set of contemporary British coinage, a rupee, and a portrait of Queen Victoria. There was also a great deal of printed material, including a written history of the transport of the monument, structural plans, a vellum copy of the inscriptions that were carved on the obelisk and translation of same, a number of copies of the Bible in several languages and a translation of a passage from John in many languages more, a copy of Whitaker’s Almanac, a Bradshaw Railway Guide, a map of London, and copies of ten British daily newspapers.
Lestrade had a vague recollection that a time capsule had been concealed in the front part of the pedestal at the original ceremony. It had been intended for the capsule to be opened a hundred years ahead in 1978, but it seemed that someone had not been prepared to wait that long.
Lestrade could not imagine what this volume of material could have to do with the disappearance of the lady, but he was also aware of the importance of not making assumptions that might later prove to have led to him missing something important. He bundled all the material back into the tin box and closed it. The box had a carrying handle affixed, and although it was almost full, none of the material had any great weight and he would be able to carry it with him back to the Yard with little effort.
He set the box aside and spent several minutes on a more rigorous search around the base of the great stone; he found nothing else of any note. If the lady had been abducted, it had been done in such a manner as to leave no trace of it whatsoever. One thing puzzled him, though, the cast iron panel that had protected the time capsule did indeed look like it had been torn open, but it looked almost as if it had been forced outward from the inside rather than by any external action. He put that away as something to consider later, for just as he stood up, he heard—almost imagined, for it seemed little more than a whisper—a muttering, as if a conversation were goi
ng on nearby. He strained to hear—it sounded like a chorus of female voices, raised almost in shouts—but he could make out none of the words, and when he walked toward where he thought the sound originated, he lost track of it in the fog almost immediately.
He was about to head back to the obelisk when he almost walked into someone in the murk. He apologized automatically, and got a frightened squeal in reply.
“You nearly frightened the life out of me,” a woman said. He was close enough to look into her face, and for a second thought that he might have walked into Lady Myers herself, for there was indeed a resemblance in the woman’s features that reminded him strongly of the missing woman. But this was no lady, not if Lestrade’s eye for the feminine was still working. She was dressed in an overly gaudy manner that at first suggested a working girl, but then he recognized her, realized that he knew of her. Mary Miller was her name, a singer on one of the Strand stages, and a well-known one at that, having been on the boards in a string of hit shows for the better part of this past decade.
She did not look like a seasoned performer at this juncture. She seemed confused and flustered, almost on the verge of tears. Lestrade doffed his hat and offered his assistance. His copper’s nose started twitching again as soon as she answered.
“I’m looking for that bally big stone, the Egyptian thing,” she said. “I know it is around here somewhere, but I’ll be blowed if I can find it.”
And again tears seemed close as she dabbed a handkerchief at her eyes.
“Can I ask why?” Lestrade said. “It’s just that something right strange happened last night and . . . ”
“He took one of us, didn’t he?” she said, interrupting him. “We thought it was all a big joke—of course we made the promise—it was the kind of thing you’d say just to make sure you didn’t miss the chance. But we thought nothing of it. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?”
Lestrade’s nose had not betrayed him, there was indeed a story here, and he had just inched a bit closer to its resolution. He took Mary Miller by the arm and led her back across the street to the obelisk.
“Now, can you tell me why you are here?”
“Who wants to know,” she said, suddenly belligerent—then she spotted the hole in the plinth where the box had lain, and saw the box itself sitting where Lestrade had left it. “Who was it?” she whispered. “Who was taken first?”
Lestrade showed her his badge and her eyes went wide. Tears were close again, so Lestrade preempted them with another question.
“Mrs. Miller, I need to know. A life may be at stake.”
“More than one,” she replied softly. “And I fear that you are already ten years too late.”
He got the story in dribs and drabs over a smoke and a cup of strong char in a tearoom across the road. The fog lifted while she told her side of the tale, but Lestrade scarcely noticed, being both astounded, and more than a little bemused, by the telling.
***
“There were twelve of us—a dozen young girls who wanted to better ourselves. Is that so bad? And he offered us ten good years each. Ten! You know as well as I do that we’re lucky to get one or two at best in this city. So when he put out that advertisement, he got plenty of takers. I was surprised to get his card saying I’d been chosen, and I thought it was well shady—I’ll tell you that for nowt—but I was down on my luck that year, and he was offering bright lights and silver. I could not turn it down, not when I needed to eat.
“We met in a room above a bar just off Covent Garden—that one with the old staircase and the fireplaces—you must know it. Twelve of us, as I said. He lined us up, took our photographs, and made us sign on the back in blood—our names, and the number ten. Next thing I know I’m in the papers, and my photograph is getting sealed inside that bloody stone, I’m getting picked to go on tour as a singer, and then I get a run of luck in the West End. I thought I did it all myself, I really did. Then, last night, he called in his promise. I got a note—two words in red the color of fresh blood: ‘Needle, noon.’ Somehow I did not think it would be a good idea to ignore it, so here I am and there is my tale.”
It had all come out of her fast, as if she had been waiting a long time for someone to ask.
“Twelve of you, that’s what you said?” Lestrade replied, and she nodded. He bent to his side, opened the tin case and got out the eleven photographs he had seen earlier. Each had a name, and the number ten, in what looked like faded brown ink on the back. He thought he already knew the answer to the next question, but he had to ask.
“Who is missing?”
Mary Miller took the photographs and rifled quickly through them before nodding.
“Elizabeth Jones should be here, Lady muck as she is now, too good to talk to the likes of us . . . ” she trailed off, and this time the tears did come. “It was her last night, wasn’t it? He took her.”
“Now that’s enough of that, miss, no time for weeping, not today. What do you mean, he took her?”
“I told you, ten good years, and then he gets the rest.”
“I’m not following you,” Lestrade said, trying to be gentle, as the lady seemed to be on the verge of hysteria.
“Just hope you never do,” she said. She looked over Lestrade’s shoulder, out of the window, and all the color left her cheeks, her mouth opening in a gape that might either become a laugh or a scream.
“It’s too late. He’s here.”
Lestrade turned toward the window, but saw only the obelisk. When he turned back toward the woman, he found he was alone at the table. She seemed to have just vanished, gone without a sound.
Just like Lady Mears.
The Inspector turned again to the window, hoping to see the woman leave the tearoom. There was nobody in the street, but there was something over by the obelisk, the faintest of vapors, like the last straggling remains of fog, even now falling into the stone, as if being sucked deep down inside.
When Lestrade finally returned to the table to put the photographs back in the tin case he found there were now only ten women there, Mary Miller’s picture had gone to join that of Lady Myers.
Wherever that might be.
***
Lestrade had a long look up and down the Embankment when he left the tearoom, but there was no sign of the lady. He also inspected the obelisk again but to his eyes at least it was still merely a lump of old stone. He returned to the Yard, taking the tin case with him—perhaps a closer study of its contents would indeed yield a clue that might shed a light on matters.
He had a team of Constables deployed to search out Mary Miller, and put his Sergeant, Clarke, in charge of a squad to track down the other ten girls in the photographs. He knew that might be an impossible task, but what he did not need right now was more well-to-do women going missing. If the press got hold of it, they would have a field day. The Ripper case was still all too fresh in the public’s minds and another storm like that one would most definitely see Lestrade on the carpet, perhaps even out of a job entirely.
What with that, and the fact that he had nothing of any import to tell the Commissioner when he reported upstairs, he did indeed get the expected bollocking in response. Lestrade was not in the best of moods when he returned to his desk later in the afternoon.
Sergeant Clarke’s report did not help much. Mary Miller could not be found, nor could five of the other ten women. Clarke had discovered that one of them, a June Wallis, née Graham, wife of a Scottish landowner, had gone missing in Aberdeen in suspicious circumstances after receiving a note—there was a rumor she had been seen on the night train to London, but that was as yet unsubstantiated. The only good news was that the remaining five women all lived in London, had been found, and were even now being brought into the Yard for their safekeeping. A watch had been put on the Needle in case any of the missing women should try to approach it, and the Yard had men at both Euston and King’s Cross railway stations on the lookout for the missing woman from Aberdeen.
Lestrade failed to see what
else he could do for the moment. He sat at his desk, had Clarke make a pot of tea, and got a pipe lit as he made a start on going through the material in the tin box.
He was thinking of Lady Mears, the first disappearance.
If I’d been at the obelisk, would I have seen her approach it? Would I have seen another puff of vapors sucked unto the blasted stone like when Mary Miller went?
He sucked angrily at his pipe as he waited for Clarke to bring the tea.
He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the missing women were unlikely ever to be seen again.
***
The women started arriving in the early evening. Lestrade had Clarke deal with them, because he was still perusing the contents of the tin case in search of enlightenment. The objects were all what they appeared to be, somewhat banal indicators of life in London at the time, representations and history of the monument itself, and the news of the day. The Inspector kept returning to two items in particular, the photographs of the remaining women, and the transcription and translation of the hieroglyphs on the stone itself.
“Clarke!” he shouted, and the Sergeant was at the door within seconds. “Fetch me somebody who knows this stuff.” He waved the vellum representation of the carvings in the air. “And not Holmes, for pity’s sake, the boss would have my guts for gaiters.”
“Any suggestions, sir?” Clarke asked.
“Try the museum first, plenty of old fossils there. One of them might know something about another of their kind.”
Clarke left at a run and Lestrade went to talk to the women who had been brought in.
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