Cardington Crescent (35 page)

The sergeant gulped again. “’Ave you got the man wot done it, Mr. Pitt?”

“It was a woman, and yes, we’ve got her. I’m going to charge her now, and take her in.”

“I’m off duty any minute now, sir—I’d thank yer dearly if I could come along with yer, sir. Please.”

“Certainly. I may need an extra man; she’s a big woman, and there are a lot of children to be taken somewhere—I suppose, the workhouse.”

“Yes, sir.”

By the time they were back in Tortoise Lane it was fifteen minutes to nine. It was still a clear evening, and at this high-summer time of the year there was another hour of daylight and twenty minutes beyond that of fading dusk, while the color slowly ebbed away and the shadows joined themselves together into a solidity broken only by the gas lamps on the main streets and the occasional lantern or candle in St. Giles.

They stopped outside number 3 and Pitt went in without knocking. There was no sense of triumph; he felt only a vindictiveness uncharacteristic of him. He strode along the corridor to Mrs. Mapes’s sitting room and threw the door open. The constable was still standing, as uncomfortable as when he had left, and Mrs. Mapes was sitting in her own chair, her taffeta skirt spread round her, her black ringlets shining and a satisfied smile on her mouth.

“Well, Mr. Pitt?” she said boldly. “Wot now, eh? Yer goin’ ter stand ’ere all night?”

“No, none of us are going to be here all night,” he replied. “In fact, I doubt if we shall ever be here again. Clarabelle Mapes, I arrest you for the murder of Prudence Wilson when she came to collect her child, whom you had sold.”

For an instant she was still prepared to brazen it out.

“Why? Why should I kill ’er on purpose? Don’t make no sense!”

“Because she threatened to make your trade public!” he said bitterly. “You’ve killed too many babies entrusted to you, rather than feed them. You’d go out of business if that was known.”

This time she was shaken; sweat stood out on her upper lip and across her brow. Her skin was suddenly gray as the blood drained from it.

“Right, constable,” Pitt commanded. “Bring her along.” He turned and went out of the door again and along the passage to the kitchens. “Constable Wyman! I’ll send someone to relieve you. Get these children cared for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll have to inform the parish authorities.”

“You takin’ ’er away, sir?”

“Yes—for murder. She’ll not be back—”

Suddenly there was a cry from the front of the house, the thud of a body landing heavily, and then yells of outrage. Pitt spun on his heel and charged out.

In the passageway the constable was scrambling to his feet, dusty and with rushes sticking to him, his helmet in his hand, and through the open door were disappearing the coattails of the sergeant.

“She’s away!” the constable shouted furiously. “She ’it me!” He ran out with Pitt on his heels and fast overtaking him.

Already twenty yards down Tortoise Lane Clarabelle Mapes was running with surprising fleetness for one so immensely stout. Pitt ignored the sergeant and sprinted as hard as he could after her, scattering into the gutter an old woman with a bundle of rags and a coster returning for his supper. If he lost her now he might never get her back; the warrens and mazes of the London slums could hide a fugitive for years, if they were cunning enough, and had enough to lose by capture.

There was no point in shouting; it would only waste his breath. No one stopped a thief in St. Giles. She was still moving with the speed of terror and even as he watched she turned sharply and disappeared into an open doorway. Had he been ten yards further off he could not have told which one. He charged in after her, knocking into an old man and seeing him collapse with a shower of abuse, but he had no feeling left for anyone but the gross figure of Clarabelle Mapes, black curls flying, taffeta skirts like brilliant overblown sails. He followed her through a room he dimly saw was filled with people bent over a table, ran along a dark passage where his feet echoed, and out into the beer-sour space of a sawdust-strewn taproom.

She swung round and glared at him, her black eyes venomous, and knocked aside a serving girl, sending her sprawling onto the floor, covered in the ale she had been carrying. Pitt was forced to hesitate to avoid falling over her, his feet entangled in her thrusting legs. As it was, he tripped over a stool and all but measured his length, catching hold of the doorframe just in time to steady himself. There was a roar of laughter behind him, and another clatter as the sergeant appeared, buttons undone, helmet askew.

Out of the front door past a knot of idlers, Pitt saw her still running swiftly towards a side alley opposite, no more than a slit in the gray walls between houses. She was going deeper into the labyrinth of sweatshops, gin mills, and tenements, and if he did not catch her soon she would find a hundred natural allies and he would be lucky if he returned at all, let alone having captured her.

At the end of the alley was a flight of steps down into a wide, ill-lit room where women sat sewing by oil lamps. Clarabelle had no care whom she spilled onto the floor, whose shirts she tore or sent flying into the dust, and Pitt could not afford to look either. Outraged cries rang in his ears.

At the far side the door caught him in the chest and checked him for a moment, knocking the breath out of his lungs. But he was too hot in pursuit to care about pain; his mind was filled and possessed with the hunger to capture her, to feel her physically under his hand and to force her to walk ahead of him, hands manacled behind her, drenched in the knowledge she was on the last length of the unalterable journey towards the gallows.

In the areaway three old women shared a bottle of gin, and a child played with two stones.

“Help!” Clarabelle Mapes shouted piercingly. “Stop ’im! ’E’s after me!”

But the old women were too rubber-legged and bleary-eyed to respond as she wanted, and Pitt jumped over them without their offering any serious resistance. He was gaining on Clarabelle; another few yards at this pace and he would catch her. His legs were far longer, and he had no skirts to trammel him.

But she was among her own kind now, and she knew the way. The next door was slammed in his face and would not open when he pushed it. He was obliged to hurl his weight against it, bruising his shoulder. It was not till the sergeant caught up with him that they were able to force it together.

The room beyond was dimly lit and packed with humanity of all ages and both sexes; the smell of sweat, stale food, and animal grime caught in his throat.

They ran through, leaping and kicking at sprawled bodies, and out of the far door into a crumbling street so narrow the jettied upper stories almost met. The open drain down the middle was crusted with dry sewage. A score of squat doorways—she might have gone into any one of them. All the doors were closed. There were huddles of people already half asleep or sodden with drink propped up here and there. None of them took the slightest notice of him or the sergeant, except one old man who, watching the situation, yelled encouragement to Pitt, imagining him the fugitive. He threw an empty bottle at the sergeant, which missed him and shattered on the wall behind, sending splinters in an arc ten feet wide.

“Which way did she go?” Pitt shouted furiously. “There’s sixpence for anyone who helps me get her.”

Two or three stirred, but no one spoke.

He was so angry, so scalded with frustration he would have attacked them even in their stupor if he had thought it would achieve anything at all.

Then another, far brighter thought came to him. He had been only a couple of yards behind Clarabelle when she had gone into the large dormitory. Even with the few moments it had taken to break in the door he should have seen the far door swing, and caught a glimpse of her fuchsia skirt in this frowsy street.

He spun round and charged back into the great room, seizing the first person he could reach, hauling him up by the lapels and glaring at him. “Where did she go?” he said gratingly between his teeth. “If she’s still here I’ll charge you all with being accessory to murder, do you hear me?”

“She ain’t ’ere!” the man squeaked. “Let go o’ me, yer bleedin’ pig! She’s gawn, Gawd ’elp ’er! Fooled yer, yer swine!”

Pitt dropped him and stumbled back to the broken door, the sergeant still on his heels. Out in the alley again there was no sign of her, and the possibility that she had escaped brought him out in a sweat of fury and impotence. He could understand how children wept at their own powerlessness.

He must force himself to think more clearly; anger would solve nothing. She had a flourishing business and considerable possessions in Tortoise Lane. What would he seek to do in her place? Attack! Get rid of the only man who knew her crime. Would Clarabelle think that far? Or would escape be all that mattered now? Was panic greater than cunning?

He remembered the brilliant black eyes and thought not. If he looked vulnerable, offered himself as bait, she would come back to finish him; her instinct was all to attack, to kill.

“Wait!” he said curtly to the sergeant.

“But she’s not ’ere!” the sergeant hissed back. “She can’t ’ave got far, sir! I’d ’ate something rotten to lose this one! A right wicked woman.”

“So would I, sergeant, so would I.” Pitt looked up, searching the grimy windows in the flat walls above. It was growing dimmer, closer to true twilight. He had not long. Then he saw it—the pale glimmer of a face behind a window—and then it was gone again.

“Wait here!” he said tersely. “In case I’m wrong.” He turned and went in the nearest door, past the inhabitants, up a rickety stairway and along a dim passage. He heard movement at the end and a rustle of taffeta; a fat body squeezing through a narrow way. He knew it was her as if he could smell her. Only a few yards ahead of him she was waiting. What would she have? She had killed Prudence Wilson with a knife, and carved up her body as if it had been a side of meat.

He moved after her quietly now, walking on the sides of his feet; even so, the boards were rotten and betrayed him. He heard her ahead—or was it her? Was she crouched behind some half concealed door, waiting, all the weight of her thick body balanced to thrust the knife into his flesh, deep, to the heart?

Without realizing it he had stopped. Fear was tingling sharp, his throat tight, tongue dry. He could not stay here. He could hear someone further and further ahead of him, going on upwards.

Unwilling, pulse racing, he crept forward, one hand outstretched to touch the wall and feel its solid surface. He came to another flight of stairs, even narrower than the last, and knew she was close above him. He could feel her presence like a prickle on his skin; he even thought he could hear her breath wheezing somewhere in the gloom.

Then suddenly there was a thud, a cry of anger, and her footsteps at the top of the stepladder above him. He started up and saw for a moment her bulk bent over the square of yellow light at the top, where the attic opened out. She was half in shadow, but he could still see the shining eyes, the curls loose like bedsprings, the sweat gleaming on her skin. He almost had her. He was forewarned, expecting a knife. She moved back, as if she were afraid of him, startled to find him so close.

He could make the last four steps easily, in two strides, and be beside her before she had time to strike. If he moved to one side as soon as he was through that square—

Then with horror paralyzing him quite literally, leaving him frozen on the step, he remembered the secret of these old warrens—and deliberately let go the rail and fell backwards down to the floor, bruising and battering himself, just as the trapdoor came down with its spearsharp embedded blades slicing the air where he had been the instant before, followed by her shrill scream of laughter.

He scrambled to his feet, blood surging through him, pain forgotten, and swarmed up the stairs, striking his hand between the blades and shooting the trap open. He fell up and out of the hole onto the attic floor only a yard away from where she crouched. Before she had time even to register shock he hit her as hard as he could with his clenched fist—and all the stored up anger, the pain and loss of her victims—and she rolled over and lay senseless. He did not give a damn about the difficulty of getting her down, or even whether his superiors would charge him with breaking her jaw. He had Clarabelle Mapes, and he was satisfied.

I
T WAS LATE
the following morning when Pitt returned to Cardington Crescent. The euphoria of capturing Clarabelle Mapes had vanished, and in the dull, warm daylight he remembered that he had gone to Tortoise Lane to find out what Sybilla March had wanted there. And he had learned nothing. No amount of questioning was going to get anything more from Clarabelle, and none of the children had ever seen a lady like Sybilla.

The butler let him in and he asked that Charlotte be sent for. He was permitted to wait in the morning room. It was oppressive, curtains half drawn, pictures draped with black, black crepe fluttering in unlikely places like cobwebs stained with soot.

Charlotte came in, dressed in exquisitely fashionable lavender; it flickered through his mind that it was a gown of Aunt Vespasia’s altered a little at the bosom to fit Charlotte. Vespasia never wore black, even for death.

Charlotte was pale; there were smudges of tiredness under her eyes. But her face lit up with pleasure as she saw him, and he found it extraordinarily good. In a sense deeper than walls or possessions, wherever she was, he would be at home.

“Oh, Thomas, I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said immediately. “Everything is getting worse. We are looking at each other with terrible thoughts in our eyes and strings of words we want to mean, and can’t.” She turned and closed the door behind her and stood leaning against it, staring at him, biting her lips, her hands clenched tightly. “It isn’t Tassie. I’ve discovered what she does at night, where she goes and gets splashed with blood.”

A monstrous anger welled up inside him, sharp as a dagger, because it was principally fear, not only for her but for himself, fear of losing all that was most precious to him, all the deep, warm safety that supported every other courage and dream he held.