The Hourglass Factory (8 page)

‘This,’ he held out a crumpled piece of paper, ‘just came in from Dover.’ There was a shifting of attention among the officers behind the desk. One of the constables
turned his head. ‘Did I ask you to join this conversation? Look there’s a woman there wants booking, get on with it, fingerprints.’

The woman standing before the counter fixed the Chief with a stubborn look. ‘I shan’t give fingerprints.’

‘You’ll bloody do as you’re told or it’ll be third division and no porridge.’

‘I’m not obliged to give fingerprints unless I’m convicted of a crime. We may be women, but we’re not stupid.’

The Chief’s face coloured from the neck up. ‘Now you listen to me!’

Primrose pointed to the telegram. ‘What does it say, Chief?’

Stuttlegate released his fix on the woman and gestured to Primrose to move further down the bench. ‘Out of that bitch’s hearing.’

‘What’s happened?’

He sighed tersely. ‘She’s only gone and been here, under our bloody noses, cavorting like a sparrow, probably there tonight with this lot.’

‘Who?’

‘Who do you think, the cat’s mother? Wake up, Primrose. Christabel Pankhurst.’

Primrose, in his weary state, smarted from the admonishment. His gaze drifted to the clock on the wall. He was bleary-eyed and it took a moment to focus on the time. A headache had begun brewing
behind one of his eyes.

‘She was spotted on the Paddington train, transferring to the ferry to Calais.’ He rapped his fist on the bench. ‘If they’d been a second sooner we’d have had
her.’ He gritted his teeth but didn’t sound convinced by his words.

‘She was here tonight?’

‘Yes tonight, Freddie. Suffragette leader, the one in hiding, here. Tonight. Do you have somewhere you need to be? You keep looking at that clock.’

Primrose swallowed, ‘No, sir.’ He cleared his throat and tried to demonstrate that he was paying attention. ‘Why didn’t they just arrest her when they spotted
her?’

‘Because it wasn’t our bloody man who clocked her. It was a solicitor travelling with her on the train. Says he couldn’t be sure till he got a look at her in the light. He
pulled the guard in just before the ferry left. They tried to find her, but I don’t know, she was in the tea room or the ladies’ room or wherever they go to polish up their broomsticks.
If you ask me he’s one of them.’

‘A suffragette?’ Primrose’s brow creased.

‘You do get them, Primrose, men’s league for women’s whatever it is.’ He puffed out his cheeks and released his breath. ‘Seems a bit of a coincidence that he kept
mum all that time on the train because he couldn’t be sure, then soon as that ferry’s on its way, that’s when he’s bloody sure.’ He looked at Primrose with his
pinprick eyes. ‘They’re laughing at us, Freddie. They brought her over here under our noses.’

Primrose said nothing. He sensed the Chief was testing him, willing him to agree.

Stuttlegate smoothed out the telegram on the counter. ‘Look, I’m at the end of my tether here. Don’t mind telling you this is driving me into the ground.’

‘You and me both,’ Primrose said quietly. The headache was starting to spread out to his ears. He thought of Clara. He hadn’t had time to send her word or even telephone her
yet to say he would be late.

The Chief rubbed his head. ‘I’ve got to get out of here. My wife’s raising merry hell. Says the children have forgotten what their father looks like.’

Primrose raised a weak smile. He knew what was coming.

‘You don’t mind, do you, Freddie? Just need to get the statement from the man logged, write up a quick report tonight and we’ll file an investigation tomorrow. It’s just
if I leave something this big . . .’

Primrose nodded. He hadn’t realised until now quite how hungry he was. Perhaps the hot potato stand at Covent Garden would still be open, he could pass by it on his way back to the
Embankment office.

The Chief slapped his back. ‘Knew you’d come good. Next time, we’ll nail her. Then we’ll both be heroes.’ He gave a wink and strode off past the two constables on
his way out, knocking into the shoulder of one of the suffragettes. ‘Pardon me,’ he called, and made to tip his hat.

Primrose looked at the grubby telegram from the Dover Customs office with its brusque capital letter account of the sighting of Miss Pankhurst. It was marked twenty past ten. He elbowed past the
desk constables until he reached the station telephone. Picking up the receiver, he asked the operator for Clapham two-seven-five.

Clara answered almost immediately. Sitting near the telephone meant she was worried.

‘My love?’

She was silent.

‘Suffragettes,’ he said. ‘Again.’ He tried to smile. He imagined her nod. ‘Didn’t you fancy a smash and a jolly to Bow Street yourself?’ Either she
didn’t understand the joke or she didn’t find it amusing.

There was a short silence. ‘I’ll leave the stove on. There’s stew and potatoes. I’m going to bed mind.’

‘That’s ok, I’ll . . .’ He wanted to say ‘I’ll be home as quick as I can’ but he didn’t dare.

‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she said. The line went dead.

Primrose made it to Covent Garden just in time to see the hot potato seller emptying a pile of cold ash into the market rubbish heap. He looked to see if the toffee apple
stalls were still out, or if anyone was selling whelks but the market was deserted, the food smells muted. On the other side of the square, a man in a filthy apron was hawking brown paper bags of
sliced pigs’ ears from a greasy basket. Deciding he had no choice Primrose grudgingly parted with a ha’penny.

They were brined to bursting, then fried to a crisp so that little remained of them but scraps of salty leather. He took a couple of mouthfuls before depositing the rest into the hands of a
beggar on the Strand. The wind was blowing up foul gusts from the Thames as he approached New Scotland Yard’s building on the Embankment. He had hoped the walk might have woken him up a
little but as he hopped up the steps and tried to focus on the clock in the deserted lobby of the building he could feel his eyes fuzz with fatigue. It was past midnight but there were a few lights
on in the downstairs offices and he could hear the Remington typewriters slamming away under weary fingers. Someone had recently boiled coffee. It lingered in the cold lobby air.

He had heaved himself up half a staircase towards his office when he heard his name called by one of the clerks downstairs. He didn’t know the boy, so he hesitated. The boy called
again.

‘Yes?’

‘You are Primrose, aren’t you? Sorry, Inspector Primrose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Primrose from Special Branch?’

Primrose pinched the upper bridge of his nose where the headache hurt most. ‘How many Primroses are there in Central Office?’

The boy, who could only have been twenty or so, looked put out. ‘Telephone call from Bow Street. They said you would be on duty, and they need someone from Special.’

Primrose stifled the simmering of rage that came from hearing that phrase ‘on duty’, the image of Stuttlegate kissing his children goodnight hovering close to his mind.

‘What’s happened?’

The boy consulted a yellow notebook in his hand covered in messy ink. ‘There’s been a girl murdered up Tottenham Court Road. Sorry, Inspector, Bow Street said you would be on
duty.’

Primrose felt briefly ashamed to think the boy had noted his sourness.

‘Any other details?’

‘They’re saying her throat was cut.’

He couldn’t stop a little groan coming out from between his lips but quelled it when he saw the boy’s face. ‘No chance this is a late Hallowe’en prank is
there?’

The boy’s face told him there was not.

A thought suddenly occurred to him. ‘Why Special Branch?’ He asked. ‘Murders go to the divisional detectives.’

The boy shifted. ‘No one’s allowed to pass this on but . . .’

‘Well, what is it then?’ Primrose asked, scratching the bridge of his nose.

When the boy opened his mouth again Primrose almost wished he hadn’t asked. ‘Suffragette, sir. Victim was a suffragette. She’s not been identified formally yet, but the local
landlord will swear on his life the girl’s name is Ebony Diamond.’

2 November 1912

Frankie slept restlessly through the night. The window pane in her bedroom had a crack near the bottom that sent cold gusts wheezing in every now and then. There had been no
coal in the scuttle when she arrived home and the measly fire Mrs Gibbons had lit was barely more than embers. With the blankets curled round her body she tossed and turned, half-dreaming about
Ebony Diamond, snakes and coal boxes. When she awoke, light was cutting a shard across the dusty floor, illuminating her desk with its scattered papers, the Blickensderfer typewriter part-hidden
under newspapers and notebooks. The room was otherwise empty apart from a washstand, a rusty mirror, a stiff-backed chair covered with shirts, trousers and braces from the day before, a pile of
books on a small shelf, and a tin of Colman’s mustard – invaluable ammunition for her landlady Mrs Gibbons’s cooking.

As she prised her head up from under the covers, a little wash of gin crept up her throat. She reached down for the jug of water she kept on the floor by the bed but it was empty.

While she fumbled for a glass there was a knock at the door. Before she could cry, ‘Who is it?’ it swung open and Mrs Gibbons appeared, a bucket of lightly steaming water braced
against her hip. She marched across the room and sloshed it into the washstand, slopping great drips onto the floor.

‘My mother always said there were only two reasons for being in bed beyond eleven o’clock,’ she said briskly. ‘The one’s childbirth.’

Frankie nodded, letting her eyes focus. Mrs Gibbons now stood with both hands on her hips, the pail dangling off her wrist. She was stiff as ever in a brown tweed skirt that skimmed the floor,
and a starched but grimy white blouse. Frothy brown hair framed her crooked face.

‘What’s the other?’ Frankie rubbed her eyes.

‘Bone idleness.’ She marched out of the room slamming the door.

‘I was working last night . . .’ Frankie trailed off as the footsteps echoed down the stairs. She could hear shuffling from along the corridor. If Piggot was up it must indeed be
late. Mr Piggot was a sub-editor who worked afternoons and nights. She reached across the floor for her waistcoat and extracted her pocket-watch, but she had forgotten to wind it again and it said
three o’clock. Feeling heavy in the belly at the thought of having to pick her Blickensderfer out from the messy desk and write up the Twinkle column, she heaved herself out of bed, washed
quickly in the water, which was only just warmer than the air in the room, and put on the same clothes as yesterday. Her comb was nowhere to be seen so she smoothed her hair down with her fingers
and made her way downstairs.

On the parlour table sat a rack of toast, slowly curling in on itself. Alongside it was a pot of Mrs Gibbons’s famously tart marmalade that she boasted could both kill a rat and bring a
dead man back to life. Frankie heaped a spoonful of it onto a piece of soggy toast and reached for the coffee pot. It was cold and empty. Mrs Gibbons bustled through, shunting open the door with
her rump, and made a show of surprise at seeing Frankie up. ‘Miss George, breakfasting before noon, what will the other citizens say?’ She called all her lodgers ‘citizens’
as if she was the despot of some boarding-house empire.

Piggot prised open the door and snorted as he heaved himself into a chair at the head of the table. Frankie ignored them both and concentrated on not wincing as the marmalade went down. She
watched Mrs Gibbons place coffee and a boiled egg in front of Mr Piggot then stand staring for a few seconds with her hands clamped to her hips. Frankie became gradually aware that she was spoiling
for a fight and wasn’t about to move until she had one.

‘I’ll thank you to eat like a lady under my roof and use a plate so you don’t spill crumbs on the tablecloth.’ She swiped a claw at the oilskin cloth. A spray of crumbs
hit Frankie’s lap.

Frankie swallowed the mouthful of toast and imagined it curdling in her stomach with the gin. ‘Is something the matter?’

Mrs Gibbons stopped assaulting the tablecloth and stared at Frankie. Her cheeks were puffed with an angry shine; she had fury in her brown eyes. Piggot, Frankie noticed, was concentrating harder
than ever on his egg. She took a pile of newspapers from the side table and slapped them down on the oilskin. ‘That’s what’s the matter. Fenwick’s.’

Frankie looked puzzled for a second, then bent over the wrinkled copy of the
Daily Mail
. ‘Suffragettes Smash Bond Street.’ Piggot sneakily reached across, extracted a copy of
The Times
from under the pile and spread it out across half the table.

Mrs Gibbons went on, ‘They’re the only ones do the lavender pillows I like. I used my last one last night. Now there’s no chance of sleep until those bloody insufferables are
dealt with.’

A smirk tickled the corners of Frankie’s mouth but she bit it back and reached instead for the fresh coffee pot.

‘Well,’ she said slowly pouring a cup, ‘it is important. I for one am grateful to the women of the WSPU. I couldn’t survive Holloway. I’m glad someone can.’
She stretched a lazy arm behind her head.

Mrs Gibbons narrowed her eyes. ‘You’ve changed your tune.’

‘Beg your pardon? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Thought Miss George was too busy and important to trouble herself with suffragettes. She don’t need to. She got a job with the menfolk.’

Mr Piggot looked up. ‘Yes, there was something I recall, wasn’t it a cartoon?’

‘Oh, don’t go bringing that up now.’ Frankie put down her toast and wiped her fingers on a fresh napkin.

‘I recall when you first came here,’ Mrs Gibbons said, ‘wasn’t there an incident with one of them?’

Frankie concentrated on the newspaper. ‘Says there were over two hundred arrested.’

‘That’s right,’ Mrs Gibbons went on, as her pointy fingers began folding the napkins. ‘Didn’t you want to write for that paper they sell about votes but they said
your English weren’t good enough?’