The Murder of Patience Brooke (24 page)

‘I do not think Crewe has been here,’ said the superintendent. ‘I spoke to the neighbours upstairs. They haven’t heard anyone downstairs. What the hell has he done with Jenny? He wouldn’t have taken her to Albany – too risky. So, where? Where?’

They looked at each other, sharing the frustration of it all –

and the fear. Dickens spoke first. He had an idea. ‘What about Louisa Mapp? She might know if Crewe – or Blackledge – had another lodging. It’s worth a try, surely?’

‘Right – Mrs Cutler’s at Bell Lane then.’

They went out. Feak and the constable in the lane were to search as well as Scrap, and the constable who had stood at Whetstone Place was to stand guard at Lantern Yard. They hurried down Serle Street and into a knot of lanes off Carey Street where Bell Lane lay. It was rather wider than the lanes they had walked through and led out to Hough Street. Sam knew the house. It looked respectable enough if you did not know what it was for. It was one of a terrace, double-fronted with a railed area in front and steps up to the front door. They knocked. Sam did not stand on ceremony. ‘Police to see Mrs Cutler.’

He was in through the door before the waif-like servant girl had a chance to answer. The hall was lit by gas. It was square with a red and cream tiled floor, and a couple of chairs by a fireplace – the fire not yet lit. There was a palm in a brass pot at the bottom of the stairs and a table with a lace cloth. Dickens was amused at the gentility of it all, and noted with interest an inviting velvet chaise-longue in the room whither had gone the startled waif in search of Mrs Cutler. A young woman came in after them through the open door. They looked round quickly, but it wasn’t Louisa Mapp. The young woman looked surprised and curious, but went upstairs without a word, glancing back once in a slightly anxious way.

Mrs Cutler came, a tall, handsome woman in her thirties, he guessed. Her dress was of some dark green, heavy material and it fitted her well. She was confident, too, and gracious, as if she were welcoming them to tea. She moved well and seemed to glide towards them. Her voice was educated though monotonous as if she had prepared her words beforehand.

‘Superintendent,’ she said. ‘How may I help you?’

‘We are looking for Louisa Mapp, and it is urgent. I cannot give you any details. It is not, I think, anything to do with your business here but we need to find her. Is she here?’

She did not blink at the word ‘business’, but replied in her colourless tones, ‘No, she is not. I have not seen her since Thursday. She came back late at night. In the morning she was gone. I do not know where.’

Dickens was surprised at how precisely she spoke. He had thought she would be rough and hard; he wondered what had brought her to this way of living. It was as if she were not real, that she had manufactured herself, a large doll devoid of feeling.

Sam asked if she knew whether Louisa had any family. Mrs Cutler did not, but she would ask one of her other residents, Mary Lyons, who had been friendly with Louisa. She went out of the room and they could hear her calling for Susan, presumably the waif.

‘Residents!’ laughed Sam. ‘Born actress, this one – I wonder what happened to the real Mrs Cutler.’

After a few minutes, Mrs Cutler came back with the girl they had seen go upstairs. She looked nervous when Mrs Cutler told her that the police wished to speak to her about Louisa. Sam sensed that she would tell them nothing if Mrs Cutler stayed. He could not afford to be tactful so he told her bluntly that they would like to talk to Mary alone. Mrs Cutler was gracious once more. ‘Certainly, Superintendent, as you will.’

Mary was Irish and beautiful with her creamy skin and green eyes. She was also frightened now she was alone with them.

‘Tell us about Louisa. It’s very important that we find her. A young girl is missing. Where has she gone?’

Mary knew about Blackledge. Louisa had told her that he was dead. Louisa had also told her that she wanted to get away, find somewhere else to lodge.

‘Get away from what?’ asked Sam sharply.

‘I don’t know – she was frightened of someone.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. I think he was a gentleman, a toff, she said. A bad ’un she thought, but Blackledge’d look after her, she said. Then when she came after he was dead, she said it was better I didn’t know where she was going, but that she’d try to come back and see me.’

There was no time for more – they knew of whom she might be frightened. Now there was Louisa Mapp to worry about as well as Jenny Ding. One last question.

‘Did she have parents, family – where?’

‘Covent Garden – mother and sisters, brothers. I’m not sure. She went there sometimes.’

‘Where?’ Sam almost shouted.

‘Off Floral Street – Lavender Alley, I think.’

They hurried away, not bothering to speak to Mrs Cutler. Dickens began, ‘So, she was frightened enough to leave the formidable Mrs Cutler. I wonder if he went to see her, to find out what she knew about Blackledge’s death. It would be logical for her to go home, but if she is not there, then, surely, there is every chance that he found her, and perhaps took Jenny to her – if he thought she was still on his side or he could frighten her.’

‘We must go back to Lantern Yard quick as we can – we’ll check if Scrap’s been back or if Feak has found anything.’ They were racing now, rushing up the length of Serle Street. At Lantern Yard, the constable told them that no one had been back. Sam instructed him to tell Feak that they would be back by six o’clock. It was past five now. It would take about ten minutes to Floral Street.

Away they went again, striding out, their fast-coming breath misting as they went, too quick to speak, hastening through Kemble Street, Bow Street, Covent Garden, Floral Street where they ducked into the ginnel which led them into the stinking alley with the inappropriate name.

‘Mapps?’ Sam asked a man coming out.

‘Down there.’ The man pointed to some steps leading underground, no doubt to some squalid, malodorous cellar where more than one family would live.

Mrs Mapp was so unlike her daughter that it was tragic – impossible to tell her age, she might have been forty or seventy, so much a wreck of a woman she was, so emaciated that her face seemed to have fallen in around a toothless, gaping hole of a mouth. They knew at once that Louisa wasn’t there. The dwelling was only one room with a few pitiful broken bits of furniture. There was a straw mattress on the floor, its insides spilling out; there were some wretched worn blankets piled on it. Lying underneath was a girl of about ten or so – she might have been older. Her hair was stringy, wet on the dirty rags which made her pillow. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was hoarse and laboured.

Mrs Mapp stared at them. They had come down the greasy steps, their feet clattering as they came and stood now, too large, in the dingy cellar. Her eyes darted to the bed and to the door. She was terrified. Who were they? What had they come for? It was as if she expected an attack, that they would leap on her – perhaps someone had done that before? Was there a Mr Mapp? Dickens wondered.

‘Mrs Mapp,’ said Dickens as Sam moved back towards the steps. He knew she was frightened of his size. He didn’t blame her. He felt enormous in this confined space. Mrs Mapp stared uncomprehendingly at Dickens as though she did not recognise her own name. The girl in the fusty bed coughed and whimpered in her sleep. Dear God, thought Sam, the misery of it all.

‘Mrs Mapp,’ tried Dickens again. ‘We are looking for your daughter, Louisa.’

The woman burst into tears, terrible hacking sobs. They were astonished. What on earth did this mean? Sam felt a second’s terror. Was Louisa dead?

Dickens was appalled, too. ‘Mrs Mapp, tell us. Where is she?’

She looked at them with her tragic eyes which he saw were Louisa’s eyes. ‘She ’ant come. She said she’d come. She woz bringin’ money.’ She looked at the bed. ‘I need the money. She’s gotter come.’ She wept again, her despair filling the room in a long wail of grief and abandonment. ‘Why don’t she come? Why don’t she come?’

There was nothing more to say. Dickens took some money from his pocket, and taking her hand, put the coins in it. It was the hand of a starved bird. I can’t stand this, he thought. Mrs Mapp stared at the money. She could hardly understand.

‘We will find Louisa for you,’ he said. ‘She will come.’

Mrs Mapp did not answer. They went up the steps and out into the air which, stale as it was, seemed at least breathable after the foetid stink of the cellar. They stood, shaken by what they had seen, but it was pointless to talk about it.

‘Back to Lantern Yard,’ said Sam. ‘This is a mess. A dead end, every which way we turn. God knows where she is. She could be dead, and Jenny Ding, too.’

Dickens felt for him; he knew how what they had seen had horrified them both. They had seen much already yet the misery here was overwhelming. His money might do some good for a short while, that is if the woman was not too stupefied to spend it. Those two would probably die in there. Once he had seen, in another cramped, vile underground room, a naked child dead for days, and the family too poor to bury it, the corpse left lying in the corner. Anger flared in him like a flame. He thought he could have killed Crewe there and then for what he had done. And then helplessness swept through him. He looked at Sam, standing in Lavender Alley, his eyes closed with defeat settled on his face.

‘On, on, we noble English,’ Dickens roused him with a touch on his shoulder, ‘once more unto the etcetera.’

Sam smiled at him. ‘You’re right. We are not doing any good here. Thank you, Charles. It’s good that you are here.’

It was beginning to be foggy as they came out of the lane. All the city clocks were striking six. Time ignored them and all the sufferings they had seen. What were human beings to Time, implacable and inexorable, striding on, dragging them in its wake? They went back into Covent Garden where the last stroke of six sounded from St Paul’s Church, passive in its Palladian grandeur, surveying coldly the things in progress under its shadow.

Scrap was back, shivering as he put on his shirt, but his eyes were alive with news.

‘You know where they are?’

‘Nah, but two girls bin seen. Asked abaht a bit – kids an’ that like yer sed, Mr Jones. Some kids sed they seen a girl, cryin’ she woz. She wasn’t in a blue dress, just rags, the other one was dressed the same like, but she ’ad dark ’air an’ wore an ’at. Draggin’ the little girl, they sed – in an’ ’urry.’

‘Louisa in disguise?’ asked Dickens.

‘It makes sense – Mary Lyons said she was frightened so if he brought Jenny to her, and she decided to run away, she would try to disguise them both, and try to hide somewhere.’

‘Where were they? Did these children say?’

‘I went over ’Olborn, talked to the kids in the alleys off Eagle Street. Kids saw ’em near there.’

‘When?’ asked Sam.

‘Couple o’ hours ago probly. I came straight ’ere arter I talked to ’em.’

‘So, she’s going north up towards the Foundling Hospital. Perhaps she knows someone up there, someone who’ll take them in.’ Dickens hoped it was so.

‘Could be – I’ll send a couple of constables to have a look up there. You never know, someone else may have seen them. They might, at least, be safe from Crewe.’

‘What now?’ Dickens asked.

‘Anythin’ else yer want me ter do?’ asked Scrap.

‘Yes, go back to Crown Street, and see them all home – don’t want them wandering off,’ Sam said.

‘Gotter keep our eyes on ’em, I know.’ Scrap winked, and went out to escort Elizabeth and the children back to Norfolk Street. Sam went out with him to give his instructions to the constables. Dickens stood, thinking about Jenny and Louisa Mapp, hoping they were safe somewhere in the shadow of the Foundling Hospital.

Dickens and Jones sat down on Blackledge’s chairs. ‘What now?’ repeated Sam. ‘What now, indeed?’

As if in answer to the question, the sound of running footsteps came, and the door was flung open to reveal a grey-faced constable whom Dickens had not seen before. Very much out of breath, he could only manage, ‘Body, sir.’

‘Where?’

Dickens stood up. Not Eagle Street. Not Jenny. It could not be, surely.

‘Cursitor Street.’ Just a few minutes from Carey Street and Bell Lane. Were Scrap’s informants wrong? Had they simply seen an older girl and a child and Scrap, in his eagerness, had wanted it to be Jenny, and, had they wanted it to be Jenny and Louisa? Because they wanted them to be safe.

‘Just one body?’ Sam asked.

‘Yes, sir, young female – throat cut.’

‘What sort of girl?’

‘Dunno, sir, just a street girl, hardly any clothes, yer know.’

They did know. They were out of the door. ‘Feak, your rattle. We need more men.’

At the sound of the rattle, the superintendent’s constables came in the instant. Two more followed. They had been on their beat along King Street. Two were to go up across Holborn to look round Eagle Street, and the other two, Dickens and the superintendent to Cursitor Street where they could rouse another couple of constables. Feak would stay at Lantern Yard.

The grey-faced constable, Stemp, told his story as they rushed to Cursitor Street, the fog descending now like a curtain. Stemp and his colleague had been looking about the lanes and courts when a lad, about eleven or so, had run up to them shouting about a body. He had vanished and they didn’t wait to catch him. In a little yard off one of the alleys they had found her. The constable led them through the suffocating nest of alleys where the fog hovered in front of them obscuring outlines, softening the jagged walls, creating an eerie silence in which their hurrying feet seemed to echo as though someone or something dogged their footsteps. Dickens could not help turning round, holding up his lamp, but seeing only the vaporous mist moving and coiling as if it were forcing them onwards. Stemp was uncertain now, shining his light on to doors and gaps in broken walls until they came to a set of steps leading into a tomb-like courtyard surrounded by high walls which gave it the look of a prison cell. There was an old well here, and a door in one of the walls which was half open, and through which they could see a small overgrown garden. She lay near the door. The superintendent lifted his lamp. Dickens followed him, his heart filled with dread at what they might see. She was on her front, one arm flung out, the other crushed beneath her. She looked like a discarded doll, too small to be Louisa Mapp. Very carefully, the second constable turned her over.