When the Devil Drives (15 page)

She went silent, seeing my expression.

‘Go on.'

‘He reckons he saw it in the sky, smelling of sulphur and trailing blue sparks.'

She looked and sounded so crestfallen that my anger melted. Still, she had to learn.

‘Tabby, when you spoke to them, did they already know about the woman's body?'

‘Oh yes. Everybody was talking about it.'

‘It's just something people do, taking something that really happened, then adding all sorts of nonsense to it. They don't mean any harm. They probably believe it themselves.'

She listened, but looked resentful.

‘Never mind,' I said. ‘Only we're no nearer knowing who put her body there, or how or when.'

‘Yes we are. The when anyhow.'

I stared at her. She glared back.

‘You don't believe what I tell you in any case.'

‘Tabby, please, just tell me when.'

‘After the bugle blows at the barracks.'

I remembered, from summer with my window open, the note wavering faintly across the park. Five or half past perhaps, for early stables. Still dark at this time of year.

‘How do you know?'

‘The boy that walks the dogs. He sleeps by the statue sometimes. He knows when he hears the bugle it's time to get up and fetch the dogs from the big house across the road.'

‘And he slept by the statue last night?'

‘Yes.'

‘And left when he heard the bugle?'

‘Yes.'

‘And the body wasn't there then?'

‘Course not, or he'd have noticed.'

‘Did he tell the police about this?'

‘Nah. He says the constable kicks him up the backside soon as look at him.'

Could the girl who at least half believed in devils trailing blue sparks be right about anything? Dealing with Tabby's reports was like plunging a hand in a bran tub.

‘If you're right, we should have been asking about things that happened just before it was light,' I said.

Carrying Dora's body to the statue in the narrow gap between the bugle call and daylight would have been a risky undertaking.

‘The dog boy, he didn't see anybody carrying something that might have been her body?'

‘Nah.'

‘Or hear or see a vehicle?'

‘Didn't ask him that. Do you want me to?'

‘Yes. In fact, ask all of them. Forget the devil. Just get them to tell you if they heard or saw anything in the early morning, around the time of the bugle call. Try to find out if anybody heard any carts, even handcarts.'

In my mind, I was seeing Jeremy James laying her down on the stone slabs. Would he have risked carrying her through the streets over his shoulder?

‘Come back here before dark and get a night's sleep,' I said. ‘We're going on a coach journey tomorrow.'

‘Where to?'

‘Boreham.'

‘That's where the man that lost this girl comes from.'

‘That's right.'

‘Why are we going there?'

I put some pennies for a pie into her hand. ‘I'll tell you on the journey.'

Upstairs, Mrs Martley was feeding her scrap book. She'd developed a fierce loyalty to little Vicky and collected every newspaper item or engraving she could find. She was reading something that pleased her, making small cooing sounds as to a baby or a kitten.

‘Bless the boy, fancy him sending her his guinea pigs.'

‘Hmm?'

She passed a newspaper cutting to me –
The Times
in its ponderously light-hearted vein. A small hamper had arrived from Yorkshire at Windsor coach office, addressed to ‘Her Majesty Queen Victoria at Briton Palace or wherever she may Bee. A curious squeaking noise was heard to proceed from the hamper, resembling the stifled cries of a child'. The hamper was hastily opened, disclosing two live guinea pigs and a letter:

‘It's preposterous,' I said, laughing. ‘No five-year-old boy would give up his guinea pigs, even if the queen sent the entire Household Cavalry to take them.'

‘You're very sceptical,' said Mrs Martley sadly.

I realized that I was trespassing in a sacred place and said I hoped the guinea pigs had survived.

‘Oh yes. Windsor Castle wouldn't take them, but a gentleman in the town gave them a home. She read: ‘The pigs, which he had christened Albert and Victoria (the latter of which will shortly be introducing some new acquaintance to his family circle) are now carefully domiciled in a spacious hutch.'

‘And it's signed “Cupid”,' she added, as if that clinched some argument I hadn't been following.

‘A guinea pig cupid?'

‘No, the proper cupid. It's
The Times
' way of letting people know they know about it, only they can't print it because it's not official yet.'

It had been a long day and my head was spinning. ‘Can't print what?'

She looked at me pityingly. ‘Queen Victoria being engaged to Prince Albert.'

‘Is she?'

‘Of course she is. Everybody knows.'

For a mad moment, I wondered what loyal Mrs Martley would say if she knew how close I'd been to prince cupid's elder brother, and why. If the contessa did manage to cause a public scandal, Prince Ernest's past might reflect on his younger and apparently more virtuous brother at a particularly delicate time.

‘Is there anything about the elder brother?' I said.

‘Oh no. Prince Ernest wouldn't have done, you see.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because he'll have to go back and rule his own country and everybody says Prince Albert is better natured and better looking.'

She turned a page in her scrap book and gazed fondly at an engraving of the two princes. ‘She could have had anybody in the world. The Grand Duke Alexander of Russia, the Czar's son, he wanted to marry her too. But she's chosen Albert, a real love match.'

I bit my tongue, to stop myself saying that queen marries prince hardly added up to a Cinderella story. I said I hoped they'd all be very happy, leaving her to decide whether I meant the royals or the guinea pig family, and took myself upstairs to my room.

NINE

T
he Essex coach was fully booked inside, so Tabby and I had to travel on top, along with a couple of louts who kept drinking out of hip flasks, imitating the coach horn and yelling witticisms at pedestrians. Luckily, they got down at Brentwood.

‘So why's he run off, then?' Tabby asked when I told her about my visit to Islington.

‘I don't know. But just because his friend was disobliging, that doesn't mean that Mr James had some bad reason for leaving.'

‘Or he might have killed her himself,' Tabby said, sounding quite cheerful about it.

Yet again, I was brought up standing by her quickness. I'd decided not to share my speculation with her until I knew the result of our trip into Essex.

‘So did you find out if anybody saw or heard anything just before daylight?' I said.

‘Nah. Nobody saw or heard nothing.'

‘No carts?'

‘Only the usual ones.'

‘Usual?'

As the stage jolted us eastwards, she ran through the list from that formidable memory of hers. The vagrants who slept in the park were used to the procession of tradesmen's vehicles in the early morning, glimpsed through the leaves in summer, recognized by sound in the autumn and winter darkness.

‘There's only the two handcarts, a couple called William and Mary pushing them. He picks up the horses' doings for the market gardens and she does the dog dung for the tanneries. Some mornings, there's a mad old man picks up cast-off horseshoes. The rest are horse and carts.'

I took pencil and notepad out of my reticule and asked her to tell me all she'd been able to find out. At the end of the process, we had a written list, as follows: the baker's cart, making early deliveries to the clubs around St James and Piccadilly. The park vagrants waited for it, because one lucky morning a door had opened and a shower of bread rolls fallen out. Two vegetable carts, rival owners, delivering to back doorways of the big houses along Park Lane. Interesting to the vagrants, because the drivers tried to steal each other's custom and had once had a fight, using whips. The ice cart. Similar deliveries, less interesting because ice was unrewarding eating. Two builders' wagons, carrying bricks. Not on regular daily rounds, but quite frequent as a lot of rebuilding was going on around Park Lane. The night soil wagon. Carting away waste from cesspits, unmistakeable by its smell even if you didn't see it.

All of them had a good reason to be there. Discouraging news.

We changed horses at Chelmsford. A few miles further on, we climbed stiffly down outside the Cock at Boreham. A cheerful middle-aged man in a yellow waistcoat who looked as if he might be the landlord was standing in the porch, watching the coach speed away. I wished him good morning and asked if he could kindly tell us where the James family lived. He stared at me, puzzled.

‘I believe they live some way outside the village,' I said. ‘They have a grown-up son named Jeremy.'

‘No Jameses I know of, and I've been here fifteen years. There's a widow woman called Jameson, but she's eighty or more with no sons as far as I know.'

‘The son said they had a small estate.'

He shook his head. ‘It was definitely Boreham, was it? You couldn't have been thinking of Basildon or Braintree?'

I was certain it was Boreham. After more head shaking, the landlord suggested we might ask the vicar, although he didn't sound hopeful. The tower of the church was visible about half a mile away. We started walking with a cold wind in our faces, between russet-coloured hedges and trees with a few yellow and red crab apples still clinging to bare branches. The vicarage stood across the road from the church, a handsome building of red brick. Two children, well-wrapped up against the wind, were playing with a white and tan terrier in the garden. When we knocked, the vicar himself came to the door, teacup in hand. He seemed a genial man, but when I introduced myself and explained that we were looking for the James family he was as puzzled as the landlord had been.

‘Were they living here some time ago?'

‘I was given to understand they're living near the village now. In fact, the young man, Jeremy James, attends your church. He was at a service –' I did some hasty counting back – ‘two Sundays ago, on the sixth of October.'