When the Devil Drives (19 page)

The first thing I looked for was a glimmer of a candle from Tabby's cabin, but there was nothing but darkness in that direction. When I did pick up a faint light it came not from the cabin but between the closed doors of the carriage repairer's store shed by the gates. There shouldn't have been a light in there. It was after eleven o'clock and Mr Grindley never worked so late. I listened and heard low voices inside. One of them was male, the other Tabby's. I prised open the door and walked in to find a man holding a mallet. His shadow wavered over the wall in the candlelight. Tabby was bending over a bench, an odd white hat on her head that I'd never seen her wearing before. My heart turned several cartwheels before I recognized the man with the mallet.

‘Tom Huckerby, what in the world are you doing now?'

He looked a little shamefaced. The mallet was the kind printers use to pack type into its frame, Tabby's strange hat a paper one that printers make fresh for themselves every day to keep ink out of their hair. Another man I'd never seen before was crouching close to a second candle sorting through type.

‘Seemed a pity to have the press here and not bring out a new edition of
The Unbound Briton
,' Tom said. ‘We didn't think you'd mind.'

They'd dragged the press out of its hiding place and reassembled it in an empty space between parts of carriages.

‘It's not a question of whether I mind,' I said. ‘It's not my storeroom.'

‘I know, but Boadicea here says the man never works Saturday afternoons and Sundays and in any case he's out visiting his sister.'

I looked reproachfully at Tabby. She grinned back. It seemed to me ironic that a girl who scorned reading and writing could so easily be seduced by the glamour of the press.

‘What are you printing?' I asked Tom.

‘Latest edition of
The Unbound Briton.
Don't worry, we'll have every drop of ink scrubbed away and the press back under the stairs by daylight.'

I tucked away my good white evening gloves and picked up a proof page. Surrounded by columns of type was a picture of a gentleman's dress chariot. It was done from a rough woodcut, over-inked and gleaming black. On the back, where footmen should have been, two creatures reared up with horned heads and animal bodies.

‘Not you as well, Tom,' I said.

He was political to the bone and would not usually waste paper and ink on horror stories to scare housemaids.

‘Not really our style, I know but we had a page to fill,' he said. ‘A fellow I know runs another paper, more of a penny-dreadful than ours, but we help each other out when we're short of copy. He takes some of our politics and I take some of his shockers.'

‘More appearances of the devil's chariot, then?'

‘All over the place, and half a dozen girls supposed to have disappeared. You know how these stories grow legs.'

He sounded as sceptical as I was.

‘The man you know who wrote this story, has he actually talked to anybody who's seen it or is it all second hand?'

Tom had to think about it. ‘As far as I remember, he claims he spoke to a girl in Holborn who reckons she was dragged into the chariot by two men with bulls' heads, only she struggled and got away.'

Tabby gave me a ‘told you so' look.

‘When was this supposed to have happened?' I said.

‘Last week.'

‘He only
claims
to have spoken to the girl?'

‘Codling's not exactly the most reliable man in journalism.'

I tried to return Tabby's look, but she was too entranced with Tom setting up a line of type to notice.

I was about to go to bed and leave them to it, when Tom remembered something. ‘I saw your friend Jimmy Cuffs. He gave me a note for you.' He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over, ink-smeared. It was addressed to me in Jimmy's meticulous writing:

Candlelight wavered over the note as I read. But the candle flame was burning steadily. The wavering was from my hands shaking.

‘Tom?'

He looked up. ‘Bad news?'

‘That friend of yours, Codling, do you think he could get the woman to speak to me? The one who says she was nearly dragged off in the chariot.'

He was puzzled, both at the request and the urgency I couldn't keep from my voice.

‘I could try.'

‘As soon as possible.'

He hesitated, torn between curiosity and the demands of his printing, then nodded. I got his permission to take the proof page upstairs with me, took off my fine clothes and read the story by the lamplight. The black chariot worked itself into my dreams. I woke shivering from a dream of it rumbling along behind me as I ran away down an endless street of blank houses. I was not much better than all those nervous housemaids now. I was starting to believe in it.

TWELVE

T
om Huckerby was at my door around noon next morning, weary and hollow-eyed.

‘The woman's name is Blade. Codling thinks he might be able to get her to talk this afternoon.'

‘Where?'

‘You know the Flora Tea Gardens, near the Swan Inn on the Bayswater Road? He said he'd try and get her there about three.'

I said I'd be there. He hesitated, looking worried. ‘He says she's accustomed to . . . to being paid for her time. That's why she was out on the street so late on her own.'

‘How much does she want?'

‘Codling thought she might talk to us for five guineas.'

‘Five guineas!'

I didn't know the rates for the midnight sparrows, but that seemed excessive.

‘That's what he says.'

In the few hours available, the only way I could put my hand on that sort of money was by raiding the store of guineas Mr Clyde had left for me in the desk at Grosvenor Street. Normally that would have troubled my conscience but I was past that by now.

Suzette opened the door less promptly than usual, looking sulky and not pleased to see me. I took five sovereigns out of the bag in the writing desk, knowing that I could make up the extra five shillings from my own resources. On the way downstairs, I asked Suzette if she'd seen Mr Clyde that day.

‘No, ma'am.'

‘When did you last see him?'

‘Can't rightly remember, ma'am.'

I might as well have spoken to the banisters.

At two o'clock, Tabby and I were walking across the park towards the Bayswater Road. I hadn't wanted to take her, but it turned out that she'd been eavesdropping from under the stairs when Tom Huckerby was talking to me. I'd given in, on the condition that she kept her distance when I was talking to our witness.

‘If she sees a whole group of us, she might turn and run,' I said.

‘Not with a chance of getting her hand on five guineas.'

It struck me that my apprentice might know more than I did about the tariff for Miss Blade's kind. The Flora Tea Gardens were not far from the livery stables where Amos worked. They'd been fashionable once, but on an afternoon in late October there was a sad and faded air about them. Rosemary bushes in the sparse borders still showed a defiant blue flower or two, but geraniums hunched as if waiting for the first frost. Tom Huckerby was already there sitting at a table, the only person in the gardens. I joined him and sent Tabby into the neighbouring Swan Inn, just in case the tea gardens still ran to providing tea. Tom was ill at ease.

‘I don't know if they'll come. This Codling, I shouldn't want you to think he's a particular friend of mine.'

A sulky girl came out with a tray, followed by Tabby. The teacups were chipped and the milk so sour that, when I poured, white globules floated on brown sludge. A long time after three o'clock, two more people came into the garden. One was a man in a low crowned hat and a black overcoat. Blue smoke and the smell of a cheap cigar came ahead of him. He was small, in his late twenties, with sparse fair hair, pale eyes with near-white lashes and a protruding lower lip like a carp. A woman followed, shoulders hunched, an Indian shawl over her head. I glanced at Tabby and she withdrew to a seat a couple of tables away.

Tom introduced Mr Codling to me. The woman was slumped on a chair, with just a glance up at me from under the shawl.

‘Miss Blade,' Codling said.

Hers was a strong face, or should have been, with high cheekbones and a good chin, arched eyebrows, dark hair waving over a white forehead. But her eyes were as dull as bottle stoppers, her cheeks too bright with rouge. She wore a brown wool skirt and a dark blue jacket. The brown bodice under the jacket was fastened unevenly with buttons in the wrong holes, glimpses of red chemise showing through. Codling sat down and looked a question at Tom. I'd given Tom the five guineas. He handed it over and it disappeared into Codling's pocket like a fly down the carp's gullet. I asked the woman if she'd care for a cup of tea.

‘She'd prefer gin,' Codling said. ‘With hot water and a lump of sugar.'

He spoke with a dandyish drawl, wafting cigar smoke aside with his hand. Tom stood up and went inside The Swan.

‘I'd like to know exactly what happened to Miss Blade,' I said to Codling.

‘So what's your interest?'

I tried to make the look I gave him as insolent as his question. ‘I think that's my business.'

‘Are you representing somebody?'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘And you're not going to tell me who?'

‘No.'

‘That's a touch cool, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Five guineas cool.'

He laughed, and drew on his cigar. I spoke directly to the woman. ‘Miss Blade, is it correct that two masked men dragged you into a chariot?'

She looked up at him, not at me.

‘Miss Blade wants me to do the talking,' Codling said. ‘She's still shaken from what happened. She'll say if I'm getting it wrong, won't you?'

She nodded. Tom came back, followed by the girl with a steaming glass and a pint of porter on a tray. Codling took a swallow of porter.

‘You've read what I wrote?'

‘I've read what Mr Huckerby published in his paper.'

‘Don't read papers like mine, eh? You should.'

I reminded myself that I needed his help. ‘Yes, I probably should. But since I've missed it, I wonder if you could kindly tell me the details?'

He took another swallow. ‘We say in the story that she was a servant walking home, but Becky was out working, if you take my meaning.'

I couldn't tell whether the brutality in his tone was directed at me or at the woman sitting beside him. When neither of us reacted, he went on talking. ‘She hears this carriage coming along slowly behind her so she glances round, sees a dress chariot with the lamps lit and a driver on the box in a three-cornered hat and a black cloak, so being in her line of business she walks on, but slower than before, thinking there's probably a gentleman inside the chariot who wishes to have a conversation with her. Is that right so far, Becky?'

A nod from the woman, as if none of this had much to do with her.

‘The chariot comes level with her, then stops. She sees the blind is drawn down on her side, but that's not unusual. Some gentlemen like to get a closer look at the lady before they commit themselves, so to speak. So she puts her foot up on the step – probably taking care to show a neat ankle in case the gentleman happens to be glancing out from under the blind. That right, Becky?'

He was enjoying this too much. I told him fairly sharply to get to the point.

‘We're there already. No sooner are her dainty toes on the step than the chariot lurches, and these two men jump down off the back. Of course, she wouldn't have seen them before, being at the side of it. They run at her and take hold of her by the shoulders. By the light of the carriage lamps, she sees they've got bull faces and horns where their heads should be and yells blue murder. But they bundle her into the chariot. There's two gentlemen inside. She says one was in what looked like military uniform, with gold braid. The bull men throw her down on the floor and hold her there while the gentlemen do what they want to do. She's screaming and struggling, but it's no good.'

He blew a smoke ring and watched as it rose slowly and dissolved in the damp air.

‘And they try to carry her off?' I asked.

‘That's right. Only the bull men have to open the door so they can get out and get back up behind. When they do, Becky here manages to throw herself out, yelling for help.'

‘And she gets away?'

‘Yes. A couple of Peelers come running up, shouting out and rattling their rattles for all they're worth. The bull men jump back on and off goes the chariot towards Soho at such a lick that the Peelers couldn't have caught it if they tried, and not many of them care for running unless there's somebody chasing after them.'

Codling settled back in his chair. ‘Not a bad little story, is it, even if it's not the sort of things
The Times
prints,' he said. ‘And she was a lucky girl, weren't you, Becky?'

The woman didn't react. It was left to me to ask him what he meant.

‘A few days after that, they found the girl by the Achilles, with all the blood drained out of her. I reckon that's what they were going to go with Becky if she hadn't got away. They'd put their mark on her, all ready for sacrifice.'

‘Put their mark on her. What do you mean?'