When the Devil Drives (23 page)

A nod. His smile faded.

‘Why aren't you with her?'

‘From what I understand, I'm the last person in the world she wants to see. At present, at any rate.'

He walked over and opened the writing desk, came back and sat in the armchair.

‘I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see you, Miss Lane. I too am going away.'

‘Abroad?'

A nod.

‘I shall always be grateful for what you have done for her. I notice you haven't claimed your fee yet. I insist on your accepting it.' He put the bag of coins on the table.

‘I took ten sovereigns out,' I said. ‘I didn't do enough to earn any more.'

‘For the fire damage then, whoever caused it.'

I thanked him and put the bag in my reticule. I'd have rather not have taken it, but couldn't see how we'd repair our home otherwise.

‘Were you at Drury Lane on Saturday?' I said.

He smiled. ‘You saw me then?'

‘Yes.'

‘I saw you too, with your friends. I hope you'll excuse me for not acknowledging you. Again, and from my heart, thank you Miss Lane. I shan't forget you.'

We both stood up. He took my hand and held it for a while, looking into my face.

‘One last question,' I said.

He let go of my hand. ‘What?'

‘When I was with the contessa, she'd left some of her jewellery spread over the dressing table. There was a ring.'

He waited.

‘An odd sort of ring,' I said. ‘It looked like a gentleman's signet with a bull's head engraved on it. She seemed annoyed that I'd seen it.'

I was watching his face closely. A flicker of curiosity, nothing more.

‘And what did you deduce from that?'

‘I don't know. I just wondered if you'd seen anything like it.'

‘Not that I remember. Some keepsake from a gentleman, I suppose.'

There was nothing more to be said.

I walked across the park to the livery stables. Amos had always been one of the few certain things in my life, and I'd had too much of uncertainties. Simply being in his company made the world a less threatening place. He wasn't there.

‘No word from him,' the owner said. He was sitting at the battered table in his office, checking feed bills.

‘Do you know when he might be back?'

‘I wish I did. The man he sent in his place is doing well enough, but all the ladies are inquiring for Legge.'

‘Where exactly did he go in Surrey, that weekend before he was attacked?'

I was so used to Amos's absence on horse-dealing errands that it hadn't occurred to me to ask at the time.

‘Egham,' the owner said. ‘It's next door to Runnymede race course so you get a lot of gentlemen down there, trying out their horses.' He hesitated, shuffling bills but not looking at them.

‘Day after he went, there were two men inquiring for him.'

‘Oh?'

‘Little dark cove and big one with stubbly hair. Reckoned they were friends of his.'

‘You don't think they were?'

‘Whiff of trouble about them. Struck me, they might be bailiffs, but Amos never seems to me a man in that kind of difficulty.'

Amos wasn't extravagant and only gambled for the fun of it.

‘He isn't. So what did you tell them?'

‘That I didn't know where he was or when he'd be back. Don't know if they believed me, but no odds to me in any case.'

‘Do you have any idea at all what he's doing?' I said.

Another hesitation. ‘Him and some of the others have been getting themselves in a lather about the chariot business. Some of the lads have got sweethearts and don't like to think of people going round attacking young women.'

My heart stopped.

‘You think Amos has gone off on the trail of the devil's chariot?'

‘I'm not saying yes or no, because I don't know. But that's what some of the lads think.' Then, reacting to my expression: ‘No need to worry if he has. I reckon Amos Legge's a match for anything, devils included.'

I asked him to send word to me at Abel Yard if there were any news of Amos. On my way out I went to say hello to Rancie and her cat Lucy, then walked back across the park, trying to make out what Amos thought he was doing. Egham was about twenty miles out of London, a day's ride for him, or three hours or so away by stage coach. If he weren't back soon I'd go and look for him, whether he liked it or not.

Tabby and I, wearing our oldest clothes, swept and scrubbed all through the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to light the lamps. By then, we had the parlour pretty well clean and the worst of the soot removed from my room and office. We bundled up curtains, books and papers that were beyond saving, carried them down to the yard and made a bonfire close to the midden. While we were raking out the ashes, Tom Huckerby arrived. He sounded subdued and, for a wonder, apologized to me.

‘I wouldn't have come here if I'd known I was putting you in danger.'

I refrained from saying it was late in the day to think of that and invited him and Tabby upstairs to find something to eat. Mrs Martley would have had a conniption if she'd known. We found ham in the meat safe (Tom pointed out that since it had been smoked already, a bit more wouldn't have done it any harm), eggs in the bowl and some potatoes. I made omelettes in the Spanish style, an adequate meal for three people who hadn't eaten since the night before, washed down with tea for all of us and a glass of wine for Tom and me. Tabby screwed up her face at the taste of it and said she'd prefer gin if we had it. We hadn't.

When we were sitting round with out feet to the fire, I put it to Tom that it would seem strange if government agents had singled out his press alone for an arson attack. He surprised me again by agreeing.

‘I've been thinking about that. I don't believe it was over our politics after all.'

‘Ah. So what was it then?'

‘The chariot,' he said. ‘The devil's chariot. I reckon the newspapers have been making things too hot for them. This was their way of telling us to lay off.'

‘But other papers have been writing about it much more. You've only just started.'

‘Maybe we were just easy to get at and they'll go after some others as well now.'

I asked if he could remember anything more about the three men who threw in the tar bucket.

‘I told you one of them shouted out something. I reckon he was telling the one with the bucket where to throw it, but I couldn't make out the words.' He hesitated. ‘I don't know for sure, but looking back, I think it might have been foreign.'

‘What language? Italian? German?'

‘I wouldn't know. Plain English has always been good enough for me.'

He couldn't remember anything else to the purpose and had no description of the men. They were just figures in the dark to him and he'd been too occupied in trying to rescue me to run after them.

When Tabby was clearing up the plates for once, I gave Tom five sovereigns from Mr Clyde's money bag.

‘To help replace your press.'

He looked startled at the amount. ‘You can't afford this.'

‘It's from a fee I didn't deserve. At least, I don't think I did.'

As we shared the last of the wine, I asked him where he intended to sleep.

‘You can't stay under the stairs,' Tabby told him. ‘It's all burned and wet. There's the shed next to the cows that I had before I got the other place.' She seemed determined to make Tom a fixture in the yard.

‘That's a good idea,' he said. ‘If they come back, I'll be ready for them.'

I took one of the lamps and showed him downstairs. When I got back, Tabby was staring into the fire, a worried expression on her face.

‘If it was the devil's chariot people that done it, they know where we live, don't they?'

When I said she could sleep on the parlour sofa if she wanted, she leapt at it, but with a face-saving addition. ‘It'll be safer for you, having me here.'

Tabby volunteered to fetch water from the pump at the far end of the yard, since our own was out of commission. As soon as the door closed on her there was a shout, a metallic clattering and the bumping of a body all the way down the stairs.

‘Tabby.'

I was on the landing, heart thumping, looking down into the dark. From the bottom of the staircase, a voice uttered curses.

‘Tabby, is that you? What's happening?'

‘I'm all right. Fell down the bloody stairs, that's all.'

I fetched a candle from the parlour and went down cautiously. By the time I got to the bottom, Tabby was upright, leaning on the door frame with her hand to her ribs.

‘Let me see. Have you broken anything?'

By then, Tom had arrived with a stick, ready to ward off another attack.

‘Just winded. Don't fuss,' Tabby said to us.

She was annoyed, pride hurt. Usually she was as sure-footed as a cat. But when she tried to take a step away from the doorpost, she nearly went over again and fell against me.

‘Stuck to my bloody boot.'

Tom knelt to look. ‘Soap.'

He scraped it off her boot sole and held it up into the light to show us – the remains of a cake of cheap yellow soap, soft from soaking and flattened by Tabby's tread. The soap that we'd been using to scrub the stairs. Not hostile action this time, just our own tired carelessness in leaving it there.

As relieved as I was, Tom took the bucket and filled it. I thanked him, said a second goodnight and carried the bucket upstairs, following Tabby. An inspection of the damage showed nothing worse than a tender patch on the ribs and a badly scraped elbow. I applied arnica, settled her on the sofa and finished the clearing up.

‘Will you be all right there?' I said. ‘I'll be just upstairs if you want me.'

She was half asleep, pride restored now she knew the reason for her fall.

‘Like stepping on ice, it was. Anybody'd have fallen.'

Of course I slept fitfully, drifting in and out of panicking dreams. For some reason, Tabby's last remark kept coming back to my mind. Then, briefly, I was back under the gas lights again, in the box at Drury Lane, the sweetness and the cold tingle of raspberry ice on my tongue. Suddenly, I was broad awake.

‘Oh ye gods.'

I saw again the flurried constable hurrying back from the pool in the dell with his soaked handkerchief, saw him slipping and almost falling on top of the girl's body. Why had he slipped? Not in her blood, I'd have remembered that. Not mud either. The rest of the stone area round the statue was dry and clean. I must have noticed at the time the small detail that was so clear in my mind now, but there'd been so much else going on that it had needed the coincidence of two quite different things to bring it back to me. As soon as it was light, I went down to the parlour, stirred up the fire and put the kettle on the hob to boil for tea. Tabby was still sleeping, her face younger and more childlike than when awake. I moved quietly, wanting her to have her sleep out, but the tinkle of spoon against teapot brought her eyes open. I waited until she'd had a chance to sit up and drink her tea, before asking my question.

‘Tabby, do you remember that list of tradesmen's carts, from just before they found her body?'

The list I'd written down had been obliterated by soot, but her memory was as clear as ever. She went through them all, almost word for word. Just as I'd thought, it was there.

FIFTEEN

S
oon after daylight, I walked down South Audley Street and Half Moon Street, across Piccadilly and into Pall Mall. Only a few hours before, gambling and drinking gentlemen would have been helped or even carried from their clubs and into their carriages by weary hall porters. Now yawning maids were scrubbing and mopping the doorsteps of those same clubs, ready for a new day. I came to one of the grandest of the clubs, went down some steps to a basement and knocked on a modest door. A middle-aged woman opened it to me and a sweet smell of baking bread billowed out.

‘Miss Lane, we were just talking about you the other day. Come on in out of the cold.'

It wasn't especially cold outside, but it seemed so compared to the snugness of the Pollitts' home. Mrs Pollitt was plump and neat in a dress of mulberry-coloured wool.

I followed her along the passageway, she calling out to her husband, ‘Mr Pollitt, guess who's come to see us.'

As we came into the room he was on his feet and buttoning his jacket. It would never do even for friends to find him sitting down to breakfast in his shirtsleeves. Mr Pollitt was hall porter at the club. In his way he was a much a part of club aristocracy as the gentlemen he served. His father had been a club porter too, his grandfather a head waiter who had been complimented on his skill in mixing punch by the great Dr Johnson himself and had exchanged witticisms with Richard Sheridan. Mrs Pollitt was housekeeper at the club. Even in private, they always referred to each other by their surnames. One of their sons was a musician in a small orchestra run by my friend Toby Kennedy. Through that connection, I'd been called in to deal with an unpleasantness at the club about disappearing silverware and settled it discreetly enough to please everybody, except the member who had to resign. The Pollitts had remained good friends.

‘You'll have breakfast with us,' Mrs Pollitt said.

A freshly starched cloth fell on the table like snowfall and was rapidly weighed down with plates of rolls fresh from the oven, boiled eggs, preserves, potted meats, a silver coffee pot bearing the club's crest. We ate companionably, catching up on gossip, then Mrs Pollitt carried the dishes away to the kitchen. When I told Mr Pollitt why I needed to consult him, he was surprised, but asked no questions.