When the Devil Drives (25 page)

She smiled, with a mouthful of teeth so even and white they must be false. ‘Oh, how is the poor soul?'

I moved aside in an invitation to sit with me on the bench. She took it.

‘Pretty well in the circumstances,' I said.

‘She must be finding it so hard not being able to get about. She was such an active body. I don't suppose she'll ever be quite the same again, will she?'

I thought the pleasure in her voice was not from somebody else's misfortune, but rather a liking for drama.

‘It seems to be taking its time to heal,' I said.

‘Oh, they do. A niece of mine was off her feet for two months, though that was only a sprain, and she always walked with a limp afterwards, but it turned out not to matter because she married a very nice man from Southwark and he didn't mind her limp at all.'

‘Is it two months for Mrs Hobbes then?' I said, pretending to have misunderstood.

‘No, a month almost to the day. I remember because we were taking down our summer curtains and putting up the winter ones, which we always do the last Monday in September and that's when I heard she'd had the accident. Of course, some people said that served her right for being down at the docks in the first place because it wasn't the place for a woman, but everybody has to admit that she never puts up with disrespectful behaviour from anybody. Even the bargees don't say anything worse than “botheration” when she's there.'

Tabby caught my eye and tapped her palms together in soundless applause. There was our main question answered, or so she thought. It turned out that our good busybody kept house for two of the curates. She'd lived in Limehouse all her life and was defensive of its reputation.

‘It's been given a bad name, but there are good and bad people here just as anywhere else. I'm sure if the truth were known there are as many sinners in Mayfair as in Limehouse.'

‘Probably more,' I said, not letting on that was where we came from.

We chatted in a general way about London crime, none of it much to the purpose. She was shifting on her seat, saying regretfully that she must get on and fetch the curate's shoes from the cobbler, when I slipped in the question I really wanted to ask.

‘By the by, did they ever find that girl who went missing?'

Our woman stopped in the act of getting to her feet, haunches hitched on the bench. She was puzzled, then it came to her. ‘Oh, you mean Mrs Bitty's kitchen maid? No, she didn't come back. Mrs Bitty thinks she went off with a sailor.'

She pushed herself to her feet, smiling. ‘They do go off, don't they?' Tolerance in her voice for the unpredictable ways of kitchen maids. ‘Well, it's been pleasant talking to you. I hope you have a good journey back.'

Tabby and I stood watching as she walked away.

‘What girl?' Tabby said.

‘I don't know. We're going to find out.'

I started walking back towards the river. When Tabby fell into step beside me, I tried to explain one of the mysteries of our strange craft. ‘Most people like to talk,' I said. ‘It's just a matter of asking the right questions and, above all, listening.'

‘I thought we just wanted to know about the accident.'

‘Yes, and we have our answer. Whether it was a real accident or deliberate, Mrs Hobbes hasn't been able to move from her parlour for a month. That's around the time that all this started. Either way, she's probably not involved in whatever's happening. But when you find things are running your way, always ask that extra question. It's like a carpenter working with the grain.'

We came alongside a small row of shops, an ironmonger, a greengrocer with nothing but cabbages on the shelf, a butcher.

‘We'll ask for Mrs Bitty's address in there,' I said. ‘Any household prosperous enough to have a kitchen maid will have an account with the butcher.'

‘Let me ask,' Tabby said.

I waited across the road as she went into the shop. She was away for a surprisingly long time and came back looking pleased with herself.

‘She lives at number eight, facing the ropemakers' works, that's just off where we were this morning. She's a cussed old curmudgeon with a face like the backside of a sow and when she buys a couple of lamb chops she expects the head and tongue thrown in for free.'

‘The butcher told you all that?'

‘I thought of what you said about people liking to talk.'

Number eight was a narrow house standing apart from its neighbours on either side by the slightest of gaps, as if drawing in its shoulders to avoid contact with them. Here by the rope walk, the smell of damp hemp was stronger even than river mud and small fibres of it hazed the sunlight. I knocked on the door and waited. A maid who looked no more than twelve years old answered, looking apprehensive. I gave her my card and said I'd like to talk to Mrs Bitty. The woman who appeared at the door a few minutes later proved that the butcher's description had been pretty accurate.

‘Well?'

‘I'm sorry to trouble you, but I understand that your kitchen maid has gone missing,' I said.

I was going to add that I specialized in tracing missing people. Her scowl was like volcanic lava.

‘I suppose you're from the orphans' home. If you're trying to palm another of them off on me, I don't want her,' she said. ‘They're more trouble than they're worth and no gratitude.' Her glare transferred from me to Tabby. ‘So you can take that one back where she came from and tell them not to send me any more. Good day to you.'

She slammed the door in our faces with a force that juddered my teeth. We stood for a moment, stunned.

Tabby was the first to speak. ‘What was that you said about asking the right questions and listening?'

‘It doesn't always work,' I said.

SIXTEEN

N
othing could be gained from standing there staring at a closed door so we turned back towards Commercial Road.

‘I'd have left the old bitch too,' Tabby said.

‘I'm sorry I've wasted our time on her,' I said. ‘All the same, we've learned two important things here at Limehouse.'

She frowned, trying so hard to see what I meant that she reverted to her old scuffy-toed way of walking. It's right to be a few jumps ahead of one's apprentice.

‘Ice,' I prompted. ‘What happens to it.'

‘They take it off a boat and put it on a barge.'

‘That's right. And the barge takes it up the canal, right to the edge of Regent's Park.'

My brother Tom, as a boy, had been obsessed with canals, from the building of the new Caledonian canal in the north down to the Hythe Military in the south. I tried to bring to mind his map of the course of the Regent's Canal. From the Thames at Limehouse it ran north to Mile End, then made a long curve round the east of London, through Haggerston and Islington to King's Cross and Paddington. It really wasn't fair to expect Tabby to follow me without giving her the essential part of the puzzle.

‘There's something I haven't told you yet,' I said. ‘Last Wednesday, when they found Dora Tilbury's body, one of the policeman slipped on a piece of ice. He didn't know it was ice and it didn't come to me until later, but it must have been dropped when her body was brought there.'

It had come back to my mind suddenly and clearly: a small disc of something as bright as a diamond, skittering out from under the constable's boot. He'd slipped because he'd trodden on a piece of ice.

‘So that's how you knew it was the ice cart.'

Tabby spoke in the tone of a person who's seen how the magician does his trick and is unimpressed. My brother's drawing was growing clearer in my memory. At some point, before it reached King's Cross, the Regent's canal had a rectangular opening at right angles to it, a place where barges could moor or turn, close to the heart of the City.

‘City Road,' I said. ‘There's a canal basin at City Road.'

I was about to explain to Tabby why it mattered when running footsteps sounded behind us. They were small, light footsteps. The voice calling to us was small too, almost inaudible.

‘Excuse me . . . can you tell me? . . . Excuse me.'

We turned round. The maid who'd opened Mrs Bitty's door to us was a few yards behind, gasping from running and pale-faced. The hem of her black skirt had come unstitched where she'd trodden on it in her haste. Her hand was pressed to her side. We stopped and she stopped too, as if scared to come too close. Any idea that Mrs Bitty might have relented and sent her after us disappeared at her next words.

‘You won't tell her, will you? She'd be so mad at me. She doesn't know I'm gone and there'll be hell to pay when I get back.'

‘Mrs Bitty? No, of course we won't tell her,' I said. ‘What do you want?'

She came a couple of steps closer, still gasping and glanced over her shoulder as if fearful of seeing her employer. ‘It's about Peggy, ma'am. You were asking about Peggy. Do you know what's become of her?'

‘Is Peggy the maid that went away?' I said.

‘Yes. Only she wouldn't go away, not of her own free will. Not without telling me. I think something's happened to her, only Mrs Bitty snaps me up if I even say her name.'

‘I heard Mrs Bitty thinks she went away with a sailor,' I said.

Her pale face flushed. ‘It's a lie. Beg pardon, ma'am, but Peggy never would. She never even liked sailors. If she liked anybody it was the boy from the fish shop and even that wasn't anything, apart from a few words every Friday.'

She stood staring at us from damp, dark-ringed eyes. Tabby and I looked at each other.

‘When did you last see Peggy?' I asked.

‘Two weeks ago last Thursday. Mrs Bitty sent her out to get the bread and she never came back. Mrs Bitty tried to get the policeman to go and find her. She said she didn't want Peggy back but she wanted her basket and the threepence. She nearly went mad when the policeman said he couldn't do anything about it.'

‘Does Peggy have any friends or relations she might have gone to?' I said.

‘No, she's from the orphans' home, like me.'

‘What does she look like?'

The girl's scared face broke into a smile. ‘Oh, she's pretty. I think that was what Mrs Bitty didn't like about her. She's got lovely yellow hair and blue eyes. Her hands are as white as a lady's, even with all that scrubbing.'

A weight of sadness came down on me. I didn't want to ask the next question. ‘Did she have a pale brown birthmark on the inside of her left wrist?'

The girl's mouth fell open. She stared at me, terrified. ‘How did you know that?'

‘She did, then?'

‘Yes, but you wouldn't notice it unless you were looking. It didn't spoil her. But how . . .?'

She must have seen from our faces that the news was bad. She put her hands to her mouth and made retching noises. I walked up and put my arm round her, but she was as rigid as a metal rod.

‘I'm so very sorry,' I said. ‘I'm afraid your friend has had an accident.'

She took her hands away from her mouth just long enough to gasp out, ‘Dead?'

‘Yes, I'm afraid so.'

She slipped out of my arm and was sick in the road. Between us, Tabby and I got her to sit down on the edge of a horse trough. I dipped my handkerchief in the water and cleaned up her face.

‘There should be somebody to look after you,' I said. ‘We'll go back with you to Mrs Bitty's.'

‘No. If you do that, she'll know I've been talking to you.'

The idea terrified her so much that we didn't persist. I felt like forcing my way into Mrs Bitty's house and telling her what I thought of her, for her callousness about her missing maid and her cruelty to this one. But it would only mean trouble for the poor girl when we'd gone. We went with the girl as far as the corner, then she asked us to go before we came within sight of the house.

‘What was Peggy's second name?' I asked, as we parted company.

‘Brown. It was the orphans' home name. We were all Brown, Green, Black or White. She never had another one.'

Tabby and I watched as her small figure walked unsteadily round the corner.

‘I hate letting her go like this,' I said.

‘No choice,' Tabby said.

But even she sounded shaken. We walked on, hardly knowing where we were going. The Dora Tilbury who had brought us into this had already been stripped of her false identity until only her name was left to us. Now even that had gone. Dora Tilbury, found dead under the Achilles statue in Hyde Park, and Peggy Brown, who'd walked out to buy bread in Limehouse sixteen days before that, were one and the same person.

The small pleasure of keeping Tabby guessing had gone. I told her outright what I suspected. ‘Both the girls were killed some time before the bodies were found, and kept in an ice store. That accounts for the wet hair. The people who did it could thaw out a body and dress it in dry clothes, but they couldn't do anything about the hair.'

‘Why would they do that?' Tabby said.

‘I don't know. Even if there is some hideous, perverted club that murders young women, why do it that way? Did it matter that they were supposed to have died on a particular date?'

Janet Priest's body had been flung off the Monument – I was sure of that now – on Thursday the seventeenth. The body of the girl we know knew as Peggy Brown had been discovered six days later on Wednesday the twenty-third. I couldn't see any special significance in either date.

‘They're both connected with the canal,' I said. ‘Peggy disappeared from this end in Limehouse, Janet near the City Road basin. Alive or dead, it would be easier to carry them by water than by road.'