When the Devil Drives (8 page)

‘Do you think you could do that?' I asked Tabby, as we waited by the horse trough.

‘Should think so.'

At least it was serving a purpose in showing her the monotony of our trade. When the next cab came to the trough I stayed within earshot and let her do the questioning. She managed very well. In her grey dress and bonnet she could have been any ordinary servant. I was amused by some turns of phrase that caught my way of speaking exactly. Tabby had a quick ear. When the cab had gone I congratulated her.

‘Wasn't any use though, was it?'

‘It would be a miracle if it had been.'

‘Why are we doing it, then?'

‘Because we've got to do something, and at present I can't think of much else. Can you manage on your own here for a while? It's three o'clock now. Give it another two hours, then come back to Abel Yard.'

I gave her money for something to eat and the omnibus fare.

‘Where are you going, then?'

‘Fleet Street. I'll see you later.'

I walked back past St Paul's to Ludgate Hill into Fleet Street. I loved every grimy, crowded, purposeful yard of Fleet Street, from the evil smelling Fleet Ditch at one end to Temple Bar at the other. Far more than Whitehall or Westminster, it always seemed to me the centre of what was happening in the country, or even the world. Slow carts drawn by shire horses bringing supplies of paper to feed the printing presses tangled in narrow side streets with discreet carriages that brought cabinet ministers for confidential talks with editors. Every fourth or fifth building seemed to be a public house, with more laughter (always male) coming out of it than in any other part of London. In between, print shops displayed caricatures of those same cabinet ministers, and the journalists laughing in the public houses probably knew more about the confidential talks with editors than the prime minister did.

Jimmy Cuffs was usually to be found in the Cheshire Cheese, just off the street itself in Wine Office Court. The rule that respectable women do not enter public houses applied several times over at the Cheshire Cheese. Even unrespectable women weren't welcome. If I wanted to talk to Jimmy, I had to wait until a waiter or pot boy came out with an armful of empty bottles and ask him to take a message inside. Luckily, at the rate men drank in the Cheshire Cheese, empty bottles accumulated pretty quickly. The boy who took my message came back shaking his head.

‘He's off at an inquest. There's three copy boys waiting already, so he should be back any time.'

I strolled up and down the street, wandering in and out of print shops. Several of them were selling pamphlets by the Chartists or other radical groups, urging people to unite against a government that kept the price of bread high in the interests of landowners, denied most labouring men a right to vote and locked them up in workhouses when there were no jobs for them. Most of the pamphlets kept just on the right side of the law on sedition, but a few went beyond it. I thought of the printing press hidden under my stairs and wondered which side of that dangerous line my father's friend Tom Huckerby walked. I thought I could guess.

When I went back to the Cheshire Cheese, the lamps were lit and Jimmy Cuffs had returned to his usual seat in the corner. I glimpsed him through the half open door, sitting very straight and writing as imperturbably as a country clergyman preparing his sermon, although his hand was moving at a speed nearer diabolic than reverend. As I watched, I was nearly bowled over by a copy boy rushing out of the door with a sheaf of papers in Jimmy's fine italic hand. Another boy was standing at Jimmy's shoulder, waiting to grab the pages away as he wrote them. After twenty minutes or so, that boy came rushing out with another sheaf of papers, followed at a more leisurely pace by Jimmy himself. He wished me good evening in his fine sonorous voice that might have brought him a career on the stage, except that he hardly came up to my shoulder and walked with a limp because of a club foot. He was one of the most learned people I knew and never seemed to resent the fact that he scraped a living reporting from the coroners' courts when lesser men held comfortable fellowships at universities. I asked if his day had gone well.

‘Yes indeed. Three different papers and probably a half column in all of them.'

‘The Monument inquest?'

‘Yes.'

We walked companionably into Fleet Street, then up another side street to the back of a coffee house. Again, women weren't welcome at the front of it, but Jimmy was friendly with the head waiter, who kept a more welcoming salon at the back. We took off our hats and coats and chose a settle by the fire. I waited until our coffee was brought to put to him the case of Miss Tilbury. He sipped and shook his head.

‘Nobody of anything like that description in the past eight days, neither accident nor suicide. I should certainly have known. Young women invariably attract attention.'

That seemed to close another line of investigation. I came back to the question of the Monument suicide.

‘Did they identify the young woman at the inquest?'

‘Yes. She was a Miss Janet Priest. Her father kept a stationery and print shop in the City Road.'

‘How did they find out who she was?'

‘Yesterday evening a distraught young woman went to St Magnus, saying that she thought the deceased girl might be her younger sister, who had been missing from home for the past week. They let her view the body and she fainted away. The poor woman had to give evidence of identification to the inquest this afternoon.'

Although it had nothing to do with my case now, I couldn't help being interested.

‘It's odd that she was missing for a week before she killed herself. Or had she gone missing before?'

There were girls who slipped in and out of respectability as financial need demanded.

‘Nothing like that. According to the sister's evidence and an older woman's who was a family friend, she was a model daughter – helped her father in the shop and had few friends and interests outside it.'

‘No gentlemen followers?'

‘No. And the surgeon who examined the body made it clear that she was not in a certain condition.'

Of course, with a young female suicide, pregnancy or otherwise would be one of the first things he checked.

‘Had she been depressed in spirits?'

‘The sister said not.'

‘Did anybody have any idea where she went in the week she was missing?'

‘No.'

I began to worry again about Miss Tilbury. There was a resemblance in that they both seemed to be two young women whose characters were a blank. Admittedly Miss Priest, doing useful work in East London, had lived a less sheltered life than Miss Tilbury, but both of them sounded too good and docile to be true. Miss Tilbury had been missing now for eight days. Miss Priest had been gone from home for a week before her body was discovered at the foot of the Monument.

‘How did she get up the Monument without anybody knowing?' I said.

‘The assumption was that she went up the afternoon before and the attendant, Mr Jenkins, failed to check before he locked up for the night. He insists that he did and that furthermore, if she had gone up in the afternoon, he'd have seen her and taken her entrance fee. He didn't.'

‘Did they believe him?'

‘On the whole, yes. Some of the jury were sceptical, but the coroner knows Mr Jenkins quite well.'

‘And the entrance is locked at night?' I said.

‘Yes.'

‘So did they decide how she got up there?'

‘No. Mr Jenkins' theory is that somebody must have borrowed the key and had it copied.'

‘And then gave it to a young woman so that she could throw herself off? That's nonsense surely.'

‘Nobody seemed impressed with the theory, but nobody produced any other.'

‘What was the verdict?'

‘That Janet Priest destroyed herself while labouring under temporary insanity.'

The usual kind verdict, meant to spare the feelings of relatives. I finished my coffee.

‘Did anybody ask why Miss Priest's hair was wet?' I said.

‘What?'

Jimmy had been staring into the fire. He turned to me, surprised.

‘I was at the Monument yesterday afternoon,' I said. ‘A policeman who'd seen her soon after the body was discovered said her hair was soaking wet. It hadn't rained that night or morning.'

‘No, a workman gave evidence about finding the body and so did a policeman, but neither mentioned her hair.'

‘I suppose he thought it wasn't relevant to anything. And by the time the sister saw the body, her hair would have dried. Strange though.'

‘Very strange.' He was staring at me, reporter's instincts aroused. ‘Another strange thing.'

‘Another?'

‘Yes, there was the question of a ring. Did your policeman say anything about that?'

‘Yes. He said she had a ring on her wedding finger. I think he described it as funny looking.'

‘Miss Priest wasn't married,' Jimmy said. ‘The sister and the older woman were quite sure there was nobody even in prospect. The coroner and the jury gave some time to that and had to conclude that it was another of those inexplicable things.'

‘So why should she wash her hair and put a ring on her wedding finger?'

‘If she put it on her finger.' He was being provoking now, trying to lead me on.

‘What do you mean?'

‘The surgeon was a thorough man. He said there were abrasions on her knuckle. The ring was too small for her finger and it looked as if it had been forced on quite roughly.'

‘By somebody else?'

‘How could they tell? It's possible, after all, that she was so desperate to have it on her finger that she forced it on herself.'

‘Why should she be desperate about that? I'm surprised that they brought in a verdict of self-destruction. There are too many things not explained,' I said.

‘Yes, but where was the evidence for anything else?'

We discussed it for a while, but it was no case of mine, after all. When we left, Jimmy insisted on paying for our coffee. He'd never accept money from me for his help. Once, as a thank-you, I'd been allowed to buy him an edition of
Martial
he'd coveted. That was all. He also insisted on walking me to the stop for the Piccadilly omnibus and seeing me on board.

‘I'll let you know if I hear anything of your fair-haired lady,' he said.

Much though I liked to solve my cases, I hoped not. If Jimmy Cuffs had news of Miss Tilbury, it would be from a mortuary. Miss Priest had thrown such a gloom on my spirits that I did not want to contemplate another death.

FIVE

T
he contessa's white forehead was creased in doubt so deep that it looked painful. Her tongue tip, bright and plump as a strawberry, was clamped between pearly front teeth, hand to her cheek, her indecision reflected in half a dozen mirrors. The rest of us watched and waited. Six of us altogether, Madame Leman and her two seamstresses in plain black dresses, the contessa's German maid, my maid Suzette and myself, sitting on the end of a chaise longue, a swathe of velvet samples in my lap. The contessa was trying on a hooded cloak of mulberry coloured velvet, the hood edged with white fur. The effect was breathtaking, framing her deep violet eyes and dark curls to perfection. It was impossible to look at her without thinking of sleigh parties, harness bells and laughter on frosty air. But she wasn't satisfied.

‘It's wrong, the feel of it. It's . . .' She swung round to me. ‘It's the wrong animal.'

‘The finest white coney,' Madame Leman protested.

The town's most fashionable dressmaker – or rather
couturière
as her bronze plate had it – was a plump woman, with rouged cheeks, several chins and the air of a put-upon duchess.

‘Coney?' said the contessa.

I struggled to remember Italian for rabbit.

‘
Coniglio
.'

The contessa flung the hood from her head as if the lining were live asps. ‘Not possible.' She flew to a rail by the wall, where clothes for other customers were hanging, seized a white fur wrap and held it close to her cheek.

‘This is what it must have. See.'

As far as the look of it went, she was right. The other fur improved on what had looked like perfection already, giving new lustre to her complexion, pointing up the whiteness of her teeth. Her great eyes took on a predatory gleam, as if from the nature of the animal that had owned the fur.

‘Arctic fox,' Madame Leman protested. ‘Very rare, very expensive.'

‘No matter. It is what it must be.
Coniglio
– urrr!'

She let the fox fur slide to the carpet and began tearing at the trim of the cloak hood, managing to rip a seam with fingers that must be stronger than they looked. Madame Leman and one of the seamstresses hastily moved forward and unfastened the cloak. The other seamstress had picked up the fox fur and was stroking it like a person soothing a sentient animal.

‘Very well,' Madame Leman said, with heavy politeness. ‘But fox will cost ten pounds more.'

The contessa waved away a sum that amounted to three months' pay for a governess with a flicker of her fingers. ‘No matter. And it must be done by Monday.'

The seamstresses exchanged looks. They'd be working all over the weekend. The expression on Madame Leman's face was one that would be recognised by anybody whose financial circumstances had ever been uncertain: she was wondering if her bill would be paid. She decided to give the contessa the benefit of the doubt, probably calculating that a woman with her beauty would always find some man who would pay.