By the time we got back to Abel Yard, we were both hungry, so Tabby went out for a couple of meat pies. Amos wasn’t due back until the evening, so we had time to get to Westminster and back without discussing it with him. I suspected he wouldn’t approve, but by now Tabby was fired up by the chase and had stopped treating me like something that would come apart. While she went out to find another cab, I searched the bookcases in the parlour, most of them full of Robert’s books. It took me some time to find the object I remembered but I came on it at last, snuggled between Aesop’s Fables and Catullus. It was a tobacco pouch embroidered with pink rosebuds, forget-me-nots and ribbon garlands – exactly the sort of gift an effusive lady might make for the man who’d saved her life. Robert and I had found it years ago when we were unpacking his books. He’d laughed and explained that once upon a time, when he was trying to smoke a pipe, it had been made for him by a young lady of his acquaintance. Both the pipe and the young lady were long since left behind, but somehow the pouch had remained. He’d said to throw it away, but I’d felt sorry for it and the unknown girl, so had stowed it on the bookshelf. Now, when I needed an excuse to visit the site, it had found its hour. The blankets and clogs might have been left with anybody but a gift for my preserver would have to be presented personally. In fact, Mr Evans had been more effective in the rescue, but I’d had the impression that Mr James was a man in some authority and I intended to use the acquaintance for what it was worth. I’d never made anything like it myself, and it struck me that it would probably have taken many more hours than had been available to me, but if I were uncertain about that, it was likely that Mr James would be even more so.
This time we asked the cab driver to let us down by the big gates to the building site. I hesitated there for a moment because the place on a normal working day was so busy. Loads of materials were trundling in all the time, with men who looked like clerks standing at the gates to tick them off in notebooks and direct them. The noise from inside sounded like dozens of stonemasons’ yards, blacksmiths’ shops and regiments of navvies all competing. I walked up to one of the clerks and asked where I might find Mr James. I had to repeat the question twice because of carts trundling in and, even when he heard it, he didn’t seem to find much sense in it. He said I should ask at the office and directed us with a wave of his hand towards the smaller of the two partly built towers. Once we were inside the gates I saw his difficulty, because the place was the size of a market town and a lot louder. There were hundreds of men – workmen in shirtsleeves and corduroy trousers, more clerkly types, supervisors in city suits and top hats, all of them seeming intent on what they were doing. I even saw a few women, though our presence was unusual enough to bring second glances as we picked our way towards a solid-looking wooden hut that luckily turned out to be the office. Inside was almost as busy as outside, with plans pinned to the walls and men on tall stools writing in what looked like account books. When I found somebody to ask, it turned out that there were at least three Mr Jameses on the site – a blacksmith, a scaffolder and a foreman in the wood-carving department. I opted for the foreman and a clerk was told to guide us. As we followed him deeper into the site, my hopes began to rise slightly because at least it looked as if I’d chosen the right one. We were heading towards the river and the wharves, and I thought I recognized some of the huts I’d passed on my way out. The clerk stopped by an enclosure with an open-fronted shed on one side of it. Pieces of carved timber were piled inside the shed and several men were standing round a large piece outside that looked like part of a door surround. My Mr James was hunkered down, peering closely at a piece of carved foliage.
‘Lighten it here and remember to balance it up on the other side. But whatever you do, don’t take it back any further than this.’
He stroked his long-fingered hand over it as a person might stroke an animal. When the clerk called out that he had visitors, he straightened up, turned round and saw me, and for a moment looked almost alarmed. I was prepared for that. Two days ago they’d taken me for a suicidal servant. Today, even in my far-from-best clothes, I looked more respectable. He walked over to me.
‘I’ve come to thank you and Mr Evans,’ I said. ‘And to return these. This is a small token of my thanks.’ I presented him with the tobacco pouch. He stared at it as if unsure what it was, glanced up at my face and away again. Some of his men were openly sniggering. Unsurprisingly, they suspected that the slightly crazy woman their foreman had fished out of the river was setting her cap at him.
He glanced at Tabby. She dumped the blankets and clogs on a convenient bench.
‘You’ve recovered very quickly, Miss …’
‘Miss Black,’ I said. I wore no wedding ring. It must have been taken on the sloop, along with my clothes. Thank you, Minerva. I didn’t like lying to him, but there seemed to be no alternative. ‘How it happened … I’d gone for a walk by the river further up Millbank and I fell in. I was carried along so terribly fast and I believe I must have hit my head.’ I didn’t add that I’d lost most of my clothes in the water but hoped he’d assume it. The look he gave me was reassuringly steady and those grey eyes just mildly amused. His pewter-coloured beard was as neat as one of the carvings. He knew I wasn’t telling the truth, or at least not all of it, but he was prepared to let me keep my secrets.
‘Your family must be relieved to have you safe.’
I thought the voice might be Midlands originally. He was obviously an educated man. Again, there was just the hint of amusement. He was right that somebody from my family should have come with me. Right, too, that I seemed to have recovered quickly. A family would surely have kept me at home in bed.
‘Very relieved.’ I smiled at him. ‘I truly am most grateful. I shouldn’t have managed to get out of the river without you and Mr Evans.’ No need to remind him that he’d almost fatally bungled the rescue attempt. His intentions had been good.
‘I’m very glad that we were there to be of service, Miss Black.’
It should have been the signal to go, but I chattered on like the featherbrain he probably took me for. ‘What an amazing place this is, so many people. I should love to see round it.’ There were a few more sniggers at this blatant invitation.
‘I’m sure that could be arranged if you write to the site office.’ He smiled, but his politeness was now close to frosty.
‘I once met a gentleman who worked here, only I can’t remember his name,’ I said. ‘I think he was a craftsman of some kind.’ From Tabby’s description, her man had been respectably dressed and had enough money to stay all night in a brothel.
‘Eight hundred people work here,’ Mr James said. ‘Many of them are craftsmen.’
That confirmed my feeling that this was a hopeless errand because of the size of the site, but I blundered on. ‘He was in his thirties – early thirties, I’d say. Rather long dark hair, and he walked with a limp on the right leg.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t help you. Thank you for the pouch. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll ask one of the men to show you out. It’s hardly safe to walk here unaccompanied.’ He nodded across to the men and one of them came over to us, young and square in build, with a broad grin showing two missing front teeth. ‘Bitten here will escort you.’
We began to walk. Tabby fell in behind us. Once out of sight of Mr James, Bitten appeared in no hurry. It was possible he enjoyed escorting two women past the various gangs of workmen, because he led us on an informal tour of the place. That over there was the House of Lords, finished now and ready for occupation. This would be the House of Commons, and those wooden sheds were for the railway committees, supposed to be temporary but would probably be there for years more. That would be the clock tower when they finished building it, but they kept chopping and changing the plans so goodness knows when that would be. While we were standing watching work on the clock tower, Bitten became more personal.
‘You’ll have to excuse the guvnor for being a bit short.’ He was clearly trying to console me for my failed romantic mission. ‘He didn’t like the police coming round – thought it reflected badly.’
‘Police? When?’
‘Yesterday – a sergeant and two constables looking round the stone wharves. Still, they have to do their job, don’t they?’
‘Why were they here?’
‘A woman got pulled out of the river same as you did, only that one wasn’t so lucky. From a good family, too.’
‘Why did the police come here?’
‘I asked one of the constables that. He said he had no idea, reckoned she could have gone in anywhere upriver. He said the sergeant had a bee in his bonnet about her head being bashed before she went in and thought it might have happened on the site here, only they didn’t find anything. Still, the guvnor thought it was unsettling the men. Bit of a mother hen, he can be.’ A wooden platform piled with stone blocks was being slowly winched up the tower, with men waiting for it on the scaffolding thirty feet up as easily as if they were standing on the kerb edge. ‘That man you were asking about – I reckon I know who he is.’
‘What?’ I’d been half hypnotized by the progress of the stone blocks, resigned to the failure of our attempt.
‘Sounded like Whalebait to me. He’s a woodcarver like I am, usually up at the main workshops by Vauxhall Bridge. That’s where most of the woodwork gets done, then it’s moved down here for fitting. I’m mostly on the site here so I don’t see him that often, but we’ve had a drink together now and then. He walks with a limp and usually wears his hair longer than most. Fancies himself a bit. Educated man, though, I’ll give him that. Knows languages.’
‘What languages?’
‘Don’t know. But there’s always parties of foreigners coming round looking at us working – prince of this, lord high something or other of that, regular tower of Babel. We just bow and get on with it. But it struck me that Whalebait knew quite often what they were saying in French or German or whatever it was. Once we had a group from Russia with their ladies round the workshops and he was laughing to himself quietly – said something under his breath in what sounded like their language. I asked him what and he said never mind, he’d just been talking gibberish, only I don’t think he was.’ He paused. ‘A bit of a man for the ladies, Whalebait is.’ He gave me a sidelong look. I think it was in his mind that I might have been one of the man’s conquests.
‘And his name’s Whalebait?’ It seemed unlikely.
‘It’s what we call him. He’s Cave – Jonah Cave. Jonah and the whale, see?’
‘Do you know where he is now?’
From the glance he gave me, I’d confirmed his suspicions. ‘Haven’t seen him for a week or two. I suppose he’ll be at the workshops, unless he’s moved on.’
He possibly thought he’d been indiscreet, because he said no more and started to lead us back towards the gates. We were almost there when another visitor came towards us. A gentleman in his early twenties was being escorted by an obviously official man in a top hat with a sombre expression. The young gentleman’s face was pale, his eyes red-rimmed. He was staring straight ahead, not noticing anything round him. As they passed us, the official said something to him in a soft and respectful voice, and I just heard the words Mr Maynard.
When we were outside the gates, Tabby said, ‘I’ve seen him before. He was out in the garden on Wednesday night, looking up at the house.’
‘The man called him Mr Maynard. He must be Felicity’s brother.’
‘So what was he doing outside the house? He should have been inside.’
‘He was supposed to be with friends up in Yorkshire. If the police think she went into the river here, I suppose he wanted to see for himself.’
‘Do you think he knew she was seeing a man?’ Tabby said.
‘Is it something you’d tell a younger brother? I very much doubt it. At least we know the man’s name now and where he works. Jonah Cave.’
‘If the police have been asking questions round the site, that means they think she was murdered.’
‘Or suspect it, at least.’ I wondered if the sergeant had been Bevan.
We crossed into St James’s Park and took the path alongside the lake. Normally it would have been an easy walk, but I was weaker than I’d realized and wished we’d taken another cab. I wanted more than anything to walk through the door at home, see Robert and hear Helena and Harry running to me, but they seemed as far away – or even further – than when I was in darkness on the sloop, and I couldn’t see how to get back to them. Tabby was silent for most of the walk and disappeared into the yard when we got back. I saw her through the window, scuffling the dust, deep in thought. She came back up to the parlour when Amos arrived soon after seven o’clock, and we all had our supper of tea, bread and cheese together while I told Amos about the events of the day. He was sure that we should tell the police about the identity of Felicity’s night visitor. Tabby, as usual, was against it.
‘We know he couldn’t have killed her, so what’s the point?’
‘He’s probably the reason why she went out of the house,’ I said.
She argued less than I expected, and we agreed that Amos should tell Sergeant Bevan about him the next day, though not saying where the information came from. He’d probably suspect it was Tabby but would know it would be a waste of time trying to question her. It seemed important to me that Amos should keep up communications with Bevan, though hiding from him the fact that I was free. Somehow, I still didn’t feel it. There was no reason for Tabby to watch the Maynards that night, so we agreed that she’d stay with me and Amos would go back to the stables for the night. I lit the fire now that the heat of the day was going and brewed another pot of tea, going over things in my mind.
‘Why would Jonah Cave have wanted to kidnap me?’ I said, speaking mostly to myself. ‘What would he want Robert to do?’
‘I know.’ Tabby said it so quietly, almost under her breath, that at first I hardly knew she’d spoken. We both stared at her. She was kneeling on the hearthrug, not looking at us.
‘What?’
‘They’re trying to break somebody out of Millbank prison. I reckon they want Mr Carmichael to get him settled with his money somewhere abroad.’
Silence reigned for a few heartbeats while I tried to take it in. ‘Who?’
‘Baron Kidson’s people.’
This time it was Amos asking, ‘Who?’
‘He’s the leader of a big criminal gang,’ I told him. ‘He’s not really a baron – that’s just what they call him.’
I’d never met him, but once an associate of his had figured on the fringes of a case I was investigating. His name had only been mentioned obliquely and very quietly. Kidson was dangerous. Sergeant Bevan had once confided to me that it was one of the great ambitions of his career to arrest him.
‘It’s not just a gang,’ Tabby said, still not looking at us. ‘He’s got his fingers in most things. He talks like he’s a lord and he’s rich enough to buy up half London if he wanted, but he just lives in different rooms, all over the place – never sleeps in the same house longer than three nights on the go. Most of the working women in London pay him for their beats, not directly but through whoever’s in charge of them. Same with people taking bets and gambling clubs. Likes going to the races and owns a lot of horses, and they say he’s never lost money on a race in his life, one way or another. Any bet that goes on in London, fist fighting, cocks, cards, he’ll have a share of the profits. He’s never once been arrested, because he keeps three or four removes away from where the money changes hands. If any of his people do get taken, they know to keep their mouths shut, then he’ll see they’re all right when they come out. If they blabbed, they’d probably never live to get out of prison. Anybody who crosses him ends up dead, probably in the river.’
‘And never once arrested?’
‘Well, not till two months ago. He’s got enemies, naturally, but they’d never dare take him on direct. There’s been a new gang coming up in Seven Dials, though – younger men, and they want what he’s got. They’ve got in with one of his women, somebody he trusted as far as he trusted anybody, and managed to set him up as being behind a jewel robbery from Hatton Garden. The police burst into one of his houses and there he is, his hands in piles of emeralds and diamonds and whatever, guilty as hell. The thing is he wasn’t, not that time. For one thing, the jewels weren’t as valuable as they looked, and for another, he hadn’t had anything to do with the robbery. He didn’t do jewel robberies – too risky. Everybody knew that, except the police, of course.’
I said I supposed the Seven Dials gang had organized witnesses.
‘You bet they did, and pretty thoroughly. Some of the best liars in the business, well paid and with a promise from the Seven Dials lot that they’d be protected from the baron’s people, which they have been mostly. Only three have died so far, and two of those were after they’d given their evidence in court, so it didn’t matter.’
I had about enough sense not to comment on the ethics of London gangs. ‘So he was convicted?’
‘Just for receiving stolen goods. Of course, the police, the judge and everybody else knew it should have been for several dozen murders and fraud and blackmail and everything in the book since he was old enough to hold a knife. So he was sentenced for about the only thing he’d never done. Seven years’ transportation.’
‘It seems fairly little in the circumstances.’
‘He didn’t think so. He stood in the dock and told the judge to his face that he was innocent and he’d never serve the sentence. And now he’s in Millbank, listed to go out on the next boat to Van Diemen’s Land.’
‘And his gang want to rescue him? But how do you know about this?’ The fear that Kidson’s web might have spread wide enough to include Tabby was in my mind.
‘Because there’s one of ours in Millbank too, and some of them had this plan to rescue him, only Kidson’s lot found out about it and we’d have got in their way, so they made us drop it. They came up to this friend of mine, right out in the open, slit his nose, cut off the top of his ear and told him there’d be worse if we went ahead with it. We’d just be getting in the way of them rescuing the baron, and they wouldn’t have that.’ She looked me in the face at last, defiant.
‘You were planning to get somebody out of Millbank?’
‘I wasn’t in it properly. I knew some of them were thinking of doing something, but not how far it had gone. I only knew that when Mr Legge and I went to that place near where there’d been an explosion.’
‘That boarded-up house,’ Amos said. ‘I thought there was something.’
She nodded. ‘I told you there wasn’t anything inside and it was true – not anything you could carry away anyhow. But there were some scribblings on the plaster of a wall with a sharp bit of slate, a game one of my friends plays when he’s got nothing better to do. It’s one he invented himself so I knew he’d been there. I went and asked him about it, and he told me because by then it didn’t matter and they’d given up. He and some others had been using that house as a lookout because it’s so near the prison. The plan was that they’d get our friend away when he was being taken out of the prison to be put on the transportation boat. I don’t suppose they’d have managed it anyhow, but now Kidson’s lot have put the fear of God in them.’
‘Was that explosion your friends?’ Amos asked.
She shook her head. ‘Nah. That must have been Kidson’s lot.’
‘It would take a great deal of explosives to blow a hole in that prison,’ Amos said. I was relieved his mind was turning on the practicalities rather than being angry with Tabby. ‘If I were doing something like it, I reckon I’d just use the explosion as a diversion. You say your gang were going to rescue your friend outside the prison on his way to the boat?’
She nodded.
‘That would be it, then. Cause an explosion near the prison to draw as many of the guards away as you can, then snatch him away.’ Amos was essentially law-abiding, but he liked to know how things worked.
Tabby nodded again. ‘Could be. Then they’ll have a boat waiting to get him hidden away somewhere and he’ll be across the Channel before the dust has settled.’
‘You think the baron’s people can do it?’ I said.
‘Why not? He’s still got hundreds of people working for him, and most of them respect him. Not just ordinary people, either. There’s high-ups he’s met racing and gambling who have to do what he says.’
‘So blackmail? But what can he do from inside Millbank?’
‘Anything. He sends his instructions out and gets reports in as easily as a general in a battle. Some prisoners get visitors and most warders’ll take money.’
‘What are they planning to do with Kidson if they get him away?’
‘He’ll settle abroad somewhere.’
It seemed all too likely. I was very much afraid that she was right and this was where Robert came into it. They’d need to spirit Kidson away to the Continent along with as much of his money as possible. A respectable gentleman speaking several languages who knew his way round the banking system would be essential. There were surely hundreds of those, and I wondered why they should have gone to so much trouble to recruit Robert. Was it possible that somewhere in my career as an investigator I’d crossed Kidson’s interests worse than I knew, and this was delayed revenge? I asked Tabby if she’d found out when the next batch of prisoners was to be transported.
‘The twenty-fourth of July. Saturday. It’s been changed. It was supposed to have been the day before, but something else is happening that day and they didn’t want the transportation ship there.’
I remembered the conversation I’d overheard on the sloop. They’d been talking about something fixed for the twenty-third of July – surely the transportation, now put off for one day. Eight days from now. ‘We should tell somebody,’ I said. ‘We can’t just let Kidson’s people go ahead.’ It was in my mind that if Kidson’s escape attempt failed, nobody need ever know that Robert had been coerced into helping to prepare a foreign bolthole for him.
‘Who? Sergeant Bevan?’ Amos said.
‘No. He’s suspicious of us already. It will have to be somebody who can do something and not give me away.’
‘Are you thinking of the one I’m thinking of?’ Amos’s head moved by a few degrees so that he was looking towards Park Lane.
I nodded.
‘You reckon you could trust him?’
How to answer? In general, with Mr Disraeli, the answer was probably not. His love of plots and stratagems and a fondness for releasing cats among pigeons meant that he wasn’t the most discreet of men. And yet he could keep secrets when necessary. I’d usually found him – in his way – honourable. Above all, he was an important man in Parliament (though nothing like as important as he should be in his opinion), and if he told the police about the Millbank plot, they’d listen and not press him too heavily for his sources.
‘To this extent, yes.’ I suspected that he’d have heard by now about my disappearance. I’d have to judge carefully how I made contact with him.
Before we parted, Amos told me he’d been to see Mrs Martley at our house. He made a point of calling in there every other day but we’d decided, reluctantly, that she couldn’t be trusted not to let out the news of my reappearance.
‘I saw the children,’ Amos said. ‘Lively as elvers, the two of them.’ Then, more quietly, ‘Harry wanted to know when his mother and father would be back. Soon, I said. Just be good and wait.’
How long? I couldn’t even let myself think about it. I found a pen and paper and wrote a note to Mr Disraeli.