Rosie and I left the convent in silence and waited under a tree for a raincloud to pass over. Rosie was calm for the most part but occasionally overspilling like a pot of boiling potatoes.
‘That Sister Nora was hoping my soft heart would take pity on the wee thing. But how can I? I’ve three kids of my own and a shop to run.’
‘Quite true.’
‘I can’t go adopting a baby just because he’s in need of a mother.’
I was scarcely listening, wrapped up in my own thoughts.
‘You’re quite right, it has nothing to do with you. You should forget about the whole thing.’
She shot me a look. ‘You really are a man sometimes, aren’t you?’
I didn’t reply, partly because I had no idea what she meant by sometimes, but mostly because I was turning over this new information in my mind. Sister Agnes had confessed to a murder because she’d smothered a girl who would otherwise have wasted away to nothing in the grip of a long, dark sleep. It was mercy, not murder. Why was she punishing herself ?
The entire situation was frustrating. I felt as though I was missing something obvious. ‘If Sister Agnes confessed to murdering Drake because she was guilt-ridden, why did she initially claim innocence?’
‘Something must have changed.’
‘Yes, exactly. But what?’
Rosie put out a hand and looked up at the sky. ‘The rain’s stopped. Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
She rolled her eyes so hard I thought they would fall out of her head. ‘The prison, of course. We need to answer your question, and only Sister Agnes Munro can do that.’
We were about to leave when a figure wrapped in a cloak appeared from around the side of the convent. Whoever it was must have exited through the back door and seemed to be in a hurry. She kept her hood raised and was staying close to the walls, cutting the corner over the grass and heading east along Tooley Street, away from London Bridge.
I nodded towards the figure. ‘Who’s that?’
Rosie squinted through her spectacles. ‘It looked like Sister Nora. You should get Alfie to check your eyesight, you really should.’ She sniffed and set off in the same direction. ‘I want to give her a piece of my mind. She’s no right to hand a person a child as if—’
‘Rosie!’ I ran to catch up. ‘This is the wrong way to get to the prison. We have to get over the river. There’s no bridge this way.’
Rosie turned to me, her eyes blazing. ‘Do you not think it’s a mite suspicious, her creeping out of the place like this? Do you not want to know why?’
I held up my hands. ‘All right. We can follow her for a little while to see where she’s going. But please, let’s not confront her.’
We’d only been walking for five minutes, perhaps even less, when Sister Nora took a left turn towards the river. The wharves huddled in front of us as the street dropped down, so we were almost at eye level with the cranes, poised like herons at the shoreside. Beyond that, the Thames was obscured by a white, sanctifying fog. I was scarcely able to spot her, though I could hear the click-clack of her shoes echoing off the walls and arches. And then we were almost upon her. She half turned at the sound of our footsteps and scurried onwards, her face lowered.
As we plunged into the stink of the quays, the hubbub grew louder, and the criss-crossing gangways over our heads boomed with boots and wheels, though I couldn’t see a soul upon them. I found myself slowing, unnerved by the hidden alleys and the hollow thump of wooden trapdoors under our shoes.
‘Quickly!’ Rosie called back over her shoulder.
As we neared the river, we reached a curious, circular building, perhaps fifteen feet in diameter and less than that in height, as if someone had intended to install a vast tower but had given up when the project had hardly begun. On one side of it, a door was propped open. When I looked inside, Rosie was already descending a spiral staircase into the ground.
‘Rosie!’
Her voice echoed back to me. ‘Come on!’
I followed her down, round and round, my feet resounding on the steps. Someone came up from below, an ancient fellow with an armful of empty sacks, and I had to stop to let him pass, taking the inner side of the spiral in deference to his age. He nodded his thanks, puffing with exertion. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely grip the rail.
At the bottom, a hundred feet or more below the pavement, the stairs ended in a room furnished with chairs, tables and lamps like a parlour. It was utterly surreal, and yet scarcely warranted my notice. All of my attention was taken up by a circular hole in one wall that simply disappeared into dimness. I had lost all sense of direction, but surely there was no other possible explanation: it was a tunnel under the river.
Rosie turned to me, her face bright. ‘I’ve heard about this.’ The glint of amusement in her eyes told me that she was enjoying my discomfort, just a little. ‘Sister Nora went this way, so we have to follow. Come on, it’s an adventure.’
A young fellow was reading a magazine in a wooden kiosk. He held out his hand without looking up and I paid him a penny for each of us.
There wasn’t enough width to walk two abreast, so I trailed Rosie in silence, the gentle curve of the tunnel gradually eclipsing the moonish light behind me.
I closed my eyes, running my hand along the dank circumference of the tunnel, feeling the rust under my fingers and the freezing water dripping into my sleeve, and listening to the toll of my shoes and the hissing lamps that marked our progress. The sound was strange, plangent and yet muffled, as if I had ducked under my bathwater as a child, watching my hair dance like riverweed and hearing the clank and echo of my limbs against the metal sides. I could hear footsteps too, some keeping pace, others growing louder until they were upon me; a seaman with a box on his back, a child with his dog, a fellow eating battered fish from a bag. Each time, I stood aside and waited for them to pass, remaining still until they were nothing but a faint ringing in the distance.
The further I walked, the more my guilt crowded in on me.
In all my life I’d never done anything so difficult to forgive. I had abandoned my mother to her loveless marriage, although I’d promised faithfully not to. I had allowed two people to hang for crimes they didn’t commit, though they’d committed others. I had exhumed the dead body of a friend and left it under the stars for someone else to find. I had become so absorbed in my own pain that when Jacob’s little boy died, I neglected my friend in the hour of his grief.
And yet, through all these sins, I hadn’t caused an innocent person’s death. Not until now.
I had accused Agnes Munro of murder and she would likely be hanged.
Just the day before, I’d contemplated leaving, going to a new life by the seaside where no one would be hurt by my actions. But that wasn’t enough. If I cared for justice at all, I should lie down in the darkest part of the tunnel, curl up against the wall and remain there. Better, I should go to Westminster Bridge, climb on to the balustrade, reach out to the horizon and just step off.
I shook myself. Melodramatic idiot. I wasn’t the flawed hero of some penny blood novel, romantically perishing in the depths. What good would that do anyone? Punishing myself wasn’t important; at least not yet. I should seek justice for Sister Agnes, even if she didn’t want it.
I felt a cooler breeze on my face and opened my eyes. I was at the end, where the tunnel opened into another room, the twin of the one at the entrance. Rosie was waiting for me with an impatient expression.
‘Where have you been?’ she hissed. ‘Quickly. We need to follow her.’
As we ascended the spiral staircase, the air became fresher and there was a glow of natural light. We came out on the north bank of the Thames, under the shadow of the Tower of London walls. I looked back at the river, iron black beneath the mist, and was hardly able to believe we’d passed beneath it.
‘That must’ve been the route Sister Agnes took as well,’ I said, basking in the daylight. ‘It explains why she went to the Mincing Lane post office to send the telegram. Coming this way, it’s the nearest one.’
At the top of the hill, by the north-west corner of the Tower, the road levelled out. There, a great works was underway behind some fencing, hurling dust and filth into the air. As we got closer, we could hear men’s voices and the clanging of pickaxes on rocks.
We spotted Sister Nora in a queue, squeezing into a narrow gap between the diggings. We joined the line, a dozen or so people behind, passing a sign saying ‘Metropolitan Railway Extension’.
Underneath it, someone had scrawled: ‘Thy money perish with thee’.
The hollow sound of our shoes on the planks told me I wasn’t walking on a pathway, but a bridge. Through a gap in the fence, I could see scores of navvies lugging barrows and shovelling dirt on to carts, carving a vast trench out of the earth beneath us, thirty or more feet wide. A mechanical crane was lowering a concrete buttress the size of an altar into position.
I was glad to reach the other side and feel firm ground under my feet. A patch of grass had somehow survived; half of an oval, sliced off by the works, bordered by a road congested with carriages and carts.
Sister Nora glanced hastily over her shoulder and sat down neatly on a bench.
Rosie and I crossed the road behind her and stood together under a tree, watching the back of her head.
‘She’s waiting for someone,’ I whispered, and Rosie rolled her eyes.
After ten minutes, a man appeared from the north side of the green, heading directly for the bench. Whereas Sister Nora had been as furtive as a mole, he seemed not to have a care in the world. As he drew closer, I could see he was wearing a clergyman’s collar.
‘My goodness,’ I said to Rosie. ‘It’s Iain Sutherland.’
The deacon sat next to Sister Nora and for a while neither of them spoke. He seemed quite content to take in the air and watch a couple of maids pushing perambulators along the path. Rosie and I edged closer, until we were no more than twenty feet behind them.
Eventually, Sister Nora sighed and folded her arms. ‘Must you act as though we have the same freedoms as ordinary people? Do you care nothing for my station or your own?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what either of those are worth at the moment.’
She didn’t smile. ‘Mine is worth plenty. I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘You’re here, aren’t you?’
They fell into another sullen silence, and I nudged Rosie: ‘Can they be lovers?’
It was a big enough secret to motivate a murder. But Rosie shook her head.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Can’t you tell? With lovers, there’s always something indefinable, a connection in the eyes, in the hands, the way their words overlap, even when they argue. There’s none of that here.’
‘Then what?’
She thought for a moment and then smiled as she reached a conclusion. ‘Of course, they’re brother and sister. She must be Nora Sutherland. We never thought to ask her full name, did we?’
Iain Sutherland stood up, seeming agitated, shoving his hands boyishly into his pockets. He was the younger sibling, if I was any judge.
‘Why should I?’ he protested, in reply to a question I hadn’t been able to hear. ‘You know what would happen if the truth came out. I’d be booted out of the church. Perhaps worse.’
Sister Nora set her shoulders. ‘She’ll be hanged, Iain.’
‘Rather her than me.’
She stared at him with an expression only a sister can muster. I knew that look only too well. She was ashamed of what he’d become.
‘Does your faith mean so little that you’ll withhold the truth?’
He pulled a face. ‘My faith was Father’s idea, not mine.’
It was her turn to stand up. ‘Tell the truth or I will,’ she declared, and strode back the way she’d come, leaving her brother standing on his own like a lost child.