Agnes lay broken.
Coffey stared at the mob, his eyes swivelling. For two seconds, no one moved. And then, as if someone had blown a whistle, they fled, scattering in all directions like the rats they were.
Rosie dashed forward to Sister Agnes’s shattered corpse, but I had someone else in mind.
Coffey’s dandy jacket was easy to spot. He was running parallel to the river, keeping close to the walls of the buildings. I didn’t pause to think, I sprinted after him, closing to within twenty yards before he heard my footsteps and glanced over his shoulder. I accelerated, my lungs burning, but he was quicker. Twenty yards became thirty as I passed his fancy hat, bouncing in the gutter. I was losing him.
A single streetlamp was working, and as he reached it, he turned to face me, his chest heaving.
‘No more,’ he gasped. ‘It’s over. Nothing you can do now, Stanhope.’
I was trying to catch my breath too. ‘Why, though? Why did you lynch her?’
He frowned. ‘Justice for Oswald. She was never getting punished by the authorities, was she? We had to take a stand.’
I shook my head and swallowed. ‘It was you that killed Oswald Drake.’
‘No.’ He sank back against the streetlamp, his face flushed red. ‘It was her, the nun. You heard her confess.’
‘That was to stop you burning the convent. She sacrificed herself. I’m taking you to the police.’
He shook his head. ‘No, you ain’t.’
He started in the direction of the bridge but didn’t make it further than a single step. I hardly saw the movement; a black shape emerging from the shadows and a flicker of metal. There was no sound. Coffey sank to his knees. The black shape raised an arm, her hatpin clasped in her hand, pointing downwards.
Elspeth Drake’s eyes met mine. ‘This time?’ she asked.
I nodded, barely thinking.
She pulled Coffey’s head back by the hair and drove the hatpin into his neck. Three more times the hatpin was raised and lowered, once more into his neck, once into his stomach and once into his groin as he fell backwards. The blood leaked out of his body and pooled in the gutter.
She straightened up.
We were alone.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You’re a fool, but you’re not a wicked fool. I’m not going to kill you.’
She wiped the hatpin on Coffey’s jacket and replaced it expertly into her hair. Throughout the entire killing, she’d been cradling baby Reggie in one arm.
I took a deep breath. ‘It was you.’
She brushed a wisp of hair from Reggie’s forehead. ‘Not just me. Oswald caused a lot of people a lot of pain.’
‘The children who sleep in the gaff.’
She angled her head in acknowledgement. ‘Some of ’em. You have to remember, I was one of ’em once. You met Lewis, didn’t you? He sometimes does a shift in the meat market. They inject the cows with morphine, you know, and—’
‘With thick needles to go through their thick hides?’
She gave a little laugh. ‘Probably. Quite fitting for Oswald; no one had a thicker hide than him. Young Maria stuck him with it to knock him out. I tied a knot in the rope and put it round his neck, and we all pulled him up. He was dead in three minutes.’
She started walking towards the bridge and I matched her pace for pace, just as if we were a family out for a stroll. I thumbed back to where Nicholas Coffey was lying crumpled on the cobbles.
‘What about him?’
She gave a little shrug. ‘I thought Nick would be different. I thought he’d help me out running the gaff, doing the bits a woman can’t, and we’d pay back Mr Sutherland’s money together. But he had ideas of his own. He wanted to follow in Oswald’s footsteps and have all the things Oswald had. All the things.’ She shot a glance at me. ‘And he killed a nun, which is a sin in anyone’s book. He deserved to die.’
I couldn’t argue with her. Not about that, anyway.
‘Elspeth, what do you imagine will happen to you now?’
She smiled. ‘I’ve an uncle in Derby who breeds dogs the size of horses, and he’s trained them to pull his house like a carriage. He and I will visit all the countries of the world without ever leaving his front room.’
I shook my head. ‘Elspeth, this is serious. You’ve killed two people. Do you understand what that means? There’ll be a trial. You’re guilty of murder.’
She stopped and faced me. ‘And did you try to stop me, Mr Stanhope? It’s my recollection that you didn’t.’ Little Reggie stirred briefly and went back to sleep, sucking his thumb. ‘Are you going to tell ’em what we did? Make my boy an orphan?’
‘They lynched Agnes Munro for a crime you committed.’
I realised my throat was closing up and I could hardly get the words out. Tears were running down my face. They lynched her.
Elspeth looked at the ground. ‘I’m sorry about that. We never guessed Irina wasn’t what she claimed, or that she’d end up being arrested.’ She threw me a quick glance. ‘Though you had something to do with that as well, Mr Stanhope.’
We’d reached London Bridge and she climbed the steps slowly. All around us, people were hurrying along the pavement or sitting in stationary carriages. It must have been midnight or later, yet still the city was alive. Among all the bustle, I noticed children, scrawny and grey, skulking in the shadows, hands out for farthings, picking among the paper bags for scraps left behind by the seagulls.
Elspeth looked over the balustrade at the water glistening in the lamplight. ‘I can’t go to prison,’ she said. ‘I’ll drown first. Me and Reggie together.’
I shook my head sorrowfully. ‘You won’t. It’s not so easy to jump, Elspeth. Trust me, I know.’
She cocked her head to one side, realising I was speaking from experience. ‘You’re full of surprises, Mr Stanhope. But it doesn’t make any difference.’ She leaned backwards against the balustrade, clutching Reggie tightly. ‘I won’t be separated from ’im.’
She shifted her weight, so, if she chose, she could twist and throw herself over the side before I could reach her.
I put up my hands in surrender. ‘Very well. You’re right. Drake and Coffey deserved what they got. But you’re free of them now. No more. I won’t tell the police or write an article about you, but you must promise it’s an end to the killing.’
She lifted her chin and stared back at me, fiery-eyed, and I could see how this girl, so slight and pale, could have survived a life on the street. I admired her. I wasn’t sure I could have been so resilient.
‘What about that Mr Lampton from Parliament?’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘He might benefit from a new hatpin, don’t you think? Men like him never seem to get what they deserve.’
She was right, of course. It rankled that he would never suffer the consequences of the movement he’d started. It was the way of power though, wasn’t it? The troops are slaughtered in the field while the generals die in their own beds from old age.
‘No. You must promise me, Elspeth.’
She smiled and turned away. ‘Goodbye, Mr Stanhope.’
‘Promise me,’ I called after her.
She looked back once, her face catching the light before she covered it with her veil. ‘All right. It’s over.’
And with that, she was gone, lost among the crowds on the bridge.